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Submission Desk
Please propose Signpost stories you want to write (or have already begun writing). Submitted stories are published subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief, JPxG. We value the involvement of Wikipedians, and appreciate your submissions. If you have ideas or questions that don't fit neatly into this framework, don't hesitate to address us on our user talk pages, by email, or as a last resort, on the general Signpost talk page.
The Signpost's content guidelines may be useful to aspiring writers; take note, especially, of the statement of purpose section. We encourage you to contact us early in the process of developing a story. Different writers have varying levels of interest in editorial input, and we pride ourselves on finding the right balance with each writer; but in most cases, a brief discussion early on can help all parties shape our expectations, and can help produce a strong finished piece. We aim to support Wikimedians wishing to share news with their peers, and look forward to working with you.
Inspired by Adam's recent article on finding and improving photos for biographies, I wanted to write a quick guide to finding and improving images for biology using a tool called Wiki Loves iNaturalist. It has a lot of nice functionality that I encourage you to play with, but before we get on a mini-tutorial, let's do a round of before and after photos so you can see what it offers.
Discussion: This piece is about the Wednesday Index, which has used PAC’s Wikidata tool to measure the gender diversity in the biographies linked from a set of 26 English Wikipedia pages — from ‘Reality’ to ‘Universe’, ‘Science’ to ‘Justice’ —for the past two years to get a sense for both the extent of citation bias on Wikipedia and how quickly it changes. In addition to data visualizations and discussion, the piece links to related research and the two previous posts about the Index. After I published this piece on Medium, I was referred to the Signpost, as it has a large audience in the Wikipedia community. I read the submission guidelines and understand that you prefer to work with writers earlier in the writing process, but I wanted to touch base to see if there was a place for the work in your publication. OpenSexism (talk) 21:41, 7 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion: This piece is about... the coverage of the Arbitration Committee in online media A.FLOCK (talk) 05:46, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@A.FLOCK: This looks like a good start for a pitch; right now it seems like something more appropriate for an entry in News and Notes, or maybe In the Media, rather than a standalone article. I would be fine with incorporating it into one of these columns if you'd like. Otherwise I think it would require some more in the way of introduction, independent analysis or interpretation, et cetera. Perhaps it would be possible to do a deeper examination of the actual casepages and decisions involved and compare them to the video? jp×g 06:14, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion: This piece is about the development and implementation of Equity lists, which are inspired by Women in Red. The basic idea is to use other demographic variables - Sexual Orientation, Nationality, Medical Condition, to aggregate lists of names of people from other language versions of Wikipedia that do not yet have English Wikipedia articles. The common thread is to emphasize people from communities that are traditionally underrepresented on Wikipedia. Will (Wiki Ed) (talk) 22:31, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Will (Wiki Ed): Yeah, this looks good. If you can format it into a draft we can run it in the next issue. Thanks! jp×g 06:14, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@JPxG: I have adapted this article from our blog to the Signpost. I'm not positive the formatting is perfect, so feel free to let me know. Thanks! Will (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:39, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good to me. Donejp×g🗯️ 23:29, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Evaluating qualitative systemic bias in large article sets
Discussion: This piece is about assessing qualitative systemic bias in large sets of articles. Most studies of systemic bias address quantitative bias by noting that large numbers of articles are missing from the encyclopedia. This does not address qualitative bias in existing articles that may be implied when large numbers of articles are missing. This submission proposes a system to identify missing statements from existing articles based on relationships between those articles and sets of missing entities. Larataguera (talk) 13:20, 18 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Larataguera: This is nice. I would like to publish this. There are a couple things that I would be cautious about with copyediting (for example, the diff you cite here looks like it's just vandalism). I am no scholar of Wikipolitics, but I think that there was a bunch of it with this project which complicates the issue a little (not sure -- it might have been a similarly named one). Overall, though, it is a good concept and it's written well. I can move it to the holding tank for next issue if you want. jp×g 06:19, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's great. Thanks! I'm happy to make edits to address any concerns of course.As for that particular diff, it may have been vandalism, though if so, it went unreverted until I fixed it a few days ago. (It introduced an invalid parameter in the template.) Shortly before that edit, the project was marked semi-active; that's how it's marked right now since my recent edit, and that may be more strictly accurate. I revamped the project page back in December, and another editor observed then that the project was struggling to remain active.I would love for CSB to be an active and effective project, but I also don't think the community should pretend that this issue is being addressed when it isn't. Larataguera (talk) 11:52, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So in summary, I can change that sentence to more accurately reflect the state of affairs I've just summarised above, and if there are any other concerns just raise them wherever you like and I'll see what I can do to address them. Thanks again! Larataguera (talk) 12:00, 26 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good to me. Donejp×g🗯️ 23:29, 5 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion: This piece is about my experiences shepherding my first Featured Article though the FAC process. RoySmith(talk) 18:49, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion: This piece is about the recently opened Wikimania scholarship process. Nadzik (talk) 22:12, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Does this need to be a separate story? It short and honestly not very informative - instead of PR lyrics ("a celebration of the ways we work together" etc.) our readers might be more interested in, say, the eligibility criteria, or stats about how many scholarships are usually awarded each year. Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:46, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
