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

Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

en.wikipedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–379 of 379 posts

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#371

Post by tiagod »

bitshiftfaced wrote: post #214
cool_dude85 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What’s a union going to do if (doing a lot of work there) AI significantly reduces the demand for software engineers or tech workers generally? Aside from general job protection stuff, the general answer would be that they can ensure that some of the productivity gains go to employees rather than employers. Let's say the company has been so much more efficient thanks to AI that they earn an extra 100 million in reve…

Isn't Wikimedia a non profit? Who exactly are the employers on the other side negotiating with the union here? They're higher on the hierarchical structure, but they're not actually stakeholders the same as there are in private for-profit companies.

Are you under the impression that a non-profit's employees are volunteers?

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#372

Post by jenny8lee »

throw0101a wrote: post #369
jenny8lee wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WikiPortraits organizer here. To give a sense of scope of project, at this point more than 1 out of every 50 pageviews on Wikipedia globally is illustrated with a WikiPortraits photo (and maybe more, we are still trying to digest what the surge from World Cup traffic means). Since our project started in January 2024, WikiPortraits photos have been viewed 5.8 billion times ( https://sightglass.toolforge.org/results/iA…

> It’s easy to emphasize glamorous World Cup coverage (which gave us huge stats!). But a lot of the events photographed are things like AAAS and other academic conference, local book festivals, politicians at an event in Adelaide, Indian artists at a fair in Santa Fe. Volunteers grinding away to fill out wiki coverage in areas they are passionate about. How does work for major events? I noticed a bunch of the before-…

We apply for press credentials using our portfolios and publication stats like any media outlet. Stats happen to be very strong for Wikipedia (Circulation? 2 billion monthly).

After two plus years, we have a good sense of what thresholds we need for which events. Bryan Berlin (World Cup photog) spent a LONG time getting qualified for FIFA through local soccer games and up. We took advantage of Thanksgiving weekend when credential demand was slow and sent him to a single game in Florida on the Friday to qualify him in a way that had been hard for us up until that point.

What is still hard for us: Met Gala (a more “known” fashion photographer may help there), Oscars, Golden Globes and F1. F1 much demand from our photogs, but very high and specific bar that is hard for Wiki to thread (photos bought at market rates).

Also some places, like World Economic Forum, have an exclusive with Getty so we are functionally locked out.

The photos work hard to get credentials. A British photog got himself qualified for BAFTA TV awards! A high school girl in Bay Area got herself credentialed for NHL. Olympics are country by country so smaller countries (like Armenia) are sometimes more strategic to credential through.

Working on better pictures of the Pope thanks to a Rome-based fashion photographer who joined us.

Remember, a number of the WikiPortraits photogs are professionals. They are just volunteering their time with us.

But we also help folks who are like “My mom is willing to help buy my first camera camera, what should I get.”

WikiPortraits meets people where they are.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#373

Post by bawolff »

joshspankit wrote: post #368
bawolff wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P2P hosting doesn't really work in reality, especially for websites that change regularly and require quick propagation of those changes. Its not just Wikipedia. Name a high traffic site that actually uses p2p hosting. I'll wait. Bandwidth is also the sort of thing that gets way cheaper at scale than most people expect. When you are big enough there comes a point where the telecom companies want to connect to you bec…

Actually, I think your argument is almost entirely about P2P tech inspired by BitTorrent. We’ve had good be the enemy of great here. No, no high-traffic sites actually uses P2P hosting but that doesn’t mean we’re not at a point where they can. In fact, I’d say the biggest impediment to P2P sites in 2026 is the absolute unit that is advertiser data. We have P2P databases, and round trip on the earth is ~300ms (aka “qu…

> No, no high-traffic sites actually uses P2P hosting but that doesn’t mean we’re not at a point where they can.

Even if true, being the first to do anything is usually an expensive proposition.

> We have P2P databases, and round trip on the earth is ~300ms (aka “quick propagation” can be seconds which is more that enough for 98%)

I dont know how you are defining "p2p database" or which product you mean, but in general distributed p2p solutions where you do not trust the peers cannot propagate information in a single round-trip, or anything even remotely close to that.

> We have VPS and serverless

Neither of these are p2p technologies. They are also a terrible fit for something like Wikipedia.

> We also have content addressing

Sure, but that is like 1% of a solution

> symmetric cert verification

Do you mean mutual TLS? That is indeed a technology that exists, but i dont know how its relavent.

> And can you imagine the nonsense of advertisers adding client side tracking data to the public db so that they can query it?

Which kind of brings up the other flaw with p2p - privacy.

It obviously depends on what technology is chosen, but p2p often has poor privacy properties. Think media companies sending threatening notices to people who download movies. People often look up private things on Wikipedia. Think sexual health topics. Do we really want malicious people to be able to track that?

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#374

Post by DonHopkins »

juleiie wrote: post #198
TSiege wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be sure to tell them why you stopped. I’ll be doing the same. Hopefully this pressures them to give up on this

You guys don’t get it apparently but once the thing became corrupted, got a whiff of power and money, there is no chance they are going to be persuaded into anything long term. They may appear to do so short term to appease but money corrupts permanently. Don’t be afraid of destroying things. Wikipedia isn’t unique or precious really. Some extended pressure would really rejuvenate the idea of such site in one way or…

You are clearly deteriorating and self destructive, especially as evidenced by your recent flagged "randomize skin tone" rant.

Well do you apologize for threatening my life, and rescind your death threats? Or are you still threatening to shoot me?

You need to stop making death threats on Hacker News, get rid of your gun, and get help.

If you need to talk, the 988 Lifeline is here. At the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, we understand that life's challenges can sometimes be difficult.

https://988lifeline.org

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#375

Post by matteoraso »

stasomatic wrote: post #367
matteoraso wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're judging the entirety of the Wikimedia Foundation based on the UI of one of their websites? This is an insane way to measure an organization.

I am not judging "Wikimedia Foundation", I am "judging" the product. Why is it insane? (btw, strong word you chose). It looks the same as it did on my Blackberry 20 or so years ago. It has less utility to me now than it did then. I've pledged my $3/5 a few dozen of times over the years, the banners guilted me into it, have you? I am amused by the idea that the thing grew enough to have enough employees to have a unio…

You're judging a singular product and then assuming that this is all the foundation does. If you want to know why they have so many employees, you have to look at the scale of the entire foundation, not just one of their websites.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#376

Post by 4lx87 »

ymolodtsov wrote: post #342
4lx87 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To stop uncompensated overtime and on-call? I’d like that very much.

So change the job if you don't want it.

So change employees if your employee doesn’t accept unpaid overtime. Employers are the ones who set working conditions in the absence of collective bargaining (either via the state or unions). Consider for a moment that maybe, just maybe, unions and labor laws came about for a reason.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#377

Post by ericmay »

robin_reala wrote: post #357
ericmay wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. At least not in the way that matters.

Maybe you could explain what matters and what doesn’t?

Well if you have 50 employees in Ireland who are unionized or even, say some retail shops but the vast majority of your high-income and irreplaceable workers aren’t in a union and aren’t inclined to join or form one, I’d say some number of employees being unionized doesn’t really matter.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#378

Post by stasomatic »

matteoraso wrote: post #375
stasomatic wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not judging "Wikimedia Foundation", I am "judging" the product. Why is it insane? (btw, strong word you chose). It looks the same as it did on my Blackberry 20 or so years ago. It has less utility to me now than it did then. I've pledged my $3/5 a few dozen of times over the years, the banners guilted me into it, have you? I am amused by the idea that the thing grew enough to have enough employees to have a unio…

You're judging a singular product and then assuming that this is all the foundation does. If you want to know why they have so many employees, you have to look at the scale of the entire foundation, not just one of their websites.

Hi Matteo. I can't quite collect myself on what to say. I'm here to listen and converse with like minded individuals and perhaps make some pen pals. I use Wikipedia for what's displayed on the tin. The foundation is more fictional to me than the Federation of the Star Trek lore. We don't know who invented the bow and the arrow and yet we use them. Cheers.

Re: Wikimedia Foundation refuses union recognition, hires union-busting law firm

#379

Post by cholantesh »

CrimsonRain wrote: post #361
cholantesh wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So paid overtime, vacation, parental and sick leave, and 40 hour work weeks are, in fact, shameless excesses that have made office work worse?

These should be coded in national laws. No need for unions.

How do you imagine they get there in the first place?
Post reply on HN