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A former employee of Wikipedia’s parent company has filed a federal lawsuit alleging she was fired after reporting her direct supervisor for gender discrimination and harassment.

The woman, Kayla Mae, was hired by the Wikimedia Foundation in November 2022, where she worked as a software engineer for nearly two years.

Her role allowed her to work remotely from Texas, and she was assigned to work on a team managed by Dennis Mburugu, a Wikimedia employee based in Kenya.

Within the first few months of her employment, she encountered problems with Mburugu, according to her complaint. Among other things, Mburugu asked her inappropriate questions about her sexual identity — she is a transgender female — and inquired about her medical history, Mae wrote in the complaint.

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[-] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 46 points 2 months ago

Interesting read but got to call out one part that made me think this reporter is at least partially nonsense:

Mburugu did not respond to an e-mail sent late Wednesday evening.

This article was published on Thursday. Late Wednesday night is most likely midnight or later in Kenya. Essentially the author gave zero time to reply.

[-] wikipediasuckscoop@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago

That's doesn't mean that the story isn't credible though. Here's a PDF to the court document.

[-] DmMacniel@feddit.org 34 points 2 months ago

yeah but its still a dick move by the publisher.

[-] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 14 points 2 months ago

I didn't say that's what it meant.

[-] tonytins@pawb.social 11 points 2 months ago

Still raises a lot of eyebrows.

[-] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This article also confirms for me that it is pointless to donate to Wikipedia. Most of these donations go to non-Wikipedia activities.

I do love the Wikipedia software though. Run multiple instances.

Why is your username Wikipedia sucks lol?

[-] shiroininja@lemmy.world 23 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I am wary of it. This and the propaganda against Bernie lately makes me think this is more fuckery to get the left to turn on things it likes. Don’t forget Trump and his ilk recently threatened Wikipedia because it was allowing information they don’t like and for DEI.

And digging deep into the accounts history has proven my point

[-] wowwoweowza@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

Group of far right extremists bent on undermining Wikipedia because it tells the truth about history.

[-] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 2 points 2 months ago
[-] wowwoweowza@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Who else hates Wikipedia? Seriously.

[-] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 1 points 2 months ago

Only person I’ve ever met that disliked Wikipedia is Charles Muller

[-] ocean@lemmy.selfhostcat.com 2 points 2 months ago

Oh yeah I see they're banned a lot!

[-] wikipediasuckscoop@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Why is your username Wikipedia sucks lol?

Because this is a multiple-used shared identity by a number of whistleblowers who wants to protect their identity. The lawsuit basically vindicates what we're trying to warn people about over the past few months.

[-] shiroininja@lemmy.world 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I am wary of it. This and the propaganda against Bernie lately makes me think this is more fuckery to get the left to turn on things it likes. Don’t forget Trump and his ilk recently threatened Wikipedia because it was allowing information they don’t like and for DEI.

How do I know you’re not just another troll farm vegetable?

Edit: and digging deep into the accounts history has proven my point.

[-] wikipediasuckscoop@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Just to be clear, we're not against the general notion of "free knowledge movement". Rather we'd love it if there are viable competitors to Wikipedia.

Edit: You can always go to dumps.wikimedia.org to download a copy of Wikipedia encyclopedic articles and start a fork from there.

[-] Saljid@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago
[-] qevlarr@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

OP is on a crusade against Wikipedia.

[-] stoly@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago

Why are you posting this everywhere you possibly can?

[-] wikipediasuckscoop@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Because that’s an old habit which is carried over from Reddit.

[-] Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

Unfortunately, this administration isn't going to be much help for her. Feels like this is going to be an uphill battle.

[-] wikipediasuckscoop@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Either way there should be competitors to Wikipedia. One of the promising projects is ibis.wiki but so far there's no function to integrate Wiki markup yet.

[-] Maxx0r@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

Why is that important? Wikipedia is a common good, can't we just fix the problems by working together?

[-] wikipediasuckscoop@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

It's impractical and unlikely, bordering on impossible. Deletionists have driven a lot of productive contributors out of the projects through shady tactics like "wikilawyering" and gaming the system. You can look at this essay by Gwern to see what I'm talking about.

[-] Maxx0r@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Thanks, interesting read!

[-] AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 3 points 2 months ago

Nutomic, dessalines

great, more projects for me to clean-room 🤦‍♀️

this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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