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WP:WMF

The Wikimedia Foundation or WMF also a.k.a. "the Foundation", based in San Francisco, is an organization that raises money, distributes grants, develops software, controls the servers, and does outreach to support Wikimedia projects, including the English Wikipedia. The WMF does not edit Wikipedia content – the community does. If it did take responsibility for content, it would introduce liability issues per Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Occasional office actions do occur, however. As of 2012, there are approximately 140 employees and a revenue of about $38 million (mostly from donations). The organization grew quickly; in 2006, there were five employees and about $2.7 million in revenue.

Software and tech info

The WMF and volunteers develop software used on the English Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects). Even you can become a MediaWiki hacker. See mw:Wikimedia engineering for some of the current priorities. The WMF is also hiring, see wmf:Work with us. If you have a specific idea about how develop a new software feature for the English Wikipedia, it could help to find a wiki-colleague or make a friend or who has expereience. You might find people by posting your ideas at WP:VPI, WP:VPP, WP:VPT, or looking for tech-savvy Wikipedians in Category:Wikipedia bot owners. You might also consider learning how to code yourself or seeing if a Individual Engagement Grant could suit you. Getting official development time from the WMF for new ideas is unfortunately difficult because there are many old and good ideas in the works, bugs already logged, and feature requests to existing software already requested.^[1]

Recent rollouts and planned new features

WP:Notifications
The Curation Toolbar was released in May 2012: just go to Special:NewPagesFeed then click on a new article
The WP:Visual Editor is released and Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback is open for feedback
WP:Flow is a planned 2013 release, though no testable version is open to Wikipedia editors

Divisions with a Wikipedia presence

Wikipedia:Growth (team)

Organization, programs, and contact

User:Sue Gardner (Sue Gardner) is the executive director, though she will be leaving in the near future and the board is looking for a replacement. User:Wing (Ting Chen – see also his former board profile) stepped down from the Board of Trustees to apply for the position.

There are ways to participate in how the money that is donated to the WMF is managed. There is a m:Grant Advisory Committee you can participate in. It is composed of volunteers. There is also a m:Funds Dissemination Committee with elected representatives. See the m:Wikimedia Foundation elections 2013/Results for results of the recent Wikimedia elections. The elections influenced the volunteer Board of Trustees, which has its own noticeboard for communicating with the various projects. Three trustees are currently elected as community representatives until July 2015: SJ, Phoebe, and Raystorm. Jimbo Wales has the founder's seat. The WMF also has an Advisory Board. See strategy:Task force/Strategy/Plan overview for old community discussion on strategy.

If you have a general question for the WMF that is more general than just English Wikipedia, then that can go to answerswikimedia.org (and here are some previous answers). If you have an idea/question about how the WMF supports or could perhaps more effectively support English Wikipedia, feel free to contact Mdennis (WMF) (Maggie Dennis) at her talk page or email her at liaisonwikimedia.org. There are other ways to contact the WMF or the WMF-affiliated chapters (mostly national in scope).

Reception

Members of the Wikipedia community vary in their reactions to WMF initiatives. Many at WP:VisualEditor/Default State RFC criticized the buggy release of the WP:VisualEditor, and the WP:Education Working Group/RfC shows both community support and community skepticism of the value of the WP:Education program. Sometimes, WMF staff provide direct and organized support to volunteer Wikipedians engaged in advancing the Wikimedia mission – more perhaps than the volunteer community might be able to muster. For example, the WMF has helped users that faced legal problems that occured because of their editing of Wikimedia projects.^[2] It has been said^[3] that WMF staff work too many hours, though who knows, that was said by an IP.

Legal

In general, the Foundation does not provide legal support or legal advice to volunteers. But see here for more details because it does maintain a m:Legal and Community Advocacy/Legal Fees Assistance Program for volunteers under certain circumstances.

References

^ Feature requests are defined as "enhancement" requests to a specific software line in a Bugzilla bug report (see that specified here).
^ Noam Cohen (9 September 2012). "Travel Site Built on Wiki Ethos Now Bedevils Its Owner". The New York Times.
^ Here's a diff.

[1] Feature requests are defined as "enhancement" requests to a specific software line in a Bugzilla bug report (see that specified here).

[2] Noam Cohen (9 September 2012). "Travel Site Built on Wiki Ethos Now Bedevils Its Owner". The New York Times.

[3] Here's a diff.

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[2]

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 {{Shortcut|WP:WMF}}
 {{Hatnote|For general discussion about the WMF or any of its projects, see '''[[m:Forum]]''' (the Wikimedia Forum).}}
+{{Hatnote|This page is for '''anyone''', including WMF employees, to edit. If you're hesitant to edit it, then something might be wrong. This is Wikipedia, where anyone can edit and everything is a work in progress.}}
 The '''[[Wikimedia Foundation]]''' or '''WMF''' also a.k.a. "'''the Foundation'''", based in San Francisco, is an organization that raises money, distributes [[m:Grants|grants]], develops software, controls the servers, and does outreach to support [[WP:Wikimedia projects|Wikimedia projects]], including the English Wikipedia. The WMF does not edit Wikipedia content – the [[WP:Wikipedia community|community]] does. If it did take responsibility for content, it would introduce liability issues per [[Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act]]. Occasional [[Wikipedia:Office actions|office actions]] do occur, however. As of 2012, there are approximately 140 [[wmf:Staff|employees]] and a revenue of about $38 million (mostly from donations). The organization grew quickly; in 2006, there were five employees and about $2.7 million in revenue.