Benni
Eugen RochkoRE: https://mastodon.social/@JMarkOckerbloom/116642253074554430
No, not you too 😭
Ainsley Lowbeer@Gargron Glad I never gave them a dime.
Pax Ahimsa GethenThanks for boosting this post by @JakeOrlowitz . As I noted when I signed the #WikiWorkersUnited petition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wiki_Workers_United_solidarity), my volunteer editing on #Wikipedia is very important to me, but I'm a strong union supporter and I do not cross picket lines.
Hannah Clover@funcrunch same! I've been very involved the whole time and told the foundation days ago that there is a very easy way to fix this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#c-Clovermoss-20260523195500-Fifteen_thousand_two_hundred_twenty_four-20260523192500
@funcrunch I'd also like to point out Jimmy's talk page for those interested in this latest kerfuffle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#h-WMF_technical_team-20260521144900
Kunal Mehta@HannahClover @funcrunch sorry, I don't think there's an "easy" fix to this. This has been going on for over a decade with rotating management and the board escaping accountability. All the things you suggested are reasonable in isolation but only address the symptoms and not the underlying causes. Staff need a union to do that.
@legoktm @funcrunch oh, I completely agree the union is nessecary. I meant "fix this" in the "fix the immediate crisis so things don't completely explode" way
@legoktm @funcrunch alas, things continued to get worse because no one cared to listen. The problems are definitely systemic in nature.
@legoktm @funcrunch and it's not like we're the first people who've tried. Lots of people have spent years of their volunteer effort trying to be a voice in the room to steer people in the right direction. It seems like the board always just does what it wants anyway and then fails to learn from the totally predictable diasterous outcome.
@legoktm @funcrunch like, no one at the foundation has even admitted that firing these people was a massive mistake yet. Days into this situation. That's a failure of epic proportions.
Mike Peel@HannahClover bear in mind that this is very much not something the Board would be involved in - it's staffing, that's very much delegated (for good reason!) to staff.
@mike_peel wouldn't dissolving a whole team, especially this one, involve the board on some level? The CTO was aware ahead of time so I don't see why the board wouldn't be.
@HannahClover nope, that's operational. There might have been a heads-up.
@HannahClover btw, the place to ask pointed questions about how this affects WMF's plans for the coming year is at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2026-2027 ...
Tamzin Hadasa Kelly@funcrunch @Gargron @JakeOrlowitz The petition has now passed 300 signatures! This makes it one of 12 things *ever* on the English-language Wikipedia, other than election results, to pass the 300 mark <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:300>. We're having trouble keeping up with the stats on everyone who's signed, but we're past 6.5M combined edits and 26k combined article creations, in terms of past work done for free that people are willing to walk away from if necessary to protect union members' rights.
richintheflow@tamzin What about to fork it? Who cares of the petition? Let's make it public and create another governance for all these free datas!
@richintheflow A fork would be extremely logistically difficult, and, in the event it succeeded, would likely go against the interests of the union we're trying to protect here. I'm not categorically against one, but it's best seen as a last-ditch option that serves as a backstop for more straightforward kinds of activism, as I discuss briefly at <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tamzin/What_would_an_editorial_strike_look_like%3F>.
Passionate Scarlet@Gargron I have wikipedia downloaded on all of my devices. I'm sure a lot of nerd will recreate it easily if shit hits the fan ✌️
fr0g@ILikeMyCoffeBlackLikeMySoul @Gargron
Wikipedia isn't a tech product. It's a huge community effort. And you can't just try to move a community from one place to another without a risk of it splintering. Which is really the last thing we need in our current times.
@frog_reborn @Gargron I trust the fanbase. But you're right, the risk is that wikipedia become shitty and, even though a great alternative exists. It does on a niche part of the web where only experts will work on it. Therefore they are not enough to maintain correctly the alternative. So we'll have an incomplete communist wiki and a complete shitty wiki. Yeah, I see now how it can be damaging. We need to fight for a democratic wiki then, and democratic web and social media platforms too !
Petrikas
mcSlibinas
primalmotion@Gargron of course old fucks are gonna try to enshittify wikipedia before they die.
LukefromDC@primalmotion @Gargron Don't be surprised if they first add ads and trackers, then refuse to load the toplevel page if JS is blocked, then finally refuse to load it if ads fail to load or trackers fail.
Just imagine the money this CEO could make with real-time bidding for Wikipedia's users by making them the product.
I agree that all donations to Wikipedia should be ended until this CEO and all of their buddies step down, and if necessary the entire project should be forked away. YES, this will be difficult, and YES it will be hard to keep it from splintering, but Libreoffice has shown that a single main community supported fork of a project can get most of the userbase to unite around it.
I'll take the "incomplete communist wiki" over the "complete enshittified wiki" any day, just as I choose Mastodon and Noblogs over Facebook and Instagram.
@LukefromDC @primalmotion @Gargron
Re "this CEO and all of his buddies": The current CEO of Wikipedia, Bernadette Meehan, is a woman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernadette_Meehan
(ETA: The previous four CEOs were women as well.)
Dr. Bruce Simpson@Gargron I actually had an item on my todo to send them a donation. I may have to reconsider that now and snag a mirror. Disk space, as ever, is an issue.
@Gargron IPFS hosted Wikipedia mirror is looking viable, but that doesn't address the issue of the WMF CEO now being stupid.
Fugue State Machine Moto@Gargron okay, how’d the trump regime manage to infiltrate WMF? who’s been making those firing decisions?
because this is feeling like enemy action.
EDIT, found my answer in the article:
“Bernadette Meehan became CEO on January 20, 2026, recruited from a career that included Wall Street stints at J.P. Morgan and Lehman Brothers, a spokesperson role at the National Security Council, senior leadership at the Obama Foundation, and most recently a posting as U.S. Ambassador to Chile. Four months in, the longtime lead developer of MediaWiki is fired, the team that personifies community service is dissolved, and the union is in open confrontation.”
Henrik Pauli
Jim Jones
Carlos SolísSerious question: how does one even start boycotting the freakin' Wikipedia?!
Speed demon 🇪🇺 🇳🇴🇺🇦🇵🇸
GeePawHill@Gargron It's hard to resist the notion that, at some point, "class" will always out.
Sir David Nielsen@Gargron @JMarkOckerbloom and there goes any chance I will renew my yearly donation
Andreas
WorldTravelerAll7@Gargron oh shit. Time to pay up😅
Tobias Hellgren@Gargron Time to download, fork to Librepedia, add decentralized article distribution and call it a day
wakest likes your bugs ⁂