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2003

Quick facts (as of 1 January)

Number of servers maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation: 1[footnotes 1]
Number of Foundation staff: 0
Number of official Wikimedia Foundation projects: 3[footnotes 1][1]
Total number of edits to official Wikimedia projects supported by Foundation: 986,819[footnotes 2][2]
Number of Wikimedia movement affiliates: 0
Lines of code in MediaWiki core: 0[footnotes 3]
Wikimedia Foundation's annual expenses (June through July of following year): US$56,666[3]

Wikimedia Foundation founder Jimmy Wales showing Wikipedia on his computer in 2003
Screenshot of Aldo Busi article on Italian Wikiquote
Wikimedia Foundation's first logo, by Neolux, introduced in October 2003 and in use until January 2006
  • Wikimedia.org launches as a single page website for the Wikimedia Foundation.

June

  • Jimmy Wales announces formation of Wikimedia and intention to create a charity and select a governing board. The intention is to provide a not-for-profit charitable framework for Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, and the growing technical and organizational infrastructure necessary to support them.
  • 9: MediaWiki's ISBN interface is amended to make ISBNs in articles link to Special:Booksources, which fetches its contents from a page editable by contributors.
  • 20: Wikimedia Foundation founded in Florida, United States. Until this time, the Wikimedia sites and servers were supported by Bomis, Jimmy Wales's for-profit business at the time.

July

  • WikimediaFoundation.org launches as a redirect to Wikimedia.org
  • The "Wikipedia software" is officially named "MediaWiki", a wordplay by Daniel Mayer on the Wikimedia Foundation's name. It is adopted as the Foundation's fourth official project.[4]
  • 10: Wikimedia Foundation launches its fifth official project, Wikibooks.
  • 10: Wikimedia Foundation launches its sixth official project, Wikiquote.

October

  • 15: The second place logo of the 2003 Wikipedia international logo contest, created by Neolux, is appointed as the logo for Wikimedia by logo contest organizer Erik Möller. A version by Neolux is adopted for the Wikimedia Foundation.[5] This specific version would remain in use until January 2006, and the overall design remains in use by the Foundation as of June 2023.

November

  • 24: Wikimedia Foundation launches its seventh official project, Wikisource.

December

  • A major computer crash takes Wikipedia offline for a week and prompts Jimmy Wales to launch a fundraising drive. In less than a week more than US$30,000 is raised, thanks partly to mentions on Slashdot. The money allows the Wikimedia Foundation to purchase nine new servers.
  • 6: Wikimedia Foundation developers support ending system messages within MediaWiki displayed to Wikimedia project users from being hard coded, allowing for contributors to modify and translate them easier.

References

  1. ↑ "Wikimedia.org". Retrieved June 2023.  (Wayback Machine)
  2. ↑ "All wikis - Edits". Wikimedia Statistics. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved 13 June 2023. 
  3. ↑ "Financial Reports". wikimediafoundation.org. Wikimedia Foundation. Retrieved June 2023. 
  4. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named mediawiki1
  5. ↑ "International logo contest/Results". Meta-Wiki. Retrieved 8 June 2023. 
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 While the Wikimedia Foundation had not yet been founded as of 1 January 2003, what would become its initial assets existed and were housed within Bomis, Jimmy Wales's for-profit business at the time.
  2. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named 2003projects
  3. ↑ Until July 2003, the software which operated the Wikimedia sites was known as the Wikipedia software. As such, there was no MediaWiki code on 1 January 2003.
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