Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-06-26/Recent research

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I do appreciate The Signpost reporting on my work, although it seems clear we need more volunteers to review recent work (I used to help, maybe I'll again). Reporting on my 2016 paper in the section titled 'recent' whatever is a bit.... illustrative of the backlog and the lack of manpower we have, I think :P --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:16, 27 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Piotrus: My understanding is that the Signpost always need more people contributing. If you're able to do so, I'm sure they'd appreciate your efforts. Clovermoss (talk) 01:51, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

True. @User:HaeB, can you link the list of papers to review? I'll try to contribute sth to the next issue. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:12, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Piotrus: If they don't get back to you, you could try posting at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom. At least that's where people would often participate when I was writing for the Signpost (2 years ago). But it looks like people still post there, so it could still be useful. Clovermoss (talk) 20:41, 4 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Clovermoss There used to be an etherpad where I left my reviews for papers that were suggested for review... I can always just choose stuff myself I guess. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:13, 5 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Piotrus: Sorry about the late reply. The current Etherpad is at https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/WRN202207 (and can usually be found via m:Research:Newsletter#How to contribute), and the draft of the upcoming issue is linked there (and in the Signpost's newsroom page). At this point, the next issue is already going to be published in just under six hours from now; but you're always welcome to sign up for a review in future issues. (As mentioned on the pad, there is also a backlog of papers that we have tweeted but not added to the pad yet.)

Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:09, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It's honestly less a lack of manpower/personpower in terms of willing volunteers overall than us (Masssly and myself) having skipped our usual proactive outreach to such potential contributors recently, mostly due to lack of time on my part. (I have still been able to set aside time every month to make sure we get our regular issue published, but often that window is already consumed by addressing technical and other issues before getting to that step.) I hope we can resume these regular notifications soon.

I'm fairly relaxed about the definition of "recent" - while covering things earlier is preferable, I would say that if the half-life of a paper's research results is so short that it's no longer worth reading about them after a year or two, then that might be an indicator that it wasn't a top priority to inform readers about them in the first place. That said, 2016 was indeed a bit of an outlier here. Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:09, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Only 2% donate

Re the comment "This admission contains a message that the Wikimedia Foundation doesn’t seem to understand. When only 2% of the audience for a widely used not-for-profit project is willing to support the project they use, this suggests that the project might not survive as a commercial venture." Firstly those who support the project include those who donate time as well as those who donate money. Secondly a not for profit is not a commercial venture. Thirdly a General Interest encyclopaedia whose target audience is the whole of humanity can afford to operate on a support level from its intended audience that is very different from that of an academic journal. 2% of hundreds of millions of people is going to be a larger number of supporters than any journal that measures its circulation in thousands, tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands. Ϣere SpielChequers 15:40, 30 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Friedman sure has some odd comments. He writes that Wikipedia "suffers from the internally-focused cultural patterns among Wikipedians that prevent the improvements needed for a high quality reference work". No kidding. But does he think things are not significantly worse in academia?
In addition to WereSpielChequers' point that 2% is not the totality of people who support Wikipedia, I think that's an astoundingly large figure. This is an audience that includes, for example, a lot of El Salvador, a country that has just seen one of its two currencies collapse (its government controls neither currency)—why would we want them to donate money to Wikipedia? Friedman says that "the project might not survive as a commercial venture", and we can only hope so. It's not a "commercial venture", but a non-profit that provides free information across the globe. — Bilorv (talk) 14:14, 13 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Immortal tables and boxes

I wonder if the scientist accounted for the fact that mboxes, infoboxes, navboxes, and sidebars are all tables in HTML? —⁠andrybak (talk) 18:05, 21 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]