Union drive, most prolific editor make headlines

In the media

Union drive, most prolific editor make headlines

Wikimedia staff demand voluntary union recognition, WMF refuses and insists on vote

San Francisco-based outlet KQED reported U.S.-based Wikimedia staff's demand for recognition of their Wiki Workers United U.S. (WWU) union:

The staff who run the platform say they want a stronger voice in their workplace, better job protections and an end to common practices that make life "precarious for everyday workers" according to Jeremy Bernick, one of the union organizers.

WWU demanded a response from the WMF by July 24, i.e. before the end of the Wikimania conference. According to Law360, which also covered the recognition demand, the union is organizing with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and aims to represent about 235 U.S. employees.

A press release from CWA said recent events at the Wikimedia Foundation had led to drastically increased concerns regarding transparency, trust, the organization's future, and leadership's commitment to the free knowledge movement.

Union organizer Jeremy Bernick told KQED that the union represented WMF employees' third and so far most advanced attempt at unionizing, highlighting the Trump administration's attacks on public media, the cost of living crisis and concerns about artificial intelligence as some of the factors driving more staff toward unionization. WWU-UK, the UK branch of Wiki Workers United, sought voluntary recognition from the Foundation in June (see press release).

As 404 Media's Jason Koebler reported on July 27, the WMF declined to recognize Wiki Workers United U.S., waiting until after the end of the Wikimania conference to make its decision public. For further developments, see this issue's News and notes. – AK

Steven Pruitt plus

Discussion of the many Wikipedia contributions of User:Ser Amantio di Nicolao, aka Steven Pruitt, begins and ends an in-depth article in the The New Yorker (not paywalled yet, except at archive.org). While Pruitt is interviewed, the charm of the article is his straight-forward modesty, as well as similar realistic commentary by other Wikipedians, including Justin Knapp (whose record as most active Wikipedian was overtaken by Pruitt), Jimmy Wales, and Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight. Going a step further the article gets into detail on AI and some of the recent challenges faced by Wikipedia. But the focus is, as it should be, on the Wikipedians. – S

In brief

Too cryptic: Wikipedia doesn't have enough cryptocurrency articles because of its stringent notability policies, says deprecated cryptocurrency media company CoinDesk [1]
Editors feel unsafe, receive "condescending" and "exclusionary" treatment: Aaron Bandler reports for the Jerusalem News Syndicate on another study by Israeli academic Shlomit Aharoni Lir (he:שלומית ליר).
Guess the real fake article: Buzzfeed has a quiz that lists 20 triplets of purported Wikipedia articles, two of which are actual articles with one being a fake. Presumably, this means current articles. This reporter could only find 10 of the fakes, even though I could easily identify 16 of the real articles. Just unlucky, I guess! Let us know how you scored in the comments section. Probability professors are also invited to give the expected number of correct guesses as a function of the number of current articles known to be real, given complete ignorance of the fake articles, a random distribution of the known articles, etc. S
This is wildly curious: Seattle isn't solely Starbucks and software; also pseudoscience: Discovery Institute blogger, summarizing The Federalist critique of the siteban received by Larry Sanger (see last issue), finds people still reading Wikipedia "beyond curious" and "a wildly Woke [sic] example of what can go wrong in an information society" [2]
Wikimedians of the Year (from Diff): [3] — see News from Diff.
Battling health disinformation: The Genetic Literacy Project features an interview with Dr. Netha Hussain, who "has been part of the last line of defense against public health disinformation on Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia".
The New York Times visits a World Cup focused editing meet-up in NYC: Published on July 17, 2026 in the The Athletic, the New York Times' sports journalism department, Rebecca Tauber's article: Welcome to the high-stakes universe of World Cup Wikipedia editing covers the Wiki Loves Fútbol campaign and includes quotes from: Kunal Mehta, Pacita Rudder, Danilo Mendonça, and Jordan Trujillo. Tauber stopped by Prime Produce for a FIFA World Cup focused event, Foundation and Friends' Free Culture / Wiki Loves Fútbol Friday on July 10, hosted by Wikimedia NYC and WikiLatinos. – W540
Television stats: A company is using Wikipedia pageviews as the primary source for its lists of the most popular TV shows, reports MediaPost.
San Francisco Chronicle investigates importance of Wikipedia in AI-heavy landscape of the mid-2020s: Published July 14, 2026, Thomas Lee's article: In the age of AI slop and misinformation, we need Wikipedia more than ever emphasis the importance and challenges Wikipedia faces in 2026 and beyond. Lee investigates the cannibalization of Wikipedia's content by AI, interviews Marshall Miller, looks into the effect that the drop of page views has had on fundraising, explains some volunteer outreach programs, and also breaks down Wikimedia Enterprise. – W540
Minnesota Wiknic welcomes new editors: Racket covers a longtime Wikipedia reader's attendance of the annual Minnesota Wiknic, expecting a gathering of graybead grognards but finding instead friendly faces.
Wikipedia cited in R400 million arbitration dispute: Times Live reports on a PwC investigation finding that arbitrators relied on Wikipedia to accept double-counting in a disputed valuation of a stake in Lanseria International Airport, also faulting the Public Investment Corporation's preparation and expert testimony in a case costing it millions.
Sleepy time, courtesy of ... us: The I can't sleep podcast features Wikipedia articles "read slowly, in a soft monotone" with episodes covering Middle-earth, French fries, and concrete. The last one sounds particularly compelling. (Boing Boing) A bonus episode is the narrator, Utahn Benjamin Boster, explaining the podcast's origin story and how he turned the "problem" of people listening to his voice, instead of his ideas, into an opportunity – and a full-time job.
Candidate's article edited before leadership bid: The Scotsman reports that shortly before announcing his bid for leadership of Scottish Labour, Joe Fagan's Wikipedia article was substantially expanded, including a rework of the "Controversy" section and blunting of criticism.

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2 August 2026 (all comments)

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As a UK party, the correct name is Scottish Labour, not "Scottish Labor". Thanks, (in solidarity), JacobTheRox^{(talk|contributions)} 10:35, 2 August 2026 (UTC)reply
Thank you, fixed and wikilinked. (You are also welcome to simply correct errors like that when you see them.) Andreas JN 466 11:32, 2 August 2026 (UTC)reply
On the Buzzfeed quiz, 17 of 20 correct. Deor (talk) 13:16, 2 August 2026 (UTC)reply
Same. — Jamie Eilat (talk) 13:09, 3 August 2026 (UTC)reply
17 out of 20 on the buzzfeed quiz. Some these are obvious lol. In all reality, I'd give myself 15 out of 20 since around two of them I wasn't sure of. Gaismagorm (talk) 13:26, 2 August 2026 (UTC)reply
- @Deor and Gaismagorm: Thanks for the feedback! I'm usually pretty good at these online multiple-choice quizzes, mostly because of their formats, e.g. the longer answer is quite often correct because the correct answer has to be more precise. But this one didn't have as many giveaways as usual. BTW I don't take too many online quizzes unless I know the source well because they can easily give away things like your age, region, income, ethnic heritage, education, favorite sports, etc. This quiz didn't seem to have those problems. It might give away whether you are a Wikipedian though! Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:28, 2 August 2026 (UTC)reply
  I actually just knew most of the articles lol. Gaismagorm (talk) 20:13, 2 August 2026 (UTC)reply
Well, for Coindesk, I think we see why they're deprecated: Even when an article clears the process, it can still be deleted by administrators or via a 7-day community vote, which cannot be appealed. Uh, yes it can be. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 14:38, 2 August 2026 (UTC)reply
You may be amused to know that I raised the errors in the CoinDesk piece (and the "report" on which it's based) with a CoinDesk editor very shortly after the piece was published, and it was not corrected. This is not to bash that editor, who I quite like, but rather to note that CoinDesk simply doesn't have the capacity for reliability that would earn it a re-evaluation at RSP; they don't even have the bandwidth to issue corrections that were dropped on their doorstep. There was once a time where I actually might have agreed that CoinDesk had improved in its reliability and could at least be used for verifying factual claims if not for establishing notability, but I no longer hold that view. The company was sold to the Bullish crypto exchange in late 2023 and has gone rapidly downhill since — taking down articles that crypto billionaires didn't find sufficiently flattering, firing its editorial staff after they complained, and now publishing more and more articles that include "AI Boost" in the byline. There are a handful of competent journalists left, but a lot of the stuff they put out these days is pure slop.

As for this "report", I was surprised CoinDesk even covered it. Besides its many inaccuracies, its conclusion is that "mainstream sources won't cover your no-name liquid staking protocol, therefore Wikipedia is wrong!" GorillaWarfare (she/her • talk) 17:10, 2 August 2026 (UTC)reply
Does anyone have a citation to a reliable source that I can use the confirm the claim "Thousands of workers across the tech and nonprofit sectors have achieved voluntary recognition through this 'card check' method"? Ideally, this would be statistics showing what percentage of nonprofit/tech sector unionization efforts are decided by a secret-ballot election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:38, 2 August 2026 (UTC)reply
@Guy Macon most video game unions at Microsoft were voluntary recognition. Here is a database I will look through later, of all known voluntary recognitions https://github.com/labordata/nlrb-voluntary-recognitions ~ In solidarity 🦝 Shushugah (talk) 17:32, 2 August 2026 (UTC)reply

How long will the secret ballot delay unionization? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:00, 2 August 2026 (UTC)reply

@Doc James: NLRB says that the elections are held as soon as practicable. From the election reports page, I picked a recent case at random, the Starbucks in Providence petition. Looks like it was about a month from beginning to end, i.e. from filing date to tally. ☆ Bri (talk) 23:46, 2 August 2026 (UTC)reply

Thanks. A month is not terribly long. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:00, 3 August 2026 (UTC)reply

From what i've heard from pro-union folks, it can depend on if WMF tries to argue about who should be eligible to be in the union. I think the fear is that WMF managenent would frivolusly dispute who is eligible in an attempt to draw things out. Bawolff (talk) 20:18, 4 August 2026 (UTC)reply

According to this union busting law firm ("We have defeated numerous labor elections in multiple industries and in multiple states") 23 days on average from start to finish.[4] Here are some labor board pages on this:[5][6] Let me know if you can get a number out of those pages. Here is another anti-union law firm: "From the moment a petition is filed, an election can occur in as little as three weeks."[7]

These are awful sources; either biased and unreliable or incomprehensible. And I can't find a single union that will say how long it takes. If anyone finds some good sources, please update our NLRB election procedures page. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:00, 3 August 2026 (UTC)reply

I'd guess the best thing for editors to do is just wait and let the system take it's course, a little time will probably help everybody. If the employees are in favor of a union, if they think it will help them and give them a better working atmosphere, it'll very likely go through. The WMF's strongest stakeholders (the editors) should support the union (individuals will have their own views of course, but from what I've seen so far there's strong support), I'd think that donors would be net favorable to unions (which are made up these days of lots of teachers and other government workers, many of the anti-Trump folks would be in favor of unions these days) the board of trustees (editors, faculty, non-profit types?) will probably be pro-union or just stay out of the way. If the employees want a union they'll likely get one. Taking the time will allow them to work through issues like differences in pay for different regions (US), how international worker will be (indirectly) affected, what the employees really want and what they can do without, working arrangements with union reps. Those will be important. It might also give the WMF a chance to say something like "donations are down these days, so we're not likely to be able to give everybody a 20% raise, 5% or 10% maybe" In other words let everybody know what are reasonable expectations. So what stakeholder groups are going to get in the way? Not the editors (especially not our notoriously right-wing editors!), not the donors (I predict increased donations because of the union), not the board. So everybody should just let the process run, let em all smooth out the kinks, and hope for the best. IMHO. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:09, 3 August 2026 (UTC)reply

16/20 for me on the Buzzfeed quiz. Wracking ^talk! 22:14, 4 August 2026 (UTC)reply
I got 9 on Buzzfeed. --not-cheesewhisk3rs ≽^•⩊•^≼ ∫ (pester) 13:31, 6 August 2026 (UTC)reply

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