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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Pine (talk | contribs) at 06:22, 4 June 2020 (→‎Gallery and OTBS for June: reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Template:Wikipedia Signpost/Deadline Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Navigation

Pageviews

By issue

  • February issue totals thru March 1, 2020, 2,134; March 3, 7,668; March 7, 13,254; March 14, 19,892; March 21, 32,508; March 28, 44,988.
  • March issue totals thru March 31, 6,203; April 4, 26,276; April 11 42,591; April 18 50,059; April 25 57,878.
  • April issue totals thru April 27, 5,033; May 2, 10,657 [1], [2]

By article – May issue

I broke out the columns/features in May issue due to a limitation in the pageviews tool; it can only display 10 at a time.

Current top five are: From the editor (281), Arbitration report (251), News and notes (200), In the media (181), Op-Ed (177). ☆ Bri (talk) 15:57, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

OK, time to publish

Everybody please step out of the way and put your keyboards down. Chris needs some room to publish. Please go ahead @Chris troutman:

Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:31, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Smallbones: starting now. Chris Troutman (talk) 18:33, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
It's going to be a good issue and will generate reader feedback. Sometimes it feels critical but we should all take pride in creating something important. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:46, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
To editor Smallbones: Published, tweet sent, email sent, and archiving and resetting for another month. Chris Troutman (talk) 19:14, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. More in 5 minutess. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:18, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to everybody involved - the authors, copyeditors, tipster, interviewees ... As always to Chris troutman and Bri. I do think this could be a great issue, it certainly was a challenging issue in many ways. We'll see what the readers say.

BTW, we do need a bit more organization at deadline. It's usually not hard to chase down 1 or 2 last minute issues, but if we have 4 or 5 often enough that will lead to a serious problems sooner or later. Some of this is obviously my fault - I've had a tough month. But I'll likely email a couple of folks and better explain how I think the deadline should work.

Special thanks to everybody who contributed to the French paid editing story. Getting an important story like that near the deadline and coming up with a pretty good article is always enjoyable. That was worth the whole month for me.

Thanks again. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:24, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Reader feedback on May issue

You can monitor reader feedback with the link above. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:41, 31 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitration report

A few readers suggested a title commensurate with the open state of the case. I recommend changing the title to "Board member to receive editing restriction". ☆ Bri (talk) 03:34, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Lurkers

Just a topic of interest for the newsroom.

  • There are 267 watchers of this page.
  • There are 47 watchers of May's In the media, 40 watchers of News and notes, 35 watchers of Op-Ed, 33 watchers of Discussion report.
  • All these numbers are far greater than the number of active Signpost contributors.

Presumably, the watchers of the articles put them on their watchlist during construction, since it's kind of uninteresting to watch changes to a published column. People seem to be interested in our pre-publication process, but I'm not sure what else to conclude. Invisible oversight? Potential recruits to the effort? ☆ Bri (talk) 16:07, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

  • @Bri: in addition to the regular contributors, watchers here probably include former contributors, WMF staff, people who are watching for discussions that should be suppressed, and people who watch both The Signpost's content pages and the discussions about them. ↠Pine (✉) 04:08, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Probably it also consists of editors (like me) who watch the page because they're part of a discussion and then when the disussion ends they forgot to unwatchlist it? My watchlist has more than 200 pages, mostly due to counter-vandalism, so its tricky to scroll through them all, which leads to simply just forgetting. I guess that's what I would venture to think. -- puddleglum2.0 04:15, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of these may be editors who at one point (possibly years ago) watchlisted the generic "Next issue" version of these pages; once the article is moved to the dated page name during publication, that new page is then automatically added to the watchlist. Regards, HaeB (talk) 12:11, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, that solves it for me. The numbers more or less carry over from issue to issue, but I'd never figured out how they switched from one issue to the next (but how then do they switch back to "next issue"?) Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:17, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
They are watching the basic ‘next issue’ page every time it gets created, so moving just adds a page to the watchlist and as the next issue is recreated users automatically watch it again. Not sure about the tech behind it but I’ve experienced this with The Signpost and users who move their talks to user talk:Example/archivenumber before recreacrating their talks. Hopefully that makes some sense. Eddie891 Talk Work 16:30, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's a pretty radical thing to have an open newsroom — I can't easily think of any other journalistic entity that does. And while it's in keeping with Wikipedia's ethos, I might support if there was an effort to make it closed. Newsrooms need to have discussions about which content is or is not appropriate for publication, and when those discussions are public, that process is hindered and the line between published and unpublished content gets blurred. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 18:16, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm one of them, and have a pretty easy answer: who doesn't want an early peek at the news? Sometimes it's interesting to see the process play out, but more often it's just because I look forward to the Signpost and like to see the content early (and, I suppose, flag any potential issues, but that's secondary). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:35, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I generally watch pages I copy edit, and talk pages that I want to follow, which would account for watching some published articles. isaacl (talk) 23:09, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Isaacl and Rhododendrites: - don't worry, we still love you and all copyeditors! Writers - feel free to email me if there is anything sensitive, or even if there's not. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:13, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Smallbones: I am trying to arrange another interview for June's OTBS. For a gallery, how about photos from the Seattle Japanese Garden? ↠Pine (✉) 04:12, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

should we publish the interview under "Interview" and just leave OTBS until you are ready with it? For Gallery, I'd like to have something every month, topical if possible (e.g. do we have pix of riots this month, or perhaps photos of people killed by police). With a resource like Commons we should always have something, even if not topical. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:29, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Smallbones: personally, I get plenty of news of violence from the news media. Also, headlines in the United States mainstream media, while often good subjects for Wikipedia mainspace articles, are not necessarily what I want to write about in The Signpost. This is not to diminish the significance of the incident in Minneapolis, bad policing, and the peaceful protests and harmful destruction in U.S. cities. Being timely is good, but also consider Wikipedia:Recentism. If you prefer, I can put the Seattle Japanese Garden photos and also the interview into OTBS and leave The Signpost's Gallery space for a different topic. ↠Pine (✉) 18:28, 2 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Go for it on OTBS, however you want to do it. Just let us know so that we don't do exactly the same story in 2 places. Duplication doesn't matter unless it's 2 big or medium sized articles, e.g. 2 mentions of the same story in paragraphs in "In the media" and "news and note' or in an Op-ed usually would just give slightly different viewpoints. But 2 big stories can be a problem.
  • For the Gallery - you're right that this would be a horrible time for timely topics. In general topical is more of what I want, e.g. Megalibrarygirl's Gallery of women in March- I just loved that. Timely and topical do have major overlaps however. Smallbones(smalltalk) 03:52, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

For awhile I've been thinking of getting some article about "Wikipedia after the pandemic" i.e how the pandemic will change the 'pedia. If anybody has ideas on this let me know. The mood I've been in over the last week though is getting to me. I don't remember 1968 being like this. I really hope I don't feel like writing "June Meltdown" for the next issue. If anybody knows of a good optimism course, let us all know. Smallbones(smalltalk) 04:03, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Smallbones: I just spent a few minutes thinking about this. I can't really come up with any really major ones, which actually makes me fairly proud. Unlike pretty much all the social media platforms, which have had ongoing and largely unsuccessful battles with misinformation and other ails, we were pretty much ready for something like this, and all we needed to do was just get to work using the methods/policies/tools we've already established. The talk pages histories at WT:19 and Talk:COVID-19 pandemic chronicle things from there. There were some areas where we lacked sufficient coordination/standardization (maps is the big one that comes to mind), some kinks to work out (here's a very small recent example: T253743), and some features deployed widely for the first time (for instance, excerpts), but on the whole, I don't think the pandemic has necessitated a course correction for Wikipedia. For the world, absolutely, but not for Wikipedia. Does that qualify as some grounded optimism? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 06:23, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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