Should Wikipedia be unionised?, needs insurance scheme & other protections Options

[Gold heart]

Now that Wikipedia is being taken seriously by many of the public at large, in its next stage WP has to move forward and develop some work ethic practices. Is it time for a trade union to be organised to protect editors interests? It's high time that Jimbo and the Foundation took out an insurance scheme on the unpaid workforce to cover any damage, whether it be physical or psychological, that might ensue from editing WP. - Examples, repetitive strain injury, or psychological damage caused by abuse of admins, or fellow-editors. These are basic standards of work conditions in the western world today. Wikipedia is playing "new boy" for too long. Time to move forward and add these protections.

[GlassBeadGame]

Now that Wikipedia is being taken seriously by many of the public at large, in its next stage WP has to move forward and develop some work ethic practices. Is it time for a trade union to be organised to protect editors interests? It's high time that Jimbo and the Foundation took out an insurance scheme on the unpaid workforce to cover any damage, whether it be physical or psychological, that might ensue from editing WP. - Examples, repetitive strain injury, or psychological damage caused by abuse of admins, or fellow-editors. These are basic standards of work conditions in the western world today. Wikipedia is playing "new boy" for too long. Time to move forward and add these protections.

I hope this is parody. If so it is pretty good. If not...well it is just getting hard to tell. Of course the best response would be to deny that it is parody and then pursue a relentless satire.

[lolwut]

Now that Wikipedia is being taken seriously by many of the public at large, in its next stage WP has to move forward and develop some work ethic practices. Is it time for a trade union to be organised to protect editors interests? It's high time that Jimbo and the Foundation took out an insurance scheme on the unpaid workforce to cover any damage, whether it be physical or psychological, that might ensue from editing WP. - Examples, repetitive strain injury, or psychological damage caused by abuse of admins, or fellow-editors. These are basic standards of work conditions in the western world today. Wikipedia is playing "new boy" for too long. Time to move forward and add these protections.

It's not recognised as work in the real world, though - Wikipedia itself is taken seriously, but its editors are not valued in any way. Being a Wikipedia administrator is not even something that would look good on your Curriculum Vitae (resume in American English), because it'd just make you look like you spend too much time online.

[dtobias]

I don't have a high opinion of labor unions myself; my mental image is of fat, lazy jerks who refuse to do any work unless it's in their narrowly-construed job description, but who will stand in the way of you doing anything for yourself by insisting on rigorously enforsing silly union work rules. Like "Sorry, you can't plug anything in that electrical outlet yourself... only members of the Electricians Union are allowed to do it. I'm in the Technicians Union so I can't do it either... you'll have to call a Union Electrician and wait for him to get here, then pay him time and a half overtime since it's 5:02 PM and his shift ended at 5:00."

[guy]

I don't have a high opinion of labor unions myself; my mental image is of fat, lazy jerks who refuse to do any work unless it's in their narrowly-construed job description, but who will stand in the way of you doing anything for yourself by insisting on rigorously enforsing silly union work rules. Like "Sorry, you can't plug anything in that electrical outlet yourself... only members of the Electricians Union are allowed to do it. I'm in the Technicians Union so I can't do it either... you'll have to call a Union Electrician and wait for him to get here, then pay him time and a half overtime since it's 5:02 PM and his shift ended at 5:00."

As opposed to the situation without unions, whereby someone would have to endanger himself and maybe others by doing something he wasn't competent to do. And this would all be done on unpaid overtime.

And in my experience, obese people are often in non-unionised activities, but that's just anecdotal.

[Gold heart]

I don't have a high opinion of labor unions myself; my mental image is of fat, lazy jerks who refuse to do any work unless it's in their narrowly-construed job description, but who will stand in the way of you doing anything for yourself by insisting on rigorously enforsing silly union work rules. Like "Sorry, you can't plug anything in that electrical outlet yourself... only members of the Electricians Union are allowed to do it. I'm in the Technicians Union so I can't do it either... you'll have to call a Union Electrician and wait for him to get here, then pay him time and a half overtime since it's 5:02 PM and his shift ended at 5:00."

Some unions are very successful. Examples, doctors, lawyers, journalists etc. Usually the cushy numbers. And they normally don't tag themselves as unions. They're usually called, medical councils, or lawyer associations, or press associations. They sure do well! How about an "admin association" holding the Wikipedia Foundation to ransom? Appalling, but maybe.

[GlassBeadGame]

Unions have played a central role in ending the economic exploitation of children. This seems appropriate to mention in this context.

[lolwut]

Unions have played a central role in ending the economic exploitation of children. This seems appropriate to mention in this context.

I lol'd. Almost.

[Castle Rock]

I don't have a high opinion of labor unions myself; my mental image is of fat, lazy jerks who refuse to do any work unless it's in their narrowly-construed job description, but who will stand in the way of you doing anything for yourself by insisting on rigorously enforsing silly union work rules. Like "Sorry, you can't plug anything in that electrical outlet yourself... only members of the Electricians Union are allowed to do it. I'm in the Technicians Union so I can't do it either... you'll have to call a Union Electrician and wait for him to get here, then pay him time and a half overtime since it's 5:02 PM and his shift ended at 5:00."

Given the rampant and horrific human rights abuses that unions helped to end I think that is an acceptable alternative. Also do you enjoy your weekends, holidays off, and forty hour work week?

[Milton Roe]

I don't have a high opinion of labor unions myself; my mental image is of fat, lazy jerks who refuse to do any work unless it's in their narrowly-construed job description, but who will stand in the way of you doing anything for yourself by insisting on rigorously enforsing silly union work rules. Like "Sorry, you can't plug anything in that electrical outlet yourself... only members of the Electricians Union are allowed to do it. I'm in the Technicians Union so I can't do it either... you'll have to call a Union Electrician and wait for him to get here, then pay him time and a half overtime since it's 5:02 PM and his shift ended at 5:00."

Given the rampant and horrific human rights abuses that unions helped to end I think that is an acceptable alternative. Also do you enjoy your weekends, holidays off, and forty hour work week?

He probably does, if he has a job. But if he's "on the clock" blue collar, the chances are growing increasingly large that he doesn't. So then, if that's you, you don't have to worry about weekends and holidays off; all your days are off. Your industry found labor costs so high that they outsourced them all to someplace with more reasonable unions, or else none. The union bosses knew this was happening, but they didn't care, as their jobs were the last to go. In fact, they probably still have good salaries, representing those last few guys in the US rust belt. Whose job it will be to turn out the lights, when they punch out for that last time.

Yes, collective bargaining and unions are the scars of bad management. And yes, in any large company, management is always bad. So how to fix this? It's always harder to do it while there are a lot of people halfway around the world who are willing to work 11 hour days with no benefits, for $1.50 an hour. One can be protectionist, but without fundamental changes in how we see development, that's a very hard cartel to make work.

Since some of my own living comes from intellectual property in the form of inventions, I see at least some of the problem in terms of IP theft. Developing countries do very well by stealing IP ("information wants to be free!") while at the same time working with a desperate labor pool. So now the question: why should the US teach India or China how to make a state of the art manufacturing plant, using labor of people with crappy health care and in the middle of the most horrendous polution and working conditions, in order to build a complex to undersell everybody on the world market? What exactly are WE going to sell, if all we have to offer is know-how, and that know-how is being stolen? If we don't figure this problem out, the major thing that the US is good at (innovation) is going to be worthless on the world market. Then, I hope you own your own house so you don't have a mortgage, and are either retired, or else work in a personal-service industry that can't be exported, like flipping burgers or security or medicine, or which depends on copyright (not that this won't be stolen too-- but at least you have a longer period to recover something) . Enjoy. When this country agreed to make patents 20 years and non-renewable, in what has always been a nation of inventors, we screwed ourselves worse than we ever could have imagined.

MR

[Jon Awbrey]

Well, I have to admit, I was seeking e-lite-n-ment on what sort of union might be suitable for the WWF, er, WMF WikiPlantation SerfiDudes, and Wikipedia its WP:OWNSELF was very helpful in my quest.

My first thought was of course to follow the model of the nearest analogous industry.

Hot on the heels of my initial Google search, this Wikipedia article coughed up a very helpful reference on the union question.

Jon

This post has been edited by Jon Awbrey: Sun 13th July 2008, 3:10am

[Viridae]

I don't have a high opinion of labor unions myself; my mental image is of fat, lazy jerks who refuse to do any work unless it's in their narrowly-construed job description, but who will stand in the way of you doing anything for yourself by insisting on rigorously enforsing silly union work rules. Like "Sorry, you can't plug anything in that electrical outlet yourself... only members of the Electricians Union are allowed to do it. I'm in the Technicians Union so I can't do it either... you'll have to call a Union Electrician and wait for him to get here, then pay him time and a half overtime since it's 5:02 PM and his shift ended at 5:00."

Given the rampant and horrific human rights abuses that unions helped to end I think that is an acceptable alternative. Also do you enjoy your weekends, holidays off, and forty hour work week?

He probably does, if he has a job. But if he's "on the clock" blue collar, the chances are growing increasingly large that he doesn't. So then, if that's you, you don't have to worry about weekends and holidays off; all your days are off. Your industry found labor costs so high that they outsourced them all to someplace with more reasonable unions, or else none. The union bosses knew this was happening, but they didn't care, as their jobs were the last to go. In fact, they probably still have good salaries, representing those last few guys in the US rust belt. Whose job it will be to turn out the lights, when they punch out for that last time.

Yes, collective bargaining and unions are the scars of bad management. And yes, in any large company, management is always bad. So how to fix this? It's always harder to do it while there are a lot of people halfway around the world who are willing to work 11 hour days with no benefits, for $1.50 an hour. One can be protectionist, but without fundamental changes in how we see development, that's a very hard cartel to make work.

Since some of my own living comes from intellectual property in the form of inventions, I see at least some of the problem in terms of IP theft. Developing countries do very well by stealing IP ("information wants to be free!") while at the same time working with a desperate labor pool. So now the question: why should the US teach India or China how to make a state of the art manufacturing plant, using labor of people with crappy health care and in the middle of the most horrendous polution and working conditions, in order to build a complex to undersell everybody on the world market? What exactly are WE going to sell, if all we have to offer is know-how, and that know-how is being stolen? If we don't figure this problem out, the major thing that the US is good at (innovation) is going to be worthless on the world market. Then, I hope you own your own house so you don't have a mortgage, and are either retired, or else work in a personal-service industry that can't be exported, like flipping burgers or security or medicine, or which depends on copyright (not that this won't be stolen too-- but at least you have a longer period to recover something) . Enjoy. When this country agreed to make patents 20 years and non-renewable, in what has always been a nation of inventors, we screwed ourselves worse than we ever could have imagined.

MR

The interesting thing is that energy prices being what they are, the onshore manufacturing method is starting to look attractive again. When (In Australia's case) raw materials are produced here, shipped to China for processing and manufacturing and then shipped back here to be sold and the energy prices are skyrocketing, it is starting to look like a more viable option to make it here again. Add the chinese government scaling back their energy subsidies - removing the artificially low prices and things get even more interesting.

[Milton Roe]

The interesting thing is that energy prices being what they are, the onshore manufacturing method is starting to look attractive again. When (In Australia's case) raw materials are produced here, shipped to China for processing and manufacturing and then shipped back here to be sold and the energy prices are skyrocketing, it is starting to look like a more viable option to make it here again. Add the chinese government scaling back their energy subsidies - removing the artificially low prices and things get even more interesting.

Indeed, rising fuel prices may cut our exposure to foreign undeveloped labor markets. Which is a good thing so long as these are powered by toothless slaves with no health care, happy to have only enough to eat.

But fuel or not, the information "flat Earth" will continue. Things shrink day by day on Earth, connectionwise. Just as with privacy, we're going to need something stronger to protect IP soon, than just people's difficulty in sending info around the world every five minutes. Because that's going away fast.

MR

This post has been edited by Milton Roe: Sun 13th July 2008, 7:52am

[Ben]

Yes. The administrators should organize and strike until conditions in the workplace improve.

[Gold heart]

Yes. The administrators should organize and strike until conditions in the workplace improve.

The End Scenario
Yes, Jimbo Wales gets $15-billion for Wikipedia, the "Admin Association" call for industrial action, each admin gets $1,000,000 to get back to 'work', and everybody is happy, or are they. The long-time loyal editors get very disgruntled and lose interest, but it doesn't matter much now 'cause the encyclopaedia is almost acceptable. But that's not the end, the admins go on a Champaign drinking spree with their new-found wealth, and Jimbo ends up with one big headache, and the $15-billion deal is nullified.

[gomi]

But I thought Wikipedia Review was (essentially) the "Union of Concerned Wikipedians". Is it not? Perhaps we should start charging dues.

[Maju]

I'm not sure if unpaid volunteers can unionize but certainly they are entitled to the right of association, what is about the same.

Certain policies of Wikipedia, specially those restricting criticism of the entity inside and outside of it seem certainly to be illegal in this sense. But well I'm not sure anymore about the letter (and much less the spirit) of Wikipolicies.

Hiya all, as this is my first post.

[Derktar]

I'm not sure if unpaid volunteers can unionize but certainly they are entitled to the right of association, what is about the same.

Certain policies of Wikipedia, specially those restricting criticism of the entity inside and outside of it seem certainly to be illegal in this sense. But well I'm not sure anymore about the letter (and much less the spirit) of Wikipolicies.

Hiya all, as this is my first post.

Welcome Maju.

[Maju]

Welcome Maju.

Thanks, Dektar.