Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 389 posts

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#141

Post by Wikipedianon »

dmurray wrote: post #87
bawolff wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a result, WMF prioritizes investing in emerging markets over enwiki. This means outreach to indigenous languages in the Global South and developing supporting infrastructure. e.g. "Abstract Wikipedia" which aims to use a language-neutral syntax that can be automatically translated into any language. I'd disagree that there is a causal relationship here. I think most of the outreach to indigneous languages has mo…

The "abstract Wikipedia" just seems like a solved problem with LLMs. However sceptical of "AI" you are, "give me the information on this page in my preferred language" is the kind of task they excel at. (I won't use the word translate ). It wouldn't even require prioritising the English Wikipedia: any agent today could one shot a task like "check the Wikipedia pages in all languages for X, summarize the results and n…

It's not a good idea for common languages like German or English or French.

But it is a great idea for indigenous languages that aren't in the training data but many people speak, which was the original purpose.

I am hopeful that it'll create synthetic training data for those groups.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#142

Post by troad »

appreciatorBus wrote: post #129
troad wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internal DEI initiatives are very helpful for an organisation trying to create a comprehensive knowledge base without falling to any group's bias. That requires diverse perspectives. I don't care about internal DEI if the job is managing sewerage systems, but this is a perfect example of a context where fostering diverse engagement is both rational and improves the end product.

That's a fine goal, but at some point, someone should evaluate if that goal is being achieved, if the purported methods actually work. It's difficult to look at any remotely contentious Wiki page today and conclude that they have succeeded.

The perfect ought not be the enemy of the good - the question isn't whether Wikipedia has solved all prejudice, the question is whether it is doing better on that question than its peers. And I'd say it is, relatively speaking. I'm always happy for it to do better, though.

Spending money to get people into editing Wikipedia that would never otherwise have done so seems like a very worthy goal to me.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#143

Post by ryukoposting »

chr15m wrote: post #77

> The point is the Foundation is rich. Seventeen-plus months of operating runway in the bank. I don't think "rich" is the correct way to describe this. It sounds like a lot of money but there are a lot of expenses and people to pay. Seventeen months sounds fragile - one long-ish recession and they're toast. I hope they survive.

18-24 months is a typical runway for a healthy American startup. As a mature nonprofit with a very predictable revenue source, 17 months is well within reason. Runways get shorter as you scale and stabilize, not longer.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#146

Post by hackyhacky »

nekzn wrote: post #123
faidit wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the Trump or Obama article not neutral? You can literally correct them yourself if there is anything untrue or biased.

[flagged]

> you can’t say some politician filled a country with immigrants from the third world.

You can absolutely say that, if it's true. As it stands, I don't know of country "filled with immigrants", so it's possible your edits are getting revoked for being incendiary hyperbole.

I'm also not aware of any politician described as racist in the first paragraph of their article. Can you indicate who you have in mind?

More realistically, controversies about racism and immigration are likely to be mentioned in a section of the given article, not in the first paragraph. That strikes me as a very fair way to handle it, which conveniently disarms accusations of bias against Wikipedia.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#147

Post by tptacek »

ryukoposting wrote: post #145

https://wikimediafoundation.org/give/manage-your-donation/ Instructions for cancelling your WMF donation.

Most of you shouldn't be donating to WMF in the first place; they don't need your money. You could reasonably cancel your donation without resolving any of the mission vs. labor conflicts indicated by this post.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#149

Post by blululu »

tptacek wrote: post #147
ryukoposting wrote: post #145

https://wikimediafoundation.org/give/manage-your-donation/ Instructions for cancelling your WMF donation.

Most of you shouldn't be donating to WMF in the first place; they don't need your money. You could reasonably cancel your donation without resolving any of the mission vs. labor conflicts indicated by this post.

Just piling in to this because it needs to be stated with emphasis. Wikipedia foundation is not Wikipedia. Their donation campaigns are highly deceptive. Pennies on the dollar will go to supporting and maintaining the actual encyclopedia. WMF is as much a liability to the encyclopedia as a beneficiary.

Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia

#150

Post by nickff »

kennywinker wrote: post #113
nickff wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These employees trying to organize seem to be ignoring that they don't actually provide the majority of the value that Wikipedia benefits from, volunteers do.

What a horrible take. The janitor deserves to be paid well, work in safe conditions, and have stable hours. They may not provide “the majority of the value” but without them work would grind to a halt. Same applies to every other job. If it needs to be done, then it should be treated with respect and dignity.

I agree that everyone deserves to be paid according to their contribution, and have their employer follow all relevant laws. I am not aware of anyone being murdered, enslaved, or even tortured by the Foundation. This group seems to be trying to ‘cash in’ on Wikipedia’s AI windfall, and I think that will cause long-term damage to the organization.
Post reply on HN