Prolific Wikipedia editors are threatening to go on strike

https://www.theverge.com/report/939442/wikipedia-editors-protest-wikimedia-layoffs-strike

by doener • 2 months ago

61 43 2 months ago

theverge.com

hootz4• 2 months ago

Can Wikipedia be forked?

colesantiago• 2 months ago

It should be.

We should do a hard fork of Wikipedia and call it Openpedia or Openwiki probably.

Taronar• 2 months ago

People often download it into offline storage, i dont see why we couldnt just make our own.

pickleglitch• 2 months ago

Who's this "we" exactly? Who's going to host the infrastructure? I don't think it would be so trivial to "just make our own."

II2II• 2 months ago

There are various reasons to avoid a fork. Having the resources to maintain such a site, spreading resources thin, and moving over or rebuilding a community of trusted editors are among them.

That said, I am one of the people who downloaded a copy of Wikipedia. It wasn't with the intent of working it. Rather, it was to wait out any political strife (since that is bound to happen with such a large and diverse audience).

jccalhoun2• 2 months ago

It has been a few times: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_forks_of_Wikip...

hootz4• 2 months ago

They seem to be specialized forks though, not actual recreations of the entire Wikipedia. We should have like an actual Mediawiki instance that forks the current Wikipedia content and maybe also leeches contributions off of it for some time to keep it up to date.

altilunium• 2 months ago

keywords : miraheze, wikioasis

ltbarcly3• 2 months ago

:thumbs-up:

1970-01-014• 2 months ago

The union Wiki Workers United, which has not yet been recognized, declined a request for an interview.

So, how can they strike when they're all volunteering? What exactly is their Trump-card secret strategy against full replacement? The article didn't even bother addressing the fundamental problem here.

guerrilla• 2 months ago

What exactly is their Trump-card secret strategy against full replacement?

They are the value. Good luck finding volunteers to replace them.

paleotrope2• 2 months ago

I'm sure there are plenty of reddit moderators ready to take it up if needed.

RALaBarge• 2 months ago

Billions of people on the planet, and not a single one of them would offer to do it?

embedding-shape2• 2 months ago

how can they strike when they're all volunteering?

Volunteering for what exactly? And if what they all are volunteering for went away one day, what exactly would happen to Wikipedia? Is it possible what they are doing, actually has a large impact for Wikipedia?

Striking is less about "us employees are angry" and more about "us who are actually doing things, aren't reaping the same amount of rewards", where "doing things" can be anything from being a salaried employee to a volunteer firemen, they can still strike because of unfairness.

pdpi• 2 months ago

So, how can they strike when they're all volunteering?

I fail to see the difficulty? Editors striking would mean them not doing the volunteer work they normally do.

How much vandalism do you reckon will go undetected if they do go on strike? How much more time will it take to get articles updated to reflect current affairs?

1970-01-014• 2 months ago

I would like to see some numbers on it. What exactly is their overall leverage here? What about a lengthy strike? Does anybody really know until it happens?

unleaded• 2 months ago

Wiki Workers United is the union for the paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation, not volunteer Wikipedia editors.

jccalhoun2• 2 months ago

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but I thought the Wiki Workers United were made up of employees not volunteer editors? Their website says, "We are Wiki Workers United, a global union for the staff of the Wikimedia Foundation. We are the people who do the work to provide a platform, services, and funds to support the Wikimedia movement." https://www.wikiworkersunited.org/

water-data-dude• 2 months ago

Don't you think it might be harder to replace the people who work for free, as opposed to replacing paid employees? The unpaid labor is...unpaid.

josefritzishere• 2 months ago

Whether they are paid or not, this represents an existential threat to Wikipedia. Without an army of competent editors, Wikipedia just becomes garbage propaganda like Grokipedia.

britta3• 2 months ago

I appreciate that this article actually cites some of the relevant discussions. Wikipedia community processes are unusual in that they are largely public, including that foundation staff members respond to community questions in public, so you can read a lot of the backstory yourself. Here are a few links.

Main discussion about Community Tech team on the Village Pump (discussion board): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#W...

* Response from the WMF (21 May): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#R...

* Note from the Wikimedia Foundation on unionization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#N...

* Response from the WMF (22 May): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#R...

* WWU statement (May 23): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#W...

* Response from WMF 24 May: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#R...

The 24 May statement includes "I know many of you asked why we cannot just guarantee people new roles...we have 4 countries represented, with a wide variance in required actions. I want to note one specific requirement that came from these laws: we could not pre-select certain staff for new roles, as that would appear to be circumventing legally required processes in some countries."

Discussion about proposed direction for Community Wishlist: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist#Prop...

zozbot234• 2 months ago

Discussed before at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285592

jmclnx• 2 months ago

The fire people doing real work. Without those 6 people, what paid people work at wikipedia ? Just fund raisers and managers ?

That seems to be how non-profits evolve these days, fund raisers and management get most of the $ raised. So it looks like the WF is going in that direction to me.

I wish the editors good luck.

frenchtoast8• 2 months ago

WMF has over 600 staff, and 6 were recently laid off from a specific team. The criticism isn’t that no one is doing work at WMF but instead

a) The team affected by the layoff was responsible for implementing ideas from the community, and this historically has not had much traction. This decision sends a signal that WMF does not care about community input.

b) Most of the people laid off were prominent in a union, and the community thinks this is unfair retaliation that a mission focused non profit shouldn’t stoop to.

ChrisArchitect• 2 months ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48285592

gjvc• 2 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=ChrisArchitect

Prolific Wikipedia editors are threatening to go on strike

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