New York Times…. Sue Gardner, who oversaw a period of rapid growth and evolution of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, said she would step down as executive director of the nonprofit foundation that runs it.
Today, Wikipedia has more than 488 million unique visitors each month, making it the fifth most-visited Web site in the world behind Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook and ahead of Amazon, Apple and eBay, according to comScore data from January.
In 2007 the Wikimedia Foundation, then based in a shopping center in St. Petersburg, Fla., had fewer than 10 employees and raised less than $3 million annually.
Sue Gardner, 45, moved the foundation to San Francisco. It now has roughly 160 paid employees. Its most recent fund-raising drive late last year yielded $25 million to help run Wikipedia from 1.2 million donors. More…
