Mastodawn

John Mark Ockerbloom

From LB: "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....

The Foundation has spent twenty years telling donors it is not like other tech companies. The union drive is the moment when that claim either becomes true or admits it was always marketing." https://medium.com/@jakeorlowitz/wikipedia-is-doing-the-capitalist-thing-56a393232943

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…

Medium

John Mark Ockerbloom 3d ago

Extensive discussion of the Wikimedia Foundation's layoffs, the wish-list team disbandment, and the union drive, from various points of view (including some WMF representatives) can be found at the Village Pump on Wikipedia. Discussion may eventually move to a dedicated page, but here's one starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#WMF_Community_Tech_team_has_been_disbanded,_engineers_laid_off

Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF) - Wikipedia

Mike Taylor 🦕2d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom And yet at the same time they are recruiting. https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4404223143/

Wikimedia Foundation hiring Senior Software Engineer, MediaWiki in European Union | LinkedIn

Posted 6:32:41 PM. SummaryThe Wikimedia Foundation is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join the MediaWiki…See this and similar jobs on LinkedIn.

Frank Heijkamp 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom
By the way, can you post a direct link?

Or an archive link.

John Mark Ockerbloom 3d ago

@alterelefant I've edited the post to include a link. Thanks for asking!

Frank Heijkamp 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom
Thank you for adding the link.

nojhan, Cassandre de l’analyse systémique 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom

"Every crisis taught a lesson. The lesson was never that secrecy and top-down decision-making were wrong on principle. The lesson was always that secrecy was operationally expensive and should be handled more carefully next time."

This is deeply wrong. Top-down decision-making (aka "power") and secrecy are know to be wrong on principle since centuries. They ALWAYS end in workers exploitation and abuse. True democracy (aka "efficient counter-powers") is the only known remedy.

Hannah Clover 3d ago

@nojhan @JMarkOckerbloom yep, I've been trying to telling the foundation they need to be more transparent since forever. I even started a petition when they did shady stuff with the most recent board elections: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2025_WMF_Board_reform_petition

2025 WMF Board reform petition - Meta-Wiki

Lily Star 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom Ending my donations to Wikimedia Foundation today. It appears they have enough cash now.

@starlily Yeah I did too. That's two nonprofits I've cut off for union busting this year.

@JMarkOckerbloom

@solitha @starlily @JMarkOckerbloom which is the other one?

@pietervdvn ProPublica. Not "union busting" per se, on that account, but their workers are on strike.

@starlily @JMarkOckerbloom

Jeff Atwood 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom 😬

@JMarkOckerbloom oh fuck off 😡 hopefully archiving is underway?

Sebastian Lasse 3d ago

@GandalfDG @JMarkOckerbloom

If anyone is interested in federating wikidata / wikibase, I wrote much code towards ActivityPub Vocabulary.

Cause I love wikipedia.

At the same time, I am also a co-founder of freelens union [DE, then also FR …] and so:
Full solidarity.

@sl007 I'd be interested in helping out, or at the very least reading some documentation. Not sure how much compute/bandwidth/admin effort I can spare

Sebastian Lasse 2d ago

Thank You!
The documentation about out projects is https://codeberg.org/Menschys/fedi-codebase [unfrotunately mixed language - chaos is good :)]
I am on the way to stick a repo and online example together, currently doing the rest of OpenStreetMap->AS Vocabulary cause when it has a wd identifier, it can result in 1 object and vice versa.

We would like to do a 1 hour online meeting soon about the building fedi blocks with some interested people, I'd let you know when.

PS Saw you're on indieweb.social; apart from the ActivityPub Confs, I have done various indiewebcamps in EU and would wish that oceans are much smaller :)

fedi-codebase

meta-repo keeping track of the unified codebase for the ActivityPub Clients menschys. taxiteam and redaktor.

Codeberg.org

@sl007 definitely looks interesting, I'd happily attend a webinar about it to get a better idea of the goals.

I like the idea of being able to provide some amount of storage and bandwidth towards a larger whole almost like BitTorrent but for web content

stonedonkey 🕹️🎮👾3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom

Seems like they made an awful hire that decided to just set everything on fire.

Is asshole a bullet on these people's resumes that resonates with people, because this stuff happens far to often.

Dźwiedziu 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom
There is a role in the post called “competent CEO”. Do you know how and where one could find such people?

Joni Bitchell 3d ago

@dzwiedziu So often an oxymoron!

@dzwiedziu @JMarkOckerbloom

There's no such theing, all MBAs know how to do is eat hot chip, extract profit, and lie

Dźwiedziu 2d ago

@TeflonTrout
Of course there isn't. That's the joke ^_^

And MBA's are Minimal Brain Awards.

@JMarkOckerbloom

@dzwiedziu @JMarkOckerbloom

Here's another backronym for your service:

Morally Bankrupt Assholes

Hoosee Tokkintoo 2d ago

@dzwiedziu @JMarkOckerbloom @Guillotine_Jones

“Competent CEO” is usually an oxymoron.

@JMarkOckerbloom Wtf, why is everyone trying to screw others up?

obscurestar 3d ago

@Fedihacker @JMarkOckerbloom Because we're irreparably damaged the environment while breeding like roaches and the next century is going to see mass extinctions so the more of us they can kill before then, the less work their AI murderbots will have to do in a decade or two.

Ratsnake 2d ago

@obscurestar @Fedihacker @JMarkOckerbloom oooh, some nice eugenics talk there, mate

Misuse Case 2d ago

@ratsnakegames @obscurestar @Fedihacker @JMarkOckerbloom He may say “we” have been breeding too much but he doesn’t really mean himself, or his friends, or most people with the same color skin as him.

Bill Sharpe Gadfly 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom
69 yr old retired Teamster here. I $$ supported #Wikipedia 's in it's better days.
Were in an upside down world aren't we.
:(
Bill

In other gadfly news:
This weekend I sorted thru 26-ish peeps garbage to remove recycles. Of course the work was technically a waste of time but I use the process as educational for others that watched me. I even squeezed in the emptying of 2 neighborhood dog poo bins.
#engineering
:)

poetaster 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom I went and signed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Workers_United_solidarity The union, such as it is is somewhat scant to date. Makes me uncertain. My logic in signing was, if employees are uncertain about joining, the more support, the better.

Wikipedia:Wiki Workers United solidarity - Wikipedia

@poetaster
Signed, and have canceled my regular donations. I don't fund union busters and scabs. #wikipedia
@JMarkOckerbloom

@JMarkOckerbloom Extremely disappointed in Wikimedia. Exploitive as any other tech company.

Tizian 「ティツィアーン」3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom Och nöö

:EA DATA. SF:3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom I'll have to stop my recurring donations.

The Turtle 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom it's OK, Jimmy Wales will not mention it at all the next time he pleads for donations.

@the_turtle @JMarkOckerbloom Of course not. Do you really think they have the free space to include that in a massive banner at the top of the site?

AnonLeftist 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom they took Musk too seriously at naming it to "dickypedia"?

@JMarkOckerbloom
Mozilla no! oh wait

Martin Schröder 🇺🇳3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom
Where does @wikimediaDE stand?

Engelbert Schnauzi 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom

I can't for the life of me open that link

@flaubau @JMarkOckerbloom This should work: https://libmedium.batsense.net/@jakeorlowitz/wikipedia-is-doing-the-capitalist-thing-56a393232943

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…

libmedium

⠠⠵ avuko 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom

Eh…

Wikimedia Enterprise, the team that provides high speed, high volume API access to AI labs, just turned profitable on $8.3 million in revenue, a 148% jump from the prior year.

That last revenue stream is good, by the way. AI companies are training on Wikipedia whether they pay for it or not, and making them pay is the smartest move the Foundation has made in years. The figure should be much higher. OpenAI and Anthropic and Google can afford to write checks an order of magnitude bigger than $8.3 million.

Google, Anthropic and OpenAI are destroying our world while free riding on our collective efforts. Making them pay is, as a matter of fact, NOT the smartest move the Foundation has made in years.

The foundation is already rich enough as per the article, and

At least all the text content of Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0. All the AI corpos blatantly violate both the Attribution and ShareAlike requirements of that licence.

What would in fact have been “the smartest move the Foundation has made in years”, for all of us, is to sue these fuckers into oblivion.

I’d damn well donate whatever was needed for that.

#wikipedia #wikimedia

@avuko @JMarkOckerbloom "...for all of us, is to sue these fuckers into oblivion. " I agree, that must be done. These projects leave a huge and undeniable digital trail that make good evidence in court. Also, as many have been saying , is necessary to fork/decentralize these projects away from USA. We need "Wikipedia", "Free Software Foundation", "archive.org" and others in EU, Brazil, Canada, Japan, etc. Not for stupid nationalist reasons, but to ensure their information & access survival.

@JMarkOckerbloom

Very disturbing…

Engelbert Schnauzi 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom

found the article.

can we now finally ditch money as a society?

Sobri | Zoe (she/her)3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom

Yo chat are we cooked?

Em & future cats 🇺🇦🐈🏳️‍🌈3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom Where is this person’s email address? And maybe even post box (one that isn’t their personal house for privacy reasons) can we please start a letter campaign of our displeasure over what just happened? And insist that they uphold the unions there?
I want to write to them asap

@JMarkOckerbloom

That's quite dissapointing, but unsurprising.

Netzpolitik Baden-Württemberg 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom Jimmy Wales got to go. Nothing else is acceptable.

Pax Ahimsa Gethen 3d ago

@LAG_Netzpolitik_BW @JMarkOckerbloom

Jimmy Wales is on the Board of Trustees, but he is not the CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Netzpolitik Baden-Württemberg 2d ago

@funcrunch @JMarkOckerbloom Thanks for clarification.

Guillotine Jones, Flâneur 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom
And there I was considering a donation to the Wikipedia Foundation having received a couple of very well-written solicitation emails.
Your post of this article about the size of their endowment and their union-busting tactics has put a stop to that thinking on my part, John.

shoartie 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom shame, one of the few places I used to donate to

Rue Mohr 3d ago

@JMarkOckerbloom I knew it was a writeoff when I attempted to add information to articles and it was IMMEDIATLY erased.

sorry but the wikipedia has always been hopeless. wiki was a fad and from it came wikipedia.

Sen the Professional

@RueNahcMohr @JMarkOckerbloom I had the same experience. I told off the editors involved, underlined the fact that they'd driven away a new contributor, and peaced out. I don't know what it's like behind the scenes at Wikipedia but if I heard on good authority it was toxic to start and getting moreso by the day I wouldn't be surprised.

@JMarkOckerbloom Can anyone that knows about the topic explain if the issue is still going on? The article doesnt touch the details or responses on this particular controversy much, but I have been reading it for the last hour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#Response_from_WMF_24_May (and the jimmy wales page)

Honestly, the last official response seems reasonable? Am I missing something, because I feel that some of the responses in there are too skeptical. Would love for another more informed perspective here

Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF) - Wikipedia

Hannah Clover 3d ago

@elkaki @JMarkOckerbloom issue is definitely still going on. I'll also note that Selena has ignored very direct questions after her comment. See all the comments underneath at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Community_Wishlist#h-Response_from_WMF_24_May-20260524222800

Talk:Community Wishlist - Meta-Wiki

Hannah Clover 3d ago

@elkaki @JMarkOckerbloom there's also a duplicate discussion on enwiki specifically where the response was also posted and other people poked holes in it, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#c-SDeckelmann-WMF-20260524222500-Response_from_WMF_24_May

Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF) - Wikipedia

@HannahClover @JMarkOckerbloom Ty, I both love and hate how fragmented the discussions on this stuff get on wikipedia. Makes it quite difficult to understand anything thats going on.