zlacker

"The NGO world of which the Wikimedia Foundation is now part uncannily follows Marx’s prediction that the middle class would devise an infinite number of ways of enriching themselves, while ensuring the proletariat, the volunteers at the Wiki-face, don’t share the riches. Understandably, the relationship between the unruly Wikipedia workers and their bourgeoisie betters at the Foundation is strained."

is this a joke? Wikipedia volunteers are also middle or upper class in most cases, they aren't editing Wikipedia as a means to their survival, they just like doing it. The comparison to Marxism is unhinged.

Good for Wikipedia. Try growing up in the 1970s when if you didn't know something, you just never knew it, unless it happened to be something the local library might have buried in a microfische somewhere and you had six hours to kill.

>>zzzeek+(OP)
> or upper class

Not sure what you mean by "upper class". The kind of people that term refers to for me, is a group of people that would never lower themselves to donating labour for nothing, and on the whole aren't sufficiently well-educated to even read a Wikipedia article.

I agree the comparison to Marxism is unhinged!

>>denton+W9
> Not sure what you mean by "upper class"

for the US, it refers to income above $156K, here's an explainer

https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/family-finan...

>>zzzeek+(OP)
I know a lot of Wikipedians who are quite poor, actually, by Western standards at least. Like living in a bedsit.

From a Washington Post article a while back:

Justin Anthony Knapp doesn’t necessarily mind that: With nearly 1.5 million contributions, the 33-year-old Wikipedian is more active on the site than literally anyone else — including members of the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation’s paid staff.

Every day, Knapp drives his 15-year-old car from Indianapolis’ poorest neighborhood, where he lives, over to a restaurant on the city’s West Side; he delivers pizzas to pay his bills, in between piecemeal work at a grocery store and a crisis hotline.

Every night, Knapp logs onto Wikipedia ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/07...

And the Wikimedia Foundation is undertaking great efforts to get people in developing countries to edit for free, in part so that Google, Amazon and Apple have Wikipedia articles for Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant to read out and make money in those countries ... same with Google's and Bing's knowledge panels, which are largely based on Wikipedia.

>>zzzeek+Gb
Ah, I see. In the UK, "upper class" generally means peerage and royalty. It implies familiarity with certain manners and customs, and having relatives that share those manners.

It's not a question of "politeness" - the upper classes curse like troopers, and generally can be very coarse. It's just a particular kind of manners, that they recognize. It's not a question of wealth, and certainly not a matter of exceeding some annual income threshold. Many people that would be considered upper class are not very rich, and most very rich people certainly aren't considered upper class.

Really, the UK upper class is defined by blood - who your mum and dad were. That affects where you go to school, which determines what manners you learn (and might influence how much you get to earn).