How does Wikipedia (Part 1)

Hi, Habr!





Within the framework of the Wikimedia blog RU I promised to write a series of articles on how to construct Wikipedia, whom she managed, as funded, as there is a process of development, etc. I must confess that I have not yet well understood how it will look a whole lot, as it will be part of, and which will be devoted to each of them, so look forward to your feedback and comments.

The first post I decided to devote himself to the Wikimedia Foundation, which manages servers Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement develops in the world.

A bit of history h4> Site wikipedia.com was recorded January 13, 2001, and on January 15 the project was launched two founders - Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. If a person first must be familiar to many (partly thanks to a banner asking for donations), then on the Larry Sanger know less. Larry is now 45 years old, when she began working with Jimmy, he was a 32-year-old scientist who received PhD from the University of Ohio.

So, in 2000, Wales hired Sanger to work as chief editor of Nupedia, which was the ancestor of Wikipedia. In Nupedia right to edit articles had only scientists who filled her Volunteering: the result in the first year of the project was created only 12 articles. Realizing that nothing serious will not work, Larry suggested the use of wiki technology to accelerate the filling of the project.

As the engine was chosen UseModWiki , and Wikipedia (which is the name of Sanger came up for a new project) began its rapid growth. In July 2001, Wikipedia was already 6000 articles, although the site was extremely unpretentious Decorated .

In August 2002, Wales announced that Wikipedia would never show ads, and the site has moved from wikipedia.com to wikipedia.org. Initially, funds for the work of the project provides another company Wales - Bomis , which are paid traffic the servers, but soon grew Wikipedia Bomis in its popularity, and 20 June 2003 to support the work of Wikipedia was founded Wikimedia Foundation. After this, the Fund has received the rights to the trademark "Wikipedia", was the necessary approvals from the US tax authorities and held recruitment.

Employees Fund h4>

The first official representative of the Fund in 2004 were Tim Starling (a leading developer of MediaWiki, is still in the state), Daniel Meyer (CFO) and Erik Möller (was hired to work on the programs of partnership in the development of site content, today - Deputy Director and Vice president of engineering, who heads all technical direction). After that, people were attracted to the position of lawyers, spokespersons, etc., but most work on a voluntary basis: in 2005, only two were paid in 2006 - five.

Today, the Foundation employs about 200 people, most of the staff make developers. Face almost all employees can be seen on a separate page Foundation website : as you can see, they are representatives of different countries, cultures and nations. Total expenditure on salaries amounted to about 16 million. Dollars in the 2012-2013 fiscal year, which represents approximately 45% of all expenses of the Fund.

While constantly the search for new employees , but many positions remain open long enough, so if someone lives in habrazhiteley United States (or is going to move there) and shares the idea of ​​free and accessible knowledge, you can safely send resume :)

Executive Director of the Foundation is now the Lila Tretikov (pictured above), and do not be confused by the Slavic name - it really a native of Moscow, but moved to the US when she was 16. In the position it has entered more recently, replacing Sue Gardner . Sue has played a huge role in the development of the Fund and the whole movement Wikimedia over the last seven years, she turned a small profit foundation from Florida into a large and self-sufficient organization earns about 50 million. Dollars a year in donations and does not depend on large contributions from individual donors. The process of finding a new director was too easy: a year ago, Sue expressed its wish to leave from the post of Director, after she helped in the search and selection of new candidates, doing all this time as director, and now has moved to the position of advisor to help Laila enter into the swing of things and get used to the new position. The very same Sue wants to concentrate on the development of the Internet, its protection from censorship bills like SOPA and CISPA.

Board of Trustees h4>

Supreme governing body of the Foundation is the Board of Trustees. The Council consists of 10 members:

• founder - Jimmy Wales;
• Two representatives elected by local Wikimedia chapters, such as for example the Wikimedia RU;
• Three representatives elected members of Wikimedia projects; li >
• Four representatives of the other members of the Board are selected on the basis of their special knowledge and experience.
  With the Council created several committees dealing with specific functions:
  
  1. Committee for accession, approval of new departments dealing Wikimedia and assist in their development.
     
     For example, when someone wants to organize a local office in your country, first he needs to gather a group of active participants define their goals and create a wiki page with the description, contacts, and tasks of association so that other members could also join and help in the work. Then you need to apply to the Committee, which will help to move towards a functioning entity signing the contract with the Fund and the official recognition of the local branch.
     Small point: The Fund does not recognize the new organization operating in the same area, which already operates a recognized branch of the Wikimedia Foundation.
  2. the Audit Committee. Statements of the Wikimedia Foundation is tested annually by an external auditor and the Audit Committee engaged the auditor selection, internal audits and financial performance of existing internal controls.
     Member of the Committee can be any of the participants Wikimedia elections are held annually.
  3. Allocations Committee. In general terms, this Committee, composed of members of the elections Wikimedia distributes part of the Fund for projects, grants or offices. In the 2012-2013 fiscal year, the Committee, for example, has distributed more than 9 million. Dollars between 15 organizations. The work of this Committee - recent innovation, and his work, I will make a separate post of.
  4. Corporate Governance Committee, and for ensuring that the Board of Trustees carries out its functions, and helps in increasing the efficiency and transparency of the work. Li >
  5. the Nomination Committee, which controls the amount of wages and of the order of work with the staff.
     

     Where is Wikipedia? H4>
     
     One of the tasks of the Board of Trustees is to determine the priorities of the Wikimedia projects, the approval of the strategic plan. In February 2011, was approved by development plan until 2015. Those interested can read it on the link, but this is a brief excerpt goals:
     
     

     • Infrastructure Development
     • The growing number of participants
     • Improved information
     • To increase the penetration of the Wikimedia Foundation in the world
     • Support for Innovation < /
       I will not dwell on the details of how these goals will be achieved: it is to build new data centers, and improved documentation for MediaWiki, and the development of WYSIWYG-editor, and implementation of quality assessments of existing articles. A significant part of the planned improvements tied to technical innovations and detail design I want to dedicate a separate post.
       
       

       Local Branch h4> Before local offices Wikimedia face the same problem as before by the Fund (see. Above). At the moment, there are officially 40 branches Wikimedia , including the Russian Wikimedia RU.
       
       Local branch is not legally subject to the Wikimedia Foundation and are not controlled by them, in addition, self-organized fundraising. It is important to clarify that through the banners of the Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects funds are transferred only in the Wikimedia Foundation, the fundraising channel is reserved for the Fund and may not be used offices, so that each of the departments come up with their own ways to find the means to exist.
       
       At the same time, there are exceptions - through banners in Wikimedia projects funds collected by the German and Swiss branch. The position of the Fund is that the collection of donations directly to the department requires considerable effort from local organizations - need to ensure transparency in fundraising, organizing the transfer of the funds to the Wikimedia Foundation, and the Foundation spends additional means for control of the entire process.
       
       In addition, the majority of local offices - is a small non-profit organization, which is difficult to lead a full and prompt financial records, so the tendency is that the Fund "closes" to raise funds for itself with a few exceptions. German branch, for example, one of the oldest and largest; it consists of more than 6,000 participants, and the organization's budget is close to 20 million euros per year; Swiss branch has received such a possibility because of the peculiarities of Swiss law, the Fund does not allow yourself to collect donations in this country.
       
       One way is to provide grants for specific projects or under the annual development plan of the Allocations Committee, but, for example, to Russian NGOs receive large remittance from abroad is a risky action (let us remember about "foreign agents"), so we do not use it.
       
       On the other hand, you have to be honest - we managed to get a collection of donations in 2010-2011, when the собрали about 5 million rubles , which are still sufficient to finance our projects and initiatives.
       
       

       Fundraising h4> Since we started talking about fundraising, let's discuss it in more detail. Recently approach to fundraising has changed a lot, and its success determined by the time for which to collect the required funds has grown significantly.
       
       How varied methods of fundraising, the easiest way to track through the study of history.
       

       1. 2011
          
          
          - $ 24 million from 1, 1 million donors
          - Gathering lasted 46 days
          - Registered users can see banners for 18 days
          - The average donation was $
          21 - The most successful banner - with the face of Jimmy (right)
       2. 2012
          
          - $ 35 million from 2 million contributors
          - Gathering lasted 9 days
          - Registered users can not see banners
          - The average donation was $
          17 - The most effective banner was a text handling, which brought in three times more donations than personal appeal Jimbo:
          
          
          
       3. 2013
          
          The main report while preparing, but for 2 weeks has been collected about 32 million. Dollars, while charges were only in the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in the rest of the collection will be launched in late summer and autumn of 2014.
          
          The most effective again became a text-treatment have been tried various changes to the text, moreover, banners began to appear on the mobile version of the site.
          As we can see, by increasing the conversion efficiency and banners, was to attract more donors who, despite decreasing average size of donations allow you to collect large sums for much less time. In addition, there was a change of emphasis in fundraising - banners began to appear mostly anonymous readers, not registered participants; own fundraising has become more targeted - ie first "polished" the English-language banners that run to the widest possible audience - English speakers from the US, Britain, Canada, etc., bringing most of the revenue. After that, based on data conversion, banners in English translated into dozens of other languages ​​and launched in other regions.
          
          Its role and test runs hundreds of different banners to a limited audience - it allows you to see which banners are more effective, and to use them in large-scale campaigns, for example, it was found that banners on white background bring more money than stylized and multi-color; and banners in the background of green leaves and vegetation - more effective than banner with white background.
          
          

          Conclusion h4> I did not mention in this article about the peculiarities of the development of MediaWiki and other technical kitchen Wikipedia, this will be discussed in the next post of our blog, if this article and proposed theme for readers seem interesting.
          
          Source: habrahabr.ru/company/wikimedia_ru/blog/224379/