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Signpost

Future directions for The Signpost

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By Bri and Eddie891

Bri is a 10+ year Wikipedia contributor and acted as interim publication manager for this month's and last month's issue of The Signpost. Eddie891 has been contributing to Wikipedia for over one year. They have both been involved in reviving The Signpost since June 2017.

We heard you

Pitching-in on a participatory publication

Feedback from The Signpost's readers on Kudpung's op-ed last issue "Death knell sounding for The Signpost?" was robust, and as somewhat frequent contributors, made us think of solutions, both incremental and major. Here are our cards on the table. This is intended to document a few of the incremental changes made so far, and to keep the conversation going.

Immediate problems

Publishing is hard and requires unusual technical skills; see Bluerasberry's 2017 grant proposal for a solution, or Bri's followup rapid grant submitted after the last issue. The rapid grant proposal is intended to demonstrate for a short time (three months) that a funded publication manager role could help keep the publication on time and basically keep the work on its feet until we get some of the other stuff sorted out. Bri listed himself as the fundee because it was easier and quicker than finding an organization to sponsor it and finding another individual with the required skills.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions is buried and user contributions are inordinately hard. To trial a solution, we have put together WP:Wikipedia Signpost/Quick Start to make it easier for first-time contributors. We're still working out the kinks.

Publication manager update

Just before publication of this issue, Chris troutman announced he is willing to take over as publication manager starting with next month's issue, for which we are very grateful. This apparently renders the grant proposals moot.

Incremental fixes

Lots of ideas worth exploring came in from the community. Here are a few:

  • Different publication schedule
    • Navigation links
    • Autofill submission block (duh)
  • Automate tedious parts (e.g., part of F.C., traffic report, etc.)
  • Consider allowing the Arb report to become just scripted by arbitration clerks, almost like the summaries.
  • Change all Signpost page names from Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost... to Wikipedia:Signpost...
  • Consider Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Mirroring
  • Email addresses for team members at a custom domain (or a "group" email-list address like en-signpost-team@wikimedia.org might be helpful)
  • Enable Visual Editor for contributions

Simplifying the publication model

A longer discussion took place related to whether we should strip away the gloss that makes it hard to publish, and make contributing to The Signpost a lightweight process more like editing any article. Would we lose brand identity doing this? Would editorial control evaporate? More discussion is required before committing to this.

Community

An energized community of contributors, readers, and newsroom volunteers are what really would keep The Signpost going. Can we do some incremental things to reinvigorate, reward, and recognize?

  • Participation badges/chicklets.
  • Reach out, e.g., an automated notice once a 500(?) edit milestone is hit. Increase visibility.
  • Figure out why others (OZOO, Armbrust, EpochFail, Piotrus, Milowent, Kaldari) stopped writing and if they will come back.
  • Becoming a User group?

Moving towards social media

The Signpost has a tiny social media footprint which we could probably leverage better. We need to put our heads together to think about responses to modern social media. Just a few ideas off the top of my head listed here. These would be tiny steps on the way to an overhaul listed below. Would somebody be willing to create The Signpost Show? We could start just by reading headlines for the Spoken Wikipedia's channel on YouTube, but I could see a video outlet becoming more of an integrated entity or even driving The Signpost (more below).

  • Why is our Twitter feed not visible in the pages of The Signpost?
  • Where do replies to Twitter icon Twitter go?
  • The Signpost Show

Dream big: Signpost 2.0

"Dream big" ideas have been floating around but need a place to land. Here are some of the things that have been discussed, in a grab-bag fashion. Readers are invited to further discuss how to organize and implement (especially where funding is required).

 · Radical look & feel overhaul: integrated video, modern look and feel, easy user interaction, easy social sharing (incl. hashtag feedback), you know, more 2018 and less 1995. Re-imagining the whole thing from the start, in other words. Ideally with input from new media experts with specific knowledge of Web based platforms. · Overhaul the submissions pages to make it inviting and easy as pie to contribute. · How about a "feed" of content proposals automatically formatted? That and some programming changes on the editorial side including short-term snippets and longer-term serious reporting and roll-ups. · More bot curated content as has been suggested – traffic report has been specifically mentioned here.  · User-customizable editions, filters, periodicity. · Upvote/downvote model for TOC presentation. · Multiple curators of multiple views  · Ad-hoc and self-organizing editorial board based on followership.
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  • Speaking personally, I'd be glad to help with the arbitration report. Thanks, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) 05:17, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • There’s a few things I have to say after publishing my first article for the Signpost in this issue. First off, thanks to the other people who spent their free time writing, copyediting, content editing, publishing, or getting someone else to do any of the above.
Secondly: The Signpost is now a monthly publication. That’s a good thing; with publishing being the real bottleneck, it seems logical to make it only necessary once a month instead of once a week. The content isn’t going anywhere, which can hopefully be seen in this pretty rich issue. However, Wikipedia as a platform often moves a little faster – especially discussions dealing with topics that need to be resolved quickly. Other discussions, sometimes on extremely important and far-reaching topics, get far too big far too quickly for anyone to stay informed by themselves; but with a monthly publication, the Signpost can fulfil its duty as informant for exactly these discussions only partially, dependent on when they come up and how long they last.
Therefore, I’d like to propose that Discussion Reports should include rolling coverage of Discussions deemed noteworthy and big enough. This could be organized either by initial publication of a Signpost article, which gets expanded as the Discussion continues, or by a Signpost writer posting a thread in the relevant discussion itself, which can be updated and later included in the next issue. This rolling coverage could include polls, short Op-Eds in favour / against a proposal, or even a moderated discussion. There’s obviously also Social Media.
The next issue is the direction of the Signpost itself. The problem, I think, is what Kudpung described so eloquently in the comments of last issue’s Editorial; “Trying to find out what was wrong, I stumbled through its offices and felt as if I were wandering nostalgically through a disused factory, hearing in my mind's eye the bustle of activity and the noise of machinery of yesteryear“. The Signpost page space is well developed and written ((kudos to Evad37) – but it’s just way too much, both for the current skeleton crew to handle and to introduce any newbie to. For example, I only found out after writing my article and asking myself several style-related questions that there is, in fact, an extremely long page on style – but that page actually deals with Wiki formatting instead of being an actual Manual of Style. There’s also the extremely confusing transclusions, about half a dozen spaces to actually discuss an article draft or the next issue itself, a table of editors and contributors where half the positions are still not filled… the list goes on.
I’d therefore like to do a full review of the Signpost page space and make article writing, editing, discussion and publishing possible with as few clicks as possible without losing anything. I’d also like to include a full Manual of Style (No abbreviations in titles, capitalizations in titles, how to spell Wiki terms etc.), while keeping the current page as Formatting. A review of the duties and roles of the Signpost would probably also make clearer what role new people could actually take on. In my eyes, this – keeping the Signpost rolling, and getting some more wheels on – should be the main concern right now. While thoughts of 2.0 are cool’n’all, I don’t think they help too much, and maybe are even dangerous, as long as we can’t even guarantee regular publication.
While on the topic, I’d also like to talk about ideas that have been thrown around last month about making the Signpost more of a collection of normal articles, without any of the pesky publication, editing or other things; in other words, to make the Signpost more like the rest of Wikipedia. In my eyes, this goes contradictory to what the Signpost is, which is exactly not the rest of Wikipedia. It’s in the name; the paper (magazine?) consists of signed publications, reviewed by copy-editors, okayed by an editorial board. Journalistic quality cannot be guaranteed if we throw this out of the window. The current system with submissions by irregular contributors and suggestions for an (apparently?) existing regular team of writers coexisting in the page space, both being used, seems to contribute to this confusion; but especially currently, when we have something of a team together for the next issue, the Signpost should keep its identity while going into the future. Zarasophos (talk) 08:40, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Signpost is naturally, a clever literary device to remind us to sign our posts, and the name should never be changed. I concur that it should be very different from the rest of Wikipedia mainspace; the 'pesky publication, editing or other things' are what set it apart and make it a newspaper. They are a necessary part of its production, but the mass (mess?) of tables and transclusions that goes on must be significantly rationalised and everything given a proper workflow overview so that not only the editorial team's work is somewhat better organised (especially when done by a skeleton crew trying to cover all functions), but also easier for non editorial users to submit their articles. Having stood in on this issue as temporary E-in-C, seeing all the work to be done, it beats me how it used to be produced to a weekly deadline. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:05, 26 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm very intrigued by the idea of creating a "Signpost Show." In many ways, it sounds similar to what WP:WEEKLY did, when it was an active podcast. For anyone interested in pursuing this, it might be worth considering integrating the two approaches. OhKayeSierra (talk) 04:31, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • One very basic thing that Signpost really needs to do is to get a watchlist notice up for a few days when there is a new issue. Now it will be monthly any possible opposition to this should be very muted, though I doubt there will be much anyway. There are other easy on-wiki places to announce a new issue too. I'm sure Signpost's problem have been as much about lack of readers as lack of writers, & more readers will generate more writers. Johnbod (talk) 11:00, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I Tried that, Johnbod. They did it for me for the March issue, but they insist it should be the subject of an RfC. Aren't we just getting perhaps tired of RfCs just now? One way would be to get 5 - 10 people to head over here and get a quick consensus for it in spite of the snark that was delivered last time. Lourdes might also still be in favour of it, and probably Zarasophos too. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:23, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, done that. Johnbod (talk) 14:33, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think we're all agreed on that Kaldari, but precisely what we don't have are people that have the time (or energy) to rethink it all. It would be too much on top of their other Signpost tasks for the current skeleton team to go about it. For one thing, it needs an interactive editable spreadsheet to track the publication work - somehting that Wikipedia markup doesn't permit. Wikitables are a challenge at the best of times. Perhaps this is a hint for MediaWiki devs to take a look at tables. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:59, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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