Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Красный (talk | contribs) at 17:21, 13 January 2024 (→‎Suggestion by Ssr (2024-01-13): Reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The Signpost
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WP:POST/TIPS
Suggestions


The Signpost
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"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.


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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 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)[reply]

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)[reply]
Of course. PAC2 (talk) 20:16, 31 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, I'm sorry but I won't be able to finish my piece for tomorrow. PAC2 (talk) 20:47, 27 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@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)[reply]
@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)[reply]
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)[reply]
After some moves and redirect deletions, it looks like this is now at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Drafts/Wikidata. @JPxG: Still planning to publish it? Regards, HaeB (talk) 22:30, 3 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Are you still planning to publish this article? PAC2 (talk) 04:10, 13 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's a bit on the short side for an article, especially compared to your treatment of actors on the French Wikipedia. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:33, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, sorry about this -- many moves indeed (there was another in the meantime). It is quite short now but if you expand this out I will publish it; ping me when it is done. jp×g 06:43, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by The Herald (2023-08-05)

The Signpost should write about

Obsidian Soul (talk · contribs · global contribs · page moves · user creation · block log)

I came across this user today during my regular RTRC patrolling who did blanking and unexplained content removals. After 4im warnings, I reported them and they got blocked indefinitely. After that, I did some digging and they've been active for 14 years in Wikipedia with over 52,000 edits. Impressive track record, all down the drain in a day. I'm not sure what went wrong or why, but this is Signpost worthy, right?

The Herald (Benison) (talk) 07:15, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Depends on the reason I suppose. Some accounts get hacked. Others go through a rough patch for whatever reasons. For the first, it sucks but there's not much to say. For the second... giving them space seems a better solution than placing them in the spotlight. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:45, 5 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It is strange and rather unfortunate. It happens every once in a while. Others I can remember are Special:Contributions/54nd60x and Special:Contributions/FacetsOfNonStickPans -- people who were very productive editors and either got compromised or went berserk one day seemingly out of nowhere and getting themselves indeffed, and then never heard from again. It's hard to say what the deal is on this. If anyone finds out, it'd definitely be newsworthy. jp×g 06:45, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by Gråbergs Gråa Sång (2023-10-11)

The Signpost should write about...

Two well-attended afd:s with WP:BLPREQUESTDELETE aspects. Perhaps something could be written on how the community deals with cases like these when there is disagreement on where to draw the line. More discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Should_Wikipedia_offer_article_protection_as_a_compromise_between_deletion_on_request_and_causing_needless_distress?. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:53, 11 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Another AfD that falls into this area by a different path. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:52, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Another suggestion by llywrch (2023-10-28)

I saw a report in the Wikimedia General Chat channel on Telegram that Hiba Abu Nada, a Palestinian writer & Wikipedian, was killed during the bombing in Gaza. According to the Spanish Wikipedia she participated in the WikiWrites campaign. NOTE: Before this report I had never heard of her, nor of "WikiWrites", so I don't know just how prominent of a Wikipedian she was. But it cannot be denied that civilians on both sides are dying in this latest conflict. -- llywrch (talk) 23:33, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • This would need to be very carefully done and may be difficult. Is there a user name? Otherwise it'll be even more difficult. But, at least we know something about where to get started. Thanks. Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:05, 2 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
English Wikipedia actually has an article about her too (as do many other languages), citing the same Spanish-language source for her having been a Wikimedian, and in the Wikipedia Weekly FB group, someone confirmed this ("Heba was proofreading articles translated from English to Arabic. This journey began in 2021"). That should already suffice for a brief item in N&N. Of course, as other news media have found out, one needs to be careful in reporting death causes in this context, but in this case it should be fine as long as we attribute such information to the sources cited in the mainspace article.
That said, yes, some more details would be nice including her user name if she had one. I asked about this last week in the linked discussion, but nobody there seemed to know.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:07, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by Rotideypoc41352 (2023-11-10)

The Signpost should write about...the edit request wizard (ERW). Not enough people know about it. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 02:43, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Given Wikipedia's prominence in Google search results, we attract a lot of COI editors, paid and unpaid alike. One of the strategies of managing them is to reduce the friction of doing the right thing: avoid direct edits to the article and suggesting edits through the talk page.
Doing so requires a nontrivial amount of technical skill and knowledge. Wikipedia editing has a bit of a learning curve that can be unforgiving. Suggestions on talk pages sometimes don't get tagged and thus never see the light of day. This nonresponse can frustrate COI editors, leading to undesired behaviors, like direct edits to the article.
This is completely avoidable because the ERW does the tagging! I think it is worth having more people, especially Teahouse hosts and Help Desk regulars, tell COI editors about them. So, I think if we have even a small blurb, it might help. With the level of awareness now, I see a lot of experienced editors directing newbies to the talk page itself and telling them to add the templates. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 22:10, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Similar logic applies to the AfC submission wizard, which reduces the number of improperly submitted drafts. Rotideypoc41352 (talk · contribs) 22:43, 7 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea. — Frostly (talk) 04:10, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by Tokisaki Kurumi (2023-11-22)

Not sure it's appropriate: the Chinese Wikipedia recently had a large election under securepoll, the first in almost a year (the last one was October 2022), in which seven people ran for sysop and two for oversight, but all of them lost. The Chinese Wikipedia has made a RFC on this matter to consider lowering the standard. ときさき くるみ not because they are easy, but because they are hard 12:54, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by Ham II (2023-11-27)

The Signpost should write about... Davies, Pascale (26 November 2023), Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says AI is a 'mess' now but can become superhuman in 50 years, Euronews.

(As an aside, the only articles I'm aware of which are partly written with AI, based on transclusions of {{OpenAI}}, are Artwork title which was done with ChatGPT, and Leniolisib, which was done with Bing. Are there more?) Ham II (talk) 08:49, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by Equalwidth (2023-12-02)

The Signpost should write about the fact that the number of active CheckUsers is having a net decrease.

Equalwidth (C) 05:58, 2 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by 0xDeadbeef (2023-12-05)

The Signpost should write about https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/12/pgad385/7457939. Seems like interesting research about Wikipedia and its environment.

0xDeadbeef→∞ (talk to me) 22:59, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Noteworthy Trustees conversation

I found the meta:Wikimedia Foundation Community Affairs Committee/2023-12-07 Conversation with Trustees (video) particularly interesting this quarter. The agenda:

  • Board updates: Sister Projects Task Force, AffCom Strategy....
  • Product and Technology updates
  • Developments in AI: the affiliate approach and the Foundation's current work
  • Talking:2024 - an invite to talk about the future of Wikimedia with Foundation senior leadership and trustees
  • General questions

Not agendized were a detailed discussion of how Affiliate spending and conflicts of interest will be monitored and controlled going forward, and an explanation from the Foundation General Counsel implying that community safety issues prevent public advocacy on the jailed Arabic Wikipedia administrators. Jimbo and everyone else who talked at length on AI were particularly intriguing.

The meta:Wikimedia Foundation Community Affairs Committee/Talking: 2024 initiative could likely be a separate news note on its own, as they don't have too many sign-ups yet relative to their stated ambitions. Sandizer (talk) 15:26, 9 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by Chris troutman (2023-12-11)

Atsme's Justapedia fork is introduced in Quillette. This is a long read and almost certainly written by someone who edits here. There are mentions of what Signpost covers and our cancer diagnosis. The real thrust is the well-documented lefty bias here (and the sources we cite) which brings about the other coverage.

Chris Troutman (talk) 15:21, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fwiw, Quillette has a WP-article and a WP:RSP entry. Another fork on Slate: Why Wikipedia’s Highway Editors Took the Exit Ramp. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:02, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Noting also that while the article has Atsme's name, linking it seems ok per stuff like Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/Flatworm.jpg. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:11, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Some connected discussion at Talk:Race_and_intelligence#Removal_of_Quillette_quote. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 19:05, 11 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia mentioned in SNL monologue

---Another Believer (Talk) 17:00, 17 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by Ymblanter (2023-12-19)

The Signpost should write about...

Today, the executive director of Wikimedia.Ru, Stanislav Kozlovsky (Ctac) was fired from his job at Moscow State University for his position as an executive director. Wikimedia.ru in response decided to disband itself. Probably someone wants to go into details.Ymblanter (talk) 19:20, 19 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Ymblanter:, I'll check if anybody is on it. I don't know who can handle this right now. There's a Russian Wikinews article we might use, just have it seperate maybe in Forum?. Could you check the machine translation? Smallbones(smalltalk) 05:50, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I can check the translation, no problem. The scale would be a couple of days though, I do not know when you want to publish the next edition. Ymblanter (talk) 06:17, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I just copied the basics to In Focus Smallbones(smalltalk) 06:09, 21 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by Ssr (2023-12-23)

The Signpost should write about... Arabic Wikipedia is on protest with blackout. The screenshot. I see some statements here. --ssr (talk) 11:00, 23 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Some 2024 media on ar-WP:[1] Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:59, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by Smallchief (2024-1-08)

Seems to me an article about plagiarism and Wikipedia would be timely after the ouster of Harvard president Claudine Gay for plagiarism. Now, I see that Neri Oxman, whose husband advocated Gay's ouster for plagiarism, has been accused of plagiarism of Wikipedia and other sources. The article in Business Insider with examples is persuasive. Perhaps a Signpost article about plagiarism and Wikipedia by one of our copyright experts would be useful. Smallchief (talk) 16:50, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Apart from the Oxman media-coverage, there is also some debate going on at Talk:Neri Oxman. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:58, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion by Ssr (2024-01-13)

The Signpost should write about... m:NWR-Hist Wikimedia User Group (North-West Russia Wiki-Historians) has published their vast and illustrated annual 2023 report in English: m:North-West Russia Wiki-Historians User Group/Annual reports/2023/en // ping @Красный: --ssr (talk) 16:56, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While report itself is ready, its English translation haven't been reviewed yet and will be ready approximately around tommorow (UTC). Red wanna talk? 17:21, 13 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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