6 ms·

This is the same press release from the union as at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663861, and the same di

by JdeBP 4mo ago

This is the same press release from the union as at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663861 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48663861, and the same discussion points apply as there, including the fact that the press release is conflating 'Wikipedia Workers' and 'British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation'. The two are not the same. This conflation appears to be the fault of the union. Certainly the people who write Wikipedia well know the difference between themselves and the Wikimedia Foundation staff.

throw93949444 4mo ago
Seems like a loophole not to employ people. "Editor" sounds like a job title! There is code of conduct, all sort of paperwork, you have to deal with comitees, editorial process... There is non disclosure agreement, you are not allowed to discus internal stuff with people outside from company... wery far from "i seen something was wrong, so i just made quick edit"! Smells like proper job to me! We closed the same loophole with uber and doordash employees. Wikimedia should employ its editors!!!
- weberer 4mo ago
  >There is non disclosure agreement No there is not. You don't have to sign anything to make edits to Wikipedia. On the other hand, these people are full employees with work contracts.
  - throw93949444 4mo ago
    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 https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Terms_of_Use
    - francisdavey 4mo ago
      You license your contributions under an open licence. You don't give up your copyright. There would be no other sensible way to operate a collaborative encyclopedia without a license of this kind. I (lawyer) have never encountered a jurisdiction where a contractor could not license their work under the contract with their employer (the person contracting them).
      - sandworm101 4mo ago
        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 case of a sale, an author retains their moral rights in the work, unless they choose to waive these rights. https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canadian-intellectual-property-office/en/copyright-learn-basics/copyright-learn-basics-protect-your-original-works-learn-why-copyright-matters https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canadian-intellectual-prope... I was thinking about this as they were covering up murals and stadium names for the world cup. Canada doesnt really do that, but canadian stadiums are not generally named after tech companies (ie BC Place got to keep its name).
        some_random 4mo ago
        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?
        throw93949444 4mo ago
        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 opinions and work like a corporation or a news paper.
- bawolff 4mo ago
  > Smells like proper job to me! In proper jobs you get paid, and there is someone telling you what to do. Neither of those things apply to Wikipedia. There is no NDA. The only exception is if you volunteer to join the group that deals with private data (this is not the same as being an Admin, its the step above. Its a very small group) Comittees exist but are largely optional. If you want to change things at a meta level or do wide coordination, there is no getting around that. But such stuff is optional. You don't need to join any comittees if you just want to write articles. Now, if you want to say its exploitative (editors put in the labour and get almost none of the created value), then fair point. I would say its no more or less exploitative than your average open source project.
chobeat 4mo ago
There's a union of wikipedia editors being formed and they are in alliance with the US and UK Wikimedia union. More public statements will follow in the next weeks about this.
- nvr219 4mo ago
  Oh boy here we go
- HugoTea 4mo ago
  Very exciting good luck to them all
- bpt3 4mo ago
  What are the legal protections for collectively bargaining as non-employees with a corporation, if any? It seems like there wouldn't be (and shouldn't be) any.
  - arethuza 4mo ago
    Different legal systems have options for groups organizing to do a join litigation e.g. England and Wales have Group Litigation Orders. I'm not a lawyer and not in England or Wales! ;-)
functionmouse 4mo ago
I used to work at a call center for a large (fortune 500) company. But that company did not sign my paychecks. It was a shell company with a different name, so that the company could not be held accountable when someone inevitably jumped from the roof. Since then accountability sinks have stood out to me. I'm going to side with the Union on this one. And plus, unions are good.
- xhkkffbf 4mo ago
  Good? They've been a mixed bag in my life. Unions are made up of people and they come with all of the good and bad of people. I watched a union refuse to support a colleague of mine. Why? Because the people in the union were competing against him for resources and they wanted him gone. And they succeeded. I've never really liked unions after that. I suppose I can see some good, but for the most part the union ends up being another branch of management with a few slightly different powers.
  - teachrdan 4mo ago
    > I watched a union refuse to support a colleague of mine. Why? Because the people in the union were competing against him for resources and they wanted him gone. And they succeeded. I've never really liked unions after that Wait until you see what management does to workers, like fail to pay them on time, give them inhumane working conditions, or fire them arbitrarily. Sarcasm aside, I've never understood this genre of comment. One second-hand bad experience and you seem opposed to unions for life? Unions are the only way workers can have anything like even footing with management.
    - rjh29 4mo ago
      I've noticed a lot of Americans have an anti-union sentiment, probably a product of indoctrination.
      - xhkkffbf 3mo ago
        Or maybe encountering union workers. Many Americans grow up in schools run by teachers' unions. Maybe the so-called indoctrination isn't working the way you expect. Ask yourself why 12 or so years of being on the receiving end of union labor isn't having the effect you expect?
some_random 4mo ago
I don't think it comes from the union, Wikimedia has always gone out of it's way to conflate the people who are creating, editing, and maintaining website Wikipedia and the leeches who captured that effort.
bawolff 4mo ago
British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation United doesn't have quite the same ring to it. I suspect its just because naming things concisely is hard.

by JdeBP 4mo ago

throw93949444 4mo ago

Seems like a loophole not to employ people. "Editor" sounds like a job title! There is code of conduct, all sort of paperwork, you have to deal with comitees, editorial process... There is non disclosure agreement, you are not allowed to discus internal stuff with people outside from company... wery far from "i seen something was wrong, so i just made quick edit"! Smells like proper job to me! We closed the same loophole with uber and doordash employees. Wikimedia should employ its editors!!!

weberer 4mo ago
>There is non disclosure agreement No there is not. You don't have to sign anything to make edits to Wikipedia. On the other hand, these people are full employees with work contracts.
- throw93949444 4mo ago
  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 https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Terms_of_Use
  - francisdavey 4mo ago
    You license your contributions under an open licence. You don't give up your copyright. There would be no other sensible way to operate a collaborative encyclopedia without a license of this kind. I (lawyer) have never encountered a jurisdiction where a contractor could not license their work under the contract with their employer (the person contracting them).
    - sandworm101 4mo ago
      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 case of a sale, an author retains their moral rights in the work, unless they choose to waive these rights. https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canadian-intellectual-property-office/en/copyright-learn-basics/copyright-learn-basics-protect-your-original-works-learn-why-copyright-matters https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canadian-intellectual-prope... I was thinking about this as they were covering up murals and stadium names for the world cup. Canada doesnt really do that, but canadian stadiums are not generally named after tech companies (ie BC Place got to keep its name).
      - some_random 4mo ago
        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?
        throw93949444 4mo ago
        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 opinions and work like a corporation or a news paper.
bawolff 4mo ago
> Smells like proper job to me! In proper jobs you get paid, and there is someone telling you what to do. Neither of those things apply to Wikipedia. There is no NDA. The only exception is if you volunteer to join the group that deals with private data (this is not the same as being an Admin, its the step above. Its a very small group) Comittees exist but are largely optional. If you want to change things at a meta level or do wide coordination, there is no getting around that. But such stuff is optional. You don't need to join any comittees if you just want to write articles. Now, if you want to say its exploitative (editors put in the labour and get almost none of the created value), then fair point. I would say its no more or less exploitative than your average open source project.

chobeat 4mo ago

There's a union of wikipedia editors being formed and they are in alliance with the US and UK Wikimedia union. More public statements will follow in the next weeks about this.

nvr219 4mo ago
Oh boy here we go
HugoTea 4mo ago
Very exciting good luck to them all
bpt3 4mo ago
What are the legal protections for collectively bargaining as non-employees with a corporation, if any? It seems like there wouldn't be (and shouldn't be) any.
- arethuza 4mo ago
  Different legal systems have options for groups organizing to do a join litigation e.g. England and Wales have Group Litigation Orders. I'm not a lawyer and not in England or Wales! ;-)

functionmouse 4mo ago

I used to work at a call center for a large (fortune 500) company. But that company did not sign my paychecks. It was a shell company with a different name, so that the company could not be held accountable when someone inevitably jumped from the roof. Since then accountability sinks have stood out to me. I'm going to side with the Union on this one. And plus, unions are good.

xhkkffbf 4mo ago
Good? They've been a mixed bag in my life. Unions are made up of people and they come with all of the good and bad of people. I watched a union refuse to support a colleague of mine. Why? Because the people in the union were competing against him for resources and they wanted him gone. And they succeeded. I've never really liked unions after that. I suppose I can see some good, but for the most part the union ends up being another branch of management with a few slightly different powers.
- teachrdan 4mo ago
  > I watched a union refuse to support a colleague of mine. Why? Because the people in the union were competing against him for resources and they wanted him gone. And they succeeded. I've never really liked unions after that Wait until you see what management does to workers, like fail to pay them on time, give them inhumane working conditions, or fire them arbitrarily. Sarcasm aside, I've never understood this genre of comment. One second-hand bad experience and you seem opposed to unions for life? Unions are the only way workers can have anything like even footing with management.
  - rjh29 4mo ago
    I've noticed a lot of Americans have an anti-union sentiment, probably a product of indoctrination.
    - xhkkffbf 3mo ago
      Or maybe encountering union workers. Many Americans grow up in schools run by teachers' unions. Maybe the so-called indoctrination isn't working the way you expect. Ask yourself why 12 or so years of being on the receiving end of union labor isn't having the effect you expect?

some_random 4mo ago

I don't think it comes from the union, Wikimedia has always gone out of it's way to conflate the people who are creating, editing, and maintaining website Wikipedia and the leeches who captured that effort.

bawolff 4mo ago

British-based employees at the Wikimedia Foundation United doesn't have quite the same ring to it. I suspect its just because naming things concisely is hard.