Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost
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Wikipedia admins jailed in Saudi ArabiaEdit
[1] Noting this. 2601:648:8200:990:0:0:0:B9C2 (talk) 22:52, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
- Thank you for the tip. I've started an item at the next issue's In the media for followup. ☆ Bri (talk) 23:25, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
- Here is another article: [2]. I realize now, this is the wrong place to post the links, but we're already here, so ok. 2601:648:8200:990:0:0:0:B9C2 (talk) 23:07, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
Readability on mobileEdit
Hi. Has anyone checked the view of Signpost on mobile (via the Wikipedia app)? For example, I only see the comments section on Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2023-01-01/In the media, while the original Signpost text is not visible. ---TadejM my talk 06:07, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
Module improvementsEdit
- Moved from Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom:
Per Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Technical, the last few days I have been working on a set of scripts that automate (and augment) the indices at Module:Signpost. This involved adding a few hundred articles to indices from past years, eliminating a few hundred unnecessary redirects from our article space, and tonight, the task of integrating about 150 separate archive categories into module-based tags (including some 4,201 edits to clear the cats off Signpost articles). Christ almighty. There is still a lot more stuff that needs to be done, but here is what we have so far:
- Since all articles are tagged by department and subject (not quite all of them, but a few thousand more than previously) this means that it will be possible to use the module for automatic series sidebars, as was intended with the (evidently long since abandoned) 2015 attempt to get {{Signpost series}} into common use
- This means that we will not have to find someone to dick around with stuff like Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Series/RfA reform every time we publish another article in the series, as happened last January: we can just use something to automatically show the most recent 6 or 7, and not have it look like shit because nothing is tagged. This can, and probably should, be done for most of our articles.
- Comment sections (which I've been putting up for the last few issues) will no longer depend on someone deciding to manually tag each article to work properly; it's a task that User:WegweiserBot can do immediately after publication. I think that with this change, it'll be acceptable to make them more public-facing (which will make it easier for readers to participate).
- Pageview counts can be obtained automatically, for as many articles as we want (going back to 2015).
- We can also get straightforward numbers for these, they no longer need to consist of multiple screenfuls of shitty glitched-out graphs from {{Graph:PageViews}}.
- This isn't anywhere near ready for prime time, but it might be possible to use the module to generate issue pages, so that, for example, we can have header images without spending four solid hours copy-pasting image links into Wikipedia:Signpost.
- Overall, I want to continue to do streamlining things like this: having 150 obsolete categories with 4,000 pages in them that duplicate other functionality and haven't been updated in 8 years is not just unsightly, it's an impassable swamp for anyone who wants to read or contribute... the less of a pain in the ass it is to interact with the Signpost, the more it will flourish... I think...
Anyway, while doing this I've been ignoring the submissions and suggestions pages, so I'm going to go look at those now.
jp×g 08:12, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
- End of moved part
Do enwiki rules apply to articles?Edit
Because according to that, yes. Dušan Kreheľ (talk) 18:40, 8 January 2023 (UTC)
Historical analysis, againEdit
Per Wikipedia_talk:Wikipedia_Signpost/Archive_14#Historical_analysis_(some_more), with a somewhat updated Quarry SQL.
| Year | Articles | Total size | Avg size |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | 415 | 1726350 | 4159.8 |
| 2006 | 433 | 2348397 | 5423.5 |
| 2007 | 435 | 2071407 | 4761.8 |
| 2008 | 400 | 1886545 | 4716.3 |
| 2009 | 408 | 2601668 | 6376.6 |
| 2010 | 359 | 2973372 | 8282.3 |
| 2011 | 360 | 3763624 | 10454.5 |
| 2012 | 348 | 3855146 | 11078.0 |
| 2013 | 321 | 3501398 | 10907.7 |
| 2014 | 281 | 3267995 | 11629.8 |
| 2015 | 374 | 4632665 | 12386.8 |
| 2016 | 228 | 2636519 | 11563.6 |
| 2017 | 117 | 1770827 | 15135.2 |
| 2018 | 173 | 2152207 | 12440.5 |
| 2019 | 154 | 1976029 | 12831.3 |
| 2020 | 164 | 2508435 | 15295.3 |
| 2021 | 119 | 1698965 | 14277.0 |
| 2022 | 193 | 2540542 | 13163.4 |
| 2023 | 12 | 161824 | 13485.3 |
jp×g 06:43, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
And a table of the top 25 most viewed articles (7 days after publication):
Chats (get in here) (yes, this means you)Edit
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 https://discord.gg/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 ;^)
jp×g 09:35, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
- The thing about archaeology is that the people who made the fossils are usually long-dead. ;-) Instant messaging for the Signpost goes back a lot farther than that! From 2012–2014ish, coordinating each week's news and notes section involved Skype for instant messaging + Google Docs for writing. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:36, 14 January 2023 (UTC)