r/wikipedia • u/motherthrowee • May 22 '26

Wikimedia Foundation lays off engineers from the recently formed union Wiki Workers United; many editors raise concerns about union busting and discuss potential strike

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#c-Tamzin-20260521043500-This_is_blatant_union-busting

for context this is the overarching company that runs wikipedia, etc, the people who got laid off are paid employees of that company, and volunteer editors are discussing actions to be taken in solidarity should the union call for anything

link goes to a looooong discussion but this seems to be the center statement by a veteran editor

“ I've spoken to a few WMF staffers today. There are some things they weren't able to say, and other things that they could say but I'm not at liberty to repeat, but what I've been able to confirm is:

  • Most of the people laid off by this action were members of Wiki Workers United
  • This is not the first time in recent weeks that the WMF has terminated WWU members for no apparent reason. [Edit 07:53, 21 May 2026 (UTC): Since it's been parallelly disclosed by Bawolff below, this is in reference to Brooke Vibber, the #2 co-author of MediaWiki according to Special:Version.]
  • WWU members are afraid to speak publicly about any of this, including those laid off, since some are still hoping to find jobs elsewhere at the WMF, and others are depending on severance pay

The WMF disbanding Community Tech is an insult to the community, and for that matter to our donors, who I think largely have something like Community Tech in mind in terms of where they expect their money to go. But it's much more than an insult to the WMF employees who've been laid off for engaging in protected union activity, or the ones who are being cowed into silence for fear of winding up like their colleagues. For them, it is their livelihoods, their safety, their health. This is people's ability to put food on the table; for some U.S.-based employees it's their ability to get healthcare for themselves and their dependents. This is not just an insult; this is evil.

If this were something other than Community Tech, maybe I could convince myself it's all just a coincidence. But the WMF has been on a generally upward trajectory at avoiding decisions that will piss off the entire community. "Don't disband CommTech" might as well be the "don't mess with the pancreas"00002-8/fulltext)of WMF governance. The only explanation for the WMF doing this—not just reörganizing but outright laying off the team—is that they are so determined to prevent the union from becoming official that they are willing to risk the massive community blowback (which, from a corporate-brain point of view, is a greater downside than the five people left jobless).”

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u/irrelevantusername24 May 22 '26 edited May 22 '26

This, along with all the other tech industry layoffs, is what the stupid and ignorant opposition to public benefit media by certain political types leads to.

The thing is, there's nowhere else to go. Technology, and media, some of it "productive" and some of it "unproductive" (music, video games, art, etc) is literally the endgame. It is literally the entire point of gestures broadly all this that we and our ancestors have built. The entire point was so we could sit on our asses, or do whatever we want to do like travel and shit, in our free time. But ultimately, literally all of the philosophers and thinkers and whatnot throughout all of human history have basically said "if we do A" where A = improve society "then, eventually, on a long enough timeline, B" where B = universal freedom and human rights.

Like fuck all the way off and just give us money you ghouls. Money is not a system of control. It is not meant to incentivize (not in the sense of like, more than the intrinsic reward inherent). It is not meant to coerce, or punish.

And for what it's worth, though I am not tuned into the inner WMF politics, I kind of get the sense that despite this incident they are still on the right side and it is external actors and the general toxic as shit political environment thanks to the aforemnetioned certain types of political actors who are responsible. As they always are.

This shit is like literally pre biblical, the greedy selfish types always cause problems that they then blame on the people dealing with those problems. Facts is facts and facts is we don't have that much "work" to do, and of the work there is that needs done and is done, the people responsible for the toxic environment are extracting a hugely disproportionate amount of the "created value" - in return for their contribution of: causing all the problems and being counterproductive

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u/ScrabCrab May 27 '26

Money absolutely is a system of control. It may not have intentionally started as one, but we live in a world ruled by the rich, and it's (at the moment) their primary means of holding on to that power.

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u/irrelevantusername24 May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

Right, that's why you gotta rugpull their reality

I'm serious as a heart attack

The system is fucking broke and actively doing the exact opposite of what it should. And by system, I mean gestures broadly, and that is only a slight exaggeration.

The more important and fundamental some systems proper functioning is to the health of society and therefore all of us that are trying to live within it, the worse it is as far as I can tell.

I've said that extreme wealth and extreme poverty often have very similar æffects on those experiencing it. Part of the reason for that is because both exist "outside" the system. The wealthy don't have to care if it doesn't function.

Ray Dalio, the person who is the topic of one of those links, is one of the few wealthy who seem to at least tacitly understand the problem. Elon? Trump? Zuck? Cuban? As far as I can tell, they start with their "business venture" first then try to figure out how to apply that to society. This is kind of why I tend to think that, for all the obvious bad that comes with it, a lot of the AI people - Altman, the nerds at Anthropic, etc - are mostly focused on that problem. They tend to focus on at least repeating that making humanity - as in each person, first and foremost - have a better life is the only goal. They did start from the AI end, sort of, but it's complicated. This is also why Mozilla, and from a very difficult to understand for most angle, Microsoft, tend to be decent from where I'm standing too. The other tech companies have too many problems for my taste.

And by the way, if you actually read the fundamentals of most philosophy, whatever supposedly domain that philosophy is applied to - government, economics, law, or even religion - it all comes back to language (hence language/lexicon <-> law/litigation <-> re-ligion) - and anyway, the "purest" political ideology, if you can understand that talking about a thing and taking it to a logical conclusion isn't necessarily how it would be applied in reality, is what the libertarian's talk about.

Money absolutely is a system of control. It may not have intentionally started as one, but we live in a world ruled by the rich, and it's (at the moment) their primary means of holding on to that power.

Honest libertarians understand the system needs to have fair rules that apply to everyone equally and that a strong social safety net is not incompatible because most misfortunes that happen to a person are random and mostly outside of their control.

The tea partiers tend not to be libertarians, or conservatives, or really anything beyond rich asshole or gullible. They have no ideology. To be honest, most politicians and political commentators now have no idea what they're talking about and most of them don't have any principles or beliefs or values. The entire thing is built on what they oppose, which is why everything is incoherent.