Big Tech’s Anti-Labor Playbook Has Come for Wikipedia
In ten days last month, the Wikimedia Foundation fired the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki and disbanded the team whose entire job was to listen to volunteers. Most of the people they fired were union organizers. Wikipedia’s editors are now threatening to strike in solidarity. The Foundation is sitting on $296 million in reserves and a freshly profitable AI revenue stream. This is a confrontation with global implications.
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Fantastic article. Is there anyway non editors can support action?
I decided to cancel my recurring donation, citing these actions as why.
Here’s the email I wrote:
Not that I think my $240/year is going to make or break them, but maybe if they hear this from other donors they’ll rethink their choices.
Yoink. Here I go cancelling again.
I wish I was already a donor so I could send this email. First time I've felt regret like this, I should be more proactive about supporting things like this in the future. Thanks for sharing.
It took me a long time and some kicks in the butt to make some of my donations recurring. Like I decided to give recurring donations to Wikimedia and the Internet Archive a few years back when Elon was attacking both of them. I’d given as one-offs when Wikipedia would prompt for donations, but was proud to make it a recurring thing.
I've done the same. This sucks, but I didn't realize I was donating to an organization without a workers union agreement in place.
Wait for the editors to strike and then make shitty edits
I have an awesome candidate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Standing_(economist)
I don't really know the details here as I can't find any other sources or articles, let alone statements by the affected parties.
But the statement that wikimedia is rich because it has 17 months of operating reserves and a profitable unit with $8.1M in revenue seems a bit naive when said about an organization with 650 employees (likely $50M annual payroll) and misses the point, if indeed the point is about union busting as the headline claims.
For me, I'm less interested in the financials and more about the story from the fired individuals. As a monthly donor, if the team comes out saying they were fired for unionizing, then I'm happy to cancel. But if it was more to do with business or operating disagreements, that's another story, even if I disagree with the specific operational decision.
But I tried following the links to the discussion pages and the solidarity pages. But most of the comments seem to be upset about the direction of the community wish list, the loss of the wishlist, and no direct statements about union busting. I then tried searching team member names and fired keywords, and couldn't find any sources or direct statements.
So I dunno. I'll wait for credible first hand statements from the team before I cancel my donation. Cancelling a community request team sucks, but union busting is a completely different ballgame.
Holy fuck.
I wonder what the ostensible excuse for the firings were? The article didn’t mention it, but I suppose that’s not public information.
…It should be, though. I feel like there’s not a lot of reason for the WMF to keep decisions secret.
I mean, it'd be pretty harsh for them to publicly publish that the teams commit velocity was down and they were all PIP'd, lol. Not that I think that's likely, but there are lots of possible for cause reasons that shouldn't be shared.
If anything, I suspect the reason is the more pedestrian "moving in a different direction" from the wish list process.
That’s true.
I asked because it makes me wonder if there’s a grain of justification. The circumstances sure look suspicious from the outside, but who knows what happened within.
Da fuck? If even Wikipedia is enshittifying now I have no hope left for the future of the web.
My personal take is: don't silently cancel your donations in hope of change. You have much more influence power if you publicly threaten to cancel your donation, especially if you already are a recurring donor. Make yourself heard, on wiki. These protest pages are being read.