Hundreds of Wikipedia editors are threatening to strike

Wikipedia is one of the last trusted sites on the internet. But last week, volunteer editors and supporters were horrified to learn that a small but important group of engineers at the nonprofit it supports has been laid off. The layoffs didn’t just threaten to end the important partnership between the Wikimedia Foundation and the community — they also expressed concern about WMF’s involvement in the partnership. After days of heated debate, some Wikipedians are ready to support the boycott. What also appears on the platform where creators are often not paid is another question.

On May 20, WMF he said was to lay off the Community Tech team, a team of five engineers and one manager who are part of WMF’s paid staff. This group was the bridge between the foundation and Wikipedia’s army of volunteers. The team created tools and products that agents use every day: things like theft detection, dark mode, or chart and graph tools. Organizers and former employees of the foundation describe it as an accessible group – somewhere volunteers can turn to if they need help, or to have their voices heard.

Even so, the system can backfire. The WMF acknowledged that the system for responding to group and equipment requests is not working well, and said that having a centralized group “creates difficulties and delays.” Beyond that, the work will be split between multiple teams rather than going through a centralized Community Tech team.

The reaction of the local people was immediate and bad. Long-time contributors have wanted to bring back the team and change the way the wishlist, a log of new features and tools requested by the community, is managed. Others suspected ulterior motives. In recent months, Wikimedia staff have announced their intention to establish a union, and others he encouraged The basis was to specifically eliminate the partners of the union. The end of the Community Tech team was also not the first time of sudden departure. Wiki Workers United, which was not identified, declined a request for an interview.

Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, argued with donors on the site’s discussion pages, saying it was time to meet the needs of the community, and assuring volunteers that there will still be volunteers working on the wish list. The devotees found no consolation.

“If it’s not about money, it’s not about cooperation, why don’t you back off like hell right now?” says Hannah Clover, editor and former Wikimedian of the Year. “Even Jimmy is trying to say this like he’s listening to the community, and that’s annoying.”

In an email to SeasideNadee Gunasena, chief of staff at the Wikimedia Foundation, said that the reorganization is based on an internal study from September 2025. Gunasena said that the reorganization will ensure that volunteer requests will be fulfilled by different groups with skills in different areas, and that they will want to put six Community Tech employees in other positions; if no one is found, they will be fired next month. Mr. Gunasena also denied that WMF has terminated union workers. If the unions get enough workers to call a vote – which was not requested – “we respect the right of the eligible workers to vote, and if the majority of the eligible workers vote in favor of the representatives, we will continue to negotiate in good faith,” said Gunasena.

The relationship between the Wikimedia Foundation and the volunteers who maintain Wikipedia has been steadily growing, said volunteer Femke Nijsse – until she was fired. Now, Nijsse says, it looks like the relationship is going the other way.

“The aspirations were broken for two, three years, and the response was not to fix this, but to fire people who are still working,” he says. Nijsse has proposed a way to reverse the process unsurprisingly it sparked a great conversation among volunteers. At the top of the list is restoring the Community Tech community.

Both organizers and former employees worry that the work done by the Community Tech team will fall by the wayside without the dedicated staff. A former employee of the foundation, who asked not to be named to speak freely, said Seaside that several of the employees who were part of the terminated group were “some kind of inventor who knows areas of technology that no one else knows about.”

“This follows the process of ending the groups that are facing the community with the idea that now everyone should do something,” they say. “And what always happens is nobody is responsible for it, and then it’s ignored.”

Tamzin Hadasa Kelly, another volunteer editor, said in a message to Seaside that immediately it became known that the people of the community were angry. Kelly made a request A contract is an agreement in which volunteers say they are ready to take action – perhaps even if the editors go on strike – if the WWU asks them to. It is signed by more than 700 editors, many from Wikipedia’s English-language website, who are responsible for writing thousands of articles and making nearly 10 million edits. “The goal was not to exercise or just turn this into a power struggle against the WMF, but to put the power in the hands of the people who need it, which is the WWU,” Kelly said.

A strike cannot happen unless the WWU calls one, and there is no clear timeline for this. Meanwhile, the volunteer group is actively signing the petition, and should outline what the fight would look like. Decision making in relation to Wikipedia. Other proposed actions do not affect Wikipedia content. Helpers will discuss ways like blocking signs call for donations to the WMF, which will reduce the foundation’s expenses.

The kind of threat that Kelly wanted, however, would ask editors to stop everything on Wikipedia except to remove the worst examples of abuse, such as posting personal information, harassment, or adding false and useless information about living people. Constant vandalism, spam, false statements, and illegal content cannot be handled properly. The leaves can be empty, or fade quickly, says Nijsse.

The impact of any kind of service outage can be huge, depending on the weight of the site on the Internet full of garbage. “Wikipedia can become popular quickly if there aren’t hundreds and hundreds of people editing it every day,” says Nijsse. “New stories are probably where you’ll see the biggest problem, where records aren’t made.” Wikipedia is also a great source for AI tools such as Google’s AI Overviews or ChatGPT. If Wikipedia breaks, the internet breaks – and Wikipedia needs unpaid editors, whose anger is rising fast.

“There will be no more Wikipedia. It will quickly collapse” if the volunteers stop working, says a former Wikimedia Foundation employee. “This would be a disaster, not just for Wikipedia, but for society.”