Wikimedia Gets $300K to Expand Web Media Repository

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on July 7, 2009 - 6:00am.

San Francisco - The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates the Wikipedia online encyclopedia, has been awarded a $300,000 Ford Foundation grant that the company says will make it easier for people to participate in Wikimedia Commons, an online repository of shareable multimedia assets.

Founded in 2004, the Wikimedia Commons is now available in 85 languages, and hosts more than 4.5 million freely reusable educational files, including audio, video, maps and illustrations.

The grant will fund a project team to study challenges faced by new participants in Wikimedia Commons, as well as to identify best practices from other media sharing websites.

Following a research phase, the team will design and implement a simple upload work-flow, enabling users to easily upload files, select licenses, and provide descriptions, the Wikimedia Foundation said.

Related Links:
http://www.fordfound.org

http://wikimediafoundation.org