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]
I 100% support simplifying the publication model. We've painted ourselves into a corner with this complicated publication set-up. Kaldari (talk) 23:58, 30 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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