Webware

As part of its annual "Wikimania" conference in Alexandria, Egypt, the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation--parent company of Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and a number of others--announced two new members to its board of trustees. The announcement went out on Friday and is effective immediately.

Taking over from current chair Florence Devouard will be Michael Snow, who has been on the board since February and has been an active member of the Wikipedia community since 2003. A lawyer based in Seattle, Wash., Snow created the "Wikipedia Signpost" community news resource in 2006.

Another Wikimedia Foundation board member has been announced, too: Ting Chen, who has worked on both the German and Chinese editions of Wikipedia. He currently lives in Mainz, Germany and works at IBM.

The Wikimedia Foundation restructured its board in April, formally naming creator Jimmy Wales as "community founder" and expanding the total membership of the board from eight to ten. The nonprofit also received significant donations this spring, including $500,000 from venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and $3 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. But things haven't all been sunny: the Wikimedia Foundation has come under fire regarding use of funds on Wales' behalf.

Talk about hot foundation-on-foundation action.

On Tuesday, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced it was giving the Wikimedia Foundation--which runs Wikipedia--$3 million.

The money will go toward supporting "Wikimedia's organizational development and help to increase the quality of its content and the reach of its services."

Among other things, the announcement said the money would go specifically to a new Wikipedia feature called "flagged revisions," which will "allow experienced editors to publicly and visibly grade the quality status of articles--in effect, functioning as a kind of 'nutrition labeling' for Wikipedia content."

I sort of wonder if that is in any way related to a feature that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales told me about back in August 2006 that was supposed to make it possible for Wikipedia's home page to be open to the public again.

Perhaps not, but it seems there might be some similarities in the functionality.

Update (4:03pm): I got an email this afternoon from Jimmy Wales who confirms that the flagged revisions feature on Wikipedia is exactly the feature he told me about back in 2006. The only difference, he said, is that back then, it was called "stable versions." But he said, that name was too confusing.

In the next several months Wikipedians, or the authors of the content found on Wikipedia will be the subject of a worldwide survey to find out about people's posting habits on the immensely popular online encyclopedia.

The Wikimedia foundation, which operates Wikipedia is employing Netherlands-based UNU-MERIT to conduct the research that aims to figure out not only who Wikipedians are, but how much they're contributing to the site. The survey is also designed to find out why people are coming to Wikipedia, and the identify the types of users who go from casual browsers to site contributors.

User identity goes farther than just browsing habits, though. The survey's creators are trying to unearth the real identities of Wikipedia authors, something that Wikipedia alternative Citizendium has already solved by requiring its users to use their real names as part of the editing process. In the past, user anonymity has been one of the key points of contention regarding responsibly and the efficacy of rule enforcement in Wikipedia's user community.

A portion of the survey results are to be released at this year's Wikimania, which takes place in late July, with a more conclusive report later this year.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit parent company of Wikipedia and its anyone-can-edit brethren, announced on Monday that it has begun its annual fund-raiser. The organization has said that proceeds from the fund-raiser, which runs through December 22, will be used to pay for technological and corporate improvements as well as program development--specifically expanding its operations to global regions and languages that are currently underrepresented.

"We believe that everyone in the world should have access to education, regardless of race, nationality, gender, age or economic background," Wikimedia Foundation founder Jimmy Wales, who also started a for-profit spin-off, Wikia, said in a statement. "We also believe that everyone has knowledge to contribute. Through the public's support and the Foundation's continued efforts, we expect to have a similar impact on communities in the most remote areas of the world as we have in more developed parts of the globe."

For example, the Wikimedia Foundation--which recently relocated from St. Petersburg, Fla., to San Francisco--will hold an event in South Africa in November with the aim to expand Wikipedia's reach among African languages.

Exact data from last year's Wikimedia Foundation fund-raiser is not yet available because the organization does not expect its audit for the 2006-2007 fiscal year to be finished until late November. The Wikimedia Foundation is not announcing a target for this year's fund-raiser but has stated that its 2007-2008 operating budget is $4.6 million.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that brought forth wiki-based sites like Wikibooks, Wiktionary, Wikispecies, Wikiquote, Wikisource, the Wikimedia Commons, and of course the iconic Wikipedia, is packing up and moving.

The organization announced on Tuesday that at the end of January it will relocate from its longtime home of St. Petersburg, Fla., to the tech hub of San Francisco after choosing from six candidate cities in a search to find a headquarters close to major media, research universities and a thriving technology scene. "(San Francisco's) proximity to Asia in particular is expected to enable the Foundation to form closer ties with volunteers and potential partners in that part of the world," a release from the Wikimedia Foundation explained. "This is a key goal for the Foundation."

The Wikimedia Foundation has been based in St. Petersburg since it was founded by Jimmy Wales in 2003. While it currently only employs six people, the organization has said that new hiring will take place in anticipation of the move to San Francisco.

Wales' for-profit company, Wikia, has offices in San Mateo, Calif., and New York, as well as an overseas branch in Poland.