Intro: $26,845.52
Hey folks!
I worked as a senior data scientist at the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) from January 2024 to December 2025.
On February 4th, 2025, I witnessed unethical conduct by a senior leader at WMF. When I shared my concerns about it with my manager, I was gaslit and told to “practice curiosity” with the senior leader until I agreed that there was no unethical conduct. My attempts to explain that that’s not what curiosity means, and that using the phrase “practice curiosity” in response to someone raising concerns in good faith is problematic, were unsuccessful.
I declined to meet with the senior leader to “practice curiosity”, as was within my rights per the WMF Staff Handbook. I was planning to file a complaint with HR or some other party instead.
After months of gaslighting, bullying and pressure by my manager, I was fired before I finished writing my complaint. But not before I got a chance to talk to many of my colleagues about this and learn about many similar experiences from so many of them.
That’s how I found out that these behaviors are systemic within WMF leadership and HR. It’s not just me, I wasn’t the only one who was treated that way in retaliation for raising concerns about leadership’s conduct at WMF.
When I asked my colleagues what could be done about this, how should I proceed, and what have they tried, what I heard back was very discouraging. My colleagues shared prior attempts to work with WMF’s HR, leadership and Board of Trustees (BoT) through similar issues. These attempts were mostly unsuccessful, and left many people feeling betrayed and distrustful of all three of these groups that were supposed to support and lead them in doing their best work for the Wikimedia movement community.
Things looked quite bleak. It seemed that there was no one who could conduct an objective investigation into the unethical conduct I observed, nor into the broader systemic leadership misconduct patterns described by my colleagues. Even the BoT and Jimmy Wales most likely would not help, according to my colleagues, because in the past, when employees came to them reporting serious problems with WMF leadership, they would simply delegate solving those problems back to WMF leadership, to the same people who were causing the problems.
I was told that a long time ago, the BoT promised WMF workers to establish an ombudsperson who would help elevate and resolve the issues they raise. That promise was not kept.
It looked like there was nothing I could do to hold leadership accountable and make things better at WMF, whether it’s for my own case, or for my colleagues going through similar experiences, or for the Wikimedia movement community (because you all, readers, donors and editors, deserve better).
I thought that if I couldn’t improve this situation, I should quit, because if I stayed, I would be further enabling unethical conduct by the leadership team with my work contributions. So, for a brief while, I was planning to quit.
But something happened that changed my mind. While I was having these difficult conversations with my colleagues about WMF leadership misconduct, one of them mentioned that, some time ago, there had been an effort to unionize at WMF. This seemed like the only ray of hope for a long-term solution to bringing accountability to WMF leadership. So I changed my mind about quitting, joined the unionizing effort, and did my best to help organize Wiki Workers United.
I anticipated that if I didn’t quit, my manager would continue to gaslight, bully and pressure me, and probably fire me sooner or later. And I knew that helping with the unionizing effort would be extra labor on top of doing my regular work. All of that did happen, and neither of that was easy. But I figured it was worth it, because it was a chance to make WMF better, to get WMF closer to what many people who donate to WMF think of it: an organization dedicated to free knowledge, led with integrity, transparency and honesty. An organization you and I can trust. An organization led by competent and trustworthy people who are committed to doing what’s best for the Wikimedia movement community, and not for themselves or their gossip clique.
I was offered a severance pay of $26,845.52, conditional on my not making disparaging statements about WMF. I turned it down, because I have something to say. That’s the purpose of this blog.