Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-08-15/Cobwebs
Getting serious about writing
As part of our attempts to publish lost Signpost articles, to give glimpses into history, we have an article originally intended for April 2019, describing changes to the Signpost's backend that took place at that time. We've been benefiting from them for so long that perhaps we don't remember how bad things used to be, so here's a report from the time, excited for the improvements. It also provides a lot of notes on using these features that might well help new contributors.
- For real: be careful using this as a guide! Some of the templates and processes introduced in this are already gone.
The Signpost has been hard at work to streamline its submission process and make the behind-the-scenes grunt work more manageable. Writing for us and getting involved has never been easier! Here is a short overview of the changes that happened since mid March.
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Before refitting: Come cross a very small and calm lake with us. Our boat floats! Bring your own life jackets. -
After refitting: Come cross the Atlantic with us. Our boat can take hurricanes and rogue waves!
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The Signpost gets a shakeup
For those that follow The Signpost, there was a big shakeup recently, resulting in new blood on the team (see Signpost coverage). While Smallbones is now the new editor-in-chief, I've decided to include myself (Headbomb) as a general editor, mostly focusing on copy-editing, writing special pieces and polishing the technical aspects of The Signpost.
The shakeup left the team with a very short amount of time to cobble together the previous issue of The Signpost, with a generally positive reception. While I can't speak for Smallbones (who said that 'getting the issue out was a great experience'), I felt there was very steep learning curve to getting involved and that a lot of things were needlessly complicated, involved pointless busywork, were poorly documented, or relied on someone else knowing how to do something.
We have been putting up call for volunteers and writers for years without much success. But we failed to ask ourselves who wants to work on a boat where you can't get out of your cabin because the door is rusted shut? Possibly because we were too busy patching holes in the hull while at sea. So for this issue, instead of being a random passerby taking on the task of mending sails during the middle of a hurricane, I figure I'd take The Signpost to the shipyard for a long overdue refit. I don't know that getting involved at The Signpost is now as easy as 1-2-3, but it certainly is easier than ever before.
Simpler management
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A lot stuff changed behind the scenes to make The Signpost easier to manage and collaborate on. Big ticket changes include
- A redesigned look for the newsroom and its talkpage. These pages are better organized with less clutter, and feature an improved {{Signpost/Deadline}} tracker. Among other things, the tracker now includes a link to a timezone converter so deadlines can be known in local time.
- A major overhaul in the newsroom's functionality. Three main components were overhauled
- The newsroom now automatically synchronizes itself with the {{Signpost draft}} templates present on draft articles from the next issue. If you mark a draft from the next issue as ready to be copy edited, the newsroom will reflect that automatically.
- The newsroom now features Recent changes/See also links that make it easier to monitor changes related to the current and next issues, as well as links to other Signpost-like newsletter in other languages with English translations.
- The introduction section now offers clearer, less intimidating directions to people who want to help and get involved. The clickable buttons are now consistent with those from the submissions and suggestions pages and will present friendlier preloaded forms.
- We now have a live mockup of the next issue to give a quick overview of how the next issue is shaping up. Note that it will not be very interesting to look at right after publication given that work on the next issue will not have started just yet.
- {{Signpost series}} has been dusted off and modernized. The modernization of Mr. Stradivarius's tag manager script is in progress, but it remains functional. Better documentation is still needed, but article series can be reintroduced when relevant.
- The template / HTML structure behind the 'two-column' and 'full width' styles has been greatly streamlined and made compatible with each other, allowing to easily switch between one style to the other if desired. Which style is used is now explicitely controlled with
|fullwidth=no/yesin relevant templates, with|fullwidth=no(two-column style) being used by default.
All of this should allow the editorial team to focus on content, rather than waste time managing things across dozens of pages and obscure template / HTML issues. If you go to the newsroom, everything is there within a click or two: the current status of the next issue, upcoming deadlines, recent changes, reader comments, and more.
Simpler writing
While improvements to the management aspects of The Signpost will save the team a lot of headaches, writers and readers that want to get involved were not forgotten. Big ticket changes included
- Better guidance about where to do what is provided in general. It is now much less confusing to get around the various pages of The Signpost. Buttons with preloaded forms were added when missing, or polished to be less confusing.
- Do you know of an exciting story that should be covered? Click on suggestions!
- Do you plan on writing an article or want to submit a draft for review? Click on proposals/submissions!
- You can now easily create user drafts with the new 'create a draft button'. This will allow you to work on articles in your user space. This is very useful if you have an idea for a special column, but need time to work on it.
- All drafts created through the newsroom have had their preloaded forms overhauled. They now all feature simpler/clearer/more useful instructions.
- The {{Signpost draft}} template now has a lot more useful information and writer resources, including deadlines and submit buttons for user space drafts.
- Signpost drafts now have editable sections, like regular articles. The [edit] button next to sections is now only disabled in published articles.
- The {{Signpost draft helper}} template is now featured at the bottom of every draft created via the 'create a draft' button in the newsroom. The template explains how to create the syntax of many common elements, like images and quotations, and how to control two-column vs full width styles.
What it all means
These efforts, which would not have been nearly as successful without the help of DannyS712, Evad37, Pppery, TheDJ, have made it simpler than ever to contribute to the The Signpost! No longer do you need to be a template guru with a deep knowledge of an arcane, Rube Golberg-like, syntax! No more getting lost and confused!
Want to get involved? Then your one stop is the newsroom (WP:NEWSROOM)! If you can make your way there, the rest is an easy click or two away. And if you are content remaining a reader, you can sleep soundly knowing that The Signpost team can now spend more of its time on bringing you the best content instead of doing busywork.
If you have suggestions on how to make contributing to The Signpost more user friendly, leave us a comment below (or at WT:SIGNPOST). Happy editing!
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