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Newsroom discussions prior to May 2018 are archived at WT:POST.

Archive 5←Archive 9Archive 10Archive 11Archive 12Archive 13→Archive 15

Reader feedback

All: You can use the link above to monitor feedback on the August 30 issue. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:46, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Pageviews

By issue

  • February issue totals thru March 1, 2020, 2,134; March 3, 7,668; March 7, 13,254; March 14, 19,892; March 21, 32,508; March 28, 44,988.
  • March issue totals thru March 31, 6,203; April 4, 26,276; April 11 42,591; April 18 50,059; April 25 57,878.
  • April issue totals 1 day - 2,119; 4d - 9,066; 1 week 10,657, 2W - 12,467 ;[1], [2]
  • May issue - 1st day 2,219, 4th day 8,154, 1st week 10,282, 2nd week 12,473, 3rd week 13963, 4 weeks 15,181 *[3], [4]
  • June issue 7,485 1st week, 9,907 2nd week, 11,174 3rd week, 12,847 4th week, 13,950 5th week 10 6 .
  • August 2 issue [5] [6] 1st day 1981, 4th day (cumulative) 7,004; 1st week, 8,393, 2nd week 10,665, 3rd week 12,320, 4th week 14,099
  • August 30 issue [7], [8] 1st day 2,128, 4th day 7,029, 1st week 8,512, 2nd week 9.903, third week 11,189.

Published, thanks

Thanks to Chris for publishing and Bri for copyediting (etc.) as usual. @SnowFire and Nosebagbear: did an outstanding job at News and notes. At this point I usually say - "We'll see what the readers say", but I'll say now that I think it is a good issue. Thanks to all who contributed. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:09, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

News & notes

Belated

@Eddie891: / @Smallbones: - Sorry, didn't realize this was so close to publication, and wasn't feeling well earlier. Looks like the section was archived. I don't agree with some of the points Eddie raised earlier.

  • There should not be a link to the original Reddit thread, which is flat wrong in parts, and much more rabble-rousing than is proper. It's easy to find if people want to search it up, but not including a link there was quite intentional. Most notably, the original Reddit thread very much overstates the amount of actionable, negative feedback the user in question received.
  • "the other active admin of Scots Wikipedia" Is incorrect. There are several others. - No, I meant "at the time of the incident," as well as "actually doing things, not merely having the bit." There were only 4 admins then, and only AG & MJL were "active" in the sense of doing things (there's been an addition of admins since). So yes, MJL was the only active in the sense of genuinely active on Scots Wikipedia admin. Maybe we edit it to be clear it was "at the time of the incident"?
  • The Times and The Guardian Telegraph article are paywalled. I don't think we need links to them since 90%+ readers can't actually see them.
  • I'm firmly in favor of not linking to the user's language page, ever. This user was 12 when this started. It's trivially easy to figure out who they are for those truly interested. If there's confusion about the language boxes, we can explain it, although I think most Wikipedia editors are familiar with those little language proficiency boxes? Also, the reason I said "2/5 or 3/5" is that AG changed this over time. He originally marked himself a 2/5, cautiously increased to 3/5, then marked himself back down to 2/5 after the scandal broke. It's a little misleading to say they gave themselves a 2/5 all along - AG clearly thought he was better than that at one point (as can be seen from the screenshot of their user page from the Reddit article, wherein he's a 3/5). I don't think going into this long explanation is worth it in the article though, it'd disrupt the flow.
  • " In an attempt to draw the heat off the user" - This is correct. MJL said explicitly that AG didn't ask for nor deserve the Internet descending upon them, and set up the AMA to move constructively forward in a way that was not "let's all mock this idiot."

SnowFire (talk) 19:39, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Points taken (except the Guardian isn't paywalled). But we're a newspaper - a snapshot in time. Other than immediate copyedits and major corrections, we shouldn't edit after publication. Though I did just follow Liz's suggestion. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:47, 30 August 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, Liz's suggestion is fine. This hopefully falls under the "immediate copyedits" category, since Eddie's contribution was just ~5 hours ago. Sorry, I meant "The Telegraph" not The Guardian, which did come up as paywalled for me. SnowFire (talk) 19:58, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Discussion report

  • We should revisit the Mid-September RfA Flight noted in the August 2 Discussion report. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:23, 10 September 2020 (UTC)
  • I guess at some point someone will discuss Kiev -> Kyiv move (which cause qwite a lot of media attention, including a statement from the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine). While discussing this, please do not forget to mention that the user who started the RM was later CU blocked as they turbed out a logged out user who was topic-banned from all topics related to Ukraine, and that the move caused a huge stream of disruptive editing with people (mainly driveby editors from the Ukrainian Wikipedia) replacing Kiev in historical contexts and claiming the move gives a blanket permission to replace all instances of Kiev on the English Wikipedia by Kyiv. See Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Mass Kyiv disruption--Ymblanter (talk) 09:22, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
    Hi. Ymblanter, that’s not a productive comment. Thanks for understanding. —Michael Z. 23:58, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
    • @Ymblanter: I'd thought 2 or 3 paragraphs in News and notes would be good. The RfC (RM) and its result seem simple enough to cover. The mention in the state news service and the Kyiv Post seems worth a short sentence or two. I suppose that the explanation of the actual war going on behind the war of words might be controversial - but that is part of the root cause of the problem, and I can't see leaving this out. Thanks for the link to AN - I'll check this out. If I can quote part of what you wrote above that might help as well (that is I'm asking your permission - what people might write on this page quickly is not the best source for quotes). If there is more to add, please email me. Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:37, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
      • Ok, I see that I've already put in a *draft* in N&N. It is very much open to discussion (here) and expansion. So far it reads:
      • Kiev moves to Kyiv. @Wugapodes: closed a long-running page move discussion moving the Kiev article, that was named based on a transliteration of the Russian name in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, to the Ukrainian name transliterated from Ukrainian Cyrillic. While most participants in the RfA cited Wikipedia's common name policy, the discussion was likely influenced by Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine, their annexation of Crimea, and Russo-Ukrainian War that has been fought since then.
Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:07, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. First, this is not a Ukrainian or Russian names, both are English names, just using different spellings. I would say spelling derived from Russian and Ukrainian. I would also add smth along the following lines: "Since this is a controversial issue, it could not remain uncontroversial in Wikipedia. The user who started the RM was found to be a sockpuppet and was blocked by checkuser. Also, some users understood the RM conclusion as a blanket permission to replace every instance of Kiev on Wikipedia with Kyiv, creating initially a lot of mess and disruption. By now, the situation has been mostly normalized".--Ymblanter (talk) 14:38, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Sure, you have my permission to quote me (just in case, I would like to be avoided being called a "Russian administrator" - this is generally incorrect and will likely be misunderstood without context).--Ymblanter (talk) 14:40, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Humor Section created

Hello there, I created the Humor section for the Signpost, and I would love pointers on what to change, what to add, etc.FlowerPetals📪 01:05, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

I'll send you an email later today. Smallbones(smalltalk) 12:17, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Arbitration report

I'll prepare a short draft Arbitration report with the understanding it will probably be held over to a future issue for more content. A rough draft has been started. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:15, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

@Smallbones: Should I scramble to clean this up, or are we holding over to next issue? ☆ Bri (talk) 14:51, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
@Bri: I don't see any problem with a short article, so if you could clean it up that sounds better to me. Your choice. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:56, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

A week until publication!

Yes, I'm off to a slow start this month again.

Please let me know if you'll be ready to go in time. @Eddie891, Igordebraga, and Pythoncoder: "In the media" should be ok and as always HaeB's got Recent research under control. There's only one obit User:Jerome Kohl. I think we can drop obits after this month unless there are 3 or more. I quickly checked ArbCom and didn't see much - so unless somebody sees anything interesting there, we might drop the Arb report this month. There's an opinion piece and maybe a humor column. I'll email a couple of other writers with some ideas. Or let us know here. Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:07, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

I wanted to wait until the next Top 25 Report to create the Traffic Report, but I'll do right away. igordebraga ≠ 23:31, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Let's please be sure publication is ready by 1600UTC, as scheduled. If this issue isn't ready by then, I won't be able to press the button to publish until later that evening. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:02, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure I'm available next weekend as a backup for Chris, if necessary. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:13, 20 September 2020 (UTC)
Standing by to publish, unless Chris troutman is unexpectedly available ☆ Bri (talk) 21:19, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
my section will be done. Very busy as of late - Eddie891 Talk Work 13:51, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Heavy lifting of FC is done, minor things to do. I'm out of the house for the rest of the day. Eddie891 Talk Work 17:23, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

All hands on deck!

It looks like the number of stories might be a bit short this month, but that's ok - there are several possible stories that I consider to be very important (and can't necessarily discus on this page). Anything anybody can do, e.g. copyediting, adding a paragraph or 5 to News and notes or Discussion report if needed, editing/writing In the media (there's likely enough stories there, but there may be better ones), adding the obit, any new stories. @Bluerasberry, Sdkb, Indy beetle, SnowFire, and Nosebagbear: and others. Whatever you can do to get this issue out on time would be appreciated. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:51, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

I could definitely write up a few paragraphs for N&N if you need it. I know I'm not the best writer, but I like to think I'm better than nothing . Let me know how/if I can help out. Best, Eddie891 Talk Work 15:13, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:59, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
In addition to creating the Humor section, I created the Featured Content section as well. Work in progress at the moment.FlowerPetals📪 21:57, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
@FlowerPetals: that was an amazingly good first try on "Featured articles", but I'd like @Eddie891: to do it the standard way this month. I'll send another email re:humour tomorrow. Thanks. Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:59, 21 September 2020 (UTC)
@Smallbones:So should I just stick to commanding the Humor editorials for now?FlowerPetals📪 23:10, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Essay

Not to throw cold water on things, but just wanted to point out we did a piece on Esperanza last year: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-03-31/From the archives. The essay under development for the upcoming issue covers sort of the same thing? Or maybe I'm wrong. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:46, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Noted Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:20, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Copyediting

Thanks to everybody who is getting their copy in. Traffic report is ready for copyediting and I've done a first pass. I found some errors of fact, e.g. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a justice, not a judge, serving on the Supreme Court. (On Monday someone should remind me to tell the story of how Clarence Thomas and I shared a one floor elevator ride, just the two of us, long ago).

So somebody should check my rewrites and I left two paragraphs to be fact checked. As well as a full copyedit please Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:56, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

According to United States federal judge, the Supreme Court justices are also federal judges, so technically it wasn't wrong. Anyway I've made a few quick cleanups and will look for anything else, then mark copyedit done. ☆ Bri (talk) 14:36, 26 September 2020 (UTC)
Copyedit done. Note fact check by Igordebraga. ☆ Bri (talk) 14:57, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Humour hasn't been edited for more than a few days ... is it ready for copyediting? ☆ Bri (talk) 23:35, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

2 articles cancelled. Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:52, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Portuguese Wikipedia discussing banning IP editing

Something to keep an eye on: pt:Wikipédia:Esplanada/propostas/Banimento de IPs (23ago2020). {{u|Sdkb}} talk 03:44, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

We are covering this in News and notes under "Registration for editing" ... ☆ Bri (talk) 04:20, 27 September 2020 (UTC)
Oops, missed that; thanks! {{u|Sdkb}} talk 04:26, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Publication in maybe 30 minutes

@Chris troutman: I think we've got this under control. But I'll send you an email soon (I've been meaning to all day)

BTW did you see that the NYTimes has got years worth of Trumps tax returns? No mention of Wikipedia so I can't yell "Stop the presses!" $750 in taxes paid in each of 2016 and 2017 if my skim wasn't too fast.

Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:58, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:34, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

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