[Foundation-l] few questions

Fri Feb 22 17:14:24 UTC 2008

>  first i like to know how many people are actively involved in wikipedia.
>  i like to know about its organizational chart if there is any.
>  so who makes the big decisions and who has oversight.

Wikipedia is one project run by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit
body. For information on the structure of the foundation, see:

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Current_staff
and
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Board

Within Wikipedia itself, decisions are generally made by consensus,
there isn't really anyone in charge. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Consensus

There are various groups with certain powers, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bureaucrats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_Committee

for the main ones. The first two don't really have decision making
power, they just have access to additional tools. The ArbCom is a last
resort when all other forms of decision making have failed and they
can make binding rulings - they generally only concern themselves with
user behaviour, rather than content disputes. What information gets
included in an article and how it's included is decided by a consensus
of the people editing the article.

I hope that helps!