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.

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.

  • GardenGeek@europe.pub
    22·
    2 days ago

    Despite all the legitimate criticism, we should still be wary of powerful interest groups that want to discredit Wikipedia as a whole… and these groups are currently gaining the upper hand. I therefore think we should be careful not to parrot every criticism unquestioningly and write off or demonize the entire project. Because that is exactly what Trump, Musk, and all the other narcissistic, right-wing oligarchs have been hoping for for decades.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldMEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      Yeah, OP isn’t one of the handful of accounts that just shit on Wikipedia though.

      They posted their own blog, and talk about other stuff.

      Like, it’s not outright misinformation, and there are some good points in there.

      But my kneejerk reaction to anyone critical of Wikipedia, is that they’ve fallen for propaganda due to how much the oligarchs hate that they can’t control Wikipedia.

      That doesn’t mean that we don’t have to be vigilant, because it is entirely possible that one day Wikipedia starts being shit. I don’t think we’re anywhere near that point though.

    • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
      6·
      2 days ago

      If they want the support of the People then they need to recognize and work with the unions to ensure the workers who make and maintain the encyclopedia are able to live a life free of employment anxiety.

      • GardenGeek@europe.pub
        5·
        2 days ago

        Of course, union-busting is completely unacceptable and is rightly condemned.

        My comment was more of a general warning against—despite all the justified criticism—allowing ourselves to be divided and discrediting Wikipedia as a project.

        If we look at how the right wing influences the world, this is exactly how it works: Instead of working from the outside to destroy an institution or movement, they use the media power they’ve bought up over time to deepen existing internal tensions and further polarize the situation.

        That’s very likely not the case with this blog, but I wouldn’t be surprised if actors from the far-right were to seize on this issue to discredit Wikipedia and Wikimedia as a whole. If the project were to end, it would ultimately do far more harm to us as a general public than the problematic handling of workers’ rights… especially in these times, when there are enough fascists for whom Wikipedia is a thorn in their side.