Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions

"WP:POST/S" redirects here. For the Signpost submissions page, see WP:POST/SUBMIT.

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.

Email a private tip to the EiC(s)

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 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)

Of course. PAC2 (talk) 20:16, 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)

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)

? note to self, could go in 2022 obits jp×g 19:44, 8 December 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)

? jp×g 19:44, 8 December 2022 (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 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)

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 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/Templates/Signpost article link for WikiProjects' 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 Chetvorno (2023-01-17)

The Signpost should write about... The state of paid editing. This comes up on Signpost briefly every 6 months or so, but it is only getting worse. Wikipedia as a trusted worldwide information source has become the target of an enormous promotional Wikiwashing industry with the advertising budgets of huge corporations behind it. No one is even shy about paid editing anymore; I see ads for WikiFederation, WikiProficiency, WizardsOfWiki, WikiCurators (retch), The Mather Group, WhiteHatWiki all the time. I would like to see a comprehensive history of the problem, including a history of RfCs of proposals for dealing with COI editing.

I have been an editor for 16 years and I feel this is the main threat to Wikipedia. We will lose our main asset, our editors, if they realize their unpaid hard work upgrading articles with the truth will simply be reverted by boiler rooms of paid flacks at ad agencies editing anonymously. Corporations' excuse is they need to do COI editing to correct wrong or out of date information in their articles, but that's inverting causality: any actual errors in these articles are because few independent editors want to work on articles where there is a 900 pound gorilla in the room. What unbiased editor would waste their time editing corporate and business articles today? How corrupted are our articles on corporations? I would like to see the opinions of veteran editors and WMF on this, and what to do about it. --Chetvorno^TALK 20:25, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion by Oltrepier (2023-01-22)

The Signpost should write about... two more press features for the project, this time courtesy of Il Post and The Atlantic!

The first article was published by Italian on-line newspaper Il Post - they have already written about Wikipedia in several instances - on January 2, 2023. The piece broke down the ongoing debate on the tone of the Wikimedia Foundation's fundraising banners that are usually hosted on the site at the end of each year: in the process, previous articles by Slate and The Washington Post on the same matter, as well as the WMF's official statements on Wikimedia 2030 and donations, were quoted as sources. If needed, I can help you translate the article to English.

On the other hand, just today (January 22), American magazine The Atlantic has published an article about the platform's approach to controversies and "edit wars", as well as its commitment to fact-checking through secondary sources. Most notably, the author has presented the very long discussion involving Gloria Hemingway as the starting point of his piece.

I don't know how interesting these news could sound like, realistically, but I hope it will still be an useful suggestion! Oltrepier (talk) 15:23, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion by Rotideypoc41352 (2023-01-29)

Less The Signpost should write about... and more "has The Signpost written about..." Saw some journal articles linked in an old Twitter thread, and wondered if we've covered those studies already. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 09:13, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

@Rotideypoc41352: we covered that paper a couple of times in In the media when it came out. The media was more impressed than I was! Now I'm interested if you know anything about GPTzero. Please email me or leave message here with a ping if you've got anything. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 17:17, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Alas, I do not really have anything (hence the lack of a ping or an email). If you are looking at Special:Diff/1134341207, I read the NPR article on GPTZero and its creator and decided to cite and add it to an existing mention of GPTZero. Beyond what I read on NPR, I don't know anything else. Thanks for the inquiry! Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 05:12, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion by Oltrepier (2023-02-03)

The Signpost should write about... the recent restrictions to Wikipedia imposed by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, a Government-owned agency that regulates telecommunication services in the country. Last Wednesday, the PTA seemingly blocked the platform in almost every area across the nation, in an attempt to push admins to remove some allegedly "blasphemous" (albeit unspecified) content from the site.

Not exactly a good omen, especially thinking about your report on Saudi Arabia from last month...

Oltrepier (talk) 17:44, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion by Nick Moyes (2023-02-10)

The Signpost should write about... a recently published piece of research entitled Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust Nick Moyes (talk) 00:46, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I think I can get one of the authors to contribute something to The Signpost. Guettarda (talk) 01:46, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

The article doxxes several Wikipedia articles and violates WP:OUT. This is also, to put it in the picturesque words of someone else "Icewhiz shit again". For context, Icewhiz is a globally banned user who has engaged in long term abuse (including making death and rape threats against other editors). The impression that this article was co-written by him or under his direction is unavoidable. Volunteer Marek 01:52, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

I have just read the article and I think it is very important. The signpost should definitely cover it. Groceryheist (talk) 05:29, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

And enable and encourage off wiki harassment of Wikipedia editors by a globally banned user? Volunteer Marek 05:43, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

This is just a rehas of the stuff Signpost covered before (Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-10-31/In the media) - back then as news, now it made it through the slow academic pipeline. It's not news, maybe it could be covered by "Recent research" section, but be careful. The stuff is highly controversial as it is related to editor harassment, arbcoms, indef and site bans, etc. Previous newsroom discussions for some context: Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Submissions/Archive_4, Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions/Archive_30. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:18, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

This is just a rehas of the stuff Signpost covered before (Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2019-10-31/In the media) - back then as news, now it made it through the slow academic pipeline - based on a quick skim of the paper, it does cover quite a few events from after 2019, so this claim does not seem to be true.

For context, Piotrus and Volunteer Marek appear to be among the main subjects of this paper, a fact that they don't disclose in their comments above. I think it could be a good idea for the Signpost to offer them (and/or other editors covered) to write a response, to be considered for publication as an opinion article. But obviously the main coverage should be written by other people. We'll definitely aim to cover it in some form in "Recent research" as with all Wikipedia-focused research papers from such academic journals (Groceryheist you would be welcome to contribute a review), but we generally aim for independent contributions in that section, so if Guettarda can get indeed get one of the authors to contribute, a separate opinion article might be the best format for that too.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 15:27, 10 February 2023 (UTC)