Big Tech’s Anti-Labor Playbook Has Come for Wikipedia
TLDR: In ten days last month, the Wikimedia Foundation fired the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki and disbanded the team whose entire…
TLDR: In ten days last month, the Wikimedia Foundation fired the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki and disbanded the team whose entire job was to listen to volunteers. Most of the people they fired were union organizers. Wikipedia’s editors are now threatening to strike in solidarity. The Foundation is sitting on $296 million in reserves and a freshly profitable AI revenue stream. This is a confrontation with global implications.
It has been suggested elsewhere that if you are a Wiki Foundation donor, it would be a good idea to email and explain that this kind of behaviour will lead to you withholding future donations.
You’re right to be furious about the layoffs, but walking away sends exactly the wrong message.
"You hold more leverage than a cancellation could ever give you, and it works in the opposite direction. A donation that disappears is invisible. It shows up as one anonymous line in a spreadsheet, gets blamed on the economy or a bad fundraising email, and teaches the institution nothing.
"A donor who speaks up is much harder to wave off, because donors are handed a door that the Foundation’s own staff and volunteers aren’t. You should walk through that door instead of slipping out the back.
"In practice, that means writing to the Board of Trustees, whose job is to hold leadership to account, and telling them in your own words that your support has always been a matter of trust, and that trust depends on how an institution treats the people who build it.
"As a donor, the most direct way is to share your thoughts and expectations with [email protected]."
