Why do orgs like Wikipedia and Mozilla keep hiring corporate CEOs thinking it will bring them anything else than toxic work culture
Usually people who want these roles most are the least suitable for the job.
Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia
281–290 of 389 posts
Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you explain what you mean by social/moral status? I haven't seen a big run of non-profit workers marrying movie stars or becoming Pope.
Isn't the Pope like the canonical high-status non-profit worker?
Yes, but notice that the pope gets paid very well
Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a huge fan of co-operatives for this kind of org. It would be interesting to create WikiMedia as a co-op and transfer ownership to editors, staff, donors, on some basis. There would be a huge argument about that basis, for sure. But if anyone has the experience to manage an enormous argument, and then handle the mechanics of conducting votes across multi-million-people ownership groups, it's WikiMedia.
Recently, every time there's a discussion about single CEOs and/or private equity ruining good things, co-operatives seem to come up. Maybe they aren't such a bad idea. Certainly, for starting a company or org, it seems like a decent option.
The big problem from a startup pov is that there's no way of getting conventional/VC funding into a co-op that doesn't break the model.
WikiMedia is different because it already has funds - you could reasonably offer donors an ownership share for their donation, and it wouldn't flood the voting.
It doesn't seem to be anywhere close to where they're heading, however, which is a shame.
Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
"status-compensated"?
people enjoy doing high-status things and will trade off pay for status. asking for equal pay as low-status work is essentially asking to have your cake and eat it too
Uh...
Can you name me a single job where the tradeoff is "You won't get paid much because this position is so respectable"?
There are respectable jobs where you don't get paid much because the area of work simply does not generate much money (charity), or because they're being exploited and guilt tripped into working hard because of their mission (charity), and there are jobs which are respectable primarily because they pay very well...
But there are no jobs where you're "status-compensated", where you are paid less but that's okay, because the job is so respectable so it's okay to pay you less.
Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
Astroturf is not the right word, because appearing to be grassroots isn't how you sell your perspective on Wikipedia. Most of the people stopped from editing contentious topics on Wikipedia are in all likelihood more sincere about their beliefs than average. The more organized and professional they are about shilling, the better they do.
> The more organized and professional they are about shilling, the better they do. This is incorrect. Shills do well when they contribute outside of the topic area, memorize wiki-law, and only coordinate to !vote in contentious high-impact discussions. e.g. requested moves, reliable sources noticeboard discussions, and RfCs. They are seen as "normal" Wikipedia editors. Professionally organized shills are unable to do…
> the best shill-farm is run by the /r/Palestine subreddit
you mean the best one that you know of
Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia
#286I spent ~2 years actively editing Wikipedia for multiple hours every day. I remember taking my laptop out at airports for 20 minutes between transfers, just to tweak an article or improve a source. While I originally started because I found some articles lackluster, I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be on controversial topics. For what simple HTML you see on the surface, you would be absolutel…
> I spent ~2 years actively editing Wikipedia for multiple hours every day. I remember taking my laptop out at airports for 20 minutes between transfers, just to tweak an article or improve a source. While I originally started because I found some articles lackluster, I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be on controversial topics.
That brings to mind an interesting parallel: I spent over ~2 years actively editing Waze for multiple hours every day. I don't fly much, but I remember taking notes about changes and taking my laptop out when I had a chance (wherever I was) to correct the map to better-match reality. While I originally started because the area I edited had way too much basemap[1], I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be when the end goal was to provide a map of driveable roads.
In some cases, the signal-to-noise ratio was so bad that I selectively nuked large parts of whole cities just to redraw them more-correctly.
I was producing good results that unambiguously had better validity than what I started with. The flurry of activity had me rise up quickly through both the editor ranks, and also the role-rankings.
It felt good.
But eventually, I got to see my careful well-researched edits be reverted by either stupid people or stupid bots. I didn't like this; I started editing Waze to make better maps of my area so I could have better maps with which to navigate with. That was awesome, but I finished those maps. So I branched out to improve adjacent areas and finished those maps, too. That also felt awesome.
I was motivated by improvement, not by competition.
When the competition showed up to re-arrange my work in ways that didn't make sense, I dropped out of editing maps on Waze as a serious pastime. I don't want to actively compete; I just want to passively fix.
I still fix things here or there, but months (instead of hours) will go by between edits.
And that's OK, I think: It still works better than it did before I put the effort in.
[1]: Oh, right. Basemap. We don't really have a single, official, freely-usable/government-supplied road map source in the US. We instead have counties doing their things with their formats, and 50 differnt states doing whatever they do, and sometimes cities with their own ways, with only the US Census Bureau's old TIGER database covering the whole gamut.
That conglomerate dataset is a damned mess, and that damnednness of that mess varies from place to place, but that damned mess is what Waze had to work with for the initial map import.
That initial import is known as "basemap."
And TIGER is cool and all (I remember an Internet where online census-provided TIGER maps were the only online maps), but it's really geared towards census-takers. It can include every private driveway, and every cowpath -- and it can include them as regular roads. I've cleaned up thousands of square miles of basemap in my area.
Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasn't actually aware of that, but key point here is that she quit that job in 2004. I'm not sure i'd describe someone who worked in wall street 20 years ago as a "wall street guy"
Looking at her resume, I don't see anything about writing encyclopedias or keeping them online. I think "Wall Street person" is a reasonable description. Perhaps "Career government person with a Wall Street background", which still doesn't give her any background to understand at a deep level what Wikipedia's editors and staff do day-to-day.
A lot of what people do at Wikimedia is try and thread a compromise path through various factions of stakeholders. I could see how career diplomat would have some transferable skills.
Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not entirely fair. The overwhelming majority of Wikipedia is not meaningless politics, but stated facts backed by decent sources. The phenomenon you are referring to usually happens in areas where there is ideological or political friction. Sure, some articles can be biased, because staying perfectly factual in the middle of an active political debate or social change is difficult for most people. But in that…
> But in that case, there is still the option to edit the page or start a discussion. Honestly, I think on any politicised topic, that’s a waste of time - there’s a large contingent of Wikipedia editors with a shared deeply ingrained perspective that will reliably back each other up. There are better uses of one’s time than fighting such a losing battle. > Personally, I do not know a better alternative. I have a frie…
>I have a friend who told me Wikipedia is biased, so he refuses to use it. When I asked him what he uses instead, he said, completely seriously, “X is my main source of information.”
I guess that was a few years ago? Because now he also has Grokipedia ("from the guy that brought you X")...
Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. So if you're OK with having the most respectable wrong beliefs about a contentious topic, go for it. It's basically the political equivalent of "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM".
Please provide examples for "the most respectable wrong beliefs". Do you consider, e.g., the climate crisis as one?
Yes. It's a contentious topic. It shouldn't be a contentious topic, but it is.
If you decide to go with the Wikipedia "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" opinion on climate, you won't be well-informed. For that you'll have to do a lot more of that reading you don't have time for. But as it happens, you'll be on the whole right, because (last time I checked) the people trying to deny the climate crisis on Wikipedia weren't very successful. It's such an old "dispute", I think Wikipedia may have developed antibodies so to speak, before manipulation could get really competent.
The scary topics are the ones we don't know are contentious. I couldn't give you examples of those, obviously.
Re: Big tech's anti-labor playbook has come for Wikipedia
#290I spent ~2 years actively editing Wikipedia for multiple hours every day. I remember taking my laptop out at airports for 20 minutes between transfers, just to tweak an article or improve a source. While I originally started because I found some articles lackluster, I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be on controversial topics. For what simple HTML you see on the surface, you would be absolutel…
> I spent ~2 years actively editing Wikipedia for multiple hours every day. I remember taking my laptop out at airports for 20 minutes between transfers, just to tweak an article or improve a source. While I originally started because I found some articles lackluster, I quickly realized how vigorous the editing process could be on controversial topics. That brings to mind an interesting parallel: I spent over ~2 year…
Please consider diverting your efforts to OpenStreetMap! The TIGER-derived basemap still needs fixup, but your work will benefit everyone, not just the Google shareholders who ultimately own Waze.