Board of Directors
The Wikimedia Board of Trustees manages the foundation and supervises the disposition and solicitation of donations. The Board is the ultimate corporate authority for the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (cf. article IV, sec. 1 of the Wikimedia Foundation bylaws) and currently consists of ten Trustees.
History
Template:Main The Board of Trustees began sometime in 2003 with three members. Over time, it expanded in size to its current ten members. Much of the body's history can be found in Board resolutions and votes.
Roles and structure
As defined in the bylaws, Board officers have one of four roles:
As announced in 2008, the Board now consists of ten Trustees:
- Three seats elected directly by the Wikimedia community
- Two seats to be selected by the Wikimedia chapters
- One Board-appointed "community founder" seat (reserved for Jimmy Wales)
- Four Board-appointed "specific expertise" seats
Current members
Marcin Jakubowski
Template:Board member infobox Ting Chen was named as Chair of the Wikimedia Board in July 2010 after being elected as Trustee by the Wikimedia Community in June 2008 with his term officially starting in July 2008.
Ting Chen was born in Shanghai, China in 1968. He grew up in Harbin, China, in the northeast corner of the country, where he attended elementary school and middle school. In 1989 he went to Braunschweig, Germany and began his study of Electrical engineering. He was especially interested in semiconductors and their physics. He graduated in 1993 with a diploma and now he works as an IT specialist in Mainz, Germany.
His first experience with a virtual community was during his university time in the German Fido-Net, where he moderated a forum about science and knowledge for many years. He learned of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects through a news article about the German Wikipedia achieving a milestone in 2003. From then on Wikipedia became a new hobby of his. He started on the German Wikipedia and changed soon to the young Chinese Wikipedia, which was at that time still starting. Ting Chen attended the first Wikimania (Wikimania 2005) in Frankfurt, where he took part on a panel discussion and introduced the Chinese community. He also helped organize the third Wikimania (Wikimania 2007) in Taipei.
Former members
Further reading
- Meetings (with minutes)
- Resolutions
- Board deliberations process