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Comment by stasomatic | Hacker News Reader

They have enough employees to need a union and a board? It's a CRUD PHP site that I could run from a VPS (joking ofc, but not that much off).

I've never worked in an industry where unionization was a thing, but my general understanding is that the unions are protectionist dreaming of things that were true before but not today, but they want to keep things as they were. Good luck.

I've benefited from Wikipedia, but I don't romanticize it. Either side of the table can't stop the AI onslaught, they are all out of jobs. Another Wikimedia will rise up from the ashes.

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>my general understanding is that the unions are protectionist dreaming of things that were true before but not today, but they want to keep things as they were.

This mindset really baffles me, as a unionized guy with a white collar email job. Don't you, like, want things that your employer doesn't want to give you? Job protection? Better than CoL wage growth? Work from home? Internal job progression? Clear, understandable job factors agreed upon in advance?

The union negotiates for what its members want. There's nothing magical about unions that mean, like, a white collar union is going to be negotiating for all its members to get a new hard hat every year, just because that's what auto worker unions do.

I don’t “understand it” because it’s an antagonist relationship, us vs them. How’s that solved anything ever without violence?

I don’t know what the solution is, we’ve tried a few. Perhaps there are none.

Do you want to keep trying for your union to earn their seat at the table each year proving their worth, or “else”?

There is going to be another meeting where the bosses from each side will sip martinis and introduce their spouses and then they depart the galla in long black limos. It’s been written.

P.S. Your employer, your chosen object of warship, your partner or children, owe you nothing. Gotta find a way to reconcile that.

Wikimedia requires a board. IMO that board should include at least one representative selected by the employees (i.e. a union rep.) It has one seat reserved for the founder.

This governance question doesn't go away if another Wikimedia rises from the ashes. You still will still need a board making decisions, and someone needs to pick the members of the board. Right now there are 8 seats selected by "the community," 7 seats selected by the board, and 1 seat selected by the founder.

Yes, so? If you are here you could clone that thing in a weekend, no? You’d be the sole Chairman, CEO, and Supreme Leader for life. Wikipedia needs to be eminent domained, but we can’t agree on things while the US is headed by you know who.

You might find it interesting to read some of the 2026-2027 infrastructure OKRs: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_...

Hi there, thanks. I scanned through them. Bots, scraping, was there something that's interesting, no sarcasm?

You're unfamiliar with the scale of Wikimedia. Besides Wikipedia, they also host multiple other projects, like Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. Besides that, a huge portion of their budget goes towards grants to organizations that help distribute information for free on the internet. This absolutely isn't a "CRUD PHP site".

Well, that’s what the output looks like. Like a barebones phpMyAdmin query result from 20 plus years ago.

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 union and dysfunctional enough to have an internal dispute. It should be a national treasure on my tax return, or something I don't need to think about, like oxygen.

insane way to measure an organization

What organization and who cares? There are dozens of you?

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.

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