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Signpost - Recruitment ideas

Greetings, Here is a list of ideas that may help attract more help for The Signpost.

  • create Invitation to help at Signpost
  • create a banner ad for Signpost
see {{Wikipedia ads}}, a plain one is #17, for RFC.
  • create a Signpost Welcome box, for new contributors, participants.
  • create a Signpost writer Userbox, to recognize anyone whose article is published.
  • create a Signpost subpage to contain the above. For example: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Community
  • add Signpost Barnstar info {{The Signpost Barnstar}} from Barnstars to new subpage.

While not complete, these are being used for some of the wikiprojects that I have seen & might be useful here. Discussion is welcome. Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 04:35, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia ads! Nice ideas. Subpage created. Please add details there: links to examples of each idea used in other wikiprojects? – SJ + 04:47, 9 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi Sj, being Bold, I redirected the Community page into the Newsroom Community page and added a wikilink to the Navbox. Now proceeding with high hopes for a better Signpost future. Cheers, — JoeHebda • (talk) 14:25, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Newsroom discussion for issue 2017-09-06

Next issue date: aiming for 18 August, but if we continue our 3-weekly pattern it would be 25 August. Lets see how it goes. - Evad37 [talk] 00:32, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Traffic report

Image for Traffic Report:Deaths in 2017

Concerning the Traffic Report. Since death usually shows up in the top 25, maybe we could make it a thing to try to have an image tying in somehow with a date-related item? Like the 2017-08-05 report included Bastille Day and the image was related to the French Revolution. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:54, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Greetings Bri, Today I found Category:Days of the year and thought this might help you locate what you are looking for on a specific date. Each day has sections for Births, Deaths and a link to images at Commons. Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 14:38, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Update

@Tbayer (WMF): will this work for you? - Evad37 [talk] 10:57, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
@Evad37: Yes, we'll have a publishable version of RR by then. Sorry for missing the earlier deadline. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 22:50, 27 August 2017 (UTC)
@Evad37: Apologies, this didn't work out. I'll do my best to have it up by 7pm UTC today, but it might become 3am UTC on Friday. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 12:37, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

{{User Signpost writer}}. ProgrammingGeek talktome 19:11, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

This user contributes to The Signpost. You can too!
Thanks ProgrammingGeek for creating this userbox. Thank you for helping. Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 14:41, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Note: most of above is no longer current having been transferred to the Newsroom Community page. Cheers! — JoeHebda • (talk) 01:35, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Newsroom discussion for issue 2017-07-15

Extended content
Something to keep in mind, a lot of North American editors may be preoccupied with Independence Day and Canada Day around that time. - Bri (talk) 23:56, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Let's see how we go, we can delay publication if necessary - Evad37 [talk] 03:25, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Looking really good! Delightful. – SJ + 05:10, 24 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks everyone! Hexatekin (talk) 01:59, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
Huge credits to Evad for getting out this issue on time! And yes, let's try to keep the planned publication date with the upcoming issue too - I'll do my part with the research section. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
Hello @Bri, Evad37, and Sj:! Just a note. I am going away today and will not be coming back until late Friday. The Featured Content is probably about halfway done (needs information filled in for FLs, and FPs added). I also finished the WikiCup, so now it just needs copy editing, etc. Good Luck! (I am also available to edit for about two more hours, so ping me if there is anything I can do soon) Eddie891 Talk Work 15:12, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

@Evad37 and Sj: anybody want to set some deadlines here? Obviously 7 July is not going to happen. Time for triage on sections, or else a significant postponement, I think. - Bri (talk) 22:53, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I think we should postpone a week, since we seem to be about a week behind in terms of the newsroom status. But lets try to have the content written by the end of Wednesday (UTC) (convert to local time), allowing a full day Thursday (UTC) for extra copyediting, fine-tuning of layouts, etc., and publishing Friday 2:00 (UTC) (convert to local time)
So how's it looking, guys? Sorry not to be involved, but I'm heavily distracted with other things. Tilman (Research report) should be apprised of the ongoing copy-deadline plans, since he has to coordinate several writers. Thx. Tony (talk) 09:21, 7 July 2017 (UTC)
Added countdown widgets at the top of this section. They should update automatically whenever this page is edited (or manually purged). - Bri (talk) 22:54, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
  • Hi all, I'm sort of back around WP again and willing to resume my little gnoming job of copyediting others' stuff. Best though if someone pings me at my talkpage because that way I'll get an email that I'm needed. Thanks! Montanabw(talk) 08:12, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Several of the stories below are now in need of / ready for copyediting. Pinging @Montanabw, Barbara (WVS), Charles Matthews, Randy Kryn, SchreiberBike, Hexatekin, and Sj: (if you are wondering why you were pinged here, it is because I saw you making corrections to previous issues after publication). (Also @Tony1 and Bri:, just in case you find some time). - Evad37 [talk] 02:45, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

I will do some copyediting. Any particular ones you want me to look at? Hexatekin (talk) 20:51, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
@Hexatekin: it is probably not my place to say this, but any page that only has the comment "needs copyediting" down below you could take a look at. Eddie891 Talk Work 22:15, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
Specifically the traffic report and technology report. Eddie891 Talk Work 22:16, 13 July 2017 (UTC)


Notes about the French disconnection

A few comments

  • your current text somehow make it appear that the current issue be between the community and the chapter. This is somewhat a misrepresentation. The current issue is purely Wikimedia France one. A disconnection certainly do exist between the community and the chapter (and has always existed), but the CURRENT crisis is due to a disconnection between WMFR leadership (namely, remaining Board + ED + Vice ED). There is nothing new under the sun when it comes to relationship with community.
  • in the sentence At the centre is the management and governance of the chapter, including conflicts of interest, board resignations, and expulsion of members., I would actually also add "resignation of volunteer project leaders" and "termination of staff"
  • Last, in the sentence In an email, forwarded to the Wikimedia-l mailing list by Chris Keating, Wikimedia France it seems to me extremely important to be specific about who is sending the letter. It is not "Wikimedia France", it is "Wikimedia France board" or even more specifically (it actually has an importance...) : 5/7 of Wikimedia France board members.

Thanks Anthere (talk) 00:47, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for the feedback Anthere – I've made some changes. - Evad37 [talk] 02:23, 13 July 2017 (UTC)
Excellent. Thanks Anthere (talk)
That's looking good. – SJ + 14:34, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Notes about In the News

I'm dyslexic, so I can't be a full copy editor, but as I was pinged above, I'll offer what I can regarding Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/In the media:

  • I'm not comfortable with respectively used to connect two topics with four magazines.
  • I don't think it's accurate to call the dark web a medium. Maybe place or network.
  • I'd hyphenate "net-neutrality regulations" where it is being used to modify regulations.
  • Usage varies, but generally in Wikipedia center wouldn't be capitalized when used by itself.
  • I'd hyphenate "like-minded editors".
  • Quartz should be italicized.
  • Bell Pottinger could be linked.

Hope that helps!  SchreiberBike | ⌨  03:29, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I've incorporated many of these suggestions. Lowercase "center" and one hyphenated instance of net neutrality looked odd to me, so I omitted. Bri (talk) 14:44, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Notes about irregular items

Subscribe inline

: 18 November 2024 

If anyone's interested, I made an inline subscription template a while back: a small link to the latest issue that works well on personal dashboard pages. It'll show a small "new" icon () for a week after the issue goes live, and will show the issue date for a month. (Afterwards it'll just show the Signpost logo.) Enjoy, czar 06:44, 9 June 2017 (UTC)

Thankyou Czar for this Signpost subscription status box. I copied above section onto new Signpost Newsroom Community page. Cheers! — JoeHebda • (talk) 02:35, 10 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikiprojects interviewing themselves?

Jamesjpk, who seems quite heavily involved with WikiProject YouTube, has started Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/WikiProject report and is using interview desk 1. While I'm all for having more Wikiproject reports, I don't think it's a good idea for Wikiprojects to be effectively interviewing themselves. - Evad37 [talk] 04:57, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

I am creating the article, as neutrally as I can, and am not participating in the interview itself. I am open to editors adding, and deleting content in the article. If anyone has any contributions they would like to make to the article, please do as Evad37 pointed out, is that I have a major COI Jamesjpk (talk) 05:03, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
I am going to make it more clear that I am part of WikiProject YouTube in the draft if it helps. Jamesjpk (talk) 05:11, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
I really think it would be better for someone without a COI to be writing it – for all the same sorts of reasoning as how WP:COI is treated in mainspace. Plus if we get an outside writer to do it, then you can also answer their questions. Can you hold off for a bit while we see what happens here? - Evad37 [talk] 05:41, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't think a member of a WikiProject should be interviewing other members, regardless of disclaimers. It's bad journalism and The Signpost doesn't benefit from having an advertorial masquerading as an interview. Chris Troutman (talk) 05:49, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
Ok feel free to delete the article, just a test anyway. Jamesjpk (talk) 06:27, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
There are a few reasons for independent input. One is, of course, that we need variety in the sequence of editions. Another is that sometimes independent editorial advice is important. Interviewees should be apprised (beforehand) of the probable need to trim back, edit, possibly change the order, of their text, to produce a smooth read. I'd also really like greater variety in the type of questions asked, tailored to subject matter and interviewees—to avoid a sameness in the products and to occasionally seek greater depth than generic questions can elicit. I guess there's no other way than the alternating Q and A format ... since it's a lot more work to make it a narrative interview. Tony (talk) 08:05, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
I don't see how WP:COI applies to an opinion piece. Shouldn't projects be free to write puff pierces promoting their project? Hawkeye7 (talk) 11:47, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
Agree, as long as it is disclosed (and, I am sure they will try to be factual) - moreover, this would obviously be just one kind of format -- and then the Signpost should just ask project/members to be available for questions comments in the in the comment section (kind of interactive) interview. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:57, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
For now, I have switched to another WikiProject to interview, that I have no COI with. Maybe if consensus is made, I could go back to the original idea. Jamesjpk (talk) 17:23, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Greeetings Evad37 and Jamesjpk, I have taken the liberty (being bold) and asked Megalibrarygirl to look into maybe writing the YouTube article. Thanks for all the communications. Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 17:36, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

@Evad37, Jamesjpk, and JoeHebda: Happy to help! Megalibrarygirl (talk) 17:49, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
Hi Evad37 and Jamesjpk and Megalibrarygirl, At the Newsroom Signpost Wikiproject Desk, Schedule section, I updated to indicate article WP Comics, and WP YouTube next. If that works for everyone, otherwise can be changed. Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 17:58, 13 June 2017 (UTC)
@Evad37, Jamesjpk, and JoeHebda: Hi everyone! So if I understand correctly, the YouTube project has been interviewed or do you still need interviews to be conducted? If the interviews are already done, I can use them to write the article so there is no COI problem. Just want to make sure I'm on the same page as everyone. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 16:49, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
Megalibrarygirl the interview was never conducted for WP:YouTube. Jamesjpk (talk) 23:50, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
Jamesjpk Thanks! I'll start interviewing. :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 23:53, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Next WikiProject Desk article

@Megalibrarygirl, Jamesjpk, and Evad37: Today, at Newsroom WP Desk I reserved workspace #2 for WikiProject YouTube interviews. Workspace #1 is reserved for WP Comics. Up to 8 WP interviews can be conducted simultaneously. Of these two, either one can "go first" for publishing. Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 17:35, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you editors for bringing Signpost back!

Wikipedia just wasn't the same without it. Jason Quinn (talk) 10:03, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Yes, thank you to the Signpost volunteers for all of your hard work! Tdslk (talk) 15:48, 11 June 2017 (UTC)
+1 to that. Publishing the signpost is a huge amount of work and much appreciated. It brings us as a community closer together. It provides accountability within our movement. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:00, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

I fixed a link on the Submissons page for my submisson but the original bad link still appears in the Main Newsroom.22mikpau (talk) 16:35, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

It probably needs to be purged from the page cache. See WP:PURGE. Bri (talk) 17:59, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Newsroom discussion for issue 2017-08-05

A big thanks to all the contributors to our current issue, that's finally published! Next publication date: Friday 28 July, 02:00 (UTC) (convert to local time) - Evad37 [talk] 02:10, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Humour is ready for a review. Ritchie333, has been wonderful and jumped right in to create some funny content. Thank you Ritchie333.
Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 00:50, 21 July 2017 (UTC)
Ritchie, your British spelling is making me crazy. Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 17:20, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
Are we on track for the Friday 2:00 UTC deadline? (ping Evad37)
TBH, there's only an about 50% chance at this point that Recent research will be in a publishable state - if not, it may need to go into the next issue. (Masssly and I had some trouble with our process of importing newly found papers to our todo list Etherpad, and didn't get to reach out in time to our contributor base with the usual invitation message.) Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 20:06, 27 July 2017 (UTC)
@Tbayer (WMF): I don't think we'll be in a position to publish for at least several days yet – probably not until next Friday (4 August), but possibly Wednesday or Thursday. Partly because I've been a bit under the weather the past few days and haven't done much, but also just generally there's a lot to do for each issue and only a few regular writers. - Evad37 [talk] 02:47, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
@Tbayer (WMF): Is RR likely to be ready in the next 24 to 36 hours, or did you want to postpone? - Evad37 [talk] 03:13, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
Evad: Yes, should have a publishable version ready by 15:00 UTC on August 4. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 08:38, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Outsider Art

I'm helping out with the traffic report and have no idea why Outsider Art had 1/2 million pageviews. What is the story on this?

Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 00:56, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Michael Bonesteel in the news maybe? The article Henry Darger had a 15x spike in pageviews on July 10 too. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:02, 24 July 2017 (UTC)
Correction: other artists' pageviews went up at the time same. I think it's because of this Reddit TIL, dated July 10 [1]. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:14, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Blog

The import tool isn't working. Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 11:43, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Found the script: here but lack the skill to use it. Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 11:49, 26 July 2017 (UTC)
I've done it manually - this blog post didn't have too much in the way of formatting, links, etc. - Evad37 [talk] 02:22, 1 August 2017 (UTC)
BTW, you can also try to use copy+paste in VisualEditor. Go to your sandbox, click the pencil icon to switch to VE, and then just paste in the blog post - it should at least preserve links. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 08:38, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Volunteers needed for next issue!

It would be nice if the Signpost could get back into a regular schedule. This Friday will be two weeks since our last issue, but there's still plenty to be done before the next one can be published – writing, copyediting, or even just suggesting items we shouldn't be missing. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom#Article_status for what each draft article needs. - Evad37 [talk] 00:58, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

Please discuss the next issue at the newsroom page
Evad37, I'd love to help but I have a few questions. Do you need an official position to contribute? What are best practices for copy-editing others' work? Is it a case of just editing the page or is there a more formal process, or expectation of discussion with original contributor or the relevant editor? What of attribution if a substantial edit needs to be made? —A L T E R C A R I  ✍ 04:39, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
@Altercari: Thanks for asking these questions. Here are some answers that will hopefully help you and others; Montanabw might be able to provide further information. - Evad37 [talk] 06:20, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
Do you need an official position to contribute? No, anyone can contribute. - Evad37 [talk] 06:20, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
What are best practices for copy-editing others' work? Pretty similar to WP:Basic copyediting and WP:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/How to, but just keep in mind the statement of purpose (i.e. these are news articles not encyclopedia articles), and that the Signpost has its own style guide. - Evad37 [talk] 06:20, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
Is it a case of just editing the page or is there a more formal process, or expectation of discussion with original contributor or the relevant editor? In general you can be bold with copyediting, as long as you are careful not to change the meaning. If something is unclear or you're not sure about a particular edit, then discuss it with the original contributor, or with other editors at the newsroom. - Evad37 [talk] 06:20, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
What of attribution if a substantial edit needs to be made? For individual items (bullet points or paragraphs), you can assert authorship at the end of the piece. For more substantial contributions, you can add your name to the byline near the top of the article (in the {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Signpost-article-header-v2}} template) - Evad37 [talk] 06:20, 19 June 2017 (UTC)
Thank you—brilliantly helpful!! —A L T E R C A R I  ✍ 07:35, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

All, I've been pitching in on featured content. What's the content cutoff date for this issue? Using "from May 21 through June 18" cutoff as listed at top of page. @Evad37: as you are the de facto editor in charge, I humbly recommend that you give us a deadline for cleaning up sections, then ruthlessly omit portions that aren't ready for publication this week. - Bri (talk) 02:35, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

@Bri: Lets make the deadline 48 hours from now: 07:30 UTC on Friday (June 23rd). I think that should be enough time to make N&N, ITM, RR, Featured, Traffic, and Tech reports (possibly also the Wikicup report) publishable. There's also a proposed op-ed at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions#Facto_Post that needs to be reviewed. - Evad37 [talk] 07:30, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Thanks, boss :) If my math is right, in the Pacific time zone, that deadline is shortly after midnight Thursday evening. - Bri (talk) 07:35, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, that's right. I've added a link above for easy timezone conversion - Evad37 [talk] 07:49, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Also: do comments on submissions go right on the submissions page? - Bri (talk) 07:46, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, that's probably best, so it all gets archived together (plus it is automatically transcluded to the newsroom) - Evad37 [talk] 07:49, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
WP:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions#Facto Post has been reviewed and revised, recommend accepting it for this issue. - Bri (talk) 21:07, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
@Evad37: Can you please give some specific suggestions as to what has to be done before we hit the deadline. Also, once the Signpost is back to normal running speed, I think that my work will become unnecessary and obsolete in the face of more experienced editors, so this is probably the last issue I will contribute to. It's been a blast, and thanks for all the experience. If you need my help again, just ping me or leave a message on my talk page. Bye. Eddie891 (talk) 17:56, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
@Eddie891: I've updated the article status section of the newsroom. And thanks for your help with this issue. Not sure if we will be back to (or approximating) normal by next issue, so if you want to stick around, even for just one section, that would be appreciated. - Evad37 [talk] 00:49, 22 June 2017 (UTC)
@Evad37: Who am I kidding? I'm addicted to writing articles in The Signpost. I'll stay 'till someone kicks me out. Eddie891 (talk) 01:09, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

Wandering talkpage

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Op-ed seems to be left over from the last edition ... I'm not sure what to do with it. Merge with Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-06-09/Op-ed maybe?? - Bri (talk) 22:51, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

@Bri: I think that is probably the thing to do. Alternatively you could just delete it. Eddie891 (talk) 00:19, 23 June 2017 (UTC)
Comments moved. To prevent this sort of thing from happening again, I've been adding {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Use newsroom}} to draft articles' talk pages. - Evad37 [talk] 02:22, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Greetings, I posted my first Gallery article and hope it is okay. I see there was a Gallery in the February 27 Signpost, so I'm hoping this Gallery can go next. Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 15:40, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the gallery JoeHebda. I meant to respond sooner, but never got around to it (sorry for that). With the gallery articles, I think that ideally there should be some sort of link to other stories in that edition (e.g. to an item in Featured content report, or like the February gallery connection with the In The Media item) – but that doesn't have to be the case every time – something that just makes you smile or "to brighten your day" is also good to have on occasion - Evad37 [talk] 02:42, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

RSS problems

Thank you for bringing the RSS feed back; very nice. I am, however, getting multiple duplicates of every post—look like every single back post is pulled when a new post appears. Can someone look into that, please?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 26, 2017; 17:01 (UTC)

@Ezhiki: What URL are you using? It should be: http://tools.wmflabs.org/mediawiki-feeds/feed.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fw%2F&category=Category%3AWikipedia+Signpost+RSS+feed&title=The+Signpost which seems to be working at the moment. Sam Wilson 23:44, 26 June 2017 (UTC)
That's the one. I'm not saying it's not working (it is); it's just that I'm getting duplicates whenever a new post is published. When the 6/23 edition came out, for example, my RSS client pulled an additional copy of every post all the way back to February (I'm subscribed to receive one item per story).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); June 27, 2017; 13:54 (UTC)
Any thoughts? Am I the only one experiencing this?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 7, 2017; 13:59 (UTC)
@Ezhiki: Is this still happening?
@Samwilson: Would editing of previous issues' pages (to add the next edition links) be changing the unique url identifies? - Evad37 [talk] 02:51, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
@Evad37: Yes indeed! :-( The permalinks are of the form <guid>https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=790634432</guid> so change for every revision (the oldid is a revision ID). These should probably use curid (the page ID, which only changes if a page is moved). The trouble with that is that the feed content won't be updated if the guid doesn't change. It looks like the solution might be to set lastBuildDate to the revision date.... I'll look into this! Sorry about the badness, @Ezhiki. I've also recently added iCalendar support to mediawiki-feeds, but doing so has bumped the PHP version requirement to 7, so I'm thinking that's a silly thing to have done and shall look for an .ical library that doesn't do that. Thanks for reporting bugs! Sam Wilson 03:30, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

(The new version of mediawiki-feeds is usable at https://archives.org.au/feeds/ if anyone's interested.) Sam Wilson 03:34, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

@Ezhiki and Evad37: I've updated it to use the full canonical URL for each page as the GUID, so the duplicate items problem should be fixed. The installation on Toolforge is updated (I removed the PHP7 requirement). Let me know if it works. Sam Wilson 09:03, 15 July 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for looking into this! I did receive about 35 posts when the 7/15 issue came out; that included two copies of each 7/15 post and some duplicates and triplicates of posts dating as far back as 6/23. That was before the tweaks above, though. I'll keep an eye on it and will report here if the problem re-occurs when a new issue is out (in August?). Thanks again; your help is much appreciated!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 17, 2017; 13:32 (UTC)

Newsroom discussion for issue 2017-09-25

Thanks everyone who helped with the last issue, now finally published. Next issue date: Friday 22 September 2017, but try to have content written by the end of Wednesday 20th UTC (convert to local time). - Evad37 [talk] 03:56, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Update: Will be looking to publish in the next 12 to 24 hours. News and notes might just end up being bullet points, but the other sections seem close to being done, just needing a bit of tidying up, copyediting, and/or titles/blurbs. - Evad37 [talk] 02:04, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Newsroom discussion for issue 2017-10-23

Next issue date: Friday 13 October 2017. Thanks all, Evad37 [talk] 02:55, 25 September 2017 (UTC) @Barbara (WVS) and Eddie891: Just wondering, as I'm new at this, what's the purpose of the hundreds of &nbsp; codes is in the current Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Featured content? Thanks,  SchreiberBike | ⌨  00:46, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

The &nbsp; prevents a linebreak between adjacent words (see WP:LINEBREAK#&nbsp;), though I have no idea why they were added in these edits [2][3] – we should be following MOS:NBSP for when to use them. @Barbara (WVS): Did you mean to add those &nbsp;s? - Evad37 [talk] 02:44, 11 October 2017 (UTC)
Someone send me a wl to a page explaining what all these hyphens, dashes and other special coded characters mean and how to use them. Thank you. Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 22:23, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
Fixed the non-breaking spaces problem, I think. Unless I "over fixed" it by removing some that should have been there. ☆ Bri (talk) 03:26, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
@Barbara (WVS): For images, use {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Filler image-v2|image=|caption= <hr />}}, filling in image= with the image you want to use, and caption= with the caption you want. Eddie891 Talk Work 23:01, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

@Evad37: where are we in the publication process? Eddie891 Talk Work 23:29, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Will be looking to publish late today or early tomorrow (UTC). News and notes might need a bit of a touch up. Also, everything needs to have a title and a blurb. - Evad37 [talk] 00:38, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
@Evad37: Asking just in case there is a chance that it may become next weekend: In that situation, I would greatly appreciate a heads-up, as it would enable us to still put together a "recent research" after all (having had to bow out earlier). Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 22:18, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
I think it's pretty much done, I've just got to get the time to check everything over and go through the publishing process - should be later today. And then the next issue should be mid-November. - Evad37 [talk] 05:13, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

 Published! Thanks everyone who wrote and/or copyedited the articles - Evad37 [talk] 02:43, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Oopsie, we left an "In the Media" placeholder image here. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:51, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
@Bri: Wasn't that meant to be representative of Facebook's small i that brings up publisher details? - Evad37 [talk] 03:18, 23 October 2017 (UTC)
Okay maybe? Was thrown by the template code that includes "Filler image". I reverted myself. The image doesn't really match Facebook's small i but I guess it is better than nothing. ☆ Bri (talk) 04:35, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Newsroom discussion for issue 2017-11-24

Next issue will be mid-November. Thanks all, - Evad37 [talk] 02:55, 25 September 2017 (UTC) Updated 02:32, 25 October 2017

Evad, do we already have a more concrete publication date scheduled at this point? For Recent research, we'll be aiming to invite contributors sometime in the next few days (this weekend, likely), and it would be useful to be able to state a more precise deadline. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 02:49, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

@Tbayer (WMF) and others: Will be aiming for this Friday, 17 November. Sorry for late response, I thought I posted something earlier, but obviously it (or I) didn't save the edit. - Evad37 [talk] 01:53, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the update - this might get tricky for RR, as I've already been telling potential contributors that it's likely going to be the weekend or later (as a guess based on the lack of edits to this page). Will see what we can do. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 03:24, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
Based on the last few issues we probably won't actually have everything done by Friday, but hopefully most sections will be - Evad37 [talk] 04:32, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
Maybe it's too late but this community ban might be newsworthy as it involves abuse of power/trust by a paid editor that it deeply concerning for many. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:26, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
@Bri: Sure, if you want to write it up (or make a start on it), go ahead - Evad37 [talk]
Started at User:Bri/Paid editing while in a position of trust and included another case just opened involving an administrator and paid editing. I'll leave a note when I think it's ready for review. I'm planning to write this up as a straight news item not an op-ed, so think about where it belongs in the issue. Maybe news and notes?? ☆ Bri (talk) 17:43, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Ready for first review. I'd especially like feedback on whether this reads like news or an op-ed. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:32, 20 November 2017 (UTC)
Looks good. It does reads like a news report to me, and I think it will fit into News and notes. - Evad37 [talk] 00:51, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
@Bri: I've copied what you had into News and notes; will make some coipyedits there - Evad37 [talk] 01:22, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
Be advised that one of the COIN interlocutors has made it clear he will open an Arbcom case on this. We may want to include that statement in the article, or wait until it actually happens, or just add a followup in a future issue. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:25, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
Lets wait and see; if happens before (or very soon after) we publish we can include a ssentence, and if it happens later it can be brought up in the comments (and covered in the next issue) - Evad37 [talk] 01:31, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Launched in the last several hours: WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Mister Wiki. I'd like to try to did shoehorn this in, since we are still some time from publishing. If editor-in-chief disagrees, can revert my 22:10 edit. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:11, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Looks fine - Evad37 [talk] 23:18, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
Will the arbitration report section remain blank for the upcoming issue? ☆ Bri (talk) 02:15, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
Probably, unless that's an offer to write it? (Or unless someone else volunteers) - Evad37 [talk] 03:27, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
If my math is right, if there are no votes to decline, Mister Wiki could be accepted as soon as 18 hours from now (i.e. at 10:45, 23 Nov) based on the current 4/0/0 Arbcom tally. Not sure if there will be an opportunity for me to do the writeup but I'll look at past issues and see how hard it is. I know I shouldn't ask, but is there a no-kidding deadline? ☆ Bri (talk) 16:13, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
Arb report doesn't have to be long, e.g. 2016-11-04. Plus we probably should be mentioning the WP:ACE2017 elections. As for deadlines, I do really want to have it out by around 02:00 UTC Friday (convert to local time), about 24h from now, (but we'll see how it goes). - Evad37 [talk] 23:26, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

@Tbayer (WMF): How's RR coming? - Evad37 [talk] 23:18, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

@Evad37: Sorry about the delay! I should have something publishable ready tonight PST (in about 9h). Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 22:50, 22 November 2017 (UTC)
@Tbayer (WMF): ? - Evad37 [talk] 01:05, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
 Done - Evad37 [talk] 01:03, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

Typo - In the media

In the photo caption, "Anies Baswedan, who is governing Jarkarta in the manner of a Wikipedia editor managing articles", there is a typo in Jakarta. JennyOz (talk) 02:41, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you editors

This is just a thank you note to all editors who created and delivered a new edition of the signpost. You guys are awesome. Thank you ! —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:11, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

I second that. Tony (talk) 11:30, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
Agree, excellent update. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:20, 5 August 2017 (UTC)
I third or fourth the thanks. Congratulations on breathing new life into the Signpost. I missed it during that long stretch when it didn't go out. Good job, and keep it up. — Maile (talk) 21:58, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

December issue

  • In The Media: This American Life writeup by Bluerasberry correctly describes their misunderstandings of the Wikipedia community but perhaps doesn't go far enough. He encouraged me to bring my thoughts here. First of all you might want to read the transcript here. It contains such zingers as "Anyone could use it [the photograph] ... for free ... that was just stealing ... but now anyone could download it from Wikipedia!", "This decision of Wikipedia's to declare the photo public domain ... it was the moment when mother nature was shoved aside..." and "Wikimedia just gave him the finger ..." As Bluerasberry correctly points out this totally conflates Wikipedia the work, the community, and the WMF. But it also has really obnoxious and strident tone towards our decisions, and doesn't address the central issue that we aren't inventing law but interpreting it, maybe in favor of open-knowledge projects towards which we are biased, but nonetheless acting within the same framework as the photographer. In fact the article never mentions open knowledge, or any communities associated with it including the Wikipedia community. The first quote above actually bothers me the most, by ignoring the fact that PD images are obtainable anywhere by their nature; they are reporting this as if Wikipedia (Wikimedia Commons actually but I won't quibble) is an especially devious and antisocial repository of illicit images, like The Pirate Bay or something. I'm struggling with how these things should be captured in the context of a response to a media piece which, seems to me, isn't deserving of the title journalism at all but rather entertainment. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:07, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
The content which is there is first thoughts. When I wrote it even I did not know how to feel or respond. I think we should avoid discussion of whether this is journalism; This American Life is the world's most popular podcast so either it is journalism or otherwise we should avoid labeling them, because they define a concept of reporting. I have a lot of sympathy for the photographer. Regardless of who is right or wrong, that person feels hurt and harassed. They never asked to be at the middle of a social movement with thousands of commentators, and no one should be expected to know copyright law like the Wikimedia community.
I would like to direct this piece into something positive where we can acknowledge that people get confused about Wikimedia and copyright, and assert the Wiki perspective, and also be introspective about what we can do better. Obviously the photographer and the podcast put a lot of thought into their show. My intuition is that they looked for official statements or an explanation and perhaps they failed to find them. Could it be the case that no one from the wiki community has ever talked with the photographer? This Signpost piece could advance that conversation. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:29, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
It might work better split between basic coverage in ITM, and an op-ed for you (either of you) to delve further into what's wrong the piece, give your take on it, make a response, be introspective, etc. - Evad37 [talk] 14:17, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
I'll think about whether another op-ed would be a good thing, since an earlier one by Newyorkbrad appeared in the 2016-01-20 edition. It might be at least worth contrasting technology.ie's excellent podcast and interview here. They do go into animal-made art, open knowledge, and even the WMF transparency report that discusses the issue. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:55, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
I just found an ITM (2014-08-13) that discussed the technology.ie coverage of the monkey selfie; it also discusses reactions to the same issue in the WMF transparency report. So maybe there's even less than I thought worth rehashing today. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:08, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
I am watching the suggested deadline in 5 days. I am offline next three days (till Monday). I will re-draft this then, probably following the advice to not repeat the last Signpost piece on this and then to compare and contrast. Maybe this will be an "in the news" and an "opinion", or maybe just in the news. I need to think a bit. I am still on this and aware of deadlines but out for a bit. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:20, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi All! Just wanted to note that with the closure of the Wikipedia Women in Red Contest, I plan to be pack on editing the Signpost in December. That is... If you guys can still use an inexperienced writer like me. Eddie891 Talk Work 00:47, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Eddie, good to see you're still around. Welcome back - Evad37 [talk] 00:59, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
Are you suggesting a cut and paste, then a major editing spree combined with taking all the accolades for the brilliant prose and then claiming that it was written by me? Sounds like it will be future fodder for a humour piece. Barbara (WVS) ✐ ✉ 23:44, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
@Evad37: I see you're probably putting together the issue ... if there's 30 minutes I'm going to try to put something up about this. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:20, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
@Bri: Sure, I've still got to finish off tech news and work out what to do with News & notes - Evad37 [talk] 02:26, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
Okay I think this addition is coherent but it could use another pair of eyes. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:49, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Who

...pushes the publish button? I need the space to work on another riveting article. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ and Merry Christmas 12:30, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

@Barbara (WVS): Sorry, I've been offline for a few days. I will be publishing later today – but you can always start drafting in your userspace, and move it over to the newsroom pages later - Evad37 [talk] 01:50, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
You are amazing. You probably doubled the content in one day. I am sorry I was so impatient. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ and Merry Christmas 15:08, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
I think we should give Evad a virtual pat on the back for all his good work on this issue ☆ Bri (talk) 15:27, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Gallery posting - Chickens

Greetings, Since the next issue Humour article is about chickens, I thought it would be also good for the gallery. First posting is now "out there". Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 18:29, 18 September 2017 (UTC)


Chapter update Actrial

You note this "Wikimedia France held a General Assembly on 9 September 2011:". Sure that the date is correct ? --Gpesenti (talk) 02:55, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a typo. Fixed now. Evad37 [talk] 03:09, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Newsroom discussion for issue 2018-01-16

Proposed next issue dates:
Writing deadline: January 10
Publication: January 12
There is a year-end Top 50 report under construction at User:Stormy clouds/sandbox/AnnualTop25Report. We're working to publish that very shortly after the new year starts.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  20:38, 29 December 2017 (UTC)
@Evad37: Would we already be able to set a more specific publication date? As always, for the purpose of soliciting contributions to "Recent research", it would be good to know it at least a week in advance (I have already been getting questions about this). Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 06:52, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

More publishing

  • I was thinking (always a dangerous thing)...and I thought some more. And I was looking, and I found. Through my own experience, I have come to the conclusion that for this upcoming year, maybe we should try to do a twice a month (every two weeks) schedule. It might sound like a lot, but I am confident that I can handle the Featured content, and probably In The Media, and (given what to write about) I can probably write a fairly awful news and notes. Traffic report is already written. Of course everyone else has to sign on as well, but thought I might throw it out there. Evad37, Tbayer (WMF) Bri and Barbara (WVS), let me know if you think we can handle it. Eddie891 Talk Work 02:42, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
No concerns regarding "Recent research", the section isn't meant to be present in every issue anyway (as indicated in the overview table below, it's aimed to come out once a month).
I think your idea makes great sense in general, in particular from the reader's perspective. The current issue is a bit of an embarrassment of riches, with more than 17,000 words across 11 sections. It's great that we get so much interesting content worthy of inclusion, but it might be easier to digest if it came in two fortnightly portions. That said, this may increase the editorial overhead a bit. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 03:17, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
I can do it. The ONLY reason I can do it is because you 'guys' help me out so much. I don't mind the reversions or edits that remove or change the content I contribute related to the SP. It's kind of freeing. I feel like the writing is more of an art form with WAY more latitude for personal expression, so ya, let's do it. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ and Merry Christmas 00:01, 20 December 2017 (UTC)
I've thought about it and can't say one way or the other yet. Participation depends on real life too much. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:07, 25 December 2017 (UTC)
  • We also might want to try some sort of reaching out to editors, like the proposed 500 edit threshold or something. It might sound inferable, but Charlesjsharp, an experienced editor and contributor of over 40 Featured Pictures had never heard of The Signpost until I approached him. Eddie891 Talk Work 02:42, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

I would like to help out more with the featured topics but need to know 'where' to get the information. Is there a page listing the featured lists with dates? The same for images? Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ and Merry Christmas 14:08, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

@Barbara (WVS): WP:GO lists all forms of featured content on a week-by-week basis - Evad37 [talk] 16:32, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
Personally, I also check: Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Featured log for featured lists, Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log for Featured Articles, and Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/December-2017 for featured pictures. Bear in mind that featured pictures lists failed nominations as well. Eddie891 Talk Work 20:27, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Arbitration report

My prior RfA came up at the Mister Wiki workshop, which will be a topic of the next arbitration report. It just occurred to me that maybe somebody else should take the helm for the upcoming issue. No hurt feelings if the answer is I should take a break on this one. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:18, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

One of the arbs stated they are on track for a proposed decision by 29 December ☆ Bri (talk) 20:18, 26 December 2017 (UTC)
I couldn't see anything on the workshop page. If this edit to the evidence page [6] is all you're talking about, I don't think you need to worry. - Evad37 [talk] 03:30, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
Sorry for the miscue, yes that was it in the evidence page. Thanks for the feedback; will proceed as per usual. ☆ Bri (talk) 03:51, 27 December 2017 (UTC)
FYI I've been keeping Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Arbitration report up-to-date every day this week in case I can't return to it for any reason. We are currently one vote away from de-sysop, so I think this will be an interesting report to many people. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:16, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
Heads-up, this might involve more feedback than usual. I've asked two editors who commented in the latest case's workshop to think about providing me copy to include in the article. One of the involved parties also will probably be commenting here on the draft. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:59, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
  • Look... I don't wanna be the nitpicky asshole trying to "control" the story, and you have of course editorial freedom on how you wish to report the story. Nevertheless, I'm going to dump some thoughts here, feel free to disregard or heed them a you see fit. These are things I believe other interested readers might bring up after reading if published as i.
  • Blurb "for concealed dealing with a PR firm" -- the dealings with MisterWiki were not concealed. The dealings with Soetermans to bypass normal AfC review were what was concealed.
  • I don't feel it is fair to mention the proposed Finding of Fact related to the checkuser review request without also mentioning its inclusion was solidly opposed and voted against by a majority of Arbitrators, especially when the current wording presents it as "equivalent" (without distinction) to FoF 2A which is mentioned right afterwards and which was approved by the commitee.
  • "Process vulnerabilities such as (...) sockpuppet investigations were concerns for some" -- wording doesn't make sense, SPI is not a "process vulnerability". Should either mention what the discussed vulnerabilities of SPI are (and link to their mention, as you've done with "corruption of AfC"), or since that was a very minority opinion opposed by most (including CUs and clerks), perhaps not mention it if it can't be both balanced and concise.
  • "It was left to an open RfC whether (...)" --I think you're missing a few words there....
In any case, as an avid reader of the Signpost for many years, thanks giving some of your time to contribute to its survival. :) Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 22:18, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Note

Hey User:Bri, you probably want to mention this: Wikipedia_talk:Administrators#RfC_about_paid_use_of_administrator_tools along with the village pump RfC (which actually started before the arbcom case was filed). Also you wrote that there was no "new policy" but there never is, really - arbcom just interprets/applies... There are no broad DS or anything like that, which is happy. Jytdog (talk) 22:16, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

proposed content

In response to this request

Incorporated as op-ed

A lot of people thought this was a case about the principle of whether it is OK for admins to edit for pay, commercially, but it wasn't. It was really, really local – just about how Salvidrim! conducted himself and what the consequences would be. It involved Soetermans a bit but there was no real controversy there.

The most surprising thing in the case to me, is the 2nd stated principle, which I will quote here:

2) Because Wikipedia is intended to be written from a neutral point of view, it is necessary that conflicts of interest are properly disclosed, and articles or edits by conflicted editors are reasonably available for review by others. Editors are expected to comply with both the purpose and intent of the applicable policies, as well as their literal wording..

You won't find that in writing anywhere else in Wikipedia, but I believe it expresses the living consensus in Wikipedia, and it is present in every other publishing institution that takes its responsibilities to readers seriously. We as an editing community are living our way into what that means concretely.

The key findings of fact were about Salvidrim!'s poor judgment in avoiding community review. In the surface of the decision it is clear that the avoidance this was about avoidance of review of conflicted edits. In discussion of the desysop decision, you will see that this was also about avoidance of review, in the sense of Salvidrim not going to RfA himself to assess the level of community trust in him; the fact that we were having an Arbcom case at all, became part of the issue. Salvidrim! was transparent about his paid editing, and he was very forthcoming in providing private evidence to Arbcom, and everybody appreciated both.

The desysop was not a happy outcome but in my view was appropriate. I think even those opposing the desysop, wished that Salv had put his admin status up for community review after all this broke, and before the Arbcom case was filed.

A first draft... that is 304 words so would need some trimming Jytdog (talk) 00:15, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Update

Hi all. I'm going to be without a computer for several days. and editing on a phone can be a bit tricky. Anyway, I think we can set the next issue for Friday 12 January, and thereafter we can try a two-weekly schedule (so the following issue would be 26 Jan), as suggested above - Evad37 [talk] 05:35, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm back properly now; sorry I haven't been around much for this issue. I see that we've got several sections that are close to being ready, and I'll write up something for the Tech report and News and notes later today. Then we should be able to publish late tonight or early tomorrow (UTC). @Bri, @Eddie891, and others: Is there anything you still need me to look at for this issue? (I've got a lot more notifications/watchlist changes than usual to go through) - Evad37 [talk] 00:49, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Just the question on your personal talkpage ☆ Bri (talk) 01:04, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Nope, Looks like I won't have an interview completed. Waiting on the NYPL and the BPL, as well as TRM to respond. Eddie891 Talk Work 02:09, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
@Evad37: Forgot that I had sent you email about the Traffic Report. It seems kinda important to me. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:05, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for posting the update here (and to Bri for notifying me on my talk page)! Unfortunately this came a bit late for Recent research (as mentioned, we need a week or so to invite contributors and give them time for their write-up) ; we'll postpone it to the January 26 issue then. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 11:46, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Great job

Thank you new contributors: Stormy clouds, Serendipodous, igordebraga, JFG, Soulbust, A lad insane, and OZOO - for the work you put into the traffic report. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ 11:00, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

English question

In Traffic report, should "swathe" be changed to "swath"? Also, same section, I don't think "purveyors" is the right term. Maybe they meant "perusers"? There are other errors here, "is owed to" vice "owes to", "rambling" vice "ambling" but I'm reluctant to go hog-wild with fixups, especially considering this is a reprint of what was published elswehere. Maybe just fix the glaring error in the lede, if it is an error. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:04, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

I've fixed "swathe" both in the Traffic report and the original. (Thanks for pointing it out.) The others are in the Round Table Discussion section and are signed by individual editors. I thought it made the most sense to not copy edit that as closely.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  20:36, 15 January 2018 (UTC)
Cool. In that case I'm going to have another once-over of the table, and mark the whole section copyedited and ready to go. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:53, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Newsroom discussion for issue 2018-02-05

And we're published. Thanks everyone! Proposed next issue date: 26 January 2018 (try to have content written a day or two beforehand). Let's see if we can make it happen. - Evad37 [talk] 16:04, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

@Tbayer (WMF): Just checking how you are going with RR - Evad37 [talk] 02:49, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

@Evad37: Honestly I'm not sure we will have it finalized a day or two beforehand, but there should be something publishable available by Friday evening UTC. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 03:01, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

Evad37: I'm incredibly pressed for time right now, but I'll see if I can have a publishable In The Media done by Thursday end. Barbara (WVS), Montanabw, Bri: If you have time, Featured content and various special publications need copyediting. Bluerasberry If you could help (again) with In The Media, I'd be greatly indebted. Serendipodous: When I e-mailed you, you said you might consider writing. Now is your time to see if you can maybe whip something up in any of the undone sections (particularly a traffic report). Bri, are there any Arbitration reports that need work? Let's see if we can get an issue together. Sorry for the mass pinging, but I don't know who would like to be pinged. If anyone does not want to be pinged, let me know. Eddie891 Talk Work 02:58, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Also under time constraints but trying to put together an Arbitration Report quickly today. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:18, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
Blog import

Eddie, not sure what you wanted done with "importing" the wikimedia blog. I tried to run the tool supplied and it errored out. ☆ Bri (talk) 23:28, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

@Bri: By the way, instead of the tool, you can also try using copy+paste and VisualEditor, which should preserve links and most of the other formatting. (Edit or create your sandbox page, switch to VE using the pencil icon, and paste in content from the blog.) Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 00:13, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
Tbayer, thanks for the tip. Have done a very, very rough import to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Blog. ☆ Bri (talk) 00:34, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
I thought, though the tool errored out for me, it might work for someone else. Thanks for importing it anyways. Eddie891 Talk Work 13:29, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
If the import tool can be revived, it would be a Good Thing. After the cut-paste workaround, there was a lot of manual cleanup required to restore lost external links. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:52, 28 January 2018 (UTC)
RfA desert

For News and Notes, this year looks more like 2016 than 2017 according to Wikipedia:RFA by month. If we have another year of <20 successful RfAs, things will not look good. Net attrition looks like it's 10 to 20 a year, commentary to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-06-23/News and notes by Widefox says 50. I'm reaching out for more info on this for a possible report.

Another thought: in the great 2011 RfA Reform debate, it was noted "August 2011 saw only one promotion, a monthly low that has only been reached one other time in RfA history". So, a phenomenon that was alarming or even worth reconsidering the whole RfA process then, isn't getting any attention at all now.

Takeaway: Is it to soon to say the December 2015 RfA reforms were followed by a one-month uptick, followed by a resumption of the slow slide that had existed before then? ☆ Bri (talk) 03:12, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Publishing soon?

Evad37: Things are finishing up around here. Can we expect a tech report? Otherwise, might consider publishing soon. Eddie891 Talk Work 22:17, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Bri: Looks like I can only get in contact with you. Is Evad the only one who can publish? It's great that he edits The Signpost, but this is getting a bit out of hand. Eddie891 Talk Work 20:44, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
As far as I know, yes. I'll contact someone offline who used to work on Signpost and see if he has any ideas. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:01, 4 February 2018 (UTC)
Hi guys, sorry, I haven't been well lately and haven't been spending much time online. If either of you want to be a backup publisher (or co-editor-in-chief or whatever), you just need to get a few user rights here and on Meta, and then I can set you up with the publishing script.
As for this issue, it looks like there's just a few things to fix up for In the media, and Traffic report; but News and notes is quite far away from being ready, so should probably be postponed to the next issue. - Evad37 [talk] 03:38, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Newsroom discussion for issue 2018-02-20

Hello traffic report editors - the Humour article is a traffic report of sorts. Editing suggestions are welcome here. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ 13:08, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Update: So we're about a day late, but most sections are pretty close to complete in terms of content, and just need title, blurb, and/or copyediting (apart for In The Media, which will probably have to be left out). I plan to clean things up a bit later today, and publish in about 12 to 24 hours from hours from now. (Pinging @Barbara (WVS), Tbayer (WMF), Eddie891, and Bri). - Evad37 [talk] 02:16, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Have slammed out a quick Arbitration Report. If we have to publish with it, it's probably good enough. I'll try to work on it a bit more before deadline. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:44, 20 February 2018 (UTC)
I'll take a stab at titling and blurbing and would like to emphasize that what I propose is more of a brainstorming activity than a final edit. So anyone is invited to be extremely bold in changing, deleting and modifying. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS) ✐  ✉ 07:40, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

Now published! Thanks everyone - Evad37 [talk]

👍 Like ☆ Bri (talk) 17:15, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

New editor-in-chief

It has just come to my attention that there is a new editor in chief of The Signpost, User:Evad37. I would like to say good luck to him, and I hope that his taking the reigns will help the signpost get back on track, and would like to bid farewell to the former Editor-in-chief, Pete Forsyth. You will be missed. Good luck Evad! Eddie891 Talk Work 15:59, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

REINS! (The rein is used to guide and control! ARRGH! Pet Peeve). But yes, hooray! Montanabw(talk) 05:09, 1 October 2017 (UTC)
+1 Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:05, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
Ditto. Evad37, thanks for taking it on. SarahSV (talk) 16:30, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
🙌 Wishing everyone here the best. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 16:36, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the well wishes everyone, though it's really just noting/formalising the defacto job I've been doing for the last few issues - Evad37 [talk] 00:25, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm glad you've formalised this, Evad. Tony (talk) 04:46, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
Congratulations and best wishes, Evad37. Thank you for serving, Peteforsyth; enjoyed working with you. --Rosiestep (talk) 04:52, 3 September 2017 (UTC)
+1 to everyone, thanks to Evad37 for stepping up and getting out some great issues already, and thanks to Pete for all the time and energy he devoted to the Signpost earlier!
I have updated the About page, and in the process also removed some recently added social media and contact links that seem obsolete currently.
However, we should make sure that the credentials for the longstanding @wikisignpost Twitter account are transitioned to the new editor-in-chief, as it has been the case since 2009. (I myself ran it when I was editor-in-chief in 2010/11, and handed over the password afterwards.) Who has these currently? And who is administrator of the Signpost's Facebook page?
Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:42, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
PS: I understand Evad37 has access to the Twitter handle now. Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:48, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
The "In the Media" section of issue 10 had a reference to the former editor in the "send us feedback" link. Might want to fix that. ☆ Bri (talk) 04:51, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
 Done, for this week and the preload template[7] - Evad37 [talk] 13:32, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Social Media

Hello! I noticed that the twitter account of The Signpost has not posted since August 2016. Who is in charge of that? The Facebook account is similar, having not posted since Feb. 2017. Eddie891 Talk Work 14:18, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

clearly my reading skills are severely impaired, sorry. Eddie891 Talk Work 02:25, 21 December 2017 (UTC)
Isn't that answered at #New editor-in-chief? ☆ Bri (talk) 21:37, 17 December 2017 (UTC)
Bri Yes, but there is no reason why these accounts have not posted anything. Eddie891 Talk Work 02:31, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
I have been posting on twitter, last post was about 2 hours ago: https://twitter.com/wikisignpost/status/942918928128286720 . I haven't yet gone into facebook (but apparently that wasn't really ever that active, from what I've heard). - Evad37 [talk] 02:35, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
If either of you want to be involved in posting on social media, send me an email - Evad37 [talk] 02:38, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
Is there a reason for not simply posting on the Wikipedia Weekly page of Facebook? Tony (talk) 05:16, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Newsroom discussion for issue 2018-03-29

Proposed next issue date: 6 March 2018 - Evad37 [talk] 14:57, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

@Tbayer (WMF): If you want to start it, I can copyedit today or Thursday (Pacific time). ☆ Bri (talk) 18:54, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Bri, but we always need a week or so runway to solicit contributions (give potential reviewers enough time for their writeups after we send out the invite highlighting new papers to cover). It looks like we will need to keep it to the next issue - hope it will still come out this month. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 04:01, 14 March 2018 (UTC)
  • Review requested I recently started a new Wikimedia job at a university. I am conflicted about self promotion but I also recognize that it is important to report precedent and seek community support and collaboration from anyone who might be in a similar position or want to partner. I posted a blurb about my position at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/News and notes and while I did that I also tried to draft some news of broader interest. I would appreciate any third party being direct in passing judgement on the issue of whether people like me should self-report Wikipedia / Wikimedia jobs and projects in this publication. Aside from that the general news story needs a review. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:57, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
  • SchreiberBike: If you have the time, there are several features in need of copyediting. Eddie891 Talk Work 14:05, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, but not now. I've sent you an email.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  14:48, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
I can't do the April Fool's humor and very disappointed about that. I will be more available for the next issue. Best Regards, Barbara ✐  ✉ 18:25, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
Wish I could just say "yes", but I don't have the publishing tools. ☆ Bri (talk) 14:25, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
Would you object if I request for the tools for you on your behalf? I really think we need a 'co-editor-in-chief'. Are you willing to do that? Eddie891 Talk Work 16:16, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry, Barbara (WVS), Eddie891, Megalibrarygirl, SchreiberBike, and Montanabw: Newsroom team, hoping to make it as easy as possible for Evad to publish when he is able. We still need copyedit of several sections that I feel I've contributed too much to, to do it myself. In the media, featured content, traffic report are "green" just as soon as the copyedit is done. Thanks! ☆ Bri (talk) 17:01, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Awesome, thanks. I've been trying to get publication of the issue started; not having tools myself this means asking a current or former Signpost ed, I think. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:32, 24 March 2018 (UTC)

News Flash

Several of us have tried to get hold of Evad37 and are a bit worried about him. However, I've located some publication instructions for publication and will attempt to publish it myself today. Please don't make any further edits on material for the current issue to avoid edit conflicts. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:20, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Op-ed?

If I wrote up my thoughts on the technology wishlist and what it means to Wikipedia would you consider publishing them? Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:33, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to review what you've got. Could you post a link? ☆ Bri (talk) 19:13, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
Cool. I'll write it up and point you to it when I'm done, Bri. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:21, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Actually, would you consider this instead, Bri? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:30, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

You have tons of leeway in choice of subject, but I think it could use some work on formulation of a central idea that is then defended.
I'm trying to find any guides for op-eds, but for now, are you familiar with one of the essay writing forms or inverted pyramid journalism style? That might be a starting point. ☆ Bri (talk) 00:46, 5 January 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for your thoughtful response, Bri. There is a lot that can be said about Wikipedia, knowledge and reliability and I thought I might start a conversation by launching a couple of javelins at the WMF ED and board. But you're right. If I'm using this platform I should at least make a cogent argument and offer serious background. I'll read your links and do some more reading about epistemology and, if you don't mind, ping you a little further down the road. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:06, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Non-breaking spaces

Is there a trick to seeing non-breaking spaces? Here for example, I replaced some non-breaking spaces with regular ones so the text justifies properly. I can view the code and see the &nbsp; or &#160;, but I can't edit it there. The only way I can figure out to remove the non-breaking spaces is to look at the text with various window widths and see where it is breaking funny. Also, any idea how these are getting added in?  SchreiberBike | ⌨  05:21, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

I think I've seen similar problems when cut-paste transferring from page histories. In the cleanup you and I did on FC, it seems to always be around wikilinked terms, so maybe that is a clue. ☆ Bri (talk) 06:25, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
I wonder if it was caused by this bug:
The fix for it was deployed yesterday. Since the 2017 wikitext editor ("New wikitext mode" in Beta features) is a mode within VisualEditor, it seems likely to be affected by the bug, even if it wasn't mentioned in the Phabricator task (until I asked about it). I see the edits by Eddie891 were done with the 2017 wikitext editor (Tag: 2017 source edit). Do you use Chrome or Safari, Eddie891? --Pipetricker (talk) 12:36, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
I alternate between both chrome and safari. Is that a problem? Eddie891 Talk Work 18:21, 12 January 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, what I meant to ask was if you use any of Chrome and Safari (which one doesn't matter), and thus could be affected by the above bug (assuming my guess that it affected the 2017 wikitext editor is correct).
Note: I neither know the details of the above mentioned bug nor have I studied the Featured content page's revision history closely. So the cause of the non-breaking spaces may be something else.
But if that bug is what caused this, it has now been fixed, so all that remains is cleaning up after it. We'll see. --Pipetricker (talk) 00:55, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for looking into it. We'll see if it comes up again on the next issue. I was hoping for a trick that would make a non-breaking space look different in the edit window (maybe a special font). I've searched around the web and had no luck finding that.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  01:50, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
@SchreiberBike: Paste into a Word document and search for ^s [8]. If you don't have Word, then in Windows, you can paste into Notepad, save as Unicode, then run DEBUG over it in a command prompt, and look for 00 A0. But that's kind of a pain ☆ Bri (talk) 04:45, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
@Bri: The Word trick works for me if I copy the display text or the text in the dif window to Word, but not if I copy the wikitext in the edit window. With Show formatting turned on in Word, I can see the non-breaking spaces as something looking like a "°" (degree symbol). With that on, I can look from Word to wikitext and edit the wikitext, so that works but its less than optimal. Debug appears to be beyond my skill level. Thanks for fixing it all though.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  23:46, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
It's very strange that it didn't work for you, then, because I pasted in the wikitext from the editing window (in Chrome) to Word 2013, then did a search-replace to fix 264 non-breaking spaces. ☆ Bri (talk) 23:59, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
Wild. I just tried it in Chrome and it worked just as you described then tried it in Firefox and it worked as I described. I miss the old days when things were simpler, but I'm also glad to be beyond the old days when everything had to be simpler.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  01:30, 14 January 2018 (UTC)
I had an idea and I think it works. If in the wikitext edit window you use the search and replace function and put \xA0 in the search field and a space in the replace field and check "Treat search string as a regular expression", it will replace the non-breaking spaces with regular spaces. I tried it on an old version of the page but didn't save of course. Now I'm hoping the bug comes back so I can test it with this.  SchreiberBike | ⌨  22:02, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

New user topicon

I quite like these icons, as they help me keep track of some of my important contributions for later reference. I've created one for the signpost: {{Signpost user topicon}}. --Tom (LT) (talk) 11:17, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

Technology report on new external tools and features

I'm guessing the "new user scripts" list is built by simply checking for changes to WP:US/L. What about external tools and the like? Maybe we could manually submit announcements that you'd consider including in the tech report? There are a lot of new and useful Toolforge tools, along with major updates to existing ones, and it'd be neat for them to get the same exposure and free advertising ;) — MusikAnimal talk 21:25, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

MusikAnimal I think you'd have to ask Evad37, who it seems is having some health problems right now. Eddie891 Talk Work 00:13, 14 March 2018 (UTC)

Newsroom discussion for issue 2018-04-26

Next issue date semi-arbitrarily set to 28 April ☆ Bri (talk) 18:06, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

So, we're about a week away from publishing. Does anybody want to step up and identify themselves as the one who okays content for this issue? What I should receive prior to publishing is a list of stuff I can compile into a table of contents like this. Or, alternatively, we can start building the Issue 5 list collectively/boldly/by non-negation. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:03, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
Well this is what you've got:
  • Signpost: Bri: User:Bri/Signpost - Reviving The Signpost - In development
  • Signpost Opinion: User:K.e.coffman/Signpost Opinion - World War II Myth-making and Wikipedia - Scheduled
  • Signpost Opinion: User:Eddie891/sandbox/signpost - The rise of Wikipedia as a disinformation mop - In development (not written yet)
  • User:Barbara (WVS)/Humour (your Q to Barbara not answered yet)
  • ANI Research: User:Zarasophos/ANI_Research - Admin reports board under criticism - In development, or finished?
  • Special report: User:Kudpung/Actrial report - ACTRIAL results adopted by landslide - completed - Unreviewed (IMO ready to go)
  • Discussion Report: User:Pythoncoder/Signpost/Portals - Discussion Report: Ending the system of portals - Finished? Unreviewed

But I don't know how the coloured table below is supposed to function or if there is any submitted work in it. Is it supposed to be for regular features? Who is supposed to do the reviewing of submissions? Who makes the decisions? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 20:09, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I think the table really only pertains to the regular features. "Who" is the million-dollar question because there isn't really anybody signed-up permanently anymore with the possible exception of Barbara for the humour section. It's ad-hoc and when things aren't moving, somebody usually pings the crew who worked on the last issue. Not the most efficient workflow model. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:05, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
I remember now that the table can be expanded manually to include the special features. Part of the publication manager's actions is to reset the table to default state. If there's time I'll convert your list below to the table format. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:44, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
I have updated the table below; let's use it as a scoreboard to drive to completion. In the spirit of keeping editorial decisions separated from publishing decisions, I will not further edit the Table of Contents; that will be used to compose the issue when it's time. I will, however, help maintain the scoreboard and do non-editorial copyediting if I can. ☆ Bri (talk) 23:44, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
Without weighing in on the larger discussion about distributing editorial decisions, this will work fine for "Recent research" - in fact it has been the de facto mode of operations for most of the section's existence as a regular feature since 2011 (i.e. I as the current section editor can take care of marking its content as publishable, via the "Done" status).
Agree with using the existing "Article status" section for this. I don't quite see the value of duplicating the list in the "Table of contents" section?
Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
I just wanted a super-unambiguous place to list what's running, what the section titles are, and in what order they will appear. The table is sort of pre-coded and hard to change for irregular content, and we didn't have it up and running at first. This way anybody can see the TOC, which is an easy to read (and easy to edit) plain bulleted list, not templated code, and frankly, changes less often than the scoreboard where we keep current status listed. Maybe it's overkill to have both but I like the idea that nobody will be surprised when I publish.
This was partly motivated by a reader comment on issue 4's op-ed where it was asked why we have such a heavyweight publishing process, instead of just having individual contributors add content when they feel it is ready. So, a nod towards consensus-driven instead of command-driven issue contents. Maybe it's useful, maybe not?
The goal in my mind is a Signpost which cleanly separates publishing "button pushing" from editorial decisions and is as open as possible for new contributors, which means contributors inexperienced with special forms and tables. The E-in-C can perhaps exercise Command by negation instead of having to be in the loop for every decision. ☆ Bri (talk) 23:02, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

I'll copy-edit, but I'd rather not take any publishing responsibilities this issue. I'm also on IRC, if somebody wants to start #wikipedia-en-signpost I'll lurk there. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:17, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

power~enwiki, I'll help where I can but but in all my 12 years on Wkipedia and 7 as an admin, on principle, I've never used IRC , and I am unlikely to do so. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:46, 20 April 2018 (UTC)
There is already an IRC channel at #WikiSignpost that was started around the time I (HaeB) was editor-in-chief years ago. It was quite actively used at the time, but has been mostly silent in recent years. It still exists though, and everyone is welcome to join (I'm there right now). Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Orphaned? sections

I don't see the following items being tracked in the Table of Contents.

☆ Bri (talk) 03:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Sorted News and notes item ... the rest are still up in the air. ☆ Bri (talk) 04:08, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
FC is a miserable undertaking. I am struggling to figure out where the FL's left off. I figure we let Indy beetle and Jytdog work until they decide they're done. Eddie891 Talk Work 11:16, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
@Eddie891: Does this diff of FLs added since List of HolbyBlue Episodes help? I think it is correct? ☆ Bri (talk) 16:47, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
Technical note for team. Because an issue is composed of subpages under a date heading, the conventions used for publishing require each section to have a unique name. We'll have to figure out what to do with multiple op-eds, if that happens. (If you think it's as simple as piping from the table of contents, you'd be right, but there are complex templates to format the page that pick up the page's name for the page heading too.) ☆ Bri (talk) 16:54, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
From Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Content_guidance#Special_columns, previously used names include "Community view", "Forum", and "In focus". "Opinion" seems like a reasonable choice too. - Evad37 [talk] 01:02, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks Evad; we have an embarrassment of riches for content, which represents community involvement and probably reply to Kudpung's op-ed in Issue 4. It's a Good Thing. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:53, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes, there's more than enough content; we should target a 3-week cycle for the following edition. power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:55, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
Speaking of riches, it's clear that Featured content is almost done (I cheated and pitched in with some drudgery). Will it be added to the TOC? ☆ Bri (talk) 01:56, 23 April 2018 (UTC)
I've finished off the FL section, so I've added FC report to the TOC. - Evad37 [talk] 06:44, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Just a note, I'll be going away tomorrow, and coming back Friday, so if I need to do anything, please ping me in the next 12 hours other than that, I'll be floating around, helping out for a few hours. Good luck. Eddie891 Talk Work 21:54, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Arbitration & Discussion Report

The current Arbitration Report is well written, but that just kind of seems to polish the turd that there is not that much to write about. Should we just cut it for this time?

As for the Discussion Report, should we maybe use the opportunity of the still ongoing discussion to get the Signpost a little more exposure by doing a bit of rolling coverage? We could link the article on the relevant page and then provide daily (or even weekly) recaps of survey, new arguments, further developments etc. by updating the article with new sections. I, for one, would be eternally grateful if I had a summary instead of having to read through that whole subpage by myself.

And a general thank you to everyone! I wouldn't have thought it, but somehow we seem to be making it on time! --Zarasophos (talk) 14:07, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Special features style concern

Not a showstopper, but there is inconsistent style for the contributor blurb across Community view, In focus, Op-ed etc. Blurb at top, bottom, and none. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:58, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

According to the submission guidelines, "opinion pieces should be accompanied by an extended byline (suggestion: one to three sentences), that briefly introduces the author and indicates why his or her opinion about the topic might interest the reader". So I would suggest standardising them at the top, where present. - Evad37 [talk] 00:33, 25 April 2018 (UTC)
@Evad37 and Bri: would you guys be opposed to moving the extended bylines to the bottom of the articles? They would look less clutter-y there, IMO. Feedback? --K.e.coffman (talk) 01:02, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Late breaking news

Content

We seem to be heading for a blockbuster issue this time despite a couple of regular features that have been postponed or not submitted in time. I know I haven't really been much help, but I did find on my further Copyedits that there were still many things to be adjusted. In all, I am amazed at the amount of real work getting a Signpost out entails, and I guess that with my own contribs I've spent the best part of 30 hours on it. Kudos to all those who are no longer on the editorial team. I now know what they have been through. For some them it must have been an almost full-time job. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:06, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Table of contents

Issue 5 is now closed to further additions

Note, the actual issue will be composed of sections in the same order that this TOC appears.

With the current dearth of content, what would thoughts be about attaching this to some of the non-editorial submissions to the signpost? We have so many editors out there, I find it fascinating and engaging to read about the experiences of other editors, especially how other editors contribute and how that might change my own editing. A little message at the bottom of those submissions may also serve to encourage further editor contributions. Thoughts? --Tom (LT) (talk) 00:33, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

Example:

This is an editor submission. You can write one too! We are always looking for contributions from editors and WikiProjects relating to your thoughts, experience here, or for an article or essay about how you've contributed, and with some takeaway messages that might help other editors. You can submit an article or essay here.

New Section idea: recently granted Page Mover / Template Editor permissions

Withdrawn; the consensus appears to be that we're not this desperate for content. power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:37, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This is content that may be of interest to readers, is fairly easily auto-generated, and can highlight (newer) non-admin users. I'm not sure it would be useful to list new AWB / ECP / Rollback users, but maybe I'm wrong. power~enwiki (π, ν) 19:31, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, you don't want to touch ECP, there's far too many to cover, especially in a month. I like the TE/PGMOV idea. ∰Bellezzasolo✡ Discuss 19:22, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
I think you're right. How would one go about automating it? power~enwiki? Eddie891 Talk Work 23:38, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
The API page at [13] is easy to parse. I wrote a quick script available on Github. In the last 28 days, I see new permissions of:
extendedmover: User:CASSIOPEIA User:Eric Corbett User:LeoFrank User:Lordtobi User:SamHolt6 User:TaerkastUA
templateeditor: User:Charlesaaronthompson User:Jon Kolbert User:KolbertBot User:Neveselbert User:Outriggr.
Both "reviewer" = pending changes reviewer, and "patroller" = new pages patroller have significantly more activity. power~enwiki (π, ν) 00:24, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Apologies, in advance but this does seem like an idea to fill space for the sake of filling it.None of the two rights are so important, so as to invoke the attention of the broader community to it's disbursal. ~ Winged BladesGodric 02:47, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
    • I can't disagree; this is motivated almost entirely by the severe lack of content and interest in this publication. To paraphrase 30 Rock, if people are mentioned in the Signpost, they are more likely to read it. power~enwiki (π, ν) 04:30, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
I think it's enough just to mention new admins. Minor rights holders are created ten a day. It would start looking like the modern credits of a movie where even the location tea lady and trash truck divers are mentioned. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:02, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Newsroom discussion for issue 2018-05-24

Discussions have been transitioned to Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom. The final Newsroom discussion at the old location is archived at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Archive 1#Next issue (May).

NCORP report?

I don't think the update to NCORP has been covered in the signpost yet. Any plans? If not I guess i am volunteering myself to draft it, by asking... Jytdog (talk) 21:02, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

  • Jytdog: Consider yourself signed up :) (If you want to draft something). Longer than three-ish paragraphs, you should probably write a piece, but a short, two or three paragraph write up can go into the News and Notes. Eddie891 Talk Work 21:21, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Jytdog, There is a short two-liner about it in the news and notes that I have drafted for the next issue due in just over a week. Feel free to expand but I think a stand-alone article would be better - it wouldn't cramp your style and it would make The Signpost look bigger. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:11, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Floating a grant proposal for publishing

There was a failed WMF grant proposal to fund a Publication Manager for 45 issues. I floated a shorter-term experimental rapid grant here for three months on a trial basis. This was done without any consultation so it might be dumb. But it might not. Comments can be made at the link provided. I know people want to keep editorial roles strictly separated from WMF support, so if this happened, and I was funded to do it, I would refrain from other Signpost activities for the duration. ☆ Bri (talk) 00:56, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

I mentioned this project of Bluerasberry's in my op-ed but I had not researched all the background here. Lane's suggestion is not without merit - he's one of our users who often comes up with ideas, I know him well pesonally and have nothing but admiration for his energy. However, there were some valid concerens expressed about the WMF funding suggestion. While it would be an incentive to keep someone in the printinhg house control room, IMHO I believe it would be important to keep the newspaper independent of the Foundation. Having discussed late last night with Bri about trying to get this latest issue out, I'm not so sure that the tasks of 'publisher', while requiring perhaps somewhat more technical knowledge than mine for example, are so onerous that they merit a remunerated position. WE're all volunteers and each one devotes as much time as they can to Wikipedia - what is needed just as urgently is also an enthusiastic and responsive editorial team. AFAICS, the current E-in-C is not the only Signpost 'staff' who has not edited in a long while.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:33, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
This is an "and not but" reply. The Publishing Manager role has zero editorial input. They are a button-pusher for content produced by the editorial staff. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:45, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
I think this is brilliant idea. I think the value of the Signpost is great, and concerns about "independence" do not appear insurmountable. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:54, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Bri, having done us the honours last night and publishing this long overdue issue, you know best just exactly what is involved in the 'button pushing', how complex (or not) it is, and how long it takes. Provided the editorial team can select appropriate submissions and copy edit them, and those who provide the regular traffic and tech reports, FA lists, and Arbcom news etc. can get their copy in in time, I belive a punctual monthly issue would be possible. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:08, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Manual publishing sucks. Kudos to Bri. (Former EIC) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 23:14, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Proposal withdrawn in light of new volunteer for position of publication manager. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:38, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Who's the editor?

I am incredibly confused about who's actually running this at the moment. Who are the important editors, publishers, and regular contributors? Not sure how up-to-date the Newsroom's contributors list is... — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 17:32, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

The newsroom is a coalition of the willing. I'd say at this point E in C is a distributed, functional role embodied by whoever takes moment to moment challenges. The only fixed role at the moment possibly is Publication Manager, which is me on an interim basis, since I'm the only active one (I think) with the requisite permissions for mass-mailings and who has published at least once. Also I should acknowledge that Barbara has consistently done the past eleven Humour columns, starting with the "reboot" 15 July 2017 issue. As for who are contributors here is the list from Issue 4:
  • OP-ED: Death knell sounding for The Signpost? By Kudpung
  • NEWS AND NOTES: Wiki Conference roundup and new appointments By Bluerasberry
  • TRAFFIC REPORT: Real sports, real women and an imaginary country (Top25 report imported, editors not really active at Newsroom)
  • SPECIAL REPORT: ACTRIAL wrap-up By Kudpung
  • ARBITRATION REPORT: Ironing out issues in infoboxes; not sure yet about New Jersey; and an administrator who probably wasn't uncivil to a sockpuppet. By Bri
  • IN THE MEDIA: The media on Wikipedia's workings: the good and not-so-good By Eddie891 and Bri
  • FEATURED CONTENT: Animals, Ships, and Songs By Eddie891 and Bri
  • TECHNOLOGY REPORT: Timeless skin review by Force Radical By FR30799386
  • HUMOUR: WikiWorld Reruns By Greg Williams edited by Barbara Page
Glad you are contributing to the current issue! ☆ Bri (talk) 18:23, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 18:40, 21 April 2018 (UTC)
To answer your original question, Kudpung has assumed the position of Editor in Chief as an interim solution. --Zarasophos (talk) 15:20, 24 April 2018 (UTC)
The article The Signpost ought to be updated. Do we say "interim" there, though? ☆ Bri (talk) 15:11, 26 April 2018 (UTC)
'Acting' would be the correct word for what I am doing. 'Interim' would sound as if I may be holding the post until someone else comes along. I probably won't. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:57, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

How do I become a copyeditor?

I saw the info on it, but there was no way to become one. qwerty6811 :-) Chat Ping me 20:54, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi. You'll first need to read Copy editing, and then these instructions and then get a lot of experience editing Wikipedia articles. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:39, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
Funny this just came up; two of the newsroom tasks I just listed include a) delineating mandatory and optional formatting issues and b) notifying copyeditors that there's work to do, which we currently do through the article status "scoreboard". ☆ Bri (talk) 17:12, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
No comment on this? Should we try to make the "looking for new talent" link more prominent? Bri.public (talk) 19:41, 1 May 2018 (UTC)

Looks to be an excellent issue

Just wanted to say that I'm really impressed with this coming issue - meaty content; plenty of authors. Thanks to Bri, Kudpung and others for saving Signpost from the brink. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:27, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Ditto. It is the first time I have read the Signpost, after coming to WP on and off for ten years. I will now be reading it again. Aoziwe (talk) 08:05, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Portal RFC closing 8 May

It would be nice if we can just replace the current Discussion report with another, more up to date one. This is not something that will be at all relevant in 19 days.Eddie891 Talk Work 13:39, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

My intention is to update the report when the discussion closes. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 12:25, 7 May 2018 (UTC)
I've updated with the result but I will check again. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 11:38, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Publication schedule

Hello, I've recently started reading the Signpost, and from what I've gathered contributions had sadly slowed down a bit for some time, so I'm a little confused about the current plans.

The newsroom seems to say the Signpost switched to a monthly schedule at the end of last year, but some other pages still talk about publishing issues on a weekly basis, and I've seen references to a fortnightly publication as well.

Assuming there's still plans for a regular schedule, is it a good time to update those pages to reflect that? Thank you! Mlkj (talk) 18:45, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

The current publishing schedule is monthly and we have mostly stuck to it thus far (kudos to Bri, Kudpung, Chris, and the others for keeping this thing running). It really is a shame that the ’Post doesn’t publish more often — the schedule wreaks havoc on the Discussion Report. I don’t see the weekly references you mentioned. Could you link to the pages that mention a fortnightly schedule? Thanks — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 22:05, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
The mainspace Signpost article mentions a switch to a fortnightly schedule and then a period of instability, although I see now that the infobox does say "Monthly newspaper". It also says Want the latest Signpost delivered to your talk page each week? for me at the bottom of the Signpost front page, and I think that's coming from somewhere inside the signpost footer template. I could have sworn I saw the word weekly on the subscribe page too, but I must have dreamed it (or somehow browsed an old version without noticing!). Thanks for the clarification! Mlkj (talk) 23:32, 20 May 2018 (UTC)
I don't believe there is any chance that The Signpost will ever rveert to weekly or even fortnightly pubications. Anyone please feel free to update the words 'fortnightly' and 'weekly' to 'monthly' anywhere they appear. While we're doing our best at the moment to prevent the machinery fronm rusting solid, there is however no guarantee that it will be monthly. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:57, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
Alright, I took a shot at fixing the next issue template, hopefully I didn't break anything. Thank you all for keeping the Signpost alive, it's greatly appreciated! Mlkj (talk) 11:59, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Creating a new position of Assistant Editor in Chief

After consulting with Kudpung, in realization of my de facto role over the last few publishing cycles, I've decided that it is in the best interest of The Signpost to list myself as Assistant Editor in Chief, responsible for being the E in C's aide and helper in managing the Newsroom. We are separated by about ten time zones so the two of us can provide good coverage for urgent issues. The Editor in Chief will of course have final say-so on content.

If this seems too grandiose to other contributors, I'm okay with something else like "Newsroom Manager" etc. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:19, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly support this. 'Assistant Editor in Chief' An excellent solution. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:38, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Writing suggestions

This is directed at the newsroom regulars with helpful and positive thoughts in mind. Not all of us have a background in journalism. Here are a few pointers on writing good copy for a wide audience.

These are especially important in modern communications. According to studies, you have maybe five seconds to capture their attention before a reader will move on to something else [14].

If people don't mind, I will take the liberty in the future of restructuring some of our content to follow these guidelines prior to publication. If this outside the swim lane for a peer contributor, let me know. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:00, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

  • Bri: Oof! Thanks for this. I'm not a journalist by trade, but do you notice me doing this a lot? I'm not a very good author at all, and tend to drone on, and on, and on, and on. Sorry if I haven't been doing this.Eddie891 Talk Work 00:44, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
I don't want anyone to feel this is aimed at them specifically. Just trying to point out some techniques to raise our game. I did make some (hopefully constructive) comments at Newsroom for this issue. But it's really meant as fine tuning to bring out the best in what we are doing already. Hey, come to think of it, I think I got burned worst by a reader of last issue over poor copyediting; I hope we are all helping each other out here and trust each other enough to take the help when offered. ☆ Bri (talk) 00:53, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

If you don't mind, I'm copying this over to my Manual of Style draft. Feel free to add anything more that comes to your mind! Zarasophos (talk) 06:20, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Retirement of old role account

Hello Signpostians, there is an old blocked role account User:Wikipedia Signpost, that is sitting with a bot flag. Per User talk:Wikipedia Signpost neither Peteforsyth or Chris troutman have use for it and mailings are now sent using the MassMessage extension. Barring anyone claiming a use for this, I plan to de bot-flag it as routine cleanup - if anyone objects please let me know (please ping me). Of course, should a future use come up, and someone has the credentials it could be unblocked and reflagged following a BRFA. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 23:01, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Xaosflux. To my memory, that account was mainly used only as a way for people to email the Signpost through the emailuser function. It certainly has no need for the bot flag, and hasn't for many years now. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 05:09, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, I removed the old bot flag. Should you wish to recover it in the future (assuming you have the passwords) just file a new WP:BRFA. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 11:01, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

My 2¢ on the reorganization

As part of the reorganization of Signpost pages, I suggest putting Newsroom discussions on the Talk page of the Newsroom then transcluding that page onto the Newsroom, like we do with article comments. That way, newsroom discussions could be archived on the Newsroom talk page rather than the most recent Signpost talk page. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 22:29, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

Good idea,  Done - Evad37 [talk] 02:21, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Is this the first time since we switched to a monthly schedule that the Signpost has been published early 2 issues in a row?!? Wow. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 14:32, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Get bots involved

I see above there's a lot of chatter about social media and the like. I don't know how tedious is it to run a twitter account/social media account to post new issues/individual articles, but you might want to consider making a WP:BOTREQ for someone to code you a tweetbot/social media bot that could do the tedious part of the job automatically. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:39, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

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