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Publication date

I set the publication date ahead a few hours, to 01:00 UTC on the 16th... currently it's about two minutes past, and it looks like some articles need substantial work (ITM, N&N). I erstwhile discovered that there seems to be some weird thing going on with the deadline template where it displays different dates (?). Anyway, I will try to drag some of my drafts out of the closet, because it looks like a pretty thin issue. I'm going to take a walk and ponder it for a bit. jp×g 01:03, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we should publish this week. Maybe not next. We need to consider how we can get the newspaper working on a regular schedule again. IMHO it should start with the EiC showing up and helping out well before the deadline, rather than an hour or so after the deadline. I can't speak for Bri or Andreas, but I suspect they are each thinking something like "This can't continue like this where I'm doing 60% of all the work." Of course there are others who have been contributing, but A&B are really carrying too much of the weight to be healthy. If we committed to addressing the problems with an issue ahead of time - before the deadline - then things would work a bit more smoothly. There really isn't an issue to patch up here, so trotting out a few old drafts won't help. Just my opinion of course. Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:28, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
Okay, I am back. Yeah, uh -- I have not really been having a great time with the bimonthly schedule, and I've noticed things getting a bit more lethargic. Perhaps these things are related. It's quite a bit more difficult to stay on top of. On one hand, it does allow us to cover things in a more timely fashion. But on the other hand, a lot of our recent issues have been very thin, and I am starting to miss the days when I was writing more stuff (i.e. the last deletion report was Aug '22 and the last time I wrote an arbitration report was very long ago indeed). Of course, it's a little embarrassing to give up on a project, especially one that had such vigor behind it (we were putting out dynamite on the regular when we started the bimonthly distribution!) but I think it might not have flown so good. Who knows. What do you all think? jp×g 03:06, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I suppose the logical next step is for me to try to finish up what we've got, and see how close that gets us to an issue. jp×g 09:29, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I added one story to N&N and two to ITM. Both sections still need some editing (titles, images etc.) but I think there is enough content now to put the issue out.
Regarding the general issues brought up above:
We need to consider how we can get the newspaper working on a regular schedule again. IMHO it should start with the EiC showing up and helping out well before the deadline, rather than an hour or so after the deadline. - Agreed
I can't speak for Bri or Andreas, but I suspect they are each thinking something like "This can't continue like this where I'm doing 60% of all the work." - I assume you are referring to their recent work on N&N and ITM. I am not sure what this has to do with percentages or workloads. As a reminder, these sections don't currently have a point person listed at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/About#The_Signpost_team (unlike, say, the Arbitration report, Featured content or Recent research). But in the Signpost's history of almost two decades both of these two sections have frequently been shepherded by a single editor each. I mean, given their usually recurring contributions, it might indeed be useful if Bri and Andreas gave a heads-up that they won't be able to contribute substantially to an upcoming issue, so that others are better incentivized to jump in in time. But as long as they haven't formally signed up as the point person for either section, they shouldn't feel obliged to do so.
As for the bi-monthly schedule, all the arguments for it (and against a monthly schedule) from the previous discussion still hold. And looking at this year's archive, we have been publishing an average of two issues per month a good while now already (2 per month from January to July 2023, 3 in August, 1 in September, 1 in October so far), including some very voluminous ones. So I'm kind of unconvinced that publishing twice per month is the cause for things getting a bit more lethargic.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:14, 19 October 2023 (UTC)
@JPxG, HaeB, Bri, and Jayen466: I don't see any reason that we couldn't put out an issue this Sunday, but I would certainly like to see the following:
1. A promise that the EiC will be available and involved on Saturday or Sunday. Or at least he gets somebody else involved (other than me) to do the work for him and approve the articles that he can't check himself.
2. That he's ready to publish at approximately the currently posted deadline. Or has found somebody ready and able to do it for him. A guide to the publication process would likely help, since there have been many changes to this process, as I understand it.
I'm sorry if this seems demanding, but I just don't understand how the process of editing and publication can work otherwise.
Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:01, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
There have been a few pings directed at me. I'll answer that yes I'm still part of The Signpost but am eager to see other people pick up more of the workload. Other stuff in my life has required a diminution of my contributions to Wikipedia generally, and I don't think it would be fair to have people waiting on me to do any regular article beat, including being considered the primary shepherd or whatever for a column. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:52, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
One thing I can say is that with all the stress of dealing with my dad's death, I've not been able to do what I usually did for the first few months of bimonthly: Go through everything the day before publication, and do what was needed to get it publishable. I was getting credit for up to 5 articles an issue - Featured Content, From the Archives, and often writing enough in order to finish up N&N and ITM to get a credit on them, and often doing a Gallery or something if things were thin (and then usually waiting a week for publication after giving an entire day to getting that all done). Now, I can just about get FC out. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.5% of all FPs. 21:07, 20 October 2023 (UTC)
My impression is that writing deadline doesn't mean a whole lot. Whenever I check on things at the writing deadline, it's typically the case (as it was here) that hardly anything's been written, or even started, so there's not a lot for me to do in terms of editing. I don't have a huge issue with this: I would spend the same amount of time editing and preparing an issue regardless of what day the deadline was. So if everyone else is fine with ignoring the writing deadline, then I am fine with it too. But it does require some time, after everything's in, to edit and publish -- which means that if this is the deal, the issue will always be somewhat late in coming out.
I have modified the template that shows up at the top of this page (and at the top of drafts, etc) so that it shows the remaining time for the writing deadline -- maybe this will help emphasize it -- I don't really know. I can promise to be available for publication -- and I was on Sunday -- but publication wasn't the task that needed to be done, the task that needed to be done was writing the articles and then editing them and then publishing them. And I am fine with being available for this, but there was nothing on the newsroom talk about it either, I figured it was just going to be the normal situation where everything's lorem ipsum until 30 minutes before the publication deadline.jp×g 00:26, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
@JPxG: You are missing the whole idea of a deadline. On the publishing deadline there's really only 3 things you can do: 1) publish as scheduled with what you have (though quite often there's 30 minutes or an hour of work that still needs to be done - in that case it's easy enough on Wikipedia to just take the extra hour to finish up - then publish asap) 2) if there is a breaking story, or a real mixup on a scheduled story so that it needs a complete rewriting, you just write or rewrite the story which might take an hour or two. I think this happened about 3 times while I was EiC. Or 3) you cancel the issue if there is not enough material available. Then you come back ready to go for the next regularly scheduled issue. I think this just happened once while I was EiC.
Then I would turn it over to the publisher, since I didn't have the technical means to publish. Normally it would take 30-60 minutes to publish, but sometimes the publisher wasn't immediately available and in one case IIRC it wasn't published until the next morning.
You notice there is a major difference in the size of the delays then vs. now - a few hours or half a day vs multiple hours or days. The reason for the difference should be obvious - I was going to get the issue to the publisher more or less on time if at all possible come hell or high water. To you it's not a big deal.
Why should it be a big deal? First the readers often like to read the paper at particular times or just get into the habit of looking for the paper at a certain time. Having it available on a regularly scheduled time is - to me - a matter of courtesy to the reader and also leads to increased readership. Perhaps more importantly it lets the reporters know that you take the deadline seriously, so that they need to take it seriously, which allows everybody to coordinate their efforts easily.
You should be coordinating with the reporters more, rather than trying to rewrite or polish what they have written after the deadline, after they've gone to sleep or to deal with other parts of their lives. And you really shouldn't write new stories after the deadline (I know it's difficult at times). That results in articles that have only been read and copy edited by you, which leads to mistakes. We do have a rule here that every story should be gone over by a second person before being published. Also, after deadline, you shouldn't be rewriting chunks of text in other people's stories - they may not agree with your changes. Sure, you're the EiC, but that doesn't mean you get to put words in their mouths. When at all possible, they should have the option to reject your changes (which then leaves you with the option of rejecting their stories or publishing as they want it). There should be some give and take between the editor and writer. That means before the deadline when you have time to email or ping them.
I particularly dislike you changing the style of others' writing. Sure you want to liven-up some text, correct confusing sentences, etc., and some of that is perfectly acceptable (before the deadline). But everybody should be allowed to use their own style, to write with their own voice. Some styles, of course, are not acceptable, but we have a wide range of topics - e.g. traffic report, recent research, special reports, interviews, etc. - that benefit from different styles within the range of acceptable styles. Every writer deserves the chance to develop their own voice. When you change my style, quite often I feel like you're not being serious enough - I feel many of my topics are pretty serious. I don't need to sound like a 20 year old. Or you are making a joke, or just missed the point of what I wrote. Writers need editors, but ...
Well that's a lot to consider. The main takeaway is "please, please take the deadline seriously. It ruins everything if you don't." Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:43, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
Not to become a man who complains about machinery not being given with an instruction manual, but it has been fairly difficult to figure out what the overall practices and expectations are. Certainly, journalistic skill issue on my part is a factor, but all of this stuff you've said is stuff I would have been glad to hear a long time ago. I even asked a month and a half ago, having completed a large volume of technical tasks, what I ought to focus on next, and it sat with no comments all the way up to being archived by the bot. From my perspective, imagine trying to make decisions based on asking what areas deserve some more attention and getting no response, not even a "whoopty doo", for six weeks: at the very least, it didn't seem like an urgent mandate to do things differently.
But at any rate, now that I've heard all of this, I will do my best to incorporate it into practice. You are correct about the deadlines. For my own part, I have been rather slovenly about it, and things have been run way later than they should have. For this there is not really a good reason (except for the wildfire too close to my house and the laptop getting busted too far from my house, which were great reasons, but the rest were just slovenliness). I really do wish people would say stuff like this more often. jp×g 11:26, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
@JPxG: Thanks for this. I'm sorry for letting this all build up and then my frustrations came out all at once. They are not as bad as it sounded. One other point that I should emphasize is that all contributors get busy at times and can't contribute as much as they'd like. Similarly, there is going to be attrition of contributors at varying rates - so recruiting new contributors should be a constant job. You're the boss, so if you don't delegate this, you have to do it.
I'll be able to work today, but not tomorrow. I'll guess I can add 3 more sections to ITM and maybe a News from the WMF copied article. Thanks again. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:39, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
I've at least polished up everything in ITM and NaN. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.5% of all FPs. 06:47, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
  • Good meowning everyone. I see that we are mostly ready, and even have about eight hours to dick around with the issue prior to publication. I will do a more intense copyedit later, but I will make some basic observations in section sections. jp×g 16:30, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks and recap

It's probably time to admit that I cautioned JPxG when he was considering taking this job, that it is often thankless, and gets the E-in-C a lot of attention. IMHO anybody who's willing to do it is taking taking a big hit for the team and deserves thanks. Now on to making JPxG as successful as possible. I think some of the guidance on hitting deadlines is well intentioned, though a bit raw, and it would be good of some other folks were available to volunteer to make the whole thing work. One or two people can't do it alone. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:03, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I feel the core of the issue is the twice monthly schedule, rather than a monthly schedule. If twice a month is too much to handle, let's slow down and that'll give people more time, and more predictable/memorable deadlines. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:18, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

November 19 issue

We are nearly 10 hours past the publication deadline, with several meaty stories basically ready to go out but the EiC's last Signpost-related edit dating almost five days back. Any updates? What is the hold-up this time? Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:56, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Hacker News

--Andreas JN466 00:22, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Not to get all politics on main, but (Redacted). jp×g🗯️ 06:07, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, that lead section is terrible. Andreas JN466 08:07, 7 November 2023 (UTC)

Earlier this week, the "Fringe" paper (item 1 above) also attracted the attention of Rebecca Watson aka Skepchick: [1] [2] (Thanks to a recent issue of Wikipedia’s Signpost newsletter, I learned about a really interesting study on Wikipedia itself. [...] it’s interesting that while Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook continue to circle the drain on their inevitable descent to the sewer, Wikipedia has only seemed to get better.) I took the liberty to add a brief item to ITM to close the circle ;)

Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:53, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Cool! Andreas JN466 09:00, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Credit for DALL-E prompt engineers

I recently read of a future job description, or maybe present already: prompt engineer, for a person who expertly interacts with an AI to produce a result. Well, I've already been working with a fellow Wikimedian who I guess is doing that; they have created many images used in The Signpost starting a bit more than a year ago (see their last five uploads). Do you think they should be credited in the byline for images created just for us? I recommend the following:

In the media

Propaganda and photos, lunatics and a lunar backup

By Bri, Oltrepier, Smallbones, and HaeB

Original illustration by Mayopotato

Is this fair? ☆ Bri (talk) 01:53, 20 November 2023 (UTC)


According to Wikipedia, The byline [...] gives the name of the writer of the article. A frequent journalistic practice (in newspapers etc.) seems to be to credit illustrators in image captions instead, which yes, seems to be a fine idea (even if not required by copyright).

I generally think AI-generated images as illustrations area a great idea - thanks Mayopotato for contributing these! But can I ask why we are apparently using the rather outdated DALL-E 2 model like it's 2022? This is like eons ago in this area and the quality of those models has improved immensely since then. Compare File:DALL-E Austronaut Library.png with [3] (click side arrows to see all four versions), which is what I just got on first try with the successor model DALL-E 3 (freely accessible via Bing AI) using the same (apparent) prompt. By the way, per c:COM:AI, the model and prompt that were used should be documented in the image description.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 02:07, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

That is nice. I switched in the Bing image (if you want image credit in Commons, go ahead and add your name there). ☆ Bri (talk) 02:23, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
I was accidentally pinged above and didn't have a clue, but I think I've figured it out now. I'd go with credit in the caption, perhaps with "(AI)" in there somewhere. For the bigger picture, I've noticed that we've had a lot of editorial cartoons/photos lately, and more-or-less I like them in ITM. I'll suggest @Mayopotato: make a bunch for every issue (depending on the amount of time he has) in the style of editorial cartoons (but photo-like is ok). Maybe even one for the menu page, that's like the main editorial cartoon on a newspaper's opinion page. Or even something like our old series WikiWorld. Maybe we could even get Annie Rauwerda to suggest articles/text? I'd say go with it as far as we can take it. If it doesn't work- it's pretty easy to just stop. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:26, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
BTW, I was tempted to put this photo in Bri's Recent research piece but the "Equal justice under law" carved in the building doesn't show up very clearly. Well maybe we could get an AI photo of the lady with the sword and the scales, with a tear coming out from under her blindfold. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:46, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
  • We previously used some DALL-E 2 images, the August 22 issue had a lot of them (and we had images on the main issue page as well). Me and Frostly made a few around that time. It's a little time-consuming and expensive, and making thumbnail images for articles is not really well-supported by our current layout code, so I haven't been doing it lately. In general, I'm not a gigantic fan of the Wikipedia image credit model -- you're supposed to totally abstain from a text image credit, which is doing too little, and you're also supposed to put a giant pain-in-the-%@# link on the image itself, which is doing too much. I think it'd be saner to just have a text credit below images, and I think it's good to have done this here. I wouldn't be opposed to a general style-guide where we just do this for our images overall. jp×g🗯️ 09:52, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
    Expensive? One can use DALL-E 3 for free on Bing now [4].
    the August 22 issue had a lot of them - to clarify for others reading along, I guess JPxG means one of the (several) August 2022 issues, already linked above.
    making thumbnail images for articles is not really well-supported by our current layout code - well, they don't have to be thumbnails.
    I think it'd be saner to just have a text credit below images, and I think it's good to have done this here. - to clarify, we went without any credit in the new ITM (as the prompter of the currently used image I'm not complaining, although I might still correct the image description on Commons per Bri's suggestion above).
    Regards, HaeB (talk) 17:14, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Toronto bomb threat

Is anybody dealing with this right now? See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions/Archive 35#Suggestion by SYSS Mouse (2023-11-12) --Andreas JN466 14:38, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

I was there. I have some screenshots of things said on social media and talked with people about what they know and experienced.
One story is that this happened; another story is that this is the latest event in a pattern of harassment or even terrorist threats targeted at the Wikimedia community.
I am not sure if I will make deadline for next issue on covering all of this WikiConference but I did do video interviews of about 20 people and plan to publish them first in a Signpost article about the conference.
I am sure I can contribute to a little coverage by the next issue; I am not sure if I can fully cover the conference by deadline. I will join anything anyone else is doing. Thanks, ping me anyone who wants to talk about the conference. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:29, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
Red-tailed hawk started a section at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/News and notes#WikiConference North America held in Toronto some days ago which has some relevant notes and links already (I added [5] and [6] yesterday).
Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:09, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
I need to expand that, yes. Can try to interview an attendee or two. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 02:51, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
@Red-tailed hawk, Bluerasberry, HaeB: This still needs work. Anyone have time? I am not au fait with what did or didn't happen. Best, Andreas JN466 15:26, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
Let me see what I can get up in the next few hours. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 21:41, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
@Red-tailed hawk Curious about Special:Diff/1185973996. It looks like you know something that I don't? Regarding the specific content of the link, I don't see anything that could remotely be conceived as problematic, not do I on an (admittedly cursory) review of other recent tweets from the account. And The Forward and Slate magazine are not exactly WP:BADSITES (in fact we prominently featured one of his Slate articles in In The Media not long ago). It also looks like the event's registration was subject to the usual policies, which would usually make one assume that conference participants are unlikely to be well-known banned users, in case that was the concern?
Currently, the WikiConference piece focuses almost entirely on the bomb story, so the link would be helpful for those of our readers who are more interested in the content of the conference itself. Again, you may be better informed about the relevant background here, but generally speaking we shouldn't make content decisions based on rumored past revdels. Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:20, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
My understanding is that both the Twitter account and real-life name of the associated user are not disclosed on Wikipedia, and that for WP:OUTING reasons we'd hit a wall in revealing those sorts of connections. There was something at a noticeboard a while back that I recall where someone connected a Tweet or an article with the Wikimedian and it got revdel'd; I'll try to find it if I can. — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 05:25, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for explaining, but since we are not connecting the Twitter account and real-life name to his on-wiki identity (which, for the record, I don't know and don't need to know), I fail to see how this could be a WP:OUTING violation. (Note also that he has been cited in mainspace for over a year without any clueless admins or oversighters hitting the revdel button, even though on the site linked there he likewise identifies as "veteran Wikipedian who has edited more than 30,000 pages on the site.")
Since we didn't get to resolve this in time for publication, I have left a comment on the talk page, in the hope it's still useful for some readers. Regards, HaeB (talk) 17:38, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

19-22 Featured content

@Adam Cuerden Do you need help to complete your draft? Sorry for not asking you before... Oltrepier (talk) 09:04, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

If possible. I'm kind of in a crunch time here. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.6% of all FPs. 15:59, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
@Adam Cuerden I've tried to knock out some of the short poems for the FA section (at least for the articles I'm more familiar with) and make a few more adjustments, hopefully it helps. Oltrepier (talk) 17:48, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

19-22 In the media

Hello! I've noticed that a snippet from a previous thread of this page has been incorporated in the Newsroom's "In the media" panel for the next issue: was it a glitch, or did anyone do it on purpose?

By the way, I would be more than happy to write a short entry for that article about the Peruvian Clásico, and I've already got another interesting story on my mind, as well! Oltrepier (talk) 21:12, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

I think the glitch is that the comments in the Newsroom page don't automatically clear out after the new issue, maybe not until the page for the new issue is created, or even maybe not at all! @JPxG: I think this is an artifact of your recent work on this issue. In general, though, that work has been useful.
@Oltrepier: thanks for the contributions in the last issue. I think *everybody* liked them very much (or should have), and you should keep on contributing as much as you like. In fact we should all encourage you. It's especially good that we're getting (through you) more non-English language sources since we are supposed to be covering all Wikipedia languages. Keep up the good work. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:30, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
@Smallbones I genuinely hope I can keep doing so, thank you so much for your support! : ) Oltrepier (talk) 21:46, 25 November 2023 (UTC)
@Oltrepier In a narrow sense this appears to have been your fault, because you created that section with the wrong heading - it should have started with "19-21" (like #19-21 Essay or #19-21 Recent research above) instead of "19-22"; for the same reason, it also wasn't included in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom at the time when it should be been (i.e. until the publication).
In a broader sense though, as Smallbones already alluded to, this is a problem with the new newsroom system itself that JPxG implemented recently, which relies on these cryptic numbers. (Or who among the Signpost team 1. always knows the volume and issue number of the upcoming issue and 2) that the sections actually have to use the volume and issue number of the *preceding* issue because JPxG wasn't able to find a better technical solution?) Hate to go "told you so", but this is exactly the kind of problem I predicted in the recent discussion about these changes (where I also suggested an IMHO less confusing solution, which admittedly would take more work and skill to implement). As said there, JPxG's sloppy work on such tech issues has again and again been causing significant confusion and lost time for others on the team. This is another such instance. Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:31, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
Since you asked, I know the issue number because I always record my contributions in my private roster using it. ☆ Bri (talk) 06:20, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
@HaeB @Bri @Smallbones Ok, thank you all for clarifying.
By the way, I've just added a new short entry to the "In the media" draft, and I've also got an interesting idea for the second lead story, hopefully I can add it sooner rather than later... Oltrepier (talk) 21:29, 27 November 2023 (UTC)
The template that generates the "create a new section" link from the Newsroom automatically inserts the section with the correct name. Previously, the system was to just not transclude items from here to the Newsroom at all, and there was a separate set of comments there and here; this also had to be reset regularly. @HaeB: I am a little saddened to hear this; I've pinged you before (when I've had a lot of free time) to ask what specific technical improvements you think I should focus on, and gotten no response at all; if your preference is for the issues to remain unfixed and you just like calling me a fool every few weeks, I guess that is fine, but let me know so that I can stop trying to actually think of what should be addressed. jp×g🗯️ 19:02, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

@Smallbones: For the record, I think I've found the English version of that Haaretz article you've been looking for, hopefully it helps. Didn't we already address the news in a previous issue, though? Oltrepier (talk) 18:03, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Wow @Oltrepier:, you're right. It looks like User:Ca added the two line blurb, which we used as is, on Nov. 17 when the article first came out. On Nov. 26 Haaretz's standard email notification sent me the same story in Hebrew (identical except for the headline) and I just missed the connection. Thanks - likely I'll just delete the section for this issue. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:46, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
@Smallbones Oh, ok, but I think it might actually be notable enough to keep it!
Oh, and I'm also completing my own entry for the second lead story... Oltrepier (talk) 20:16, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Ok, my draft should be live and ready for copyediting now! Oltrepier (talk) 21:41, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
It looks good to me. I just added a link to when we covered her Nobel Price acceptance speech. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:58, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

As far as the Haaretz article. I'm pretty sure I don't have the time or the skills to do a good write up. It looks like a minefield to me, but anybody else who wants to write it should go ahead. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:58, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

@Smallbones I think I can at least help you write a proper entry, but I won't have enough time to do it until tomorrow... Oltrepier (talk) 21:14, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Thanks (if you want to take on the whole thing!) Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:38, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Actually, I'll likely be late with it, I'm so sorry... Oltrepier (talk) 21:40, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
@Smallbones Ok, surprisingly enough, I've managed to prepare and submit a last-gasp write up for the Haaretz article: since it's under pay-wall, I couldn't add many details aside of the Yoram Cohen dispute, but I tried to do my best. I hope it's good enough! Oltrepier (talk) 18:09, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
OK @Oltrepier:, for some reason (maybe because I accept their email reports) they let me see the full article. I've got an hour of work to do on my Disinformation report before deadline! after that I'll go over the Haaretz section in ITM, then there's a bunch of other stuff I've left hanging... Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:55, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Images for lead story

I have created some images for the first ITM item "Edit wars over real-life war in Gaza" (Haaretz report on editwarring). I'd like the team to select one.

Cheers ☆ Bri (talk) 22:23, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I think #3 should be eliminated because I've seldom seen Israelis (or Palestinians) wear ties. #2 is better than #1 IMHO. Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:47, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
  1. 2 is better, if only because the typewriters in #1 make no sense.
Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:12, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
  1. 2 looks good to me, as well! Oltrepier (talk) 09:06, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
Please include the prompts used (per c:Commons:AI-generated_media#Description). Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:06, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
  • I have been working on some CSS/html/template/js shiznit lately and I think I might be able to make the "images on the Signpost front page" thing work again, without it requiring 800 hours of labor like it did when we tried this last year. jp×g🗯️ 02:00, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
    I did and it works. Article headers now take a piccy= param which can be used for a header image that'll automatically get put on the main Signpost page and also in the archives (which, incidentally, also have subheadings too). That and some CSS fixes for templates and the external site. Ready to be ready now. jp×g🗯️ 07:01, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

3 December issue

I am trying to take care of a bunch of stuff before we publish. I will be around tomorrow. jp×g🗯️ 09:19, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

"Tomorrow" was stated about 7 hours ago, so I hope this actually means publishing will be on time about 2000 UTC. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:19, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
In the far future of the year 2000 humanity will have advanced past the need for time zones. jp×g🗯️ 18:18, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Looks like 7 pretty good articles, some copyediting needed. Smallbones(smalltalk) 00:15, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

@Smallbones: Wanna take a look at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Next_issue/Comix? jp×g🗯️ 01:42, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
@JPxG: - yes, it's pretty good, say 96.5/100. Did you plagiarize the captions? (joke) I'll copy edit, which should take three minutes. The best humour article we've had in a long time. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:21, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
OK CE done - I could only verify the last part of the blurb quote [7] but it looks ok. I don't know how you got a laptop on the table in the 3rd cartoon, but if possible you should remove it. Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:29, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
LOL -- I don't actually know what that is. The image is a direct scan from a Danish magazine from 1877; I think it's just some kind of briefcase or craft kit that happens to look like one. It would be a pretty stupid thing to add, though, if it wasn't there to begin with. jp×g🗯️ 07:07, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Out

Image script worked, so there are piccies on the main page and also in the archives. I will incorporate this into the preloads and documentation -- it's an invisible param that goes into the article header with the title and author. jp×g🗯️ 10:53, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

@JPxG Thank you for implementing this!
The only problem I've got with the current script is that some images (most specifically, three of them on today's issue) look giant in comparison to anything else... Is there an easy way to make all the pictures fit in a "standard", proportionate format? Oltrepier (talk) 20:25, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I am messing around with {{Signpost/snippet/sandbox}} as we speak. I am not 100% on what to do; I think that some kind of CSS crop may be condign, but I will have to take a look at {{CSS crop}} and see how grotesque of a hack it is. It might just be too half-assed to be worth using, but if it's actually good, I will test it out. jp×g🗯️ 20:27, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Nice to have the images back. Some notes:
  • The first image is broken right now in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Archives/2023-12-04 (but not in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost).
  • Let's make sure that the image for each story is actually also used in the corresponding story. That is not the case right now for the photo of the mysterious gentleman in a suit. (Unless the reader is a knowledgeable fan of a particular sport, they would need to scroll through much of the tables in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-12-04/Traffic report and do some skilled guesswork and clicking on various biography articles to find out that he is the same as the athlete in sportswear with sunglasses.)
  • This is also important because the current solution likely violates CC licenses, as the images are not clickable in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost - i.e. the file description pages with the required attribution and licensing information are not accessible. (For some reason they are clickable in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Archives/2023-12-04 though.) I doubt that having the image with file description link on the linked page is sufficient either, but at least it would ameliorate the situation a bit.
  • Looks like the template's documentation still needs to be updated.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 02:49, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Are you sure the image isn't a caching issue? It was messed up earlier today but I thought I fixed it.
The whole thing is pretty experimental overall; I haven't added documentation yet because I am not sure if this is the best way to implement it. That is: having SPS constitute markup for archive/issue pages based on information in the articles, then having that stored separately on different wikipages. For a simple example, changing one of the pictures for one of the articles right now requires a sequence of three separate edits (article metadata, Signpost front page and archive issue page). I don't know if it is smart to stick with this, so I don't want to commit it to documentation just yet (and everything still works fine without including a piccy param in the header templates). The image attribution thing is another issue I'm not quite sure about. A bunch of the images (i.e. the midjourney/stable diffusion ones at least) are public domain; for the ones that aren't I am trying to figure out an attribution overlay CSS.
As far as I can tell, there is no other website besides Wikipedia where "making the image a hyperlink to a different website that has information about its author provided if you scroll down" is considered necessary and "crediting the author with an attribution line below the image" is forbidden. This seems to be a quirk particular to Wikipedia; the Creative Commons website doesn't say anything about needing images to only be displayed with the full image as a hyperlink to an attribution page. About the extent to which notices are required, they say

In 4.0, the manner of attribution is explicitly allowed to be reasonable to the means, medium, and context of how one shares a work.
In the 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0 licenses, attribution may be reasonable to the medium or means, and applied to all elements other than certain notices where the requirement is firm. In 4.0, this explicit permission applies to the medium, means, and context of use. We believe this to be a clarification rather than a change: attribution reasonable to the means, medium, and context of use should be permissible for works under any CC license. Additionally, the pre-4.0 licenses specified that credit in adaptations and collections should be at least as prominent as credits for other authors; 4.0 is not specific in this regard.

As far as I can tell, the "image as hyperlink" practice exists here because of our practice of refusing to give attribution in article text or image captions, necessitating something else be done (and to be honest, I'm really not sure that Wikipedia actually provides reasonable attribution -- I certainly wouldn't be satisfied with a website using my photographs and then saying "no it's okay bro we don't give you any acknowledgement but we made the image be a hyperlink to a Commons page which incidentally mentions your username 2 screens down").
But that is another thing for another day. Here I will try to figure out something today for getting attribution publicly on the front page as well as the article pages.
Overall, I'm thinking that having separate static pages for everything might not be a great idea. Module:Signpost has proven quite powerful and useful wherever it's been used -- e.g. there are about a hundred tag and series pages like Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Series/RfA reform and Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Tag/fromtheeditor, with thousands of articles between them. But since these use the module, they can all easily be modified by simple edits to list-maker templates (i.e. if we decided we wanted to include bylines or subheadings on the tag pages or something). Contrariwise, if we wanted to include bylines on archive pages -- even though this information is already stored in the module's data indices -- it'd still require a gigantic bot run across hundreds of pages running weird bespoke code to properly format the bylines onto the articles (which would itself require a lot of oversight and review because of oddball formatting issues on the archive pages). So I am not completely certain that adding another parameter to our weird "static archive page" thing is the best way to go -- it might just be better to use all the metadata from the module indices and generate pages from that instead. Who knows. jp×g🗯️ 05:32, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Technology report

Hey everyone, because I have some experience in working with you already, I've boldly added a post I'd very much like to see in Signpost. Of course, as a Wikipedian working for the Foundation, I know that Signpost is totally yours, so if you decide not to have this text or to move it around, I'll understand. At the team, we just wanted to make sure that this news reaches as many editors as possible. Signpost would be perfect for that. Thanks! SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 17:47, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

This rules, thanks. jp×g🗯️ 22:15, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

19-23 Crossword

I finally figured out how to do the templates so we can put together crosswords pretty easily, and also styling so that they don't look like utter trash. I have a couple more queued up for the issues after this one (like the old-timey comics, this is kind of a reservoir we can dip into whenever we want). jp×g🗯️ 22:37, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

💜 — Frostly (talk) 02:58, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

prediction markets

https://manifold.markets/browse?q=wikipedia&s=most-popular&f=open&ct=ALL&t=Questions

Check this shizzle out. jp×g🗯️ 00:27, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm scratching my head over Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist "Christmas" carols but I think if you mean "illustrations of seasonal celebrations" we could probably come up with some. Let's not forget this issue will cover New Year's (on the civil calendar at least) and that's an opportunity for a lot of inclusion. Don't forget Tết and other celebrations of the Lunar New Year although it's in February 2024. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:46, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Io Saturnalia! jp×g🗯️ 19:30, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
@Bri: Thanks for the pix (especially the Malanka one). You probably think I should just have "holiday songs", but that's not really what I'm aiming at. Carols go back before Xmas, e.g. Mummers and I like the old carols, or songs of similar meaning. I also like Xmas, but fully understand that there are people who don't celebrate it. Hanukah songs should be just the thing, but I can't really find anything other than the Dreidle song and something from Adam Sandler (See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Gallery near the bottom). If it was a competition the Muslim carols would be ... but it's not a competition. It's just an important time to say "Peace on earth goodwill to all." Any suggestions ppreciated. I just found a good French carol [8]

Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:31, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure how well it translates to The Signpost ... we can't even use album covers ... but wrt Hanukkah music you might want to be aware of the existence of Erran Baron Cohen's album Songs In The Key Of Hanukkah, another oddball satire one by the Klezmonauts Oy to the World, and The LeeVees' Hanukkah Rocks. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:50, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
p.s. We may want to take care not to re-do images from the 2019 year-end Gallery or the 2018 edition. There was a polar bear swim in 2018, but it is a different image than the one offered above. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:15, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Publishing schedule

It's a good time to discuss the Dec.-Jan. schedule now. We're scheduled to publish Sunday Dec. 3, and then the next issue would be Sunday Dec. 17, and we're into the Christmas-New Years period which can be an interesting time to publish. On the regular 2 week schedule, the next after that would be Dec. 31, which would be a horrible publishing date (December 24 would be just as bad). I'll suggest we just wait another week and go past the New Year (with a new volume number! #20) and publish on Jan. 7, 2024.

I've always planned to be out of touch over the holidays, but it never worked out that way. My wife always has 2+ weeks off over the Xmas-NewYears holiday, so we always plan to travel. This year though she'll be traveling abroad alone to meet family, and I'll be taking care of the other family here. But I'll be fine with the schedule I outlined above.

BTW volume 20 just means that we'll be completing 19 years of publication soon, it doesn't mean that it will soon be our 20th anniversary. That'll be January 10, 2025 (or Sunday Jan. 12, 2025). We should probably start something though that leads up to the 20th birthday. Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:41, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

On the regular 2 week schedule, the next after that would be Dec. 31 - that's not "the regular schedule"; per this discussion, the current default schedule is the first Sunday and third Sunday of the month (i.e. twice per month, as also stated in the Signpost's "About" page, not every two weeks). In other words, your proposal is exactly the default schedule. Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:02, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
Whoops! My mistake - then nothing to worry about. One possible thing to do, though it would likely mean a lot of extra work for @Igordebraga:, would move the year-end summary of Traffic report, to a Jan-November summary and publish it on December 17, rather than in a January issue. Would that be possible? Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:10, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
Better keep the Annual Report in January, it's an yearly deal so it only really works with 365 days of traffic data. December is business as usual. igordebraga ≠ 01:15, 29 November 2023 (UTC)
Nineteen years is old enough to get a beer in Canada (as everyone who's ever turned 19 in Michigan will already know). The first sunday of January is the 7th, but I think it may be more apropos to shoot for the 10th (since that is the 19th anniversary and all). jp×g🗯️ 20:40, 28 November 2023 (UTC)
@JPxG @Smallbones @Igordebraga So, the plan is to address the WMF report on this year's Top 25 list only in January, right? I hope I'll be able to help you with it, by the way! Oltrepier (talk) 21:04, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
For sure. Who knows what can happen in the December to bring in loads of views (for instance, 2021 had Spider-Man, 2022 had the World Cup and Avatar) and cause some changes to this list with only 11 months of data. And Indian Premier League is excluded from ours because the traffic might be legit but the mobile percentage is so high that it unfortunadely gets out along with articles we know have fishy data like Skathi (moon) and everything starting with "XXX". igordebraga ≠ 21:05, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
So, did we settle on December 23 as the date for next issue? I must have lost the discussion...
It's perfectly fine for me, though! Oltrepier (talk) 09:28, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
Indeed, it would have been nice if JPxG could have weighed in here about the publication date before setting it to December 23 instead of the default date, or if he had at least posted an update in this thread afterwards.
But the bigger problem is that the date needed to be set by hand at all after it didn't get updated for six days after the publication of the December 4 issue. As discussed here in July we should have a technical solution for automatically updating the deadline template to the default date for the next issue (first or third Sunday of the month), with manual adjustments still possible afterwards of course. (In that discussion, Adam Cuerden had volunteered to take care of this task manually after the publication of each new issue, which didn't happen here - but it's understandable that folks are not over-enthusiastic about this kind of avoidable chore.)
Regards, HaeB (talk) 14:46, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Traffic report blurb

To me, by far the most interesting item on the 20 articles in the traffic report is the possible existential threat to humanity. I wobbled on whether to bump the apparently fascinating (to some) cricket games from the blurb, and chickened out, and put them first. If somebody wants to take a crack at the other thing, go for it! ☆ Bri (talk) 00:35, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I've never been good at TR blurbs, or blurbs in general, but here's an off the cuff try.
If you think one sport taking more than a quarter of the slots in these lists isn't cricket, look for movies, celebrities, and political follies. Or a possible existential threat to humanity from an unusual fired-for-the-weekend CEO!
Maybe a bit over-the-top, do with it what you like. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:25, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
@Bri: Maybe relevant: there's a prediction market on this. jp×g🗯️ 20:01, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
Holding steady at 25%, that's actually pretty high for a predicted breakthrough. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:35, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

19-23 Discussion report

Arabic Wikipedia Blockout

There is a blockout in Arabic Wikipedia on December 23 for 24 hours. أيوب (talk) 14:28, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Already being covered in "Discussion report", but thanks for the heads-up! (next time consider using the suggestions page) Regards, HaeB (talk) 15:18, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

19-23 Recent research

@HaeB: Just saw this: "Toxic comments are associated with reduced activity of volunteer editors on Wikipedia, PNAS Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 12, December 2023". Seems slightly interesting but also kind of bizarre. Mostly, what they do is carry out sentiment analysis on a bunch of user talk page diffs, run them through a black-box algorithm to determint their "toxicity", and then compare them to user contribs graphs. The conclusion they draw is that, since many users' contributions cease after receiving a "toxic message", "Wikipedians might reduce their contributions or abandon the project altogether, threatening the success of the platform".

I am not so sure about this. Their methodology is somewhat troubling. They go into great detail on what a shame it is that people are leaving Wikipedia due to these toxic comments, and how the community needs to take a strong stand against "toxicity", but do not actually give examples of what is or isn't a "toxic" comment. Most user warning templates, like {{uw-vandalism4}}, have pretty harsh language ("You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you vandalize Wikipedia").

This becomes very important when combined with the next omission, which is rather disturbing: they do not seem to have made any attempt whatsoever to determine whether the users were blocked. The words "Block" or "ban" does not appear anywhere in the paper and the topic is never mentioned; it seems like they simply assumed that a user's contributions stopping at a certain date indicated that they "abandoned the platform".

It doesn't really seem to me like the data demonstrates what they're claiming it does, at least based on the graphs they show. They've done a bunch of regressions on the data, sure, but it seems equally likely that what the data actually demonstrates is "user accounts that get warned for vandalism often stop editing afterwards", which is trivially true, and definitely isn't evidence for this:

A suggested solution to this problem has been the red-flagging of harassment and harassers (46). However, the opinion that toxic comments are negligible and should be seen as merely over-enthusiastic participation is still present among editors (25). Furthermore, various anti-harassment measures have been de-clined multiple times by the community, as they were seen to slow the process of content creation (57, 58). Based on our find-ings, we believe there is a need to reevaluate these policies, and more research attention is required to understand the impact of potential interventions.

Of course, this isn't false, but it really seems questionable to me whether any of the data in this paper is actually evidence to support it. What do you think? jp×g🗯️ 00:16, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Just quickly: I haven't read the full paper yet, so I don't have an opinion on several of the issues you mention. But the preprint version, which came out some months ago, has been on the the to-do list for RR for some months already. As noted there, this comment (by a researcher from EPFL) seems worth considering: "I've found the title of this paper a bit misleading — the finding is purely correlational: there is no attempt to control for the confounders that might be present."
Now, that title was changed in the now published peer-reviewed version, from "Toxic comments reduce the activity of volunteer editors on Wikipedia" to "Toxic comments are associated with ..." (my bolding). But evidently tons of people still interpret it as a causal claim. Earlier today, after (re)tweeting the paper from @WikiResearch, I reached out to the authors (or the two of them I was able to find on Twitter) about their thoughts on this issue, let's see if they respond.
If you want to write up a review for RR, I'd be happy to assist.
PS: The supplementary material contains some concrete examples of comments with their toxicity ratings.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:33, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
Oh, I am a fool and missed that. Some interesting stuff there:
These diffs go back a very long way (some as far back as 2004). But then the paper says stuff like: "A suggested solution to this problem has been the red-flagging of harassment and harassers (46). However, the opinion that toxic comments are negligible and should be seen as merely over-enthusiastic participation is still present among editors (25)." The idea, I guess, or at least the implication, is that Wikipedians have never done anything about civility, or that we think it isn't a problem, or that we need to take action because there's so much of it, et cetera -- but the evidence of this is a bunch of comments that people already got blocked for, and also some people were assholes in 2005... jp×g🗯️ 02:54, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
I guess we can expand the list of spurious causation-inferrers to the authors of the paper. jp×g🗯️ 05:37, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
Looking into this deeper: googling the string from the 0.99 toxicity comment gives https://storage.googleapis.com/kaggle-forum-message-attachments/300575/8842/oof_greatest_hits.xlsx which is an Excel file called "oof_greatest_hits.xlsx". In the fifth tab, "threat_ranked_high", the topmost row is this: Please stop. If you continue to ignore our policies by introducing inappropriate pages to Wikipedia, you will be blocked. Much to think about. jp×g🗯️ 06:03, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
I am not sure about the provenance of that file, although it does seem to match up rather nicely with the data they give. But nonetheless, I have obtained developer access to the Perspectives API, and I can confirm that the text of {{Uw-own3}} does indeed give 0.8039029 for ATTACK_ON_AUTHOR (above the .80 threshold they give). I will have to look into this in some more detail. jp×g🗯️ 08:52, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
Not sure what the ultimate source of the corpus was. meta:Research:Detox/Data_Release seemed likely; it was used in a Jigsaw paper in 2017. The comments in it are from between 2001 and 2015. But one of the diffs above is from 2021(?) so I don't really know. jp×g🗯️ 09:46, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
That's stated in the paper: we used the English dump from 2021 November 1, the German dump from 2022 August 1, the French, Italian, and Spanish dumps from 2022 August 1, and the Russian dump from 2022 July 1. (Or if you are asking which corpus the Perspective API that they used in the paper was trained on, that would be a separate question.) Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:23, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
@JPxG: These are really interesting observations. I have also since read (most of) the paper and supplement, and encountered some other noteworthy aspects. Also btw, the authors thankfully provide the scores directly as part of the paper's replication data (although in a somewhat cumbersome format), I've started to take a look at that too.
Were you going to start a review for RR? If not, I'll take a stab at that; not sure if I'll make it by today's deadline, but it could go into the January issue too.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:38, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Update: The replication data is indeed quite interesting and will provide some good context for the review, but it'll need to run in the next issue. I'll try to get RR into a publishable state with some other content shortly. Regards, HaeB (talk) 14:43, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Note: Our usual to-do list (that I had mentioned above) has since been updated - help is still welcome to review or summarize the many interesting items listed here, as are suggestions of other new research papers that haven't been covered yet. Regards, HaeB (talk) 10:14, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

@JPxG: This should be publishable now if need be, except that I haven't yet looked into the piccy thing (and some other formatting is a bit wonky still). Regards, HaeB (talk) 22:03, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

19-23 In the media

https://quillette.com/2023/12/11/introducing-justapedia/

Well, this sure is a bunch of words. We even get specifically mentioned. I don't know where those archive.ph links go (I'm on my phone and they won't load)...

One thing that strikes me as risible about this is the idea that Cyber Anakin's page was trimmed in "retaliation" for him hacking some Communist web site -- what the hell? -- lmao. Most of the stuff about bias is pretty usual. Particularly grimaceworthy is them quoting Sennalen specifically, who was banned just a couple days ago at AE... not sure if that makes their argument stronger or weaker. At any rate: here's it. jp×g🗯️ 09:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

@JPxG On a side note, I've just realized we've listed a ton of entries for the "In brief" section, but none as lead stories...
Do you think there are some of those news that have the potential to be developed into wider articles?
[Also, I've fixed the "News and notes" thread above, in order to reflect the correct 19-23 issue format: I forgot about it...] Oltrepier (talk) 10:04, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
Wait, maybe this is an interesting bit of news to point out! Oltrepier (talk) 16:26, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
  • I wrote it up as a brief item at In the media, but there's definitely enough substance in Quillette to expand this to a lead item, if someone wants to take it on. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:00, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
@Bri The Quillette report would definitely have the potential to be a lead item, although it could also be suitable for the "Disinformation report" column. The Slate report on AARoads Wiki and Le Monde's article about online access for people with visual impairment could be worth the lead space, too, in my opinion.
On a side note, if we do cover that discussion in "News and notes", then should I move my report on Wiki Loves Monuments to a separate space (like "Special report", for example)? Oltrepier (talk) 10:26, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
@Oltrepier, Bri, and JPxG: I've been hoping I'll get all my research done and be able to post an astoundingly good "Special report" next week, but I could always post it in "Disinformation report". There are several things that might be put in DR this month, so maybe we could have seperate sections on indiividual stories there as well as my Special report. It's up to JPxG. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:48, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
@Smallbones @Bri In my humble opinion, your two short stories about the Ledger's "mocking" article and Justapedia are the strongest candidates for the lead section.
@Oltrepier, Bri, JPxG, and Jayen466: I did move up the Ledger/donations section, but I don't think they were mocking anybody. I may be mocking paywalls though. We should also check that I'm not violating any Signpost policies. It is alright to say that it's acceptable to donate, rather than donations are highly discouraged? I've also got a good pic for the section. File:Old concrete wall.jpg Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:02, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
@Smallbones Sorry, I swear I intended that term as a joke! : D
That image is... quite appropriate, I would say! Oltrepier (talk) 19:47, 18 December 2023 (UTC)
Like I said, elaborating on that Le Monde article I previously included, by explaining which accessibility tools Wikipedia users can already adopt, could be another option: I'm not familiar enough with them to expand on the subject myself, though... Oltrepier (talk) 20:48, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

@Bri, Red-tailed hawk, and Smallbones: Er, did we forget to develop the Slate report about AARoads into a full blurb? Oltrepier (talk) 08:55, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

  • @Bri and Oltrepier: I can complete it (I hope) within the hour. I might have to simplify the Gallery piece though. It was fun to write so far, maybe too much fun - I've spent way too much time on it already. The special report has also ground to a halt, after taking too much time - just one of those things where, the more I dig, the more I don't want to publish it. Smallbones(smalltalk) 13:12, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
    • @Oltrepier: well it took 3 hours (lots of Christmas interruptions) and I can't find the the Tik Tok video, but I'm done with In the media. Next is Gallery. Does anybody know @JPxG:'s ETA? That might help my editing on the Gallery. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:20, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
      Six ways till Sunday is what it is. Adding picture support has taken a lot longer than I expected due to the giant litany of random-ass scripts that have to be updated for everything to work right. The last of them, of course, is the publishing script -- a bunch of params have to be updated before it's even possible for me to run the issue. jp×g🗯️ 16:27, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
      Looks like I misunderestimated myself -- it works fine now. I think that is about the capstone. The only remaining issue is that CSS-cropped images on the front page are cropped improperly and look like dogshit on mobile for some reason (I think probably because the CSS crop params are in px and not em or vw or whatever). Alas. jp×g🗯️ 17:11, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
      @JPxG I should have just finished copy-editing the whole column! Oltrepier (talk) 08:53, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

19-23 In focus

Russian chapter closing - can anybody handle it?

I asked @Ymblanter: if he could check or make a translation of RU WikiNews [9] Maybe put it in Forum?

Moscow Times has an article in English [10] Smallbones(smalltalk) 05:56, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Finished checking the machine translation. Ymblanter (talk) 15:58, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
I've done some initial copyediting although this isn't actually marked "ready for copyedit" (should it be??). ☆ Bri (talk) 17:41, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
Me too! Oltrepier (talk) 17:52, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
«Wikimedia Russia closer after founder is declared a “foreign agents”». Russian authorities did not officially call him a «foreign agent» on Friday. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Википедия:Форум/Новости#Реестр @JPxG Lokilohh (talk) 08:57, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

19-23 jam time

We have a couple more hours left; most of the articles look good. I had intended to spend less time on programming shit and be able to actually write out some of my drafts this issue. Oh well. The piccies are good to roam (mobile display for css crop needs to be fixed, yada yada). I am going to try to take a nap and then let's get this out. jp×g🗯️ 17:16, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

First time in my life I actually succeeded in taking a nap for a couple hours. jp×g🗯️ 22:44, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
@JPxG: I think I'm ready! Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:08, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Some licenses are incorrectly named: CC 2.0 BY-SA, CC 4.0 BY-SA, CC 3.0 BY, CC-4-SA. Also the black section headings above the white article titles may not fully match WP:COLOR Lokilohh (talk) 09:13, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
@Lokilohh Whoops, I'll try to go through all of them: thank you for flagging it! Oltrepier (talk) 10:04, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Are those bad? The license text says, e.g. "Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution-Sharealike", which I figure abbreviates naturally to "CC 4.0 BY-SA". At any rate, the image credits at the top left are links to the attribution pages, which have the full legal-beagle licenses with disclaimers and glossy eight-and-a-half-by-eleven photographs with the circles and the arrows on the back and a paragraph explaining what each one is et cetera. jp×g🗯️ 10:37, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

update from the mines

Image params (filename, credit, license, and x/y/size params) are now incorporated into the draft template, the module indices, and SignpostTagger. Will need to be programmed into SPS and Wegweiser, then the module itself, then the presentation templates. When I am finished this will make it possible to generate issues dynamically from the database. No more of this stuff with hardcoded issue pages: if we want bylines on issue pages we can just put bylines on issue pages. Or subheadings, or images, or whatever. This has been a long time in the making but it will let us just have images without it being a pain that requires constant manual effort... jp×g🗯️ 11:00, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue now works properly, i.e. automatically transcludes all the pages in Special:PrefixIndex/Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/, instead of the pain in the ass thing it was doing before where you had to manually add every single thing you wanted to see in the mockup. Also it fetches the piccy parameters. jp×g🗯️ 00:56, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
SignpostTagger, SPS.js, Wegweiser, and the module are now set up to work properly with subheadings.
SignpostTagger, SPS.js, and Wegweiser work properly with image params. The module still has to be fixed to accomodate them. For now this is fine; everything will work properly for this issue. jp×g🗯️ 17:13, 23 December 2023 (UTC)
Oh I messed up the SPS code so it took all the piccy params out. How stupid. Dumb dumb dumb. Well it is easy to fix it will just take forevar. jp×g🗯️ 13:22, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Template for article images

Okay, after long work in the Signpost mines, I think I am pretty close to something that actually works for articles having images (and us not having to manually do 800 edits every time). You can see a preview of this at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Technical/sandbox.

The thinking, which I incorporated into the publishing script, is to have the piccy parameters be put onto the main issue page as drawn from the article pages. So, for example: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-12-04/Essay has the following header. 

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Signpost-article-header-v2
 |{{{1|I am going to die}}}|By [[User:WhatamIdoing|WhatamIdoing]]
 |piccyfilename=File:Memento Mori 'To This Favour' by William Michael Harnett, c. 1879.JPG
}}

When I run the publishing script, the piccy param gets parsed out of that header template and put into the main page (and the issue archive page) by SPS.JS automatically. So it only has to be messed with manually the one time, during the article drafting process. However, more params are needed to make this actually work. As far as I can tell here is what's required:

  • Picture name, for embedding it.
  • Picture author and license, for attribution.
  • Crop attributes.

The last one is what I'm not sure about, because there are a few ways to do this. Basically, the situation is this: not every image we want to use for an article will have a 1:1 aspect ratio. Forcing ourselves to wander over to Commons and upload totally new image files for each article is an unreasonable pain, but it's possible to use CSS to make oblong images be square. However: not all images look best when they're forced into 1:1 from the top left corner. See the memento mori image for example:

William Michael Harnett – PD
Essay
I am going to die
And so are you.

This leaves a bunch of empty space on the bottom because |300px sets the width, which works fine for portrait images, but here leaves a bunch of whitespace to the bottom because it's a landscape image. So I added a scale param that you can use to give the image different sizes. Here is it at 400 and 500px, respectively:

William Michael Harnett – PD
Essay
I am going to die
And so are you.
William Michael Harnett – PD
Essay
I am going to die
And so are you.

Now, you'll notice this is still kind of effed up. Notably, the skull (the focal point of the piccy) is way off to the right. So this is why I have x and y params in the template. With an x offset of 70 and piccy size of 400, we get this, which is actually dece:

William Michael Harnett – PD
Essay
I am going to die
And so are you.

We can even specify different crops entirely. Here is scale 800, x-offset 350, and y-offset 100:

William Michael Harnett – PD
Essay
I am going to die
And so are you.

Now, with all of this shizzle, we end up with a somewhat larger header template for our articles. If this is implemented the way it is right now, this is what they'll end up being (and of course this will be incorporated into the scripts and preload templates, etc): 

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Signpost-article-header-v2
 |{{{1|I am going to die}}}|By [[User:WhatamIdoing|WhatamIdoing]]
 |piccyfilename = File:Memento Mori 'To This Favour' by William Michael Harnett, c. 1879.JPG
 |piccy-credits = 
 |piccy-license = 
 |piccy-scaling = 
 |piccy-xoffset = 
 |piccy-yoffset = 
}}

Now, if there's nothing put in for piccy-x and piccy-y and piccy-scale, it will just use default values, which are fine for most images (esp ones that are already square). Also, I think it might be possible to use some kind of machine magic to autofill author and license params (the data on Commons is machine-readable etc).

In a broader sense, my sinister plan is to integrate this into the databases used by Module:Signpost, and make it so that the main page and the issue pages are generated dynamically by the module from the databases. Right now, the way it works is, if you want an archive page or an issue page to be different, you have to edit the article and then edit the issue page and then edit the archive page etc. But if the pages are generated dynamically from the database all you'll have to do is edit the metadata in the article itself (let's say there is a typo in the subheading or the title or the author name or whatever), then either use SignpostTagger or trigger WegweiserBot, and then it will automatically propagate this change to everywhere else the article's shown without having to edit them individually.

Let me know what everyone's opinion is on this, because it does affect the writing process inasmuch as making drafts are concerned. jp×g🗯️ 19:34, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Note that the top left image attributions look like ass and aren't finished -- the link needs to be styled differently, the text needs to be given an outline, the licenses need to be linked etc etc etc et etc. I am working on that still. jp×g🗯️ 19:39, 10 December 2023 (UTC) Fixed jp×g🗯️ 20:38, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
Also EVERYTHING looks like ass on mobile because the Signpost styles are almost all written to use pixel values instead of em-dash values because they were written like 400 years ago. That is in the process of getting fixed but it might be a while. jp×g🗯️ 19:44, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
@JPxG I'm not too familiar with the code you've used, but this still looks pretty promising: thank you for the update! : D Oltrepier (talk) 21:09, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
Please consider increasing the contrast for the section title "e.g. Essay". — Frostly (talk) 22:40, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
To keep conversations together: Several issues with the layout are currently being discussed here. Regards, HaeB (talk) 14:56, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Revamped About page

Hi all, hope you're doing well. I drafted a few edits to the about page; you can see the updated version here. Here's a diff as well. Please let me know your thoughts! Thanks, — Frostly (talk) 16:48, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

Signpost statement of purpose before-and-after text
Topic Text before Text after
Inform The primary purpose of The Signpost has always been to inform the community about events that affect and are affected by the Wikimedia movement. Though it was originally created topically an English Wikipedia–only publication, it has long since expanded its scope to cover the Wikimedia movement at large, a transformation symbolically completed by the 2011 renaming of The Wikipedia Signpost to just The Signpost. The Signpost does not specifically maintain a commitment to neutrality in the same way that Wikipedia articles do, but the magazine is nonetheless known, and aims to serve, as a balanced and impartial news source—a recurring problem is the difficulty of representing consensus viewpoints in a critical lens. Its editors and contributors are expected to exercise good judgment at all times, and generally speaking reports usually include at least some mention of all major positions adopted by Wikimedians on the issues at stake. We report on the issues that matter most in the Wikimedia movement, covering all relevant perspectives with fairness and empathy. We explain news and norms in plain language so that everyone can collaborate in disseminating free knowledge.
Entertain A wish to entertain provides the incentive behind some of the publication's lighter-hearted features. The Signpost aims to be a quality online magazine, after all, and is not an encyclopedia itself, and so allows many things—editorializing, narrative, original research—that would be unacceptable in Wikipedia article space. It is worth emphasising, however, that unless there is good reason (and this is highlighted to the reader as a preface to a piece), writers always strive "to maintain [a level of] objectivity as would be appropriate for an independent media organization elsewhere" (in the words of The Signpost founder Michael Snow). We transcend the boundaries of article space to share excellent writing in a variety of formats, including interactive, opinion, narrative, satire, and original research content.
Publish The Signpost is the best space available to present ideas, publish community research, and draw attention to a cause before both the English Wikipedia community and the Wikimedia movement more broadly. We are a community organized and executed publication reaching thousands of readers every month, attaining a readership—and an impact—for our publications that far exceeds any of the other, more disparate publication channels and newsletters maintained among the projects. The Wikimedia Foundation Blog is supposedly the most impactful channel of communication available to the movement—yet in our 2015 readership survey we found that a significant number of our readers did not know of the blog's existence, and that those that did usually found The Signpost's content more appealing. The Signpost as a platform is available for you, our readers, to use. Have a project that you'd like to highlight? An issue that you'd like to bring to light? An essay you'd like to publish? Bring it to us and let us help you to make it known. The Signpost solicits articles, op-eds, and special reports from the community, and publishes them subject to the approval of the editor(s)-in-chief. See How to contribute for more details. We are Wikimedia's best space to amplify ideas and spark curiosity. Reaching more than a million people throughout our nearly two decade history, we effectuate impact that far exceeds any other publication in the movement.
I encourage editors to especially consider the alteration to the statement of purpose. It's summarized in the table above. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:02, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
The new version starts with a false claim right in the first sentence. Not saying that the current version has to be set in stone, but I would encourage you to provide a rationale for each specific change (also the many deletions). On first glance the current version looks better to me overall. Regards, HaeB (talk) 17:16, 15 December 2023 (UTC)
Regarding the rationale, I believe that the previous version is wordy, repetitive and difficult to read. As well, many components (such as the reference to the former WMF blog) are outdated.
Additionally, I was wondering if you could elaborate on the false claim?
Thanks, — Frostly (talk) 22:42, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm not disagreeing that the current version is wordy in some parts and could be streamlined. But a rationale for each specific change would need to refer to the concrete content you are removing, modifying or adding (e.g. something like "I removed sentences 1, 2 and 3 because they are redundant to sentence 4").
As for the first sentence, I was referring to the claim "the oldest online newspaper covering the Wikimedia movement" - what did you base it on? While this isn't a mainspace page subject to WP:BURDEN, given your previous track record of introducing inaccuracies to it (cf. the corrections Andreas and I had to make last year [11][12] after you had edited one part of it), the onus shouldn't be on other people to fact-check your proposed sweeping changes. Regards, HaeB (talk) 09:41, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

19-23 News and notes

@JPxG @Bri @Smallbones @HaeB

Hello! I was thinking about starting a short draft for a recap of Wiki Loves Monuments 2023 and its national editions across the world (with the main focus on Italy, since it registered the highest number of uploaded images by a long shot), but I'm not sure about which column would be more appropriate for it.

Should we put it in "News and Notes" as a lead story, or is there any other suitable slot, such as "Special report"? Oltrepier (talk) 21:19, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

I think N&N is q good place to start with something like this. If it grows too big to fit there (which it seems like it can and should) it can be split out to its own article, and if not it can just live in N&N. jp×g🗯️ 21:31, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
@JPxG Thank you for the advice.
Actually, I've also written another piece for the same column, and at least for now it's a King Kong-level-big block of text: even if we managed to trim it, I don't know how much space will be left for the WLM recap and other stories... Is it still OK? Oltrepier (talk) 16:33, 9 December 2023 (UTC)
Oh, and there will be an election cycle to report about in the next issue, as well, so that's another thing to keep in mind. Oltrepier (talk) 18:04, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

@JPxG: Ok, yesterday I've completed the draft for WLM 2023 and submitted it in "News and notes"; I'm still a bit conflicted over including it in that column, though... (Both of my articles will likely need adjustments and copy-editing, anyway). What do you think about it? Oltrepier (talk) 09:32, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

For the lead section of N&N, could we include this photo. It shouldn't replace The Birth of Venus, but it summarizes my reaction to the proposed law quite well. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:34, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
@Smallbones That's... quite edgy, I should say! : D Oltrepier (talk) 08:46, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
BTW is the Dec. 23 deadline set in stone? I'd prefer it that way, but only since I have a big article that still needs a lot of research. Also, my Christmas carol gallery would go well then (can anybody suggest better Jewish or Muslim Christmas carols? Also Buddhist, Shinto, etc. carols would be welcomed). Also Dec. 23 is something of an anniversary for me. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:34, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

@JPxG: @Jayen466: Should we move the Wikimedia Russia report over my WLM recap? I think it would make more sense for two reasons: firstly, because the former looks to be much more notable news (albeit disastrous ones) than the latter; secondly, because I'd like to let the column end on a lighter note, given how it's shaping up... Oltrepier (talk) 16:48, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we should, though it looks like all we need may be a link to the dedicated article (see section presently at the bottom of this page). Also, pinging User:HaeB, who is usually well informed and may have more info on this story (or know where to find it). Andreas JN466 16:56, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
@Jayen466 I should have added a link to the "In focus" article at the end of your entry, actually! Oltrepier (talk) 17:04, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
@JPxG I think there are still one or two brief notes that need to get sorted out (I don't really know how to do it...), and then we should be ready. Oltrepier (talk) 08:53, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Now it got published with these unfinished items. In case anyone has a moment to help fix them: Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2023-12-24/News_and_notes#Brief notes (see "TKTK" and the yellow highlights). Regards, HaeB (talk) 10:49, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
Removed now after several readers pointed this out too. @JPxG: IMHO checking for such obvious issues at publication time should have a higher priority than say scraping the very bottom of the barrel for half-baked humor pieces. Regards, HaeB (talk) 09:46, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Manual (script-less) publication

We used to have a manual publication process outlined at Special:Permalink/842781293#Manual_process. If a case of The Signpost's publishing script being broken, I've used this as a fallback at least once. As good as the scripts are, I think it would be good to continue with a documented manual fallback so that the publication manager has an "out" if things get weird. Especially with recent significant upgrades to accommodate images and other things. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:25, 26 December 2023 (UTC)

As a side note, the manual process is documented at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Resources § Publication. I agree it would be helpful for changes in the publication process to be reflected both in the manual description and the publishing script at the same time. isaacl (talk) 22:58, 26 December 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, I believe I left a note somewhere on your subpage about this. I am out of town for a few days but I will try to write something up that encapsulates the whole deal of it upon my return. It is still kind of tentative -- there are a ton of tasks and some simplifications aren't finished. Ultimately, it should be possible to publish a whole issue by making a couple quick edits to the drafts, one (prefilled copy-and-paste job) to a module index, and no need to manually compose an entire frontpage/archive page. jp×g🗯️ 09:58, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Submission: FAC Retrospective

I originally submitted this to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions but it sort of fell through the cracks there. @Smallbones gave me some suggestions off-wiki. Based on that, I've trimmed a few hundred words and broken it into two parts, to run in consecutive issues:

Please let me know if there's anything else I need to do. The FAC I refer to in the piece is scheduled to hit TFA on January 14th, so it would be great if the timing of this lined up. RoySmith (talk) 02:32, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

19-24 News and notes

Hello again! I hope you've all spent some happy and serene holidays.

I just wanted to know if there's anyone who knows when the international winners for Wiki Loves Monuments 2023 will be announced: I'd like to write an update on my previous blurb, but I don't have a clue about when the final list will be live... Oltrepier (talk) 15:40, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

News and notes

The tips for the new information's in the next published version:

Dušan Kreheľ (talk) 22:49, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Death of User:Anthony Bradbury

Long-time user and administrator Anthony Bradbury has died. Here is my posting at the bureaucrats' noticeboard about it. Acalamari 12:15, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

19-24 In the media

@Smallbones: With respect to the "More about Ackman", I'll note that FMatPSCM is already contributing to the talk page of the article, and claims to be paid by Pershing Square to make contributions relating to the biography of Bill Ackman. Seems like he (or his firm) is aware of how properly disclosed paid editors work. Would it be reasonable to change the relevant parts of the section from second person to third person, as well as to note that there's already a user who's active on the talk page on Ackman's behalf? — Red-tailed hawk (nest) 03:24, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, I got it. There was also a previous declared paid editor User:NinaSpezz&oldid=1021764421 in 2021. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:02, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

In focus copyedit?

@Bri I'm not sure about this, but regarding Special:Diff/1194792660, isn't the rule that you capitalize the word after a colon, per MOS:COLON? RoySmith (talk) 16:24, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

You are correct, I didn't notice that a complete sentence follows. It has been corrected. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:31, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Ready for publication

@JPxG: It appears that everything is ready for your final check, then publication. No sections have outstanding titles, blurbs, copyedit required, etc. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:33, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I am trying to fix SPS.js to properly parse the picture metadata, but for some reason MediaWiki has decided that I'm no longer allowed to have syntax highlighting in my edit window (if userscripts take too long to load it just decides, on my behalf, that I didn't need to load them after all, and it'd be better off if a page just loaded with random scripts missing), and there seems to be no way whatsoever to alter or abolish this behavior, so I am trying to debug that right now. Man, it would really be cool if there were some sort of nonprofit organization that had a budget of millions of dollars and uses this money to fix basic issues with the website's software. I guess such a thing is not possible so it will take me three times as long to fix the script because I have to fcking keep copypasting it between the edit window and a text editor I guess. jp×g🗯️ 23:02, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
@JPxG what you have failed to factor into the equation is that you're a volunteer, so your time is free, um, unaccounted for, um, worthless. RoySmith (talk) 23:43, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Late-breaking changes

Sorry to hold things up, but I'm not really a fan of some of JPxG's changes here to the Special Report. Many of the changes are fine, of course. I appreciate taking a look, and no good deed goes unpunished, writers need editors, etc., but...

  • The whole reason why I was interested in doing a Signpost article was precisely to do a somewhat more serious take on this matter. Humor pieces are fine, but I was hoping for something more of a useful resource akin to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-08-15/Tips and tricks. A light hand is fine (I do a fairly conversational style) but throwing in jokes will cause the work to not be taken as a resource but as a humor piece. (I do encourage someone writing an explicit humor piece with some Mickey Mouse x Wikipetan fanfiction, go nuts, but... it wasn't this article. In fact, checking the logs, I specifically said when I was chatting over Discord with JPxG that "I'd probably want to keep it more serious" for the article I'd want to do.)
  • The tagline I put some thought into. There's a call to action (CTA) in my version, "Micky and you: What can you do?" which also fits with the above idea of this being a resource and an encouragement to go grab some newly-public domain sources. If anything, make the second "you" in my suggestion bold and blinking or something. I think the new version is weaker, "Famous mouse released from 95 years of captivity: who else can we help bust out?" The other 1928 characters are already "out" of "captivity", they just need to be preserved and uploaded. This version is long for a tagline, too - brevity the soul of wit, etc. (I suppose it's still a call to action in the broader political sense, e.g. hypothetically reducing copyright terms, but let's be realistic, that isn't happening any time soon. But finding & uploading 1928 images is absolutely something random readers can do, immediately after reading the article.)
  • I don't agree with the positive spin added to the first paragraph of the legal & political section ("On the other hand, the last couple decades have seen a wide variety of proposals for draconian copyright legislation go down in flames after enormous public outcry..."). I'm familiar with FOSTA-SESTA and the like, which passed, and is precisely why the first paragraph is laying out the dire and bad state of what happens when politicians mess with copyright law. Even "success" stories like SOPA were rearguard actions where the community was fighting to stop dumb new laws to preserve a not-quite-as-bad status quo. Sure, sometimes we successfully stopped things from getting even worse, but that just deepens the earlier point about inviting politicians to take a new look at the topic being a dangerous gamble - it's possible-to-probable the result is a proposed new law that makes things worse. I don't agree with "the point" added at all - this isn't an "on the other hand" deal, the past several decades have essentially never seen copyrights get shorter or be capped more strictly, which is what is being suggested. And if you don't agree - that's fine! But this may be a too many cooks spoil the broth situation then - that's a valid opinion to have, but it certainly isn't my assessment of the facts, and adding it upends and weakens the point of the previous sentences.
  • And yes, I think the article could do without some of the humor additions. I'm not trying to rag on JPxG here, but humor tastes can be very personal, and the added stuff (e.g. the paragraph about the rainbow covenant, "the ol' pubby domey", an apparent intentional confusion of Mickey with a different character named Mortimer Mouse who isn't actually public domain yet, etc.) is not something I personally would have written, nor would want to have my name as author on.

I made a diff of my proposed changes, which keep some of JPxG's changes but not others, then immediately reverted it. I'll leave it up to you to decide what to do with it. SnowFire (talk) 09:10, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

That is fair enough; it's on me for having been so delayed in the editing for this issue. We can run that. jp×g🗯️ 10:59, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Automated listing of tasks on Newsroom

Okay, it has been a really long time since we all talked about this and agreed it would be a good idea, and it has finally been made possible: The newsroom lists tasks automatically.

That is: it has blank entries for all of the regular columns. Below that it now has a database-report section, that will automatically search for and include pages under Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/* every 24 hours (and also whenever someone clicks the update link). This is the same thing I did at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue, the mockup page for the pending issue's main page, which also automatically updates to include all such articles. This means that nobody has to go dick around with code in newsroom to include a task listing for additional draft articles: you just create Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Baba booey and then click the update link on the Newsroom (or simply wait a day for it to update automatically).

This should greatly reduce the effort of preparing and checking issues. I think that I may also rework the task template somewhat, because the code structure for it right now is best described as sedimentary -- but this probably won't have much effect on how it looks. jp×g🗯️ 00:56, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

WikiProject reports on Newspapers, journalism etc..

I started a draft at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/WikiProject report for covering WP:WPNEWS which is small, so might combine it with WP:MAGAZINES, WP:JOURNALISM and other periodical related WikiProjects. I am genuinely curios why we don't have a Periodicals Cited by Wikipedia equivalent to JCW. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 00:02, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

I love the idea and am sure you can do it well. The joke links in the section heading are funny but don't belong in the heading. Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:34, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Is this issue happening??!

@JPxG, Bri, HaeB, and Jayen466: As I recall, setting the publication date for January 10, 2024 was to mark the 19th anniversary of our first publication, and perhaps setting up some special stories for our 20th year of publication. It looks like we can get an issue done for the 10th, but we better get serious real soon, or delay it to Sunday, the 14th. There are about 5 stories that look like they can happen. I'll get something for In the media (there are about 4 good sections to write), I'm not so sure about News&notes, Traffic report just needs copy editing, In focus is fine (except the pic should be moved to the top), Special report (on copyright expirations) is wonderful, WikiProject report is a good idea but still needs a lot of content.

Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:29, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

In my inbox just now (Google alert):
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/how-wikipedia-is-being-changed-to-downgrade-iranian-human-rights-atrocities-0j6gqqtkt
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/iranian-cyber-army-blamed-as-wikipedia-deletes-atrocities/news-story/3947931532816bc4f1a9c5eca7df5f71
Anyone fancy having a go at this in ITM?
(Thanks, Smallbones. I thought it was the weekend ...) Andreas JN466 00:54, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
@Jayen466 and JPxG: to be clear, I had thought that we were on the regular schedule which would have been Sunday, January 7, until I noticed the Jan. 10 date in the deadline box.Then I remembered (faintly) a discussion about January 10. Perhaps I'e just jumped the gun and fallen in a puddle. In any case, the deadline box hasn't met my expectations for a while.
The Iranian story looks like a real zinger. You (hint, hint) should check with @Marco: (Whoops! No User:Marco here unless "Polo" or something else added) the Times source, and (no disrespect for Marco) check the discussion with admins mentioned and try to get the other side as well.
I'm quite busy with a story on Bill Ackman and Neri Oxman, his wife about plagiarism, the resignation of the Harvard president (might be included) with a working title of "Can you plagiarize from Wikipedia?" We all know the answer to that question, but I think somebody needs to spell it out. Smallbones(smalltalk) 01:47, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
I am about to take a little snooze and then I will get started on editing for this issue. jp×g🗯️ 01:48, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
Thanks Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:42, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
Note that the Iranian story is basically "an editor removed some content", and that's the level of evidence they present to cast aspersions about an indefinite number of editors being Iranian agents. Also note that given the edits they seem to refer to, as well as who was the only party launching a social media campaign around this news piece, it is very likely this smear piece was instigated by a coordinated group whose accounts are now mostly indef'd or globally banned by WMF T&S. MarioGom (talk) 08:39, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
@JPxG, Smallbones, and Jayen466: Note that @MarioGom: is one of the editors involved in assisting IRP disinformation in Wikipedia, which is also likely the reason behind his detracting ("smear piece"?) comment. I'm @Marco:, and I can provide the evidence if a Wikipedia administrator is willing to look at it. Thanks, Marco.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.110.69.12 (talk • contribs) 22:36, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
Yes, "Marco". I am aware that your now-banned colleagues accused me before. Note that accusing me of being an Iranian agent is unacceptable. MarioGom (talk) 22:57, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
A note to bystanders: I'm referring to a group of now indef'd or globally banned accounts that were doing pro-MEK POV pushing for several years. Many of them were on one side of the WP:ARBIRP case. MarioGom (talk) 23:48, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
You continue to deviate, MarioGom (you literally know nothing about me yet that's the focus of your aspersions; also nobody accused you of being "an Iranian agent"). Note that topics containing disinformation include protest in Iran, Human right crimes in Iran, Human right crimes by the Iranian regime, political oppositions of the Iranian regime, promoting Iranian regime discourse using unreliable sources, and I could go on; not only here but also in Wikimedia Commons where something similar is happening. The IRP seems to be outsourcing its censorship on to Wikipedia, and you (MarioGom) have certainly helped facilitate this. Either Wikipedia's systems for tackling disinformation are outdated, or there is an apparent lack of diligence on the part of administrators managing these matters. Marco 175.110.69.12 (talk) 15:44, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
@MarioGom:, at the risk of sounding conspiratorial, I wonder if some of these same globally banned accounts (or whomever was controlling them) is behind this story? VR (Please ping on reply) 01:52, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
I don't think that's conspirational. It seems the most plausible explanation looking at the sequence of events unfolding on and off-wiki. MarioGom (talk) 06:53, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
Since I was pinged above: Sorry, I probably won't be able to contribute much for this issue. Will schedule "Recent research" for the next one (second of the month) as usual.
And +1 to Smallbones' point about taking the deadline time seriously (which should include updating the box if necessary, and also preferably posting a heads-up here when setting it to a date that deviates from our default 1st+3rd Sunday schedule). That said, I think we got a bit better with some recent issues in at least not letting the slippage reach several days. Regards, HaeB (talk) 22:55, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
HaeB is correct, we are getting a bit better with the deadline. In the media is done. I'm out of here for about 15 hours. Smallbones(smalltalk) 05:47, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
This is also ready User:SDeckelmann-WMF/WCNA speech ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 14:31, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
Does she know we want to publish this? Andreas JN466 17:56, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for all your work on ITM, Smallbones.
JPxG, News and Notes still needs a headline and blurb, but is otherwise at least publishable. Andreas JN466 17:56, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
I assume User:SDeckelmann-WMF/WCNA speech should be moved to Technology report. It's pretty well edited/copy edited (as are most WMF origin articles). I'll do it in 20 minutes if nobody else does first. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:02, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

@Bri: seems to be doing the copy editing there now. I'll avoid edit conflicts and let him do it. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:05, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

@Smallbones the WikiProject report is almost ready. I pinged one admin who volunteered to give it a priority, and would like their input. What is the new publishing deadline? ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 09:06, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
I put the
@Shushugah:Just in case somebody else wants to add more. They are easy enough to remove before publishing if not needed. All I know about the deadline now is that it's been changed in the box to the 12th. The issue looks fine to me (except for "From the editor"), though the news keeps on changing so I may add another "In brief" to In the media. Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:26, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Garfield pubby domey?

commons:Commons:Village_pump/Copyright#Jim_Davis'_early_work_(Gnorm_Gnat,_Jon,_Garfield) jp×g🗯️ 07:12, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Really? That looks great! Oltrepier (talk) 14:50, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

The issue immediately after 19-25 In the media

@Smallbones @Bri Since I've noticed that you already started editing the new draft, I'd like to let you know that there's a recent article on Il Post tackling various themes related to the open access movement, including shadow libraries, the legacy of Aaron Swartz and, you guessed it, the role of Wikipedia. It notably includes a short interview with Andrea Zanni, which served as an admin on Wikisource and the president of Wikimedia Italia until a few years ago.

I still haven't been able to read it in its entirety, but it looks extremely interesting nevertheless, and might serve as a good entry for a lead story! I might even be able to write a blurb myself, although I can't guarantee it...

What do you think about it? Oltrepier (talk) 21:28, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Go for it! In the #1 slot, if it works out that way. I like the quote "the idealism of those years can be said to be dead, and the fight for the free web was in dire need of idealism." But again, if the story goes that way - it's just an odd quote that grabbed me. I think the only rule we have for the content covered in In the media is that the story is "in the media" broadly defined and contains the words "Wikipedia" or "Wikimedia" or maybe "Section 230".
Ok, how do we pick the #1 slot? I pretty much just decide which one is most important, or touches on themes related to the the other stories, or the one I just like best. Provided, Bri or Andreas hasn't already done the same thing. You don't have to ask to join in this group. You only have to be ready to be disappointed every once in a while, when your favorite gets knocked down. In short write first, move it up later. Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:31, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
@Smallbones All good, thank you for answering! : ) Oltrepier (talk) 08:51, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
@Smallbones Ok, I've just published my entry draft, and it should be ready for review from another pair of eyes! Oltrepier (talk) 14:38, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
Ok, but we've got a week to do it in. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:21, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
Well, better... early than never! : D
I think I'll be able to complete a piece for the "Opinion" column, too. Oltrepier (talk) 17:29, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
There was a YT video from 4 days ago that covers two edit wars related to election infoboxes from January 5th. Would this count for the column? Aaron Liu (talk) 02:33, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
@Aaron Liu Um, I think the scale of this controversy actually deserves an article on its own, maybe in the "Disinformation report" or the "Discussion report". I'm not too familiar with this case, though... Oltrepier (talk) 09:37, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation video interview for The Signpost

The general situation is that I have capacity to do video interviews, and also, the Wikimedia Foundation has a new program through which any community members can request one-on-one meetings with top Wikimedia Foundation staff.

I requested an interview, and got approval to do one in about a month. My general proposal was to talk about money and WMF/community relations. See meta:Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Committee/Talking:_2024/Interested#Username:bluerasberry

Along with their approval, the WMF requested that in advance I send them 4 general framing questions so that they can prepare. I would like to do a reset of what I requested, and just re-ask here:

Suppose that I was playing the role of a neutral interviewer for The Signpost, and and trying to keep focus on a single topic, fairly close to four framing questions on that topic, and that I everyone expected that I would ask for clarification, for follow up details, and do conversation beyond those questions. Does anyone here want to play the role of editor and suggest a focus for me? I would love to collaborate with others here on this, and with that collaboration, go out and collect a video interview that I could bring back for publication here.

For inspiration on what questions I could ask, see that link above where I made the request, but again, we could do a reset here and ask any theme of question. I do not have much experience with this but I have more than zero - see me talking at

I would like to play it safe here and set the precedent for encouraging routine interviews, with multiple Signpost interviewers, with WMF staff. Thanks. Bluerasberry (talk) 17:11, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: I'll send you an email tonight!. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:59, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

In the media - link to Enterprise/Google story

Hi all,

Just a quick note that the link to the new article on Google becoming a customer of Enterprise is news from 2022 (see this Signpost article). It just happened to be picked up now by this news outlet. Google has been a customer of Enterprise for a while; they’re paying for high-speed access to the api, not for the rights to use the content in their search results. If you need more details or have questions, please ping @LWyatt (WMF). Best, JBrungs (WMF) (talk) 09:06, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying me JBrungs (WMF).
FYI Smallbones - This article in "BNN Breaking" which is currently listed as "Lead story 2" in your draft Next issue/In the media - manages to be simultaneously incorrect and old.
Incorrect because the clickbait headline "Google Inks Deal to Pay Wikipedia for Content Displayed in its Search" implies that Wikimedia Enterprise customers are buying access to the content of Wikipedia or the right to use it in their products. As we all know, the content of Wikipedia is freely-licensed and consequently they can already use it for commercial purposes (and already have done for decades). Rather, the Wikimedia Enterprise "product" is pay-per-use access to a dedicated high-speed API and legal-contractual guarantees of uptime etc. Access methods (including several at-no-cost options are documented at m:Wikimedia_Enterprise#Access.
It is also old because the news of Google being a customer was a press release back in June 2022, and subsequently being reported widely in mainstream news (including The Signpost). A summary (but still quite lengthy) list of news articles about that customer announcement is listed in the dropdown box at Meta:Wikimedia_Enterprise#Press. Sincerely, LWyatt (WMF) (talk) 10:36, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @LWyatt (WMF) and JBrungs (WMF): It helps when people catch our mistakes early. I do think we would have caught this before publication, it's something that comes up from time to time especially in In the media - people and news sources revisit old topics and in general we don't want to do that except for extraordinary reasons. One way we catch it is by checking out the source, how reliable are these folk?? Or is it al least authentic, even if it pushing a point of view? Next is when we actually write it up, rather than just flag it for a story. That said, thanks again.

Next - when are you folks going to announce a new customer?! Or at least tell us what you are doing? How about writing a progress report for The Signpost? And don't forget to tell us about all the money you are bringing in. I'll look forward to it! Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:57, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

@Smallbones, maybe I misunderstand you now, but I don't think bnnbreaking.com (aboutpage, down atm) and BNNVARA are the same thing. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:37, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
Was there a merger? In any case I don't think we should be drawing attention to either of these channels, unless we wanted to do something about Sekspedia. On 2nd thought no. Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:31, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Katherine Maher to head NPR

https://www.npr.org/2024/01/24/1226035539/npr-ceo-katherine-maher-wikimedia

No idea where to put this yet, In the media or in News & notes. We've exchanged 5 lines each in an email, so I can probably get a short quote. N&N is probably better for a longer news story, although we're a bit short at ITM. Who wants it? Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:45, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

This was not in my 2024 bingo card! I'll take it. ITM seems appropriate, even for a longer feature. — Frostly (talk) 17:20, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, no quotes will likely be forthcoming. An automatic message said she's overwhelmed with emails and might be able to get back in a week or 10 days. Who might give a quote about Kathrine? @Rosiestep: just popped into my mind, but who knows. Also please link to "previous Signpost coverage/interview at (April 2019 Interview)". Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:58, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
@Smallbones Oh, snap, that's a surprise!
To be honest, though, I don't know if I'll manage to take over the blurb... Oltrepier (talk) 21:45, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Bashkortostan

A place I didn't know existed until recently ... Bashkortostan ... pageviews up 2600% on 1/17 from the week prior. Probably people like me trying to figure out where it is (or if it is a hoax) after reports of a 1/17 courthouse rally that has been described as revealing "layers of discontent within Russia's highly centralized, authoritarian system" [13]. Maybe somebody wants to take this further? ☆ Bri (talk) 21:34, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

@Bri It's most definitely a real place, since that rally in Baymak has made the international news...
I don't know if I'll be able to take over the blurb, honestly, but it sounds good for something like N&N! Oltrepier (talk) 21:49, 25 January 2024 (UTC)
Is there a link to Wikipedia other than pageviews? I'd guess there are 2600% jumps in pageviews quite often. It does just look like a big jump on one day then gradually leveling off. Not that big for Baymak and Ufa. Smallbones(smalltalk) 23:04, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Added "News from Wiki Edu" but...

I had to start from "News from Diff" and then move it. I'm almost sure that will cause some difficulties, what happened to "News from Wiki Edu"? Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:15, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it will mess anything up to move it, the templates are automatic and will adjust properly (so long as you click the "refresh" link in the tables). jp×g🗯️ 21:08, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
I see the News from Wiki Edu link at WP:Newsroom, second from bottom. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:45, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

The issue immediately after 20-01 News and notes

I added an item about a University of Washington study "Nationalist governance capture in self-governed Wikipedia projects". I'm not sure if this belongs in News and notes, Recent research, In the media (where there's currently another note from Smallbones currently at Lead story #3), or maybe Disinformation report. I started at News and notes, where we usually put in stuff concerning internal governance. But it seems to have aspects of all of them. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:08, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

@HaeB: Any thoughts on moving this to Recent research? I didn't really review it as a research paper and probably won't have time to expand what's already there. I could just leave it at News and notes. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:25, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
I think that's great already and have moved it over to RR. The only thing that's still kind of lacking in terms of a review is a sentence or two about the paper's methodology (on what basis did the authors arrive at their conclusion). I should be able to add that in case you don't get around to it (I read an early version of the paper last year already), along with some other context and detail like the Wikimania video I already included. Regards, HaeB (talk) 07:29, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

I've run into a good problem

I'll be rewriting the Disinformation report. Yes, after @Bri: did a great copy editing job! I'll be working on In the media for a couple of hours. @JPxG and HaeB: just for the heck of it (HaeB especially for the top of ITM. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:36, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

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