Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom

Go time

Good to go. Please everyone stop editing and let DannyS712 publish now. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:01, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

@Bri published DannyS712 (talk) 21:06, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Spot check of enwp and global subscribers looks great. I don't social media, did we tweet the issue? ☆ Bri (talk) 22:48, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I just tweeted it right as you posted that ;) Will follow up with a general update re social media below on this occasion. Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:13, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Reader feedback

View reader feedback on issue 11 (December)

All: You can monitor reader feedback by pressing the button. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:11, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

News versus opinion

I don't recall "In the media" having as much commentary in past issues. Perhaps we can more clearly define which columns are more straight news versus which ones may also contain editorial opinion? isaacl (talk) 21:33, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Is something specific too opinionated, or just the overall tone?

BTW our content guide, last substantially edited in 2018, uses the phrase "ruthlessly objective" only for News and notes, I think, but it also says both NaN and In the media are "core reports". ☆ Bri (talk) 22:54, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Just to clarify, it's fine for there to be embedded commentary if that's the goal. From a copy editing perspective, it's helpful to clearly know the intent, though, so any inappropriate editorial comments can be trimmed. "Like a beautiful garden with some thorns" has commentary in its last paragraph, and praise of a quote in the second paragraph. The last paragraph of "Wikipedia meets the history wars" to me kind of hangs there: it seems to be starting a discussion on the content of the referenced Wikipedia article, but then it doesn't lead to anything. So it comes across as an editorial comment on why the article shouldn't be deleted, without any summary of the actual article for deletion discussion. isaacl (talk) 23:45, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

A not-so-liked report was written in 2017 (by a young version of myself) which included only commentary. Looking back at it, think it was a tad bit over the top. However, it is not unheard of to put some personal touches to these pieces. Jonatan Svensson Glad (talk) 23:57, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I see some commentary, but I disagree the column is only commentary. Editorial commentary also differs from an irreverent tone, or other personal voice. isaacl (talk) 00:17, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

The main difference between N&N and ITM is that N&N reports the news. ITM reports how the media reported the news. Thus there's a need for *context* or call it commentary if you'd like. You can get a lot of news out of ITM, but ultimately if you want to get the in-depth news there you have to click thru to the story we're reporting on. So we let the reader know about the POV and scope of the article and just a bit on what the actual news is. So is it worth the readers' time to click through?

It usually works out that the the first quarter is just the article title and link, perhaps the author or news outlet. The 2nd quarter includes the most important facts, as might the 3rd quarter. The rest might be a quality assessment (on the article or writer) and other context.

This month might be heavier on the context, because December is often a "news-free zone" and I was trying as much as possible to get these done early. Or it might just be the particular stories. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 01:37, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Context and commentary are two different things. Calling a word "shrill" and speculating on an author's motivation is commentary. Describing communist regimes in the 20th century is context, but it only covers one side of the deletion discussion, and the absence of the other side makes the description seem like commentary. And I don't think it helps the reader decide if they want to click through; providing an overview of why people want to delete the article would be a better incentive. isaacl (talk) 04:13, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Looks great!

Thanks Bri! Thanks Danny! Thanks everybody who contributed this issue, and everybody who contributed this year! And I know Bri, as well as myself, always appreciate everybody who helps copy editing. I should be able to say more tomorrow.

Happy holidays and happy new year!

Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:36, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Update on wikisignpost Twitter/Facebook posts

As a general update re social media, I have doing Twitter and Facebook announcements for each new issue since February (except last month's tweet, which someone else kindly took care of).

On Facebook I'm currently posting to the Wikipedia Weekly group from my personal account (example), since this tends to get much more engagement than posts from the wikisignpost Facebook page (which, as I understand it, can't post to that popular group), making it frankly speaking not seem very worthwhile to do manual posts from the latter. That said, it would be great to automatically forward the tweets to the Facebook page. This is possible - I have set it up for the WikiResearch Twitter and Facebook feeds using this IFTTT applet and it works fine. However, it seems that this applet only supports one page per personal Facebook account, meaning that I can't use it for wikisignpost since I'm already using it for WikiResearch.

Long story short: If someone else from the Signpost team has a Facebook account and would like to join the wikisignpost page's staff with the sole obligation of having that IFTTT applet set up once to run through their account (or if one of the other two current members, Evad37 and The ed17, would be up for that), that would be an easy win. I can walk them through the initial setup and there is basically no effort required after that.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:41, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

@HaeB: Sounds fine to me. Ought I to send you an email, or what? jp×g 20:51, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

@HaeB: I think I should still have access to that Facebook account/page. You can send me an email with instructions and I'll take a look on the weekend - Evad37 [talk] 09:37, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks both! Evad37, I have emailed you. JPxG, if you are still interested in being added to the Facebook page's personnel to help improve the bus factor, I think that would make sense too - for transparency, it currently consists of The ed17 (as admin) and Evad37 and myself (as editors). Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:15, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not up for running or posting anything to the Signpost page, as that would be a conflict of interest. I'm still on there only to help with the bus factor. :-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 22:04, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Which is much appreciated of course. (Apropos bus factor, we should probably have >1 admins in the long run.) Regards, HaeB (talk) 19:08, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

For the record, Evad37 has since set up the bridge, and it appears to work [1]. Regards, HaeB (talk) 19:08, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Adminship

Hi Bri and Smallbones. Happy New Year to you both. I wonder if someone could please update the series template with this article and this article, and any others on the topic I may have missed. I would do it myself but for some reason it won't accept my edits. I'm working on something with some other editors which may or may not be a draft of a Signpost article sometime in the future this year. Thanks. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:06, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I made an addition buy it doesn't display. Maybe only 15 articles can be displayed. It is too big to use in any case. Can we nest the templates? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:45, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

That's what I thought. Perhaps the very earliest two or three could be left off. Dunno about nesting - I don't know how that works. Maybe a sub section: Older articles ? The more recent discussions are of greater importance to anyone doing any serious research. Barkeep49's huge effort is now closed, but the discussions will continue for years until either a true solution is reached or Wikipedia really ends up with no active admins (IMO at least not in the next 5 years), and some people are working on it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:59, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

@Kudpung: I may try nesting, but I'll be over my head since I've never made a template before. Simple nesting strategy: 1) copy the current template to say "Template:old adminship" and remove the most recent 6 entries. 2) in the current template remove the first 10 entries and add a link to "Template:old adminship". Does anybody know if this will work? BTW @Cabayi: explained on my talk page that there is a limit of 16(?) in Signpost templates. Thanks. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 16:35, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

The kludge is to just extend Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Series to support more entries. However as noted on that template's page, using {{Signpost series}} might be a way forward, which as described at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Index, lets you tag articles with topics which can then be gathered into series. But perhaps User:Mr. Stradivarius can comment further on the status of this mechanism. isaacl (talk) 16:50, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

It looks as if Template:Signpost_series#Sidebar_and_sidebar-v2 is the solution with its 'see more' feature. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:09, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I've edited Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Series to display up to 20 articles, so it will be possible to add the new articles to the old template now if desired. However, as Kudpung says, the more modern way is to use Template:Signpost series. To make this template work, the articles in question need to be tagged using User:Mr. Stradivarius/gadgets/SignpostTagger. Looking at the article data modules, it seems that nobody has been tagging articles since mid-2019. There are some default tags that are always applied ("In the media" articles all get the tag "inthemedia", for example), so keeping new articles automatically tagged might be a good task for a bot. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 12:45, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for that, Mr. Stradivarius. It's a short-term solution. You and Resident Mario went to a great effort in developing the excellent list and tagging system back in 2015. However, I was not aware of it in 2018 when I was E-in-C, and perhaps not many other users are. It would be great if someone could appropriately tag all the articles since 2019 that need tagging. Unfortunately, nowadays I have neither the time nor the inclination for such a task and I'm sure that Bri and Smallbones who have made a magnificent effort to keep The Signpost going despite the strings of intimidation they've been subjected to, are not especially enthusiastic to spending time on it either. However, it clearly needs to be done, and by some kind soul who understands it all. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:56, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I've updated the basic list of adminship articles with the ones I wanted to add, but that leaves only one slot left of the 20 and the list is now looking very long. I do think the other system with its 'see more' feature is the way to go. Mr. Stradivarius said something about tagging the post 2019 articles by using a bot. Is that possible? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:32, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Series has a "breakpoint" argument to deal with very long lists like this one; I tried setting it to display five articles initially, then display the rest when you click on the "More articles" link. Unfortunately, it does not seem to play nicely with Popups, and often instead of showing me the rest of the articles, just navigates to the Main Page... feel free to revert if this is a problem for others as well.

As for writing a bot - this is possible, but such a bot does not currently exist. It would have to be written and approved before it could be used. Even then, human oversight of the tags would be necessary - a bot would be good for generating an initial list of tags, but the list would be likely to be incomplete and/or wrong, as a bot would probably not be so good at actually understanding the article. At the moment, the best way to tag the articles would be to install the SignpostTagger gadget, view each of the untagged articles, and use the gadget to add tags for each of them. The gadget will add default tags like "inthemedia" and "newsandnotes", so this would be worthwhile even if editors don't add any custom tags. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 15:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Was it always done manually, or was this a bot/script task that broke silently without anyone noticing? I would be up for doing an AWB run (or comparable TAS technology), but if it's an ongoing issue that seems a little impractical. jp×g 03:22, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

All I know is that in 2019, I had to expand the underlying list template to accommodate the 16th entry. I agree that it's a bit unwieldy now and having a "more..." link would be useful (or maybe "older..."). ☆ Bri (talk) 20:39, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

series list with 'More articles' feature

@Mr. Stradivarius: There are several other types of regularly covered topics that use a similar series list and I'm sure you had this in mind when you created the new tpl. Such lists are extremely useful and cosmetically they also give more body to a Signpost article. The adminship series will continue to grow with at least two or even three new articles this year. There will also be new articles on other perennial topics. Perhaps it's now time to come up with a definitive solution. My favourite is the one illustrated, but its set up and the backlog for tagging the articles is beyond my technical scope. Maybe it's possible to go through the archives and manually list the articles that are part of popular series and manually tag them. Once done however, it would encourage other contributors to The Signpost to use it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 00:27, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Oh my a ping! This is something I worked on a very long time ago yes. My hope was originally that the list of topics would be maintained by the EIC and adjacent editors, who would also take responsibility for tagging new content published under their aegis. However this did not prove to be practical (it was just too much work for an already strapped leadership team).

I think the solution that was arrived at in practice was that whenever an editor wanted to use this template within an article, they would update the specific series they are interested in (or create a new one) themselves immediately prior to publication. For that purpose the additional tooling that Template:Signpost series provided was not strictly needed, and I'm not surprised to hear it eventually fell out of use.

As for how all of the articles were tagged originally, that's no great mystery. I was a college student on winter holiday, and I remember I had several days to kill with nothing to do anyway. No bots needed. ResMar 03:04, 4 January 2022 (UTC)