Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Archive 25

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Archive 23

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Next month's opinion piece

I was toying with writing an opinion piece and offering it for publication next month. I see there is already an opinion piece, which is great because it gives me more time. However, I have concerns about the current draft by Adam Cuerden, "Picture of the Day: How I plan to ru(i)n it". I understand that it is intended to be humorous, and I understand that it is a draft, but I think the sarcasm may be missed by some readers. I'm not totally sure that I know which parts of this are intended to be jokes and which parts are intended to be serious. I would much prefer to read a straightforward statement of what Adam Cuerden intends to do then try to understand his sense of humor. Polycarpa aurata (talk) 21:37, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree with the above in the sense it is a bit too heavy on the sarcasm/personal grudges for me, but I don't think it needs to be super super straightforward. An opinion piece thats toned down significantly (and shows some appreciation for those that have ran FP before) would be a better fit imho. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 00:37, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

I've added a few additions to contextualise it. Basically, I hate talking about myself. I really can't write a serious post introducing me and have it be readable. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 14:08, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

We're all glad to write a post for you in the future, Adam ^u^ In any case, good luck with POTD. I'm particularly excited about theming. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 14:13, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

If you think you can, feel free. I am trying to use the humour to get people to actually read some important points, though, like how we need more participation at WP:FPC, and to talk about my theory of what belongs on the main page. I would like it to run, but if there's specific sections that are too sarcastic, let me know. Can always trim it a bit. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 14:19, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Cross posting [1]. Is this deep offensive, arrogant, leave it or lump it, fingers up to the community rationalizing rant dressed up as an op-ed really going to be published. It will lead to the signposts discretion, and Adam’s removal from his post, which should really happen now anyway, given his brazen dancing in the face of any other opinions. I advise editorial discretion, and as its a real name account, rev delete, although wow, how did he get to this position. Ceoil (talk) 15:39, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Ps I know the charade is "humour", but its fingers to you humour and a highly transparent bid for dictatorships, and fits neatly into his "cant hear/wont hear" attitude lately. Does not have my trust. Ceoil (talk) 15:48, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

...I really don't get people some days. How hyperbolic can one be? In the last month, I've given POTD a 6 month buffer, put Wikipedia:Picture of the day/Unused on a more open and less arbitrary basis, and all this from a start where there was less than two weeks before POTD ran out of entries. And it was demonstrated that a lot of complaints were horribly overblown. Wikipedia did not fall apart because a pooing seagull taught everyone about guano, or that Durova got one last go on the main page with some 18th century crudeness in art. We've also delisted a bunch of things that weren't of FP quality, dealing with POTD/Unused that way. A few hard discussions and a rough month and we've cut through an anti-democratic process of arbitrary pulling of images, and made it an open, documented one. And I'd say that's worth a difficult first month.

But things did get ridiculous. If the objection to running an image is that it's not good enough quality, then the appropriate venue is the FPC delisting process. After two weeks of suggesting this, I finally acted on their behalf and put the Merkin image up for delisting. And it turns out things work exactly as they should if you use the appropriate process. Some people really don't want to be helped. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 00:28, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

You totally don't get it, and your handwaving and "I did other stuff" only compounds. Obviously underlying processes failed (in FP and at the signpost) that you have such disgression - and bty this isn't about FP quality, or whatever divert, but your raw aggression and seeming my way or the high way dictatorship. I'll launch a recall at FPC soon enough, and frankly I think you have a self destruction agenda, which is along the lines of "I like confronting all ages and sexes with 19th century pictures of women pissing on the street, and if you don't like it, then tough, as I am MASTER OF Wikipedia:Picture of the day, SO HAA HOO to you." Ceoil (talk) 01:10, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Discussion board

I had the idea of making a 'discussion board' of sorts for each issue. Just a page that displays all the comments from each article in one place for easy access. Something like this. Thoughts? ––FormalDude talk 13:35, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

This was suggested off-wiki as well, and I support it. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:31, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

I can create it for this issue. We'll need to decide where we want to link to it though. Preferably somewhere on the main page for the issue. ––FormalDude talk 17:33, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Module:Signpost could work well for generating such. Maybe a link in the bottom links bar 🍸? 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 07:17, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Reuters

Wikipedia fights Russian order to remove Ukraine war information (from Reuters, 13 June 2022). Does someone have access to the Russian court order, seemingly directed at WMF in the US? Vysotsky (talk) 10:23, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

I found it (in Russian of course) on the Roskomnadzor website at one point. See Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Archive 23#Roskomnadzor demands censorship. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:09, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Humor

I assume it's a work in progress, and how do the green boxes work? After all, the team is not Ros Angeles Lakers, nor is the movie Star Srek or Star Grek. (I don't know much of the answers, but of course I know the building in WP:SPIDER!) igordebraga ≠ 16:34, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

Next issue/Opinion "holiday" error?

Near the end of the article is the text write blurbs for awesome featured pictures that haven't appeared yet on the main page, possibly to celebrate holidays such as Hallowe'en, Christmas, Diwali, or Ramadan. My understanding is Ramadan is a religious observance containing the holiday Eid al-Fitr, so this probably should be rewritten. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:58, 14 June 2022 (UTC) @Adam Cuerden: do you concur? ☆ Bri (talk) 19:35, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Fair point. It has certain trappings of a holiday, but isn't technically one. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 00:04, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

12 days until publication

We don't have much right now. NAN definitely needs expansion, ITM has some but optimally would have more, FC has a barebones thing and an awesome intro, Opinion needs CE and approval, arb report has 3 months to cover. I have a few things that I'd like to add that I'm dumping here. Please submit your stuff. More to come later.

By the numbers
News from the WMF
Tech report
ITM 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 00:33, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

WLE 2022 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 04:16, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper: FC and Opinion are ready for copyedit now. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 14:05, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Also made a Gallery celebrating the solstice, both Summer and Winter.

Potential outing issue

No issue after all ☆ Bri (talk)

I'll be contacting an E-in-C about a potential outing in the next issue. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:48, 16 June 2022 (UTC) Mail sent ☆ Bri (talk) 20:08, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Resolved. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 22:16, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, I missed an editor's self disclosure. ☆ Bri (talk) 00:31, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

@Bri: Is this about the names used in the Featured Content? I try to use the preferred credits of each person - usually obvious from their user page (or their file information pages for images), but it's a little hard sometimes to tell what's preferred. Also had a person state on the featured article nomination page that they were renaming their account, after which they left Wikipedia, and I'm not sure what the best action is there. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 14:23, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Nope, it was In the media§Slate reports on Tamzin's Request for Adminship. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:56, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Oh wow, it’s this weekend

I may have a lighter presence this publication. Swamped with IRL stuff. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 23:45, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Re: where WM spends its money

Jayen466: An important topic, but the overview in the upcoming News and Notes doesn't seem to be an accurate representation of currently available information. I pointed some of this out in my email reply on wikimedia-l, but reposting here since Andreas's original email is making its way into a column :) In particular, the claims about the % of revenue going to various regions are incorrect readings of the 990.

That grantmaking line referenced in this article doesn't seem to include APGs (before or after they were renamed). The APGs to Indonesia 2019-20 and CIS 2019-20 (now pointing to the correct years!) are another $500k to the S. Asia region. I don't know where the confusion comes in, but perhaps some of the larger funds distributions for one- or multi-year annual plans are glossed as program services and not 'grants'. Better to get clarification from someone in the department.

Another statement about funds spent "in the United States" is also worth qualifying given the global distribution of the team.

My view:

+ Grants, exclusive of APGs, are mostly going outside of NA + Europe.

– Few new organizations lately have reached the size / capacity of having regular APGs. This greatly limits what we can accomplish regionally.

= The other limit on $ diffusion right now is a shortage of good ideas for how to use funding locally to advance the projects, and people to implement them. We can't fund communities that don't have funding bottlenecks, or that don't exist. Recent proposals are a mixed bag.

+ The new grants program is giving community members experience in evaluating + soliciting ideas, and increasing the supply of funds. Which starts the bootstrapping process. +10

– We're starting in a valley: total funds disseminated outside the foundation has been low for years, due in part to the WMF encouraging other orgs to limit growth.

Which is to say, as far as I can tell via public records:

The supply taps are open, and most if not all solid grantable proposals from underrepresented regions are being supported.

Grants are a lagging indicator of support; redirected staff time is a present indicator; language about priorities and focus is a leading indicator.

Current language matches what I've seen of active focus; grant programs build momentum over time.

A lot about the current year's efforts [which any current conversation would be about] remains unwritten; including updates to the plans of established chapters in underrepresented regions, the development of regional hub, and the like.

The implication of the above, if true, is that to do more than what has been achieved recently by expanding grant support for solid proposals from the region, would mean redirecting foundation staff energies and time towards the global south. Those staff would for now be employees of the global org, until there is regional capacity to support that work. 990 data doesn't say one way or another whether this is happening, but a good deal of narrative energy and named roles are currently going into it. – SJ + 21:54, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

@Sj: I am using the figures and labels as given by the Foundation in the 2020 tax return it submitted to the IRS: [2] I believe this to be the most solid, dependable and accurate data available. If you would like to dispute any of the figures, please point me to the appropriate page in the Form 990 where you believe it shows something else than what I say.

I do agree that CIS-A2K funding appears to have been included under Program Services: I believe it accounts for the lion's share of the $640K going to South Asia. (Note that South Asia does not include Indonesia, which is instead lumped together with affluent north countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Australia in the East Asia/Pacific region. The Middle East and North Africa region is a similar case, including Israel and the oil-rich countries of the Arabian peninsula. Best, Andreas JN 466 08:03, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

I read Jayen466's summary and support it as suitable reporting for The Signpost. We are a volunteer publication taking on very complicated reporting. We cannot promise professional level fact-checking and investigation, but there is fact checking and journalism review process here, and I think this story meets the established standard.

The Wikimedia Foundation is aware that the Wikimedia community expects transparency in financial reporting. They are the ones with the money, and they decided how to present themselves and how available they want to make themselves for interviews. I put an hour into into reading the articles, looking at the source documents, and talking with Jayen about their process for making this. We are a community publication and this is the level of review that we can attain. That think this article is good enough to publish, and if there are errors or something to correct, then we can do a retraction or correction in the next round. The Wikimedia Foundation is also welcome to be proactive in sharing their own financial reports with The Signpost if they want to engage, or publish their own version of this, or provide a representative for an interview.

Part of the journalism cycle here includes comments on the newspaper issue talk page. If there are errors here then the crowdsourced Wikipedia community has the option to address them publicly.

I looked at the tax forms. I am not an accountant, but that is the info WMF makes available for us to check, so I and others did the best we could to interpret it. I give my ✅ approval on this as journalism meeting the standard that we can attain as volunteers. Bluerasberry (talk) 17:06, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Chiefing some edits

I'm going to leave my notes on what I see here as I go through everything.

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/News and notes is coming along good.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/In the media is coming along good.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Discussion report is an empty draft. I assume EP will be working on it.
Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Opinion looks good for the most part. @Adam Cuerden: I'd recommend dropping some of the "uh"s and "ums" and misc filler words. If you want, I can dick around with commas. The "what can we do to stop you" section is very confusing. I get that you are doing a bit, but it's kind of hard to follow, and you write a whole paragraph saying a bunch of very bad advice. It may need some work to make it clearer what you are going for.

Isn't the whole "Just do the opposite" shtick clear? Will tweak. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 04:28, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Edit it as you like. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 13:15, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

jp×g 18:38, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

@JPxG will you be available to publish? 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:45, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Darn tootin'. I have been away from Wikipedia the last few weeks but I will be here to run this shit into the ground in a few days. Buckle up! jp×g 18:50, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Good luck y'all :) I'll be recovering from surgery but if you need me on short notice you can always DM me here or on Discord for any last moment fixes. Thankfully this seems like a smaller issue than last time so it should go more smoothly. — Ixtal ^{( T / C )} ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 19:27, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

I've copyedited everything I can. I presume I can't just copyedit my own articles. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 12:08, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper: I've emailed you the piece we discussed the other day. Am happy to put it up; just let me know where to put it. JPxG, let me know if you'd like to see the draft as well before it goes on-wiki. Best, --Andreas JN 466 19:37, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

State of the articles:

Only need EiC approval

Discussion, Serendipity, Essay, Humour. (I think I copyedited all of these.)

Only need EiC approval, but with a note from the copyeditor

I think I got the Traffic Report formatted correctly, but check my work. The first table has to be partial width to fit the graph next to it, but the rest looks untidy if it's not full width.

Basically done, but could use a copyedit by not-me since I wrote them

Opinion, Gallery, Featured Content. Just cut anything from Opinion you want to. Too late to discuss more changes now.

Others

News and Notes: ~~Two big problems:~~ Upgraded to ready
- ~~Has this linked as a planned story. Given I don't see the history behind the policy being written, I don't know how to cover this. If it's time-sensitive, this needs done ASAP.~~
- ~~I don't think #Re: where WM spends its money has been edited in at all, which is particularly bad as that section is linked from another article.~~
In the Media: If we lose the "Optional: Give a short WP:LEAD-like introduction statement here." line, it's probably fine to publish after a copyedit. I don't know if it's done-done, but I can't see it getting more done before publication.
News from the WMF: Honestly, if we remove the "Optional: Give a short WP:LEAD-like introduction statement here." bit, it's publishable. but this reads like an advertisement. Like, really reads like an advert. Possibly important information, though.

Not started, with slight appearance of a start: Arbitration report is basically blank.

Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 23:15, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

@Adam Cuerden: #Re: where WM spends its money I'm not sure what you feel needs doing. The section is not meant to be any more than a summary of the data on non-US and Global South spending reported to the IRS in the recently released Form 990. --Andreas JN 466 23:38, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

@Jayen466: Perhaps I should have said that there's a section on this page discussing that bit, and I'm not sure whether we want to publish without incorporating that commentary somewhere in the issue. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 00:00, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

The only thing I thought was actionable was the point about CIS funding probably being included in Program Services -- but absent confirmation from WMF I am not prepared to state that as a fact. (I did ask about this but received no reply. Basically I suspect that CIS is treated much like a chapter and that all APGs for chapters and the like are reported to the IRS under Program Services.) Andreas JN 466 00:21, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

@Jayden466: Very well. Then that just leaves the unfinished story. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 00:25, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

I've written it up as an in brief. Thanks for mentioning it. --Andreas JN 466 07:03, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

I won’t be here for publication today. @Jayen466, please add your opinion to a column; @JPxG can help with that. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 17:16, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper: Thanks, I sent JPxG the formatted draft earlier. Best, Andreas JN 466 17:52, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Transphobie sur Wikipédia, les auteurices de BD s’indignent

I just stumbled upon this recent French article, should probably be added to in the news section. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:00, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Machine translated title "Transphobia on Wikipedia, the authors of comics are indignant". I don't read French but this appears to be about an artist's deadname in a WP bio. The publisher has a fr.wiki article, ActuaBD. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:59, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

In the media / "home chemistry"

Potential fact checking problem. I was unable to confirm that "home chemistry" is a term that means house arrest in Russian. I checked the Russian Wikipedia house arrest article, ru:Домашний арест and Google Books (in English). I'd expect it to be roughly Домашний Химия and it doens't seem promising for a Google search. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:06, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

I changed the spelling to "домашней химии" and found some stuff. Maybe it's OK, probably Belarusian slang. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:13, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

I'll link to https://sputnik.by/20210707/ot-domashney-khimii-do-tyurmy-kak-osuzhdennye-v-belarusi-otbyvayut-nakazanie-1054494446.html in the section. It gives all the usual punisments in Belarus (in Russian) and the reason for use of the word "chemistry". All the sources on the trial outcome only use the term, so of course I had to find out what it meant, Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:22, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Enjoyed "editing" this issue

@JPxG, Bri, and Jayen466: I've gone thru and edited to my heart's content except for Arb report. Everything looks fine, but I'll say it's much nicer to edit as just 1 of 3 editors rather than as E-i-C. More relaxed. One minor problem - I'll let JPxG sort it out - and accept what he says. I trimmed an item by Andreas in ITM about a mis-translation. How much do we really need to say about a mistranslation. Andreas disagreed and reverted me. That's not what I.m used to, but of course the situation has changed. I'll just switch it back in the next ITM edit and forget about it whatever happens. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:28, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

See this edit Smallbones_(smalltalk)

@JPxG and HaeB: I added the final paragraph to ITM, and am done (I hope) except as a reader. Are we close to "hands off the keyboards" yet? Smallbones_(smalltalk)

Thanks for the heads-up! On first glance it looks like this Nature article might warrant a fuller treatment (it's also OA under a free license, so we can reuse figures), so I might postpone its coverage in RR.

Concerning hands and keyboards, note that Template:Signpost/Deadline as our single source of truth was updated about an hour ago. Regards, HaeB (talk) 20:26, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

A craven gesture of cowardice indeed. We're all trying to find the bastard who did this... jp×g 20:53, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for raising it here, Smallbones. Let me explain. I was concerned about this interview because the Indian Express is a major national daily (and a top-100 website in India) and the original wording (that "most of" the money raised around the world is going to the Global South) was just so striking (and so strikingly wrong) that I wouldn't have thought anyone reading through the article could have failed to notice it. I am quite certain that people at WMF Communications read through major news articles -- especially in a case like this, as this article was placed as part of the PR work preparing the ground for the Indian fundraiser that was then just kicking off. I am sure we can agree that leaving the Indian public with the impression that most of the money donated would go to the Global South -- including India itself -- would make them more inclined to donate.

As far as I know, there was no mistranslation involved here and no one has claimed that there was. I think the interview was conducted in English. What Megan did say is that Raju was misquoted -- in which case surely they could have sought a correction of such an obvious and grave error. But five days passed without the WMF seeking such a correction, until I brought the matter up on the mailing list (and others pointed out to WMF staff that this is the sort of statement that people might feel really angry about if it turned out not to be true). Given that the mailing list discussion is what led to the correction, I think it is relevant for it to be available to readers to enable them to understand the situation; hence the link to it.

The reason I included Megan's full response to this issue in my piece is that she specifically endorsed the "a lot" wording on Meta that the WMF asked the Indian Express to use instead and linked to the grantmaking report. People should be able to follow her link and make up their own minds. I personally believe that most Indian Express readers would interpret the statement that "a lot" of the money raised internationally flows into the Global South to mean that this is a substantial percentage. I believe most people would think it is more than the 2.4% indicated in the Form 990. So this was my thinking, and I hope it makes some sort of sense now. Best, --Andreas JN 466 20:46, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

@JPxG:: Could we please make it "Wikipedia's" and "Wikimedia's" in the headline? The abbreviations are not generally well known. [3] --Andreas JN 466 21:32, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, this would be smart. jp×g 21:40, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

@JPxG: Anything need some with the Gallery? It wasn't approved yet, but I mainly made it to try and help Bill up the Sipnpost on a slow month. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 22:19, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Everything's good and ready as far as I can tell. jp×g 22:21, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Right! Sorry! Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 22:23, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Hands off the keyboards

I'm going to start the publishing process now, everything is good to go. Hopefully the script doesn't eat shit like it did last month -- we have fewer articles in this issue, so it should work, but fingers crossed. jp×g 22:21, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Feeder readback

View feeder readback

Here ya go. Hopefully we can figure out something a little less half-assed (@FormalDude: that message-board thing looks like it would be really neat) jp×g 22:32, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Done: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-06-26/Comments. ––FormalDude talk 22:58, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Social media credentials

A note for general awareness: I wrote up some documentation last month about the Signpost Twitter feed and Facebook page (having taken care of posting each new issue there since February 2021, when they had been dormant for a while). In particular, I have listed who has access to these (to my knowledge). Experience has shown that that information tends to get lost over time. If someone happens to read this who also has access and doesn't see themselves listed, please add yourself on that page.

And some related responses to a more recent question by EpicPupper:

I'd appreciate if you could send me the credentials for our Twitter and Facebook accounts :)

There are no credentials for the Facebook page, access is granted via individual Facebook accounts - i.e. you will need to let The ed17 (currently the page's sole administrator) know your personal Facebook account, so that he can add you as admin or editor. He has also been the person who has been taking care of maintaining the @wikisignpost Twitter credentials for years (it may well be thanks to him that they haven't been lost yet). I'll send you the password myself now, but I can't commit to serving as the credentials maintainer/distributor in the future. (CCing JPxG who IIRC had been interested in helping to improve the bus factor in such matters)

I'd love to help with writing copy for each issue, as well as scheduled Tweets/Facebook posts, in order to hopefully increase our reach.

I'm still fine with committing to send out at least one post for each new issue. But I tend to not have bandwidth for much more, so if you are up for contributing additional posts, that would be great. You are also welcome to take on that initial announcement in any given month, but in that case please notify me beforehand - I'd like to avoid allocating time for writing up and posting the announcement only to find out that someone else has already done it.

Besides posting more links to our own stories, it would also be great to curate the Twitter account more actively by e.g. tweeting or retweeting relevant news in a timely manner before covering them more fully in the next Signpost issue. I was doing that back in 2010/2011 when I was editor-in-chief (random example), and IIRC more than doubled the number of followers within a year, to around 2000 (it's at 4,235 right now).

Regards, HaeB (talk) 07:36, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

" The ed17 (currently the page's sole administrator)" There should definitely be 2 administrators for any such property. Ppl disappear, ppl loose their FB account and sometime ppl die. We should not rely on a single owner. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:29, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

BTW. https://tweetdeck.twitter.com lets you share Twitter accounts with a team, without having to pass around the 1 and only password to each of those team members. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:32, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the kind words, HaeB! And I am of course happy to grant admin access to someone else on the Signpost team. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 00:58, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

@The ed17: @HaeB: Check your emails. jp×g 20:57, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
- @JPxG: I've replied! Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 16:31, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper: Un-archiving this thread since the last activity was less than three days ago, and also because I'm not entirely certain whether you have read it yet? In particular, the exact thing I had asked to avoid above just happened [4][5]. Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:22, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

OneClickArchiver f'ing up on this page again

While poking around in some archives, I found an exceedingly bizarre page located at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Archive 1. Yes -- an archive page for Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost itself, not Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost. I have no idea what is going on here. It seems that this bizarre page was created accidentally in 2020 by the use of Technical 13's OneClickArchiver, but has also been added to in 2022. We have had some trouble with that script before, adding threads on this page to the wrong archive. Ironically enough, I can't link to the thread where I last brought this up because the stupid archiver puts them all into random places.

I think it may be possible to repair some of the broken archives -- and it may be possible to figure out what's making the archiver go bananas -- but in the meantime, it may be condign to stop using OneClickArchiver on this page and just manually archive things until we can figure out what the hell's going on. jp×g 20:53, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Unless you've changed procedure, it has been the responsibility of the publication manager to archive this talk page every month. The archiver (much as I like it), should not have been used. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:55, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

It was a 1-click archiver error but not the one identified above. They didn't come from this page; rather from Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions starting with [6]. I suspect the archiver script may have problems with a pseudo-path to the page more than one level deep? Bizarre, but not a problem with the publication manager procedures.

The misplaced archives have been moved to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions/Archive 31 & Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions/Archive 33. I'm going to mark Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Archive 1 for deletion but it will probably happen again if anybody touches 1-click archiver. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:33, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately that cleanup deletion of Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Archive 1 also led to the deletion of discussions from the Signpost entire first half decade (and the vanishing of all archive links from Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost), via a (now gracefully corrected) admin mistake that I spent some time tracking down yesterday after encountering a broken link elsewhere.

Honestly, all these complications and mix-ups and wasted time look like a good argument for not burdening the publication manager with archiving this talk page manually every time. Rather, let's just let the widely used and tested lowercase sigmabot III do its thing, as already configured in the first of the two (contradictory) archive templates on top of this page.

Also, some threads clearly got archived too quickly, As I wrote on March 27 in a thread about the same topic that we already had on this page: "if anything, the 30 days limit should be increased instead of decreased, given that because of the Signpost's publication cycle, some threads may still see new activity after a month (like this one right now ;-) )" Ironically, JPxG one-click-archived away that comment after less than three hours *cough* ...

Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:25, 14 June 2022 (UTC)

In the meantime, the issue of the weirdly messed-up archives for this page may have a happy ending, if I can convince my buddy who has just gotten into editing Wikipedia to do a very boring task (going through the archives one by one and noting the dates of the first/last post on each). Once this is done, I think it will be easy to just rearrange them to not be ass-backwards. jp×g 21:41, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper: Curious whether you had seen this thread and what your thoughts about this matter are. It seems that you disagree with the concerns about using OneClickArchiver on this page, and about archiving threads too early? Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:28, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

PS: Seems that the use of OneClickArchiver is indeed already messing things up again, with one section being duplicated: [7][8]. Again, I suggest to just rely on the tried and tested automated archiving like on most other talk pages, instead of wasting our collective time with all this manual fiddling and futzing. Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:44, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

I'd be fine with either that, or someone just manually archiving the threads each publication day. I don't think there is much utility to be gained from the archival happening over the course of dozens of separate edits (especially when it has so many foibles and foozies over where it puts the archived sections). jp×g 00:31, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Mailing lists

We haven't announced the new issue on the Wikimedia-l and WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing lists yet. Could one of you who's an active member of both do the deed? --Andreas JN 466 14:09, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Cf. documentation and this thread from last week (EpicPupper: does any of the recent suggestions resolve the issue for you? If not, I'd volunteer to try my luck with the Gmail account myself; albeit without committing to do more than sending these monthly announcements.)

Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:46, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I can look into them. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 17:48, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and posted it to both. [9] (The one to WikimediaAnnounce is still stuck in the moderator queue.) Andreas JN 466 06:58, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Great work, everyone!

Think we have a quite nice issue this month! I'll try to do the initial setup work on FC around the end of this month, as normal. Does someone else want Gallery this month? It was kind of fun, but if I'm going to do it again, I'd rather not do it last-minute. Also, not quite sure who renamed Featured content, but good job! Always find naming them awkward. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 23:00, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

I'll be on a summer holiday starting around our publishing date, and preparing to go for the prior week. I'll expect to be contributing sporadically up till then. ☆ Bri (talk) 23:14, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

I'll be on holiday for the next two weeks, but might contribute some. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 17:49, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

As no-one's claimed Galleries, how about a theatre focus? But I am willing to have it ruthlessly kicked forwards to next month, so please feel free to make your own gallery if you'd rather. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.9% of all FPs} 12:13, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Update on Twitter

Over the past 28 days, I've posted 22 tweets, impressions have risen 3,095.8%, profile visits are up 819.5%, mentions have increased 160.0%, and in June we have 9 new followers. I'm taking this as a success to keep on doing a similar strategy This tweet was the most popular, earning 11.2K impressions, which lead me to come to the conclusion that more tweets welcoming newcomers would be beneficial (as that tweet was designed). Our top mention this month was this WMF tweet requested by me through DMs, indicating that we probably should request more of such things. Finally, this was our most popular media tweet. I think that we should probably include more media in our outreach efforts. All in all, I consider this month to be a success! I'll be considering expanding into more social channels like Instagram and Reddit. Pinging @JPxG, who requested these metrics. Cheers! (PS, also noting that I'll be going through the suggestions tomorrow). 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 16:41, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper: You neglected to mention in your research methodology that you posted a red panda. Keep it up, you are doing great, but I think a more plausible theory is that cute animal pics matched to beginner outreach is effective as a comms strategy. I think people want beginner outreach too, but we are a social media channel that can post interesting pictures in an on-topic and relevant way. We can leverage that! Bluerasberry (talk) 16:52, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Good work. The Twitter feed looks great.

Andreas JN 466 18:11, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

Stuff for next issue

https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1010653/she-spent-a-decade-writing-fake-russian-history.-wikipedia-just-noticed.

jp×g 01:16, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Ethical implications of huge scoop

I have seen Wikipediocracy thread (and, I assume, so have others) making quite a spicy claim -- namely, that the perpetrator of the latest deranged act seems to have edited here (under the username 2dgirl) and repeatedly tried to write a mainspace vanity article about himself. This seems like a pretty big scoop -- and, per the readership statistics of the last couple months, it would probably get us some sorely craved eyeballs, as it is fairly recent and nobody seems to have written about it yet.

However, I think it could potentially be chickenshit to run an in-depth story about this, and we shouldn't do so, based on the following reasoning:

There is significant evidence that the people who perform repugnant acts like this do it in the interest of notoriety, recognition, and to expose large amounts of people to what they have to say (or at least that, if not the sole motivation, this is typically a significant factor). The Unabomber, for example, used the threat of additional bombings to compel newspapers to publish his manifesto. Subsequent murderers have made explicit or implicit references to this in their writings as well. (Further reading: Hate is not at the root of most mass shootings, James Densley and Jillian Peterson, Washington Post; Terrorists Read Your Articles, Too: How To Report On Manifestos, Emmi Conley, Logically)
Providing a large audience to these people creates an incentive structure whereby committing acts of violence entitles you to detailed reporting on your actions, your personal life, your beliefs, and your SoundCloud. It demonstrates, empirically, that doing things like this causes you to become (in)famous.
While there may be a legitimate news interest in reporting on the notability of an event (like an act of vandalism or a series of murders), it is not clear to me that this necessarily extends to the person who did them; evidence for this can be found in the established mainspace consensus where Wikipedia often redirects articles about mass murderers to articles about their crimes (for example, Adam Lanza, Joaquin Roman, et cetera, whose articles are redirects despite massive reams of WP:SIGCOV about them).

Basically, it seems to me that if we write an article about this guy, we are at risk of sending a message to the world: "we don't care about what you have to say, unless you murder a bunch of innocent people, and then we will spend a lot of time caring about what you have to say, and we'll push other stories down the fold to explain it to our readers in great detail". I suppose that this gesture may be wasted if someone else writes an article about it before us (it's already been several days), but I think it is still worth making, in the name of maintaining integrity (which is really all we have to care about, since we all do it for free here). And I will admit it is possible that I've made an error in my reasoning, or failed to consider something -- but for the time being, I cannot come up with a reason for us to give this asshole the time of day. jp×g 18:12, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

While I would agree that "chickenshit" articles still garner clicks, someone with a registered account who during one day years ago made a few edits is not a Wikipedian and there's no reason The Signpost should care about such a vandal. Chris Troutman (talk) 18:19, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

I happened to mention that a couple of days ago to Stephen Harrison ... he published an article earlier today: https://slate.com/technology/2022/07/bobby-crimo-highland-park-wikipedia.html (It has a link to The Signpost.)

I hadn't actually seen this on WO, but remembered from discussions years ago on WO that there have been a fair number of people like that who edited Wikipedia (Anders Breivik, Elliot Rodger, Adam Lanza, Luka Magnotta, John Patrick Bedell ... Midsize Jake actually once wrote a blog post about this). So when I searched for the name on Wikipedia, sure enough – there it was.

I added this to next issue's ITM a few hours ago even though I understand and sympathise with all the above reasoning. I hope that's okay ... Andreas JN 466 20:56, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

@Jayen466: Hmm: "said Andreas Kolbe, a Wikipedia volunteer on the editorial team of the Signpost, the site’s community newspaper, who also contributed to the reporting of this piece". I guess that puts us in kind of a weird position, doesn't it? Much to think about. I suppose an intelligent way to mention this might be contextualizing it through the lens of WP:DENY. I will try to get something written in this vein for July. jp×g 22:04, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

Well, journalists on all continents have trawled through the guy's social media history and music and video uploads and reported at length ... However, Wikipedia was something that had universally been missed. Most journos don't know how to look for something here – Wikipedia's internal structure is a closed book to them.

You can contest the Slate article's conclusion – sheer ignorance of Wikipedia rules is more common a factor in such cases than anything else – but it closed the gap and accurately describes what happened here.

The article resulted from a couple of off-hand comments of mine that were originally just meant as "by the way". But given that it was written, I was offered attribution and thought a name check of the Signpost complete with a link might help bring some of the abovementioned eyeballs here. Most of the world has no idea we exist. Slate were kind enough to oblige.

As I said before, I understand the "Deny" argument, but to my mind there is no scope for meaningful denial of attention on our part here, given the global in-depth reporting that has already been done by the mass media.

Just for reference, prior cases like those I mentioned above generally have been covered here – see

but I have no problem with it if we pass over it quietly here. I added the link to ITM yesterday; what if anything you want to do with it is up to y'all – I had no intention of writing it up personally, for the reasons Smallbones mentions. Given this precedent I'll leave ITM write-ups of any further articles by this writer to others as well. Okay? Andreas JN 466 17:57, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Chris; I don't think six edits in one day (plus whatever handful of edits made from a non-logged in account) is worth discussing. The Slate article might be enlightening for anyone unaware of what happens when editors try to create autobiographies, but it doesn't tell any tale unfamiliar to those who have seen it happen innumerable times already. isaacl (talk) 22:14, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

I support not running anything related to this story, especially the Slate article which is a really poorly done, irresponsibly and speculative opinion piece. I don't think it should be included in next issue's ITM at all. ––FormalDude talk 00:48, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

{od} I'll note that something similar came up on-deadline a few months ago. See here I didn't mention the alleged shooters name, user name, or the school where the shooting took place. Not that I had a lot of time to think about why rhese should be left out, but when in doubt it's a good idea to leave them out.

Next, @JPxG: when in doubt don't take anything WO says seriously, it's not a reliable or unbiased source. Their editorial line is that Wikipedia is always wrong. I've been tempted to use material from them 2 or 3 times, but it's better to just not read them. I was dissappointed in all but 1 case.

BTW Harrison is a good journalist. He doesn't have to follow the same rules Wikipedians do. The evidence on the offending edits is sparse, but the conclusion looks ok. To me the point would have been thar Wiki processes wprked to keep out the offending material. But his readers aren't very interested in the details of Wiki processes. Andreas does have a COI in writing this up on ITM and he should stay away from it. I might also write an opinion on this, mentioning the case briefly. If anybody knows details on other editor/shooters please email me (I won't print anything other than the pure number). Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:52, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

I think the article jumps to a unwarranted conclusion in attempting an analysis of the editor's psyche based on their Wikipedia activity. How many other editors have idly made some attempts to get an autobiography submitted? I would venture that most of them were not obsessed nor nihilistic, but bored and looking for a diversion. isaacl (talk) 06:49, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Six edits some time ago seems like a nothing burger to me. It's as if we were a retail establishment and he walked in the door once. There's no meaningful connection. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:27, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

That's quite right, but if a mass murderer had walked into your store once you'd tell your colleagues about it, wouldn't you? Andreas JN 466 18:50, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

I live in "America's killing fields" and people here don’t usually go around commenting on the time they bumped into Ted Bundy or Gary Ridgeway. So, no. ☆ Bri (talk) 04:00, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, fascinating article, and I see what you mean. On the other hand, the very fact that the Seattle Times published an article titled "Does Northwest draw out serial killers?" could also be seen as countering your argument.

Just like serial killers are more common for some reason in the Northwest, the proportion of mass shooters who have dipped their toes into Wikipedia and registered user accounts here appears to be greater than the proportion of the general population who have done so. Andreas JN 466 10:13, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

"Aspiring rapper or someone closely associated with him tries to create a Wikipedia article on them" is not news, its almost the other way, if an aspiring rapper didn't try to create a Wikipedia article on themselves that might be less common than the opposite. I'm speculating that we have a correlation - misfit loners who become school shooters are likely to have made unsuccessful attempts at fame through rap etc first. But given the vast number of people who make a handful of edits to this site and then gone away, it should not surprise us if some are people who probably wouldn't have fitted in here. Ϣere SpielChequers 10:48, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

If you look at the earlier examples of mass shooters mentioned above (von Brunn, Bedell, Breivik, Lanza, Rodger), none of them had musical ambitions. The common theme surely was already identified when JPxG started this thread: it's about notoriety, or the "attention-factor". More generally, Wikipedia – more so than other social media – is an obvious way to reach a lot of people, and the desire to do so is surely something shared by all people who edit here. --Andreas JN 466 07:32, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes that fits with what I said "unsuccessful attempts at fame through rap etc". Not sure you were replying to with that "none of them had musical ambitions" comment. Ϣere SpielChequers 22:12, 14 July 2022 (UTC)

Never mind.

One thing I had completely forgotten to mention above was that Raymond Spencer, the Edmund Burke School shooter, also edited Wikipedia, both before and after the shooting this April: contribs (that's on archive.org; his user name has been wiped off Wikipedia, though his edits, like this one, are still there). His Wikipedia editing was mentioned in the Washington Post. Andreas JN 466 17:01, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Community view (Have your say in the 2022 Wikimedia Foundation Board elections)

@EpicPupper and JPxG: What happened with the board selection poll (see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-05-29/Community_view)?

Did we have significant participation or was it too little to be worth reporting? Andreas JN 466 12:12, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Btw, note yesterday's WMF email on the Election Compass.

Community members are able to propose statements from July 8 to July 20 (unfortunately too short a window to advertise in the Signpost) but the community can then vote on statements from July 23 to August 1. That is worth including in the next issue.

Note that the Elections Committee makes a selection before the community vote and then makes the final selection after the community vote. Andreas JN 466 12:19, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

Last time I checked 16 people voted, so I didn’t publish the results. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 00:05, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Do we still do a Watchlist message?

I know we used to, but haven't seen one in a while. It might help traffic if we did. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 16:02, 13 July 2022 (UTC)

Writing an op-ed for my WMF board candidacy

Hi @EpicPupper and @JPxG, I'd like to write an op-ed about my WMF board candidacy - would that be OK? Legoktm (talk) 19:04, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

I am not very well-versed in what the precedents are on this, but it seems like it would be fine to me. I will have to get back to you. jp×g 19:59, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

If I may, I'll suggest *not* doing this. It would be viewed as The Signpost's endorsement of your candidacy over the other 11 candidates. This doesn't imply that I oppose you candidacy at all, just that we would need to consider the others as well. As far as I know there have been 2 or 3 attempts by The Signpost to provide election info on individual candidates (or somewhat close to it). See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2021-07-25/Board of Trustees candidates which I wrote - it was harder than it looks and there was a very polite complaint that my method unfairly disadvantaged some candidates. In another, I didn't mention any candidates, but I think some folks might have read something into it. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2015-10-28/Op-ed, I think it still holds up pretty well. The only other attempted election commentary I remember in TS involved a survey of candidates and then classifying the results. The candidates refused to play the game. So I support the general idea of election commentary, but haven't figured out a good way of doing it yet. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 03:20, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

To be clear, I wasn't asking to solely run just an op-ed from me, it would be nice if other candidates wrote things too! I'll be honest, I was a bit miffed at the coverage two issues ago, where it felt like us candidates were being reduced to our edit counts, when many of us have contributed to Wikimedia in so many other ways. But my approach is always if I'm unhappy with something I try to fix it, and this is my idea/proposal on how to improve the situation.

It's certainly not perfect, but I think it would be good if the Signpost is able to let readers hear from the candidates in their own words, as well as provide a place to ask questions. An op-ed is the simplest solution that doesn't require too much effort on the Signpost staff's part. In the very old days, and even slightly less old days the Signpost did various interviews and surveys, maybe that's an option this year? Being a digital publication, the Signpost has a big advantage that print newspapers don't have - if candidates don't reply in time their op-ed or answers can still be updated after publication (maybe even a mid-month MassMessage to let readers know).

Ultimately, given the importance of the board election I hope the Signpost is able to help inform voters about the candidates. I appreciate y'all even just considering my ideas :-) Legoktm (talk) 04:27, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

@Legoktm: You appear to assume or (more likely) be aware that you are on the shortlist. However, the shortlist does not appear to have been published yet on Meta (only the ratings are available, here). Have you seen the shortlist? --Andreas JN 466 16:33, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

@Jayen466: to be clear, I have zero knowledge of who will be on the shortlist other than guessing based on the other candidates. I am of course hoping I will be on it and am proceeding as if I'll make it through given it's unclear how long it'll take for results to be announced and the deadline for the Signpost's publication coming up soon enough. Legoktm (talk) 17:28, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper, JPxG, Jayen466, and Blue Rasberry: If we're going to do this I think we need to start immediate and not underestimate the difficulty of the job. There will be complaints. There's no need to suggest impropriety however.

I suggest we just have the lead story in News and notes be about the election with links to the candidate statements of the full list of candidates (unless the short list is officially announced a day before publication) Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:45, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

I do sort of share your unease that if some of the shortlisted candidates have a piece in The Signpost, people will ask why the others didn't get one as well. If we're thinking of offering a slot to everyone, then the next consideration will be whether all shortlisted candidates feel comfortable writing an op-ed in English – it's obviously not everyone's native language.

Let's hope the shortlist is published tomorrow (the vote should have finished a couple of days ago according to the schedule). Andreas JN 466 20:04, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

@Jayen466: All candidates had to write their statements in English, and the shortlisted candidates are apparently now being required to create videos of themselves answering questions in English, so we're well past that point. —Emufarmers^(T/C) 21:42, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

@Legoktm: If you can actually get consensus among the shortlisted candidates to submit platform statements then I think that would be fine. It becomes more ethical the more transparent and inclusive the process becomes. As Smallbones said, coordinating the collection of such statements in a few days is difficult and I think it would push the limits of what Signpost editors can accomplish. It is about a week to publication, and the shortlist is not even published yet, so there could be 1 to 7 days for comments from 6 people who are not expecting to be asked to speak for publication.

Lego if you can coordinate this, then even as a candidate, I think that is fine. All candidates are experienced Wiki people, we all know the constraints of keeping to an election schedule, and we all know that monthly publications like Signpost are essential news sources which have to go out on time.

Lego are you willing to ask all the candidates to submit statements as soon as the shortlist is published? If so here is some guidance:

Check agreement and consent for this op-ed process ASAP - if all the candidates do not explicitly approve then I think we have to reconsider allowing Lego to coordinate. I like the idea of a candidate coordinating this because realistically no one is more involved, and because all the candidates are peers and colleagues.
This op-ed cannot be an undue burden on any candidate. Everyone involved is a volunteer, time is short, and public attention can be stressful. Set a limit to cap the candidate labor cost to participating in this. I suggest 5 sentences which is about 100 words. If candidates agree then 200 words is probably the limit of what Signpost readers can take in for 6 candidates in our publishing format. Anyone can link to their candidate profiles for more detailed information.
If all the candidates can collectively author an introduction to explain the election and get out the vote, then that would be welcome. The entire op-ed could be co-authored by the candidates.

I realize that it is non-traditional for a publication to turn so much over to candidates but for the wiki community at this time in these circumstances, I think this kind of collaboration could work. For context in case anyone is not aware - to date this has always been a friendly election among people who all support each other's candidacy. I expect that this election is the same.

Bluerasberry (talk) 13:38, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm pretty confident I can be neutral and objective in coordinating something like this, but I'm going to pass, I think avoiding the appearance of impropriety/COI is just as important here, and one definitely exists. I'll see if I can wrangle someone else to take this on.

That said, if the Signpost is just giving candidates 100-200 words it'll probably just be easier to copy from the candidate statements, which were limited to 150 words. Speaking for myself, I would have just copied my statement and tweaked it to fit the word limit.

I'm a relatively strong English writer so I have some bias, but I don't think allowing up to 500 or 800 words is an undue burden - personally I think setting low word limits are more burdensome because it's really hard to describe oneself and what we'd like to do on the board in just 100-200 words! My 2 cents is that voters would like to hear more from candidates, not less. Legoktm (talk) 16:27, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

@Legoktm: If you can convince anyone to come to the newsroom and coordinate that is most welcome. We have a shortage of contributors and coordinators here. The 100 words is a suggestion; I was looking for a way to be fair in making a request that the candidates can reasonably achieve in a few days. Whatever the case, if you can recruit someone to present something, and none of the candidates object, then I invite them here to do whatever is reasonable. I apologize - The Signpost gets good readership and comments to articles, but we struggle to attract, support, and sustain our writers and editors. The lack of capacity is why I am asking for your help. Bluerasberry (talk) 13:07, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm comfortable coordinating this for this issue. It's the least I can do after being on holiday for the last one. That being said, I will say that The Signpost desperately needs more contributors. It's hard covering a movement of millions of people with a small team. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 22:27, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

14 days

I'm back.

Board elections (see above, @Smallbones, @JPxG, @Bluerasberry, and @Legoktm): I'd support interviewing the candidates or the shortlisted ones, if they're released. I can get translation done if needed. A NAN segment about the elections seems warranted, especially the Elections Compass (@Jayen466).
Watchlist message (@Adam Cuerden): Yes, we do. The one for this issue was removed on July 4, per usual for the timeframe. They require an admin to add, which is why sometimes it lags behind. Hopefully that'll be better in a few months (hint hint).
Shooter (@JPxG and many others): I agree with JPxG's conclusion. If needed, a very brief item in ITM can be considered, and I'd be happy to accept an Op-Ed from Smallbones.
Lots of ITM (see "Stuff for next issue" above), a potential report above NPP and a WMF Human Rights-related NAN item.
Gallery looking great.
FC great.
User group status: application waiting. Recently, a new group was accepted, so hopefully AffCom's workload is lower now and they're better able to support us.
Tech Report: TODO HELP NEEDED, see https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/07/11/tech-news-2022-28/
Other news for NAN and/or news from WMF: TODO HELP NEEDED, see Diff https://diff.wikimedia.org/
Discussion Report: TODO HELP NEEDED
Serendipity: will have submission.
Traffic: I trust that the team will complete this. Help always welcome in generating the most edited articles.
Essays: TODO HELP NEEDED Done I've got this. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 18:12, 21 July 2022 (UTC)
Tips: @Headbomb, are you interested in doing a piece on citation bot? If not, I can republish from TOTD.
Humor: @Ganesha811, submission welcomed! If not, I might be able to work on a Wordle clone that's Wikipedia-themed.
Bright side: TODO HELP NEEDED; usually this includes happy news.
Other technical stuff: HELP NEEDED to change contact links to email User:The Signpost (which forwards to both of our emails). If anybody's interested in creating a scavenger hunt, tagging authors of pieces, or other projects, please reach out.
Discussion board: @FormalDude, any progress on this?
Socials: I'll try to Tweet some stuff, but I've been away.
Mailing list: I'll try to coordinate creating a editors@signpost.news and use that for mailing list announcements.

I think that's all. Still a lot of exciting improvements ahead: discussion board, updates to the script (for automatic semantic tagging and social posts), scavenger hunt, user group status, author tagging, Wordle clone, and more. Cheers! 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 04:25, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

- I've suggested that a submission on the submission page be accepted and volunteered to edit it.
- I'll send a proposal to the joint User:The Signpost email on the Op-ed proposal within 2 hours
- Be careful with Wordle. It's copyrighted and the NY Times paid big bucks for it. I don't see any reason that they'd allow our use of it, or what our defense would be if sued. Fair use is not allowed on The Signpost - at least for photos. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:50, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
  Leaving aside the question of whether or not the Signpost should publish a word puzzle: strictly from the copyright perspective, you can't copyright a game mechanism. Additionally, Mastermind-like games aren't anything new. (In theory, a truly novel mechanic might be patentable. In practice, finding one that is considered non-obvious and not already published and thus ineligible for patent protection is hard.) isaacl (talk) 16:01, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
  
  Thanks for the warning. I'm planning to not use any copyrighted elements (colors, branding, even perhaps the "Wordle" trademark). 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 01:23, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper: I'll polish the piece on Citation bot this week. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:22, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper and JPxG: I finally sent the email to the "new user" Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:42, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Will do my best to get the Gallery in time. Mostly over COVID. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 05:51, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper and JPxG: Could use a copyedit, but my articles ("Featured content" and "Gallery" are otherwise pretty much done. I mean, I might poke at them a little more, but they're publishable as-is. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 00:18, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 02:00, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Happy to help! Kind of hate having to rush for deadlines, so... Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 02:08, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper and JPxG: And I did the Essay. Though I think we normally grab existing essays, not yet another patented Adam ramble on something that may only interest him. Feel free to spike, move or delay if you see fit. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 18:15, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper: Draft for Election Compass is in News & Notes. Will need tweaking nearer the time. --Andreas JN 466 14:13, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Upvoting of the proposed statements for the Election Compass was supposed to have started on Saturday. It's now Monday and nothing has happened. Andreas JN 466 15:23, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Upvoting is now underway: m:Wikimedia_Foundation_elections/2022/Community_Voting/Election_Compass/Statements#Proposed_Statements. Andreas JN 466 22:24, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Brief notes for new WMF job openings in NAN

Hiya y'all. What do you think about adding a brief line in NAN that advertises the three newest WMF job openings? The WMF is crucial for supporting Wikimedia's development and more help always benefits them. Cheers, 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 02:11, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

How about a "Classified notifications" article instead? (obviously not "Classified ads" - but similar in form) Any Wiki project, affiliate, institution (e.g. ArbCom, featured articles) or their representative could put a 30 word notification about their next edit-a-thon, backlog drive, etc. Classifications might include "Careers" (real paying jobs), "Help wanted" (I need some unpaid body to write my articles), "Edit-a-thons" (if I ever learn to spell it), "Get togethers" (e.g. for affiliates), "Conferences", maybe even "Personals" (not "DWM seeks ...", but maybe "Serious newbie seek mentor"). It could be fun and provide a service at the same time. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:06, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

I would support a regular article or section about that! Perhaps it could merge the sporadically published WikiProject news as well. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 00:37, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

I'd rather not see it supplant the in-depth things like Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-05-29/WikiProject_report, as we're much less likely to get the big reports if people feel they have to be limited in length. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 02:07, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

I meant things like the item on that page like "WikiProject Wisconsin is requesting photographs of Door County. A Reward Board item is available!" 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 02:08, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Makes sense. Although we could probably make that fit News and Notes in a pinch. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 18:17, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Candidate shortlist

Out today. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 21:46, 19 July 2022 (UTC)

The WMF wants to keep the list of affiliate orgs who participated in the shortlist vote secret. Community members are complaining about the perceived lack of transparency on the mailing list: [10]

This makes me wonder: How many people actually have access to the votes cast? (@Sj: As one of the people involved in the discussion – do you know?) I am not saying the WMF is making them up, but I wonder whether there should be a bit more community oversight ... it feels like things are becoming more and more opaque and serving a WMF-driven rather than community-driven agenda. --Andreas JN 466 09:50, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Gallery

I've done the one for this month's issue, but does anyone want to take August? I don't want to block others from the opportunity, but I also tend to do my Signpost stuff as early as possible. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 02:12, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

I'd like a chance for a gallery in August. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:55, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

@Smallbones: Right! I shall leave it to you, then! Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 20:23, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Fact checking SF Examiner interview

San Francisco Examiner has an interview of WMF CEO Iskander. Islander said "Wikipedia is written by volunteers, unpaid people...not paid staff." which isn't entirely correct since there are paid editors, just not paid by WMF. Is this worth pointing out in News and notes? ☆ Bri (talk) 18:17, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps. I would keep the tone of voice non-accusatory, as I think this was an honest mistake. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:45, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

Also, it's almost a quibble. Paid editing is hardly encouraged, outside of some rare academic collaborations. Most editors are unpaid volunteers. It's maybe not 100% accurate, but it's more of a simplification than a complete inaccuracy. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 18:50, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't agree it's a quibble. https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Connected_contributor_(paid) returns 6421 transclusion(s) found. In other words, over 6,000 articles on English Wikipedia have paid contributors. That we know about. Some are quite prominent articles, too, like World Bank and Saudi Arabia (just picking two that catch my eye from the first 50 results). ☆ Bri (talk) 19:02, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

It is a pretty simplistic overview of Wikipedia, but it's not a quibble any more than the lack of gender or racial diversity on (English) Wikipedia is something to quibble about, I don't think either of these were mentioned as well. Paid editing goes right to the issue of credibility and the WMF should mention it more. We can probably deal with the interview in ITM with a sentence or 2 of background added. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:29, 21 July 2022 (UTC)

I suppose I see your point, but I still think that, when you're not talking to Wikipedians or people who know the details, the simplistic version is probably going to leave them with a more accurate impression of the site ethos and structure. Kind of like when children are taught to divide stuff up into mammals, birds, insects, fish, and a few other categories, and then all the other categories get explained later. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 02:32, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

It's something to expand upon when the discussion turns to weaknesses and challenges of Wikipedia. It doesn't have to be mentioned all the time when discussing an overview of Wikipedia. For instance, the third pillar doesn't have to be "Wikipedia is free content that anyone can use, edit, and distribute, including paid editors." isaacl (talk) 20:22, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

You have to remember that millions of people (and donors ...) believe or imagine that the WMF plays an active part in writing and curating the content of Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, that it employs paid moderators, etc. ... so what she says is valuable in terms of countering that mistaken impression. Compared to that, the fact that there are paid editors on Wikipedia is a detail. It's an important detail, for sure, but a detail. Andreas JN 466 09:38, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Having read the SFE article now, I agree she should have mentioned paid editors. For reference, the exchange goes as follows: You said there’s hundreds of thousands of volunteer editors. So how many people get paid and are professional editors of Wikipedia? Wikipedia is written by volunteers, unpaid people helping the rest of us make sure that we find information on the internet that is accurate and verified and cited and sourced. There are employees of the Wikimedia Foundation that provide support to these communities and volunteers, but the volunteers themselves are not paid staff. To omit all mention of paid editors in reply to a direct question like that really is a bit iffy and I agree it deserves a mention.

I also don't very much like this answer: Why does Wikipedia have banners on its website asking people to give money? They’re a small invitation for folks who find value in Wikipedia to chip in and ensure that this can remain as it is: An enterprise that doesn’t rely on selling you anything with ads. The money demands have never been about "ensuring that things remain as they are" – they have always been about funding exponential WMF growth. Andreas JN 466 10:03, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

I think the implicit context of the question was how many editors are paid by the Foundation to edit Wikipedia. I agree with the original assessment that the response was countering the assumption that the Foundation writes and edits Wikipedia. I agree with EricPupper about avoiding accusing anyone; interviews are typically edited and the original line of questioning may have made the context more clear, or the original response may have provided more detail that isn't included in the final article. isaacl (talk) 20:15, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

I've written to Maryana and Jeff Elder, the SF Examiner's interviewer, with a cc to Wikimedia-l. I hasten to add that I've done so as an individual, and not on behalf of the Signpost. Andreas JN 466 13:38, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Wow, it seems like you have a knack for getting replies to requests for comments/interviews 😅 I usually get a reply of either "no comment" or don't get a reply. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:28, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Wikimedia chapters' application for WIPO observer status denied

WMF post: https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2022/07/15/seven-wikimedia-chapters-rejected-as-permanent-observers-to-wipo/

The WMF post says, "China was the only country to oppose the Wikimedia chapters’ request for observer status, again, claiming that chapters were complicit in spreading disinformation and are subsidiaries of the Wikimedia Foundation."

But note https://twitter.com/jamie_love/status/1547954981633871877 by James Love (NGO director) – he says a whole bunch of countries that aren't mentioned in the WMF post supported China. I checked and he is right. You can view of the actual proceedings of July 15 at https://webcast.wipo.int/ – the webcast in question is titled A 63 DAY 2 AFTERNOON and the item is 6. Admission of Observers, starting at 01:30:05. Andreas JN 466 16:11, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

I asked James Love on Twitter whether the WMF press release was compatible with the facts. His reply. --Andreas JN 466 17:21, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Done Added as a brief note in NAN. Andreas JN 466 17:58, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

RF doesn't like WP

Russian Federation declared WP ~~"war disinformation"~~ spreading "war fakes" according to Moscow Times. I don't care to repeat Russian gov't stuff in our pages but I'm putting this out on the Newsroom in case someone has a different view of it. Bri.public (talk) 16:32, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

I think that kind of desperate attack is interesting, as long as we don't give them much more of a platform than "note their ridiculousness". Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 19:38, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation Earns Accreditation to the United Nations Economic and Social Affairs Council (ECOSOC)

https://wikimediafoundation.org/news/2022/07/22/wikimedia-foundation-earns-accreditation-to-the-united-nations-economic-and-social-affairs-council-ecosoc/ --Andreas JN 466 18:35, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Awesome. I read about the endorsement a few days back. NAN seems worthy. Might be worth mentioning about future WPTO opportunities. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 21:26, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

WIPO. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 23:36, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
Done Added as a brief note in NAN, together with the other UN item above. Andreas JN 466 18:00, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Not sure it's newsworthy, but...

According to my calculations, as soon as Becquerel passes, I'll have hit a full 8% of all featured pictures for the ones I've created/restored alone. Mind, I'm also 17 FPs away from 600 (which is maybe 2-3 months?), so... your call. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 19:36, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Might be interesting to do an interview with you in time for your 600 FP milestone? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:14, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Will let you know when I get a little closer. I've had about 47 since the start of the year, probably a few more before we close out July, so it works out to around 7 a month. At that rate, I'd imagine that aiming for October or November would be about right. (Of course, I think the actual total FPs I have is a bit higher - there's a bunch of older FPs that I didn't think were good enough that I stripped from my list somewhere around 2012, only keeping the best of my early work. And I don't imagine the count would have been perfect anyway, especially with my habit of declaring things "half a restoration" when I don't feel I've done enough.) Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 00:39, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

9 days

News from the WMF: republish https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/07/14/dont-blink-public-policy-snapshot-for-june-2022/
Opinion: I trust that Smallbones will have a piece ready. I'd also like to write something on the power of Wikipedia's open discussion forums, and how the WMF is damaging them through complex, bad requirements such as question limits in the Board elections. I think that all three can be published under something like "Op-Ed - Youth culture", "Op-Ed - Criminals", "Op-Ed - Open discussions".
Discussion report needs writing. Short one for this month.
Tech report needs writing. Lots of Tech News inspiration. New user scripts as well (including one of mine!)
From the archives could benefit from an anniversary/holiday-based item.
On the bright side - perhaps a story about Ukranian Wikimedians, or Wikimedians in an age of COVID
NAN: Briefs about https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/07/21/reflections-on-funding-from-the-middle-east-and-africa/, https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/07/20/the-platform-powering-wikimania-2022/, https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/07/19/movement-strategy-and-governance-newsletter-issue-7/, https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/07/18/who-will-be-the-2022-wikimedian-of-the-year/, https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/07/14/the-birth-of-a-team-the-movement-charter-drafting-committee-met-in-berlin/, https://diff.wikimedia.org/2022/07/12/the-wikimania-festival-goes-global/ 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 01:23, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
I'd like to add that I've been quite busy and preoccupied lately - if you have a submission I haven't been getting around to lately, please poke me or JPxG. Thanks. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 01:28, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

If someone's up to copyediting my three (Featured content, Gallery, Essay), it might not be the worst idea. I'm quite happy to copyedit other people's work, but I can't really be my own copyeditor. Misses the point.

On my part, I've copyedited the war diary. That was painful. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 03:52, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Actually, one note on the war diary: From what I can tell, we dropped the ball are publishing it a bit late - I believe it's from May. Given I'm sure there's going to be an outpouring of support over it, how do we make the timing clear? George knows it's being published now, right? Just it is about his son being killed; you don't surprise someone with ripping that sound open again. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 05:25, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

A technical error caused it to publish late, yes. There's also some new content from his talk page that I'll add to the bottom, but I can write up an editor's note. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 06:03, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

@EpicPupper and JPxG: One more thing I should quickly note: I decided to start setting up August's FC, because I'll have less time in August, and have insomnia now. As long as it's not accidentally deleted in the publication process it can safely be ignored. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 06:52, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

Great, thanks for letting us know. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:26, 23 July 2022 (UTC)

If I do say so myself, it's impressively far along. Everything that's been promoted to date is ready to go. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 16:11, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

The Tips and Tricks column is ready to go. I've also added it to Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Next_issue so it gets previewed from now on. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:32, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

I'll happily copyedit anything I: A: Haven't written; and B: Is marked as ready for copyedit. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 23:22, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Discussion report is done. ––FormalDude talk 23:56, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
Humour is "done". Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 03:56, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Lead image for August's FC

Given the aspect ratio I like for lead images, I'd say any of these are suitable for the lead of August's FC report. I have skin in this game - the Battle of Shiloh image is one of my more difficult and impressive restorations for a bit - so I don't feel the decision should be mine. Here's all the ones that seem suitable,:

1. Coconuts by Ivar Leidus
2. Splendid fairywren by JJ Harrison
3. Kaohsiung Music Center by Tiouraren (Y.-C. Tsai)
4. "Battle of Shiloh" by Thure de Thulstrup, restored by Adam Cuerden
5. Lightning in Port-la-Nouvelle by Maxime Raynal
6. NGC 3324 by NASA (James Webb Space Telescope)
7. Canadian National Railway by Kabelleger / David Gubler

Vote for your favourites. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 16:17, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

5 and 6 are absolutely stunning (we use 6 as a header image for Twitter). 4 is also amazing; I have no preference between those three. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 16:20, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Worse comes to worst, I suppose I can roll dice. Or stuff the lead with three images in a row. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 16:27, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Love 3. Next in line for me are 1 and 2 (never can resist a pretty bird). Andreas JN 466 16:44, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

5 for me. 6 was already seen by millions. 5 is both stunning and new to most. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:29, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

I like 5 the best for sure, and 3 is my second favorite. ––FormalDude talk 01:53, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

I do not have a really strong preference either way. I feel like, maybe, the best thing to use as a lead image is a thing which obviously illustrates the article. But what kind of photo illustrates the idea of photography? It is kind of like listing a mirror on Craigslist and attaching a picture. The bird and the lightning and the nebula are pretty close to that, but even then, it still kind of looks like the article is about birds or lightning or nebulas. Not that it matters, since everyone will see that it's called "featured pictures" and realize that that's what the picture is. Anyway, all that aside, you are all completely bonkers if you don't like the train. It's got, like, mise en scène and shit. But I don't feel like imposing my opinion on this, and everyone should just say what they think is the best. jp×g 04:37, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

What I try to do is A. pull out anything that doesn't work in a gallery - hence why the article ends with The Dover Boys: Videos fit oddly into galleries. - And then, B. Try to keep it varied over time. And C. Try not to over-emphasise my own work. Because I'm very good at seeing the merit in images I chose myself. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 01:58, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

GPT-3 Holmes

Possibly a dumb question, is the GPT-3 writing for Arbitration report a joke, or true? ☆ Bri (talk) 18:04, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

It's true, although the image of Justice GPT-Holmes with a glowing cyberpunk android eye is a matter of artistic license ;) jp×g 19:00, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Rise of the Machines

This month I have indulged an idle fancy of mine, and actually had GPT-3 write two articles: the deletion report and the arbitration report. The deletion report is finished, and ready for copyediting, and the arbitration report is not (there is a bunch of stuff I have to figure out how to input properly, like the proposed decisions).

I am also writing something to explain and contextualize these, which will either be an op-ed or a "from the editor", since there really is a lot to explain (way too much to cram into the reports themselves) and it seems appropriate to kind of have a general go-off about foundation models. There are a couple news items about this anyway, so I think it'd be condign. jp×g 19:04, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Both articles should link to the full explanation because this will be very, very confusing otherwise. This should include an in-article summary about these text being AI-generated for entertainment, and not 'reliable' or 'journalistically accurate' or whatever. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:06, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

@Headbomb: I fact-checked all of the claims in both articles, and they are all accurate descriptions of the discussions I provided to the model (even when said discussions were extremely detailed). As an example, for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Political ponerology, we got:

Others felt that the book is notable and the article should be merged with the existing article on ponerology; they noted that the book is cited by a variety of sources, including Psychology Today, The Psychologist, the Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Times Literary Supplement, and The Conversation. In the end, the result was no consensus, and the article was not deleted.

This was all true: Mhawk10 proposed a merge to Ponerology, and a list of sources really were provided that included those five websites. And it really was closed by Stifle as "no consensus". It's batshit crazy -- even a couple years ago the state of the art was nowhere near this. I messed around with GPT-2 when it came out in 2019: it would basically spend a paragraph making up outrageous falsehoods and then start repeating the same line over and over. But this seems to be a wholly different affair. I do agree that GPT-3's writing needs to be fact-checked (as would be true for any human writer). There is the added consideration that it's not capable of doing additional research beyond what is provided in the prompt, like following diff links or clicking through to read sources -- but, then again, neither are we, a lot of the time. jp×g 22:11, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

This is amazing content. Wikipedia needs a policy discussing the copyright of bot-produced creative works. Bluerasberry (talk) 20:14, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Images for articles

I have added some lead images to the articles for this month (especially the ones that did not already have any) -- my goal on this is to run with zero articles that are completely unillustrated. Studies have shown, blah blah blah. I have not yet bothered to device a way for bringing us forward into the year 2007 and including them as header images for the articles themselves, or Heaven forfend, on the main issue page (although with {{CSS crop}} I'm sure all sorts of wacky dreams is possible). jp×g 03:58, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

We used to have an image on the main issue page ... I'm not sure why that stopped. See https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost&oldid=662534494 for an example. Andreas JN 466 05:02, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

One thing I could use some thinking on is how to format a collage of several images. At Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Next_issue/Discussion_report I just made a single image of all six; at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Next_issue/In_the_media I put them all in a gallery. Which of these looks better? (Ignore that the discussion report ones are lower resolution -- that's got nothing to do with the formatting).

For the purposes of comparison, I'll embed both here, with the gallery first and the single-image collage second.

A collage of abstract images illustrating an argument at a train station, a calendar surrounded by question marks, a phone with an exclamation point on its screen, a moving van with a trash bin in the back, a person in front of a large pile of papers, and a village pump.

Train station arguments, calendar confusion, mobile editnotices, trashing-while-moving, neutrality on bureaucracy, and the good ol' village pump.

My thinking is that the gallery is obviously superior, except for the situation where it breaks unevenly (on my monitor right now, there are 5 images on the first line and one on the second - yuck). I don't know what the best way to fix this would be (it may be possible to use "perrow"). jp×g 04:11, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

While I agree we should be using images throughout, I actually find the gallery at the top of ITM a bit confusing. Most sections on that page already have a picture that has clear relevance to the content; I find adding the gallery at the top is overkill. Andreas JN 466 08:41, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, my thinking is mostly that these can be used as tiles or thumbnails or something like that -- not necessarily that they all get splatted into the articles themselves. If I can figure out how to fix the issue page and display them, I'll do that. jp×g 15:29, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

DALL-E 2 generation for "Teddy bears working on new AI research underwater with 1990s technology"
Same thing with Craiyon, which I am using

Also, it should be noted that these are kind of shitty, mostly because I was too lazy to apply to the DALL-E 2 waitlist, which means I am stuck with Craiyon and the Midjourney trial for this month. Later iterations of this will improve considerably. jp×g 15:56, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
@JPxG, TNT has access to DALL-E 2. I also applied but haven't got in yet. I'll ask her if we can generate some stuff for next month. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 22:30, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Annual Plan approved ... er ... what annual plan

See [11] where User:Yair rand points out another instance of what I like to think of as "democracy theatre". Yair, would you like to write something up for the Signpost? Andreas JN 466 08:35, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

WMF looking for At-Large Directors for the Wikimedia Endowment Board

https://twitter.com/juliesausy/status/1550112972722188290

https://boards.greenhouse.io/wikimediaendowment/jobs/4226183?gh_src=24038f881us

Note that the second link says, "The Wikimedia Endowment is led by Lisa Seitz-Gruwell, President, and a Board of Directors."

That does not match the info currently shown on m:Wikimedia_Endowment – there is no mention of a president, only of a board.

The doc then outlines a new Endowment Board structure:

The Wikimedia Endowment Board consists of between 7-15 members, including:

1 Community Founder Director (Jimmy Wales)
2-3 Community Directors
4-11 At-Large Directors

The Board strives to represent a diversity of geographies, backgrounds, races/ethnicities, gender identities, points of view, and interests. At-Large Directors must have prior fundraising or financial expertise and a passion for free knowledge. Community Directors bring deep knowledge of the Wikimedia movement and must have previously served as a director of the Wikimedia Foundation Board.

At this time, the Board is actively seeking candidates for At-Large Director seats.

Andreas JN 466 13:26, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Added a brief note to NaN. Andreas JN 466 19:16, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

Article about the deletion of Bruce Faulconer

This a self-published article by Ted Gioia that takes quite the stance against Wikipedia's decision to delete a two-sentence long article. May be worth mentioning in ITM. ––FormalDude talk 19:56, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

The article has now been recreated. We should cover the story; it's worth at least an In brief. --Andreas JN 466 18:08, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks to Sdkb for writing a good summary about this! ––FormalDude talk 23:54, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

@Smallbones and Sdkb: Smallbones deleted the piece on Faulconer, accidentally I guess. I was going to reinsert it, but it acutally needs rewriting, as the Faulconer article has been recreated. Sdkb, could you please have another go? --Andreas JN 466 14:41, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to wait a bit to make sure everything's settled, but in the meantime, the piece should be up so someone doesn't accidentally rewrite it from scratch. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 15:23, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, yes it was accidental/ I was trying to do 2 things at once 1) merge the 2 sections that both were starting to cover the High Courts articles, and 2. Move the Faulconer article to just above the "In brief" section. I do think that the section needs to be rewritten and cut down by more than half. What's it about. As I understand it, it's about a blogger who complains that a 15 year old article of only 2 sentences and no references gets AFDed. I don't think any regular reader would want to read that, except maybe to find out who's been smoking what. Perhaps I've misunderstood, but if it's true, I'd recommend summarizing that part in 2 sentences, and then taking another 2-3 sentences for the interesting part. How the heck did the article get reinstated? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 15:36, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

The article used to be much longer, see e.g. [12], but was very poorly sourced. That version I linked to also included a BLP violation. Andreas JN 466 15:48, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Irish study shows judges do something or other involving Wikipedia

I am in the middle of doing a bunch of other stuff, but I see that some big new story broke this morning, so I have dumped a bunch of shit at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Next_issue/In_the_media#Footnotes. I don't know which of these articles is the best to use, so I put them all as formatted citations. jp×g 20:57, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Don't worry, my "Humour" section makes all other half-arsed things in this issue look like arse (but a whole one). Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 21:37, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Also, I wrote up a section on it, but don't blame me if I was influenced by a certain bot's pithy quotes. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 00:09, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Biden, recession definition needs ITM write-up

https://www.newsweek.com/wikipedia-editing-recession-joe-biden-rejects-claims-economy-1729065

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11060135/Wikipedia-SUSPENDS-edits-recession-page-woke-users-changed-definition-Bidens.html

https://unherd.com/thepost/wikipedia-takes-cue-from-white-house-and-re-defines-recession/

Quote from Unherd:

Wikipedia has changed the definition of ‘recession’ and locked the page from further edits. These changes were made during the week that the White House proposed a re-definition of recession to mean something other than two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.

Until July 11, the world’s largest online encyclopedia included in its definition of a recession as ‘two negative consecutive quarters of growth’ with users free to make alterations:

Screengrab from July 11 But as of July 25 any mention of ‘two negative consecutive quarters of GDP growth’ was removed from this section. The page now also has a lock sign on the top right, which means the page cannot be edited. The new definition is therefore locked in:

Wikipedia’s edit history shows that, up until July 27, users were making significant changes to the definition of recession with any mention of two consecutive quarters of negative growth scrubbed from the page.

I haven't looked at the article history yet. Why does all this stuff always come up right before publication weekend??? --Andreas JN 466 14:45, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

The number of articles on this will still continue to grow for a while ...

https://nypost.com/2022/07/29/elon-musk-blasts-wikipedia-after-it-suspends-edits-of-recession-page/

https://gazette.com/news/us-world/wikipedia-restricts-edits-to-recession-page-after-biden-denial-of-definition/article_f3b9fa9c-8a98-5cba-9ac4-6c9afd1b3da7.html

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/3579467-rising-july-29-2022/

As far as I can tell, it all began here ... lots of "reliable sources" taking their cue from the Daily Mail, which as usual presents almost the exact opposite of the truth. "The truth has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie." (A quote not by Mark Twain.) Andreas JN 466 21:44, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

More accurate headlines would be "Wikipedia restricts edits to recession page after Biden comments trigger edit wars and drive-by IP trolling". It's really a routine administrative action, but sensationalists will sensationalize. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:08, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Pageviews is interesting. ~3,000 a day most of the summer until a week ago, then 80,000 yesterday. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:42, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

It actually went up to 200,000 in the latest day's numbers. ☆ Bri (talk) 08:16, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

JPxG is quoted in the Washington Examiner's piece, which looks like a more reasonable description of the dispute: [13] Andreas JN 466 08:43, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Oh boy, WP:RSPS says There is no consensus on the reliability of the Washington Examiner, but there is consensus that it should not be used to substantiate exceptional claims. Almost all editors consider the Washington Examiner a partisan source and believe that statements from this publication should be attributed. The Washington Examiner publishes opinion columns, which should be handled with the appropriate guideline. ☆ Bri (talk) 08:47, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Compared to the Daily Mail the Washington Examiner article is, in this case, a model of restraint and factual reporting. :))

More rolling in:

https://www.thestreet.com/.amp/technology/elon-musk-takes-sides-in-controversial-wikipedia-debate?fbclid=IwAR2ZXX1TpjzFTkCDd8tAnmgTCojH8Pzjor_FLAUl3JdzDeCgMIaHGJsUraQ

https://www.mediaite.com/tech/wikipedia-suspends-editing-recession-page-after-users-furiously-debate-definition/

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/29/1114599942/wikipedia-recession-edits (calls out User:Soibangla) Andreas JN 466 11:14, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

A debunker of the story has been posted on YouTube:

Is Wikipedia Redefining The "Recession" Page 🕵DEBUNKED

Might be worth mentioning (I don't think I'll have time to write this up this weekend). Andreas JN 466 12:23, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Strangely, the Washington Examiner is one of the few that seem to actually understand what happened. Anyway, I am also quoted in the Fortune one, so I don't think I should be writing this up for ITM. But here are some of the links from the {{high traffic}} template on Talk:Recession --

 | url     = https://www.dailywire.com/news/wikipedias-recession-page-shows-41-edits-in-one-week-attempts-at-changing-definition
 | title   = Wikipedia’s ‘Recession’ Page Shows 41 Edits In One Week, Attempts At Changing Definition
 | site     = The Daily Wire
 | date    = July 28, 2022
 
 | url2    = https://www.outkick.com/wikipedias-bans-edits-to-recession-page/
 | title2  = Wikipedia Bans Edits to ‘Recession’ Page
 | date2   = July 28, 2022
 | site2    = OutKick
 
 | url3    = http://hannity.com/media-room/wiki-tweaks-41-edits-made-to-wikipedias-recession-page-in-one-week/
 | title3  = WIKI TWEAKS: 41 Edits Made to Wikipedia's 'Recession' Page in One Week
 | date3   = July 28, 2022
 | site3    = hannity.com
 
 | url4    = https://thepostmillennial.com/wikipedia-redefines-recession-to-resemble-bidens-changes-then-locks-page-to-new-edits
 | title4  = Wikipedia redefines 'recession' to resemble Biden's changes—then locks page to new edits
 | date4   = July 28, 2022
 | site4    = The Post-Millennial
 
 | url5    = https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11060135/Wikipedia-SUSPENDS-edits-recession-page-woke-users-changed-definition-Bidens.html
 | title5  = Wikipedia joins in the gaslighting! Online encyclopedia SUSPENDS edits to its 'recession' page after woke users changed definition to align with Biden's claim that the US isn't in one
 | date5   = July 28, 2022
 | site5    = dailymail.co.uk
 
 | url6    = https://dailycaller.com/2022/07/28/wikipedia-change-definition-recession/
 | title6  = Wikipedia Attempts To Change The Definition Of ‘Recession’ 41 Times
 | date6   = July 28, 2022
 | site6    = Daily Caller
 
 | url7     = https://www.newsweek.com/wikipedia-editing-recession-joe-biden-rejects-claims-economy-1729065
 | author7  = James Bickerton
 | title7   = Wikipedia Suspends Editing of Recession Page as Biden Rejects Claims
 | date7    = July 29, 2022
 | site7     = Newsweek

 | url8    = https://idahonews.com/news/nation-world/wikipedia-freezes-edits-to-definition-of-recession-after-editors-try-to-align-with-biden
 | title8  = Wikipedia freezes edits to 'recession' entry after editors try to align with Biden
 | date8    = July 29, 2022
 | site8    = Idaho News
 
 | url9    = https://nypost.com/2022/07/29/elon-musk-blasts-wikipedia-after-it-suspends-edits-of-recession-page/
 | title9  = Elon Musk blasts Wikipedia after it suspends edits of 'recession' page
 | date9    = July 29, 2022
 | site9    = New York Post
 
 | url10   = https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/courage-strength-optimism/wikipedia-restricts-edits-to-recession-page-after-biden-denial-of-definition
 | title10 = Wikipedia restricts edits to 'recession' page after Biden denial of definition 
 | date10    = July 29, 2022
 | site10   = Washington Examiner
 
 | url11   = https://www.mediaite.com/politics/wikipedia-suspends-editing-recession-page-after-users-furiously-debate-definition/
 | title11 = Wikipedia Suspends Editing ‘Recession’ Page After Users Furiously Debate Definition
 | date11 = July 29, 2022
 | site11 = Mediaite
 
 | url12 = https://fortune.com/2022/07/29/wikipedia-recession-definition-debate-partial-blocking-new-users/
 | title12 = The recession debate is so intense that Wikipedia has blocked new users from editing its recession page because people keep changing the definition
 | date12 = July 29, 2022
 | site12 = Fortune

It's insanely early in the morning and I have to go do a bunch of stuff, so sorry, I am just going to plop these on here formatted like this lol. jp×g 14:13, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

@JPxG: I'll write it up in ITM. It will have something to do with my ITM intro, as do your pictures. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:12, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Of note, nearly all of those sources are considered poor or questionable at WP:RSP Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:58, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I think the NPR, Fortune, Idaho News and Washington Examiner are the only of these that would survive in mainspace (coincidentally, these are mostly the ones that have correct information and not just screenshots of a tweet -- much to think about). It is probably still worth mentioning the others, even if they are dumb or wrong... in fact, I'd say the wronger and dumber an article about us is, the more it warrants us clarifying as such, because who else will? ;^) jp×g 18:49, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

As for the biggest howler I could find -- this crown probably goes to "Wikipedia blasts after Elon Musk suspends editing of recession page". What da... jp×g 04:37, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Copyediting

There's a bunch of articles that may be ready for copyediting, but aren't marked as such. I'm happy to copyedit, but we need to start closing revisions soon if we're publishing on time Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 15:39, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Opinion

I've posted this submission and think it's ready for copy editing - except for a small section on business people, which I'll finish tonight. It was a difficult article to write and it may be a difficult article to copy edit, so please start as soon as you are able. Please don't change the content however. If you have comments or suggestions, please contact me via email. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:03, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

my email Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:10, 30 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm going to be taking a look at all the articles and can try to CE today. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 02:08, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I've done some preliminary work, though I think it could use another pass. It's a great article, but, while I'd want to keep some of the raw passion, it could use a few more tweaks for flow, and, since I'm prone to very long sentences with a lot of clauses (such as this one), when I was removing redundancy I might have created some long sentences that don't fit in with Smallbones' more terse style. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 04:12, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I've taken a tour of most of the articles and only see a couple of problems

I don't think running just one op-ed for a Board candidate will work at all. I'd say at least 5 out of the 6 should have op-eds. If only 1 candidate has an op-ed, we are certain to be accused of favoritism (and very loudly) and it won't work for the candidate either. He'll be accused of trying to pull a fast one and will likely receive the fewest votes with opposition of all the other candidates,
My opinion article is still incomplete but just one small section. But in the Comment section was this from @Ceoil:

":is this really going to be published. It will lead to the signposts discretion, and Adam’s removal from his post.Ceoil (talk) 14:38, 23 June 2022 (UTC)" There's some misspelling in there so I don't know exactly what he's trying to say, but it doesn't sound good.

Ceoil, could you flesh out what you're trying to say. For example, are you saying that there's some rule I'm breaking by writing this? Are you aware that almost all of this material has already appeared in The Signpost. It's really just a collection of old stuff.

I'm going to bed and will be back bright and early, @JPxG, EpicPupper, Bri, and Jayen466:. As always Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:59, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

The Ceoil stuff is all about Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Archive_25#Next_month's_opinion_piece, which really doesn't need to be revisited. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:26, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! I hadn't noticed the date on that post - how do you think it slipped in this month? No matter for now. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 11:14, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

T-minus fifteen hours

I will be publishing in fifteen hours (22:00 UTC).

In another craven gesture of cowardice, I have pre-emptively pushed the deadline forward by two hours, mostly because I fucked up and had to spend all day driving around instead of finishing the stuff that needed to be done for this issue. Feel free to start a "Lock him up!" chant, because I deserve it. jp×g 07:05, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

@Smallbones, there's an uncopyedited section in bullet-point form in your opinion piece. Should we scrap that section, or do you want to write it up, or something else?
- It looks like we have 6 hours to go. If so, it'll be complete with at least 3 houts before publication. Smallbones_(smalltalk)
The election guide needs republishing of candidate statements, which is truly a pain. I'll get it done but if anyone can offer help, that's appreciated. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 16:06, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Artificial intelligence

In Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/From the editors, there is the following passage: However, there is another side to artificial intelligence that is not often talked about. The potential for AI to do good. Maybe that's true in some circles, but I don't think it's generally true. There's lots of coverage about using AI in modelling/simulation, medical research, expert systems, automated control, and so forth. I suggest dropping "that is not often talked about". isaacl (talk) 16:12, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

@Isaacl, that bit of text was generated by GPT-3 (AI). I'm fine with it being tweaked. Cheers, 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 16:16, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed the fourth paragraph. Was it intentional to have two explanatory paragraphs, for rhetorical effect? Or are all of the first three paragraphs AI-generated? I won't tweak the AI-written text to that degree, as that would seem to defeat the point of the exercise. isaacl (talk) 16:22, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

It was intentional, yeah. There's two generated paragraphs, and the second serves as a segway to JPxG's point. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 16:28, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Three hours. Good morning!!!!!! jp×g 18:55, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Did you follow the same approach as you described below to generate these two paragraphs, and if so, did you make the statement that the positives of AI are not often talked about? If so, then I do suggest dropping that clause. isaacl (talk) 21:12, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Oh, that was my two paragraphs; JPxG didn't do them. I didn't make the statement, the AI itself inferred. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 21:27, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Well, arguably it could be removed as an outcome of fact-checking. I'll leave it up to your judgement. isaacl (talk) 21:35, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Five hours

I'm concerned about the length of Humor. CC @Adam Cuerden
- I find it funny in a... so terrible it becomes funny again way. If you don't, feel free to spike or delay. It's not like I don't have a mark in this week's issue. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 20:30, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Columns might need a bit of reorganizing.
@JPxG, mind writing an article on the recession? I can also publish your FAQ.
What's the status on OneClickArchiver? 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 16:54, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

What about OneClickArchiver? On which page? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:57, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

It was broken on this page. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 17:03, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I just tested it and it seems to work just fine. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:11, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

The last couple months, it has been messing up and adding stuff to weird places (if you look through the archives of this talk page, you can see that they're bizarrely out of chronological order). For this issue I think we should just manually cut-paste the old stuff to an archive page, rather than trying to do it in twenty separate edits that have a high probability of causing difficult-to-fix errors. jp×g 21:39, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I'm done approving what I can, and the columns are organized on the newsroom by approximate order of relevance. Election guide is done. Frankly, that was quite exhausting. I'll be on and off my computer until publication time, but I recommend JPxG to take the time to write an Op-Ed, whether that means delaying publication by an hour or something else. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 17:39, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I'll try to keep copyediting, but I am burning out a little. On the other hand, I suppose that Candidate statements should be pretty minimally copyedited. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 20:48, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes. Unless there's a glaring accessibility/etc issue, don't touch them. Especially the typos. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 20:52, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

The humor section is funny as hell. I mean, you click on it expecting some long drawn-out thing, and then it's actually a zero-effort one sentence shitpost. At least I laughed out loud when I saw it. Maybe other people have a different sense of humor. If everyone thinks it's lame, there is some other stuff I have lying around. When I was messing around with GPT-3, I had it generate some output along the lines of "A caption to a New Yorker cartoon about Wikipedia", which was pretty funny a lot of the time (and I got Craiyon to make some images as such), but I think the current one is fine. jp×g 21:39, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
I like the humor currently. Perhaps we could do that next issue. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 21:40, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I liked it too. A nice contrast from all the other very wordy pieces in this issue. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:46, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Well, sure as heck not now. It will be a little bit. jp×g 21:59, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

ITM

Is this already in there? 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:10, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I'd love to have that in ITM. More precisely, I'd love for you to write it up and post it there, if we have the room. I'm exhausted, too. The Opinion piece is now completely ready to copy edit (only the last 2 sections need it). There is an advantage to everybody frantically editing near publication deadline. We interact and get new ideas and are up-to-date. The disadvantage is that we all get tired and there's only so much we can do. Thanks. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 19:45, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
I'll paste the contents into an AI model and have it generate something. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 19:49, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
...Do you realise we have twenty-seven articles this month? I wonder if we could get a banner notification alongside the watchlist one? Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 20:28, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
What. The. Heck. TWENTY-SEVEN articles, you say? Huh. Perhaps we could get a CentralNotice, but I'm not sure if the admins would approve. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 20:41, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
(I assume a lot of it is the 6 candidate statements. That whittles it down to 21.) 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 20:41, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Twenty-eight. Fuck me, huh? jp×g 20:46, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
I'm so so sorry, I need to accept a special report submission that might bump it up to twenty-nine. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 20:49, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Well, we could always publish the August Featured content as well as the July. It's like, 99% finished. But we'd lack an FC for August, as I'm not going to try and do that again this month. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 21:04, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

I would throw a suggestion that we perhaps don't link to invididual candidate op eds in the 'main' issue and instead only link them in the Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Election guide page.

I don't know how much I support this myself, but I'm throwing the suggestion out there to see what others think of it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:02, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
The prompting style I used for the deletion and arbitration report is noted at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/From the editors. Basically, it is to put something like "The following is an article in [whatever] titled [whatever], about [whatever]:" on the first line. The second line should begin a paste of the whole article. Then, after that, "The following is a detailed description of the above article, written by [some description of a person who is smart]". This can be something like "a professional journalist", or "an extremely insightful cultural commentator", or something. It sounds gobsmackingly stupid, but GPT-3 is a text completion model, so it actually works. The same principle is behind why you can make DALL-E generate better pictures by saying "a high-quality professional picture of" before prompts -- the models will associate it with data labeled in this way. jp×g 20:45, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

What's left to do

~~Traffic report needs an EIC decision on the graph from @EpicPupper: or @JPxG:~~
~~Recent research needs to be finalized by @HaeB:~~
Several pieces are only waiting for approval by @EpicPupper: or @JPxG:
~~Decide how we handle the candidate op-eds (see #ITM above). Treat as individual articles, or only link to them from the Election guide article~~

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:32, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

(By the way, my username's EpicPupper. The one you pinged is my doppelganger :) 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 21:40, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Fixed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:45, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Recent research should already be in publishable state from my perspective, as mentioned earlier on the main newsroom page. I guess I should have marked it as ready for copyedit in case someone wants to give it a second pair of eyes, but I'm fine with it going out as is. Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:50, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Well it was missing a few things (title, blurb, placeholders still in place) making it look incomplete, but it should be good now. I've given it a final spitshine and now the only thing left if for the EiCs to approve things and make decisions. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:54, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Hands off the keyboards

@Adam Cuerden, @HaeB, @Headbomb, @Smallbones, let's allow @JPxG to approve the remainder of the pieces and publish. We've decided to make the candidate statements subpages of the main election guide. Cheers, 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 22:21, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Just had to fix the candidate's op-ed's talk page links. Should be good now. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:30, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good. Only thing I'll edit is the August FC, which, as long as a million things don't promote in the next hour and a half, literally only needs me to choose a lead image (the lightning seems to win numerically, so probably that) and count how many of each type of content there is. And then needs someone to shake a finger at me and tell me there's no way we can publish it with my chosen title. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8% of all FPs} 22:39, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Wouldn't the August FC be for the August issue anyway? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:43, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Yes. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 22:59, 31 July 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I have gone over everything. Hold on to your hats jp×g 00:19, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

There's four stories not marked as approved yet. Did they get a look at? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:25, 1 August 2022 (UTC)

I looked at all of them, although I may have messed up and not marked them as reviewed. The script is running now, but I will have to manually move the candidate op-eds and add the images to the main page. jp×g 00:37, 1 August 2022 (UTC)