Wikipedia relies on volunteer editors and contributors supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. The Wikimedia Foundation disbanded the Community Tech team, eliminating five engineers and one manager who served as a bridge between paid staff and volunteers. The team built tools and features used daily by contributors, including plagiarism detection, dark mode, and chart and graph tools. Community members said the team was approachable and helped volunteers get support and have their voices heard. The foundation cited bottlenecks and delays caused by a centralized workflow and said feature requests would be distributed across multiple teams. The community response was immediate and negative, with demands to reinstate the team and change how requests are handled, and some contributors considered strike support despite the platform’s unpaid creator model.
"On May 20th, the WMF said it was disbanding the Community Tech team, a group of five engineers and one manager who are among WMF's paid staff. The team was a bridge between the foundation and Wikipedia's army of volunteers. The team developed tools and features that contributors use every day: things like plagiarism detectors, dark mode, or chart and graph tools. Editors and former foundation employees describe it as an approachable group - somewhere volunteers could turn if they needed help, or to have their voice heard."
"Even so, this system could get backlogged. The WMF acknowledged that the process of responding to community requests for features and tools was not working perfectly, and said that having a centralized team was "leading to frequent bottlenecks and delays." So going forward, that work would be distributed among multiple teams instead of through a centralized Community Tech team."
"The reaction from the community was immediate and negative. Longtime contributors demanded the reinstatement of team and changes to the way the wishlist, "
"Wikipedia is one of the last bastions of trust on the internet. But last week, volunteer editors and contributors were alarmed to hear that a small but important team of engineers at the nonprofit that supports it had been laid off. The layoffs didn't just threaten to sever an important link between the Wikimedia Foundation and its community - they also raised concerns that the WMF was engaging in union-busting. After days of heated discussion, some Wikipedians are ready to support a strike."
Read at The Verge
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]