Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 31, 32, 33, 34 |
Settings:
Discussions are archived by Cluebot III when older than 60 days, or if marked with {{done}} |
This page is for suggesting news to be covered in the next Signpost. We are a newspaper that covers subjects of general interest for our audience of Wikipedia editors. If you'd like guidance on editing for new editors, please inquire at the Teahouse. More general questions may be addressed to the help page.
For general discussion, comments or questions regarding The Signpost, please see our feedback page. You can also write a piece yourself! See the submissions desk for details. Or send a news tip by email to our tipmail.
Suggestion by NikosLikomitros (2022-06-21)
The Signpost should write about the consequences of COVID pandemic in Wikipedias, especially in the activity of many Wikipedias of the developing world. In the developing world, the years until 2020 were met with continuous and uninterrupted growth in users and activity. However, after the beginning of the Covid pandemic, the brief further growth due to the first lockdown has been followed from a, for many Wikipedias, prolonged decrease in active users and activity.
Here are some examples:
- Hindi had 7,707 active users in 2017 (according to Wikiscan), number that doubled to 15,2 thousand active users in 2020 based in Wikiscan. However in 2021 only 12,282 users made at least one edit according to Wikiscan. The evidence from 2022's activity show further decrease. And before the pandemic it was one of the shining stars globally in activity and gradually new articles, heading for more than 2 thousand active users in 2020 (in regular basis).
- Spanish had 118 thousand active users in the same year, 2017 (Wikiscan data)). In 2020 the active users had surged in 150 thousand (Wikiscan) and in 2021 the users decreased to 131 thousand. More decrease is expected in 2022.
- Indonesian, based in the same site, has recovered from 2021's decrease and heads back to normal.
- Turkish had 32,585 users in 2020, in the first year after the unblock. In the next year 30,3 thousand users did at least one edit, and further decrease seems to be expected.
- Bengali had 5,230 users in 2017. In 2019 the users with at least one edit increased to 10,8 thousand. In 2020 users increased to 11,6 thousand, and in 2021 to 11,8 thousand. This year a small decrease is possible. The impact, thus, was lower, but it would have been nearly to 17 thousand users without the pandemic's disruption and new articles would have continued to grow to more than 40-50 thousand a year.
- Urdu had 1,385 users in 2017. In 2020 the users with at least one edit had surged to 2,576. In the next year they decreased to 2,127 and a check of this year's data shows very strong possibility for a further decrease.
- Swahili had 590 users in 2017, 1,047 in 2020 and 1,012 in 2021. Finally for 2022 there is a strong possibility of growth based in the estimation from the numbers provided from Wikiscan.
- Marathi had 2,020 users in 2017. In 2020 they reached 2,270 (in 2019 there were 2,591) and in 2021 they continued to decrease to 1,794. In 2022 the most recent data show further decrease, possibly even 30%.
- French had 105 thousand users in 2017. In 2020 they reached 139 thousand, and they decreased to 133 thousand in 2021. As in 2010 there were 99 thousand users and 112 in 2014, it is obvious that much of post-2017 growth was driven from the French-speaking African countries.
- Persian had 33 thousand users in 2017, 52 thousand in 2020 and 49 thousand in 2021.
I suggest that you should write an article for this decrease of activity in many Wikipedias of the developing world. This decrease has been mixed with stagnation or decrease in pageviews as well, as you can see from the Wikistats site. These decreases wouldn't have happened if Covid pandemic wasn't disrupting the growth cycle of various Wikipedias of the developing world. You can check, in Wikiscan, in the Calendar unit (checking Stats and after the name of year, which is given as e.g. 22 for 2022), the growth and decrease of annual new article production pre and post-2020.
I think that you must compile a such article, with interviews from Wikipedias of India, Africa and Asia giving their opinions for the decrease and what could be done to finally end it. After the publication of that article, if you judge that it would be on the benefit of the Signpost, I would suggest to publish an op-ed as well, showing an estimation of how Wikipedia's activity could be now if Covid was just a mere fiction. NikosLikomitros (talk) 21:36, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
- This is quite interesting. A deep dive on topics like COVID-19, the Russo-Ukranian War, etc could be done./ 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 17:45, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
- Late, but @NikosLikomitros:, if you can give links for these statistics (I see that there are links for the first couple, but not the rest) I can try to write it into a story for this month or the next. Also, a lot of them stop around 2021 -- is it possible to get updated numbers for 2023? jp×g 08:58, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Suggestion by Ghmyrtle (2022-08-24)
You might be interested in saying something about how the death of singer-songwriter Tom Springfield came to be reported, albeit belatedly. I've included my commentary at Talk:Tom Springfield#Death. Ghmyrtle (talk) 13:25, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
- jp×g 19:44, 8 December 2022 (UTC) note to self
- I've put this in the grab bag for the next few issues. {{done}}jp×g 08:59, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Suggestion by PAC2 (2022-07-30)
The Signpost should write about... https://observablehq.com/@pac02/actress-singers-and-actor-singers-do-actresses-become-sing?collection=@pac02/wikidata
In this notebook I posit an intuition and use Wikidata to test if my assumption is wrong or false. It's not directly using Wikipedia as such but it show how data from the sister project Wikidata can be used to test various assumptions. PAC2 (talk) 20:58, 30 July 2022 (UTC)
- Hi @PAC2! Would you be comfortable with writing something up for this, for the September issue? Thanks, 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 16:14, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Hello, I'm sorry but I won't be able to finish my piece for tomorrow. PAC2 (talk) 20:47, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
- @PAC2, that's totally fine! Our publication deadline is actually on the 31st, but we'd also be happy to accept something later than that. Cheers, 🥒 EpicPickle (they/them | talk) 21:30, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
- @PAC2: If you are still interested, so are we -- let us know if you want to circle back on this. jp×g 09:14, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
- Thanks for your ping. Here is my draft User:PAC2/How to use Wikidata to test your intuitions. PAC2 (talk) 09:52, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
cricket player Arshdeep Singh (2022-09-05)
The Signpost should write about... this TechCrunch piece regarding Arshdeep Singh (cricketer). Chris Troutman (talk) 18:19, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
- This looks like one of those typical pieces of coverage about someone's Wikipedia page being vandalized, and I think it is too far in the past to be relevant now. {{done}} jp×g 09:01, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Suggestion by Legoktm (2022-09-05)
The Signpost should write about...the passing of Peter Eckersley. He was a prominent figure in digital rights advocacy at EFF, as well as an early contributor to Wikipedia as User:Pde, editing up through last year. I found out about his involvement in Wikipedia from this Twitter thread. Legoktm (talk) 23:12, 5 September 2022 (UTC)
Suggestion by BD2412 (2022-09-29)
The Signpost should write about... User:BD2412 becomes the fourth Wikipedian to surpass two million edits. It's here now, but should be official here tomorrow. Moving Wheeler Martin from draft to mainspace was the edit that hit the magic number. I kind of feel like Forrest Gump in that scene after he has been running back and forth across America for three years, and suddenly stops and says, "I'm pretty tired, I think I'll go home now". Cheers! BD2412 T 07:09, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
Suggestion by Tcr25 (2022-10-07)
The Signpost should write about "Wiki Dive" a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon type solo game/exercise/challenge where you start with the Featured Article of the Day (or a random article) and see how quickly you can reach submarine. It makes for some interesting thought exercises as you try to figure out a possible path to follow. (It was originally posted in the Antherwyck Games blog back in May, but I just saw it today.) Carter (Tcr25) (talk) 21:17, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- This is a pretty old game, if I remember correctly (Wikipedia:Six_degrees_of_Wikipedia) -- it's been covered a few times before. {{done}} jp×g 09:05, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Suggestion by Hunter Kahn (2022-10-07)
A few years ago I drastically expanded the Wikipedia article about the baseball player Stephen Vogt, working it up to GA status. This year, Stephen Vogt retired, which brought some additional attention to the page.
I mentioned on my personal Twitter page that I was the primary author of Vogt's Wikipedia page, which led to me getting contacted by Ben Lindbergh, senior editor at The Ringer and co-host of a baseball podcast called Effectively Wild. It turns out Ben had done a little research about the longest baseball player articles on Wikipedia, and he had been particularly intrigued by why the page about Stephen Vogt was as detailed as those of players like Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson.
So over the course of an hour-long conversation via Twitter DM messages, he started asking me questions about why I edited that page, how I went about it, what other pages I've edited, etc. He said he might discuss it on his podcast, and I figured he might give it a 30-second shoutout or something, but he ended up dedicated a full THIRTEEN MINUTES of his podcast to the discussion and to Stephen Vogt's Wikipedia page.
Not sure if this is something that would interest the Signpost, but if you want to listen, the Vogt/Wikipedia discussion can be found at the 17:40 mark of the podcast episode, which was just released today (October 7). The official episode description states: "Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley... share a few words from the diligent author of the retiring Stephen Vogt's exhausting exhaustive Wikipedia page." LOL
— Hunter Kahn 15:59, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- @Hunter Kahn: Note that the official description actually says
exhaustive Wikipedia page
(emphasis mine) — which is a compliment, whereas the version you gave would not be. "Exhaustive" means "exhibiting all the facts or arguments; very thorough". It's a synonym for "complete" or "comprehensive". "Exhausting" means "producing exhaustion (extreme fatigue); having a debilitating effect". It's a synonym for "tiring". Veeeery different words! 😃 FeRDNYC (talk) 02:33, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
— Hunter Kahn 15:59, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
- Congrats! User:Hunter Kahn That looks like a fast ball belt-high right down the middle. I'm sure somebody will be stepping up to the plate. Smallbones(smalltalk) 17:06, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
In the grab bag. {{done}} jp×g 09:09, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Suggestion by MER-C (2022-10-17)
Russian disinformation on the Ukraine war gets noticed: [1] MER-C 18:14, 17 October 2022 (UTC) We covered the ISD paper, excellent. {{done}} jp×g 09:09, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Suggestion by JamieF (2022-11-02)
The Signpost should write about... the View it! tool. A new tool for discoverability of images on Commons in development utilizing Structured Data on Commons. I would be happy to write/help write the article, if others are interested. JamieF (talk) 19:19, 2 November 2022 (UTC)
- @JamieF: That sounds like it would be great. I would love to see a draft -- either as part of the technology report or potentially (if there is enough in there) as its own article. jp×g 09:11, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Suggestion by Project Osprey (2022-11-15)
The Signpost should write about... Wikipedia’s Citations Are Influencing Scholars and Publishers an interesting opinion piece with references Project Osprey (talk) 22:04, 15 November 2022 (UTC)
Suggestion by Gråbergs Gråa Sång (2022-11-17)
The what-to-do-about-twitter-blue discussion Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Twitter_Blue_and_verified_Twitter_accounts may be worth a mention. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 14:09, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
Suggestion by Novem Linguae (2022-11-19)
The Signpost should write about... Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#RfC on the banners for the December 2022 fundraising campaign. That's looking like pretty big WMF x Community Relations news for this month, which should be included in any WMF roundup type articles. @Bluerasberry, Jayen466, and Kudpung:. –Novem Linguae (talk) 07:05, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
- Good suggestion. Andreas has already written a book review for this month's issue, but another WMF article wouldn't hurt - especially as I ironically had to tag the author's Wiki article for serious BLP issues today. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 08:48, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
{{done}} jp×g 09:14, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Covered.Suggestion by Daniel Case (2022-11-25)
The Signpost should write about... University of Kansas archaeologist John Hoopes' praise for Wikipedia's articles in that area at the end of a recent interview in Slate Daniel Case (talk) 07:30, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
doubles of people showing up in new Mexico
The Signpost should write about... 172.56.12.38 (talk) 09:49, 30 November 2022 (UTC) The crew of let's encrypt they are taking over political and justice positions in the state something needs to be done about it muy pronto.
Suggestion by Dumuzid (2022-12-06)
The Signpost should write about... Dumuzid (talk) 21:03, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Elon Musk has been something of a tear on his personal site Twitter, including, for instance this], and it seems (from my very subjective point of view) to be getting a lot of pickup. Just thought I would throw it out there! Thanks. Dumuzid (talk) 21:03, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Suggestion by Kosboot (2022-12-16)
The Signpost should write about... for "In the Media" https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/11/01/guest-post-wikipedias-citations-are-influencing-scholars-and-publishers Wikipedia’s Citations Are Influencing Scholars and Publishers By Rachel Helps kosboot (talk) 13:23, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
Suggestion by FeRDNYC (2022-12-18)
This might be worth a nod.
The Signpost should write about writer Emily St. John Mandel's effort to have her marital status updated on her own Wikipedia article, which it seems met with a bit of WP:BLP-fueled resistance... to the point where she took to Twitter and enlisted the assistance of Slate's Dan Kois, who ran "A Totally Normal Interview With Writer Emily St. John Mandel" for the sole purpose of generating a citable announcement of her divorce. Which worked.
...Our processes may be slightly broken. FeRDNYC (talk) 16:42, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
- Meant to include this Twitter source, which includes screenshots of the unfolding rigamarole: https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1604297664316821504 FeRDNYC (talk) 16:45, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
Use of Wikipedia by Russian troops
I've seen occasional mentions in the last week that Russian conscripts are being trained by simply handing them a copy of relevant Wikipedia articles. As much as I would defend the accuracy of Wikipedia content -- I know technology articles have been unofficially used inside Intel -- this is criminally negligent for any government to do. Anyway, I've discovered a NYT article that details this practice: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/12/16/world/europe/russia-putin-war-failures-ukraine.html Unfortunately, this is behind a paywall, so I can't verify exactly what is actually written. Hoping someone else can have a look & use this for Signpost article. -- llywrch (talk) 20:44, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
Suggestion by Gråbergs Gråa Sång (2022-12-20)
You have probably noticed the adventures of Emily St. John Mandel, [2][3][4][5], just wanted to note that editors are talking about it at Talk:Emily St. John Mandel. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:17, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
Also at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Women_in_Red#Sourcing_marital_status and Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons#Resolving_conflicts_between_WP:BLPPRIMARY_&_WP:BLPEDIT/. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:57, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
Suggestion by FacetsOfNonStickPans (2022-12-27)
The Signpost could create its own mini-course or mini-capstone project within the Wikipedia Signpost namespace itself. Just text based, like normal Signpost articles. Here is one idea: On the software/coding/technical side of the encyclopedia. I am sure there are many non-technical editors who would want to know more about the technical side of this place and wouldn't know where to begin. FacetsOfNonStickPans (talk) 22:41, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
Saudi Arabia jails two Wikipedia admins in ‘bid to control content’
This article also states that last month's WMF banning of Arab and Persian admins had a theme: they were "Saudis acting under the influence of the Saudi government". cc @Jayen466. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:42, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
- WMF is disputing the extent of Saudi involvement, stating that the Guardian article contains inaccuracies: https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/6IXJ7UQPFTLOC4YRUJNYUGHTXAN5ACVL/ –Novem Linguae (talk) 18:45, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
- In this issue. {{done}} jp×g 09:16, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
Suggestion by PAC2 (2023-01-07)
The Signpost should write about data analytics tools to analyze the list of articles created by a user (https://observablehq.com/collection/@pac02/pages-created).
I have already written a draft User:PAC2/What about the list of articles you've created. -- PAC2 (talk) 09:31, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
Suggestion by PAC2 (2023-01-07)
The Signpost should write about the Wednesday index (https://mastodon.world/@OpenSexism/109315053114410894). OpenSexism measures gender diversity in 26 Wikipedia articles each week. This has created a nice dataset which helps measuring the evolution of gender diversity over time. Here is the article: https://medium.com/@OpenSexism/the-wednesday-index-one-year-of-gender-diversity-data-visualized-a6458b94d52b
This is related to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-05-29/In focus. PAC2 (talk) 14:49, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
Linking talk pages of mainspace articles to relevant Signpost articles
The template 'Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/WikiProject used' has been used rather consistently. Is there any mechanism to add relevant The Signpost articles to the talk pages of articles in the mainspace? There is a template already used for coverage which has been used around 4.5k times; can this template be used? For example, from this issue (v19i1), if I wanted to link the Technology Report to the corresponding Wikipedia article talk page how should I do it, the press template or some other way? Can I duplicate this process to other cases? FacetsOfNonStickPans (talk) 19:49, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
- I would indeed use the press report. This is basically a newspaper that is slightly more editable/close to home than most ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 20:15, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you Shushugah. I hadn't really expected a comment from a reader/contributor of The Signpost like me. Now that you have...
- I think this is a small point but important enough to mention. All I can gauge from the current scenario is that no one has discussed this, it isn't on the About page, so WikiCommonsense applies, a case to case basis, based on The Signpost and English language Wikipedia structure.
- The above example with Abstract Wikipedia I took seems a positive case. Other articles in mind would be more difficult to say. For example let's take, The Daily Mail does not run Wikipedia. Now the full article doesn't cover the header, since it is an "In the media" post, a bunch of other stuff are also mentioned. So do we draw from this a criteria that only those articles which cover the mainspace article in entirety and in depth with no other topic should be added? Another example, Wikipedia impacts town's reputation, assorted blogging. Here The Signpost has commented on a media article. So should The Signpost be linked, or should that media article? A number of threads emerge. Should a line about this be added to the About page? Should it become a formal part of the publication process? How many articles are we talking about here?
- This much detail is unnecessary. This is a small point; getting out quality issues on time is the main priority. Those on the About page, thank you! FacetsOfNonStickPans (talk) 18:35, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
Suggestion by PAC2 (2023-01-15)
The Signpost should write about this article in Slate : "Should ChatGPT Be Used to Write Wikipedia Articles?" (https://slate.com/technology/2023/01/chatgpt-wikipedia-articles.html) PAC2 (talk) 09:31, 15 January 2023 (UTC)