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- Hacker News
- Wow, they're on a roll over there. Just two days ago they permanently banned the cofounder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger.
Per his tweet: "Well, that’s that—I’ve been blocked by Wikipedia “indefinitely” for unstated reasons, by the “consensus” of a mob. There was no due process, no prosecutor, no dispassionate judge, no jury, no interpretation of law. All my judges were self-selected and hated me."
Link to his June 22nd tweet on the matter: https://x.com/lsanger/status/2069061483422425287
- That seems completely irrelevant to the post. Plus, isn't that the guy who hasn't been involved in the project since 2002? If it's been 2 decades, maybe it's time to find something elseby aircraft
- While the merits of Sanger's banning are worth debating, Sanger is dishonestly representing the process here. The reasons, rather than being 'unstated', were stated repeatedly and were not unreasonable. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...
by _djo_ - >for unstated reasons
the reasons were clearly stated, which he knows because he replied to them in the discussion.
whether you agree with the reasons is one thing, but this tweet is just a lie, and only serves to discredit him.
- This made my day. These workers will be better stewards of Wikipedia than management.by bwestergard
- In EU I would form union even at 3 person company. There are all sorts of tax benefits. Union fees are usually exempt from tax and social and health insurance. In my country we make dinner (yearly union meeting), produce meeting notes and get about 50 euro per employee. Union also organizes trips for families, tax free...
Worth asking AI about local lawx...
- > In EU
Where, exactly?
> Union fees are usually exempt from tax
What do you mean? You pay taxes on other membership fees?
by klez - The announcement says both
Wikipedia workers in Britain are setting a “global first” by becoming the first body of workers at the online encyclopaedia to seek union recognition.
and
Outside the United States, the United Kingdom is WMF’s largest employment location, and a substantial majority of its UK staff are union members.
Something is inconsistent here. Are they trying to unionize people who edit Wikipedia for free?
by Animats - I think it’s the WMF employees who are unionising, as in salaried employees.by ymhr
- I read that as the majority of wikimedia employees in the uk have joined the union, but the union has yet to be recognized by the company with a collective agreement.by kennywinker
- You can be a member of a labor union without that union being recognized as your exclusive bargaining representative for a certain employer (or whatever unit).by isamuel
- There are other lines in the post that, to me, provide clarity.
First is this, the second paragraph:
> British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) wrote a letter to management today (Wednesday 24thJune) requesting their right to be represented by the United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW) section of the Communication Workers Union (CWU).
That makes it clear that this is regarding the "British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation". Yes, the headline does say "Wikipedia": I expect the CWU chose that because many more folks know what Wikipedia is, vs. the Wikimedia foundation.
Second is this:
> Over 1000 Wikimedia volunteers and community members have also signed petitions in support of the workers, who have networked globally under the banner of Wiki Workers United (WWU).
I view terms like "[wikipedia] editors" as terms of art: "Editor" in the Wikipedia context maps to the more-generic "volunteer" in the broader context, which is why the post is referring here to "volunteers and community members".
So, I don't see any inconsistency in the article, but I see how the current post title can make it confusing.
In my opinion, I think it would be appropriate for you to email the HN folks, to ask the title be changed to something like "Wikimedia Foundation Workers to Seek Union Recognition".
- Unions at least in the European setting not really effective in protecting workers in the way people seem to imagine. The labor laws are somewhat but not really. It just increases the cost of getting rid of people and reduces mobility. So i don’t know what utopian view people have of unions but reality does not reflect that. It also leads to a salaried class of union representatives inside big companies that causes their own problems as they are the ones granting favors and benefits to their friends.by christkv
- Guess how those labor laws were achieved. Spoiler: unions. Same as weekends, 40-hour work week and so on. Strong unions win laws.by chobeat
- Seems entirely reasonable and I would hope will be accepted as such by the management.by ggm
- Have the WMF done something bad that needs counterbalancing or are they just forming a union out of some sort of principle?by jl6
- unions are institutions for bargaining power, even under decent employers
- They recently laid off an internal team that was popular among workers and also fired one of the oldest employees for dubious reasons. Notably all of the people laid off or fired were union advocates, so this can be seen as a supercharged reaction to an effort to union bust (whether it was or not, it was certainly perceived that way).by fzeroracer
- > The workers are longtime contributors and organisers, and are deeply committed to the Wikimedia movement.
It always starts this way, and ends with over half the people not bothered but still under union protection, and cannot be removed.
- Ahhh the American mindset.by jonkoops
- I've been mostly resistant to unionization for my whole career, but I think now is the right time. Between AI and H1B, the pool of jobs available for engineers is getting smaller and smaller, especially at the low end.
When you destroy the entry level position, you also destroy the pipeline that creates senior engineers, a shortage of which is used as leverage to increase H1B in America.
- Can you say more about why you are resistant to unionization
- >When you destroy the entry level position, you also destroy the pipeline that creates senior engineers, a shortage of which is used as leverage to increase H1B in America.
It's okay, the same is happening across the board, everywhere. Companies are engineering their own labor shortage 10-20 years from now.
by fluoridation - Now may be the right time to HAVE a union, but the time to unionize was when engineers had more power. That same soft job market means we have much less leverage to unionize than we used to.by kaikai
- Man, it's sad how far the wiki foundation has fallen.
For (literally) decades no one there would have even thought of forming a union! To get them to not only consider it, but actually go through the effort of actually doing it ... the foundation truly has shit the bed.
by hungryhobbit - > For (literally) decades no one there would have even thought of forming a union!
Why do you feel so certain about that?
by neilk - It's bleak it seems like wikimedia is controlled by the same ghouls who are running Mozilla.
Why is it so hard to keep a public interest tech firm honest?
by jordanb - Wikipedia has a lot of money, along with a valuable dataset (for AI); it was only a matter of time until rent-seeker(s) would come along and try to get it. As we saw with OpenAI, it is difficult to keep a non-profit dedicated to its public benefit mission when it has something of tantalizing value.by nickff
- Unionization shouldn't be seen as an emergency measure. Even if I would hypothetically accept union as a last resort, which I don't, safety nets should be built not only when you are speeding towards the ground, and often lack the resources, but much before that, when you are safe.by shye
- There is no reason for any employee to not search for unionization. It is your right and it is in your best interest. Good for them.by Frieren