*Stanton Foundation Awards Wikimedia $3.6 Million for Technology Improvements*
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – October 5, 2011 – The Wikimedia Foundation announced today it has been awarded the largest-ever grant in its history: $3.6 million from the Stanton Foundation. The purpose of the grant is to fund major investments in the technology infrastructure that supports Wikipedia and its sister projects, in order to successfully serve their growing readership. The Wikimedia projects currently reach more than 422 million unique visitors around the world every month (comScore, August 2011), making Wikipedia the fifth most-popular website in the world.
The grant will fund development of a new editing interface that will make it possible for people to easily edit Wikipedia without needing to learn special wiki syntax. It will also support development of new technical features to make Wikimedia a friendlier and more understandable environment for new editors, and an improved mobile experience for readers and editors.
"The Stanton Foundation is a long-time funder of the Wikimedia Foundation, and I am thrilled they're increasing their investment in us," said Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. "The Stanton Foundation was one of the first institutions to recognize that Wikipedia is a serious educational endeavor that's having a significant impact on people around the world. I will always be grateful to them for taking a risk in first funding us, many years ago."
The Stanton Foundation is the foundation created by the American broadcasting executive and media pioneer Frank Stanton, who, in 1960, organized the first-ever televised presidential debate. Among its previous grants to the Wikimedia Foundation, the Stanton Foundation provided $1.2 million in 2010 for the Wikipedia Public Policy Initiative, a program designed to improve the quality and quantity of information related to public policy topics in Wikipedia. The project resulted in 800 American students at universities such as Harvard and University of California Berkeley adding the equivalent of 5,800 printed pages of material to Wikipedia, and has now been expanded to include universities in Canada and India.
*About the Wikimedia Foundation* http://wikimediafoundation.org http://blog.wikimedia.org
The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization which operates Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. According to comScore Media Metrix, Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation receive more than 422 million unique visitors per month, making them the fifth-most popular web property world-wide (comScore, September 2011). Available in more than 280 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 18 million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of more than 100,000 people. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants.
Media Contact: Jay Walsh Head of Communications Wikimedia Foundation Tel. +1 415 839 6885 x 6609 jwalsh@wikimedia.org
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Jay Walsh wrote:
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - October 5, 2011 - The Wikimedia Foundation announced today it has been awarded the largest-ever grant in its history: $3.6 million from the Stanton Foundation. The purpose of the grant is to fund major investments in the technology infrastructure that supports Wikipedia and its sister projects, in order to successfully serve their growing readership. The Wikimedia projects currently reach more than 422 million unique visitors around the world every month (comScore, August 2011), making Wikipedia the fifth most-popular website in the world.
The grant will fund development of a new editing interface that will make it possible for people to easily edit Wikipedia without needing to learn special wiki syntax. It will also support development of new technical features to make Wikimedia a friendlier and more understandable environment for new editors, and an improved mobile experience for readers and editors.
Is the grant restricted or unrestricted? (Is there a copy of the agreement somewhere?)
Apologies if this is obvious or already stated elsewhere. I couldn't figure it out.
MZMcBride
MZMcBride, 06/10/2011 05:13:
Is the grant restricted or unrestricted? (Is there a copy of the agreement somewhere?)
The WMF said very clearly that they're not accepting restricted grants any longer, so I assumed it's unrestricted.
Nemo
Wow, that's great!
On 10/06/2011 05:13 AM, MZMcBride wrote:
Is the grant restricted or unrestricted? (Is there a copy of the agreement somewhere?)
I'm not sure if it's any more restricted than the summary says:
The purpose of the grant is to fund major investments in the technology infrastructure that supports Wikipedia and its sister projects, in order to successfully serve their growing readership.
So basically "Tech Operations department".
WMF's spending plan says $12.4M on Technology 2011-2012: http://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=File:2011-12_Wikimedia_Foun... BUT, I suspect the majority of that $12.4M will go to Features/General Engineering, not Tech Operations.
Oh, well, we could always use another data center ;P
--Tobias
On Thu, Oct 6, 2011 at 12:17 AM, Jay Walsh jwalsh@wikimedia.org wrote:
The purpose of the grant is to fund major investments in the technology infrastructure that supports Wikipedia and its sister projects,
Excellent.
Does this mean we can now finally have categorised watchlists? It's an idea that people have generally been supportive of when I have mentioned it on wiki but never gets any actual action. I'd program it myself if I could. Put simply, imagine you are interested in both football and politics: you can put articles in your football list or your politics list and when you want to check your watchlist you can choose just to check either the football or the politics one or both.
I see people complain that their watchlists are unmanageable every now and again and this would help.
Bodnotbod
Bod Notbod, 06/10/2011 11:45:
Does this mean we can now finally have categorised watchlists? It's an idea that people have generally been supportive of when I have mentioned it on wiki but never gets any actual action. I'd program it myself if I could. Put simply, imagine you are interested in both football and politics: you can put articles in your football list or your politics list and when you want to check your watchlist you can choose just to check either the football or the politics one or both.
I see people complain that their watchlists are unmanageable every now and again and this would help.
I doubt this is the right place or thread to restart a list and assessment of all feature requests we have.
Nemo
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