Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom/Archive 13

Newsroom discussions prior to May 2018 are archived at WT:POST.

All ready to publish.
Please go ahead Bri! (back in 5) Smallbones( smalltalk ) 19:41, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Getting started. Hands off keyboards! ☆ Bri (talk) 19:45, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Done, modulo Remember to announce the new issue on the mailing list, Twitter, and Facebook. and mass messaging global subscribers. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:50, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Reader feedback
All: You can use the link above to monitor feedback on the November 1 issue. ☆ Bri (talk) 20:00, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

Pageviews by issue

 * February issue totals thru March 1, 2020, 2,134; March 3, 7,668; March 7, 13,254; March 14, 19,892; March 21, 32,508; March 28, 44,988.
 * March issue totals thru March 31, 6,203; April 4, 26,276; April 11 42,591; April 18 50,059; April 25 57,878.
 * April 26 issue totals 1 day - 2,119; 4d - 9,066; 1 week 10,657, 2W -  12,467 ;,
 * May 31 issue - 1st day 2,219, 4th day 8,154, 1st week 10,282, 2nd week 12,473, 3rd week 13963, 4 weeks 15,181 *|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/Arbitration_report|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/News_and_notes|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/Op-Ed|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/In_the_media|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/Discussion_report|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/Obituaries|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/Special_report|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/News_from_the_WMF|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/Recent_research, |Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/Gallery|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/On_the_bright_side|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/Traffic_report|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/On_video|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/WikiProject_report|Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2020-05-31/Featured_content
 * June 28 issue 7,485 1st week, 9,907 2nd week, 11,174 3rd week, 12,847 4th week, 13,950 5th week 10 6.
 * August 2 issue  1st day 1981, 4th day (cumulative) 7,004; 1st week, 8,393, 2nd week 10,665, 3rd week 12,320, 4th week 14,099
 * August 30 issue, 1st day 2,128, 4th day 7,029, 1st week 8,512, 2nd week 9.903, third week 11,189.
 * September 27 issue 3rd day 3,693; 1st week 5,652; 2nd week 7,287; 3rd week 8,519; 4th week 9,500
 * Nov 1 issue 9 articles 2 articles 3,385 2nd day; 4,281 3rd day; 5,411 5th day; 6,953 10th day; 7,770, 2nd week; 8,961 3rd week;

Thanks to all!
It looks like everything is published. I did check for redlinks, but only found 2 (on the single page version - which it turns out that I don't know how to edit!)  Thanks twice as much as usual (at least) for help on this issue. and everybody else. It's a strange issue, but packed with lots of stuff. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 20:11, 1 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I scanned the single-page ed. and don't see any redlinks except for one of our contributors' userpages (!)... it was probably waiting for the cache to catch up. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:36, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Featured content
I think FPs are done. Little bit of speculation on what'll pass, but FPC is highly predictable if things have five supports already. Spent some time rearranging them so that they'd look as pleasing as possible at arbitrary screen widths. If someone wants to step in and start FA and FL, feel free. Presuming we don't report Good Topics, I think we can ignore the Featured Topics for this Signpost. (As an aside, what is up with the FTC archives? They seem to be completely broken. Had to go to the page history). Figured I'd be a lot more relaxed if I had it mostly done now.

When's the new publication date? Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.7% of all FPs 22:04, 6 November 2020 (UTC)


 * draft due Saturday November 28 (Friday 27th would be better), publication Sunday November 29. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 17:49, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Think I'll be done on it aout the 11th, then start on other things. FPs are done, all FAs currently promoted are done, and FLs can be done tomorrow. It's done! Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.7% of all FPs 23:08, 8 November 2020 (UTC)

Now that the election seems to be over ...
does anybody have any ideas for related stories in our next issue?

Smallbones( smalltalk ) 17:42, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * A short follow-up on how election-related pages were put under extended-confirmed protection and when that protection was lifted would be good. Also, a short summary of high-traffic election articles, perhaps with a chart showing their daily pageviews.  If there are any academic studies of Wikipedia's coverage of the recent election, at least a short mention of them with a promise of more coverage in late December's issue would be warranted.  Also mention if the balance-of-power-in-the-Senate Georgia Senate runoff-related pages will continue to be protected and if so, for how long.  Of course, if there was any Wiki-related abuse by any major candidate, cover that as well (I don't know of any).   For the late January issue, at least a paragraph about the articles related to the start of the new Congress, the Presidential inauguration, and the two Georgia Senate run-offs. davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  18:43, 7 November 2020 (UTC)
 * There's probably already enough election/Wikipedia related stuff for its own section in In the Media. ☆ Bri (talk) 03:10, 12 November 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom elections

 * Voting period: Tuesday 00:00, 23 November to Monday 23:59, 06 December (14 days)

Suggestions on how to cover it?

I believe that *we* are not allowed to endorse anybody, per the rules on election guides, which in effect, say each person can give election advice, but no teams, political parties, etc., allowed. In any case, given the timelines and general practices, "no endorsements" is a reasonable way of dealing with it. So how do we cover it? Just count the number of candidates and give their names? Ask each one for a 12 word statement?

Smallbones( smalltalk ) 16:04, 10 November 2020 (UTC)
 * They have candidate statements. I'd say treat it like a Wikipedia article NPOV-wise. Use primary sources carefully to present their positions, and any controversies. Be even-handed. Now, I'd expect a shitshow in the comments if any candidates are controversial, but THAT is not our responsibility, beyond, perhaps, page protection - We're here to report, anything that arises from that really isn't our problem as long as we do our job right. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.7% of all FPs 19:38, 12 November 2020 (UTC)


 * Seems like we ought to be able at least to discuss the contents of the official elections navbox, including the listed voter guides. - Bri.public (talk) 00:19, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Billionth edit countdown
My forecasts for the date we hit one billion edits, using data from Time Between Edits are as follows



!Date forecast was made !! Edit count (M) !! colspan="2"|Forecast date of billionth edit
 * || ||Lower bounda||Upper boundb
 * 6 Nov|| 987 || || 23 Jan
 * 12 Nov|| 988.4 || || 21 Jan
 * 16 Nov|| 989.03 ||10 Jan|| 21 Jan
 * 18 Nov|| 989.36 || 10 Jan|| 21 Jan
 * 20 Nov|| 989.7 || 11 Jan|| 21 Jan
 * 23 Nov|| 990.25 || 11 Jan|| 20 Jan
 * 25 Nov|| 990.62 || 11 Jan|| 20 Jan
 * }
 * 18 Nov|| 989.36 || 10 Jan|| 21 Jan
 * 20 Nov|| 989.7 || 11 Jan|| 21 Jan
 * 23 Nov|| 990.25 || 11 Jan|| 20 Jan
 * 25 Nov|| 990.62 || 11 Jan|| 20 Jan
 * }
 * 25 Nov|| 990.62 || 11 Jan|| 20 Jan
 * }
 * }
 * }
 * }


 * a 50 days/10M edits (avg since pandemic)
 * b 60 days/10M edits (normal)

I'll keep updating this table every few days, if there's interest. - Bri.public (talk) 00:29, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * , yes, definitely! &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 00:40, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * OK time to start cranking out those nearly-null edits so I can see my name in lights. Oops, I mean see my account blocked for abusing Wikipedia.  In all seriousness, yes, give us updates every week or two until we get close, then maybe every day when it's within 2 days, every few hours, and so on.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  01:32, 13 November 2020 (UTC)
 * The pedant in me is obliged to spoil the party by pointing out that Wikipedia's billionth edit has almost certainly already been and gone unnoticed and unremarked. Special:Diff/1000000000 is just going to be "the billionth edit made on the current software", since when we switched from UseModWiki to MediaWiki the counts were reset (Special:Diff/1 is completely unremarkable). Because the UseModWiki logs have been lost, we have no idea how many edits were made using it. &#8209; Iridescent 19:33, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info. we'll have to say something like "the billionth edit since January 25, 2002". One question, the URL that results fro clicking Special:Diff/1 is https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?diff=1&oldid=294750 . Does the "294750" mean anything? Could about 300,000 edits have been made in the very first year? Smallbones( smalltalk ) 12:50, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I thought that a lot of the early edits were recovered from an archive and reloaded. But presumably some deleted stuff was lost.  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  15:12, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I doubt there are any exact answers since we know some of the early edits have been completely lost; one also needs to account that although we take 15 January 2001 as a "start date" that's just the day of the Wikipedia/Nupedia fork became separate entities. The articles on Nupedia were just ported across to Wikipedia (compare the last edit to "The Donegal Fiddle Tradition" on Nupedia with the first version of [[Donegal fiddle tradition] on Wikipedia]) but the Nupedia edit histories weren't preserved in the transfer. IIRC Graham87 has done some work to try to reconstruct the early days, but I would think too much history has been lost to ever be able to be more specific than "lots of edits". (Bear in mind also that prior to the Wikidata migration, things like changes to the interwiki language links also show up in the history as "edits", as do edits made to pages in other languages that were then transwikied for translation—for instance you (Smallbones) have officially made quite a few edits to German Wikipedia all of which go towards de-wiki's edit count, even though it doesn't appear you've ever touched that project in reality.) &#8209; Iridescent 16:32, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I know that there are edits on the German, Greek and perhaps other Wikipedias that are transwikied copies of edits from EN Wikipedia. Most of my edits on DE were made here and subsequently copied over when someone translated an article into German and copied all its history. But that only effects our billion edits calculation if people have imported article histories to here when they have translated articles into English, and as far as I'm aware we haven't done that (arguably for attribution we should).  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  19:35, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I doubt there are any exact answers since we know some of the early edits have been completely lost; one also needs to account that although we take 15 January 2001 as a "start date" that's just the day of the Wikipedia/Nupedia fork became separate entities. The articles on Nupedia were just ported across to Wikipedia (compare the last edit to "The Donegal Fiddle Tradition" on Nupedia with the first version of [[Donegal fiddle tradition] on Wikipedia]) but the Nupedia edit histories weren't preserved in the transfer. IIRC Graham87 has done some work to try to reconstruct the early days, but I would think too much history has been lost to ever be able to be more specific than "lots of edits". (Bear in mind also that prior to the Wikidata migration, things like changes to the interwiki language links also show up in the history as "edits", as do edits made to pages in other languages that were then transwikied for translation—for instance you (Smallbones) have officially made quite a few edits to German Wikipedia all of which go towards de-wiki's edit count, even though it doesn't appear you've ever touched that project in reality.) &#8209; Iridescent 16:32, 24 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I know that there are edits on the German, Greek and perhaps other Wikipedias that are transwikied copies of edits from EN Wikipedia. Most of my edits on DE were made here and subsequently copied over when someone translated an article into German and copied all its history. But that only effects our billion edits calculation if people have imported article histories to here when they have translated articles into English, and as far as I'm aware we haven't done that (arguably for attribution we should).  Ϣere Spiel  Chequers  19:35, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I think all the wiki-spelunking (or is it archaeology?) above is a useful addition to a piece we write about the so-called billionth edit. Pedantic or not, newsworthy and will prove interesting to many.

Furthering the pedantry, History of Wikipedia says "The first portable MediaWiki software went live on 25 January" 2002. but Special:Diff/1 is 14:25 26 January 2002 UTC (which was also 26 January in the U.S. [except Guam where it was 27 January, take that pedants]). I wonder why? - Bri.public (talk) 23:06, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

I think we're only out by a few hundred thousand edits, at the very most, perhaps closer to 150,000 or 200,000. We have relatively exact figures for the number of edits from 15 January to 17 August 2001 and from 20 November to 20 December, which total 88,837 edits. The 17 August 2001 database dump, which contains every edit from Wikipedia's founding until that date, contains 57,982 edits per a line count of one of the log files, rc.log (each edit is stored on its own line). The Nostalgia Wikipedia contains a snapshot of all edits up to 20 December 2001, and as far as I understand it contains a complete archive of edits between 20 November and 20 December of that year, because edits from that time weren't automatically removed. It contains 95330 edits, but that includes edits made by the conversion script in 2005 among other things. I did a quick and dirty database query to list all timestamps in the database, earliest first, and from there I found out that the Nostalgia Wikipedia contains 88,040 edits from 2001, 30,855 of which were made in the llast month of the database and therefore form a complete archive. (We can't do this on the current Wikipedia database since, as explained at Usemod article histories, the final edit made to each page wasn't imported when the UseModWiki edits were added in 2002).

Another thing that would whack out the count a bit is that edits deleted before Wikipedia was upgraded to MediaWiki 1.5 lost their revision ID numbers and got new ones when they were undeleted. According to an old Bugzilla thread, there were 511,728 of those. Some of those got undeleted/re-imported, most notably at Historical archive/Sandbox, which has over 20,000 revisions. There are also quite a few other revisions that have also been imported from the Nostalgia Wikipedia (I'd say 50,000 or so). Graham 87 03:48, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree with Bri on this. The story that is emerging here will be worth much more to many of our readers than just the date of the "billionth". That billionth-date article would after all just be a number and a date, a round number marking point with maybe a bit of nostalgia, but not much more. The emerging story however has got a lot more - an origin story, some mystery, there's even some controversy regarding the last Nupedia edit - see Talk:Donegal fiddle tradition. That article became a featured article - with very few edits after Larry Sanger wrote it on Nupedia - and it's still a good article. But it seems that Sanger was complaining that it was a copyright violation. So who wants to write it up? for December 20ish if we really want to emphasize the history, or late January if we just want to accompany the billionth-date article. Either way it would be an important part of our 20th birthday celebration. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 15:26, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia Signpost/2010-04-19/News and notes: On Friday, 16 April 2010 the Wikimedia projects passed a total of 1 billion edits, as measured by the edit counter. Regards, HaeB (talk) 15:45, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll be happy to check out any such article pre-publication, but I'd prefer not to be the main writer ... writing things from scratch scares me. But re the discrepancy between the edit with ID 1 and the date given for the software upgrade, I don't exactly know the answer, but it says it was upgraded on the 25th of January at Magnus Manske Day, the mailing list thread linked from there, and this mailing list thread. I seem to recall that there were  some weird issues in the early days with time zones, but I thought they were about some timestamps being in Pacific Standard Time instead of UTC, which wouldn't make sense at all here. Also see more info about early timestamp bugs at User:Conversion script. Graham 87  15:52, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * OK, the one billionth (since whenever) is for the English-language Wikipedia Time Between Edits. The 4.5 billion from edit counter is for all WMF projects. This is getting complicated, but that should add to the mystery. It is over my head, though, I'll help write the article, but somebody who knows something about the topic needs to take on the responsibility to get it going and lending some structure to the article. I looks like you'll have a lot of help though. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 17:37, 25 November 2020 (UTC)

I've prepped this conversation as an article here: User:Bri/Signpost Story1. It could probably go as-is or we could wrap more narrative around it ... or if there's time rewrite as a unified narrative instead of a back-and-forth conversation. ☆ Bri (talk) 14:59, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Next issue Sunday November 29
please have any submissions in by Friday Nov. 27, or if you want detailed feedback by Wednesday Nov. 25. - the usual time applies. I'm not quite sure who will publish this issue yet, but should get that taken care of over this weekend. Thanks. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 17:53, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I can publish Sunday morning (Pacific Time). - Bri.public (talk) 21:05, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Bri.  - that's an hour or 2 earlier than usual = ok with you? Smallbones( smalltalk ) 00:30, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Got it. Going to be busy tomorrow (and that ate up most of this week) but I'll work once I can on the third article. Other two are done. Adam Cuerden (talk)Has about 7.7% of all FPs 02:01, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes - thanks for the heads-up. Regards, HaeB (talk) 08:30, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It doesn't have to be super early ... I'd just like to finish up in the morning, instead of starting at noon like we usually do. ☆ Bri (talk) 14:14, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. , I'll send you an email about something else. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 03:04, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

"Diff"
Has The Signpost reported on https://diff.wikimedia.org/, "a blog by and for the Wikimedia volunteer community to connect and share learnings, stories, and ideas from across the movement"? I just stumbled across it and didn't know it was a thing. Is this the new name for blog.wikimedia.org which now redirects there? Did I miss a renaming announcement? - Bri.public (talk) 17:50, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * (Responding in a volunteer capacity) You did. :-) More here. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:54, 25 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If I may add, The Signpost has repoSted a couple of stories published on Diff, and we were very happy to see that they were considered interesting here. Qgil-WMF (talk) 10:56, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

Lots to Copyedit
They be some more tonight or tomorrow. Expected publishing time noon (ET) Tomorrow (Sunday)/ Smallbones( smalltalk ) 18:09, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/News from Wiki Education uses typographical quotes. Does the Signpost follow Wikipedia's Manual of Style guidance to only use straight quotes, or as long as it's consistent in an article, does it matter? isaacl (talk) 20:29, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Per WP:MOS straight quotes - sorry. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 22:39, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
 * If you could use fewer contractions and possessives next time, it would be appreciated ;-) isaacl (talk) 00:55, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * In the final section of Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Opinion, you use "whitewash" a lot. There are other words that could fit but I'm not sure of the specific nuances you are trying to convey. I suggest the section would read better with less repetition, but I leave it up to you to decide. isaacl (talk) 07:34, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Countdown: a little less than two hours left till publication on our ideal schedule today. I will be the publication manager. – ☆ Bri (talk) 15:15, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * By the way I still don't have access to The Signpost's Twitter or Facebook accounts, and really don't want to take that on. We need to fill the outreach manager position probably as much or more than we need a non-interim publication manager. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:27, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Opinion column/paid editing
Would it be in the interest of fairness to link to Wikipedia Signpost/2014-06-11/Paid editing somewhere in the upcoming issue's Opinion column? Sort of as a balance to the pro/con discussion. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:51, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

About an hour to go
shall we shoot for 1 hour 8 minutes from now. I've been trying to get another story or 2 for News and notes. Let me know when everything else is ready. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 15:53, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Great story in N&N. I don't want to get into edit conflicts, but will check out the sources, maybe ask Jimbo for comment via his talk page. We should move that story to the top and arbcom elections 2nd.  Does the top pic still belong at the top - either way from my POV. Smallbones( smalltalk ) 16:15, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I'll be AFK till 9 Pacific, so no edit conflicts from me. I agree, the Wales story should lead (and I like the quote for the title). ☆ Bri (talk) 16:17, 29 November 2020 (UTC)