Wikipedia editors plot strike and banner sabotage after Wikimedia layoffs

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) has sparked a revolt among Wikipedia editors after disbanding the engineering team responsible for many community-requested fixes and moderation tools. The Register was tipped off this week to growing unrest inside the Wikipedia editing community following the WMF's decision to disband its …

[_wojtek]

maybe wiki foundation should be moved over to Europe where unionising is not frowned upon (that much)?

[Paul Herber]

We could call it The Second Foundation.

[steelpillow]

Putin would become The Mule.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

At least until we found Gaia...

[wolfetone]

The Wiki Foundation 2: Electric Boogaloo.

[Pascal Monett]

Oh sure

"The WMF also stressed that no formal request for union recognition has been submitted and said it would respect the legal process if staff eventually vote to unionize."

Of course it will.

After having fired anyone that even looked like they were thinking about it.

[elsergiovolador]

Unions

Most knowledge workers I knew said unions are bad because they increase the cost of doing business, and that once they finally got their own business running, they wouldn't want to deal with unions either. All whilst looking down on blue-collar workers trying to get fair pay.

Except most of them never actually got to run their own business. Meanwhile, their ability to do so has been steadily limited by the very people they helped enrich.

Now there's the surprised pikachu face.

If you're working class, most people will never escape it. So if you don't have a union at your workplace, start one!

[VicMortimer]

Re: Unions

Yep. ALL workplaces should be unionized. Shouldn't even be optional, once the first employee is hired the business should be required to provide a list of appropriate potential unions for the first employee to pick from, or of course the employee can choose their own. Union dues shouldn't come from employees, they should be assessed against the business.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Unions

> Shouldn't even be optional,

In many places, past a certain head count, it is *not* optional.

[Meeker Morgan]

Re: Unions

Union dues shouldn't come from employees, they should be assessed against the business. ???

If it's part of the cost of employing them, it comes from the employees, regardless of how the bookkeeping is done.

[Paul Herber]

Re: Unions

Powerpoint to the people!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Unions

Isn't it fun when you get to decide why people oppose your points so you can best disagree with the counterarguments? I'm sure some people think that. I'm even sure some people say that, and likely more think it than say it because it's not the most sympathetic point of view. There are many other reasons why some people oppose unions, the same way there are many good and many bad reasons why people support them. If you support unions, the best thing you could do is express why, but you didn't. The second best way you could approach that is to honestly collect sentiments against unions and explain why you think they're wrong. You didn't do that either.

For example, one reason I've heard frequently for opposition to unions, especially in tech jobs, is that unions tend to support all members without reference to their capability, making it difficult to remove people whose incompetence is causing problems for the rest and making technical ability more irrelevant to career goals. Is that true? It likely varies depending on the union and the company, and we have plenty of evidence saying that you can manage that without a union at all. Some of the people I've heard that from have experience of unions to base it on while others are repeating a stereotype. It might be possible to do something to improve that by changing union rules or processes. Are you really going to tell me you've never heard that argument before? Or was it perhaps because that would be harder to argue against so you picked the easiest one and pretended that was the only one?

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Unions

The competence argument you raise I find unconvincing, and not because it's never said. I just don't believe a union would actually fight to keep a clearly incompetent worker whose output is dragging down everyone around them, because that damages the prospects of the members the union exists to protect. The "unions shield dead weight" line tends to describe a failure mode of specific badly-run unions rather than a property of unions as such, and as you say, plenty of non-unionised workplaces manage incompetence terribly too. So I don't think it survives contact with what unions are actually for.

The objection I find more interesting cuts across knowledge work generally, though it's sharpest among developers. Many knowledge workers love what they do, find it comes easily, and have genuinely forgotten the years and sleepless nights that went into getting good at it. They look at a nurse or a warehouse worker, recognise that as brutally hard, and conclude they're the lucky ones who couldn't do that job and yet somehow get paid more. So they feel a kind of guilt, and from that guilt they decide a union is the last thing they need.

What that misses is that being well paid relative to a nurse tells you nothing about whether you're paid fairly relative to the value you produce. Those are two completely different comparisons. The guilt is also aimed at the wrong target: the fix for a nurse being underpaid isn't a knowledge worker staying unorganised, it's the nurse having a stronger union too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Unions

Problem is that unions like everything else in this world become a popularity contest with cliques and favourites / untouchables, whereas others diligently pay their dues and when they need the union, the union is "unable to assist with this " *cough* USDAW *cough* fucking wankers *cough*

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Unions

> I just don't believe a union would actually fight to keep a clearly incompetent worker whose output is dragging down everyone around them

Oh yes, they do (especially if the employee in question is the union rep). They don't do it necessarily out of concern for that particular employee but to use them as bargaining chips.

> What that misses is that being well paid relative to a nurse tells you nothing about whether you're paid fairly relative to the value you produce

Correct (and the same goes for the hypothetical nurse, of course).

[doublelayer]

Re: Unions

Your point about relative value is correct but doesn't in itself argue for or against unions. All that says is that, even though someone is better paid, it doesn't mean they're fairly paid, with all the subjectiveness that goes into defining "fair" in that context. I do consider myself lucky, mostly because I do think I and my colleagues* are fairly paid and all the comparisons you mention about the enjoyment and difficulty of the work apply. Since that is my position, if one of my colleagues thought they were unfairly paid, they are perfectly within their rights to try to get more, but I don't really want to join that fight if I think they are incorrect about their value.

* My belief in the fairness of my colleagues' pay is based on partial knowledge of how much they are being paid. If I learned that someone on the team was getting far less than the others, I would change my mind and would be willing to help them with that, but I have reason to believe there is not such a large difference among us. My belief in the fairness of my own pay is based on comparisons to levels I'm aware of inside and outside the company which I consider parallel to what I'm doing. I know some who argue based on other bases, for example that if you work for a large company with cash reserves that you must be adding more value or that because you embraced LLMs more that you must be a better employee than those who resisted them, but I think those arguments are incorrect and therefore don't intend to back up people who try to get raises based on such things. I hope unions will not decide otherwise, but I don't have the level of faith you do or the evidence to prove that without faith.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Unions

Something few consider, particularly here, is that there is a difference between how unions operate in Europe vs the US.

In Europe, the union is a representative for the worker with the company, and will endeavor to balance the needs of the worker with the needs of the company. When the company is doing poorly, the union will even back down on pay and benefits to keep the company afloat of necessary. The union recognizes that without the company, there is no job and no need for the union.

In the US, the union is there to make money. They represent the workers as a side gig, but their main focus is money extraction. If they cannot make money, they will stop representing the workers either by refusing to protect individuals or just cutting entire companies loose. The money that is collected is used for the benefit of the union, including paying politicians to further the interests of the union. The union will also bleed the company dry for dues today, knowing that if the company goes under tomorrow and the employees lose their jobs they can just go unionize another company and keep the dues coming in.

I wouldn't join a US worker's union at gunpoint, but would volunteer to be a union steward for a European worker's union.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Unions

> Something few consider, particularly here, is that there is a difference between how unions operate in Europe vs the US.

Spot on. I would argue that certain large unions in Europe operate according to the "US model" that you describe (IG Metall being a particularly notorious case), but otherwise I do agree with your post.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Re: Unions

…I wouldn't join a US worker's union at gunpoint, but would volunteer to be a union steward for a European worker's union.

Which is really just saying the US industrial relations is just another facet on the brilliant jewel of general American fuckedness. Has pretty much always be been that way (both the IR failings and the fuckedness) — certainly predating the advent of the Wobblies (IWW) in 1905 : see… WikiP. :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Unions

"In the US, the union is there to make money. They represent the workers as a side gig, but their main focus is money extraction."

That describes most large unions in the UK. Like Unite, which mostly exists to fund a political party (Labour) and the union bigwigs.

For example 'Serious Fraud Office probe £112m Unite union hotel' an ego trip for the union leaders.

'Unite the Union spent a total of £112m of its members’ money on the project in Birmingham.

The building has since been valued at just £29m, suggesting £83m has been wasted.'

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn5z54236wgo

[Mike VandeVelde]

Re: Unions

Unions can get fat and corrupt, sure. But compared to large multinational corporations? Not even in the same league. Who can workers look to? Governments?? Unions are all that workers have. "Protecting the incompetent" is just a grosss twisted way of looking at everyone should get a chance to defend themselves against potentially undeserved loss of liveliehood. A very profitable corporation sends out pink slips to tens of thousands of hard working people in order to get a big fat bonus for a few executives, no union no problem.

[doublelayer]

Re: Unions

Unions are not the only type of worker protection. There are in fact employment laws designed to protect people, with tribunals or courts to back them up. That doesn't mean those are sufficient, but if you honestly think that "Unions are all that workers have", you're unaware of many other things they also have or at least could if you were designing protections you think appropriate. There may be things which are better solved by employment law rather than unions for the reason that individuals have all the same rights under employment law whether or not a union cares to defend them. If one person is unfairly treated and a union chooses not to care because everyone else is fine, the employee still has options to obtain justice. In the same way, there are likely things that are better solved with unions than laws because many of the things a union fights against aren't abuses that are or should be illegal but common preferences that the workers generally want and have the power to make happen, pay rises being the most obvious example.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Unions

> There are in fact employment laws designed to protect people, with tribunals or courts to back them up.

>> corporation sends out pink slips

*Useful* employment laws? In the land of the pink slip, good ol' US of A? "At will" employment States and all?

(But US unions aren't any more help than the US laws)

[tiggity]

Re: Unions

@Mike VandeVelde

Indeed, unions are better than nothing (mostly! * ) - and as for "Protecting the incompetent"

Lets look at an issue a lot of reg readers (myself included) are not huge fans of "AI"

I'm sure there are probably already instances were people are being dismissed / demoted / threatened with dismissal / demotion for not complying with the enforced "AI" enthusiasm / "AI" usage of that particular company and it will be called incompetence or similar weasel words e.g. "failing to embrace the company culture", "being obstructive" etc..

* Darlington Nurses Union (DNU) was formed by some nurses at Darlington Memorial Hospital as their original union (UNISON) had been worse than useless (UNISON were actively opposing the female nurses who did not want a man using the female changing rooms)

Spiked ref

[keithpeter]

Re: Unions

"unions tend to support all members without reference to their capability"

Not sure if AC is UK based but 'capability' is a word used in employment contracts and law here in the UK. If an employer is trying to remove an employee under capability clauses, the bar is quite high, and yes a union will work through the process with an employee. The enthusiasm with which such support is provided will depend on the level of 'complaints from colleagues' (see ACAS page below). Unions support members through a process, this isn't some kind of protection racket.

https://www.acas.org.uk/performance-management/dismissals-for-capability-or-conduct

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Unions

> Most knowledge workers I knew said unions are bad because (etc)

I'll say three things:

1. Every large union I dealt with over the years were rotten and corrupt. Small ones are a different matter.

2. Unions (especially large ones) can work against the interests of the workers (their interests seldom align). Case in point: VW during Diess.

3. In spite of points one and two above, I fully agree with your observations, and I would encourage workers (and the capitalist class too) to explore all means by which workers can get fair compensation for their labour and skills.

[steelpillow]

Re: Unions

Power corrupts.

Back in the day, the capitalist owners had the power, became greedy and amoral, and exploited their workforces ruthlessly. The Trades Union movement arose to try and put a stop to that, and would be illegal for many a long year before the conscience of the people finally made it into law.

So then the unions had the power, became greedy and amoral, and shafted boss and member alike. As Tom Paxton sang back in 1964, "He was mining down at Hazard 'til the Unions sold him out. So here's to you my rambling boy..." In the UK, it took Margaret Thatcher to restored a semblance of balance to the Force.

Let us not imagine that floating to the top of the shitpile is a qualification for sainthood.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Unions

I was a scientist working in one of the more "interesting" bits of the Home Office when Margaret Thatcher was PM. Fortunately, most of the public weren’t aware of all that she enabled, and quite how close the social disruption caused came to "class warfare"; or even, perhaps, civil war in the affected industrial areas. AC for obvious reasons >>======>

[tiggity]

Re: Unions

@AC

As someone who as a student, when not at uni, voluntarily helped out with soup kitchens & other support activities for striking miners (I was born & grew up in a working class mining / textiles area) I'm fully aware of what the tensions were like (& the enthusiasm of many police to brutally assault the striking miners *) & how the media gave such an awfully biased coverage of events.

* So much for class solidarity, as many of the police were from similar poor working class backgrounds as the miners they were more than happy to baton charge, kick & punch. Unfortunately UK policing did (and still does) attract a proportion of violent thuggish people (for balance I do personally know some decent cops & ex cops, so not saying ACAB)

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Unions

> Most knowledge workers I knew

Please state your country/state/region, 'cause unions vary A LOT from country to country, even within Europe.

> So if you don't have a union at your workplace, start one!

Yes, if it will benefit you, do so! Not all workers or job types need a union though. But that is not to me to decide which jobs would not need one, that is up to the workers.

[steelpillow]

Link, please

Where are the Editors voicing their concerns? Can someone provide a link? Given the vast and vile (and cavalierly insulting, but let us not go there) redlink-style headlines on the reg's home page, one might hope for something with a little prominence i n this article, too.

[Albert Coates]

Re: Link, please

The original proposal is here:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist#May_20,_2026:_Community_Tech_becomes_a_program

And the discussion seems to start here:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist#May 20 update

The strikers' page is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Workers_United_solidarity

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Link, please

The editors are in hiding right now, because they keep getting asked when they are going to go back to the old story formats rather than this crap design they pushed off on us. They're waiting for it to blow over and for people to get used to it.

[steelpillow]

Re: Link, please

Yeah. I don't know if the "gotta have a massive leader box" toy is personalised to our click-throughs, but in a global crisis of AI-driven meltdown, it is giving me this very topic - a bunch of us Wikipedians having a private bitchfight about a modest reorg - dressed up with wild paranoia about the Trades Unions taking over the White House or whatever. That's a real global headline-grabber - errr, right?

I know, what the Reg really needs is a Community Tech team to implement its readers' Wishlist....

[ecofeco]

Mixed feelings

Having dealt with Wikipedia in the past and witnessed outright bribery to get an article published, I don't care. Not to mention their utterly arcane markup language.

However, doing your employees dirty is still dirty.

[Albert Coates]

Re: Mixed feelings

Are you sure you weren't being scammed? Was the article about you or your company or band? No honest full-time volunteer editor would ever ask for money, but there are plenty who of unscrupulous people who attempt to extract your cash to write articles for you. I agree, the WP markup is pretty grim and unforgiving, but there is a visual editor (not that I've ever used it.) Sorry your experience with WP was unfulfilling. (Editor since 2010)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Mixed feelings

> No honest full-time volunteer

I'm sorry to break this to you, but volunteering for Wikipedia is as dumb as volunteering for the Olympics. You're just being exploited by capitalists. It's basically legal slavery.

[doublelayer]

Re: Mixed feelings

You have an unusual definition of slavery since volunteers have no requirements at all. Usually, slaves are not permitted to do whatever subset of work they want, at any time they want, stopping whenever they want. That doesn't change whether it makes sense for people to volunteer, but using hyperbolic language like that requires at least some defense.

I accept what I think your point is, that Wikimedia could pay editors but chooses not to, but I think those who make that choice are well aware of that. I don't know what motivates major editors, but I think they are focused on those who use the site rather than benefiting the organization that hosts it. Pretty much all volunteering, from open source work to charities to answering questions on online forums works the same way.

[SundogUK]

Re: Mixed feelings

"I don't know what motivates major editors"

Those that control the past, control the future.

[tinpinion]

Re: Mixed feelings

The thing that makes slavery wrong isn't the fact that the slaves are unpaid. Slaves don't have the liberty to decide how they spend their time. Someone freely volunteering to do something cannot be a slave.

We live in an economic reality where, for most people, survival is predicated upon the sale of their time to others. Everybody who engages with that economic reality is being exploited by capitalists. I still wouldn't call it legal slavery, but it fits the bill a little more aptly than people who volunteer their time doing something that stands to benefit all of humanity.

Finally, Wikipedia is licensed under the CC-BY-SA. The Olympic Games don't seem to produce anything as beneficial to each individual human as Wikipedia does, and they have the international community backing them.

[steelpillow]

Re: Mixed feelings

Oh, my, the number of opinionated capitalists who have condemned me as the spawn of Satan, just for trying to explain that Wikipedia does not publish unverified propaganda to promote their enterprise. In their eyes, the Wikipedia community is wrong to run their encyclopedia they way they want to. So I tell them they could go create their own encyclopedia their way, and they treat that as absurd. We Wikipedians really ought to understand that Wikipedia should be run by their rules, not the community's. Straight up, I am not joking, time and time again. There are sane business folk, who I am always glad to help, but the greedier motherfuckers just can't deal with it. FYI the Wikimedia Foundation is a nonproift, relying entirely on donations. And you accuse us of being exploited! Feckin' eejit.

[Jimjam3]

And so the enshitification of the internet continues.

I give Wikipedia another 5 years…

[Bebu sa Ware]

And so the enshitification of the internet continues. I give Wikipedia another 5 years…

I wouldn't give the connected internet five years.

The fragmentation is already evident. The continuing imposition of conflicting legislation mandates can only accelerate the process.

Given its current state I am not so sure that this would be entirely a bad thing.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

I heard that 10 years ago. BTW: I heard the same 15 years ago about Fecesbook...

[steelpillow]

Historically, Wikipedia's "anyone can edit" mantra* has led to the most amazingly robust community policing and audit trail that I have ever encountered bar none. If enshittification does win out, Wikipedia will be the last to fall.

* Provided you don't abuse the house rules. We even still allow anonymous IP editors without so much as a Captcha to hold them back, but woe betide them if they break the rules.

[Will Godfrey]

On the other hand...

I know of an open source Linux project that contained nothing but entirely factual information with links to the project itself, and also to a number of conferences where it was presented over the years.

Wikipedia removed it for lack of independent verification!

[Ace2]

I signed up for an account once when I noticed an error. (Possessive its.) A bot instantly reverted my change as “suspected vandalism.” I’m never bothering to touch that ducker ever again.

[tiggity]

@steelpillow

Except when the "community policing" is done by people who know nothing about the subject area but want it as part of their personal fiefdom.

Many years ago, partner (then still working as an academic & (published) world expert in a particular area of the subject she taught) got me* to edit a page full of dire factual errors (in case students used it as a reference) .

Changes (which had plenty of references too) were all reverted back by the regular maintainer.

We checked some of that maintainers other pages - they showed same pattern of poor quality content and reversions of edits that improved the pages.

So partner just instructed students to never rely on Wikipedia for anything relating to their course work.

* she is not an IT person & Wikipedia editing back then was not very user friendly so I got that task!

[Blackjack]

Was the term AI mentioned so far? Because removing editors when people can do more harm that ever before to Wikipedia articles seems dumb.

The team could have been expanded.

[FIA]

[...]some contributors accuse Wikimedia leadership of becoming increasingly disconnected from the unpaid volunteers who maintain Wikipedia itself. Several editors have also questioned why an organization reporting nearly $300 million in assets in its latest annual report is restructuring an engineering team dedicated specifically to editor support.

Just remember this the next time that begging banner appears.

[Jellied Eel]

Just remember this the next time that begging banner appears.

I'm hoping those might be a casualty of the strike. But also-

"We learned from these assessments that it is rarely possible to fulfill community wishes through a single team due to the vast breadth of the software we support

Why does wiki support a 'vast breadth' of software?

[rasputinjones]

That's assets. Wikimedia revenue runs to around 180 million PA, which is a pretty close match for their expenses of $170 PA.

That doesn't leave much for mega yachts.

[FIA]

That's assets. Wikimedia revenue runs to around 180 million PA, which is a pretty close match for their expenses of $170 PA.

True.

That doesn't leave much for mega yachts.

No, but it's hardly just 'scraping by' either, which is what the donation solicitation banners often imply. (You don't just transition from poor to mega yacht status, there's a whole load of opulence in between).

Plus, the contributors and editors of Wikipedia are unpaid, again a fact often omitted from the 'it's just a cup of coffee' wording.

Also, what are those expenses? I fully admit I'm no expert in finances (so there's a fair bit of Dunning/Kruger going on here I expect), but if you have yearly expenses of $190M, and your primary reason to exist is an online encyclopedia (to spread the knowledge and all that) how do your 'travel and conference' expenses end up being nearly double your actual internet hosting costs of $3.5M? (they spend $7M on 'arbitrary stuff')

Again... written and edited by unpaid volunteers....

I like Wikipedia and think by and large it's a good thing, but I think they grossly misrepresent themselves when touting for my cash.

[skein]

Labour

Ffs - is this publication English or American?

[that one in the corner]

Re: Labour

We should all get behind any campaign to urge Trump to declare 'American' the official US language ahead of 250th anniversary.

Then at least The Register could make a definite statement one way or the other.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikiwhacky

CULT

A unionised cult would be quite unique I guess.

[boblongii]

Oh no

Never mind.