Wikipedia Turned on its Volunteers. Now it’s Coming for its Workers.
Crossposted from https://fedia.io/m/[email protected]/t/4218790
TL;DR: In the last year, the Wikimedia Foundation has fired several union organizers, including those that worked on the Community Tech team - a team dedicated to building features for the volunteer community that edits Wikipedia.
As the Wiki Workers Union tries to get the Wikimedia Foundation to recognize their union, it is worth remembering that this is not the first time that the Foundation has worked against the community.
Wikimedia Enterprise is a betrayal of the volunteer movement community of Wikipedia editors, as the Wikimedia Foundation is providing privileged access to big tech AI companies to the Wikipedia corpus - a body of work that the Foundation does not own.
Movement volunteer communities contributed to Wikipedia under copyleft licenses - licenses that work to ensure that the work remains free (as in speech). The big tech AI companies do not license derivative works under copyleft licenses and often do not even attribute where the works came from.
This means that volunteers are working for big tech for free, and the Wikimedia Foundation is selling privileged access to that free labor.
It is against that backdrop that the current unionization struggle unfolds.
https://www.quippd.com/writing/2026/08/04/wikipedia-turned-on-its-volunteers-now-its-coming-for-its-workers.htmlOpen linkView original on fedia.io
9 replies
i suddenly dont feel so bad for never donating when they pull out the tin cup.
I feel bad for donating
Wikipedia is a desperately needed thing in these dark times. These people should be dragged into the streets and thrown on a pile of legos
LOL the downvotes I got for years for hating Shitipedia.
I honestly think this is a psy-op by Musk who has been actively trying to destroy Wikipedia for years, especially with his shitty Grokpedia
But also could be AI psychosis of the leadership. Humans are irrational creatures, and some of us really like to cling to tech. A lot of people grew up with the dreams of having their own KITT, JARVIS, HAL9000, or whatever talking computers were promised by sci-fi, and many of them won't give up until they die. Could be the same for Jimmy Wales.
I have a deep respect for the Wikimedia Foundation but this looks like a pattern of behaviour form them. are there any alternatives worth looking into?
Maybe Wikipedia should be copied safe somewhere before it collapses?
Kiwix exists and they have at least one copy (which they provide for free to anyone who presses the download button).
the contents is the worst part