Misplaced Pages

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126-540: The Misplaced Pages community , collectively and individually known as Wikipedians , is an online community of volunteers who create and maintain Misplaced Pages , an online encyclopedia . Since August 2012, the word "Wikipedian" has been an Oxford Dictionary entry. Wikipedians may or may not consider themselves part of the Wikimedia movement , a global network of volunteer contributors to Misplaced Pages and other related projects hosted by

252-478: A PHP wiki engine with a MySQL database; this software was custom-made for Misplaced Pages by Magnus Manske . The Phase II software was repeatedly modified to accommodate the exponentially increasing demand. In July 2002 (Phase III), Misplaced Pages shifted to the third-generation software, MediaWiki, originally written by Lee Daniel Crocker . Some MediaWiki extensions are installed to extend the functionality of MediaWiki software. In April 2005, an Apache Lucene extension

378-530: A cease and desist letter to the Wiki-PR agency. Misplaced Pages's co-founder Larry Sanger (who later founded rival project Citizendium ) characterized the Misplaced Pages community in 2007 as ineffective and abusive, stating that "The community does not enforce its own rules effectively or consistently. Consequently, administrators and ordinary participants alike are able essentially to act abusively with impunity, which begets

504-597: A transclusion system for templates , and URL redirection . MediaWiki is licensed under the GNU General Public License and it is used by all Wikimedia projects. Originally, Misplaced Pages ran on UseModWiki written in Perl by Clifford Adams (Phase I), which initially required CamelCase for article hyperlinks; the double bracket style was incorporated later. Starting in January 2002 (Phase II), Misplaced Pages began running on

630-524: A "Knowledge Equity Fund", to provide grants to organizations whose work would not otherwise be covered by Wikimedia grants but addresses racial inequities in accessing and contributing to free knowledge resources. In January 2016, the Foundation announced the creation of an endowment to safeguard its future. The Wikimedia Endowment was established as a donor-advised fund at the Tides Foundation , with

756-523: A 2008 Wikimedia Foundation survey. Sue Gardner , a former executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, hoped to see female contributions increase to 25% by 2015. Linda Basch, president of the National Council for Research on Women, noted the contrast in these Misplaced Pages editor statistics with the percentage of women currently completing bachelor's degrees, master's degrees and PhD programs in

882-480: A barrier, people become novices and participate in community life. After contributing for a sustained period of time, they become regulars. If they break through another barrier they become leaders, and once they have contributed to the community for some time they become elders. This life cycle can be applied to many virtual communities, such as bulletin board systems , blogs , mailing lists , and wiki-based communities like Misplaced Pages. A similar model can be found in

1008-645: A caching cluster in an Equinix facility in Singapore , the first of its kind in Asia. The operation of Wikimedia depends on MediaWiki , a custom-made, free and open-source wiki software platform written in PHP and built upon the MariaDB database since 2013; previously the MySQL database was used. The software incorporates programming features such as a macro language , variables ,

1134-438: A catalyst for collaborative development, and that a "creative construction" approach encourages participation. A paper written by Andrea Forte and Amy Bruckman in 2005, called "Why Do People Write for Misplaced Pages? Incentives to Contribute to Open-Content Publishing", discussed the possible motivations of Misplaced Pages contributors. It applied Latour and Woolgar's concept of the cycle of credit to Misplaced Pages contributors, suggesting that

1260-407: A chance to reach a new group of consumers in online communities, but to also tap into information about the consumers. Companies have a chance to learn about the consumers in an environment that they feel a certain amount of anonymity and are thus, more open to allowing a company to see what they really want or are looking for. In order to establish a relationship with the consumer a company must seek

1386-430: A character theory for analyzing online communities, based on tribal typologies. In the communities they investigated they identified three character types: Online communities have also forced retail firms to change their business strategies. Companies have to network more, adjust computations, and alter their organizational structures. This leads to changes in a company's communications with their manufacturers including

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1512-445: A common public place where members can meet and interact, and sustained membership over time. Based on these considerations, it can be said that microblogs such as Twitter can be classified as online communities. Dorine C. Andrews argues, in the article "Audience-Specific Online Community Design", that there are three parts to building an online community: starting the online community, encouraging early online interaction, and moving to

1638-486: A company must understand the dynamic and structure of the online community to be able to establish a relationship with the consumer. Online communities have cultures of their own, and to be able to establish a commercial relationship or even engage at all, one must understand the community values and proprieties. It has even been proved beneficial to treat online commercial relationships more as friendships rather than business transactions. Through online engagement, because of

1764-558: A fear of criticism or inaccuracy. Users may withhold information that they do not believe is particularly interesting, relevant, or truthful. In order to challenge these contribution barriers, producers of these sites are responsible for developing knowledge-based and foundation-based trust among the community. Users' perception of audience is another reason that makes users participate in online communities. Results showed that users usually underestimate their amount of audiences in online communities. Social media users guess that their audience

1890-470: A feeder project to supplement Nupedia . The project was originally funded by Bomis , Wales's for-profit business, and edited by a rapidly growing community of volunteer editors. The early community discussed a variety of ways to support the ongoing costs of upkeep, and was broadly opposed to running ads on the site, so the idea of setting up a charitable foundation gained prominence. That addressed an open question of what entity should hold onto trademarks for

2016-526: A grant agreement was reached with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to build a search engine called the " Knowledge Engine ", a project that proved controversial . In 2017, the Sloan Foundation awarded another $ 3 million grant for a three-year period, and Google donated another $ 1.1 million to the Foundation in 2019. The following have donated $ 500,000 or more each (2008–2019, not including gifts to

2142-518: A high school or undergraduate college education. In August 2014, Misplaced Pages co-founder Jimmy Wales said in a BBC interview that the Wikimedia Foundation was "... really doubling down our efforts ..." to reach 25% of female editors (originally targeted by 2015), since the Foundation had "totally failed" so far. Wales said "a lot of things need to happen ... a lot of outreach, a lot of software changes". Andrew Lih , writing in The New York Times ,

2268-438: A minority of Misplaced Pages users contribute regularly, and only a minority of those contributors participate in community discussions. In one study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University , they found that "more than two-thirds (68%) of newcomers to Usenet groups were never seen again after their first post". Above facts reflect a point that recruiting and remaining new members have become a very crucial problem for online communities:

2394-514: A mobile device in the United States. Researchers and organizations have worked to classify types of online community and to characterise their structure. For example, it is important to know the security, access, and technology requirements of a given type of community as it may evolve from an open to a private and regulated forum. It has been argued that the technical aspects of online communities, such as whether pages can be created and edited by

2520-571: A more easily consumable way, the data of the Wikimedia projects, including Misplaced Pages . It allows customers to retrieve data at large scale and high availability through different formats like Web APIs , data snapshots or streams . It was announced in March 2021, and launched on October 26, 2021. Google and the Internet Archive were its first customers, although Internet Archive is not paying for

2646-557: A move as letting down those who elected me." He subsequently added that while on the Board, he had pushed for greater transparency regarding the Wikimedia Foundation's Knowledge Engine project and its financing, and indicated that his attempts to make public the Knight Foundation grant for the engine had been a factor in his dismissal. Heilman was reelected to the board by the community in 2017. In January 2016, Arnnon Geshuri joined

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2772-467: A never-ending cycle of abuse." Oliver Kamm of The Times expressed skepticism toward Misplaced Pages's reliance on consensus in forming its content: "Misplaced Pages seeks not truth but consensus, and like an interminable political meeting the end result will be dominated by the loudest and most persistent voices." A Misplaced Pages Monument by sculptor Mihran Hakobyan was erected in Słubice , Poland, in 2014 to honor

2898-910: A part of an online community usually have to become a member via a specific site and thereby gain access to specific content or links. An online community can act as an information system where members can post, comment on discussions, give advice or collaborate, and includes medical advice or specific health care research as well. Commonly, people communicate through social networking sites , chat rooms , forums , email lists, and discussion boards, and have advanced into daily social media platforms as well. This includes Facebook , Twitter , Instagram , Discord , etc. People may also join online communities through video games , blogs , and virtual worlds , and could potentially meet new significant others in dating sites or dating virtual worlds. The rise in popularity of Web 2.0 websites has allowed for easier real-time communication and connection to others and facilitated

3024-412: A representative survey of 1,000 adults in the U.S. by YouGov found that 7% had ever edited Misplaced Pages, 20% had considered doing so but had not, 55% had neither considered editing Misplaced Pages nor done it, and 17% had never visited Misplaced Pages. In a 2003 study of Misplaced Pages as a community, economics Ph.D. student Andrea Ciffolilli argued that the low transaction costs of participating in wiki software create

3150-639: A role in the cycle of social networking, such as: An article entitled "The real value of on-line communities," written by A. Armstrong and John Hagel of the Harvard Business Review , addresses a handful of elements that are key to the growth of an online community and its success in drawing in members. In this example, the article focuses specifically on online communities related to business, but its points can be transferred and can apply to any online community. The article addresses four main categories of business-based online communities, but states that

3276-597: A self-sustaining interactive environment. When starting an online community, it may be effective to create webpages that appeal to specific interests. Online communities with clear topics and easy access tend to be most effective. In order to gain early interaction by members, privacy guarantees and content discussions are very important. Successful online communities tend to be able to function self-sufficiently. There are two major types of participation in online communities: public participation and non-public participation, also called lurking. Lurkers are participants who join

3402-572: A sense, virtual communities may fill social voids in participants' offline lives. Sociologist Barry Wellman presents the idea of "globalization" – the Internet's ability to extend participants' social connections to people around the world while also aiding them in further engagement with their local communities. Although online societies differ in content from real society, the roles people assume in their online communities are quite similar. Elliot Volkman points out several categories of people that play

3528-898: A set of values, sometimes known collectively as netiquette or Internet etiquette, as they grow. These values may include: opportunity, education, culture, democracy, human services, equality within the economy, information, sustainability, and communication. An online community's purpose is to serve as a common ground for people who share the same interests. Online communities may be used as calendars to keep up with events such as upcoming gatherings or sporting events. They also form around activities and hobbies. Many online communities relating to health care help inform, advise, and support patients and their families. Students can take classes online and they may communicate with their professors and peers online. Businesses have also started using online communities to communicate with their customers about their products and services as well as to share information about

3654-424: A shared communication environment, relationships formed and nurtured, a sense of belonging to a group, the internal structure of the group, common space shared by people with similar ideas and interests. The three most critical issues are belonging, identity, and interest. For an online community to flourish there needs to be consistent participation, interest, and motivation. Research conducted by Helen Wang applied

3780-772: A single server until 2004, when the server setup was expanded into a distributed multitier architecture . Server downtime in 2003 led to the first fundraising drive. By December 2009, Wikimedia ran on co-located servers, with 300 servers in Florida and 44 in Amsterdam . In 2008, it also switched from multiple different Linux operating system vendors to Ubuntu Linux . In 2019, it switched to Debian . By January 2013, Wikimedia transitioned to newer infrastructure in an Equinix facility in Ashburn, Virginia , citing reasons of "more reliable connectivity" and "fewer hurricanes ". In years prior,

3906-402: A site is SixDegrees.com , set up in 1997, which included a friends list and the ability to send messages to members linked to friends and see other users associations. For much of the 21st century, the popularity of such networks has been growing. Friendster was the first social network to gain mass media attention; however, by 2004 it had been overtaken in popularity by Myspace , which in turn

Misplaced Pages community - Misplaced Pages Continue

4032-681: A stated goal to raise $ 100 million in the next 10 years. Craig Newmark was one of the initial donors, giving $ 1 million. Peter Baldwin and Lisbet Rausing , of Arcadia Fund , donated $ 5 million in 2017. In 2018, major donations to the endowment were received from Amazon and Facebook ($ 1 million each) and George Soros ($ 2 million). In 2019, donations included $ 2 million from Google, $ 3.5 million more from Baldwin and Rausing, $ 2.5 million more from Newmark, and another $ 1 million from Amazon in October 2019 and again in September 2020. As of 2023,

4158-406: A truly successful one will combine qualities of each of them: communities of transaction, communities of interest, communities of fantasy, and communities of relationship. Anubhav Choudhury describes the four types of community as follows: Amy Jo Kim's membership lifecycle theory states that members of online communities begin their life in a community as visitors, or lurkers. After breaking through

4284-484: A trustee recently elected to the board by the community, was removed from his position by a vote of the rest of the board. This decision generated dispute among members of the Misplaced Pages community. Heilman later said that he "was given the option of resigning [by the Board] over the last few weeks. As a community elected member I see my mandate as coming from the community which elected me and thus declined to do so. I saw such

4410-409: A virtual community but do not contribute. In contrast, public participants, or posters, are those who join virtual communities and openly express their beliefs and opinions. Both lurkers and posters frequently enter communities to find answers and to gather general information. For example, there are several online communities dedicated to technology. In these communities, posters are generally experts in

4536-416: A way to identify with how individuals interact with the community. This is done by understanding the relationships an individual has with an online community. There are six identifiable relationship statuses: considered status, committed status, inactive status, faded status, recognized status, and unrecognized status. Unrecognized status means the consumer is unaware of the online community or has not decided

4662-604: A webcomic called WikiWorld which ran in The Signpost from 2006 to 2008. A podcast called Misplaced Pages Weekly was active from 2006 to 2009, while a series of conference calls titled "Not the Misplaced Pages Weekly" ran from 2008 to 2009. Offline activities are organized by the Wikimedia Foundation or the community of Misplaced Pages: Wikimania is an annual international conference for users of the wiki projects operated by

4788-453: Is Wiki Indaba which is the regional conference for African Wikimedians. The conference includes Wikimedia projects such as Misplaced Pages , other wikis , open-source software , free knowledge , free content and how these projects affect the African continent . The Seigenthaler and Essjay incidents caused criticism of Misplaced Pages's reliability and usefulness as a reference. Complaints related to

4914-509: Is 27% of its real size. Regardless of this underestimation, it is shown that amount of audience affects users' self-presentation and also content production which means a higher level of participation. There are two types of virtual online communities (VOC): dependent and self-sustained VOCs. The dependent VOCs are those who use the virtual community as extensions of themselves, they interact with people they know. Self-sustained VOCs are communities where relationships between participating members

5040-645: Is B60 ( Adult , Continuing education ). The Foundation filed an application to trademark the name Misplaced Pages in the US to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences on September 14, 2004. The mark was granted registration status on January 10, 2006. Trademark protection was accorded also by Japan on December 16, 2004, and by the European Union on January 20, 2005. Subsets of Misplaced Pages were already being distributed in book and DVD form, and there were discussions about licensing

5166-856: Is a national conference organised in India . The first conference was held in November 2011, in Mumbai , the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra . It was organised by the Mumbai Misplaced Pages community in partnership with Wikimedia India Chapter . The conference focus is on matters concerning India on Misplaced Pages projects and other sister projects in English and other Indian folk languages . WikiConference India 2023 took place in Hyderabad from 28 to 30 April 2023. Additionally, there

Misplaced Pages community - Misplaced Pages Continue

5292-494: Is a yearly WikiConference North America organized by and for Misplaced Pages editors, enthusiasts, and volunteers. The first two events were held at New York Law School and Washington, D.C.'s National Archives Building in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Staff from the Wiki Education Foundation , which co-sponsored the 2015 event, and the Wikimedia Foundation also attend each year. There is WikiConference India which

5418-511: Is defined as an aggregation of individuals or business partners who interact around a shared interest, where the interaction is at least partially supported or mediated by technology (or both) and guided by some protocols or norms". Digital communities (web communities but also communities that are formed over, e.g., Xbox and PlayStation) provide a platform for a range of services to users. It has been argued that they can fulfill Maslow's hierarchy of needs . They allow for social interaction across

5544-426: Is formed and maintained through encounters in the online community. For all VOCs, there is the issue of creating identity and reputation in the community. People can create whatever identity they would like to through their interactions with other members. The username is what members identify each other by but it says very little about the person behind it. The main features in online communities that attract people are

5670-496: Is organized by a committee supported usually by the local national chapter, with support from local institutions (such as a library or university) and usually from the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimania has been held in cities such as Buenos Aires , Cambridge , Haifa , Hong Kong , Taipei , London , Mexico City , Esino Lario , Italy , Montreal , Cape Town , and Stockholm . The 2020 conference scheduled to take place in Bangkok

5796-482: Is that an individual will participate in an online community. Establishing a relationship between the consumer and a seller has become a new science with the emergence of online communities. It is a new market to be tapped by companies and to do so, requires an understanding of the relationships built on online communities. Online communities gather people around common interests and these common interests can include brands, products, and services. Companies not only have

5922-468: Is that it's fun and addictive". Wikipedians sometimes award one another " barnstars " for good work. These personalized tokens of appreciation reveal a range of valued work extending beyond "simple editing" to include social support, administrative actions, and types of articulation work. The barnstar phenomenon has been analyzed by researchers seeking to determine what implications it might have for other communities engaged in some collaborations. Since 2012,

6048-463: Is the enjoyment that editors may get from contributing to Misplaced Pages and being part of the Misplaced Pages community. Also mentioned is the potential addictive quality of editing Misplaced Pages. Gina Trapani of Lifehacker said "it turns out editing an article isn't scary at all. It's easy, surprisingly satisfying and can become obsessively addictive." Jimmy Wales has also commented on the addictive quality of Misplaced Pages, saying "The main thing about Misplaced Pages ...

6174-451: Is when an online community has not relevance to a person. The faded status is when a person has begun to fade away from a site. It is important to be able to recognize which group or status the consumer holds, because it might help determine which approach to use. Companies not only need to understand how a consumer functions within an online community, but also a company "should understand the communality of an online community" This means

6300-502: The Bass diffusion model , originally conceived by Frank Bass to describe the process by which new products get adopted as an interaction between innovative early adopters and those who follow them. Wikimedia Foundation The Wikimedia Foundation provides the technical and organizational infrastructure to enable members of the public to develop wiki-based content in languages across the world. The Foundation does not write or curate any of

6426-551: The Charities Aid Foundation , scheduled to be funded in five equal installments from 2012 through 2015. In 2014, the Foundation received the largest single gift in its history, a $ 5 million unrestricted donation from an anonymous donor supporting $ 1 million worth of expenses annually for the next five years. In March 2012, The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation , established by the Intel co-founder and his wife, awarded

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6552-554: The San Francisco Bay Area . Considerations cited for choosing San Francisco were proximity to like-minded organizations and potential partners, a better talent pool, as well as cheaper and more convenient international travel. The move was completed by January 31, 2008, into a headquarters on Stillman Street in San Francisco. It later moved to New Montgomery Street, and then to One Montgomery Tower . On October 25, 2021,

6678-567: The Wikimedia Foundation (such as Misplaced Pages and other sister projects ). Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia Foundation projects, other wikis, open-source software , free knowledge and free content, and the different social and technical aspects which relate to these topics. Since 2011, the winner of the Wikimedian of the Year award (known as the "Wikipedian of the Year" until 2017) has been announced at Wikimania. The first Wikimania

6804-506: The Wikimedia Foundation . In April 2008, writer and lecturer Clay Shirky and computer scientist Martin Wattenberg estimated the total time spent creating Misplaced Pages at roughly 100 million hours. As of August 2023, there are approximately 109 million registered user accounts across all language editions, of which around 280,000 are "active" (i.e., made at least one edit in the last thirty days). A study published in 2010 found that

6930-694: The Wikimedia movement 's websites. WMF is now the registrant of the domain wikipedia.org , owner of the trademark and operator of the wiki platform. It runs projects like Wikibooks , Wikidata , Wiktionary and Wikimedia Commons ; it raises money, distributes grants, controls the servers, develops and deploys software, and does outreach to support Wikimedia projects, including the English Misplaced Pages . It also engages in political advocacy regarding copyright, press freedom and legal protection of websites from liability related to user content. The Wikimedia Foundation mainly finances itself through donations from

7056-471: The 20 most-trafficked websites were community-based sites. The amount of traffic to such websites is expected to increase as a growing proportion of the world's population attains Internet access. The idea of a community is not a new concept. On the telephone, in ham radio and in the online world, social interactions no longer have to be based on proximity; instead they can literally be with anyone anywhere. The study of communities has had to adapt along with

7182-498: The English-language version of the site and received 288 valid online survey responses. Their results indicated and confirmed that subjective task value, commitment, and procedural justice affected satisfaction of Wikipedians; and satisfaction influenced an author's continued intention to edit Misplaced Pages content. Editors of Misplaced Pages have given personal testimonials of why they contribute to Misplaced Pages. A theme of these testimonials

7308-511: The Foundation announced what was then its largest donation yet: a three-year, $ 3 million grant from the Sloan Foundation . In 2009, the Foundation received four grants. The first was a $ 890,000 Stanton Foundation grant to help study and simplify the user interface for first-time authors of Misplaced Pages. The second was a $ 300,000 Ford Foundation grant in July 2009 for Wikimedia Commons , to improve

7434-460: The Foundation approved, finalized and adopted the thematic organization and user group recognition models. An additional model for movement partners, was also approved, but as of May 19, 2022 has not yet been finalized or adopted. Wikimania is an annual global conference for Wikimedians and Wikipedians, started in 2005. The first Wikimania was held in Frankfurt , Germany, in 2005. Wikimania

7560-568: The Foundation as affiliates officially when its board does so. The board's decisions are based on recommendations of an Affiliations Committee (AffCom), composed of Wikimedia community members, which reports regularly to the board. The Affiliations Committee directly approves the recognition of unincorporated user groups. Affiliates are formally recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation, but are independent of it, with no legal control of or responsibility for Wikimedia projects and their content. The Foundation began recognizing chapters in 2004. In 2012,

7686-438: The Foundation launched Wikimedia Enterprise , a commercial Wikimedia content delivery service aimed at groups that want to use high-volume APIs, starting with Big Tech enterprises. In June 2022, Google and the Internet Archive were announced as the service's first customers, though only Google will pay for the service. The same announcement noted a shifting focus towards smaller companies with similar data needs, supporting

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7812-572: The Foundation received a $ 40,000 grant from the Open Society Institute to create a printable version of Misplaced Pages. It also received a $ 262,000 grant from the Stanton Foundation to purchase hardware , a $ 500,000 unrestricted grant from Vinod and Neeru Khosla , who later that year joined the Foundation advisory board, and $ 177,376 from the historians Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin ( Arcadia Fund ), among others. In March 2008,

7938-548: The Foundation's "awards and grants" expenses. In September 2021, the Foundation announced that the Wikimedia Endowment had reached its initial $ 100 million fundraising goal in June 2021, five years ahead of its initial target. In January 2024, the endowment was reported to have a value of $ 140 million. The Foundation summarizes its assets in the "Statements of Activities" in its audited reports. These do not include funds in

8064-567: The Stanton Foundation pledged to fund a $ 3.6 million grant of which $ 1.8 million was funded and the remainder was to come in September 2012. As of 2011, this was the largest grant the Wikimedia Foundation had ever received. In November 2011, the Foundation received a $ 500,000 donation from the Brin Wojcicki Foundation . In 2012, the Foundation was awarded a grant of $ 1.25 million from Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin through

8190-588: The Technology Acceptance Model to online community participation. Internet self-efficacy positively predicted perceived ease of use. Research found that participants' beliefs in their abilities to use the internet and web-based tools determined how much effort was expected. Community environment positively predicted perceived ease of use and usefulness. Intrinsic motivation positively predicted perceived ease of use, usefulness, and actual use. The technology acceptance model positively predicts how likely it

8316-522: The United States (all at rates of 50% or greater). In response, various universities have hosted edit-a-thons to encourage more women to participate in the Misplaced Pages community. In fall 2013, 15 colleges and universities—including Yale, Brown, and Penn State—offered college credit for students to "write feminist thinking" about technology into Misplaced Pages. A 2008 self-selected survey of the diversity of contributors by highest educational degree indicated that 62% of responding Misplaced Pages editors had attained either

8442-431: The United States, but European services like VK , Japanese platform LINE , or Chinese social networks WeChat , QQ or video-sharing app Douyin (internationally known as TikTok ) have also garnered appeal in their respective regions. Current trends focus around the increased use of mobile devices when using social networks. Statistics from Statista show that, in 2013, 97.9 million users accessed social networks from

8568-494: The Wikimedia Endowment): The Foundation's board of trustees supervises the activities of the Foundation. The founding board had three members, to which two community-elected trustees were added. Starting in 2008 it was composed of ten members: Over time, the size of the board and details of the selection processes have evolved. As of 2020, the board may have up to 16 trustees: In 2015, James Heilman ,

8694-453: The Wikimedia Endowment, however expenses from the 2015–16 financial year onward include payments to the Wikimedia Endowment. A plurality of Wikimedia Foundation expenses are salaries and wages, followed by community and affiliate grants, contributions to the endowment, and other professional operating expenses and services. The Wikimedia Foundation has received a steady stream of grants from other foundations throughout its history. In 2008,

8820-659: The Wikimedia Foundation a $ 449,636 grant to develop Wikidata . This was part of a larger grant, much of which went to Wikimedia Germany, which took on ownership of the development effort. Between 2014 and 2015, the Foundation received $ 500,000 from the Monarch Fund, $ 100,000 from the Arcadia Fund and an undisclosed amount from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation to support the Misplaced Pages Zero initiative. In 2015,

8946-425: The Wikimedia movement, such as regional conferences, outreach, edit-a-thons , hackathons , public relations , public policy advocacy, GLAM engagement, and Wikimania . While many of these things are also done by individual contributors or less formal groups, they are not referred to as affiliates. Wikimedia chapters and thematic organizations are incorporated non-profit organizations. They are recognized by

9072-634: The Misplaced Pages Education Program (and the spin-off Wiki Education Foundation ). In March 2011, the Sloan Foundation authorized another $ 3 million grant, to be funded over three years, with the first $ 1 million to come in July 2011 and the remaining $ 2 million to be funded in August 2012 and 2013. As a donor, Doron Weber from the Sloan Foundation gained Board Visitor status at the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. In August 2011,

9198-427: The Misplaced Pages community. The 2015 Erasmus Prize was awarded to the Misplaced Pages community for promoting the dissemination of knowledge through a comprehensive and universally accessible encyclopedia. To achieve that, the initiators of Misplaced Pages have designed a new and effective democratic platform. The prize specifically recognizes Misplaced Pages as a community—a shared project that involves tens of thousands of volunteers around

9324-525: The Misplaced Pages page curation interface has included a tab offering editors a "Wikilove" option for giving barnstars and other such awards to other editors "as a reward for carefully curated work". Wikilove has been described as "an immaterial P2P reward mechanism" that substitutes for a formal reputation-valuing system on the site. Misplaced Pages has spawned a number of community news publications. An online newsletter, The Signpost , has been published since 10 January 2005. Professional cartoonist Greg Williams created

9450-540: The ability to attach files, embed YouTube videos, and send private messages is now commonplace. As of October 2014, the largest forum Gaia Online contained over 2 billion posts. Members are commonly assigned into user groups which control their access rights and permissions. Common access levels include the following: Social networks are platforms allowing users to set up their own profile and build connections with like minded people who pursue similar interests through interaction. The first traceable example of such

9576-508: The advisory board consists of Jimmy Wales , Peter Baldwin , former Wikimedia Foundation Trustees Patricio Lorente and Phoebe Ayers , former Wikimedia Foundation Board Visitor Doron Weber of the Sloan Foundation , investor Annette Campbell-White , venture capitalist Michael Kim, portfolio manager Alexander M. Farman-Farmaian, and strategist Lisa Lewin. The Foundation itself has provided annual grants of $ 5 million to its Endowment since 2016. These amounts have been recorded as part of

9702-420: The attraction of writing and contributing. This, coupled with the fact that organizational culture does not change overnight, means creators can expect slow progress at first with a new virtual community. As more people begin to participate, however, the aforementioned motivations will increase, creating a virtuous cycle in which more participation begets more participation. Community adoption can be forecast with

9828-820: The board before stepping down amid community controversy about a " no poach " agreement he executed when at Google , which violated United States antitrust law and for which the participating companies paid US$ 415 million in a class action suit on behalf of affected employees. As of January 2024, the board comprised six community-and-affiliate-selected trustees (Shani Evenstein Sigalov, Dariusz Jemielniak , Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight , Victoria Doronina, Mike Peel and Lorenzo Losa); five Board-appointed trustees ( McKinsey & Company director Raju Narisetti , Bahraini human rights activist and blogger Esra'a Al Shafei , technology officer Luis Bitencourt-Emilio, Nataliia Tymkiv, and financial expert Kathy Collins); and Wales. Tymkiv chairs

9954-524: The business. Other online communities allow a wide variety of professionals to come together to share thoughts, ideas and theories. Fandom is an example of what online communities can evolve into. Online communities have grown in influence in "shaping the phenomena around which they organize" according to Nancy K. Baym's work. She says that: "More than any other commercial sector, the popular culture industry relies on online communities to publicize and provide testimonials for their products." The strength of

10080-432: The communities will eventually wither away without replacing members who leave. Newcomers are new members of the online communities and thus often face many barriers when contributing to a project, and those barriers they face might lead them to give up the project or even leave the community. By conducting a systematic literature review over 20 primary studies regarding to the barriers faced by newcomers when contributing to

10206-423: The community include the effects of users' anonymity, attitudes toward newcomers, abuses of privileges by administrators , biases in the social structure of the community (in particular gender bias and lack of female contributors) and the role of the project's co-founder Jimmy Wales in the community. One particular controversy with regards to paid contributors to Misplaced Pages prompted the Wikimedia Foundation to send

10332-424: The community to be useful. The recognized status is where a person is aware of the community, but is not entirely involved. A considered status is when a person begins their involvement with the site. The usage at this stage is still very sporadic. The committed status is when a relationship between a person and an online community is established and the person gets fully involved with the community. The inactive status

10458-923: The content on the projects themselves. Instead, this is done by volunteer editors, such as the Wikipedians . However, it does collaborate with a network of individual volunteers and affiliated organizations, such as Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, user groups and other partners. The Foundation finances itself mainly through millions of small donations from readers and editors, collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Misplaced Pages and its sister projects. These are complemented by grants from philanthropic organizations and tech companies, and starting in 2022, by services income from Wikimedia Enterprise . As of 2023, it has employed over 700 staff and contractors, with net assets of $ 255 million and an endowment which has surpassed $ 100 million. Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger founded Misplaced Pages in 2001 as

10584-454: The contributor base to Misplaced Pages "was barely 13% women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s". A 2011 study by researchers from the University of Minnesota found that females comprised 16.1% of the 38,497 editors who started editing Misplaced Pages during 2009. In a January 2011 New York Times article, Noam Cohen observed that 13% of Misplaced Pages's contributors are female according to

10710-414: The end of its first fiscal year, ending June 30, 2004, to $ 53.5 million in mid-2014 and $ 231 million (plus a $ 100 million endowment) by the end of June 2021; that year, the Foundation also announced plans to launch Wikimedia Enterprise, to let large organizations pay by volume for high-volume access to otherwise rate-limited APIs. In 2020, the Foundation donated $ 4.5 million to Tides Advocacy to create

10836-416: The field who can offer technological insight and answer questions, while lurkers tend to be technological novices who use the communities to find answers and to learn. In general, virtual community participation is influenced by how participants view themselves in society as well as by norms, both of society and of the online community. Participants also join online communities for friendship and support. In

10962-676: The first to find a satisfying way of representing electronic chatter on-screen." Fan communities in platforms like Twitter , Instagram , and Reddit around sports, actors, and musicians have become powerful communities both culturally and politically. Discussions where members may post their feedback are essential in the development of an online community. Online communities may encourage individuals to come together to teach and learn from one another. They may encourage learners to discuss and learn about real-world problems and situations, as well as to focus on such things as teamwork, collaborative thinking and personal experiences. Blogs are among

11088-418: The general user base (as is the case with wikis ) or only certain users (as is the case with most blogs), can place online communities into stylistic categories. Another approach argues that "online community" is a metaphor and that contributors actively negotiate the meaning of the term, including values and social norms. Some research has looked at the users of online communities. Amy Jo Kim has classified

11214-448: The greatest attractions towards online communities is the sense of connection users build among members. Participation and contribution are influenced when members of an online community are aware of their global audience. The majority of people learn by example and often follow others, especially when it comes to participation. Individuals are reserved about contributing to an online community for many reasons including but not limited to

11340-443: The highest motivator. This paper suggests that although people might initially start editing Misplaced Pages out of enjoyment, the most likely motivation for continuing to participate is self-concept -based motivations such as "I like to share knowledge which gives me a sense of personal achievement." A study in 2014 by Cheng-Yu Lai and Heng-Li Yang explored the reasons why people continue editing Misplaced Pages content. The study used authors of

11466-500: The hurricane seasons had been a cause of distress. In October 2013, Wikimedia Foundation started looking for a second facility that would be used side by side with the main facility in Ashburn, citing reasons of redundancy (e.g. emergency fallback ) and to prepare for simultaneous multi-datacenter service. This followed a year in which a fiber cut caused the Wikimedia projects to be unavailable for one hour in August 2012. Apart from

11592-551: The immediate area offline. This has led to a range of popular sites based on areas such as health, employment, finances and education. Online communities can be vital for companies for marketing and outreach. Unexpected and innovative uses of web communities have also emerged with social networks being used in conflicts to alert citizens of impending attacks. The UN sees the web and specifically social networks as an important tool in conflicts and emergencies. Web communities have grown in popularity; as of October 2014, 6 of

11718-424: The information shared and made accessible for further productivity and profits. Because consumers and customers in all fields are becoming accustomed to more interaction and engagement online, adjustments must be considered made in order to keep audiences intrigued. Online communities have been characterized as "virtual settlements" that have the following four requirements: interactivity, a variety of communicators,

11844-544: The interface for uploading multimedia files. In August 2009, the Foundation received a $ 500,000 grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation . Also in August 2009, the Omidyar Network committed up to $ 2 million over two years to Wikimedia. In 2010, Google donated $ 2 million and the Stanton Foundation granted $ 1.2 million to fund the Public Policy Initiative, a pilot program for what later became

11970-417: The introduction of new ways for information to be exchanged. Yet, these interactions may also lead to a downfall of social interactions or deposit more negative and derogatory forms of speaking to others, in connection, surfaced forms of racism, bullying, sexist comments, etc. may also be investigated and linked to online communities. One scholarly definition of an online community is this: "a virtual community

12096-491: The least frequently indicated motives were "career", "social", and "protective". The six motivations he used were: To these six motivations he also added: The Wikimedia Foundation has carried out some surveys of Misplaced Pages contributors and users. In 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation, alongside the Collaborative Creativity Group at UNU-Merit , launched a survey of readers and editors of Misplaced Pages. The results of

12222-430: The logo and wordmark. On December 11, 2006, the Foundation's board noted that it could not become a membership organization , as initially planned but not implemented, due to an inability to meet the registration requirements of Florida statutory law. The bylaws were accordingly amended to remove all references to membership rights and activities. In 2007, the Foundation decided to move its headquarters from Florida to

12348-554: The major platforms on which online communities form. Blogging practices include microblogging , where the amount of information in a single element is smaller, and liveblogging , in which an ongoing event is blogged about in real time. The ease and convenience of blogging has allowed for its growth. Major blogging platforms include Twitter and Tumblr , which combine social media and blogging, as well as platforms such as WordPress , which allow content to be hosted on their own servers but also permit users to download, install, and modify

12474-474: The new technologies. Many researchers have used ethnography to attempt to understand what people do in online spaces, how they express themselves, what motivates them, how they govern themselves, what attracts them, and why some people prefer to observe rather than participate. Online communities can congregate around a shared interest and can be spread across multiple websites. Some features of online communities include: Online communities typically establish

12600-879: The one side, newcomers can bring online communities innovative ideas and resources. On the other side, they can also harm communities with misbehavior caused by their unfamiliarity with community norms. Kraut et al. defined five basic issues faced by online communities when dealing with newcomers, and proposed several design claims for each problem in their book Building Successful Online Communities . Successful online communities motivate online participation . Methods of motivating participation in these communities have been investigated in several studies. There are many persuasive factors that draw users into online communities. Peer-to-peer systems and social networking sites rely heavily on member contribution. Users' underlying motivations to involve themselves in these communities have been linked to some persuasion theories of sociology. One of

12726-410: The online community should not be viewed as "merely a sales channel". Instead it should be viewed as a network for establishing interpersonal communications with the consumer. Most online communities grow slowly at first, due in part to the fact that the strength of motivation for contributing is usually proportional to the size of the community. As the size of the potential audience increases, so does

12852-413: The online community's power is displayed through the season 3 premiere of BBC's Sherlock . Online activity by fans seem to have had a noticeable influence on the plot and direction of the season opening episode. Mark Lawson of The Guardian recounts how fans have, to a degree, directed the outcome of the events of the episode. He says that "Sherlock has always been one of the most web-aware shows, among

12978-418: The open source software projects, Steinmacher et al. identified 15 different barriers and they classified those barriers into five categories as described below: Because of the barriers described above, it is very necessary that online communities engage newcomers and help them to adjust to the new environment. From online communities' side, newcomers can be both beneficial and harmful to online communities. On

13104-483: The product. A New York Times Magazine article was reporting that Wikimedia Enterprise made $ 3.1 million in total revenue in 2022. Wikimedia affiliates are independent and formally recognized groups of people working together to support and contribute to the Wikimedia movement. The Wikimedia Foundation officially recognizes three types of affiliates: chapters, thematic organizations, and user groups. Affiliates organize and engage in activities to support and contribute to

13230-499: The project. The Wikimedia Foundation was incorporated in St. Petersburg, Florida on June 20, 2003. A small fundraising campaign to keep the servers running was run in October 2003. In 2005, the Foundation was granted section 501(c)(3) status by the U.S. Internal Revenue Code as a public charity, making donations to the Foundation tax-deductible for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Its National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) code

13356-674: The public, collected through email campaigns and annual fundraising banners placed on Misplaced Pages, as well as grants from various tech companies and philanthropic organizations. Campaigns for the Wikimedia Endowment have included emails asking donors to leave Wikimedia money in their will. As a 501(c)(3) charity, the Foundation is exempt from federal and state income tax. It is not a private foundation, and contributions to it qualify as tax-deductible charitable contributions. In 2007, 2008 and 2009, Charity Navigator gave Wikimedia an overall rating of four out of four possible stars, increased from three to four stars in 2010. As of January 2020 ,

13482-497: The rating was still four stars (overall score 98.14 out of 100), based on data from FY2018. The Foundation also increases its revenue through federal grants , sponsorship, services and brand merchandising. The Wikimedia OAI-PMH update feed service, targeted primarily at search engines and similar bulk analysis and republishing, was a source of revenue for a number of years. DBpedia was given access to this feed free of charge. An expanded version of data feeds and content services

13608-456: The reason that people write for Misplaced Pages is to gain recognition within the community. Oded Nov, in his 2007 paper "What Motivates Wikipedians", related the motivations of volunteers in general to the motivations of people who contribute to Misplaced Pages. Nov carried out a survey using the six motivations of volunteers, identified in an earlier paper. The survey found that the most commonly indicated motives were "fun", "ideology", and "values", whereas

13734-434: The rituals and stages of online community interaction and called it the "membership life cycle". Clay Shirky talks about communities of practice, whose members collaborate and help each other in order to make something better or improve a certain skill. What makes these communities bond is "love" of something, as demonstrated by members who go out of their way to help without any financial interest. Campbell et al. developed

13860-482: The second facility for redundancy coming online in 2014, the number of servers needed to run the infrastructure in a single facility has been mostly stable since 2009. As of November 2015, the main facility in Ashburn hosts 520 servers in total which includes servers for newer services besides Wikimedia project wikis , such as cloud services (Toolforge) and various services for metrics, monitoring, and other system administration. In 2017, Wikimedia Foundation deployed

13986-414: The second wiki-based project hosted on the original server. The Foundation's mission is collection and distribution of educational knowledge under free licenses or public domain and promised to keep these projects free of charge. All intellectual property rights and domain names about Misplaced Pages were moved to the Foundation after its inception, and it currently owns the domain names and maintains most of

14112-418: The service through "a lot paying a little". The Foundation owns and operates 11 wiki-based content projects that are written and governed by volunteer editors. They include, by launch date: The Foundation also operates wikis and services that provide infrastructure or coordination of the content projects. These include: Wikimedia Enterprise is a commercial product by the Wikimedia Foundation to provide, in

14238-445: The smoke screen of anonymity, it allows a person to be able to socially interact with strangers in a much more personal way. This personal connection the consumer feels translates to how they want to establish relationships online. They separate what is commercial or spam and what is relational. Relational becomes what they associate with human interaction while commercial is what they associate with digital or non-human interaction. Thus

14364-617: The software on their own servers. As of October 2014, 23.1% of the top 10 million websites are either hosted on or run WordPress. Internet forums , sometimes called bulletin boards, are websites which allow users to post topics also known as threads for discussion with other users able to reply creating a conversation. Forums follow a hierarchical structure of categories, with many popular forum software platforms categorising forums depending on their purpose, and allowing forum administrators to create subforums within their platform. With time more advanced features have been added into forums;

14490-422: The survey were published two years later on 24 March 2010. The Wikimedia Foundation began a process in 2011 of semi-annual surveys in order to understand Misplaced Pages editors more and better cater to their needs. "Motivations of Misplaced Pages Content Contributors", a paper by Heng-Li Yang and Cheng-Yu Lai, hypothesised that, because contributing to Misplaced Pages is voluntary, an individual's enjoyment of participating would be

14616-591: The works of Lave and Wenger, who illustrate a cycle of how users become incorporated into virtual communities using the principles of legitimate peripheral participation. They suggest five types of trajectories amongst a learning community: The following shows the correlation between the learning trajectories and Web 2.0 community participation by using the example of YouTube : Newcomers are important for online communities. Online communities rely on volunteers' contribution, and most online communities face high turnover rate as one of their main challenges. For example, only

14742-402: The world between people of different cultures who might not otherwise have met with offline meetings also becoming more common. Another key use of web communities is access to and the exchange of information. With communities for even very small niches it is possible to find people also interested in a topic and to seek and share information on a subject where there are not such people available in

14868-471: The world." Online community An online community , also called an internet community or web community , is a community whose members interact with each other primarily via the Internet. Members of the community usually share common interests. For many, online communities may feel like home, consisting of a "family of invisible friends". Additionally, these "friends" can be connected through gaming communities and gaming companies. Those who wish to be

14994-436: Was added to MediaWiki's built-in search and Misplaced Pages switched from MySQL to Lucene and later switched to CirrusSearch which is based on Elasticsearch for searching. The Wikimedia Foundation also uses CiviCRM and WordPress . The Foundation published official Misplaced Pages mobile apps for Android and iOS devices and in March 2015, the apps were updated to include mobile user-friendly features. The Wikimedia Foundation

15120-646: Was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic , along with those of 2021 and 2022, which were held online as a series of virtual, interactive presentations. The in-person conference returned in 2023 when it was held in Singapore, at which UNESCO joined as a partner organization. The Wikimedia Foundation maintains the hardware that runs its projects in its own servers. It also maintains the MediaWiki platform and many other software libraries that run its projects. Misplaced Pages employed

15246-501: Was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic , along with those of 2021 and 2022, which were held online as a series of virtual, interactive presentations. The in-person conference returned in 2023 when it was held in Singapore, at which UNESCO joined as a partner organization. The annual Great American Wiknic was a social gathering that took place in some cities of the United States during the summer. The Wiknic concept allowed Wikipedians to bring picnic food and to personally interact. There

15372-513: Was founded in 2003 by Jimmy Wales so that there would be an independent charitable entity responsible for company domains and trademarks, and so that Misplaced Pages and its sister projects could be funded through non-profit means in the future. The name "Wikimedia", a compound of wiki and media , was coined by American author Sheldon Rampton in a post to the English Misplaced Pages mailing list in March 2003, three months after Wiktionary became

15498-484: Was held in Frankfurt , in 2005. Wikimania is organized by a committee supported usually by the local national chapter, with support from local institutions (such as a library or university) and usually from the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikimania has been held in cities such as Buenos Aires , Cambridge , Haifa , Hong Kong , Taipei , London , Mexico City , Esino Lario , Italy , Montreal , Cape Town , and Stockholm . The 2020 conference scheduled to take place in Bangkok

15624-461: Was later overtaken by Facebook . In 2013, Facebook attracted 1.23 billion monthly users, rising from 145 million in 2008. Facebook was the first social network to surpass 1 billion registered accounts, and by 2020, had more than 2.7 billion active users. Meta Platforms , the owner of Facebook, also owns three other leading platforms for online communities: Instagram , WhatsApp , and Facebook Messenger . Most top-ranked social networks originate in

15750-417: Was launched in 2021 as Wikimedia Enterprise, an LLC subsidiary of the Foundation. In July 2014, the Foundation announced it would accept Bitcoin donations. In 2021, cryptocurrencies accounted for just 0.08% of all donations and on May 1, 2022, the Foundation stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations, following a Wikimedia community vote. The Foundation's net assets grew from an initial $ 57,000 at

15876-462: Was quoted by Bloomberg News in December 2016 as supporting Wales's comments concerning shortfalls in Misplaced Pages's outreach to female editors. Lih states his concern with the question indicating that: "How can you get people to participate in an [editing] environment that feels unsafe, where identifying yourself as a woman, as a feminist, could open you up to ugly, intimidating behavior". In October 2023,

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