Ask a question/FAQ/Business

Where can I learn more about advertising on Wikimedia Foundation projects?

The Wikimedia Foundation does not accept advertisement.

The Wikimedia Foundation is not against the world of online advertising or against other organizations that host ads, but it does not believe that advertising belongs in a project devoted to education, particularly one that is driven by the values consistent with a balanced, neutral encyclopedia. The global volunteer community has always felt that advertising would have a major effect on our ability to stay neutral and that ultimately ads would weaken the readers' overall confidence in the articles they are reading. Even if advertisers put no pressure on us to slant articles to their favor, readers may fear that they exert an influence, consciously or otherwise.

In addition, the Foundation has strong views about reader privacy. Current models for web advertising are inconsistent with these, particularly contextual advertising, which reads the content you are viewing. The Foundation also thinks it intrusive to deliver ads to readers based on their geography.

If you'd like to read more about the history of discussions about advertising Wikipedia - including both pros and cons - the volunteer community has written a page about it here.

How can I request Wikimedia support for my charity?

As you may already know, the Wikimedia Foundation is a nonprofit charitable organization with a very specific goal, which is to develop and maintain our suite of online open-content educational resources in all the languages of the world, to be distributed free of charge to the public. As we are a nonprofit organization incorporated in Florida, United States, local and national laws prohibit us from using our funds for anything but this purpose.

If your request is related to our mission, you may wish to review the Grants "Start" page for more information on requesting support.

How can I propose a new project or a new way to do things on an existing project?

We appreciate that you're spending time thinking about ways to improve Wikimedia.

Because the Wikimedia Foundation does not create or curate the contents on Wikipedia or the other sites we manage—this work is done by a vast community of volunteers—we are not able to implement most suggestions directly by email request. Changes to existing projects, like Wikipedia, and new project approval (like new languages for existing projects or entirely new concepts for sites) come from this community of volunteers.

If you want to propose an entirely new project, please visit Project proposals. If you'd like to propose that we create a new language version of an existing project, please visit Meta's "Requests for new languages" page. If what you'd like to propose is a new feature for one of our existing projects, please share your thoughts with the volunteers at that project. There are community forums for ideas and suggestions. Most of our projects have a link on the right hand side to community discussion points, sometimes given titles like "village pump" or "cafe" or "travelers pub." For example, the English Wikipedia discusses ideas and proposals here.

Just as article pages can be edited by anyone, so can these discussion pages. If you're not already familiar with how to edit our pages, the MediaWiki guide on editing can be useful. If you need further assistance, either with editing or with finding a proper home for your discussion, the community maintains a volunteer email response team who should be able to assist. They can be reached at info wikimedia org. Please be sure to tell them specifically which project and in what language you are working on; if you are more comfortable corresponding in languages other than English, they can in many cases communicate with you in your native tongue.

We hope that the community will be receptive to your idea.

If you have a business proposal that is not a new project, a new language version of an existing project, or a modification of practices on an existing project, please contact business wikimedia org.

May I use your logos or trademark?

To find out more about using Wikimedia's trademarks, including whether your intended use is permitted, please see our Trademark policy.

Please do not hesitate to contact us at trademarks wikimedia org if you are not sure whether your use is in compliance with that policy or local trademark laws.

May I use your software on my own site?

We welcome and encourage you to do so! MediaWiki is free server-based software which is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). MediaWiki is an extremely powerful, scalable software and a feature-rich wiki implementation that uses PHP to process and display data stored in a database, such as MySQL.

The MediaWiki homepage should have all the information you need to install and use the software for your own purposes. While the Wikimedia Foundation encourages people to use the software for their own purposes, we are not able to provide training in the use of the software or answer questions about it, but the volunteer community is frequently able to help. If you cannot find the answer you seek about using MediaWiki software at the help page on the website, there is a support desk where you can ask specific usage questions at the Support Desk. You can also reach assistance through IRC or email at the avenues listed at The "Communication" page.

May I reuse text or images from your sites?

Note: If you are interested in hosting a mirror or downloading considerable content from one or more of our projects, see "May I mirror or copy your sites? instead.

The Wikimedia Foundation actually does not own copyright to most of the content on Wikipedia. This material is generally owned by the volunteers who create content on the site who liberally license it so that it can be used on our sites and elsewhere. In principle, most of the text on our sites is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC-By-SA) and can be used free of charge for any purpose. A specific permission for use is not necessary, as long as the license conditions are observed. Some text is also available under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).

Images are identified as being subject to any of several licenses. Therefore, if you want to use an image, it is advisable to check the image information page for the source and/or licensing information. Clicking on the image will lead you to the image information page. Most images are free to use as long as you give the proper credits and follow the terms of the license indicated on the image description page.

For more information please see our Terms of Use -- Licensing of Content, section 7(g). There is another page on our websites that may also be of us. While written by the volunteers who create and curate content on our sites, Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia may offer more information specifically related to media.

Please note: Neither the Wikimedia Foundation nor the contributors of content to Wikimedia sites are able to provide legal advice. We wish we could give you specific feedback on the content you would like to use, but - unless it is one of our logos or rare content generated by our staff - we cannot. It is your responsibility, if you intend to reuse content from Wikimedia sites, to determine how the licenses of the content that we host apply to your intended uses. If in doubt, you may wish to contact an attorney licensed to practice in your jurisdiction who has familiarity with intellectual property law.

May I mirror or copy your sites?

Note: If you are interested in using only a small amount of content from one or more of our projects, see "May I reuse text or images from your sites?" instead.

Since sharing information is a key part of our mission, we welcome and try to facilitate the spread of our content. You are, of course, welcome to link to our website in the traditional sense that you inform your readers of its existence and offer them the option to visit our website for further information. However, we do not support live mirroring (remote loading or hotlinking) of our websites. Given our unique copyright situation, it's actually better for you to host a text dump of earlier versions or locally hosted copies of our articles (see this section). For downloadable dumps of Wikipedia article database, see the database downloads page. You may also be interested in the Mediawiki API.

Please note: Neither the Wikimedia Foundation nor the contributors of content to Wikimedia sites are able to provide legal advice. We wish we could give you specific feedback on the content you would like to use, but - unless it is one of our logos or rare content generated by our staff - we cannot. It is your responsibility, if you intend to reuse content from Wikimedia sites, to determine how the licenses of the content that we host apply to your intended uses. If in doubt, you may wish to contact an attorney licensed to practice in your jurisdiction who has familiarity with intellectual property law.