Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom

Reader feedback

View reader feedback on issue 3 (March)

All: You can monitor reader feedback by pressing the button, or clicking here. jp×g 20:53, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Looks good

Thanks @JPxG, Bri, Epic Pupper, and HaeB: and all it looks good. I've taken a brief tour, including the single page edition and it all looks fine. There are even some comments. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:11, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, out of four comments so far, only two of them are cursing us out, so I'd call it a successful issue so far :) jp×g 21:21, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

You gotta get used to that. I've had much worse said about me for about 7 days in a row at arbcom. Actually there's no personal attack here. A walk in the park.Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:52, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

A helping hand

The recent discussions about the last issue suggest to me y'all could use more volunteers in general. I'm not sure how effectively I could contribute but if there's any area I could lighten the burden for y'all (e.g. copyediting or short summaries of things) I'd be glad to help. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 16:39, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

A. C. Santacruz, you can add yourself to any of the positions here. While I'm still siding with the publication, I agree that we need more peeps to work on certain stuff. Smallbones (EIC) can prolly also consider promotion to add more members? GeraldWL 17:17, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

I've added myself to the copyeditors, Gerald Waldo Luis :) A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 17:34, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

A. C. Santacruz, welcome to the club :) GeraldWL 01:31, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

meta-tagging Signpost content

As discussed in early-January of this year, I've been updating the meta-tagging on Signpost articles using User:Mr. Stradivarius/gadgets/SignpostTagger. Today I tagged the just-published latest issue and have been working my way backwards. I've gotten as far as November 2020, slowly approaching July 2019 when the tagging task was collectively forgotten. It doesn't seem that the draft articles can be tagged; only published Signpost can. Excusing the GIGO factor, many hands make light work and the article authors in the future might be reminded to tag what they wrote/compiled once publication happens. I'm hopeful that this tool will aid in a meta-analysis of past Signpost coverage. I don't mind covering this task myself as time permits because I see The Signpost as a champion for the editing community and their content while also serving as a bulwark against W?F, who threatens everything we've built here. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:32, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

April issue

I reset the countdown clock for publication on the last Sunday in April. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:38, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

recommend bot to scrub your subscribers list

User:Yapperbot/Pruner is currently in use on WP:FRS, pruning the names of inactive editors from newsletter subscriber lists so their respective talk pages don't become over-filled with newsletter announcements. When I was Signpost's publication manager I irregularly scrubbed our list after finding massmessage error reports showing which talk pages were too big to receive messages. Does anyone object to putting the bot to work? Chris Troutman (talk) 18:45, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me ☆ Bri (talk) 20:03, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

LGTM 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 23:01, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Affirmation of "From the Signpost team" in the 2022-03-27 issue

Hello Signposters,

In order to facilitate evidence-based discussion relating to the Signpost and the "From the Signpost team" article that was published, I would like to be able to share a precise list of those affirming the article.

So, please add your signature below in the "Affirm" section if you fully affirm the editorial without objection, and the "Do not affirm" section if not. Cheers! 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 23:08, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

Affirm

1. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 23:08, 28 March 2022 (UTC)
2. GeraldWL 01:31, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
3. Bluerasberry (talk) 01:41, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
4. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:31, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
5. I'll affirm to anybody who asks that I signed off on the article. That's in the edit history. While I don't want to stand on ceremony or complain about fuzzy-headed complaints that we can't express opinions in our editorial column, I don't think it's a good idea to report to people outside the Signpost that we took a headcount , and yes, by golly, the large majority of the staff expressed solidarity with Ukraine. Send them to me instead. I'll politely describe to them our rules. If you want to make a submission to have your opinion expressed in The Signpost, all you have to do is make a submission, have it meet our standards for quality, and have it approved for publication by the editor-in-chief (that's me for the time being) , They can also post their opinions in the comments below a related article. What's nor appreciated is people coming here for the first time and trying to dictate what staffers can say in The Signpost. EpicPupper put a notice on this page what he wanted to write, I encouraged people to contribute their ideas. It was also obvious to me where most individuals stood. Check my count on this - there were 18 articles this issue (some writers wrote more than one) - 7 weren't saying anything about the war - as might be expected, 11 were in some way about Ukraine, with one or two being not explicitely anti-Putin and the rest "stood in solidarity with Ukraine".The writers chose to do this themselves. I can read a consensus. BTW if you know of somebody with an opinion contrary to the above, feel free to invite them to submit an opinion piece for next month. But frankly I think they'd look pretty ridiculous saying that they can express an opinion here but Signpoist staffers for some reason are not allowed to. Enuf said. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 04:54, 29 March 2022 (UTC)
6. FormalDude talk 07:56, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Do not affirm

1. I do not think it's appropriate for us, as the house publication of Wikipedia, to take sides in any dispute not directly related to the encyclopedia's purpose. It damages the perception of our neutrality, which is our single most valuable (and fragile) asset. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:44, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

   Sdkb, I'm not sure non-neutrality is a case here though. The statement doesn't side with any parties politically, and is merely stressing commitment to being trusted info on the invasion. As we should. GeraldWL 03:00, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

   The headline is "We stand in solidarity with Ukraine". {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:12, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

   Yeah... can do some copyediting with that one. But otherwise it feels well-intentioned, and the deletion review for me is too much. A chill discussion I think makes a difference; I can't see that now; it's moral panic going on. GeraldWL 03:14, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

   @Gerald Waldo Luis: The statement doesn't side with any parties politically is simply not in any way a truthful description of the headline "We stand in solidarity with Ukraine". BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:54, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

"From the team" retracted

Hello all! After some careful thought, I have decided to retract the original statement on behalf of the Signpost team. Although certainly many support it, I believe it is important as a newspaper of record to remain neutral in times of crisis, as it is the reason that our readers can trust us. I have replaced it with a title that is hopefully more neutral, and a note affirming our neutrality in conflicts and explaining the retraction. I hope that this can be another step in righting this wrong. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 18:40, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

To save others the trouble of finding it, the title is now "How The Signpost is documenting the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine". The single-page edition still needs an update. I'm fine with this myself but not fine with how we got here. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:48, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

What a clusterfuck. I guess I picked the wrong couple of days to be in bed with a fever, huh? jp×g 19:36, 29 March 2022 (UTC)that article

OK, that's enough

• First, nobody except me will touch that article any more
• It is quite embarrassing for The Signpost - this looks like we're having an edit war with ourselves, but in reality it's just 1 editor with himself.
• Nobody should be speaking for The Signpost or "the team" except for the editor-in-chief, nobody should be avoiding the standard of having their work approved by the e-i-c before it's published.
• So we're going to wait at least a full day and staff can let me know what they think should be done with the article. I'm leaning to just returning it to the original headline with post publication additions removed. Let me know what you want or forever hold your peace. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 23:09, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  Sorry. 🐶 EpicPupper ^{(he/him | talk)} 23:17, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

  Aaaand that's why I'm not fine with how we got here. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:22, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Helping out

Hi, I was just talking off-wiki with EpicPupper about joining the Signpost team, and he said that the Featured content section could be a good place to help out. I'd love to work on that if possible! ––FormalDude talk 23:34, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

FormalDude, you can add your name here :) GeraldWL 01:51, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Featured content section guidance

The guidance on the writing and publication of the Featured content section of the Signpost on the Content guidance page includes the following statement:

The basic Featured content report template is currently generated on a weekly basis via script.

The hyperlink points to https://github.com/ResidentMario/fcimporter, which is the GitHub repository for a Python script I authored seven years ago (!). This is very old code, and I have very little expectation that it is actually still in working order, so it seems highly improbable to me that these instructions are still correct. Can the EIC or whoever writes the Featured content report these days confirm that this is the case? If so I can/will remove this reference. ResMar 18:17, 4 April 2022 (UTC)