Editor strikes and Wikipedia might
Wikipedia editors might revolt over perceived union busting at the Wikimedia Foundation and new analysis puts even more concrete numbers on the importance of Wikipedia to various AI models.
🔔 Wiki Briefing
Union busting at the WMF?
Last month, the Wikimedia Foundation dissolved its Community Tech team, a group of developers tasked with responding directly to the wishes of the volunteers that make Wikipedia and its sister sites possible. The Foundation said the small group had frequently been a bottleneck to progress and their workload will be distributed across multiple teams.
Where things start to get complicated are with the affiliations of those Community Tech team members. Several of them were allegedly involved in organizing for Wiki Workers United, a union attempting to get recognition from the WMF. Another longtime dev, Brooke Vibber, who had been with the Foundation almost since the beginning — and was also involved with organizing the union — was let go the week prior to the dissolution of the Community Tech team.
The ties to the union led many volunteer editors to speculate that these terminations were made in retaliation for the unionization efforts, which the WMF denied. The volunteers took to the Talk page of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and the community message board known as the Village pump to voice their theories and their displeasure.
Many suggested a volunteer editing strike in solidarity with the union that would cease basically all editing activity by the site's most prolific editors, except fixing the most egregious cases of vandalism, until the terminated workers had their positions restored and the union recognized. As of this writing, more than 1,000 editors have signed a solidarity pledge with the union and the workers, which would represent a sizable chunk of Wikipedia's most active contributors. A looming strike could bring updates to Wikipedia to a halt.
📰 In the News
Cozy coffers
Nonprofits in the US still have to file with the IRS and disclose their funding and expenditures, and the Wikimedia Foundation and its sister organization, the Wikimedia Endowment, are no exception. The organizations jointly released their Forms 990, the tax documentation required, for the 2024–2025 fiscal year and things are looking rosy.
The Foundation — that's the organization in charge of the tech that makes Wikipedia and its sister projects work, as well as putting on programming and acting as a kind of public face for the otherwise decentralized Wiki world — reported $20 million in additional revenue and $25 million in additional assets over the prior year. The Endowment — which exists to help keep the lights on if revenue otherwise drops — showed a big drop in revenue, simply due to some funds shifting from one organization to another. Donations, however, totaled $11.9 million, nearly $2 million more than projected, showing the importance the public places on maintaining Wikipedia as a public resource.
📚 Research Report
Wikipedia plays major role in ChatGPT, Gemini
Communications firm 5W has been on a data-processing tear in the last month. After publishing an AI citation audit (discussed in the last issue of WikiWise), they followed up with a broader overview of citations across industries and AI platforms. Their results were consistent with their audit, finding that Wikipedia accounted for around 8% of citations in a dataset 680 million strong. In another, smaller dataset, Wikipedia accounted for more than 18% of the citations.
The AI platforms most reliant on Wikipedia are also two heavy hitters. ChatGPT uses Wikipedia the most of the bunch, with the free encyclopedia accounting for 48% of the top-10 citation share for the platform. Gemini and Google's AI overviews lean on Google-owned properties and LinkedIn, yet Wikipedia also makes up a sizable portion of its citations. In 5W's examination of citations by industry, Wikipedia was prominent in sourcing for travel, financial services, and beauty and personal care.
🧩 Wikipedia Facts
There are many reasons editors get banned from Wikipedia, and now the community has decided that persistent AI usage is another reason to get the boot. It's another reminder that working on Wikipedia requires a deliberate, human touch.
💡 Tips & Tricks
Which Came First? comes to the iPhone! The beta version of the Wikipedia app now lets Apple users play this quick trivia game. Android users won't be left out of the new feature rush, as half will now see a new "Home" feed that includes a more curated "For You" tab and community news for testing.
