Wikimedia and Wikipedia are a complex infrastructure of servers, applications and databases managed by the Wikimedia Foundation and the community of volunteers. National organisations contribute to stimulating the use of and contributing to free knowledge.
Wikimedia is the organization; organized by country and via user groups
The Wikimedia Foundation is the supranational organization in California, founded in 2003.
The Foundation owns the servers and logos (not the content).
Is financed through donations (donations)
There are about 40 national organizations
The organization is mainly composed of volunteers (The Foundation has more than 300 employees and a number of large countries such as France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Germany have dozens of employees).
Wikimedia Belgium was founded on 8 October 2014 (no staff; volunteers only, 100 members in 2019).
The national organisations are legally independent of the Foundation but are contractually bound to use the logos and the name Wikimedia™ under a license.
The sole purpose of the association is to promote the use of Wikipedia, to provide training, and to cooperate with museums, libraries, heritage associations, universities and institutions.
The Wikimedia organization has no control over, or influence on, the content of the encyclopedia.
The Wikimedia organization is not responsible for the content of the encyclopedia.
The movement is composed out of all volunteers and their representatives from the Community and the Organisation (Affiliates like national Chapters and regional or world-wide User groups, the Foundation, and partner organisations).
There are countries where Wikipedia is blocked, such as Turkey, China, etc.
Kazakhstan has bypassed the https protocol
There are countries where volunteers have to write anonymously, with an IP address, and even via international VPNs to prevent their identity from being revealed (risk of imprisonment).