A few months ago I cancelled my donations due to them firing a group of workers who stated their intent to unionize.
I’ve never even considered donating since I learned they have reserve that can cover site upkeep for decades, and the way Jimbo Wales spends the money. And this is like, more than a decade ago.
It’s the same for St Jude. They sit on millions in reserve and ask for donations that end up in the CEOs pocket.
Source?
Which one? There’s so many scandals St Jude is involved in. A 5 second search on Google will give you at least 20 different ones just on the first page.
That may be true, but I feel like you’re the one propagating the information so you should back it up with one source. But now that you’re noting that there are “so many,” it seems only right that you now include multiple sources of different scandals.
Lazy ass. These are just the first three examples. Spend more time and even an ounce of effort and maybe you’ll fucking learn something.
https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/providers/st-jude-fights-donors-families-court-share
https://hoptownchronicle.org/st-jude-stashed-away-886-million-in-unspent-revenue-last-year/
It only takes an ounce of effort to provide a source from the get go. ❤️
deleted by creator
Perfect timing. I just started donating to a new startup (comingle) that seems as promising as Wikipedia once was. Nonprofit whose goal is to start their own universal basic income for users who don’t want to wait for the government to start one. Now I can cancel my Wikipedia donations and not feel so bad
I instantly regret every donation I’ve made to Wikipedia, and won’t be making more in the future.
I had the same instinct, but then I read an argument from a contributor who recommended continuing to support the organization financially while writing privately and publicly in support of the union. Voting with your wallet in this case has a good chance of backfiring, or at least sending the wrong message. The bottom line is taking money away from the organization hurts regular employees more than the leaders. Then again, if you believe the leadership is going to do this no matter what you do, it’s understandable not to want to give the organization any support. It would be a terrible thing for this organization to die, but the ones putting it on this path are the leadership.
I think I’ll stop my donations. Nothing gets executives’ attention like dropping revenue. I read a lot of exec responses to employee dissatisfaction at other big tech companies that basically said ‘too bad if a bunch of you are unhappy, the company is doing great so we’re right, you can leave.’
I don’t care if this backfires. My money helps people and union busting is modern day evil against the people.
Besides, we have seen it work recently. A bunch of local stations took Kimmel off the air, pressuring Disney to cancel his show. So Disney was about to cancel Kimmel, and instead everybody canceled their Hulu/Disney+ memberships, and a couple of days later, Kimmel was back.
It would be a terrible thing for this organization to die
If an organization won’t respect the fact that it exists ONLY because of its workers, it would be a great thing if it died and made way for one that will. There are enough backups, we can survive the transition period. I have two, currently; one that gets updated, another from the pre-LLM era.
I can’t disagree with the points being made in the replies here. It doesn’t seem like continuing to give them more money will help the situation, and maybe a funding crunch would be the incentive they need to change course and save the organization. Or maybe it would just accelerate its demise.
I guess I’d rephrase my previous statement to: Wikipedia has been one of the world’s greatest free repositories of public knowledge for decades, and it would be a terrible thing for the world to lose that resource. The contributors and employees were always the reason it was such a great resource. If an organization can’t exist without exploiting the people that are responsible for its product, then I agree, it should die and make way for something else. But I (perhaps naively) believe that Wikipedia can exist without exploitation, so the present situation is not fundamental to the organization; it’s the result of poor leadership. So while I don’t want to kill it by withholding funding to send a message, the leadership may kill it anyway by refusing to negotiate with their workers in good faith.
This is yet another case where I can see people in power ruining something I loved, and I don’t know what can be done from the outside. From that standpoint, yeah… if Wikipedia is damned if I do and damned if I don’t, then it’s better to “don’t”.
and made way for one that will.
I think that’s the problem. Have you seen how hard it can be these days to rally volunteers to a common cause? Even if people were to back up and preserve all the content of Wikipedia, WM Commons, Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata etc., getting enough of the original contributors on board to found some new organisation without a thousand splinter factions pulling away over some issue or other is a long shot.
And in the meantime, for-profit corporations now bereft of their largest, free competitor would rush to fill the void and try to become the “new Wikipedia” (now with ads, spyware, premium features and blatant corruption, selling control of truth to the highest bidder).
WMF is a behemoth, kept moving through its own momentum. Letting it break in hopes of building something new is a dangerous gamble, unless we can get the successor up and ready to step in beforehand
This is the same as gamers ranting about cosmetic prices while spending $100 a month on them. It does nothing. The company sees the balance sheets and walks away laughing while your words are ignored. Money talks and words are only worth anything when it threatens their future money streams.
Maybe we can create a fund that goes towards the employees and divert our contributions there for now. Send a message and support to the ones who want to unionize.
Are they working with any kind of union organizer like Tech Workers Coalition? We could donate to them instead.
They mention in the US they are affiliated with the US branch of Communications Workers of America (CWA). “Separately, the WWU-UK branch has affiliated with United Tech and Allied Workers (UTAW), a national branch of the Communication Workers Union (CWU).” You can see their FAQ for more details.
A Jewish Zionist urges you to continue donating to Jewish Zionist Wikimedia foundation? Shocker
I stopped my yearly contribution last year when they felt the need to start guilt tripping their donors into trying to get them to donate more. It put a massive bad taste in my mouth.
This is bad.
…But I’m very worried about the future of Wikipedia.
Questionable leadership or not, it is a lighthouse in the information dystopia of the 2020s, which literally helps hold society together.
The far right wants it gone, and are not shy about screaming it, because Wikipedia is not compatible with fascism.
If it becomes hated by the left too, and ignored by the masses because of Big Tech blacklists it, I worry it won’t have the political support to keep its prominence.
And to be clear, I’m not worried about it dying. Wikipedia will stay where it is for decades.
I’m worried about it ceasing to be popular.
It doesn’t function as a uncontrolled source of information if no one sees it. Modern fascist censorship works by simply shifting attention.
The Wikimedia foundation vastly outpaces expenses. Despite doing their best to convince you if you don’t donate $10 right now Wikipedia will literally evaporate 🥺🙏
They can afford to not pay like shit
They’re also wasting massive amounts of money on things outside their core mission and scope.
I think you missed my point.
I’m not worried about them running out of funding. I’m worried about their reputation in the public’s eye.
No I got that I was just pointing out there’s no reason to do this besides naked greed
thanks for this info, cancelled my recurring donation 😮💨 I’ll give that money to a small local org instead
some entries are already questionable asf. some of them are written like an opinon piece, or a hs essay.
Wikipedia is made by people, like me and you. If you see bias or wrong information, you can either fix it or flag it with an appropriate template.
I really would like to, but German Wikipedia for example is something of an inner circle where you can’t do shit. They don’t allow newcomers to touch most of the articles.
Reddit, Wikipedia, Fediverse… powertripping mods are everywhere.
Please link such an article. I have never ever received a link to one when asking this question and I always ask for one/them when I read such “accusations”.
I am also curious what AnBee tried to edit and was refused.
If you’re a newcomer, start with simple edits. Fix small mistakes. Show the community you can be trusted.
Unlikely you can just ‘fix’ most points on articles. They have mad gatekeepers.
Then they need to drop the losers behind this anti-union BS. This isn’t a complicated problem. If they’re against working people they don’t deserve political support. Anyone who cares enough can rip the site and rehost it elsewhere anyway or preferably multiple elsewheres so we don’t run into this issue again.
being more worried about the reputation of your fave than the quality of your fave, because you’re so convinced it needs to exist, is how we get catholic church cover-ups and rightwing politicians transparently masquerading as populist socialists. value an insitution for what it is, not what you need it to be
I can’t tell if your’re agreeing or disagreeing with me but them taking an anti-union shows their quality. If they aren’t for working people then they have none and they don’t need to exist. The information there can easily be re-homed elsewhere.
yeah sorry pal, i was trying to add onto what you were saying, in disagreeing with the comment you were replying to. wish I’d made that clearer. sorry for the confusion
No worries.
Questionable leadership or not, it is a lighthouse in the information dystopia of the 2020s, which literally helps hold society together.
It pioneered a novel mechanism for collaborating on a project with minimal trust between contributors. But it was also riddled with bias and vulnerable to exploitation and as prone to cultivating disinformation as a universal source of truth.
Rather than fixating on the site as some last bastion of Web 1.0 nostalgia, we would do well to do better than Wikipedia.
Organizations like the Internet archive project have, imho, done as much or more than Wikipedia because of their commitment to accumulating primary source material. Managing that catalog and incorporating it into an encyclopedia of knowledge is much more than just stuffing a hard drive full of editor arguments and dead links from the old site.
Well, unfortunately, there is no project like that with Wikipedia’s critical mass. Most attempts with any attention are rather horrific. See: Grokipedia.
If Wikipedia dies, nothing good will replace it.
I know that’s a bit defeatist, but I really think its “the best we got.” Nothing better is coming with the state the internet is in now.
And I just want to emphasize that maybe a small community could build something better. I know.
But in terms of “keeping a healthy knowledge base for civilization,” that kind of project doesn’t matter if no-one sees it. Wikipedia is valuable because its a reasonably sane default reference for billions of people, that isn’t some megacorp or government.
See: Grokipedia.
That’s a very low bar.
Well, unfortunately, there is no project like that with Wikipedia’s critical mass. Most attempts with any attention are rather horrific. See: Grokipedia.
Idk if you even want the kind of attention Wikipedia achieved, given how it ultimately became the target of endless waves of scams and influencer operations.
That said, the Wiki format has been prolific in a way even the core website has not been. The core data for Wikipedia has been harvested and replicated across a thousand different boutique iterations. A lot of what made things like Grokipedia and Conservapedia and the rest flop is that these projects tried to administer the sites even more tightly than the original. And it’s an enormous project, so that loads a phenomenal amount of work on a handful of people.
If Wikipedia dies, nothing good will replace it.
That’s an absurd presumption. Just straight off the bat, you have the old Encyclopedia Britannica. You’ve got dozens of alternative Wiki competitors with their own rarified communities of editors and contributors. You’ve got subject-specific Wikis for a thousand different fandoms, hobbies, and crafts. You’ve got physical libraries. You’ve got digital libraries. You’ve got LLM compositions of libraries.
The biggest flaw most of these have is the same one any search engine after Google had. “Why would I go here if I can just go to Wikipedia instead?”
But the idea that tens of millions of curious people and subject-experts are just going to endure a vacuum? Come on.
Wikipedia is valuable because its a reasonably sane default reference for billions of people
It’s a very English-language and Euro-History oriented source of truth for tens of millions of online nerds. If it gets subsumed or shut down or otherwise undermined by western-aligned governments, I might suggest that the problem will not be an absence of Wikipedia but the presence of a malignant surveillance-enabled censorship bureaucracy.
What you will experience is not merely a lack of oxygen but a surplus of boot on your neck.
the old Encyclopedia Britannica.
No one uses this.
You’ve got dozens of alternative Wiki competitors with their own rarified communities of editors and contributors.
No one uses them.
You’ve got subject-specific Wikis for a thousand different fandoms, hobbies, and crafts.
Fandom has a grip on this space, unfortunately, and that’s under Wales too. Yes, I know there are community alternatives, but their traffic/SEO is small in comparison.
But the idea that tens of millions of curious people and subject-experts are just going to endure a vacuum? Come on.
They absolutely will.
They already have!
Look at the rest of the internet. Literally every space, every niche, every congregation of experts has rotted away, and these “curious people and subject-experts” are clingimg to big social media toxic spaces because it’s the default.
It’s a very English-language and Euro-History oriented source of truth for tens of millions of online nerds. If it gets subsumed or shut down or otherwise undermined by western-aligned governments, I might suggest that the problem will not be an absence of Wikipedia but the presence of a malignant surveillance-enabled censorship bureaucracy.
You’re speaking of an internet that, for the bulk of humanity, doesn’t exist anymore. It is all but gone. That’s what I’m saying.
Maybe a few million nerds would create new Wikipedias, but the billions of other people on their phones and tablets would almsot never see it.
And that is dangerous for society. Wikipedia’s sheer critical mass is a huge monkey wrench in “soft” censorship, and for all its faults, every bit Wikipeida is delegitimized is a fascist dream-come-true.
And I hear a lot of people talking like that popularity isn’t important. There’s this sort of “old internet” attiude like we can just archive it and keep to ourselves. What does everyone else matter?
Well. Without Wikipedia putting the braKES on loss of freedoms in our IRL lives, we may lose the ability to do that.
No one uses this.
Estimated annual revenue of around $100M. That’s half of Wikipedia’s. Someone’s using it.
No one uses them.
Quora alone has 400 million monthly active users.
Look at the rest of the internet. Literally every space, every niche, every congregation of experts has rotted away
None of that is true. Your institutional knowledge hasn’t keep pace with the modern net. And your nostalgia has biased you against anything novel or unfamiliar.
You’re rotting. The net is doing fine.
Nobody sane is using Quora as a legitimate source of information. Seems like you’re the one not keeping pace with the modern net. Would you also suggest Pinterest lead the charge in representing collective human knowledge?
Nobody sane is using Quora as a legitimate source of information.
-
Nobody uses anything but Wikipedia
-
Nobody I like use anything but Wikipedia
Uh-huh
Would you also suggest Pinterest lead the charge in representing collective human knowledge?
If you’re interested in art, fashion, or any number of other hobbies, absolutely.
But if you want to host other media on their systems, it works just as well. I suspect you just feel embarrassed to use other websites.
-
God dammit, this is like the moment the Titanic first hit the iceberg. No matter how this labor issue is resolved, it will permanently demonize Wikimedia. No matter how valuable Wikipedia is or has ever been, current culture provides no foregiveness or path of redemption after an ethical transgression. Again, dammit, I love Wikipedia and have been donating steadily for years.
Let’s not say never. Because they can course correct but it has to be hard pivot:
- immediately recognize the union
- in the same statement, provide a path for every other employee to form a union and guarantee that if formation passes, that they will immediately recognize it
- commit whatever amount they were going to pay their union busting attorneys plus 25% towards helping other unionizing efforts across the tech industry
- provide free legal services for unions at other companies to help them get recognized
The fact that Wikimedia foundation chose profits over people is absolutely disgusting.
- Shitcan whoever was responsible for hiring the union busters in the first place.
Yeah I’m probably never donating again after this. Why even bother arguing with the current US administration when the foundation is just going to copy all the bullshit the administration is pushing anyway…like, congratulations now literally everybody is pissed at your service.
You really don’t need to donate to them. Wikipedia has enough money to run itself indefinitely. The foundation just keeps growing and wasting money on non-Wikipedia stuff.
Curious, what does Wikimedia actually invest in besides Wikipedia? It’s still a non-profit, right?
As of June 30th, 2025 (this years report is pending), Wikimedia has $213 million invested in corporate bonds, stocks, mutual funds, mortgage-based and US Treasury securities. This is about a $30 million uptick from 2024:
Meanwhile, their actual hosting expenses sit at $3,5 million. Should they cut benefits and grants, they can last indefinitely on their assets appreciation alone.
Wow. So Wikimedia is really just a small hedge fund that happens to run the servers for an encyclopedia on the side. I had a hunch they spent a lot more on other non-wikipedia stuff, but for hosting to cost almost 2% of what they invest is eye opening. And makes it all the more petty that they can’t pay their labor. Especially since so much labor is in fact volunteer work.
I don’t understand this, the employees are few and the pr fallout + fighting this is much more expensive than just agreeing to what they demand
Plus it’s a foundation and shouldn’t have profit
the employees are few
WMF has 650 employees.
What they’re going to demand is preventing arbitrary layoffs, less bullying in the workspace, etc. Supposedly the Foundation is very toxic workplace. It’s not (just) about the money.
I never would have heard about this if not for the fediverse
One of the reasons I am on the Fediverse is that it often highlights pieces not widely reported on mainstream media. This is not just one case
Aaand bye bye any intent I ever had to donate again. Fuckers.
I was initially 80/20 against/for Wikipedia’s stance. I tentatively agreed with Wales’ criticism of identity tracking for the initial vote, but needed more information to form a solid opinion. Then I saw the mention of their hiring a union busting firm in addition to their current relationship with a known union busting law firm.
Fuck them, 100%. I immediately cancelled my ongoing monthly donation, which I’ve provided for years. Until the Wikimedia Foundation recognizes their unionized employees and works with them in good faith, they will get not a penny from me
Yeah I’m cancelling my donation immediately. Not that my $2.30/month will break their budget, but fuck them now.
A penny here a penny there… it’ll add up.
Relevant to mention: I’ve just posted a thread about users reporting that apparently WMF has hired a union-busting firm.
https://lemmy.world/post/50205578
It is publicly confirmed that WMF contracted the notorious union-busting law firm Littler Mendelson to fight Wiki Workers United.
(I also posted it to this community but it got deleted by the autobot.)
Edit: I just realised the OP link/article talks about this as well, ah 🤦♂️
Also may be worth mentioning the later part of the article, talking about Abstract Wikipedia, a beta project regarding whose future a request for comments has been called. Many editors believe it is unviable and a waste of money and time: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/The_future_of_Abstract_Wikipedia
They’re the “good guys” until their power is slightly threatened.
I don’t regret my donations, because though this was predictable, I suppose, it hadn’t happened yet. It’s like the people who bought Teslas before the big reveal that Musk is a Nazi. Maybe we all should have seen it coming, but it’s hard to blame anyone for missing it.
Wikimedia please fire whatever consulting firm told you it’s a good idea to do extractive capitalism as a non-profit foundation, reliant on long-term community goodwill and sustainable work ethics with low turnover rate
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
I’m not familiar with how unions work in the USA. Why does a union need to he recognized by a company? Just to have a formal communication pathway or is there more to it?
I do know the answer to this. In the US, the process goes roughly so:
Workers want to form a union. Workers sign authorization cards allowing a specific union to represent them. The union approaches the company and says, we have enough of your workers who want to join, (50% +1) will you voluntarily recognize that your workers have formed a union.
At this point it can go a few ways. The company can demand proof that there are 50%+1 workers authorizing the union to rep them. A neutral 3rd party will inspect the cards and attest this to the National Labor Relations Board office in that state. Like a public notary or professional witness. This protects the anonymity of the workers.
The company can immediately, or following this process recognize the union. They can go to the bargaining table and strike a deal with the workers, or enroll with the union under the area agreement and get the workers signed up.
The company can refuse, like wikimedia did, and demand it go to an election. A date is set and the workers come in to vote by anonymous ballot wether to be represented by the union.
If the company is some real shitheels they’ll start dumping $$ into discouraging the workers from voting yes. They hire a union buster and hold captive audience meetings. The union buster tells the workers any kind of lies and bullshit they want, they are a 3rd party and therefore not liable for the bullshit they spout. They say the company will go bankrupt. The company can’t afford to have union workers. Unions are corrupt and suck you dry with dues and don’t deliver a better life for you and your family. Etc.
Companies frequently violate labor law during this time period. They give raises and benefits to anti-union workers. They fire union supporters (they will owe these workers back wages later). They lie to their workers, threaten the workers, intimidate the workers. Often this corrupts the election process and if the election fails, it can be overturned and repeated because of the illegal practices of the company and union busters. Their goal is to wear out and drive away pro-union workers by dragging the process on indefinately. When you see pickets, this is often what the picket is about. Informing the public that the company is mistreating the workers violating their right to form a union.
Wikimedia are some real shitheels.
That’s exactly how it worked for my agency.
They were dragging new hires in and ordering them to sign away the union without knowing anything about them.
they are a 3rd party and therefore not liable for the bullshit they spout.
Screw that liability BS so hard. You hire them to represent your company, you need to be accountable for what they do under your payroll.
I just hope the past generation (going on two now) have gotten people to see through the gaslighting and we can rise up against it this time.
Its not just liability, its that the laws apply to what you say to YOUR workers. So a union buster can say whatever they want because they are not the employer.
Unions then have to spend $$ on lawyers making arguments before the National Labor Relations Board that the union busters were acting as agents of the employer to violate the law. If that sticks, it is still the company that is held liable, usually through having to hold a fresh election. The union busters move on to another company collecting 5 and six figure checks for attending a few meetings to lie to the employees. Scum.
How do you get out of bed in the morning when that’s the “work” you do. Lying to hard working people trying to better themselves
INAL and even further away from am American one, but I shall inboke the law of Cunningham . Having the company recognising or just generally being okay with the union formation makes the whole process easier. No hiding your unionisation activities and such. I believe the role of the union-buster is to dissuade the employees from signing up to it, see if there’s any dirt on union leaders to have then fired, and to just generally be a royal pain in the arse for everyone.
If I got the story right a bunch of Blizzard developers got fired because they shared company secrets/IP in the same discord server they discussed their unionisation work, so Blizzard’s lawyers found an easy way to get rid of them.
Cancelled my monthly. I’ll start it again when I receive info that the workers have a union.
Did the same.
Might as well mirror the whole site, run it elsewhere where the suits don’t have control over people.
I have an old 2023 copy of Wikipedia saved to my NAS using kiwix. This is probably the most recent version I’ll ever need. But yeah, it’s long overdue for some healthy competition, conflicts have been brewing for over a decade at this point.
This is probably the most recent version I’ll ever need.
Assuming nothing historically significant happens after that download, sure.
I’ve got an ancient encyclopedia from the 1950s that my dad owned. Let me tell you how useful that’s been over the years.
When I was a kid in the 80’s, my sister and I found an old World Book Encyclopedia from the 50’s that someone in our neighborhood was throwing out, so we brought it home. It had some interesting “facts” in it. E.g., did you know that guinea pigs are perfect as subjects for scientific research because they’re unable to feel pain? 1950’s worldbook did!
That’s the cool thing about knowledge. We learn new things all the time. 70 years from now, things we think are true today will be laughed at as ignorant and naive.
Like an old Sears catalogs, old encyclopedias are fun snap shots into the past and worth the read.
Uhhhh there is no way that is true
I mean, I don’t have the encyclopedia anymore, so I guess I can’t really prove it to you. But it was sort of my introduction to the idea that not everything in an encyclopedia is necessarily true, so it’s pretty memorable for me. I recognize the irony of using another encyclopedia here, but Wikipedia mentions in the History section of its Pain in Animals article, “Researchers remained unsure into the 1980s as to whether animals experience pain.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_animals#History ) I obviously don’t know the story about how the line ended up in World Book, but I know they employ fact checkers for every line in the book, so presumably in the 50’s the line reflected some kind of scientific consensus, as bizarre as that sounds now.
I have a single volume of an 1875 encyclopedia, it’s facsinating
I’d rather use Grokpedia or Stupidedia, anyway. Gotta have my ✨ alternative facts ✨.
Lots of things could do with more competition more than ever
