Wikimedia Foundation sponsor John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Knowledge Engine project
Knowledge Engine was a search engine project initiated in 2015 by WMF to locate and display verifiable and trustworthy information on the Internet. The KE's goal was to be less reliant on traditional search engines. It was funded with a US$250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation. Some perceived the project as a scandal, mainly because it was conceived in secrecy, and the project proposal was even a surprise to some staff, in contrast with a general culture of transparency in the organization and on the projects. Some of the information available to the community was received through leaked documents published by The Signpost in 2016. Following this dispute, Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Lila Tretikov resigned.
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