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Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

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201–210 of 300 posts

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#201
post #56

There is no reason for any employee to not search for unionization. It is your right and it is in your best interest. Good for them.

Strong disagree that there is no other side of the question from the employee's perspective. Personally, I don't want to be collectively represented in my work by any group other than myself.

What do you mean by that? A union represents you as a worker and not your work.

Baseball players, for example, are represented by the MLBPA. Collectively they get a say in things like setting the rules of the game and negotiating healthcare, but the union isn't taking credit when a player hits a home run.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#202
post #19

Wow, they're on a roll over there. Just two days ago they permanently banned the cofounder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger. Per his tweet: "Well, that’s that—I’ve been blocked by Wikipedia “indefinitely” for unstated reasons, by the “consensus” of a mob. There was no due process, no prosecutor, no dispassionate judge, no jury, no interpretation of law. All my judges were self-selected and hated me." Link to his June 22nd…

While the merits of Sanger's banning are worth debating, Sanger is dishonestly representing the process here. The reasons, rather than being 'unstated', were stated repeatedly and were not unreasonable. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...

Maybe the implication here is that supposedly the real reasons are personal/political and the stated ones are just the justification?

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#203
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the merits of Sanger's banning are worth debating, Sanger is dishonestly representing the process here. The reasons, rather than being 'unstated', were stated repeatedly and were not unreasonable. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_no...

Maybe the implication here is that supposedly the real reasons are personal/political and the stated ones are just the justification?

Then he should justify that. When I read through the discussion though it seems that the stated reasons were arguably sufficient to justify the action taken.

Sanger has been given a lot more leeway over the years, because of his status as a co-founder, than anyone else would have been given.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some non-divestable rights out there. Canada (and others) have a copyright concept of moral rights that cannot be given away by contract or, in other words, nobody can ever force someone to give them away. An artist/creator can decide to not exercise them but the artist/creator retains them regardless of contract language. >> Unlike other IP rights, moral rights cannot be sold or given away. Even in the cas…

How is the right non-divestable if you can waive it? More importantly, how could wikipedia possibly work if contributors retained copyright in any form over their submitted articles and edits?

It seems to be a somewhat murky area of law. In Europe (and, I guess Canada) you can't really have public domain because of moral rights that you can't waive. IANAL but I've talked with IP lawyers about this and they've been sortof "Yes this is often kinda true." So the broad public domain that is generally true of the US government and which individuals can release in the US isn't really true in Europe as I understand it.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#205
post #182
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you hate for time off at weekends, paid vacations and medical leave?

We have these in Singapore as well, and our unions are toothless.

Singapore is actually a great example of somewhere where communists and trade unionists fought and won a lot of concessions (especially in the 1950s) and where that contribution was airbrushed out of history.

The HDB building program was a reaction to the popularity of 1950s communists, for instance. Lee Kuan Yew yielded to a lot of good ideas like that (and CPF) under intense domestic pressure which he later pretended were just artefacts of his prescient genius.

Singapore has also had its share of wildcat strikes which the government reacted to by cracking down violently on the strikers but also reacted to them by trying to placate the others. They would then the rewrite history to pretend that they weren't pushed into that so you wouldn't accidentally credit "the wrong group".

So yeah, you're both the beneficiary of a rich history of trade unionism in Singapore and the follower of a personality cult that airbrushed that contribution out of history.

Labor rights are also steadily getting worse there because there IS little organized pushback these days and because NTUC has been turned into the government department that provides supermarket discounts, thus nullifying it as a force for advocating for labor rights.

If you've ever wondered why your government is so ridiculously abusive towards bloggers and has one of the worst press freedoms in the entire world: this is why. They need a tight control of that narrative to maintain their grip on power and to get labour to knuckle under and do as it is told.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is like 50 page agreement, you even have to give up your copyright rights! The only way to do it legally in my country, is to hire editor as an employee!!! (Contractors can not legally give up copyright to their work) https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Terms_of_Use

Have you ever read the ToS/ToU of any social media site? Did you know that by using this site you've agreed to arbitration? https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/#tou Giving up copyright when you write an article for Wikipedia is literally the only way it could possibly work. The biggest issue Wikimedia has is its full time staff, followed by full time editors.

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the right non-divestable if you can waive it? More importantly, how could wikipedia possibly work if contributors retained copyright in any form over their submitted articles and edits?

The only legal way to waive copyright rights, is to hire an employee to produce the work. Individual contributors are not cogs in a machine, employees are! And if someone produced work for 15 years, and edited 10000 articles... very hard to argue it is not permanent worker! Wikipedia can easily work as "marketplace of ideas", linking original authors. That is not possible if you have editorial policy, political opini…

A "marketplace of ideas" wikipedia is not wikipedia, that's twitter or maybe reddit. More importantly, your theory of copyright being unwaivable without an employee-employer relationship makes the entire internet unworkable. Nothing could accept user input of any kind unless it can be ruled uncopyrightable.

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Global prosperity” is a good one. How is global prosperity achieved? Business owners get all the profits of our labor and maybe some of it trickles down? Workers get “prosperous” on crumbs? I’ll be expectantly awaiting for my prosperity in the mail.

You think global prosperity was won by unions fighting for rights? This is untrue and a folk theory that people hold on to, to justify their ideology. Primarily global prosperity was achieved by higher productivity - the ability to do more with less work. Unions had very less to do for increasing productivity. I’m not saying anything extreme because this is the academic consensus.

Ahh I see. I misunderstood what you meant with global prosperity.

I understood it as "everyone being prosperous". You mean a few individual becoming insanely prosperous at the expense of everyone else. Then you're completely right.

Unions have definitely succeeded in redistributing prosperity though (e.g. negotiating for higher wages) and also reducing exploitation (e.g. fairer working conditions).

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is like 50 page agreement, you even have to give up your copyright rights! The only way to do it legally in my country, is to hire editor as an employee!!! (Contractors can not legally give up copyright to their work) https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Terms_of_Use

Have you ever read the ToS/ToU of any social media site? Did you know that by using this site you've agreed to arbitration? https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/#tou Giving up copyright when you write an article for Wikipedia is literally the only way it could possibly work. The biggest issue Wikimedia has is its full time staff, followed by full time editors.

Social media is different from wikipedia. If i write my opinions here, it is not an opinion of ycombinator. If I write stuff on wikipedia, it is opinion of wikipedia and there is rigorous editorial process, to get my stuff published...

Also here my name is right next to the text, not in wikipedia!

Platform vs publisher...

Re: Wikipedia Workers to Seek Union Recognition

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only legal way to waive copyright rights, is to hire an employee to produce the work. Individual contributors are not cogs in a machine, employees are! And if someone produced work for 15 years, and edited 10000 articles... very hard to argue it is not permanent worker! Wikipedia can easily work as "marketplace of ideas", linking original authors. That is not possible if you have editorial policy, political opini…

A "marketplace of ideas" wikipedia is not wikipedia, that's twitter or maybe reddit. More importantly, your theory of copyright being unwaivable without an employee-employer relationship makes the entire internet unworkable. Nothing could accept user input of any kind unless it can be ruled uncopyrightable.

Just link original author, and do notndestroy their work, even copyleft license wikipedia uses demands that!
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