Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Navigation
Submission Desk
Please propose Signpost stories you want to write (or have already begun writing). Submitted stories are published subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Editor(s) in chief. We value the involvement of Wikipedians, and appreciate your submissions. If you have ideas or questions that don't fit neatly into this framework, don't hesitate to address us on our user talk pages, by email, or as a last resort, on the general Signpost talk page.
The Signpost's content guidelines may be useful to aspiring writers; take note, especially, of the statement of purpose section. We encourage you to contact us early in the process of developing a story. Different writers have varying levels of interest in editorial input, and we pride ourselves on finding the right balance with each writer; but in most cases, a brief discussion early on can help all parties shape our expectations, and can help produce a strong finished piece. We aim to support Wikimedians wishing to share news with their peers, and look forward to working with you.
News Proposals
News stories present facts and analysis. We intend "news" in a broad sense (as distinct from opinion pieces); submissions may be for any of The Signpost's regular sections, as well as "special reports". These can cover a diverse range of topics, such as project history or statistical reports, and may have an investigative or evaluative focus. Simple narratives of interesting events, whether online or in person, that offer our readers an informative or entertaining glimpse into the Wikipedia or Wikimedia world, are also welcome.
Opinion Proposals
Position pieces, calls to arms, perspectives from other projects, debates and essays addressing important issues facing the English Wikipedia and the broader Wikimedia community. Have a project that you'd like to highlight? An issue that you'd like to bring to light? An essay you'd like to publish? Bring it to us and let us help you make it known. Book reviews are also welcome, for new books that explore topics of relevance to the Wikipedia community.
Give a suggestion instead
If you don't want to write a story yourself, you can just give The Signpost a suggestion or tip (but publication will be subject to staffing constraints, in addition to suitability).
Email a private tip
Guidelines
Please comment on submissions below: share ideas about how to improve pieces that catch your interest, make suggestions as to whether a given piece is ready for publication, or pitch ideas for future pieces. Note that news submissions should be kept relatively neutral. We ask that comments be kept constructive; if you are unclear on any of the process or have questions related thereto, feel free to use the talkpage. Generally speaking special reports are less factional than op-eds are, so are not subject to quite as much approval.
The criteria for publishing opinion pieces are quality of argument, originality, and relevance to the community, as judged by The Signpost. Similar to newspaper op-eds, opinion pieces should be accompanied by an extended byline (suggestion: one to three sentences), that briefly introduces the author and indicates why his or her opinion about the topic might interest the reader. The purpose of publishing opinion pieces is to provoke thought and discussion in a productive rather than antagonistic fashion, and so submissions should be well-researched and not factually misleading or unnecessarily inflammatory. A related set of submissions that address the same issue but from editors' different perspectives are especially encouraged.
Unlike the weekly news reporting focus of the standard Signpost articles, and the investigative and evaluative focus of its special reports, opinion pieces are primarily editorial in tone. As The Signpost does not have a house point-of-view or political agenda, it does not endorse the perspectives of opinion pieces, which express only the views of their authors.
Formatting
To easily set up a new page with Signpost formatting, create the page with {{subst:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Story-preload}} as the only content in the edit window, and save the page. For more advanced formatting, see the style guide and style cheatsheet.
Alternatively, you can just focus on the writing, and Signpost editors can help with formatting later.
TITLE
- Done: The submission was published here. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 16:03, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
TITLE
- Done: The submission was published here. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 16:03, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Donna Strickland: Can we please make a (small) change to the way we document the notability of academics?
- Done: The submission was published here. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 16:03, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Now Wikidata Is Six
- Submission: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2018-10-28/Now Wikidata Is Six/Draft
- Submission type: Opinion
- Author: Charles Matthews
- Discussion:
A personal take on Wikidata, based on my involvement over the past four years, as volunteer and Wikimedian in Residence. The title references Now We Are Six. Wikidata's sixth birthday is 29 October. Charles Matthews (talk) 10:33, 16 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Hey Charles Matthews, thanks for the submission. After checking the page, it seems that this is not intended to be the finished work. If it is not, do you intend to be finishing it? Or is this more a proposal for another writer to take up? If you intend to finish this yourself, then the writing deadline is currently at 23:59 UTC on 26 October. So long as it is finished and ready for copy-editing before then, Bri or whoever can decide whether to schedule it then.I have changed the submission status to "Needs drafting" for now, but feel free to change it to a more appropriate draft status whenever another better applies. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 02:22, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks. Yes, this is just a placeholder for now. I have to concentrate on d:Wikidata:ContentMine/Cambridge Wikidata Workshop right now, one of the Birthday events. I fully intend to write a substantial piece, early next week. Charles Matthews (talk) 04:23, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Good to know and I hope it goes well! —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 04:37, 17 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- @Nøkkenbuer: @Bri: I now have a first draft together of what I want to say. I'm still working on images, links and bits of wording. Charles Matthews (talk) 09:51, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Putting this up as a Special report. Please give me a moment to prepare... ☆ Bri (talk) 23:58, 24 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- For the record, this was moved to "Opinion" so that the piece above fills the "Special report" feature, per this discussion. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 04:18, 25 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Done: The submission was published here, as "Special report 2", after being moved again per discussion here. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 16:03, 6 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Looking back, looking forward: A beginners experience on Wikipedia
- Submission: User:DiplomatTesterMan/Signpost Opinion1
- Submission type: Opinion
- Author: DiplomatTesterMan
- Discussion:
This piece is about my experiences as a new Wikipedia user and editor who is now nearing his 3000th global edit in the Wikipedia universe. It is not meant to be self-promotion in any way, but rather a write-up about the motivations behind why I stayed (hinting on retention of new users), how a new user like me has spent his time navigating Wikipedia, what I think of Wikipedia now, and what a user like me can aim for in the future. I also try to make this a little a humorous, and draw attention to certain issues too. (This is still a work in progress, but I think good enough to be shown since I am not sure if this will be allowed or not on Signpost. Please do suggest improvements, is it too long, too short, too much of self promotion? BUT, I am not using my real name here... is the humour bad? etc) Ques: In short the first question I just need help with, can something like this be considered for Signpost? Thanks! DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 23:55, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Approved for issue 12, will be adding to contents page. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:14, 24 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 17:42, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Done: The submission was published here ☆ Bri (talk) 02:22, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Signpost statistics
Discussion (hidden for clarity)
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Following my article suggestion a few days back and the "Sounds good to me" by Pythoncoder, I compiled statistics for Signpost articles for 2018. The stats can be found here at the moment, User:DiplomatTesterMan/Signpost Statistics, where i have listed all 157 articles in a sortable table along with their pageviews. I would request everyone in the Signpost team, User:Bri, User:Evad37, User:Bluerasberry, User:Barbara Page, User:Kudpung, User:Tbayer (WMF), User:Nøkkenbuer to give suggestions related to interpretation of the data and what could be done with this article, if possible.
- The article for Signpost could be in the following four formats:
- The current format tagged in my submission above (with various Signpost team members answering questions, and framing better questions)
- A serious research article
- A funny+serious opinion piece backed by the research
- This becomes a small part of the main research article
- Any other suggestions and help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks. DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 12:59, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- DiplomatTesterMan, This is truly an impressive amount of research and very valuable to the Signpost team. I don't have time to go through it all, but I would be inclined to suggest summarising which of our regular columns are the most visited, highlighting which articles received particulary high hits. Maybe illustrate with some charts of how readership has increased or declined over the year, and maybe a colourful pie chart to demonstrate which columns got the most hits Probably wrap it in traditional quality newspaper journalese, fairly serious, but perhaps some light comic relief. Unusual for The Signpost, a three part series on adminship may be worth examining. Unfortunately you'll have to do most all this yourself, but we can improve the style and copyedit it. 14:18, 10 December 2018 (UTC)Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)
- Kudpung, Thanks for the reply. Well, I didn't want you all to go through all of it... just the actual article which is fairly short located at "How many pageviews does Signpost get?" But yes, I will go ahead with all the points mentioned above. I have already covered a point or two, will work on the others. Thanks. DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 14:27, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Question: the Q&A section for "The Signpost members" – who is this? The editorial team? Or the readers?
- Feedback: I'd be fine running what you have so far as a special report. Then coming back with the analysis part after you've done interviews for the Q&A section. In other words, a two-part special report spanning two issues. It might be interesting to include the interviewees' reactions to reader input from the first issue. Bri.public (talk) 19:07, 10 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- DiplomatTesterMan, Do you have any updates regarding Bri's comments? Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:31, 17 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Sorry for the late reply. Bri's suggestion is a really good one and I had been working towards the article in that direction, that is, a two part report spanning two issues. The Q&A section had been for the editorial team, but since that is going in the second part, it can be put on hold for now. I will wrap up the first article in the next two three days. DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 15:09, 18 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- If you don't mind, I'll move your draft to Signpost space so it has the Special report page name, and the section starts showing up in the contents page and other tracking. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:18, 18 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Sure. No problem at all. DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 15:34, 18 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Approved part 1, statistics and analysis, for issue 13. We will hold off Q&A for follow up. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:09, 18 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- @Bri: Hi. Just now you reviewed the article lightly. Thanks. I just now added a small new part related to comment stats. So yes. The article is like 98% done from my side. Will just tweak it a bit, check typos and all. Thanks Kudpung too for reminding me on my talkpage to wrap up the article :D I saw the revised dates just now for 24 Dec :D Regards DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 07:46, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Suggestion needed:
- Currently the first headline says - "380,000+ views in 2018, sounds reasonable enough, right?"
- Do you think this alternative one is better? - "380,000+ views in 2018, sounds reasonable enough, right? Tell us in the comments what you think?"
- DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 07:51, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- @Bri: Should I add in the article that this is a two part report? Or no need?DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 08:26, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- @Kudpung: You had written: "Probably wrap it in traditional quality newspaper journalese, fairly serious, but perhaps some light comic relief." Well, i have left out the comic relief part... the hard stats by themselves seem better. Maybe the hard stats themselves in the serious tone of the article is the comic relief, the irony of it all :D the actual comic relief could maybe go into the second part after the Q/As. lets see.
- You had also written :"The Signpost, a three part series on adminship may be worth examining." Will consider for the future and lean upon previous three part articles on adminship :D DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 08:53, 20 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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Done: The submission was published here ☆ Bri (talk) 02:23, 1 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Gallery (memorials)
ALT title, "A tour of some of the world's greatest memorials, courtesy the PM of India"
ALT title, "A tour of some of the world's greatest memorials"
ALT blurb, "Travel across USA, Israel, Russia, France, Canada, UAE, Rwanda and Tajikistan..."DiplomatTesterMan (talk) 22:41, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The Collective Consciousness of Admin Userpages
Daty Wikidata Editor: alpha release
Hi everyone,
I have released the alpha version of a Wikidata editor called Daty, which of course I think would be of great benefit to Wiki* communities among others; the project development has been supported by Wikimedia CH, too, so I thought it would be appropriate to have its release inserted in the news.
I have already made a release post on your Village Pump and on IRC, where an user suggested me to write a short article on the Signpost for maximum visibility. Ogoorcs (talk) 04:16, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- @Ogoorcs: you were a bit late for the January issue, which we are busy finalizing. This will be reviewed for February's issue. ☆ Bri (talk) 04:31, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- @Bri: Thank you for the quick reply! If everything goes well, next month this could be about the beta release announcement. Ogoorcs (talk) 04:34, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- Sure, and in the meantime I'd suggest writing a standalone page vice referring to the village pump discussion. You can also decide how you want to "pitch" it to the readership. Informative only? Call to action? Background on what's missing with existing Wikidata interface(s)? ☆ Bri (talk) 04:43, 30 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]
TITLE
- Submission: User:Dlthewave/Signpost_Opinion_Firearms
- Submission type: Opinion
- Author: Dlthewave
- Discussion:
This op-ed describes a long-term pattern of disruption at Wikiproject Firearms, where editors coordinated to keep information about mass shootings out of firearms articles for over 10 years. –dlthewave ☎ 16:29, 2 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
- As an editor who was involved with at least some of these events I think this is a very one sided OpEd article. Claiming there has been a "long-term pattern of disruption" is a bit like asking the left if the right has a long term pattern of resisting laws the left thinks are good. The external articles it cites are basically three sources parroting the same story. That story is easily shown to be poorly researched and quick to jump to conclusions. The OpEd here can be boiled down to a disagreement regarding what is DUE and UNDUE that has yet to be cleanly resolved. Perhaps it is a good topic but I would suggest a joint authorship debate article rather than one that accuses editors the author has disagreed with of disruption. I will close by saying I do believe Dlthewave is a good faith editor but I think this is a poor summary of a long term debate related to the topic. Springee (talk) 20:20, 2 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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