Wiki Media

WikiMedia is a nonprofit foundation set up to run WikiPedia and other sites. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia for more information.

(This should be merged with WikimediaFoundation.)

Wikimedia is based in SaintPetersburg in southern Florida. It is lead by a board of directors, some of which are elected yearly by WikiPedia users who comply with certain conditions. In the 2005 election, for example, Wikipedia users had to have pushed the Save button 400 times before being able to vote for two Wikimedia board members.

Initially, WikiMedia projects used UseModWiki, a WikiClone of the WikiWikiWeb's WikiEngine. UseModWiki was later replaced by WikiMedia's own WikiEngine called MediaWiki.

WikiWikiWeb WikiEngine -> UseModWiki -> MediaWiki

WikiMania is the WikiSym-equivalent yearly conference that started in mid 2005.

WardCunningham, who has been working for the MicrosoftPatternsAndPractices division since 2003, was interviewed by a group of WikiMedia members. The interview was published on the first edition of WikiMedia's electronic and printed newsletter in 2004. The newsletter is called "Quarto" because it is published every quarter of a year.

The interview, among other things, discussed Wikipedia's no-original-research policy.

(WC = WardCunningham, WQ = Wikimedia Quarto)

WC: Wikipedia is close to becoming an original source, I suppose.

WQ: Actually, we are totally against that; one of our basic rules is "no original research".

WC: That's because this is the grounding that keeps it from spiraling off into argument? I always wanted people to talk about things that actually happened to them; their own experience was that grounding. A community has to be grounded in something, or else you end up in a spiral of mutual delusion.

Cover of the "Inaugural Edition" of WikiMedia's newsletter of 2004:

CategoryWiki