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FYI: Mastodon account

Hi all,

to go with the times, I have asked Legoktm for an invite to create a @WikiSignpost account on https://wikis.world/ , which appears to have become a somewhat popular Mastodon server for Wikimedians. (As discussed back in February, it would be best to have a credential handling system in place, and to regain access to the wikisignpost Gmail account as - e.g. - a common contact address for such social media accounts; @JPxG: have you been looking into the latter? But also, this shouldn't hold us up for years, and in any case we have since clarified credential handling a bit as part of the EiC continuity norms. I'll use my own wikimail address for now and share the password with JPxG and the other folks who are listed as having Twitter access at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Coordination#Outreach_Manager.)

PS: Personally I've been highly skeptical of all the recent claims about the impending death of Twitter (but would love to read an article about them like this one...). However, supporting and being present on the Fediverse is worthwhile in itself. (For @WikiResearch I already set up a Mastodon account some years ago, with automated crossposting from our Twitter account - will do the same for @WikiSignpost.)

Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:48, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

@HaeB during my time we established signpost.eic@toolforge.org as the central email. It currently forwards to JPxG and I, but that can change easily. I chose this solution as it's powered by Toolforge, which is hosted by the WMF. Because of how it works, if JPxG and I both vanish/bus factor, access to it can still be recovered by making a request to the Toolforge project standards committee.
On another note, the text after "signpost." can be changed to anything, and it'll still forward: for example, signpost.outreach@toolforge.org would forward to the same people. The EiC email was (is?) used for User:The Signpost so that the email button email(ed/s) (both) EiC(s). 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 00:36, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for this information! Good point regarding bus factor, but for that to work, this email address would need to be known to the rest of the team in the first place. I have added it to the credentials documentation, but that is really the responsibility of the EiC(s) per our recently adopted EiC continuity norms. Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:46, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
@HaeB could you please clarify what you mean by this email address would need to be known to the rest of the team in the first place? Thanks! 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 17:11, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
Sure, I had somehow thought this was obvious, but to spell it out: I understood your point that if the EiC(s) vanishes/vanish, the rest of the team would be able to recover the credentials from the Toolforge team. That's good thinking. However, since we wouldn't even have known that this new Toolforge address had replaced the long established official wikipediasignpost Gmail address (which we had discussed repeatedly here and over email earlier this year, IIRC without you ever mentioning that you had already "established signpost.eic@toolforge.org as the central email" instead), we - the rest of the team - also wouldn't have known that we could ask the Toolforge team to get access. Does that make it clearer?
Again, I really appreciate you providing all this information now, and I don't want to dwell on the past more than necessary. But it seems worth stating directly that is among several things that could have been handled significantly better during your now concluded co-EiC tenure. Regards, HaeB (talk) 07:01, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
@HaeB thank you for the clarification. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 23:05, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
@HaeB:
  • My apologies that the Toolforge email was not discussed on wiki; I recall mentioning it with JPxG off-wiki. Here, I see that I posted Mailing list: I'll try to coordinate creating a editors@signpost.news and use that for mailing list announcements., but I was met with silence on the matter. There may have been a follow-up clarifying the current Toolforge situation, but I do not recall. Ultimately, I feel that the many Signpost improvement projects (see that page for I pursued led to difficulties in communication and organization, and I regret that it happened.
  • "About" page and puzzling changes: I have no objections to the role of technology manager being removed. The Affiliations Committee liaison was intended to be the point of contact for AffCom and The Signpost, but if it is preferred by the current team to not codify this, I will respect that.
  • User group application: I hope that the aforementioned statement of [my] problematic tendency to speak on behalf of the entire Signpost when you shouldn't have does not include the events surrounding the user group application. I previously discussed the recognition idea without objection. This was after I observed previous musings about affiliation recognition that were generally positive. Also see the various "14 days", "7 days", "3 days" until publication, etc. threads; for example, on the one linked above in the first bullet point, I discussed the user group application yet again (also with no comments).
  • ANI thread: If I am not mistaken, I believe that the vast majority of Signpost contributors supported the editorial. I posted my justification, the process that produced the piece, and more clarification in the thread; that may be relevant here. Please let me know if you have any further questions about the piece.
  • I wish to express that the newly-passed "continuity norms" for EiCs should be clear in the distinction of expectations between Editors-in-Chief and co-Editors-in-Chief. I feel that it should be considered if a period of activity would be less impactful, should there be another current EiC also responsible.
I apologize for my shortcomings in communication and any confusion it may have caused. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 17:35, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
(To avoid confusion for others: It seems that part of EpicPupper's bullet points refer to the separate #User group application thread.)
Thanks for the apologies and happy to move on regarding those issues, but it seems that there is still some confusion about what the concerns are about other aspects.
  • The problem about the addition of these two roles to the "About" page was that nobody (apart from yourself perhaps) seemed to know what they consist of. We can discuss separately who should fill each, but first we would need to clarify why such new titulars are needed and what they entail (as now partially done regarding the second one).
  • Re User group application, the problem wasn't the discussion before the application was filed, but the failure to keep the rest of the team informed about the content of the application (e.g. even after Andreas had started that thread on Oct 2 and information started to percolate slowly, I didn't know until your Nov 28 update that I'm going to be a member of this new user group, if it is approved). Appreciate your more recent updates about the status of the application, please keep it up.
  • "I believe that the vast majority of Signpost contributors supported the editorial" - it sounds that you are referring to the responses to the misguided "affirmation" request you had posted in response to that affair on this talk page. It seems you aren't sufficiently aware that there were several regular, longtime Signpost team members (not just me) who abstained from weighing in there. As I said earlier, I did so because I wanted to be supportive of the Signpost in general; in particular, I did not want to give weight to the accusations that an op-ed or editorial in the Signpost violates NPOV, which I think were a misinterpretation of that policy. However, I surely think that it was wrong to issue proclamations of "standing by" some political cause on behalf of "the Signpost team" without having received consensus by all active team members beforehand, and I also agree with the objections that Sdkb, another valued Signpost contributor, expressed there. I don't have "further questions", except that I'm wondering why you had retracted that piece and apologized for it, but now seem to imply everything was OK with it.
  • Regarding the EiC community norms: Sure, taking a wikibreak is fine if there is a co-EiC who can pick up the slack during one's absence. But that's not what is called out as a potential problem in the norms, rather, it's unannounced absence, or unresponsiveness to question about information that the rest of the team needs to continue work on the Signpost. Specifically, the norms ask to Give notice before going on a longer wikibreak, or when leaving the EiC post entirely.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:17, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
OK, I have set up https://wikis.world/@WikiSignpost (including crossposting), reached out via email to the folks who are listed as having Twitter access (@JPxG: for you I used the eic email address that EpicPupper revealed above, let me know in case that didn't work), and updated the credentials documentation at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Coordination#Outreach_Manager. Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:46, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
Update: The Mastodon account is now at 94 followers, which is of course still way below the 4,347 followers of its Signpost equivalent - but the latter can't all assumed to be active. Regarding engagement, Mastodon is already way ahead based on the tiny sample consisting of the November issue announcement posts (8 reposts and 4 faves on Mastodon vs. a pity 1 retweet and 1 fave on Twitter). Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:17, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
The account has only really posted once so far, I expect it'll pick up more followers with the announcement of the next issue, especially as more people migrate over. Legoktm (talk) 08:35, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Publication date

Are we really going for publication right before New Year's, or is that just a default? I think I can get four or five articles ready by the 18th, if that helps, but it'd be good to have something not-me. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 04:44, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

I think it would be a big mistake to publish before Christmas, especially if nobody is stepping forward with stories. One or two people can't produce a Signpost issue. The last discussion we had on this ended with the E-i-C saying approx. "We can have the pre-Christmas issue if we can keep it." Sorry, but I can't help before Christmas. Smallbones(smalltalk) 16:03, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
I guess the question becomes: do we want more full-length feature columns, or do we want timely regular columns (News and notes, In the media). I'm kinda leaning toward the latter. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:05, 14 December 2022 (UTC)
Was there a reason to start a new thread instead of following up in the existing thread above?
Anyway, I agree that publishing twice per month would be better in general. ("Recent research" will stay monthly, as it was when the Signpost was still on a weekly schedule. But other, more timely sections will benefit. And we may increase readership in the sense that issues are currently very voluminous, and more people would be able to read or skim the entire Signpost issue if they receive their subscription notification twice per month instead of once.) But it also seems a bit late at this point to make that change this month already. Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:15, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
+1. Andreas JN466 18:40, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
If we change the publication frequency, I think more ideal timing would be near the start of 2023. Holidays for people who celebrate them are more out of the way and I think it's a good idea thematically. New year, new Signpost? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 18:48, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
Sounds good. Just better we know, y'know? Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 17:44, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

It occurred to me a couple days ago that it would probably be much easier to do December as two issues, but I didn't think it would be reasonable to throw everyone's plans into arrears by proposing we modify the publication schedule so far into a one-month cycle. However, we can give it a shot next month, with enough notice for everyone to work with it. By this I mean setting the deadline to January 15th (which is a Sunday) as soon as December publication is finished. As for the December date: it is going to be a pain for me, but I have published the Signpost from a busted laptop out in the mountains before, so I think I can do it again. jp×g 04:48, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

From the archives

I've roughed this in now. Not all the summaries, but I think I've at least made a header for everything important. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 23:39, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Looking good; thanks, Adam. jp×g 04:51, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

Picture of the Year story?

Hi @JPxG, could we/I do a short article on the recently concluded Picture of the Year contest? I was thinking it could have a gallery of the winner + top finalists, brief details about the photos/photographers, and then an explanation for why the contest was so delayed and a pitch for more volunteers. Legoktm (talk) 18:38, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea. ––FormalDude (talk) 19:34, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Dunning–Kruger effect added to List of citogenesis incidents

[1] Needs verifying but sounds plausible. Andreas JN466 23:40, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

The original article creator User:Uucp is still active these days. Schierbecker (talk) 01:10, 21 December 2022 (UTC)
I remember reading discussion of the original Dunning-Kruger results in Science magazine and/or New Scientist around the time they were originally published (1999). I thought they were hilarious and discussed them with many people, and posted about them on Everything2 on October 11, 2002 [2]. You can see there that I used both the expression "Dunning-Kruger Effect" and "Dunning-Kruger Syndrome", and that the language is similar to that of my original Wikipedia post; many of my early Wikipedia posts were taken from earlier posts I had made at Everything2.
Did anybody use these expressions before I did? No idea. Uucp (talk) 00:31, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

RfA interview questions

I'll be continuing my interviews of newly elected admins, and this month we have two. Please let me know here if you have any questions you'd like to ask ComplexRational or Extraordinary Writ. ––FormalDude (talk) 02:59, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

WMF Trust and Safety

I recieved a wikimedia-l email that mentions that 16 users were globally banned in the MENA region due to conflict of interest editing. Might be worth mentioning somewhere? The public archive link is here for people who aren't subscribed to the mailing list like I am [3] Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 16:57, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

@Clovermoss: I started the story here Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/News and notes.
At a glance, these are power users of Arabic language Wikipedia and quite active in Wikidata. We probably need comment from Arabic language Wikipedia editors to do this story. Bluerasberry (talk) 18:03, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks. I thought it was worth mentioning (News and Notes works well for that) but I think we'd be limited in what we could say without speculating since the nature of the matter provides us with limited information. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 20:06, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
@Clovermoss: We already have a lot more information than what Trust and Safety shared, which is weird. Here is what we know that they did not say:
  • They posted the banned users to the global list, but did not link it. We have those usernames.
  • We know that many of the users were admins, and many seem super active.
  • We know social context; if English Wikipedia suddenly had several admins banned, we know those emotions. I guess this is comparable to a network of Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Orangemoody cases, in the since that multiple trusted powerusers are banned.
  • We know this is an Arabic language issue.
  • The Arabic language community was not informed in advance, and they also do not know what is happening.
I am not suggesting investigation of this, but there is a mismatch in what is plainly obvious and what information T&S put out. I do not think we should deeply dive into this when T&S wanted privacy but I do think it is on them to expect that we will report what is apparent with a 5 minute look. Bluerasberry (talk) 20:23, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
I'm not saying that we shouldn't interview active Arabic Wikipedia editors if we can. I think that'd be a great idea. You're right that the mismatch is weird. If there's public information that is out there, it shouldn't nessecarily be off the table. I guess I was saying to be cautious that we don't go into speculation since this is a situation with potential legal implications? I'm on my phone right now so I can't easily do much digging beyond the available email. I trust what you have stated to be accurate, though. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 20:52, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

We have to check the edit count for all of these. I checked some of them and they were all Arabic; then I checked another which was a power user in Farsi. I noted that in the draft in "news and notes". Here is the block log for the Farsi language user -

I do not know what to make of this except that it seems like an indication of long term conflict, and that for blocks to happen there must be a group of Farsi admins who reviewed this person repeatedly. They might have a story. Bluerasberry (talk) 02:16, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Note that Farsi is most often written in a script derived from Arabic, so to a non-reader, they are easy to confuse. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:41, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
As far as I can make out, Arabic Wikipedia had 26 sysops in May of this year [4], and 7 of the sysops listed there are now on the Global ban list [5]. Andreas JN466 15:11, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Of the entire set of WMF bans from 6 December, I am just slightly familiar with 4nn1l2 (talk · contribs) as he was an admin at Commons (see his candidacy). He had quite some checkered past of which he made no secret (see his first admin candidacy at fawiki which failed like his second and third attempt). He was initially active as user Montesquieu (later renamed to Montesquieu~fawiki (talk · contribs), just active at fawiki) and Americophile (later renamed to Mondephile (talk · contribs), was actively used on multiple projects including Commons and enwiki). I cannot follow all the conflicts which apparently originated at fawiki but you see traces of this at Commons. In 2019, 4nn1l2 suggested to remove IP block exemption from a list of users which led to a serious allegation by Ladsgroup. Afterwards, 4nn1l2 filed a deletion request for his photos of the 2011 attack on the British Embassy in Iran including an image previously refered to by Ladsgroup. 4nn1l2 commented in his DR: ”My real identity is known to some fawiki users and they have not felt ashamed for abusing these photos as a weapon to "win" petty wiki arguments at the expense of my security and peace of mind in the real world”. --AFBorchert (talk) 18:39, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

First, out of 16 bans, 6 were in Persian and 10 in Arabic.
@AFBorchert That is one part of this, there are many parts that can't be mentioned publicly And I don't know all of them, WMF did the investigation not me. I'm just mentioning the public ones. The UK embassy raid is one of them (the user claims he was there just for taking picture but I can easily dispute that, email me if you want to know more). Block log of his new account, Block log of his old account. list of his known socks. On top of that, I suggest looking at the user's contributions in English Wikipedia. There are also some public stuff but they need knowledge of Persian but again, if you want to know more, email me. Ladsgroupoverleg 22:43, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Is "Cancelled account" a vanished user?

I'm guessing the name change introduced here machine translated as Cancelled account 123321 could indicate a "vanished user" (my Arabic is near non existent so I'm not sure even with machine translation). We may want not to indicate the account's prior name in The Signpost? Just being extra careful, maybe someone can shed light on this name change. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:08, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Per WP:Vanish, vanishing is only for accounts in good standing, and in any case vanishing leaves all of the account's talk page mentions and signatures unchanged. If you go to https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:سامي_الرحيلي&action=edit&redlink=1 the information about the renaming is actually public. And m:WMF_Global_Ban_Policy/List still mentions the old account name (which has now turned into a redlink here as a result of the rename).
If Dr-Taher, the ar.WP admin who performed the rename, tells us there are particular concerns with reporting the old account name in the Signpost then we can take that on board, but I don't think there is any policy reason requiring us to omit mention of the original account name.
Dr-Taher, would you have any comment? Andreas JN466 09:55, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
Hello, The user uses his real name, and it was defaming for him, because WMF didn't make any direct investigation with him regarding the accusations. This is the reason for renaming the account. Dr-Taher (talk) 15:13, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, Dr-Taher; in that case I'm perfectly happy for us to err on the side of caution and omit mention of the old account name. (All the contributions histories work fine with the new account name.) Andreas JN466 16:33, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Proposed COI policy

It is somewhat surprising to me that the Signpost does not seem to have an official editorial policy regarding conflicts of interest among editors and contributors. While it has certainly been our practice (at least most of the time) to proactively disclose potential entanglements with what we write here, it seems like there is no good reason not to at least have a few paragraphs about it in the About page. Here is what I have come up with:

Proposed policy

As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia's mission is to provide the public with articles that summarize accepted knowledge, written neutrally and sourced reliably. Readers expect to find neutral articles written independently of their subject, not corporate or personal webpages, or platforms for advertising and self-promotion. While the Signpost is not an encyclopedia, and its content is not bound by the same standards that govern mainspace Wikipedia articles, it is still important for our publication to maintain a high standard of editorial integrity. We do not accept payment in exchange for favorable coverage, and we believe that our contributors should disclose any potential conflicts of interest before writing for the Signpost.

A conflict of interest exists when a contributor has a personal or financial stake in the subject of their article. For example, a conflict of interest would exist if a contributor was writing an article about arbitration proceedings they were a party to, a discussion in which they participated, a company they work for, or an initiative they support.

If you believe that you may have a conflict of interest in an article you would like to write, please disclose this to the Signpost's editorial team before pitching the article. We will then work with you to determine the best way to proceed.

Contributors are expected to make pre-emptive disclosure regarding conflicts of interest. Additionally, if editorial staff become aware of a conflict of interest that has not been disclosed, we will take appropriate action, which may include choosing not to publish the article, retracting an already-published article, reassigning the article to another writer, or editing the article to ensure that it meets our standards of neutrality and impartiality.

As Signpost contributors are almost all Wikipedia editors, conflicts of interest regularly come up in the course of writing articles. We understand that it is not always possible or desirable to avoid all conflicts of interest, and we are happy to work with our contributors to find solutions that allow them to write about topics they are passionate about while still maintaining our publication's standards.

Acceptable disclosures might look like the following:

  • "The author of this article participated in the arbitration proceedings, providing comments during the case request as well as the evidence phase."
  • "Note: I wrote the article that was the subject of this AfD discussion."
  • "The organization I work for is one of the participants in this project, and received a WMF grant to work on it in 2024."

If you have any questions about this policy or how it applies to your situation, please don't hesitate to contact the Signpost's editorial team.

I encourage everyone to provide feedback on this, and suggest improvements; if we can come up with a version that passes muster, I propose that we adopt it. jp×g 22:23, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

English Wikipedia's COI policy draws a distinction between actual, potential and apparent COI. I don't see this language here. It might be helpful. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:42, 3 November 2022 (UTC)
@Bri and JPxG: a distinction between actual, potential and apparent COI I think that probably makes sense for the encyclopedia COI policy, because it's enforced entirely by self-policing and peer-monitoring. But the Signpost doesn't operate in the same "self-service" manner, and it has something Wikipedia doesn't: editorial oversight.
A news source that doesn't have to expect (and, therefore, prepare) authors to self-regulate conflict minefields can be more general in its standards and more vague in its commitments. Journalistic standards would apply equally in all cases, at least in terms of disclosures and declarations, since any undisclosed conflict or bias has the same potential to negatively impact a news source's reputation and consumer confidence. Fiddly distinctions about the nature of the conflict are of no real interest to the audience. And while the editorial approach might depend on the nature and/or extent of the conflict, that's a discretionary call for editors to make on a case-by-case basis anyway. IMHO the policy should trust the editors' discretion and give them latitude to exercise it, rather than dictating to them.
So, my personal preference would be for a policy that focuses less on (possible types of) editorial remedies to conflicts. The important policy goals, as I see them, are to establish clear and absolute expectations of Signpost authors, and to make clear and unambiguous commitments to readers. Major beats would be:
  1. Authors are required to declare conflicts at time of submission, if not before.
  2. Immediately notify the editors when an undisclosed conflict comes to light that affects previous submissions, including published articles.
  3. Conflicts known to the editors at time of publication will be explicitly declared in a note accompanying the affected articles.
  4. If an undisclosed conflict comes to light post-publication, a declaration will be printed in the next issue. Further actions (retractions, revisions, etc.) are possible, at the editors' discretion.
  5. The editors may, at their discretion, reject or reassign stories if they feel the author's personal ties threaten objectivity.
  6. An editor with their own conflict must recuse themselves from oversight of any reporting on affected subjects.
Editorial discretion is the primary means by which the editors apply policy expectations to produce an end result that fulfills policy commitments. They should have sufficient leeway to make appropriate decisions, and we should be able to trust their judgement. (At least collectively, if not individually.)
More concretely, I definitely think sentences like this one could stand some tweaking:

If you believe that you may have a conflict of interest in an article you would like to write, please disclose this to the Signpost's editorial team before pitching the article.

Phrasing it as a polite request implies that it's an option for the author to either take or leave. It's not optional, and it's not a request. If someone knows there's a conflict, they must provide that information when pitching an article. And when submitting an article. And when participating in discussions about related articles / reporting. Editors need that information, and may even request further details, so they can properly evaluate contributors' reporting and ensure objectivity.
Policy is not the place to be polite, flexible, or nice. Nice is great, but a nice policy statement is a less effective policy statement. Clear, direct, and absolute statements create less ambiguity, so they're easier to both follow and enforce. FeRDNYC (talk) 14:05, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
@FeRDNYC: Wikipedia does have editorial oversight: WP:EOC, WP:EDITDISC. ––FormalDude (talk) 00:13, 5 November 2022 (UTC)
@FormalDude: The contortions those essays perform in their attempts to justify the Wikipedia model in terms that placate journalistic traditionalists are certainly impressive, but also a bit painful to watch. Personally, I don't feel Wikipedia's approach to content needs equivocation with the processes and traditions of old-world media. The fact that it operates differently is one of its great strengths, not something to be downplayed or reframed.
Still, I'm not above drinking my Kool-Aid when necessary. So, fine:
I misspoke, in my comments above, when I said that Wikipedia "doesn't have" editorial oversight. Wikipedia articles actually benefit from more editorial oversight than any other media platform in history, because everyone is an editor! (...Seriously, nobody else smells bullshit when they read that?)
The point I was actually attempting to make was that Signpost is published in a somewhat traditional-media fashion, with contributors submitting their work to the editor(s) who organize each issue. Conflict declarations can thus be made to those editors, who can then provide external viewpoints on the nature of the conflict and its consequences for the author's submission. Nothing to do with Wikipedia, don't know why I even mentioned it.
The publishers of my brain sincerely regret this error. FeRDNYC (talk) 09:23, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
So apart from the process questions being discussed above (when and how to disclose/declare a COI etc.), the rest of JPxG's draft makes great sense to me.
One term that is too ambiguous though is "support" in an initiative they support. We need something that distinguishes opinions (thinking "yeah that initiative is probably a good thing") and statements (expressing the opinion that that initiative is a good thing) from actions (doing volunteer or paid work for that initiative, being the person who proposed that initiative in the first place).
Also, I want to call out that in a community like ours that has existed for many years, often with the same set of people working in the same area for a prolonged period of time, there naturally tend to be a lot of personal connections. (This has regularly created issues in e.g. Wikimedia chapters and other formalized segments of the movement.) It can be tricky to draw a sharp line, but some connections clearly give rise to a COI (your sibling, your direct boss, yourself) and others clearly don't (person you had lunch with once). In "Recent research" I have written quite a bit about publications by people I would consider friends and acquaintances of various degrees (from "had a nice chat once" to "I have stayed at their / they have stayed at my house for a couple of days"), but I don't necessarily consider that a COI. There have been a couple of papers where I was tangentially involved by providing some input and advice to the researchers during the project (sometimes to the point where they named me in the acknowledgements, sometimes more superficially), and I might be more scrupulous in mentioning that consistently going forward. Overall, "Recent research" has always discouraged contributions from researchers writing up their own findings, even though this could increase contribution volume a lot (except of course that we feature lots of excerpts from paper abstracts).
Regards, HaeB (talk) 02:49, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
  • No administrative capacity I agree in principle but this level of complexity is a mismatch with the administrative capacity of The Signpost. Here is my best advice for anyone who wants to develop or adopt this rule:
  1. Start drafting out an application for The Signpost to register as with meta:Wikimedia user groups
  2. Set up a project page for the group
  3. Recruit members who have time to be around for regular discussion
  4. Post this draft policy on the project page, and discuss with the members
  5. Now the editorial team here will comply with the policy
I agree with the policy and want to adopt one but what is being proposed is a labor burden beyond what current volunteers are able to provide. The Signpost has for years begged for more contributors and editorial support and is not able to meet demand on that end. As an alternative development strategy to include people who want to support journalism, but who do not want to do journalism themselves, help developing governance processes like COI policy is a welcome contribution. The part that is unwelcome is asking for any additional labor from current editorial contributors. Again, yes please develop this, but do it by recruiting additional oversight labor, rather than asking for more labor from the volunteers who are already engaged.
If there were an oversight board, then there are other policies which The Signpost could adopt. For example, https://www.ifcncodeofprinciples.poynter.org/ is respectable and we already have transparent citation practices far superior to almost any other news source. Adopting policy is a good idea, but it comes at significant labor cost and we have no labor pool. Bluerasberry (talk) 15:55, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
Sorry Lane, not sure I understand this reasoning. First, just looking at the revision history of this talk page in recent months (and the resulting changes), there seems to be quite a bit of energy among the existing crowd to discuss and update norms and processes, so the labor shortage claim looks a bit dubious in that regard. What's more, even assuming that your proposal overcomes the various concerns (discussed extensively above just last month) about incorporating the Signpost as a user group and that you can recruit such an external committee that commits to meet for "regular discussion", I'm not sure every one here will regard it as "a welcome contribution" if a whole new set of process rules (as opposed to norms) will be imposed on their regular Signpost work by a committee who is unfamiliar with the Signpost's processes. Especially not if they are patronizingly told that those rules will be made without their involvement because "oh we know you are all too busy".
All that said I would agree that we could benefit from reviewing existing COI norms for journalists and don't need to reinvent the wheel here; also, we should welcome comments from readers about what their expectations are. But we don't need to add a whole new bureaucratic layer based on a newly incorporated entity for that. Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:57, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
@HaeB: I will simplify my position: I feel that adopting this policy is a significant burden, and that volunteers here are unable to continuously give more with nothing in return. The Signpost cannot continuously adopt new policy, and adopting this policy comes at a high cost. Yes, I recognize that volunteers are interested in improving quality here, including for the issues in this policy. But committing to a policy has a high cost, and this is a negotiation which asks for a lot but brings no benefit to the table in return.
I agree that the policy is nice but if no one brings something valuable into the negotiation, then here's what can be offered for free: if any volunteer wants to help with this or any other issue in The Signpost, then they can if they like. I oppose all commitments to give something for nothing, especially in this context where demand is high and there are so many options for people to give something instead of nothing. If anyone wants more, then find a way to give more, or at least be proactive in suggesting how to bring more resources in rather than spend more of the already scarce labor.
This request is part of an unending pattern of asking more from volunteers here. The situation here is already unsustainable and asking for even more is not a path to the solution. Bluerasberry (talk) 20:06, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
Where are we on this? @JPxG: were you planning to update your draft based on the feedback, or would it be better if someone else takes the lead from here? Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:18, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
Looks like JPxG is too busy. Does anyone else want to pick up the slack and come up with an updated draft? If not, then I may take a look sometime after the publication of this month's issue. Regards, HaeB (talk) 17:05, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

ACE2022

I have posted a short report of the election at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Arbitration report. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:21, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

[moved] Reply from AffCom

Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost#Reply from AffCom per recent discussions. 
See the notices on top of each talk page:
- This page "is to discuss the upcoming issue of The Signpost."
- Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost is "for general or technical issues, praise, queries, or complaints related to The Signpost as a whole."
Regards, HaeB (talk) 11:23, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

[moved] Signpost templates

Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost#Signpost templates, per recent discussions. 
See the notices on top of each talk page:
- This page "is to discuss the upcoming issue of The Signpost."
- Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost is "for general or technical issues, praise, queries, or complaints related to The Signpost as a whole."
Regards, HaeB (talk) 11:23, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

From the archives

This could probably use a heavy hand in the copyedits. Not sure it glows well yet Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 17:55, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

A5 deprecated

Probably worth a mention: Special:Permalink/1130280550#A5. Transwikied articles - Wiktionary ~ Amory (u • t • c) 14:40, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Mobile editing

I've mentioned this before but I didn't think it was ready to be published when I first brought up the idea months ago. One reason is that there was still a lot of back-and-forth with WMF staff, but that's been more slow lately. There's still some improvements I wish to make but I think that I can do that within the deadline for the next issue. I'm referring to this essay. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 21:46, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

@JPxG: I think this essay is actually relatively ready for publication now. Are you okay with me copying this content to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Essay? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 00:19, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

@Clovermoss: Yeah, this looks basically good, could use some light copyediting. Go ahead and move it and we can go from there. jp×g 01:34, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

I'll take care of the move. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:36, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
Oof, I didn't realize the essay was linked from Wikipedia:Editing on mobile devices. Let me know if I should undo and we can create a copy for The Signpost. ☆ Bri (talk) 03:13, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
@Bri: My original plan was to copy the current version for the Signpost and keep the essay in my userspace because I wanted to be able to update it over time. I appreciate the initiative in doing the page move already though. No harm, no foul. I'm sure it's an easy enough issue to fix, right? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 05:12, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
Okay, I will undo the move so that the original is in your userspace with its edit history intact. ☆ Bri (talk) 14:45, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
I undid the page move already. :) Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 15:54, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
Okay all good now. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:19, 18 December 2022 (UTC)
@JPxG: Is there anything else I should be doing apart from waiting for copyediting before this edition is published? Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 12:36, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

1 day to go

Just my evaluation of where we stand FWIW:

  • In the media might still need a bit of copy editing but is otherwise done
  • News and notes needs some work, especially the 1st section. There's a lot of facts there and it should be a good story in that section - somebody just needs to write it.
  • Humour is incredibly humourous - but I'm not sure most readers will realize it in the current format
  • I have questions on the Concept article, but I don't really know enough about the topic to judge.
  • Traffic report looks ready (headline and blurb?) I always have trouble copy editing it, but this one looks to be one of the easier ones for CE. You'll just need to know if they are spelling "football" correctly.
  • Most of the rest I've looked at might need a tiny bit of work, but nothing special.

Smallbones(smalltalk) 05:58, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

I understand enough of Concept to be able to answer questions. It needs another copyedit though, and I'm struggling to find time. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 06:24, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
See the discussion above regarding the "Concept" piece. None of the issues discussed there have been resolved in the meantime. I don't think it should be published in this form. Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:06, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
I also started "Technology Report" (see below) and as usual should have RR in a publishable form in advance of the deadline. Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:19, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Poasting from my phone at the gas station: I will be here to finish copyediting and publish today. jp×g 17:45, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

January deadline

Can't help but think of the Signpost crew, hurrying to get another new issue published this New Year's Eve/New Year's Day weekend! I've been seeing fewer editors on the project over the last 10 days so I think you all should get a year-end bonus for working during the holiday season! Thank you and good luck! Liz Read! Talk! 20:45, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

Oh, on an editorial note, you might mention in News and Notes that several hundred marginally active admins will be desysop'd on January 1, 2023 due to the new activity requirements. I've seen probably a dozen almost completely inactive admins spring back to active editing and even adminning since last summer when the first notices went out. Some last had an admin action many years ago. Editors probably won't see a big change but I've been seeing new faces (to me) closing discussions in the AFD area this past month...I had to double-check to see who they were! Liz Read! Talk! 20:54, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

"Concept" column in next issue

Sorry for snipping WP:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Concept accidentally from the in-progress articles during the Newsroom reset.

This piece seems a little problematic, not really fitting into the usual Technology report. If it was proposed somewhere like WP:VPT, we could list it in a Discussion report. I'm not really sure that a Signpost article is the best place to roll this out. Also, isn't the idea just an implementation of Run-length encoding (I'm sure this would have been brought up at VPT). ☆ Bri (talk) 20:06, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

Honestly, with the move to "Next next issue" it was probably inevitable. But I think it's reasonable to propose such things publicly to get more discussion. We're not a commercial newspaper, we don't have to have every article be a high-engagement article for everyone. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 21:07, 28 November 2022 (UTC)
Looks like the talk page got lost in the move: Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Next next issue/Concept.
In addition to the concerns raised by Bri, the writing and presentation in the main part (i.e. below the intro added by Adam) are honestly terribly convoluted. E.g., to name just a small example, why are there tables that present the same number repeatedly in slightly different formats (e.g. "17449299" under "Count" vs. "17 449 299" under "Human-like count")?
Also, does anyone understand the author's responses in the "Existing 'ez' compressed format, as well as pageviews complete" thread, where Milimetric (WMF) stated that the proposal is mostly redundant to an existing dataset?
Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:41, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
@HaeB: The number with more number char is more like to separe by 1000. Dušan Kreheľ (talk) 17:38, 29 December 2022 (UTC)
I'll withhold comment on the idea itself, but yes it is exactly a particularly naive form of RLE (as it only compresses runs of one specific character pair: 0 ). I don't see any reason why a Signpost article would be the right venue to propose generating pageview dumps in such a scheme. If it were adopted by the Data Engineering team, then an article explaining how the new format was arrived at and why it's of interest to Wikipedians might be appropriate. (With far less technical detail, that stuff's for the wikitech site.)
@HaeB: Basically he's doing an apples-to-oranges comparison, and saying that even though the pageviews_complete 'ez' encoding is far more efficient than his format for daily or monthly data dumps (not that it's acknowledged out loud, but it's true so it doesn't have to be), his format can encode hour-granularity yearly dumps more efficiently than actually writing out 8760 repetitions of 0 for low-traffic pages. While that's true, it's begging the question to assume that anyone wants combined yearly per-page view stats at hourly granularity. And that if they do, they want them in a byzantine format like (to take a real-world example from one of the en.wiktionary datasets I downloaded):

"qué_duda_cabe" 8082839 desktop ^2941 1 1 ^5817

That signifies, "obviously", that the page wikt:"qué duda cabe" (id 8082839) received a single page view from a desktop-browser visitor on the 2942nd hour of 2021 (which I determined, by whipping out the Python arrow module, was:
arrow.get('2021-01-01').shift(hours=2942) ⇒ <Arrow [2021-05-03T14:00:00+00:00]> ...May 3 at ~14:00 UTC), and then a second page view in the following hour.
Now, you may be thinking, "OK, that's efficient, but for a page with that little traffic you could just write out the date of each individual page view and it wouldn't be much longer." And you'd be right! In fact, that line represents a re-encoding of a line from the pageviews-20210503-user file that would've read something like,

en.wiktionary "qué_duda_cabe" 8082839 desktop 2 N1O1

(N being the 14th letter of the alphabet, and O the 15th), as that's how the efficiently-encoded daily pageview files are already formatted. That format doesn't store date information in the data, it's left to be implicit in the filename of the data dump. The article in question wouldn't appear in any of the other 2021 daily dump files, as it didn't have any views any other days.
Of course, if you only wanted to follow that one article, you wouldn't use the data dumps. You'd likely make a query to the pageviews API, which would return this data:
{
  "items": [
    {
      "project": "en.wiktionary",
      "article": "\"qué_duda_cabe\"",
      "granularity": "daily",
      "timestamp": "2021050300",
      "access": "desktop",
      "agent": "user",
      "views": 2
    }
  ]
}
The API only supports daily or monthly granularity, so whether hourly is even needed... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. FeRDNYC (talk) 07:05, 1 December 2022 (UTC)
At any rate, it is very tech-paper-y. I don't think this will be well received by the readership. ☆ Bri (talk) 04:57, 3 December 2022 (UTC)
User:JPxG: The above discussion never concluded – a decision needs to be made whether to publish or not. Andreas JN466 18:24, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Foundation's "Abstract Wikipedia" project "at substantial risk of failure"

I saw that we hadn't yet covered this evaluation report (from the December 19 Abstract Wikipedia newsletter) which seems quite important, so I started a write-up. It turned out a bit complex to cover, requiring a good deal of context to be included for a general Signpost audience, so I've created "Technology report" (which did not have content yet for this month) with this as the sole topic, and may still add some explanations. The text that's already there is ready to be copyedited. Regards, HaeB (talk) 16:17, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

This is very good and very important. I suggest putting it in the 2 or 3 articles at rge top of the page so it doesn't get lost. Smallbones(smalltalk) 21:07, 30 December 2022 (UTC)
@HaeB: Brilliant article. I've done a copyedit. Note I've edited/swapped headline and subhead to make the main headline easier to understand for readers at Hacker News etc. (IMO "Could Abstract Wikipedia fail" on its own is likely to nonplus people); please review. Andreas JN466 20:04, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Insurmountable difficulties

I post this from my phone in the corner of my grandma's dining room, having failed to set up my laptop on a TV tray in front of a rocking chair; it will die instantly if unplugged, which I had accounted for, but the keyboard is no longer functional, which I had not accounted for. There is also approximately zero chance of SPS working on my phone. These difficulties, along with some other extremely doxable ones which I shall not recount here, will have to be surmounted tomorrow. jp×g 23:09, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

SPS = Signpost publishing script, I think ... good luck when you can get things working again. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:53, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
@JPxG, Bri, HaeB, Adam Cuerden, and Jayen466:
I think this is a good issue. With some encouragement (especially from JPxG) I'd be willing to take on the emergency responsibility of approving articles (prob. excluding Humour and Concept), if somebody could publish. Ping and email me if such encouragement is given. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:39, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
@Smallbones: I'm fine with this Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 18:57, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
I'll need just 1 more encouragement and somebody who can publish! Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:01, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
+1 ––FormalDude (talk) 19:33, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Down from the clouds. I am happy with hitting the switch if the issue has been finished, as soon as I am at the computer in a couple hours. jp×g 19:37, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks @JPxG: that would be wonderful. I'll finish up with the final approvals.
Thanks again Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:47, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
Thanks, Sb! Andreas JN466 20:04, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

OK, I've approved 12 articles. I'll return in an hour or two for my favorite part of the month - reading the new Signpost. Smallbones(smalltalk) 20:41, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I've taken the liberty of moving Humour and Concept from cancelled to postponed, in case that makes a difference Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 02:07, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Surmounting

Big shouts to everyone who prepped this issue. Also, big shouts to my girlfriend's parents for letting me borrow the USB keyboard from their computer to plug into my impossibly fucked-up laptop! This issue looks good and I am stoked for the next one in a couple weeks. Time to sleep! jp×g 03:47, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

The photo of the Yellow-billed oxpeckers appears twice in the gallery at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2017-12-18/Interview. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:29, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

@Kudpung: I believe I fixed the issue? [6] Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 12:32, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Feeder readback 2023-01-01

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2023-01-01

Here is a prefixindex of the talk pages. When someone gets around to adding the issue pages with Signpost Tagger it will transclude them as well, and give view counts. jp×g 18:41, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Does anybody do videos? For a January issue

I ran into a couple of hilarious videos of encyclopedia adverts, the first from 1987/1988 - a real ad by Stan Freberg - is the best by far. see [7]

The second - a more typical ad of the period - is from 1989. We could do a satire for our humor column, together with "if you feel comfortable contributing", for a January issue. They are copyrighted by Encyclopedia Brittanica but since it would be satire, our version should be exempt from copyright.

I could easily write a script, but could anybody actually do the acting, filming, and production? Smallbones(smalltalk) 22:12, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

I might be able to do acting and filming. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 22:17, 26 December 2022 (UTC)
The set could be as simple as a table or desk with a laptop on it, perhaps with some accessories as in the first video. The production might be as simple as a fixed video shot view (though some close ups would be nice). Some titles could be placed at the bottom (not an 800 number!). Getting the video into a Commons and/or YouTube format might be a clumsy step. I think an actor (M or F) would be best in the 15-25 year old range (but ...) with a separate narrator. Does that fit? Smallbones(smalltalk) 02:36, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
Don't think I'm quite young enough, but can see what I can do. Could always play the narrator and get my partner involved. He can look a decade younger than he is; I risk looking a decade older. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 05:31, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
I'm 20, which is within the age range Smallbones suggested. I was a bit puzzled about why this would even matter until I actually saw the ad. It'd be somewhat weird to act like that but I suppose that's the fun of acting? I admit that I know pratically nothing about film production so I might not be able to participate in what has been envisioned. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 02:25, 31 December 2022 (UTC)
Would it be funny if I did it with my white beard (I started going grey at 16), but pretended to be a kid? Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 04:50, 2 January 2023 (UTC)
@Adam Cuerden: I think it'd be amusing but humour can be subjective. If we go this route, I'd suggest satirizing the concept of "how do you do fellow kids"? It's a meme. Maybe you could go for a time travelling teen angle? I don't know. I will say you'd probably have much better production quality than what I would accomplish however you approach it. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 07:25, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

In the media, December

[[:File:VSK-94-removebg-preview.png|thumb|Voyskovoy Snayperskiy Kompleks, a Russian 9x39mm suppressed designated marksman rifle designed in 1995]] For weird, personal, complicated reasons I don't want to post this to In the media myself.

A printout of the Wikipedia article VSK-94 (probably from ru.wiki) was on the body of a Russian soldier named Ruslan, who "seemed to be learning to use his weapon on the fly" according to a New York Times long read on the way the combat is being mismanaged [8]. "He had little else besides the printouts in his pack, which Ukrainian soldiers recovered with what they believe to be his body in September. The rifle next to him suggested he was a sniper. But while snipers in modern militaries often go through weeks of additional special training, Ruslan’s teacher appeared to be the internet." ☆ Bri (talk) 04:01, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Bri, the NYT is behind a paywall. Send me a copy of the article by mail so that I can check it out and Ill do it for you. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 19:35, 23 December 2022 (UTC)
Bri, that was indeed a very long read. I did not stopwatch it but it took about an hour. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:05, 24 December 2022 (UTC)
Bri, done, with just a couple of very minor tweaks to the prose. I note however that all recent edits to the the ru.Wiki article at Редактирование: ВСК-94 are still pending review. I read Russian well enough, but I don't know how their pending changes/flagged revisions work. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 05:18, 24 December 2022 (UTC)

Weber und Wiki

Regarding the Palladium Magazine piece by Samo Burja brought up by JPxG and the comment from Smallbones. The thread to follow in the piece seems to be –

  • modern, Western society runs on intellectual authority
  • intellectual authority is categorically distinct from, and replaces, all other sources of authority
  • power systems controlled by gatekeepers are a problem
  • institutionalizing and de-personalizing knowledge gatekeepers in the form of an institution is a solution that has been tried
  • institutions inevitably become bureaucracies
  • bureaucracies always fail to recognize good science (or by extension good ideas) because "the existing distribution of legitimacy is just frozen in place, and more funding works only to keep it more frozen rather than to drive scientific progress forward"
  • bureaucracies "only recognize certain pre-existing bureaucratic markers of legitimacy as valid" and therefore reject new ideas
  • individuals should be empowered to steer or trump institutions because "individuals have a chance to make the right bets, whereas bureaucracies can only pretend to make them"
  • Wikipedia is an example of a gatekeeping knowledge institution: "The reliability of contemporary Wikipedia, for example, rests on a tight social network of obscure and enigmatic editors rather than occasional contributions or vigilante edits from visitors."

Yes, this will be difficult to summarize in a ITM piece, especially for those not up to speed on Weberian historical philosophy. And I'm not sure what the "so what" will be for the last bullet. WP will ossify and create a useless bureaucracy of itself until a strong leader upsets the applecart? ☆ Bri (talk) 07:02, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

@Bri: Yes, this is an interesting and difficult piece. Especially for ITM. Perhaps you could write a separate opinion piece? Or maybe we could ask Burja to write a piece for next month? I think the current piece is alternately pretty standard material, revolutionary (at least for Wikipedia), frustrating in that it gives no real alternative, and hugely reactionary in that it states that a Sovereign (government? editor-in-chief? King Jimbo?) is needed to make the final decision. I like the issues raised, but just don't know what to do with it. Maybe just state all of the above and say it's a paradox or a conundrum, but maybe Wikipedia can solve it when User:Gordian knot cutter comes along. For the record, I'm not up on my Weber, but approach this from faintly remembered The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, especially by recognizing that Kuhn divides up science into two phases: the heroic revolutionary periods (which undergrads love and take as the ultimate contribution of the book) and the "normal science phase" which essentially implements the revolution and then ossifies, only to be overthrown later.
Humbly yours,
Smallbones(smalltalk) 14:18, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
Someone asked me today what the expanding WMF staff (700 now) are actually doing, and as I answered as best I could, it occurred to me that there is a process of bureaucracy growth and ossification in the WMF that, however well-meaning its various initiatives are, actually parallels what's encapsulated in the above bullet points Bri put together. Andreas JN466 18:03, 27 December 2022 (UTC)
I do plan to take this on as an op-ed or something. Maybe in concert with a semi-serious humor thing I'm working on. ☆ Bri (talk) 06:46, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Submissions page needs attention

There are several things on the submissions page that are marked unreviewed yet are reviewed, and a couple unreviewed that haven't received a response. ☆ Bri (talk) 04:22, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

Back on the roost. I am going through it now. jp×g 00:29, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

Deadlines

Are we not doing two issues this month? We talked about it quite extensively. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.2% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 17:28, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

If you set the date to 15 Jan I won't squawk. But just be aware it will leave a week and two days for all the writing. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:28, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
Since this Saudi infiltration story has broken, I think I'm now positively in support of the 15 January publishing date, to get it out to our readership. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:46, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
@JPxG: What say you? If you like we can put together a short list of articles to be included and I will commit to being available to run the publishing script next weekend. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:32, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

[moved] Module improvements

Moved to Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost#Module improvements per recent discussions. 
See the notices on top of each talk page:
- This page "is to discuss the upcoming issue of The Signpost."
- Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost is "for general or technical issues, praise, queries, or complaints related to The Signpost as a whole."
Regards, HaeB (talk) 20:03, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Newsroom and individual issues

I think it might be condign for us to just have individual talk pages for individual issues (i.e. talk of specific features, copyediting, etc), and a separate area to talk about issues of general interest (i.e. the CoI section above). I am trying to figure out what happened with a few discussions here and it's a total mess -- stuff is always getting archived from here after publication and it's a lot of work to sort out things that got resolved from things that haven't. Perhaps we could just have, say, Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/2022-12 for this December issue, and only put stuff on Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom if it had relevance beyond then? jp×g 07:59, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

It feels hard enough to get a response here as it is.... Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 09:12, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
If we had a separate page for every issue, then we would have to get people to opt in to watch that page every month. That seems like much less attention per issue, which I think would be creating a bigger problem. I see the complaints about archiving - perhaps delaying archiving or encouraging un-archiving could be a solution? Bluerasberry (talk) 16:50, 6 December 2022 (UTC)
Agreed that having to watchlist a new page every month (and possibly having to move several threads about postponed stories) is kind of a dealbreaker. Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:41, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
Yes, as mentioned there, if there are no objections, I will start to move new threads to the more appropriate one of the two talk pages, to gently enforce the bold-faced notices on the top of each page:
  • This page "is to discuss the upcoming issue of The Signpost."
  • Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost is "for general or technical issues, praise, queries, or complaints related to The Signpost as a whole."
Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:41, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
I think one of the issues is that it's hard to get a reply - even on this centralized page. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 19:34, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
This is especially prominent with the suggestions and submissions pages - they're much-neglected. When I was co-EiC I tried to help with them but ultimately whoever is in charge needs to actively respond to the messages. Our readers are what makes up us. 🐶 EpicPupper (he/him | talk) 19:36, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
@HaeB: My impression of how these pages work, based on the last couple of years, is that this page (newsroom talk) consists mostly of internal discussions among contributors, whereas the main talk page at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost consists mostly of feedback from readers. At least, that's what it looks like based on the last few archives of the latter. jp×g 20:10, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
That's not my impression (e.g. most recent archive of the latter contains quite a few threads started by regulars, including yourself); conversely, on this page we have been allowing non-contributor comments regularly, e.g. this, this and this one just within the last two weeks. In any case the aforementioned notices defining the scope of each page have been in place for a long time (at least three years, probably longer). I would also think that the approach you suggest (dividing the two talk pages according to the identity of the commenters) is problematic because it can become hard to define and remember who is part of the contributors club and should thus be allowed to post on this page and whose comments should be relegated to the other done. I think the usual practice of grouping discussions by topic is better. Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:11, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
Personally I like the convenience of just a single page – this one – for everything. We could set up automatic archiving of sections after x days. (Isn't it possible to make some sections sticky so the bot doesn't grab them?)
Back in 2015/2016, we actually did a lot of coordination on Skype ... Andreas JN466 09:04, 7 December 2022 (UTC)
In fact automatic archiving is already activated and last happened on November 29. I appreciate the good intentions of the people who volunteer their time to manually archive threads, but it doesn't add a lot of value except making this page a bit more polished and compact for a little while. And given how often manual archiving has resulted in screw-ups and confusion over the course of this year (just two examples out of several more: 1, 2), I would kindly suggest they try to resist this urge for the foreseeable future and just let the bot do its work. Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:41, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
Not to beat a dead horse, but I just discovered another such screw-up: The number of the last archive in the template on top of this page had not been not updated during some recent manual archiving, causing a lot of threads from recent months to appear out of order in the archives (which can get quite confusing if you are trying to find a thread from a specific timeframe there). I have fixed the template parameters so that future bot archived-threads should appear in order again, but haven't tried to clean up the recent archive pages.
Ceterum censeo: Refrain from manual fiddling and futzing and just let the well-tested bot do its work. Regards, HaeB (talk) 20:13, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

RfA interview

Whether his RfA is successful or not, I think The Signpost should interview MB – his would certainly be a viewpoint worth understanding. theleekycauldron (talk • contribs) (she/her) 05:07, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I will reach out -- although right now, with the crat chat running, doesn't seem like the most appropriate time, so I will wait until that concludes... jp×g 02:02, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Featured content 1-January

Could use a hand with this, though it's not going too badly. I would also like to get "From the archives" done and a "CommonsComix". Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 22:57, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

...Never mind. It's done. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 00:24, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
@Adam Cuerden: Someone mentioned at some point that there was once a bot that prepped the featured content sections. In the course of spelunking, I have found out that this was something Resident Mario had thrown together in 2015, and it was mentioned on this talk page about a year ago, but nobody was really able to follow up on it. Is this something that would help, if I were able to get it running again? jp×g 02:01, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
It'd be great. I mean, we'd still need to get the descriptions, but it'd be nice to not have to do the search-replaces. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 06:37, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Saudi story

The Guardian article mentions two admins who were jailed. I'm confused right now because the user page User:OsamaK (whose content dates back to 2015) describes him as a bureaucrat and administrator on Arabic Wikipedia – but he stopped being listed as an admin around 2016/2017, according to archive.org copies of the list of Arabic admins [9][10]. There is another Osama, https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/مستخدم:أسامة_الساعدي (User:أسامة_الساعدي, Osama Al-Saadi, describing himself as Iraqi in earlier versions of his user page) who was listed as an admin from 2013 and stopped being so listed sometime in 2019 or 2020; both accounts stopped editing in 2020. Is that the other admin who was also jailed, is it an alt account of OsamaK's, or is it an unrelated Iraqi user? If the latter, do any of you know who the other jailed admin is? Andreas JN466 10:36, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

According to Facebook discussions [11], the other jailed Wikipedian is User:Ziad. He too stopped being listed as an admin around 2017/2018 ([12][13]). Andreas JN466 12:13, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
The DAWNMENA report links to OsamaK (Osama Khaled); indeed, he was the one to be jailed acc. to multiple sources including intel-reports by those priv. agencies who monitor the region. I think that DAWNMENA failed to recognize that they were ex-admins as of the time of arrest.
Osama Al-Saadi appears to be an Islamic preacher (FB - very active, Twitter - inactive). The social media profiles were retrieved from Wayback machine's snap of the now-dead website, linked to from his ar-wiki u/p. TrangaBellam (talk) 13:23, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
The term imam is probably both more accurate and more respectful than "preacher". ☆ Bri (talk) 14:38, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
I know, but used a self-decription. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:03, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
The desysop logs are still public: [14][15][16]. Nardog (talk) 14:52, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

Someone on Facebook said they had read the charges ("It was also shocking that when I browsed through the details of his arrest, one of the charges against him was because of his activity on Wikipedia!"). I've asked whether they could provide a link.

Ars Technica have just published an article as well: [17] They're quoting a WMF statement: “There was no finding in our investigation that the Saudi government ‘infiltrated’ or penetrated Wikipedia’s highest ranks,” Wikimedia’s spokesperson told Ars. “And there are in fact no ‘ranks’ among Wikipedia admins. There was also no reference to Saudis acting under the influence of the Saudi government in our investigation. While we do not know where these volunteers actually reside, the bans of any volunteers who may have been Saudi were part of a much broader action globally banning 16 editors across the MENA region.” --Andreas JN466 18:26, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

"tktktk there was no FINDING that tktktk." I like paying attention to word choice.Dan Murphy (talk) 18:35, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
The Ars Technica piece now contains an update (starting with the second sentence of the second paragraph copied below):
"It's wildly irresponsible for international organizations and businesses to assume their affiliates can ever operate independently of, or safely from, Saudi government control,” DAWN Executive Director Sarah Leah Whitson said in a statement.
DAWN and SMEX did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. (Update: Whitson told Ars that Wikimedia is "playing technical word games" in its statement and that "it's really important for Wikimedia to be transparent about what they have described as a conflict of interest among its editors." She said that Wikimedia should "provide more transparency about the 16 users that they banned" and "the safety precautions they're going to take to avoid further endangering Wikipedia editors in totalitarian states, because there's no denying that two of them are now languishing in Saudi prisons" and the problem goes "well beyond Saudi Arabia." Whitson urges Wikimedia to reconsider its global model of relying on Wikipedia editors based in totalitarian states, not just because it can endanger the editors, but also because Wikipedia "loses its credibility" when information edited in these states cannot be trusted.) Andreas JN466 20:18, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
Whitson does have a point. When an entire Wikipedia only has 26 administrators, any of them is ipso facto "high-ranking" – even if it is technically true that there are no admin ranks. And you can't write about "external parties" and claim that people are editing to promote those external parties' aims, as the WMF T&S team has done, without having had an idea who those parties are. The WMF decided it is best not to say. The correct expression for that is "studied ignorance." It's not going down well so far. Andreas JN466 20:28, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
  • This does indeed look like it might be related to the following passage in the mailing list statement: The roots of our December action stretch back over several years. We were initially contacted by outside experts who made us aware about concerns they had about Farsi Wikipedia. We can’t comment on that report right now, but it will be published by that organization soon. This report not only contributed to our August 23, 2021 modification of our non-disclosure agreement to make it harder for rights-holders to be coerced, but led to further evaluation of issues across MENA. The December bans were the culmination of those evaluations. (This is the NDA modification concerned.) Andreas JN466 20:02, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
  • Twitter account of one of the banned check-users of ar-wiki; account was linked to from his local u/p. @Jayen466:, can you machine-translate this "real account" of his ban? TrangaBellam (talk) 15:28, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
    I did manage to do just that. Given that the main content of the tweet is a graphic, I was stumped at first but then found a handy Arabic OCR service that offers free transcription online. Putting the result in Google Translate yields the following:
    A number of administrators and editors of other Arab groups participated in this discriminatory measure, which targeted the most prominent Gulf editors, by fabricating lies, fabricating malicious accusations, and submitting false testimonies to the Wikimedia Foundation, which was deceived by issuing this decision.
    The political inclinations of the decision-makers also affected its decision-making. Especially after the hate campaigns targeting the Gulf Arabs and the Saudis in particular, after the OPEC + decisions. The Foundation did not provide any answer about this procedure and deprived those affected of the right to defend themselves by classifying the decision as final and not subject to appeal. According to the available data, [they] use[d] the WikiArabia Conference in its sixth session, which was held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, between October 28 and 30, 2022, in completing this plot without the Emirati official authorities being aware of it; it is an exploitation of the good Emirati hospitality.
    An important part of the non-partisan Arab editors lost confidence in the Wikimedia Foundation, which showed its indifference to the development of Arabic digital content and its lack of respect for those who contributed over the years to the development of the project. I contributed to the Arabic Wikipedia over the years in creating more than 400,000 articles, which brought the project to more than a million articles, to be the first project among the languages of the Middle East, which is equivalent to a third of the Arabic Wikipedia articles today. The number of my contributions to the maintenance of the Arabic Wikipedia has reached more than 2 million contributions, equivalent to a third of the maintenance operations. If it were not for the blocking campaigns that were being run by some groups in the Arabic Wikipedia, the project would have brought to more than three million articles. Wikipedia is no longer a reliable and safe platform for volunteering. These unjustified measures taken by the Wikimedia Foundation have emphasized the need for Arab countries, especially the Gulf countries, to end their global Arab knowledge project, free from factional agendas and political whims that control Wikipedia projects.
    Jar Allah Muhammad
    * Administrator in the Arabic Wikipedia Andreas JN466 18:02, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
    Thanks, I had used Google Vision on the image for OCR but the product was nonsense. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:47, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
  • For what it's worth, two of the banned admins were bureaucrats and checkusers: [19], [20]. --Andreas JN466 20:15, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
  • Recent clarification from the WMF:

    Our investigation and these bans are not connected to the arrest of these two users.

    Further:

    Further, we imagine you are all aware that editors are volunteers, not paid by the Foundation, and that the Foundation does not have offices or staff in Saudi Arabia.

    Apologies if I have missed out on something but who claimed the editors to have been "paid by the Foundation"? The statements are increasingly exercises in elaborate obfuscation and constructs strawman defenses; WMF banned two of the six Checkusers in a community, and has the chutzpah of finding fault with DAWN's statement about "high-ranking admins"! TrangaBellam (talk) 06:47, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    Plus if a Wikipedia only has 26 admins, then any of the 26 is "high-ranking". I put together a Twitter thread this morning cataloguing a number of these issues that keep getting misreported or glossed over: [21] Have I missed any? Andreas JN466 13:17, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
    The "staff" reference is because of the Guardian headline: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/05/saudi-arabia-jails-two-wikipedia-staff-in-bid-to-control-content Andreas JN466 13:21, 8 January 2023 (UTC)


I think we should just have one big article* about the Saudi thing, as it's clearly the biggest story of the issue unless Jimmy Wales shoots the President on Monday morning. That is to say, take the stuff from ITM and the stuff from N&N and spin them into a special report. What sayeth ye? jp×g 09:17, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

*: Possibly two. Someone being imprisoned for thirty-seven years for posts is a big deal, and so is the alleged state infiltration, and I'm not sure to what extent these are the same thing -- is there any connection, or are they two stories that just broke at the same time? jp×g 09:17, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
Can use this photograph. TrangaBellam (talk) 10:00, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
Which is him? jp×g 10:03, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
Err, both are ex-admins and have been jailed. The one on the right (User:Ziad) for eight years and the one on the left (User:OsamaK) for thirty two years (not thirty seven). This is a particularly tragic photograph. TrangaBellam (talk) 10:13, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
@TrangaBellam: Brilliant find. Thank you!
@JPxG: Doing just one special report is fine by me (though if we have nothing else for News and notes by next weekend, we might as well use News and notes). At any rate, for now let's please leave the Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Next_issue/News and notes#Arabic Wikipedia community statement in place, as it is linked to in the Arabic Wikipedia to enable Arabic Wikipedians to check the translation. --Andreas JN466 13:26, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
CCing Pyb who wrote that summary and is generally well-informed ;)
Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:24, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for your work, this page and the Signpost are very useful for me. I maintain that kind of page because it's useful in our public policy work. And I'm worried that next years the French speaking Wikipedia might have the same problems that we discover in other part of the world. Pyb (talk) 09:45, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
Sorry, I'm not sure what "Khashoggi edit I mentioned" you are referring to? ☆ Bri (talk) 21:53, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
You mentioned the edit here. I just had a quick scan and couldn't spot it. Do you remember where you saw it? Andreas JN466 21:56, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
Ah, I got confused when you said "this month" I was thinking of the article under development. Anyway let me find the diff, I think I can. It was a bit buried in time. ☆ Bri (talk) 21:57, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
Sorry. I could have been clearer. Andreas JN466 21:59, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
I think it was this one, 5 October 2018 which I think was the day after Khashoggi went was reported missing. They had made the same edit earlier and were reverted, but this one stuck. Note that of the three citations added, one is www.spa.gov.sa and is offline so we can't easily evaluate it, but it appears to be official state media and probably shouldn't have been added in the first place. Of the remaining two, the NPR citation is bogus – it actually says that there is evidence "directly contradicting the Saudi government" but the edit leaves out this crucial fact. In other words, NPR mentioned the claim, but only to debunk it. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:11, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
Oh gosh; I remember that. He fought to have the official Saudi version in the lead. I hope I didn't make him feel too welcome, Huldra (talk) 23:38, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
Thanks. (The gov link worked just now. It was just a very brief statement, which they essentially quoted in full in the ref.) Andreas JN466 00:19, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
  • I think the question of which accounts were admins or crats is largely a distraction. Admins can delete pages and block people on a website. Checkusers can get the IP addresses of other editors and thereby dox them. I don't know whether the Saudis have sufficient monitoring of the internet within Saudi Arabia that they know who edits what on Wikipedia from within Saudi Arabia. But if an arabic government had control of a checkuser account on arabic Wikipedia they could dox any editor who edited on the arabic Wikipedia, or at least find out their IP address - wherever they are in the world. It might be a sensible move to restrict checkuser rights to editors in countries that respect human rights. ϢereSpielChequers 01:26, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
To your "I don't know whether the Saudis have sufficient monitoring of the internet within Saudi Arabia that they know who edits what on Wikipedia from within Saudi Arabia": you bet they do. The Saudis have access to the latest Israely spyware, which they use extensively against any critical sources. (And both the jailed Wikipedians had uploaded pictures of Saudi critics; more than enough to bring them to the attention of the authorities.) Huldra (talk) 23:43, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
  • @WereSpielChequers I think that WMF's Legal Team introduced this clause a few months ago; even if you are an editor in good standing, they can decline your request to sign the confidentality agreement on the basis of your country-of-residence and preclude access to CU. TrangaBellam (talk) 13:51, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
    Thanks Trangabellum, that's good news. However "can decline" is not the same as "will decline", and at least one of the recently blocked was a Checkuser. So either they were only phasing this in gently such as by declining new CUs, or something else - such as they are working though existing ones in ways such as this. ϢereSpielChequers 15:41, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
    • Hi all, esp @Jayen466, Bri, TrangaBellam, JPxG, and WereSpielChequers:. I've been investigating the story and haven't come up with anything more than what's here, so I won't be participating in the write-up. I really wouldn't know where to start. The problem is that there are no hard, solid facts to report, e.g. how exactly do we know that the two editors were arrested and sentenced? Dawn and a few of our editors have said that the believe they've been arrested, but in many stories that wouldn't be good enough. How do they know? Are there any reliable sources that say they were arrested (beyond "Dawn reports that people knowledgeable with the situation report ....") It's not that I don't believe that they've been imprisoned, or that we can't present "facts" such as so-and-so reported, but I'd like something solid to hang my hat on. I suppose that the WMF bans are solid, but they raise more questions than answers. We've got to report on this, can't ignore it, but where should we start?
I suppose I'd start with the first event we have anything on, which is the Iranian stories from about 2-3 years ago. So it is very possible that the WMF got complaints about the Iranian chapter and started their investigation there. I should give a mea culpa here. I knew about those 2 stories a couple of years ago but couldn't figure out what to do with them. This was about the time we had a big story about on the Croation Wikipedia. IIRC one of the stories was from Voice of America and the other was just following up on the first story. They purport to show that the Iranian chapter was holding joint public session(s) with Iranian secret services. But how to check this out? Also motivation seems key here: were they forced to hold those sessions? Or maybe they were just trying to hold off worse consequenses? Or maybe the chapter organizers were gov't employees? No matter what I wrote it would have serious credibility problems on a very serious matter. I'll suggest we include a couple of paragraphs on this while letting our readers know how little we actually know about it. The same for every other "fact" we report. I wouldn't use this article as a platform to smash Trust & Safety - they're getting it from both sides. Dawn wants the WMF to let everybody know the dangers of editing Wikipedia if you edit from a couple of countries, and to protect our editors. I really can't disagree with that. Most Saudi/Arab editors want the WMF to stay out of their business. In most cases, I'd agree with this. But if somebody has been thrown in jail for 32 years for editing Wikipedia, I'd pretty much have to disagree. I'll leave it to you folks. Smallbones(smalltalk) 19:28, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
I agree with almost everything that you wrote. I have some thoughts; will string them together in a while. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:40, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
Please have a look at the draft at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Next_issue/Special_report
The Farsi stories are mentioned about halfway down. Andreas JN466 20:09, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
As for the Wikimedians' imprisonment, it never occurred to me to doubt that. Our records show that both stopped contributing abruptly in July/August 2020. Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN's Executive Director, ran Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa Division for over fifteen years. Their press release said they conducted interviews with "sources close to Wikipedia and the imprisoned administrators." (Not sure how to parse that. It may mean that they (1) interviewed sources close to WP and (2) interviewed the imprisoned administrators or it may mean that they interviewed (1) sources close to WP and (2) sources close to the imprisoned administrators.) Osama's increased jail sentence was also reported here by ALQST, another human rights org (which didn't mention his Wikimedia activity but just called him a "writer, translator and computer programmer"). Someone on Facebook said they had located and read the charges, which included Wikipedia editing (unfortunately they haven't gotten back to me about where they read the charges). :/ I'm still researching and hope to have more tomorrow. Andreas JN466 23:09, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
@WereSpielChequers: What they're saying – and their letter to the Arabic community (translated here) actually refers to that – is that The Foundation shall not grant Foundation volunteer NDA recognition to applicant(s) for volunteer roles if the applicants live in jurisdictions that block(ed) access to Wikimedia projects AND there is reason to believe that their domicile is known to others than the individual applicant(s) and the Foundation. Exemptions may be granted in individual cases following a request for review by the Legal department. Granting such NDAs would put the applicant(s) as well as other volunteers relying on the Foundation’s platform at undue risk. All NDA-based access rights granted to users fulfilling both criteria in the proposed adjustment shall be revoked at the point of policy adjustment. I think giving someone access as long as their domicile is not "known to others than the individual applicant(s) and the Foundation" is still a heck of a risk when measured against a jail sentence of several decades. People get doxxed all the time. (Saudi Arabia has blocked Wikipedia in the past, notably back in 2006.) Andreas JN466 22:37, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
People do get doxxed all the time, but governments doing it to jail people are a very different thing than we are used to where I'm from. I'm not comfortable that the WMF have got the right thresholds here, however I'm not sure what the right answer should be other than not published in a way that allows dictatorships to know what the defences are against them. There's the further issue that quite a few countries are one coup or election away from falling into dictatorial hands, and not everyone realises before the country they live in becomes a dictatorship. When it comes to sensitive topics, more editing by expats may be the solution. ϢereSpielChequers 23:44, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
I agree. Nobody knowing where you live today is not a guarantee that nobody will know in five years' time. The longer people edit, the more they give away; in their cases, identification was trivial, given we had photos of them. Have you read al-Ha'ir Prison? Time in that prison is what they were sentenced to, according to DAWN. It's a maximum security facility. --Andreas JN466 00:21, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
@Bri: The "recent trend" phrasing is based on this paragraph: Saudi Arabia has seen a dramatic increase in extreme prison sentences against political activists and human rights defenders following President Biden's meeting with MBS in Jeddah last July. On August 8, the Specialized Criminal Court sentenced Salma al-Shehab, a mother of two and Ph.D. student at Leeds University, to 34 years in prison and a 43-year travel ban for her use of social media. The next day, the court sentenced Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani, a 49-year-old mother of five, to 45 years in prison and a 45-year travel ban for tweeting. The same month, the court sentenced Abdulilah al-Huwaiti to 50 years in prison and a 50-year travel ban for publicly supporting his family's refusal to be forcibly evicted from their home to make way for NEOM construction. It also sentenced Osama Khaled, a writer, translator, and computer programmer, to 32 years in prison, after a lower court sentenced Khaled to five years in prison on allegations related to his freedom of expression. Saudi authorities have already detained Khaled since 2020. "There's no mistaking the fact that President Biden's fist-bump with MBS has ushered in an even more extreme level of oppression and human rights violations in Saudi Arabia," Alaoudh said. "The families of al-Shehab, al-Qahtani, al-Huwaiti, Khaled, and others will take little solace in the fact that President Biden promised to confront MBS on human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia." I thought "recent trend" is an acceptable paraphrase here. (The source is linked in the following sentence.) Hope that's okay. Andreas JN466 17:05, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
As long as the article says "according to DAWN..." or some such. We're not just going to uncritically echo their conclusions about Saudi governance. Smallbones' concerns are right, we have to distance ourselves a bit from this and take care that the facts and opinions are labeled as such. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:14, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
Now attributed to human rights org ALQST, citing their piece "Extreme jail terms in Saudi Arabia signal new phase of repression and new low for human rights" from last September. Middle East Eye carried a similar report, again mentioning Osama as an example. Just preceding the ALQST report was this report in the Middle East Monitor.
I am quoting Whitson at the end of the piece; I was on the phone with her for an hour earlier today. She said publicity might conceivably have done them harm at the time of the trial, but not now, when they have already served 2.5 years. Andreas JN466 18:14, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Wikimedia Medicine statement

From meta:Wikimedia Medicine -

Khalid organized this Wikipedia medical training and editing event at King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences in 2015

Wikimedia Medicine appreciates the medical editing which Osama Khalid and Ziyad Alsufyani contributed to Wikipedia. They are both Wikimedia editors in good standing who have organized medical editing, training of physicians to edit Wikipedia's medical topics, and good community discussions about improving Wikipedia's coverage of medical topics for Arabic language. The arrest is shocking to us and beyond our understanding. We know nothing about this except that these two are friendly Wikipedia editors who have been highly engaged in our Wikimedia community activities.

Here is some more context:

  • Osama has attended multiple Wikimania events in person and joined the medical meetups there.
  • There is such a thing as "Wikimedia editor culture". Wikimedians can recognize each other, share values, and have passions about the same things. Just like no one can fake any complex fan culture like opera or sports or whatever, Osama came to wiki events because they were enthusiastic about sharing general medical information in Wikipedia. He is a proper Wikipedian.
  • Multiple people in Wikimedia Medicine know Osama. Wikimania includes social events and Osama was personally open in talking about themselves. The above statement is a reaction from an organization but individuals could say more.
  • Osama was particularly known in the wiki medicine editing community as an organizer for the Translation task force, and moving Wikipedia medical articles from English to Arabic as well as the reverse when it made sense.
  • I am a Signpost editor and a Wikimedia Medicine member. I am relying this information to get out some wiki community context, but could someone else please include this information in this article? I want to keep some distance from writing this because I am too close to the subject.
  • Osama's wiki account is about 15 years old and Ziyad's is 13 years old. Osama engaged much more in English language activity than Ziyad.

Bluerasberry (talk) 12:14, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Bluerasberry. I was just getting round to fleshing out their contributions history. This will do perfectly.
@JPxG:: I will break this out of News and notes into a Special report now. We have the UCOC vote in N&n, which shouldn't be buried under this. Andreas JN466 18:54, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
@Bluerasberry: m:Wikimedia Medicine redirects to m:Wiki Project Med. Should the quote above be presented as an official statement from the Wiki Project Med Foundation? Andreas JN466 19:34, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
@Jayen466: Yes confirmed cleared as statement by Wiki Project Med Foundation by email. Bluerasberry (talk) 21:48, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
Great, thank you. Andreas JN466 21:51, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

My contributions for this issue

In the course of fixing the headers on back-isse articles (and making Module:Signpost work properly) I have written a relatively thorough history of 2006's Signpost content, in addition to the summaries I wrote for 2005. I think I'm gonna put this in "from the archives" -- it will need some copyediting, but I think it might make for a nice series.

Also, if we want to fit in an essay, we have Wikipedia:Analysis_of_citation_issues_for_date_and_year_articles, which I wrote a couple years ago and never posted anywhere. It is not very exciting, but it is thorough.

I don't know what I want to do for the deletion report and arb report; these will take a shitload of work if done to the normal standards (because of how much catching-up has to be done) so I may just give a minimal overview. jp×g 07:45, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

I'd say we accept that some things are still once a month and get them for next issue. I'll do the 5, 10, and 15 year archive dive next issue Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 21:21, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Concept, 1 Jan

I'm going to reluctantly suggest we spike Concept. I can't get the text to match the pages that explain how it's meant to work. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 07:23, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't have very high hopes for this submission, despite valiant efforts at copyediting: to be honest, it doesn't really make sense to me. I say this as someone who just spent multiple days writing and running a series of scripts that query the Wikimedia pageview API endpoint for Signpost view counts; in practice data is obtained from something like https://wikimedia.org/api/rest_v1/metrics/pageviews/per-article/en.wikipedia/all-access/all-agents/Poop/daily/2019080800/2019081000 and I'm not sure what circumstances require you to use the actual pageview dump files. Not to say that there isn't any utility for compressing them, but it just seems to me like something of extremely narrow interest to begin with, and it would be better suited to a suggestion on a technical mailing list than a Signpost article. jp×g 08:53, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Strategy for the half-issue

For In the Media, News and Notes, and such, I'd suggest we just publish whatever's done and move anything not done to the second issue. Any objections? Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 00:42, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm probably going to say "no objections" but are you suggesting that ITM and NAN be frozen as they are now? Or maybe frozen at the usual writing deadline, which I believe now is this coming Saturday? ☆ Bri (talk) 02:19, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
Well, maybe if nothing else happens in the next week. If some major ruckus goes down tomorrow I think we've got enough time to write something. jp×g 05:00, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
Well, nothing says we can't just move an unfinished section to a holding page based on what we have time for. As long as we leave time for copyediting. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 05:24, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
By the way I think this should be communicated to the readers as a "trial" of a biweekly publishing cadence. We don't know yet if we have the editing/writing resources to make it a permanent change. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:29, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
Honestly, I hope it keeps up: It makes Featured content so much easier if it's smaller. Also far more readable. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 20:12, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
I'll write a "from the editeurs". jp×g 22:56, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
It's also useful this month in that we can tell people about the UCoC vote. Announced by the WMF on Jan 4, voting to open Jan 17. On a monthly publication schedule, the vote would have been practically over before we would have been able to write about it. Andreas JN466 21:07, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

@HaeB: I'm assuming that Recent research will go at the end-of-month issue? ☆ Bri (talk) 17:08, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day

We are publishing on WP:Wikipedia Day, maybe worth a blurb somewhere. ☆ Bri (talk) 14:37, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

I threw it into a News and notes brief bullet. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:08, 13 January 2023 (UTC)

More stuff (for January Part II)

The backlog of suggestions has gotten too long to address them in the normal way, so I am just going to start dredging crap out of the archive and putting it out on the main submission page. There was a lot of stuff that didn't get looked at -- more eyes are welcomed over there. I think there is a substantial amount of material -- some of which is no longer timely, but some of which could easily fill a couple issues. jp×g 08:45, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

A few of these are basically submissions (a paragraph or two) that can be easily copyedited into either this issue or the next one, I'm putting those ones into Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next next issue/Grab bag. jp×g 09:33, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

Chats (get in here) (yes, this means you)

Looking through some old archives in the course of my spelunking to clean up our namespace and fill out WP:POST/T, I have been finding all sorts of interesting things: abandoned templates, abandoned drafts, abandoned projects, and abandoned layouts. I even found Pete Forsyth's 2016 attempt to gather together a technical manual to running the Signpost where he got about as far as I did and then stopped. But one of the most interesting things I found is what looks like the fossil remains of ancient Signposters' communication protocols: they used Slack all the darn time.

It has definitely occurred to me a few times that having some method of instant communication would be vastly beneficial for writing and editing -- for example, the hours before publication tend to be a gigantic mess because of the asynchronous nature of Wikipedia talk page. And even prior to the publication rush itself, it's often difficult to have quick communication (to say nothing of the dynamic between the various Signpost talk pages, email addresses, user talk pages and...)

Anyway, Slack is kind of a pain in the ass -- it was really hot stuff half a decade ago, but nowadays, I don't know many people who use it except begrudgingly and for work. However, there are somewhat superior options nowadays: Discord seems to be the prevailing one, and especially the prevailing one here (we already have a gigantic one for Wikimedia projects, and there are others for UV, SWViewer, WLDC, WMUSC, WMNYC, WMSA, WPTC, and NPP).

In fact, EpicPupper and I had planned to set up a Discord guild for the Signpost a few months ago, but never really got around to it. It is one of those things which I have left lying around for a little too long, but I am trying to work through the backlog right now, so I think it is probably time that I put up the invite and start getting people on. The invite link is zW9JVvVwFR or at the button below (I've set it up not to expire, but if a bunch of assholes show up and start posting hello.jpg, we can turn it off).

For anyone over the age of 25: there is a good deal of information at WP:DISCORD on how to install the goofy zoomer app (it is like IRC, except much better in a user interface sense, and much shittier in an ideological sense). I'm aware that this is some goofy zoomer app, but it is better than nothing, and besides, we should get used to zoomer stuff if we are going to publish every Fortnite ;^)

[zW9JVvVwFR Invite link]

jp×g 09:34, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm very conflicted on this. On the one hand I want creating the newsletter to be less arduous and, when appropriate, less visible to people who aren't part of the staff. On the other hand, I don't want it to turn into another job (I already have a job that uses a work queue). I guess my question would be, if we adopted Slack, what would our process look like, say June this year. What's the problem we're trying to solve and how do we avoid the situation Bluerasberry talked about the last time something like this came up: turning the volunteer staff into unpaid professionals?
Just to add, part of why I'm reticent of even using Discord is, I'm already responsible for monitoring about 6 realtime streams, including my WP watchlist/talkpage, and don't really relish adding another stream to the list. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:59, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
I have some different reasons, but agree with Bri. Smallbones(smalltalk) 18:21, 15 January 2023 (UTC)
I think a helpful expectation might be that Discord is purely optional/with no expectation of responding to something. It could decrease the number of light-hearted feedback on wiki, while allowing a quick feedback loop in discord, allowing pings on wiki to be more focused. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 19:37, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

From the Archives, 15 Jan

Really sorry this is so late getting done. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 8.3% of all FPs. Currently celebrating his 600th FP! 20:55, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

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