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Deadlines (UTC) Current time is 2026-06-23 12:01:41 ( v t e ) Writing: 11 July 01:00 (18 days left; 90%) Publishing: 12 July 01:00 (19 days left; 90%) There are 17 days, 12 hours, 58 minutes and 19 seconds until deadline. (refresh)

Calendar: current deadline is highlighted, and current UTC date is 2026-06-23 12:01:41.
May 2026 Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 27 28 29 30 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	June 2026 Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 01 02 03 04 05	July 2026 Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun 29 30 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 01 02

Hello, does The Signpost have a documented procedure for what to do for when the editor-in-chief has been away for a period of time, such as a week, and the publication process or other actions that the EIC should execute are not happening, and the EIC has not publicly delegated who should take the EIC's place for a temporary absence?

Also, in the event that the EIC is inactive in The Signpost for a longer period of time, such as a month, is there a documented procedure for how and when to replace the EIC? ↠Pine (✉) 19:02, 19 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

To your first question: Yes, in recent years we have informally developed a process for this kind of situation and successfully used it to get several delayed issues out; search the archives of this talk pages for "EICAWOL". (That said, maybe it's time to document it more formally, IIRC Smallbones also suggested that earlier this year. I could take a stab at that next week.) Note though that right now we are not quite in this situation.

To your second question, yes, kind of, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Coordination#Editor-in-Chief. (I'd caution against the temptation to come up with overly formal rules like "after a period of X days of inactivity, the Secretary of the Council Of Regular Signpost Editors will invoke Clause 43b to start the Voting Period, to be administered by the EIC Appointment Subcommittee ...". It's more about gently setting expectations and creating legitimacy for those - like you here! - who raise the issue and propose solutions, and it's informed by the only real near-death-experience this little newsletter had in it over two decades of existence, where there was too much hesitancy to call out a dysfunctional situation with a respected but negligent - and long since departed - EIC.)

Regards, HaeB (talk) 19:32, 19 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think i agree with @HaeB: on just about everything here. I'll try to briefly add some practical suggestions.

• The deadline is a very practical method of organizing a newspaper. It lets everybody know what's expected and when. Publishing using fake deadlines is very unprofessional and just doesn't work very well IMHO. That said, we've had some very good issues in the last 3+ years that I'd entirely given up on - so sometimes it has worked. But we need consistency as well.
• There are some decisions that only the EIC can make. I've needed feedback on 3-4 of these in the last 3 years and haven't gotten adequate responses. Even "yes" or "no" would be adequate most of the time.
• The real problem is that being EIC is a time consuming task with no letup. Burnout after a couple of years should be expected and planned for.
  • Maybe we should just always schedule a feedback/review session for EIC's on their 2nd anniversary.
• The really difficult part is finding a new EIC to replace the old.
  • Perhaps we can redesign a few things about the job to make it easier or to make succession a more natural task. (ideas requested)

I'll leave it there for now. I'd also like to thank JPxG for all his work as EIC. I twisted his arm to get him to take the job. Now I'll give him a little nudge to take a few steps to make a dignified exit (whenever that is). Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:31, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Agreed about the importance of reliable publication deadlines in general (we've been over this topic many times on this talk page; I'm wondering if it might be useful for someone - e.g. a friendly LLM - to compile and summarize those past discussions to help reduce repetitiveness). I also think people may overindex on the fact that we've still muddled through, this ignores the costs and damages we incur from this unreliability (just speaking for myself, it has definitely made keeping up RR - as I've done for the last 15 years, more or less - more difficult). On the other had, it should be said that this was much less of a problem in some recent issues.
• I think there is a connection between your second and third bullet point that you might not be fully cognizant of: The more often contributors impose difficult decisions on the EiC, the harder and more time-consuming that role becomes. Now, I certainly don't want to discourage potentially controversial but valuable stories (like many of your Disinformation reports), but I think this is also why I'm a bit less enthusiastic about the increased frequency of opinion articles, and wary about creating the impression that the Signpost is an open forum for every angry Wikimedian's rants (see also the discussion above about submissions and some team members' frequent, energetic solicitations of opinions from our readers). Conversely though, this also means that we can help make that job easier by e.g. weighing in on such decisions, e.g. raising problems in submitted pieces, following up with their authors to fix them, etc., before the EiC has to make the final call on them. Of course that is among the many things facilitated by a reliable publication schedule.
• Like Pine, I disagree that JPxG should feel compelled to step down. He continues to do lots of good work as EiC and I hope he stays on. But yes, by now there is no need to politely ignore this particular shortcoming. I'm also a bit confused how subjecting someone to a (public, I assume) "feedback/review session" in that role would help with burnout, but then again that's what's already happening a bit here. One concrete thing that would be useful for JPxG to do more often *without* having to spend more time and energy is to delegate more often (but I'll stop here before I start sounding like an executive coach).
• On that matter, and considering the continuing progression of time, I have now proposed above to invoke the aforementioned EICAWOL protocol to get the current issue out and get us back on track.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 22:49, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not intending to suggest that JPxG should step down. :) The Signpost is a team effort, and perhaps with someone to fill the publication & newsroom manager role and/or if someone volunteers for an "Assistant Editor in Chief" role as backup, JPxG will be okay with continuing. There's a real risk that if an EIC steps down, and no successor is lined up, there will be an EIC vacancy which may be a bigger problem than having an EIC who is competent but has limited availability. The EIC, like most people involved with The Signpost, is a volunteer, and there are limits to how much can be expected from every volunteer including the EIC. ↠Pine (✉) 00:59, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. I do think that @Bri: has essentially filled the role of "Assistant Editor in Chief" even though I don't think it was entirely voluntary and done mostly without notice. So we need some practical steps. Can we find a volunteer to be "Assistant Editor in Chief"? That might be enough for now, but I can't see the current situation continuing for another year. Another thing we might do is recruit a copyediting corps - but that takes time and effort and has no guarentee of success. Perhaps something like "guest EICs" or rotating EICs. It might help having a separate publisher and EIC - that worked pretty well during my tenure. I'll strongly suggest an automatic procedure to publish what we have ready 2 hours after deadline, unless the EIC is present and saying something like "We're waiting for the article from X, which should be ready in an hour". I do think that we should have a strategy for ongoing recruitment for all positions (reporters and editors). Let's get the ball rolling on this now, if not we'll have to do it later from a worse position. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:19, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/About has a list of 18 EICs over the 20 years of publication. Eight of those served less that 1 year. We need to be realistic. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 02:32, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Back in '22 I was stoked as hell to be publishing every issue, although at the time I dragged my feet on it for a while because it sounded like a gigantic amount of work and I was concerned it would be too much for me to commit to doing on a regular schedule forever. At the time, this was resolved by having a co-EiC, who was Frostly, and with whose heavy lifting it was very easy to put out gigantic quantities of very good stuff on a regular basis. After a while he called it quits and it was just me. For some time this was basically fine; various factors in my life led to my being unemployed for a rather long period, and there was not really a whole lot to do, so I was happy to spend a lot of it on Wikipedia.

At the time I was very excited about taking a leadership position, about the Signpost, about journalism, about Wikipedia, about developing the MediaWiki ecosystem, and about my role in all of these things. I cannot really say I see a bright future for all of these things. Now it is 2026 and I have not really written an article in a very long time (either a mainspace Wikipedia article or a Signpost one). Mostly I log in on the publication date and then try to put out something that's not going to be false or have grave errors or create liability or get anybody screamed at or get me doxed again by that deranged guy on the message board (the left-wing one) or the deranged guy on Twitter (the right-wing one) who sends death threats under my name to random influencers. It is really impossible to overstate how much of the result of my interacting with Wikipedia is that weird assholes want me to jump off a bridge or call me woke or a Nazi or whatever. I pretty much never get an email or a talk page message from somebody who read an article I wrote and thought it was good, or funny, or whatever. It's not that having some random guy I've never met tell me I suck is some terrible fate worse than death, it's just like having a rock in your shoe: what's the benefit? Why would you put a rock in your shoe on purpose, if it didn't have one there to begin with? That is the question I ask myself when I log in. Well, if it was changing the world, then it'd be worth it. If I had to go invent the printing press, and I had to wear shoes to do it, and the only pair of shoes I owned had rocks in them that you couldn't get out, then I would just have to deal with it because the printing press is too goddamned important and changes the world so much and helps so many people and stops so much injustice that I couldn't stomach the idea of passing it up to bitch about rocks in my shoes.

But I am not 100% convinced that we are still trying very hard to be inventing the printing press, or write the Encyclopedie, or whatever. Definitely we are not doing that, but I'm not sure we are even really trying to be doing it anymore. I signed up for making the greatest and most comprehensive reference work in history. It feels like what we as a project are doing is too often random pointless mumbo-jumbo, and occasionally random pointless mumbo-jumbo that is directly inimical to that goal. Sorry to do a tl;dr soliloquy about life the universe and everything, but that is kind of how it feels sometimes.

An issue every two weeks was a very ambitious goal that was only possible with either two EiCs or one with drastically more free time and motivation than I've got available to me. I think the only practical thing to do is go back to once a month (which is what we did for many years previously) because anything faster is going to kill me.

I think part of the reality of the situation is that we just don't have as much stuff to publish as we used to; the old situation was that Frostly would do a bunch of posting and outreach to get people interested in sending stuff in, which would cause a bunch of high-quality stuff to come in. We do not really have much in the way of that now, which means all we have is a few sections; I don't really feel good about publishing this one just now because all it had was the bare skeleton of what you could possibly say was an issue.

I am really glad that people have been doing so much stuff to get things ready for publication, and specifically Bri who has done a very large amount of it. As far as I can tell he refuses the crown now and has done so in the past, or else I would insist upon his being listed as a co-EiC. I think the reality of it is that I am sometimes just not very good at this; I have previously said a few times that I would be open to and happy about sharing the role, or having some of its formal duties carved out, or whatever. As a first step I will set the next issue date to a month because I think picking at a scab every four weeks is less painful than every three weeks. jp×g🗯️ 07:36, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@JPxG I feel your frustration, and I gotta say we should show way more appreciation than we usually do for the care you're trying to put into this newspaper, even when you have limited time and low motivation.

I also agree that we should stick mostly to a one-per-month schedule for now, as it will allow us to gather more interesting bits of information, recruit new writers/reviewers (hopefully) and improve the overall quality of our articles. Oltrepier (talk) 16:04, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@JPxG: Aaron Swartz, Wikipedian and activist, said, "What is the most important thing I could be working on in the world right now, and if you are not working on that, why aren't you?" I submit to The Signpost because I sincerely feel that it is the best and most intelligent use of my time. I have been submitting stories since at least 2015, and your executive decisions as editor-in-chief have been an entirely positive experience for me and made major improvements in this publishing social machine. I am immensely grateful and appreciative for your technical contributions to The Signpost, including making the timer countdown for publication, sorting metadata for the archives, reforming the submission room templates, doing something that enables publication to be better staged and delivered to readers, and making that tool which identifies popular discussions in Wikipedia talk pages. I appreciate your editorial will to make executive decisions which conform the submissions and editors into a coherent tone, which allow plenty of room for controversial hot takes but also intuitively draw the line to a standard of respectability, restraint, and shared consensus. Editorial control is probably the least of your time commitment but also the most human and irreplaceable thing that you personally do, and that is what is putting you in the growing club of Wikipedians with crazy violent stalkers. I went to counseling for years only to talk about the threats and harassment I experience in Wikipedia, and there are lots of other people in Wikimedia LGBT+ and many other demographics who similarly experience this vulnerability and violent insanity. I say that I especially respect your editorial choices the most, even in the context of my recognition that your technical contributions are something that we or the WMF could not have hired a contractor to accomplish if we had $100,000 to spend. I also appreciate your submissions, like the recent description of the self-hacking incident, and while people may not be thanking you for that, I wish that you could interpret all the comments the article got there and in the social network of discourse to be an indicator of appreciation.

I want you here. I like writing under you. I hope you stay for as long as you feel that this is meaningful and satisfying. If you leave, I would love to do an exit interview with you to record your values and intents and wishes for this publication, because The Signpost is a bulwark against existential threat to Wikipedia and the the concept of freedom in the digital world generally. I think you are one of the most influential newspaper editors who ever lived. If it is not fun anymore then I understand that, but please believe me when I say that I appreciate a lot, and I think you should be proud of this publications dedicated readership and the esteem that this news source has. I take it seriously. Thank you. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:12, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @JPxG: Agreed that one might expect more gratitude than people get around here, both in The Signpost and Wikipedia content activities in general. Around here are risks, complaints, arguments, power plays, and activities that feel a lot more like work than a fun hobby. The technical contributors are at least doing things that look good for their resumes. I'm not sure that anyone doing content activities will get gratitude or benefit unless they're part of an education program or GLAM. I feel that decades ago the world was a more optimistic place where there was slow but observable incremental progress over the course of years and decades, in many domains. These days technology is moving fast ahead but everything else feels painful when looked at with a wide-angle lens. This is my long way of saying that I think I feel similar to you, and my guess is that many other people do too. Hopefully we all make a little positive difference here. We can at least say we tried. ↠Pine (✉) 03:16, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Seconding what Pine said. I think JPxG should continue as long as he wants to. It's not an easy job; several of us here have held it with varying degrees of longevity. @JPxG: If you know in advance you want me to handle publication for some time period, just say so. I'll make arrangements to be there. It's difficult to do at last minute, and like I said for April, I have been busy lately with the 420 Collaboration, especially now that (partial) U.S. rescheduling is happening.

For everybody else: I've contacted JPxG offline to offer commiseration/encouragement/acknowledgement of potential burnout, and encourage others to do so if they feel so moved. We regulars should treat each other kindly, as comrades at least. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:20, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

You guys are all way wiser than me, so I could not agree with everything you've said right above...

@JPxG Just know that you can count on us in these stressful times. Oltrepier (talk) 19:44, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

JPxG is, by some margin, the longest-serving EiC the Signpost has ever had. Kudos!

I second Bri for Co-EiC or Assistant EiC or whatever title he prefers while taking some of the pressure of JPxG. Andreas JN466 20:26, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@HaeB: thanks for your comments above. Have you had time to work on the EICAWOL policy draft? ↠Pine (✉) 01:30, 7 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the ping! I have just added this to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Coordination (also seeing that we are already invoking it again this time).

As discussed above, this is just reflecting the procedure as we have already used it several times before, with the exception that I added a 24 hour grace period between pinging the EIC (in case of a deadline in jeopardy, with a request to update it or advise otherwise) and carrying out publication without them. This is likewise also what we ended up doing in practice anyway (and what Bri did earlier this week), so adding a formal requirement might seem a bit bureaucratic. But I think it's worthwhile for avoiding a potential loophole that someone could be attempted to exploit sometime in the future.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:34, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

To the extent that this needs any kind of official ratification, I propose that we do that, perhaps by putting some kind of big damn wax stamp on it that says "Officialus Certificus" on it. jp×g🗯️ 14:35, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Publishing deadline is Thursday evening in the U.S. How do people feel about that? Should we push a few days and publish on a weekend day? ☆ Bri (talk) 14:33, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

On the Corgi/theinsurer.com news thing, I haven't read it, but from what I could glean I worried about if there was WP:OUTING in it. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:44, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri That would be great for me, because I would have more time to help you finish the issue! Oltrepier (talk) 15:48, 18 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The gallery is in good condition. @Bri: would you like to walk through the drafts and start pinging authors as needed to ask about readiness for publication? ↠Pine (✉) 01:42, 19 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm leaning towards sticking with the Thursday publication, which I can support as emergency publisher if necessary. @JPxG: any objections?

I did a cleanup pass on In the Media and on News and notes. NaN is a little thin though probably publishable. If anybody wants to put in additional commentary on the election (was there anything out of the ordinary?) or on any remaining highlighted items, go for it.

Will request copyeditors to come do their thing at end of day (Pacific Time). ☆ Bri (talk) 15:12, 19 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Gerald Waldo Luis, Headbomb, Isaacl, and Adam Cuerden: Copyeditors listed on Signpost's about page -- could you take a look at article status and help out where needed? Publishing deadline is coming up. Thanks! ☆ Bri (talk) 05:01, 20 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I don't mind either Thursday night or Friday publication even if I'm a bit behind. (I'm just getting ready to post the 2 major sections of the Disinfo report and have a so-so intro too, but there are a couple of minor sections that I'd like to do something with) After Friday evening, I'm off to the Memorial Day holiday. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 21:33, 20 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Smallbones: It looks like maybe you finished the Disinformation report; is it ready for copyediting? ☆ Bri (talk) 13:07, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri: All but the final section is ready for CE. I like the new piccy and blurb better. In 10 minutes I'll have my own CE done, then another 30 minutes for the conclusion. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:13, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri: Ok, sorry for the delay, after a short break I'll look at CEing News and notes. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 13:58, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Based on the comments or lack of comments, I'm going to plan to publish this evening Pacific Time, probably after watching the Starship test flight. If you are reading this, you are eligible to copyedit (hint, hint). ☆ Bri (talk) 13:17, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Also, a reminder that under our usual EICAWOL procedure (which I just codified per the earlier discussion above), regular team members should start approving sections for publication standing in for the EiC, preferably not those they have been involved with themselves. I'll try to chip in myself (besides focusing on getting RR into shape, as discussed above earlier today).

Alternatively, we may just want to go ahead and appoint Bri Co-EiC, as Andreas already suggested above.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 21:43, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be better to stay in a backup/emergency position. ☆ Bri (talk) 23:07, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It comes to the same thing in practice. As always, thanks for your service. Andreas JN466 23:16, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I actually don't think it does, even not "in practice" (happy to explain further after this issue is out, in case you still disagree). I do understand a reluctance to fully commit on a permanent basis of course, but if Bri wants to use the additional authority that comes with the EiC position, even if only as "backup/emergency" EiC, then we need to formalize that at some point. Regards, HaeB (talk) 23:47, 21 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we keep hinting as such, but I think we have tried and found wanting all normal methods of suasion short of tying him to a chair and whacking with a rubber hose — he is too smart to say "yes". jp×g🗯️ 14:40, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Taking a break. In the interest of peace in the newsroom I've backed off the approval for the Essay, which is exactly why I'm considering myself publisher at best, not co-anything. I do think we should have a better way of handling stuff like this. This leaves a pretty full issue of material ready to go:

• In the media
• News and notes
• Comix
• Disinformation report
• Gallery
• Opinion
• Recent research
• Serendipity
• Forum
• Community view
• In focus
• Special report

Additionally, if the Op-Ed is copyedited when I get back in ~1 hour, I will include it. ☆ Bri (talk) 03:47, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Issue 7 is published. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:19, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I have run the script to populate the index and make the single-talk. jp×g🗯️ 08:57, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2026-05-22/Opinion, I am a bit surprised that this got published; I spiked this twice because the text was entirely AI-generated. jp×g🗯️ 09:05, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@JPxG I did copy-edit it, though... Oltrepier (talk) 11:37, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@JPxG: I accepted the submission and pushed the piece. I did not realize that there were AI concerns. Each time you sent it back I got the author to further edit it.

Going forward, I will push again to develop a Signpost editorial policy on AI. We can all discuss, but one possible change we can make is asking every author if and how they used AI in submissions, and reacting by our policy.

I apologize for the misconnect here but now that I understand the issue, I can change going forward. Bluerasberry (talk) 14:49, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Feel like I was part of that mixup too. Maybe when we decline the sub it should go back to user space, then through the whole Signpost approval cycle? In other words: maybe leaving declined drafts in Signpost space is causing problems. I dunno. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:48, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This is my fault; what I am pretty sure happened is when I declined the submission I noted it in some stupid place like an edit/move summary instead of the section on here. It should have been in the newsroom talk section, and then everyone could have seen it. Ironically, despite the general tendency towards furore and imbroglio among the editoriat on this topic, nobody seems to have noticed at the talk page for the article itself, or indeed anybody here besides me, so I guess maybe it does not matter and our society has crossed the threshold of being able to distinguish or care. Who knows. jp×g🗯️ 14:38, 25 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This confusion could have been avoided just by using Template:Signpost draft as intended for such cases (i.e. adding status = rejected instead of just moving the draft, which understandably left Bluerasberry and others a bit confused about why it hadn't been included.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:49, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

And great points regarding AI. Indeed this submission is extremely likely to be fully AI-generated, and a week after publication, the article has received only positive reactions from readers, including enthusiastic praise from the Wikimedia Foundation's Senior Director of Movement Communications (when was the last time a Signpost story elicited such reactions from WMF management?).

I'm not sure society has crossed that threshold yet, but yes, it's definitely been getting closer recently. With regard to our deliberations about how we should handle this at the Signpost, I think this example supports my point above that we should make such decisions based on the quality of the content rather than by trying to predict how it would "go down with" a hypothetical group of readers who cares more about fighting larger battles about AI than about the Signpost's quality per se. That said, as also mentioned before, I'm concerned that AI might exacerbate the recent problem of some folks putting effort into maximizing the number of opinion articles about arbitrary topics in the Signpost (as opposed to factual, journalistic reporting about current news). In any case, Signpost team members should consider creating a Pangram account (one currently gets 4 checks/day for free).

Regards, HaeB (talk) 04:58, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Just came over to make a similar comment and found HaeB beat me to it. There's ~7.5 kB of comments and none mention AI. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:53, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I just saw the June deadline occurs in the middle of a three day weekend in the United States. This may hamper people's ability to be present at or near deadline. Would June 13–14 be better? Then four weeks later, July publishing could be 11–12, avoiding Independence Day weekend. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:14, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

No issues with me. On my side, I am supposed to be slogging through till August anyway. – robertsky (talk) 14:42, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'd support moving it to June 13-14, yes.

Apropos, I think last week's issue illustrates how assumptions that every four weeks is less painful than every three weeks may backfire. We ended up with an issue of >20k words (reading time over 90 minutes), and too many submissions having piled up to review in the allocated time (you did a ton of work and I tried to chip in as well by reviewing several sections, but still we e.g. left some unpublished).

Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:46, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• I would suggest a soft deadline for writing be a Wednesday, a soft deadline for copyediting be the Friday of the same week, and a soft deadline for publication on Saturday of the same week. Publication days seem to be very busy around here. If there are last-minute things to do, the EIC can address them on Saturday, and if the EIC is AWOL on Saturday, an EIC AWOL procedure could be immediately invoked on the Sunday and concluded by whenever the EIC substitute wishes on Sunday. ↠Pine (✉) 17:45, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I have decided to get this section started early, the Tech Team layoffs will likely be the biggest story this issue. I invite other Signpost editors and uninvolved to contribute, but seeing the levels of contention that has already arisen, I think it would be best if involved editors, such as those significantly engaged in resulting discussions, those connected to the union, or WMF staff sit this one out. I welcome comments and suggestions from involved editors, especially since their engagement will help us find newsworthy items. Mitchsavl (talk) 23:05, 22 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for getting this started: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Technology report. I'd like to help but haven't contributed to a Signpost article before. I might share some ideas on the talkpage. I will ping you if i do. - Wil540 art (talk) 01:23, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Barkeep49: I just saw Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#Data_on_Wishlist_work, where you mention your intent to write a Signpost article. This data is a central point to this argument, so if you would like to include it in this Technology Report, that would be great. Mitchsavl-on-public-wifi (main|talk) 04:41, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Could somebody else please pick up this article? Every time I've tried to look at the discussion, I have found it completeley overwhelming. Mitchsavl (talk) 11:50, 13 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Sohom Datta has since done a lot of work on the story, I also just went through it - first for copyedits, then I ended up adding various context information, clarifications and source links. More of the latter would still be good (especially whenever we write that so-and-so stated such-and-such) but I think it looks broadly good to go already; save for some open questions and one to-do item someone had marked earlier. Some more copyediting wouldn't hurt either.

I also added this which I want to flag here in case anyone has second thoughts about it (see edit summary).

Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:06, 20 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Mitchsavl, @Bluerasberry, @Bri I recommend trying to make the Community Tech team disbanding article accessible to both experienced Wikimedians and a more general public who aren't very Wiki-literate. This could be a great introduction to the history of wishlists/wishtlisting on Wikipedia for those who are not informed.

I think it would be informative to explain simply:

• Brief history of the process of taking in wishes and responding to Wikipedia editor community needs on Wikipedia/Wikimedia
• What is/was Community Tech? What came before it?
• What is the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC)? What came before it?

I see you are already beginning to cover the WMF responses and the editor responses. I also think it would be worthwhile to share ideas for the future of the wishlist that have came about because of the discussion surrounding this re-structuring. The path forward. I'd be interested to help collect the wishlist ideas shared. - Wil540 art (talk) 15:49, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Wil540 art: Thanks for the comment and welcome to exploring The Signpost. I moved your comment from the draft to here - editorial conversations go here and that original space is for readers after publication.

We have very little labor for journalism or requests for articles. Your ideas are good, but in practice, if any article will be written, then it takes recruiting a volunteer journalist to create it. If someone actually writes a draft then Signpost editors can review it.

This does not need to be one story. It could be several smaller stories with different writers who do not coordinate. For example, the "wishlist" story goes back 10+ years with multiple developments, and anyone could tell that story without the recent news, and either or both with numbers or with human narratives. Community Tech is its own newer story, as is PTAC.

Signpost tends to attract reports of recent events by Wikimedians who already are following day to day updates, but contextual journalism for the more general public is very welcome because it brings new users into important social and ethical conversations, and also cools conflicts and makes way for progress. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:17, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the welcome and the insight. I'm not 100% clear on how things work here, so thanks for the patience. I will start by trying to write a short about the history of Wishlists of Wikipedia. If that already exists elsewhere, I couldn't find it and please point me to it. - Wil540 art (talk) 19:37, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Wil540 art: Here are some events in the story of the wishlist. Thousands of Wikipedia editors went through all of this together.

VisualEditor - 2013

• VisualEditor#Opposition
• User_revolt#VisualEditor
• Wikipedia:VisualEditor/RFC (closed by user:Fram / WP:FRAM

Wikimedia Deutschland makes a wishlist - 2013

• https://www.wikimedia.de/2019/en/themen/technical-wishes/
• "user:raymond - Why did you start the Technical Wishes project? - When the Visual Editor was introduced a few years ago – basically a Word-like what-you-see-is-what-you-get interface – a lot of criticism was coming from the community. In order to start a constructive discussion, I set up a page called “Technical Wish List”..."
• meta:WMDE Technical Wishes
• File:White Paper Technical Wishes 2018.pdf

Wikimedia Foundation makes a global wishlist - 2015

• successful, so WMF copied it - meta:Community Wishlist Survey
• meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2015 ... meta:Community Wishlist Survey 2023
• routine Signpost report - Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2022-02-27/Technology_report
• File:Wikimania 2023 - Room 310 - 19 August - The Future of the Wishlist Survey.webm

Proposed end of the wishlist to redesign it as "Wikimedia Opportunities registry" - 2024

• https://diff.wikimedia.org/2024/01/04/shaping-the-future-of-the-community-wishlist-survey/
• meta:Community Wishlist Survey/Future Of The Wishlist/Redesigning the Wishlist
• meta:Community Wishlist Survey/Future Of The Wishlist/Renaming
• meta:Community Wishlist Survey/Future Of The Wishlist/Renaming/Voting
• meta:Community Wishlist

This brings the story to summer 2024. Bluerasberry (talk) 21:32, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for this timeline. Are there any particularly impactful examples where the wishlist worked well? Where a wish was made, granted, then well implemented and with positive effects? - Wil540 art (talk) 23:45, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Bluerasberry: That's a great timeline. We should add it to the News and notes feature that I have just started. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:30, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Wil540 art: There are a lot of good wishes that were implemented. I'm probably gonna barrage you with a SEAOFBLUE, but here goes. IABot (started as a community-WMF collaboration), PageViews tool, XTools, CopyPatrol, WhoWroteThat, Global Preferences, LoginNotify, user-right expiration, Editor syntax Highlighting, Pinging users from edit summaries, Watchlist expiry, Template Wizard, SVG Translate, improvements to NPP workflows, Wikimedia OCR, VideoJS integration (the video interface on Wikimedia sites), Edit recovery, Live Preview, the ability to share QR codes, Multiblocks and probably some more that I've missed. Heck the Wishlist even provided early impetus for the DiscussionTools project. Sohom (talk) 01:25, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There are attempts of analysing the wishlist, Wikipedia:Village_pump_(WMF)#Data_on_Wishlist_work and m:Talk:Community Wishlist#Statistics about the implementation of wishes. Do note that MikeZ (WMF) had just commented as well. Further assessments may be required. – robertsky (talk) 16:44, 29 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/From the editors by request Bluerasberry (talk) 16:28, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Someone asked me how they can contribute to The Signpost. Here are some ideas.

Bluerasberry (talk) 21:00, 26 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like something we can add to the next Signpost issue, possibly, with blessings from the editor, in the "From the editor" section. – robertsky (talk) 14:39, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Robertsky: Sure, I formatted this as "from the editors". This column requires support from other editors to proceed though. It is posted to help discussion over the next few weeks. I invite anyone to revise. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:30, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yay! I have added some stuff there. Honestly, I had been asked to by others on contributing. Hopefully, this would make a quick primer. – robertsky (talk) 17:06, 27 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I will see if there's anything I can add from the Signpost contributor Quick start I created some time ago. ☆ Bri (talk) 14:06, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Now that there are three of us on the byline, should it be moved to "From the editors"? ☆ Bri (talk) 16:39, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I was starting to write up some text on the "long-term roles" but decided to back off and start here instead. I think that the Publication manager, Outreach manager, and Designer roles outlined at the Quick start really would work better if the person got consensus to do them from other editors, versus simply putting on the hat and starting – which I think is fine for everything else now listed in the From the editors report. Any ideas on how to put this forward, assuming I'm right about that? ☆ Bri (talk) 16:45, 30 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Here is what I'm thinking we could do: Experienced users and Signpost editors can volunteer to fill the roles of Publication manager, Outreach manager, and Designer. The Signpost team will review the users contribution and ask questions in a similar format to administrator elections, and may be asked to demonstrate the technical knowledge to autonomously perform tasks similar to what is required of their role. Signpost contributors and other Wikipedians can seek consensus on who (which may include multiple editors) will fill those roles, and with these placements requiring EiC approval. Mitchsavl (talk) 07:12, 3 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Folks, nothing against inviting new contributors of course, and many suggestion in this draft are fine. But that "Quick Start" document (largely written in 2018 by User:Zarasophos) should have been updated/corrected a long time ago; while it contains some useful advice and purports to provide a "quick" summary of our processes, several parts are not in sync with our actual (non-quick) documentation of those processes at "Coordination", "Content guidance" and "About".

To give just one concrete example, regarding the "roles" descriptions, since it affects me personally:

Since over four years ago I have been doing the "Outreach manager" work of posting the social media announcements for each issue (and Andreas is taking care of the mailing list part). So I'm very surprised to read in this draft story and above that Bri apparently wants to replace me in this long-term role[]. I'm going to AGF and assume that Bri isn't actually unhappy with my work there, but simply wasn't aware of Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/About#The Signpost team (and the aforementioned other documentation pages). But this should hopefully help to substantiate the assertion that some parts of this article do not reflect actual practice and consensus at the Signpost.

I also disagree with parts of what Bluerasberry says about the Signpost in the video (which should not come as a surprise if you watched it and read some comments by me or others above). And given that we had several discussions on this page about Bluerasberry's longtime unhealthy tendency to speak for the Signpost as a whole when expressing his personal views, including less than two months prior about the wisdom of him starting "From the editor" pieces containing his own opinions and policy proposals for how the rest of us at the Signpost should work, I'm quite disappointed that he again used that misleading title (also, whose "request" was it?). Bluerasberry is not "the editor" of the Signpost and the three folks who are on the byline are not "the editors" of the Signpost either. I still would not have minded title that so much if the piece only reiterated consensus of the Signpost team. But as it is, fair warning that I may leave some comments after publication to alert readers to the above and other issues that I don't have the time to write up now that we are nearing publication.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:15, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

No problems with your work HaeB. Saw this comment right after publication. Is it OK if we leave the text Outreach managers: Editors delegated to assist the editor(s)-in-chief with managing The Signpost's tip lines, handling the occasional Signpost reader surveys, and maintaining The Signpost's social media accounts without disparaging you? The plural in the "managers" title and the plurality of work to be done leaves us options to take extra hands for the work. I've noticed that our suggestions (broadly "tip lines") often go unheeded, and could use some help there, at least.

As for the terminology about who "Editors" are ... I'm going by the book, and Bluerasberry, Bri, Headbomb, Oltrepier, Red-tailed hawk, Smallbones, Svampesky are listed on our "about" page. As far as I'm concerned any regular contributor here can call themselves an editor. ☆ Bri (talk) 03:29, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Wikipedia:Wiki Workers United solidarity

This is currently the second-most popular and signed petition in English Wikipedia history. The story has appeared in international news media. User revolt events are fairly common in Wikimedia projects because we have a democratic process here, but this event is on track to become a high consensus community demand.

Compare this to some previous petitions, like meta:Community open letter on renaming, where there were wiki community organizational supporters. I have information that some wiki community organizations are voting on whether to sign support as an organization.

I propose that The Signpost sign onto the solidarity petition as an organization.

We do not have a process for this, but here is what comes to my mind:

• Regular editors and contributors who watch this talk page and speak up make the call, just as this is the place for other organizational decisions.
• Editor-in-chief / chiefs have veto power and need to participate, as is usual here.
• We could do an accompanying "from the editors" piece because we are a newspaper but for other petitions, organizations usually do not give a reason.
• We are a Wikipedia community newspaper and signing on would not be surprising, as obviously this is a major English Wikipedia / global wiki social movement by and for the demographic we represent.

Thoughts? Bluerasberry (talk) 00:30, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely not, and it's disappointing to see yet another failure of you to recognize how basic journalistic principles might be in tension with your attempts to use the Signpost as a tool for whatever activism and advocacy you happen to be interested in at the moment. (Like COI principles, when you used News and Notes to write glowing praise about an organization and its work that you happened to be centrally involved in, without even so much as a disclosure. Or just this month when - for the second time - you thought it would be a good idea for the Signpost to run an advocacy piece by a particular editor with a problematic history of community sanctions in the same broad topic area, in this case involving what in my and various other people's view was clearly an attempt to use the Signpost to criticize their current topic ban. Apropos, that editor was just fully site-banned by ArbCom for a week in connection with that Signpost submission which you had wanted us to run.)

Even if you share this petition's goals, you should take a moment and think about which of these two roles is more likely to result in the Signpost having a bigger positive impact on this situation: As an independent publication that our readers trust to report on these matters factually and neutrally? Or as a publication whose credibility in such matters will be tainted from the beginning as a de facto "party newspaper", because critical reporting on the topics in question might be attacked as violating this absolute commitment to stand in solidarity with Wiki Workers United that you want the Signpost to sign onto here? And in the longer view: Suppose that things go well from the petition's perspective - WMF staff does fully unionize, and WWU becomes a powerful force at WMF and in the Wikimedia movement (maybe even with a few seats on the WMF Board, as has been proposed by some in the past IIRC). In that case it would absolutely become important to report on potential missteps and scandals at WWU, or also just to highlight cases where its goals might conflict with the view(s) of the community - just like the Signpost has long done with other influential organizations in the movement. This too would be incompatible with the blind solidarity commitment you're advocating for here.

Likewise, I oppose a pre-commitment to cease publication of the Signpost on the say-so of WWU functionaries (the other thing that the petition would ask of us in case we sign: engage in collective action if called upon by WWU, up to and including staging an editorial strike). To the contrary, maybe our independent reporting would actually be especially valuable in such a situation.

Of course individual Signpost team members should feel free sign the petition (although, as another Signpost contributor already pointed out in case of the related signature list on Meta, they then might want to refrain from working on our factual coverage of the matter in N&N etc). Also, we of course have some room for separate opinion pieces advocating for signing the petition and in favor of unions in general, which already seem to be in preparation. (Although we should also have some room for well-argued opinion pieces criticizing WWU, even if they fail to "stand in solidarity" or disobey a collective action decision made by WWU's functionaries.)

Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:28, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@HaeB: You have a lot of opinions and evaluations about me personally. I am not avoiding personal evaluation, and I would answer for my biases, faults, and shortcomings publicly or privately as you like, on this board or elsewhere, but not in this thread where it is off topic.

Here I want to discuss editorial positions of The Signpost.

We are a community newspaper. This union petition is one of the most popular organizing efforts the Wikimedia community has ever convened. The Signpost's bias is toward community interests, so it should be standard and non-controversial practice for The Signpost to support any petition that achieves this level of consensus.

There is no need to view community organizing as negative or a conflict. User organizing is constructive, advances our shared goals, and is the source of our success. Wikipedia is the only major media and tech platform which is self-governed by its own user community. Petitions are not a failure of governance, and are instead exactly the kind of civic engagement we designed the Wikimedia Movement to create.

While opposing views are welcome, we have arrived at the point where our data shows a pattern. As seen with meta:Superprotect, the removal of the CEO, the rebranding, and fundraising messages, we experience massive community demonstrations regularly. In these and the many others, we get hundreds of Wikipedia users signing on to the position, but WMF staff do not. The Signpost reports the community's voice, yet we routinely face silence from the Wikimedia Foundation. I am not sure why WMF staff never join these petitions or speak to The Signpost, or speak anywhere else in record. If they are prohibited, then that seems like an error, but if they are just the kind of people who would not sign community petitions, then that seems even worse. I really, really would like someone representing the WMF to end the one-sided conversations and speak frankly about why we do this repeatedly. That conversation could have started 10 years ago.

There should be no dividing line between the WMF and the community, and I think The Signpost can help convene productive new approaches to conversation and collaboration. I want to break the loop of major chaotic user demonstrations happening and then never getting any record of meaningful two-party conversation which follows.

The Signpost represents the community, so standing behind massive community demonstrations should be The Signpost's default, expected position.

Briefly - this position has nothing to do with favoring or disfavoring the union. The union is for WMF staff and the petition is for Wikimedia community, so this petition is not about being loyal to a union which staff may form in the future. I would have written this same position statement for whatever flavor of mass protest was going to happen this summer, and if it were not the union, then it would have been any other issue on the to-do protest list. The demonstration is not about the union particularly, there is just a recovery time between community demonstrations and it is time again. The grievances being raised are hardly about WMF staff labor conditions, and more about every issue that our user community has ever raised.

So again - I propose that The Signpost sign onto the solidarity petition as an organization. Why would we not join Wikimedia community consensus? I take it for granted that if we asked our readership, they would tell us to do this. Bluerasberry (talk) 21:38, 31 May 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Op-ed from contributors who want to sign onto the WWU solidarity petition makes more sense to me. I don't think The Signpost itself has taken a position on community driven change slash community-WMF conflicts before, including stuff like "A constitutional crisis hits English Wikipedia" which I wrote in 2019 and remember getting kudos for doing so impartially. Not sure why we should start NYT "From the editorial board" type writing now. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:10, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Lane, I have nothing against you personally, but with respect: I am astounded at your utter lack of understanding of journalistic objectivity / journalism ethics and standards. Coming on top of this fundamental lack of understanding what a COI is, I have to wonder if you should still be writing any non-opinion article for the Signpost. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 03:07, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

A key question raised by HaeB remains unanswered: is the community best served by the Signpost pledging to do whatever an outside organization tells it to do? Personally, I agree with the concerns that this would compromise the Signpost's neutrality in covering related news. isaacl (talk) 06:17, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

To correct just one of Bluerasberry's new claims: Why would we not join Wikimedia community consensus? / It should be standard and non-controversial practice for The Signpost to support any petition that achieves this level of consensus (my bolding) - leaving aside the Trump-like logic here that newspapers should be obliged to adhere to supposed majority opinions and promote them: This petition (and any open letter like this, regardless of how many hundred signatures have been canvassed for it) is not an expression of community consensus. As Bluerasberry should know but apparently forgot, that term has a particular meaning in our community. See in particular Wikipedia:Consensus, which clarifies right in the lede that Consensus on Wikipedia [... is not] the result of a vote; Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion goes a bit further into this.

In fact, the petition's main organizer explicitly acknowledged this issue at the bottom of the petition, contradicting Bluerasberry's claims above: this is a petition of editors expressing individual intent to participate in something, not a community consensus-building effort (my bolding). In particular, the organizers have gone through extensive activities that would be prohibited as WP:CANVASssing if it had been such a consensus-building effort, by selectively mass-pinging editors they could assume to be supportive to the effort, while making no such attempt to invite potentially dissenting editors. (And while this thread is not the best place to debate the specific pros and cons of the petition and surrounding proposals, I have seen skeptical reactions from many experienced editors, ranging from polite expressions of surprise about some incompatibilities with opinions that are also widely held in the community to deep discomfort with various central claims; this new essay by Thebiguglyalien describes some concerns.)

WP:PETITION has for many years pointed out fundamental problems with these community demonstrations that Bluerasberry seems so fond of:

Petitions are even more problematic [than regular polls] since they not only encourage the community to avoid meaningful discourse and engagement, but also limit their scope to only one initially-stated opinion or preference with little or no opportunity for discussing and reconciling competing or opposing points of view.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:12, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I did a speed read on Thebiguglyalien's essay. Section "The necessity of informed collective decision-making" particularly resonated for me. I think that informing the community is a big part of what we do at The Signpost, and our taking a position on the petition right now would essentially make it impossible to do that correctly. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:26, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I have also read through the essay, and I think it might be worth considering it as a potential publication for this issue. I know that there is already a lot of content lined up on this topic, but Alien's essay provides a different perspective on this, and outlines why the community should not make a dash straight for the most disruptive form of protest short of going through WP:MfD and deleting all 65,702,176 pages that make up Wikipedia.

As for the Signpost signing onto the petition, I oppose for the reasons mentioned above. As a news source, we should present facts and opinions in ways which lead our readers to think, and not to do the thinking for them.

Mitchsavl (talk) 09:03, 3 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. While I'm sympathetic to the desire to support the cause, I would not suggest that The Signpost as an organization take a position on this, per the concerns about journalistic neutrality. However, if an individual who happens to be a Signpost regular contributor wanted to write an op-ed and invite other contributors to sign onto it as individuals, I possibly could be fine with that approach, which if it got enough support could turn into an "Editorial board" type op-ed and which would be necessary to separate carefully from objective reporting about the topic. I would want to have a high wall in The Signpost between the news reporting and the editorializing. In particular, I disagree firmly with the statement "The Signpost represents the community, so standing behind massive community demonstrations should be The Signpost's default, expected position.", which is incompatible with my opinion that the The Signpost should be trying to provide objective information in the same way that any mainstream American newspaper would, I hope, try to provide objective information about a mass political movement without itself tilting its coverage to favor whichever way the political winds are blowing at any particular moment. This is my long way of largely agreeing with User:Bri. My comments here are not intended to be disrespectful of User:Bluerasberry's good intentions, and as someone who considers him a friend and also a supporter of Wikipedia I appreciate his efforts here, but there are important reasons to decline this proposal. I thank everyone for their interests in considering how The Signpost as a publication should handle this important topic. ↠Pine (✉) 06:41, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I do not see a consensus forming here. I believe there is a space for organisations to explicitly express their support for either WWU and/or the editorial-strike, without claiming to represent the community's consensus. The Signpost has always been an independent, though-provoking organ of English Wikipedia.

I would just like to point out that newsrooms have been going on strike for the past 150 years, not only for basic things like union recognition, but also for more overtly political causes. The NewsGuild-CWA and the List of NewsGuild-CWA Locals list some of the newspaper unionisation efforts over the years.

I am planning to publish an op-ed and would welcome additional contributors or collaborating on a separate editorial Op-ed. and welcome contributions or inspiration for another piece. I expect this topic to be a major one in our 20 June release. ~ In solidarity 🦝 Shushugah (talk) 17:54, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Obviously a no-go Thank you to everyone who replied. I need to reflect on this and my general views on the position of The Signpost and journalism generally. I will reply more to this another time and soon. Thank you to everyone who helps get stories about this overall topic out in the next issue. Whatever else happens, I think that I should sit out editorial engagement with this particular topic. If I have a pending commitment somehow, then I will turn it over to others here at the talk page.
• I need more time to think and discuss major takeaways from all of this. I want to close out any request for urgent, further discussion, but as a personal matter, I want to learn and understand more about objectivity and neutrality when it comes to journalism. I have in my head that The Signpost is centrist, with a definite tilt toward community interests whenever there is any competing interest at play. I certainly do not want Signpost beholden to other organizations or authorities, and want it to have its independence in media. At another time and in another context, I would like more discussion on what biases The Signpost balances, and where exactly it fits with positioning itself with those biases. There are lots of "media bias charts" for mainstream publications, for example Allsides. I am unsure, but I doubt that it is anyone's intention to say that Signpost's position is centrism in all dimensions. I personally do not agree with high profile Wikimedia claims from this week that, for example, "Both sides of the trans debate have been toxic" which to me sounds like as much of an error as in my town Charlottesville where it is said that there are "Very fine people on both sides" of Nazi demonstrations. My intuition is that The Signpost cuts through many debates and takes non-centrist positions. This particular issue is obviously not one of those debates, and I need more time to think about why. Thanks everyone, and I definitely will talk with others about this. Or, I could be even more in error, and I may need to learn that. I appreciate all the constructive responses. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:56, 3 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

5W PR has a press release with some startlingly weird writing like "Wikipedia hygiene is now reputation infrastructure" and "win the AI surface", I guess by pumping out native advertising or something. On the one hand I don't want to give them free PR via The Signpost. On the other hand, it is appropriate IMO to call out companies trying to pimp leverage the information commons for their own ends. Any thoughts on how to treat this?

Oh, just why is this on my radar in the first place? Found it when scanning Google News for "Wikipedia" stories and this popped up. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:51, 5 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia and Entity Infrastructure — Notability assessment, entity establishment, ongoing accuracy governance, and dispute management — handled through the platform’s editorial channels rather than against them. I interpret this to mean We will perform paid edits on Wikipedia by converting money into notability, and using this to win over disputes! Perhaps we should try to find out if this actually means editing Wikipedia, and if so, do they disclose any paid editing. Mitchsavl (talk) 07:44, 5 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

According to their chatbot, they help generate "third-party coverage", and don't edit Wikipedia directly.

from https://www.5wpr.com/practice/geo-optimization.cfm:

[...] We clean up Wikidata, Wikipedia, Crunchbase, LinkedIn, and other foundational entity sources so the brand is uniquely identified and accurately described across the AI ecosystem. This seemst to suggest that they may make no content-related edits.

[...] The single biggest GEO lever is third-party authority — what trusted publications, Wikipedia editors, and Reddit communities say about a brand. That’s PR work. SEO agencies don’t place stories in Bloomberg. PR agencies that don’t understand semantic retrieval can’t structure the content for LLM extraction. 5W does both. This supports them using third party sources to "generate" notability. Mitchsavl (talk) 08:30, 5 June 2026 (UTC).[reply]

PR Newswire ha released an article covering this, as well as BreifGlance. Mitchsavl (talk) 10:25, 5 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The PR Newswire placement is what appeared on the first page of Google News search results for "Wikipedia". And it is a press release by 5W, not a real news article (as usual for PR Newswire). ☆ Bri (talk) 14:08, 5 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

We can focus on the points that Wikipedia and Reddit has been cited more in AI generated responses, and leave out direct mentions of the company and the services they provide. I wonder if Wikimedia Enterprise has picked up on that and 'milk' some money from it. – robertsky (talk) 17:01, 6 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri and Mitchsavl: I have boldly named this section in the newsroom talk page to "22:8 In the media", and added a subheading for 5W PR. ↠Pine (✉) 03:16, 6 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

See https://medium.com/regarding-wikipedia/the-most-predictable-edit-in-history-967956076b11 by Jake Orlowitz. ↠Pine (✉) 20:40, 6 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Risker: Would you be willing to have your comment posted here republished in the Signpost in the upcoming Community View, or a similar section? Note that even if everyone agrees for now on this concept, there may be some changes over the next few weeks before publication while the situation evolves.

@Bri and JPxG: any comments about this? Would Community View be an acceptable section? ↠Pine (✉) 02:57, 6 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Pine:, I am actually working on writing something on an entirely different topic, which I'd rather put forward, and I really don't think it's a good idea for someone not normally involved in Signpost articles to have two in the same issue. My comment is appropriately placed, in my opinion (i.e., relevant topic on VP:W, and the related discussion on meta): the people who are most interested in the topic have had the opportunity to see it and comment on it or take action in relation to it. Risker (talk) 03:28, 6 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Risker: thanks for the speedy reply. As far as I know the Signpost doesn't have a rule against having two pieces by the author in the same issue, but I understand that this might raise some questions. Have you cleared your alternative plan with JPxG and/or Bri? If not then I recommend you discuss this with them sooner rather than later, so that you don't spend hours working on something only to have it declined or postponed near the publication date. Regards, ↠Pine (✉) 03:39, 6 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Risker, I personally think it is fine to have your summary be reposted here as a request from other editors while you submit what you intend to submit still. I would also like to have this summary up on The Signpost as it is really sufficient for what has happened up till now. – robertsky (talk) 16:58, 6 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'll put it very simply. There's nothing I can do to stop it; I do know the licensing conditions under which it was posted. On the other hand, if I had intended it to be a Signpost article, I would have written it very differently. It was written with a specific audience in mind, not the general audience that reads the Signpost, which deserves more of an "explainer" type article with more factual information rather than one that hits only certain highlights. While I very much recognize the difference in circumstances, I don't recall either the community or the Signpost noticing or commenting on the fact that there was a 10% 9% reduction in WMF staffing between December 2022 and December 2023. Risker (talk) 19:39, 6 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Risker: thanks for the comments. I think The Signpost should respect your wishes. In the meantime, I have deployed a barnstar to your talk page. ↠Pine (✉) 07:04, 9 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, I have an outline of content for this. I added a placeholder for this column in the newsroom. There was already a corresponding line in the SQL statement in Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Newsroom database report. ↠Pine (✉) 03:13, 6 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

News tip: see this comment on Jimbo's talk page regarding "1,000 English Wikipedians 100,000 edits". ↠Pine (✉) 20:37, 6 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Related:

Hi, an idea for mentioning in the next issue. English Wikipedia now has 1,000 editors with 100,000, a nice round number event. The thousandth to reach the milestone (or, some say, signpost) was user Ecangola. Randy Kryn (talk) 14:00, 2 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Randy Kryn: This is neat, thanks for the post. I'll forward this to the newsroom :) jp×g🗯️ 06:18, 8 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Partly done: I decided not to include the username, as I don't think it is necessary to draw more attention to a user than needed. Mitchsavl (talk) 09:14, 8 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a neat thing to cover. jp×g🗯️ 06:19, 8 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote this Quarry query to confirm the 1,1000/100,000 figure. Since some users (such as me) operate more than one legitimate account, the sum across human users could be higher. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:28, 9 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, are we going to keep the essay staged, or are we going to unstage it, after the author had a 1 week block for violating their topic ban over the article? Mitchsavl (talk) 10:29, 11 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It was a contentious discussion among the arbs. And I need to re-read it to see what they think, as a group, the violation was. It is possible that only the final paragraph of the essay, the part that I removed as bear baiting (presciently, maybe), triggered the tban.

I'm pretty sure there was no consensus to restrain any individual from speaking about the fact that they are under a tban, nor from speaking about the wisdom of tbans generally, amd the impact they have on groups of editors.

Maybe it is a chance to revive the Arbitration report for an analysis… ☆ Bri (talk) 14:19, 11 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@.nhals8: You commented about this draft at the submissions board. Can you please here join this editorial discussion about what to do next? Do what feels right, but perhaps talk through pros and cons of publishing this piece. Bluerasberry (talk) 19:01, 11 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• I processed this submission and staged it for editorial review. I did not solicit or invite this publication, but I definitely tell people to publish here. This submission also overlaps with my interests in demographic analysis in Wikimedia projects and anti-harassment procedures by demographic, and I said this at the ArbCom trial which resulted in them getting a one-week block as punishment for violating their ban on discussing transgender topics. For a variety of reasons, I do not want to touch this particular article further. I would like to say that I was not expecting this Signpost submission to be an issue where ArbCom would intervene and I do not think the author imagined that either. I do not want to cross ArbCom and publish content which they have prohibited. It seems that Wikipedia:Contentious populations stands, so as best as I understand, the author bias disclosure was the arbcom-restricted content. The uncertainty here makes me uncomfortable. One view could be that this piece could inappropriate to publish due to being prohibited content from a restricted editor. Another view could be that the problem was my behavior and the user's behavior on that disclosure, and not the editorial views in the essay / article / Signpost submission itself. I apologize to my fellow editors for inviting a contributor into a restricted situation. This is not something that I have previously put thought into. I feel like if I had been more careful in how I welcome submissions then could have gone through without the user getting an ArbCom review and block on their record. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:51, 11 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • BR, hate to contradict you but this is more complex than content that they [Arbcom] have prohibited. Two facts: One: Any prohibition is on the author, not on us, and the cat was out of the bag when they started their userspace essay. Two: Arbs said, and I quote, editors have leeway to write constructive critiques of Wikipedia, and particularly, critiques of ArbCom (Arb 1); [an essay a particular arb disagrees with is] not sanctionable, and I think that a topic banned editor talking about how topic bans could be better and clearly doing her utmost to avoid directly discussing her own topic is, if nothing else, something I'm more (but not always) willing to IAR on. (Arb 2). At the least, I think we can say that the content itself is not prohibited. Perhaps the behavior resulting in its generation, or more narrowly, the generation of the final "bear baiting" paragraph was prohibited.

Whether we exercise the option to nuke the essay I think is in our court now, and depends more on how we see its disruption by violating a tban outweighing the informational and reform-oriented content utility for the community. ☆ Bri (talk) 17:10, 11 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri @Bluerasberry

I'd say there was general consensus among the arbs that the positionality statement was too cheeky by half, but the essay as a whole was not (and many arbs agreed with parts of it). The positionality statement was removed in both the original and the signpost version (before they dropped the block on me but c'est la vie).

I know that when publishing essays, the Signpost often precedes it with an editorial note giving context if there was any contention or wider discussion. Which is to say, it would be within your remit and usual practice to note the block and the bit they found too cheeky.

I'm about to have 2 weeks off work starting next week so will have time to help out if you need anything from me. I'm unsure if you were thinking Arbitration report for this piece, the block, or the original case - in any case I'd be happy to be interviewed but unsure how BANEX applies to that: as long as it's above board I'm down to give 2c. Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 20:55, 18 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I had thought this was a clear indication that our editor-in-chief considered the case closed. In any case it is highly unfortunate to reopen it without any reference to the discussion here about the same submission from the last issue. I don't think the concerns there have been resolved, and I would support moving on to focus our energies on publishing submissions by other authors who have not been repeatedly sanctioned for violating our community's policies on collegial collaboration. HaeB (talk) 08:29, 19 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/WikiConference report

Thanks Wil540 art for making a first Signpost submission to create this summary of the last meta:Volunteer Supporters Network annual meeting.

I helped Wil to format this, but if anyone has editorial suggestions or can review the content, then can you please send feedback to Wil? Thanks all. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:12, 11 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you @Bluerasberry and @Bri for the pre-copy edits. I'm here if there are any other changes I should make. - Wil540 art (talk) 20:53, 19 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/In focus

This story on the Wikimedia community wishlist relates also to Wikimedia union organizing.

I staged and formatted this following user submission. Could I now ask anyone else to volunteer to give this editorial review, and ping Barkeep49 with any feedback? Thanks. Bluerasberry (talk) 16:25, 11 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I think it's more appropriate as an OpEd, as it makes editorial commentary throughout. isaacl (talk) 17:19, 11 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Isaacl: Can you help further?

Currently this is submitted as op-ed - Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Op-ed

Some open column labels are "community view", "special report", "concept", and "in-focus". Is community view a fit? Bluerasberry (talk) 15:47, 16 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Content guidance doesn't provide any guidance regarding the content of the Community view section. My personal feeling from a quick skim of this year's content is that it isn't quite as editorial as the submission in question. Perhaps "Opinion" is a suitable spot, or the existing Op-ed piece can be moved to Opinion to make space. isaacl (talk) 16:52, 16 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Isaacl: I can arrange the moves if you can suggest some order to things. "Opinion", so far as I understand, usually refers to the opinions of known, regular contributors. Of all these authors we are considering, Shushugah has the most with 3 articles by Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Statistics/Authors

• opinion - Wikimedia and unions - Shushugah
• op-ed - AI - Sadads
• community view - wishlist - Barkeep49
• Essay - contentious populations - Your Friendly Neighborhood Sociologist

I moved wishlist out of "in-focus" to put this there

• in focus - NPOV - Risker

I can move any of these at your suggestion, but it is not clear what changes are an improvement. We have "discussion report", "special report", and "concept" open. Our publishing system does not allow two of a type to run in the same issue. Bluerasberry (talk) 19:18, 16 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I don't have the same view of the "Opinion" section as you (and the search link for the Opinion section on the Content Guidance page shows a variety of authors). Let's see what other people think. (Note there is no need to send me a notification for discussions in which I am participating.) isaacl (talk) 21:24, 16 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri, Mitchsavl, and Jayen466: The above is an invite for Wikimedia Café sessions in June. Would one of you please add a note about this in the upcoming News and Notes? Thanks, ↠Pine (✉) 03:40, 15 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

 Done: Thanks for the tip! Mitchsavl (talk) 07:41, 15 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Does anyone know why https://wikipediocracy.com/ has gone 404 today? All of it. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:18, 15 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

No idea, but confirmed at https://www.isitdownrightnow.com/wikipediocracy.com.html ☆ Bri (talk) 04:32, 16 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to check the goss and saw it was down too. Who knows. There have been a few times before that it went down for a day or two. Such is life for a small website run by a couple people. jp×g🗯️ 16:20, 16 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Who is going to throw the party? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:26, 16 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@HaeB: You may be interested in this article, covering a research study. It Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests. It looks at how user generated sites, such as Wikipedia, reddit etc. can be used to manipulate LLM based searches. Mitchsavl (talk) 10:12, 16 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@HaeB: We're about a day from writing deadline and I don't see anything started for this section. Will it be missing in this issue? ☆ Bri (talk) 15:41, 18 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we just updated the usual to-do list Etherpad (as usual, contributions are welcome, as described there), and I have started the draft. As always, I'll take responsibility for having it in a publishable shape by the publication deadline (if not, feel free to publish the issue without it).

Appreciate the nudge, but also, we've used this same process for RR for over a decade now, and you've been around for many or even most of these issues, so I'd assume you are acquainted with parts of the process (like that Etherpad, and that I generally always post a note like this here).

Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:36, 19 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This should be publishable now if need be, except for the missing piccy (will try to find one myself if no one beats me to it).

Bri: I saw that you postponed your own contribution that you had started, so I left that at "next next" (but also put you down as reviewer for that paper on the aforementioned Etherpad).

Regards, HaeB (talk) 00:06, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like Bri chose to publish it with the piccy still missing. Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:20, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Left out due to an oversight. ☆ Bri (talk) 03:32, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I added one to the empty template still in the article, but it will need to be ported over manually now since the script already ran. Regards, HaeB (talk) 03:40, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Should be manually patched now. ☆ Bri (talk) 04:17, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'd welcome another pair of eyes on this: [1] Google Books appears to have started displaying AI slop when it can't display the actual text of a book. Even worse, it "finds" its own slop when you do a Google Books search.

This could be worth mentioning somewhere in the upcoming issue. People might need to adjust their workflows. Have you come across this before in your reading, HaeB? Andreas JN466 12:15, 16 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

The Google AI explanation seems unlikely. The book seems to be an AI-written fake entered into the Google Books Partner Program, using the author name, book title and the actual title page of the US edition. If so, rather sloppy of Google. Andreas JN466 09:26, 17 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Jayen466: By the way, straying off from the topic for a bit, theres an urgent situation needing your attention which you've familiar of and I've sent you many emails a while back that I've since found that it's the work of a global ban evader. Tqsm.~2026-35518-19 (talk) 13:16, 17 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting find. No, I hadn't read about this before (except in the Kurier when you posted about it there ;). I agree that it sounds quite unlikely that this a hallucinations by Google's own AI systems.

A general warning apropos your linked post: "Don’t trust AI to talk accurately about itself" (Simon Willison) - meaning that aside from any general reliability considerations about AI (and these free AI features integrated into Google Search can be assumed to be of vastly lower quality than e.g. current paid versions of Claude or ChatGPT), a particular chatbot or LLM naturally doesn't have any special knowledge about itself in its training data (and whatever it can retrieve via a web search at inference time will likely also be available to the public directly). We had a syndicated Signpost article a few months ago whose author unfortunately fell into that trap, causing substantial parts of his story to consist of reproducing LLM hallucinations. Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:52, 19 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

This AI futures article was submitted right before last issue and did not match with a review.

• Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Next_issue/Op-ed

Max263, Ijon, Bri, Smallbones, and I have all done some amount of review and copyediting. Is anyone willing to sign off on shipping this? Bluerasberry (talk) 16:21, 16 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I just read it for about the third time. It starts to grow on you the more you read it. It is rather long, in-depth and contrary to the usual consensus view. More-or-less the type of thing we claim to be looking for (except for the length). Smallbones_(smalltalk) 18:24, 16 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry for the length @Smallbones this one has been stewing for a while, glad it grows on you -- I have a few more followup ideas I want to tease out, will try to make them shorter! Sadads (talk) 18:57, 16 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

(see above for the previous discussion about this submission, where Bluerasberry had already conveyed several green checkmarks to it - I guess by did not match with a review he means that it wasn't signed off by the EiC or substitute)

To Bluerasberry's question: Yes, if we are invoking the (recently officialized) EICAWOL for this issue, then I would be happy to sign off on it.

I will say in advance (because I might post about some of that in the comment section after publication) that there are a few aspects where I personally disagree with this op-ed as a matter of opinion, and also various statements that seem maybe not entirely factually correct to me, or at least not fully supported by the cited sources. But I likely won't have time to do more thorough fact-checking myself before the publication deadline, and don't think this needs to be a blocker. (Apropos, generally speaking I can recommend trying a paid version of Claude or ChatGPT for this btw, I used the latter successfully when reviewing various sections for publication in last month's issue [2][3].)

And overall this is of high enough quality, citing lots of relevant sources - more than most of our op-eds and opinion articles - and making a very interesting contribution. Again speaking personally, I am very grateful to Sadads for questioning some widespread assumptions and claims which I agree do need to be questioned.

Some of the main theses could even be strengthened further by pointing to relevant examples of other communities. E.g. OpenStreetMap seems to be quite healthy despite getting most of its impact from reuses away from its own website, and thus never had the opportunity to do as much fundraising via on-site banners and editor recruitment via "edit" buttons as we had. (Consequently, the OpenStreetMap Foundation has vastly fewer paid employees than WMF. I don't think this is necessarily a good thing - maybe Google Maps would be less dominant today if they OSF had had more funding. But at least this example indicates that even a massive loss in direct traffic and WMF revenue might be survivable for the Wikipedia community.)

Editorially speaking though, the biggest problem has already been mentioned: The piece is quite long, and likely to lose quite a few readers before getting to its main points. Maybe consider summarizing them briefly at the very start in a WP:LEDE / BLUF style, before going into personal background (also keep in mind that TOCs are deactivated in Signpost articles).

Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:04, 19 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

For me a lede summary (already added to Op-Ed edit there directly) would be something like:

This op-ed challenges the way we recruit and retain long-term Wikipedia editors. As direct traffic declines, the strategy of converting readers into editors is threatened. The op-ed questions whether that was ever truly an issue. Future long term retention and recruiting of new editors could include drawing from sister wikis, such as Wikidata, Wikisource, and Commons, as well as investing more in GLAM partnerships, Wiki Education.

My question to @Sadads, suppose I agree, I am unsure how this would work financially. You hint at this by pointing OSM has a much smaller staff team, but what other ways would there be to cover either declining donations, and or...the increased public investments in the different institutional partnerships you proposed? Or at least acknowledge that this is a tough part of the puzzle. ~ In solidarity 🦝 Shushugah (talk) 21:09, 19 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify, Sadads' op-ed doesn't mention OSM (at this point); it was me who brought it up as a possible example. Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:51, 20 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I prophesize an extremely busy publication day and it is very likely I will not be around then. jp×g🗯️ 16:26, 16 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I should be available to stand in as publisher. Is it possible to get EinC approval on important bits like In focus, Op-ed a d Opinion, though they may not all be fully copyedited yet? Also, haven't seen your opinion yet at #22:8 Essay ☆ Bri (talk) 13:53, 17 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

OK, time to invoke WP:EICAWOL (the heads-up this time is appreciated). Re 2. there, I understand Bri is willing to carry out publication, so per 3., Signpost regulars should start approving sections for publication in lieu of the EiC (preferably not those they have been involved with themselves in a major way). As mentioned above the other day, I can do that for the Op-ed, and I'll try to do some others as well. Of course there is still quite a bit of writing and copyediting to do before all sections can be approved, see also below. Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:31, 20 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

It is currently about six hours until writing deadline. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:44, 19 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, that's the writing deadline. I'm going to postpone my own work on Recent research till next issue. Anyone else still working? How's Disinformation report coming, Smallbones? ☆ Bri (talk) 01:37, 20 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Slower than expected, but a final draft should be ready in 10 hours. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 07:26, 20 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Mitchsavl and Bri: still writing - please don't copy edit yet. I'll let you know here when it's ready. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 09:59, 20 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

OK, most of it is ready to copy edit! That's every section except the Ogilvy section (I'm getting sick of it and want to clear my head) and the last section (something like a conclusion - which I haven't written yet!) Feel free to change the title and/or piccy. Min(d/e) clearing for maybe an hour. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 14:31, 20 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I filled out the conclusion. so another quick CE should do it. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 20:43, 20 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

My article Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Opinion is ready for copy-editing/any other improvements. ~ In solidarity 🦝 Shushugah (talk) 15:04, 20 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

/Opinion has been CE'd. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:23, 20 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry ): Mitchsavl (talk) 02:37, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that "On the Bright Side" is ready for copyediting. I asked HouseBlaster and Clovermoss to read through the entire article before publication. ↠Pine (✉) 03:42, 20 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Editors and copyeditors listed at WP:Wikipedia Signpost/About: @Bluerasberry, Headbomb, Oltrepier, Red-tailed hawk, Smallbones, Svampesky, Gerald Waldo Luis, Headbomb, Isaacl, and Adam Cuerden: – your assistance copyediting this issue is requested. Help, please! ☆ Bri (talk) 17:13, 20 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Given the lack of Newsroom consensus up at #22:8 Essay I do not plan to include it in this issue. Here is a tentative table of contents.

1. From the editors
2. News and notes
3. Disinformation report
4. In the media
5. Community view
6. In focus
7. On the bright side
8. Op-ed
9. Opinion
10. Technology report
11. Traffic report
12. WikiConference report
13. Comix
14. Humour

Publication can be held until tomorrow if we expect to have further discussion over any of this. ☆ Bri (talk) 23:39, 20 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Corrected TOC; I said I would not include it, then accidentally listed it. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:08, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

From the editors, News and notes, and In the media need copyediting. My name is on the byline and it's best practice to have someone else copyedit. I'll wait a bit to publish to see if that gets done. Will probably kick it off around 2000 Pacific/0300 UTC. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:37, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Still waiting for From the editors, News and notes, and In the media copyedit. If you like replacing "Subtitle" with a snappy take, here's your chance. ☆ Bri (talk) 02:39, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to do this at 0310. Please avoid editing until I post here again, so we don't have script errors. ☆ Bri (talk) 03:03, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

p.s. Yes, adding the new Recent research column. ☆ Bri (talk) 03:06, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Publication complete. Looks good at first glance except we forgot to put the thumbnail image up for Recent research. ☆ Bri (talk) 03:18, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Noticed a glitch. The single-page edition of 22:8 doesn't expand, and in the editor it says Warning: Post-expand include size is too large. Some templates will not be included. The workaround is just to click the Wikilink, but it's kinda unfortunate. Especially for subscribers. Also, Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2026-06-21 doesn't seem to be populating. On the other hand, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Single works fine. Weird. ☆ Bri (talk) 05:34, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri I have temporarily redirected it for now.

I also noted that Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Single/2026-06-21 is empty because the script to populate Module:Signpost/index/2026 has not completed ~ In solidarity 🦝 Shushugah (talk) 12:42, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

For internal editing, we reference these as 22:8 (Volume 22, Issue 8) but we do not mention the volume/issue in either the url, or more problematically, on individual archives, e.g nowhere inside it referenced. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Archives/2026-06-21.

Because the exact publish date sometimes changes last minute, I understand why we use Volume/Issue, but would suggest making it easier to understand what volume/issue can be referencing then without having to go to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Archives to manually verify, and automatically display Volumes/Edition on all archive pieces, similar to how it is displayed in the current issue. ~ In solidarity 🦝 Shushugah (talk) 12:47, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There is actually one place that Volume 22 issue 8 appears again in the archive: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Archives/2026#June. But I see your point, that is not reiterated in what I like to call the cover page, the page with the grid of pictures for each article. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:31, 21 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I recently read some arbcom proceedings that focusing on the content is not enough. I have not dug into this too far, but I think this could be a good arb com report. Has Signpost already covered it in someway? I do not see it in the previous issue. Czarking0 (talk) 14:48, 22 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Arbcom has never been an examiner of content; in their words from WP:Guide to arbitration#Content rulings, ArbCom avoids taking positions in content disputes. Are you saying there's something new here? - Bri.public (talk) 16:06, 22 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

See here for the full principle. It's a civility thing. Chess enjoyer (talk) 08:13, 23 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]