Mastodawn

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

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elkaki 3d ago

@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

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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

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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

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elkaki

@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.