In a ten-day span in mid-May, the Wikimedia Foundation fired Brooke Vibber — MediaWiki’s lead developer since 2003, the Foundation’s first full-time employee and first CTO, and a union organizer — then on May 21 announced the disbanding of the entire Community Tech team: five engineers and a manager whose sole mandate was to build features requested by volunteer editors through the official Community Wishlist process. According to people familiar with the situation, most of the fired staff were also union organizers with Wiki Workers United. Within hours of the May 21 announcement, Wikipedia editors began signing a solidarity petition (Wikipedia:Wiki_Workers_United_solidarity) pledging collective action up to and including an editorial strike — the first time the volunteer editor community has organized in solidarity with paid Foundation staff. Administrators offered to resign their access; anti-vandalism bot operators offered to disable filters. WMF General Counsel Stephen LaPorte stated publicly that the Foundation respects employees’ right to unionize and would negotiate in good faith, but offered no explanation for the specific terminations.
The firings came four months into the tenure of new CEO Bernadette Meehan, who joined January 20, 2026 from a background that includes J.P. Morgan, a National Security Council spokesperson role, and a posting as U.S. Ambassador to Chile. Critics note the Foundation is not under financial pressure: it closed last fiscal year with $208.6 million in revenue, holds $296.6 million in reserves (17.1 months of operating expenses), and its Wikimedia Enterprise unit — which sells high-speed API access to AI labs — just turned profitable on $8.3 million in revenue, a 148% year-over-year increase. Jake Orlowitz, founder of The Wikipedia Library and former WMF staff, published a sharp critique on Medium arguing that the moves follow a standard tech-industry anti-labor playbook — firing engineers with institutional knowledge alongside union organizers, then waiting out the news cycle — and warning that the Foundation’s credibility as a mission-driven nonprofit depends on how it responds. Wiki Workers United’s stated demands include transparency in annual planning, consistent HR practices, safe channels for dissent, and the principle of “nothing about us without us.”
Wikipedia Village Pump | Jake Orlowitz / Medium
https://medium.com/@jakeorlowitz/wikipedia-is-doing-the-capitalist-thing-56a393232943