Please propose Signpost stories you want to write (or have already begun writing). Submitted stories are published subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief, JPxG. We value the involvement of Wikipedians, and appreciate your submissions. If you have ideas or questions that don't fit neatly into this framework, don't hesitate to address us on our user talk pages, by email, or as a last resort, on the general Signpost talk page.
The Signpost's content guidelines may be useful to aspiring writers. We encourage you to contact us early in the process of developing a story. Different writers have varying levels of interest in editorial input, and we pride ourselves on finding the right balance with each writer; but in most cases, a brief discussion early on can help all parties shape our expectations, and can help produce a strong finished piece. We aim to support Wikimedians wishing to share news with their peers, and look forward to working with you.
If we allow AI-generated Wikipedia articles we'll increase the digital knowledge divide
Discussion:AI slop is flooding the internet, and it is harder and harder to find reliable information. The digital divide of the future will be between people who can afford to pay for high quality, fact-checked content, and people who only have access to cheap, AI-generated texts full of hallucinations, promotional content and scams. In this world, the Wikipedia must remain a reliable and trustworthy source that is free to all users. To stay reliable, the Wikipedia has to keep relying on human editing, because LLMs are not reliable and they are not accountable for the words they generate. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2026-01-15/Special report argues that using LLMs will help Wikipedia serve the Global South better. I disagree - to use LLMs means we will lower quality to the extent that the Wikipedia will lose its role as a reliable encyclopedia accessible to anyone. I'm both a Wikipedia editor and a professor doing research on LLMs and their cultural effect so would like to write something about this if it seems suitable for the Signpost. Lijil (talk) 20:33, 18 January 2026 (UTC)reply
@Lijil: Thanks for your submission. Yes, it seems that for the foreseeable future, Signpost readers want and will react to perspectives on AI.
Thank you so much for making this submission. If you drafted anything, then I think you would be the first person with professional expert insight into this, and I would be delighted to help you get something to reviewers. This is a standing offer. Our next issue is in 10 days, but we are always publishing, so take the time that you want.
I apologize for the delay in getting back to you but I think just now, we have cleared our submissions backlog, and you have our editorial attention now.
I appreciate your strong opinions. Feel free to take this in the direction you like, whether a soap box for making bold claims, or reacting to anything else, as long or as short of a piece as you like. I think it would mean a lot to readers to get any sort of input from a person who edits Wikipedia, but who also has research insight into the broad effects of LLMs. Thanks for considering and let me know how I or the other editors can support you. Feel free to start drafting. Bluerasberry (talk)20:38, 17 March 2026 (UTC)reply
Great, thank you! I'll try to draft something in the next few days - not sure I can get anything ready soon enough for the next issue but definitely want to do this. What is the ideal word count? Lijil (talk) 07:47, 18 March 2026 (UTC)reply
@Lijil: 1000 words is a good length for an op-ed. We have plenty of shorter and longer submissions, but for this audience, it is reasonable to expect people to read submissions of that length. Bluerasberry (talk)14:13, 18 March 2026 (UTC)reply
Discussion: I don't have a page to show for this yet, since it's mostly an idea that I'd like feedback on before starting to write (apologies if this is in the wrong place): I had an idea of writing a short report on how NYT Games (like the crosswords, Wordle, and Connections) drive Wikipedia article views. For example, when myrrh was the Wordle answer on 19 December 2025, the pageviews report shows a massive spike due to a decent amount of people being unfamiliar with the word. I like looking at statistics and I play NYT Games a lot, so I'd enjoy writing it, but I don't know if people would enjoy reading it, so I'd like feedback before committing to writing. (It's possible it could focus on other platforms as well as NYT Games, to avoid seeming promotional, but I'm not familiar with others and NYT Games is the most popular by far afaik.) Suntooooth, it/he (talk | contribs) 20:30, 5 February 2026 (UTC)reply
@Suntooooth: Sure, we can find a way to publish that. This is a secret so do not tell anyone, but Signpost editor Bri has a new Signpost crossword game in development at User:Bri/Signpost. If you can get a draft of something going, then your story and the presentation of this new Signpost crossword could coincide. Also, if you have any interest in being a contributing editor for Signpost crossword Wikipedia clues, then I think there is an opening for a crossword fan.
@Suntooooth: You are still welcome to make a submission on this topic. There is no rush, and this is a standing offer. We accept modest submissions of a few paragraphs and 1-2 pics from Commons. Your topic is interesting and fits, so please draft if you like. Bluerasberry (talk)15:18, 21 February 2026 (UTC)reply
Thanks for the reminder - I'd love to be working on it, but IRL factors mean it might take a while. I'm most likely to get it done for the issue after next, but we'll see - could be sooner, could be later. Suntooooth, it/he (talk | contribs) 17:21, 21 February 2026 (UTC)reply
@BlueRockThrush: The next issue is in 2-4 weeks. I put a template around your article. Can you add images, fill in the header template, and give a go at making your text fit this format? I hope that doing this will not take you more than 30 minutes, but if it does, then ping me and I will help with that. Following that, I will stage it for review by other editors.
Thanks for submitting. If you can, then can you solicit your own pre-review from any Wikimedian you know or from a public forum? It helps to get review especially on community issues before this arrives to the Signpost's own editorial team. Thanks. Bluerasberry (talk)15:58, 13 July 2026 (UTC)reply
@Bluerasberry: I've done what I've been able to figure out. I can't get rid of the Canadian thing and the very top item for title, that displays as "... has no title defined." I can't figure that one out either. If you could fix those two things, we'd be on the right path. Thanks for helping. I don't have any wiki friends, so I've asked Risker, the person in the signpost page just above me, to look at it. BlueRockThrush (talk) 22:30, 13 July 2026 (UTC)reply
Partly done: I have changed the title, it is throwing an error, but that is because the tile is the same as the name of the subpage which should be fixed once this article is staged. I think this could make a great opinion piece (: Mitchsavl (talk) 10:11, 14 July 2026 (UTC)reply
Risker said she doesn't have time to do it. She did say it's a good article for SignPost, see her talk page. I've now asked Wehwalt because I saw an FA of his.BlueRockThrush (talk) 15:42, 14 July 2026 (UTC)reply
Having read this submission, I would oppose publication in its current state. The Signpost has published on this topic multiple times in the past 6 months ([1], [2]). This new piece doesn't really say anything new, and it's not in dialogue with these prior pieces and their arguments, nor with the additional comments and criticism raised in response to these pieces in the comments section. signed, Rosguilltalk16:20, 14 July 2026 (UTC)reply
I recommend you not bring section 230 into the discussion unless you really know what you are talking about. I am pretty sure you are misleading the reader with the way you present it. Czarking0 (talk) 20:32, 11 September 2026 (UTC)reply
2026 Summer Archives and Open Knowledge Faculty Fellowships Announced
Discussion: This coverage is about the 2026 Summer Archives and Open Knowledge Faculty Fellowship which is supporting 4 full-time teaching faculty members to expand the use Wikimedia platforms at CUNY in the Fall 2026 semester, part of the CUNY Newmark Wikimedian-in-Residence program. Not sure what column this fits in. Should it be included in Recent research? Or Community view? Or somewhere else? -Wil540 art (talk) 03:14, 17 July 2026 (UTC)reply
It should not be in Recent research, though Community view could suit. Perhaps The Signpost could use a dedicated column for things like this, I would describe this as a Community program, as far as I am aware, there is nothing that would prevent the creation of a new column, though sticking with the more common ones is probably preferable. Mitchsavl (talk) 06:14, 23 July 2026 (UTC)reply
@Mitchsavl Thank you for the suggestion. I'm open to creating a Community program column or using Community view. There are lots of Wiki-activities I could report on that I think readers would be interested to learn about. @Bri, @Bluerasberry, @jpxg, @Smallbones, any thoughts here on the appropriate column or creating a new one? - Wil540 art (talk) 15:32, 23 July 2026 (UTC)reply
Editorially, can I ask that you make an attempt to call out some projects associated with fandoms? WP:Video games is one of the most popular WikiProjects, for example, and commons:Category:Fandom leads to lots of content. Tell me briefly about connections to existing wiki-fandom connections, and confirm to me that you have looked for popular fandom-development projects in Wikimedia projects and tried to make connections in this article.
Hello @Bluerasberry, Nope, I didn't use LLM to write the base article or article itself! though I got really confused when you asked me that, cause why would you ask that, when I read after writing it for the first time, I thought it was so good! so I went to re-read my article (and also to do your suggestion!) and after reading some.. I was like holy shit, this looks so sterotypical, holy forking shirt balls!, which after sitting in my living room and considering my life, who I am, and everything about myself up to that point; the reason I didn't notice this at first was probably what they say about You would see mona lisa in your first try!..welp. I assume why it looked like that was beacuse I used phrases like "grab them from their ankles and run-a-marathon with it!" mixed as my somewhat pathetic try to fix grammar by and 2. how disconnected the article was. You're right, this article is too surface leveled, it looks like what would came out if you asked a bot to write the most basic concept of this. I edited to make it look better, I still keep my fun phrases (cause I'd rather die than remove them), I also used a mix of CSS and HTML which after looking a while, I somewhat realized "hey mate! this ain't the knuckleist" so I just removed it mostly.
For the second and other suggestion, thanks a lot' mate! I kind of feel a bit consious since looking back.. this article was really bad..how did I even submit it like this?
About your editorial suggestion
Hello, to improve the article I added context and called out several fandom project as you said, hopefully; that being said, this article on its own meant to provide a starter look on our reletionship with the fandoms, so it still may be a bit surface level. Let me know how it looks now! I have also did grammar corrections cause looks like copyedit wasn't great either and article had some grammatical errors. Thank you. :) 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝕻𝖊𝖓𝖈𝖎𝖑 𝕿𝖎𝖒𝖊𝖘 (talk) 14:27, 25 August 2026 (UTC)reply
@CatPencil: You are doing great! Thanks for the submission. I expect to recommend this to other editors for review. Thanks also for making the updates that I requested. I have some more editorial requests before I bring this to the newsroom. It is my intent that my requests are not labor intensive, and I hope you can complete them in about 30 minutes. If what I request seems complicated, then come back to me, because I want to make this submission easy.
Can you please add an introduction which explains what a fandom is and how it relates to Wikipedia? Many Signpost readers are not Wikipedians themselves, so we need stories like this one to be relevant long term and to mixed audiences. Can you clarify your thesis in the introduction? I believe that your thesis is something like "members of fandoms have influence in society, and also there are many fans who edit Wikipedia, and also the Wikipedia articles on fandom content are very high traffic. Because this is such a high traffic, high engagement cultural category in Wikipedia, we should all be aware it exists and support the editors and readers who go there." Use your own words and clarify what you have to say, but please include the main point somewhere in the intro. There are some readers who only read intros, and I want them to get the point.
Related to the clarification in the intro, please look through the article and try to keep it globalized, multicultural, and multigenerational. Fandom Internet culture is fairly new (25 years or so) and a bit different from TV / scifi previous fandoms. Make wikilinks or parenthetical references as needed.
Give another round of copyediting and capitalization. The other editors will process it too, but check it again after other changes.
Hey @Bluerasberry, very sorry for my late reply as I was outside when you sent this out; I did as you pleased so!
I have looked through and added some projects, and places from french, spanish wikipedia, and globalized the language of the article, for this topic which I would love to dive deeper in a next piece, but like I said, this is a starter article for the topic so in my personal view, this is a well-rounded look to it, I would love to go deeper in another part, or continuation of this article, or the topic itself.
To add* I somewhat already have an idea for my next piece if this was to be actually published, which would be the effect of fandoms in global protests, wikipedia, etc. Or something along that line, hopefully you get where I'm coming from. 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝕻𝖊𝖓𝖈𝖎𝖑 𝕿𝖎𝖒𝖊𝖘 (talk) 19:43, 26 August 2026 (UTC)reply
@CatPencil: Thanks, I have it staged for other editors to review. Also - sorry about miscommunication about the next deadline. We just published an issue early, so the deadline which says publication is tomorrow is inaccurate. The next issue will come out in 2-4 weeks, and does not have a date yet. The other editors will review this and make a decision. This piece has my support to advance. I appreciate all the editorial changes you made, as they were what I imagined and I think they make the piece more accessible. Bluerasberry (talk)20:07, 26 August 2026 (UTC)reply
@CatPencil: I advocate for the publication of your submissions but I do not typically have insight into other parts of the editorial process. I am first reviewer, not last reviewer. I can say that with our typical editorial capacity, we only run one submission per person per issue. I think you may have gotten comments from multiple editors with your submissions. My read on both stories is that either could run, but I think you have comments and requests about each one. I am writing here to encourage you to go through the editorial process of responding to the reviewers. If I can help then ping me. If you get stuck in the review process then ping me and I can get more clear feedback, but please do try to talk with the reviewers yourself if they already gave you feedback. Bluerasberry (talk)19:29, 18 September 2026 (UTC)reply
Heyo @Bluerasberry, sorry for being a bit late, I've already started some changes for the other opinion post which will be the one that going to get published, we decided that other one, fandom one will be post pone until I can work on it. I'm trying to listen and do my best, I still lack a lot but hopefully in the end of my efforts I can publish something nice here. I'm willing to learn and give efforts so eh, might take some time, few rejections but I'm determined, thanks a lot again. 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝕻𝖊𝖓𝖈𝖎𝖑 𝕿𝖎𝖒𝖊𝖘 (talk) 22:20, 18 September 2026 (UTC)reply
@CatPencil - This is an interesting opinion piece of a worthy topic. IMO, it fits in the Opinion column. I have a couple notes on the article; mainly, I think you should avoid speaking on behalf of the Signpost and make your declarations from a first person perspective. I'm referring to the first sentence and the third to last sentence. Also, I would include more links to the Reliable sources Noticeboard discussions and earlier in the article. It might also be interesting to bring up discussions on the Talk:CNN and Talk:CBS pages. Overall, very well done and thanks for submitting this to the SP.
Hey @Wil540 art, Thanks for the reply, so here's editorial changes you asked; I have switched nouns, I however, did not added talk pages of CNN and CBS, beacuse there was nothing interesting to put there. About the Noticeboard discussions, I have put one in the third section, the one says Is CBS reliable?. I did not put CNN to spotlight since it's not completely taken by paramount yet, and CBS is meant to be on the spotlight, as an tell-tale of what could happen to CNN after deal. 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕮𝖆𝖙𝕻𝖊𝖓𝖈𝖎𝖑 𝕿𝖎𝖒𝖊𝖘 (talk) 16:35, 11 September 2026 (UTC)reply
This is interesting and potentially useful in streamlining some processes. I think it would be worth talking about the downsides, and mentioning Wikipedia's AI policies, and providing some guidance on how to keep the use of these tools within said policy boundaries. It would also be worth bringing up source reliability,, and making sure readers understand the difference between what Wikipedia considers reliable and what AI models consider reliable. Mitchsavl (talk) 04:35, 30 September 2026 (UTC)reply
I think after you have implemented those suggestions, this article will need to be discussed wth other Signpost editors before it can be published. Mitchsavl (talk) 04:46, 30 September 2026 (UTC)reply
OK I added a section on Wikipedia AI policy and mentioned source reliability. The review was full of downsides, I tried to include positives for these pioneering tools. These tools don't encroach upon WP:EPAI as far as I can well, so I don't know what to say about keeping them with in those boundaries. I mentioned that these tools don't report on source reliability. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:26, 30 September 2026 (UTC)reply
Discussion: I conceptualised this piece some time ago. I intend to bring together pieces of advice from various users with whom I've collaborated and my own realisations over time. After all, wisdom takes time to develop but knowledge can be shared. MSincccc (talk) 16:02, 26 September 2026 (UTC)reply
WikiProject report for WikiProject Tree of Life concept
Discussion: This piece would be a hypothetical report of how projects such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life handle the writing of articles pertaining to species, particularly those of newly discovered species, and what the general process is for creating and developing these articles. This would potentially tie into the recent discovery of the highly-publicized Tilcayo and how that was adapted into a Wikipedia article.
This is my first submission for the Signpost, so I'm admittedly a bit uncertain if I'm doing this right or if there's even something to report here within the Signpost's usual realm of coverage at all. I would appreciate comments on this, including those telling me I'm in the wrong place if I am. This hypothetical concept would involve asking questions to those involved with the WikiProject, as well as any particularly relevant editors to the Project or this story's concept. Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 04:10, 29 September 2026 (UTC)reply
This sounds like a nice topic, and would make a great article. Are you planning on writing the article yourself, or is this a suggestion for what The Signpost should write about. If you are planning on writing the article yourself, follow the instructions, and if this a suggestion, it would be better to post on the suggestions page. Mitchsavl (talk) 04:30, 30 September 2026 (UTC)reply
@Mitchsavl I intend to write this myself. I followed the link in the above "instructions" hyperlink which led me to submitting here, so I'm not certain if I've missed a step in that regard since I assumed getting the go ahead would be the next part of the approval process. I wanted to make sure I had approval before I started pursuing this, since I would likely need to get comments from active editors and I didn't want to do that if I didn't have approval first. Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 04:43, 30 September 2026 (UTC)reply
You are always welcome to write a piece, which can be discussed and approved once it has been written. Once you have written a draft, leave a message here and I or another editor will review it and give feedback, and once that is done, the article can be queued for final approval by JPxG and published. Mitchsavl (talk) 04:57, 30 September 2026 (UTC)reply
@Mitchsavl would there still be time to consider this entry for next issue? I should have some time in the coming weeks to work on this (Been busy lately) but I don't know if it's been too long for this topic to be "out of focus" now or not. Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 16:07, 14 October 2026 (UTC)reply
Discussion: This piece is about the recent Anti-Defamation League report on the edits that remain after the PIA editor bans in January 2025. The report recommends a thorough review of the edits of banned editors and identifies several articles edited by Iskandar323 as an example of what to review. This piece would briefly summarize the report and include an analysis of Iskandar323's edits to Gaza war through the lens of someone reviewing a GA or FA, a table breakdown of which I have already completed and is available at the link above. I am envisioning this piece as a bit more lighthearted in tone despite the heavy subject matter, and it will not relitigate the ArbCom case (in fact, I intend to include a line that explicitly states that). Instead, it will be focused purely on the edits and the ADL's arguments. I will go for less academic and more of an analysis/response piece. M4V3R1CK32 (talk) 01:20, 22 October 2026 (UTC)reply
Partly done: I have changed the title, it is throwing an error, but that is because the tile is the same as the name of the subpage which should be fixed once this article is staged. I think this could make a great opinion piece (: Mitchsavl (talk) 10:11, 14 July 2026 (UTC)
