*'''Submission''': [[User:Josve05a/Signpost draft]]<!--Or link to where you intend to write it-->
*'''Submission''': [[User:Josve05a/Signpost draft]]<!--Or link to where you intend to write it-->
*'''Column''': Opinion perhaps?
*'''Column''': Opinion perhaps? or Op-Ed? What's the difference?
*'''Author''': {{u|Josve05a}}
*'''Author''': {{u|Josve05a}}
*'''Discussion''':<br/>This piece is about the need to enforce the free licenses of Wikimedia Commons, while at the same time not appearing as a copyright troll. [[User:Josve05a|Jonatan Svensson Glad]] ([[User talk:Josve05a|talk]]) 21:19, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
*'''Discussion''':<br/>This piece is about the need to enforce the free licenses of Wikimedia Commons, while at the same time not appearing as a copyright troll. [[User:Josve05a|Jonatan Svensson Glad]] ([[User talk:Josve05a|talk]]) 21:19, 2 August 2023 (UTC)
Revision as of 07:36, 3 August 2023
"WP:OP-ED" redirects here. For the guideline on not editorializing in article content, see MOS:OP-ED. For the policy on op-eds and original research, see WP:NOROPED. For the guideline on citing op-eds as sources, see WP:NEWSOPED.
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Submission Desk
Please propose Signpost stories you want to write (or have already begun writing). Submitted stories are published subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief, JPxG. We value the involvement of Wikipedians, and appreciate your submissions. If you have ideas or questions that don't fit neatly into this framework, don't hesitate to address us on our user talk pages, by email, or as a last resort, on the general Signpost talk page.
The Signpost's content guidelines may be useful to aspiring writers; take note, especially, of the statement of purpose section. We encourage you to contact us early in the process of developing a story. Different writers have varying levels of interest in editorial input, and we pride ourselves on finding the right balance with each writer; but in most cases, a brief discussion early on can help all parties shape our expectations, and can help produce a strong finished piece. We aim to support Wikimedians wishing to share news with their peers, and look forward to working with you.
Discussion: This piece is about treatments of re-harassment after global bans -Lemonaka 13:16, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This would go well in a Op-Ed column. @JPxG:Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:02, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Changed to Op-Ed, thanks.---Lemonaka 14:52, 14 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Lemonaka: I think this is an interesting piece, but it could do with a little work. It seems like the lede is kind of buried here: I had to read through it a few times to figure out the thrust (that sometimes a global ban doesn't fix the issue, and sometimes an LTA only stops when someone actually calls the irl police, and whether this is justified and some cases where this has happened). I think it would be good for this to be expanded on a little: is it good? Should it happen more? Less? Who should be taking action on this? You ask "is a global ban the last step?", which is an interesting question, so it would be good to explore this in a little more detail (why it ought to be, why it oughtn't to be, etc). jp×g 18:17, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@JPxG: Thanks a lot for your advices and suggestions, I will go for it as soon as possible. ---Lemonaka 14:33, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've added some content, adding the last paragraph for hoping less, adding the second and third paragraph on Maybe a solution? to describe " Who should be taking action on this?", hoping this will improve a little on this article.---Lemonaka 11:08, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion: A piece I wrote in 2019 following several technical improvements to the Signpost's workflows. It could possibly be updated with whatever's been new since,like the previous/last navigation help for individual columns. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 13:57, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I noticed this out in the doldrums. Based on my carousing through talk page archives, there was quite the drama over this one. I am not quite sure what the hell was going on there -- presumably some feud thirty years in the making whose only surviving chronicle requires me to use FidoNet, but all of that aside, it seems pretty decent to me. I see no issue with publishing this as-is, with appropriate notes to indicate what stuff is current and what stuff is outdated. This is from 2019, so I imagine that some of the publishing process and organizational schema has changed in the last four years; might it be appropriate to run it as a cobweb? jp×g 08:14, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Well that's what I suggested it for. I'll move to /cobwebs but I'll leave the mini intro to you, because I don't think I'll be able to put it in context without gnashing teeth. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:27, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Can do. I think I am going to start calling these something a little more dignified than "cobwebs" -- that was only ever supposed to be a placeholder name lol -- maybe "apocrypha". jp×g 18:18, 29 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion: This article discusses the work Ocaasi and I did as part of a project with CUNY and the nonprofit organization Hacks/Hackers. Harej (talk) 16:13, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Seems to be a good fit for the /Forum column. @Harej:, do you want me to set up the signpost draft in your sandbox directly (which will get moved upon acceptance/publication), or create a /Drafts subpage so you can put the relevant content in a preformatted article sandbox (so your sanbox doesn't get moved)? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:43, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There's a bit at the end about WP:VSAFE... I'm not sure what that's about or how it's related to the credibility bot? Sandbox leftover? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:07, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As described in the article, WP:VSAFE is the project created from this effort. It is necessary for us to include this because we were paid for this work. Harej (talk) 17:31, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Would that make sense to you? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:35, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Since there was only a few pages with those shortcuts, I've boldy updated things accordingly. I hope that's ok. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:44, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Actually upon reading, this is a better fit for a special report, so I moved it to /Special Report. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:28, 28 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Some feedback.
In the "What is the problem?" and later in the "The vision" sections, I'd like to see an acknowledgement of current efforts. I'm a bit biased there, but WP:CITEWATCH (Signpost coverage) is "centralized tracking of citations" (I presume you mean problematic ones), as is WP:JCW (Signpost coverage), if you mean a citations in general. I'm not really looking for praise here, but rather a discussion of strengths/weaknesses and how Credibility bot builds/improves upon this or supplements this, or whatever.
I am referring to literally all citations, not just problematic ones. CITEWATCH is good for what you are describing. Harej (talk) 18:12, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
JCW then would be your more relevant comparison point then. Covers all citations with a |journal=. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:21, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Again, that's just citations that are formatted in a certain way. I am talking about a database of literally all references, formatted with a template or not. Harej (talk) 13:40, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And that could be pointed out in the article, is what I'm saying. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:14, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In the solutions section, you mention workspaces as a generic solution that scale up, that can work for WikiProjects or something. It would be good to have an example, possibly with an explanation/instructions of how to set things up. These explanations could be on a separate page, like WP:AALERTS/SUB.
The example is WP:Vaccine safety. At the moment there isn't really anything you can "set up" as it is all a work in progress, only working for vaccine safety at the moment.
So let's say I'm interested in setting up something like this for WP Physics. Where would I go, what would I need to have, and/or what would I need to do? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:06, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
In the "Our Vision" you write, "Tagging talk pages with WikiProject templates will no longer be necessary to get the benefit of automated reporting." This is a bit hard to believe/understand without the above example.
It's not ready yet. Harej (talk) 18:12, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Headbomb, I have made some changes to the article. Does that clarify matters? Harej (talk) 17:16, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Could have gone a bit more into details, but at the same time it's your piece. As long as existing efforts are mentioned and discussed/contrasted with, I'm happy. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:18, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Harej: I have a couple concerns about this piece, which I am not sure can be addressed solely through me copyediting it. Basically, my understanding of this is that the bot gives reports and alerts on which articles have references to reliable, unreliable, and no-good very-bad sources. These reports are based on Wikipedia:Vaccine safety/Perennial sources. This looks to me like a project-specific and subject-focused analog of WP:RSP, made almost entirely by three users (Sj, Harej and Netha Hussain (WikiCred)). While there are citations for the individual table entries, these do not seem to support a high confidence in the ranking. The citation for Proto Thema being rated "mixed", for example, links to this archived RSN thread, which has literally no discussion at all: a single post, by Cinadon36, which was archived without anybody else having responded. Did anybody agree with this claim? Disagree? Was it just caught by the archive bot before anyone had seen it?
Now, I am not saying that Cinadon36 is an idiot or a liar. For all I know, Proto Thema is a huge pile of garbage and should never be trusted for anything. However, when we look at Wikipedia:Vaccine safety/Alerts, we see a bunch of domains listed with simple emoji indicators as "unreliable". There's no link to the RSN thread, or even to the perennial sources table -- and no indication that any of these things reflect actual consensus or policy or guidelines, as opposed to "one person in 2021 saying a website sucked". It is a bit strange to me that this bot is being operated, and these pages maintained, and the suggestion made that people use them to carry out article work, while no caveats are given (and no information is made easily available to its users) about the rather-sketchy provenance of the actual reliability indices themselves. If these resources were put together with grant money, was there no stage of the development process where these issues were raised? This is somewhat troubling to me. While there are some serious issues with WP:RSP being treated like Scripture based on (sometimes very partisan or very poorly-attended) noticeboard discussions, it seems to me like a tool such as this using a local-consensus fork of RSP has all of the same issues in greater form.
Let me know what you think about this. jp×g 20:43, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
JPxG, that is valuable criticism of what has been built. In order for us to improve what we built, we need to do outreach. This piece is part of that outreach. Are projects required to be perfect before they're covered in The Signpost? Harej (talk) 20:57, 31 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I suppose my context for this is that in this same Signpost issue, we cover (in N&N) an article from Unherd, which alleges among other things that Wikipedia is serving as a conduit for "narrative control wizardry" by the hands of governments and NGOs who seek to supplant our editorial processes with blah blah blah blah. Ideally, we would be able to respond by saying that this is a big pot of nonsense, and our determinations of content are made on the exclusive basis of discussions with solid consensus among volunteer editors. While it's obviously not the case that this software is in itself sinister, the issue of sources being determined to be good or bad in an opaque way by people who've been paid by advocacy organizations (are they political? maybe -- some people, see above, seem to think they are) definitely seems like something that ought to be to addressed up front, without waiting for criticism. jp×g 02:21, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"Are projects required to be perfect before they're covered in The Signpost?" I would argue that that's not a requirement, but at the same time, it ought to be clear what the current limitations and caveats are. I would personally consider getting help from WP:RSN/WP:BOTN/WP:VPT people first, flesh out some of what needs to be done and get it to a state where a person that goes 'hey, what if I want to use this in WikiProject Foobar?' will have an answer.
It took me a while to get WP:CITEWATCH in a 'ready for mainstream editors' state, but once it was, it got heavy buy in from the community. And that's when a Signpost post can have maximal impact. If you just want technical people / citation people to chip in before it's ready for everyone, I would wait a bit before the signpost piece. I know I'm certainly interested to help. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:51, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with JPxG and Headbomb that this lack of integration with existing efforts (in particular WP:RSP) and potential for Wikiproject-based balkanization look like a major problem, and possibly not something that can be fixed retroactively with a "oh by the way everyone is welcome to use this bot too". (NB, I had similar concerns forming in my head a couple of days ago already after seeing this project promoted in the "Wikipedia Weekly" group on Facebook.)
That said, I think we should separate editorial judgment about such a Signpost draft article from assessment of the project overall, in particular if we are active in both spaces (Signpost and source/citation-focused bots).
What is needed though is a clear disclosure in or near the byline whether any of the authors were paid to work on this project. Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:37, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The disclosure footnote/footer can easily be moved up. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:57, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I saw the footer, but that's not a disclosure - it does not inform the reader that the two writers of the article were paid for their work on the project that their article extolls (and presumably also for writing the article itself, assuming that the grant includes outreach work for the project). And yes, readers should be informed about this from the beginning. Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:02, 1 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Opinion: Copyright-Troll or The Last Guardian for a Free Commons
Discussion: This piece is about the need to enforce the free licenses of Wikimedia Commons, while at the same time not appearing as a copyright troll. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 21:19, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
