Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Newsroom

WP:POST/N

Newsroom

Welcome to the central hub of The Signpost!

This is The Signpost Newsroom, a place where The Signpost team can coordinate with writers, both regular and occasional, and people who have suggestions for topics to cover. See the boxes below if you have suggestions (something for the team to write about in regular columns), proposal/submissions (for articles you want to write/have written yourself), or want to create a pre-formatted draft article in your userspace, with helpful links and easy-to-edit syntax. Discussion occurs both here and in the Signpost Discord.

Discussion of upcoming issues is done at the newsroom talk page. For general feedback on The Signpost as a whole, go to our talk page. To learn more about The Signpost, see our about page.

The Signpost currently has 5857 articles, 728 issues, and 14429 pages (4744 talk and 9685 non-talk).

Links:

Current issue: Volume 22, Issue 7 (2026-05-22) Purge · issue page · archive page · single-page edition · single-page talk (create)

Suggest a topic

To suggest a topic to be covered by The Signpost, simply click on the button below or post to our suggestions page manually. Example of good topics are

Editors who have done something extraordinary/wonderful
Ongoing discussions
Media coverage of Wikipedia
Technical news
Updates to important tools and templates
Wikipedia-related events

but many more exist.

Email a private tip to the EiC

Propose/submit an article

If you have an idea for an article you would like to write, you can submit it for review by the editorial team. You can do so by clicking the button below or by posting to our submissions page manually.

News articles should be kept relatively neutral and report on a specific piece of actual news. They can be on any topic of interest to Wikipedians, from general events, to technical news.
Opinion pieces are evaluate on originality, relevance to Wikipedians, and the quality of the arguments. They should provoke thought and encourage productive discussion.
Special pieces cover things that don't fall neatly in the above two categories. If it's interesting to you, it's likely interesting to someone else as well. Check with us and we'll see what can be done!

Create a draft

To create a draft of an article in your userspace, simply copy-paste {{subst:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Story-preload}} at Special:MyPage/Signpost draft (replacing USERNAME with your own username).

You can also use the button below. This will preload a form, which you can then save and edit. We recommend saving without making any edits to the preloaded form before starting to write your article.

Refresh the page to update the newsroom

Calendar: current deadline is highlighted, and current UTC date is 2026-06-10 01:15:29.

Article status

Below here is an automatically generated master list of every page whose title starts with Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/. It's automatically generated by SDZeroBot every day. Also consult the mockup page for the next issue to make sure all of their titles, images and blurbs are correct.

You should click the button to manually update it and make sure it's current before doing anything serious.

Show all TKTKs in next issue

Update newsroom tasks

Note: There are also a bunch of things in /Drafts and /Next next issue. When prepping an issue, make sure that articles in this expand-o-box are accounted for.

Sometimes titles will get messed up -- anything between here and the next horizontal line has a title error and needs to be fixed.

End of parseable title errors

Also, these categories (Purge):

`Ready for copyedit`	`Copyedit done`	`Final approval`	Cat	#
no	no	no	Signpost drafts, not ready for copyedit	59
yes	no	no	Signpost drafts, ready for copyedit	4
yes	yes	no	Signpost drafts, ready for final check	9
yes	yes	yes	Signpost drafts, ready for publication	25

From the editor

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Discussion

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

Additional editors invited to The Signpost

Lane talks about The Signpost

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

material now in From the editors is collapsed

10-30 minutes

Contribute to "in the media". Every issue of Signpost summarizes recent journalism about Wikipedia. Search for news through your favorite search process. There are 10-20 articles a month. Make a decision of whether an article merits a 1-sentence or 1-paragraph summary. Write your summary, and post it to Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/In the media.
Summarize any interesting and broad-interest Wikimedia community activity, particularly governance issues, in News and notes
Go to WT:NEWSROOM and join in any discussion. Start with unanswered or smaller posts. Your opinion and review is invited.
Go to WP:NEWSROOM#Article status. Find a scheduled submission which says, " Ready for copyedit". If it also says, "No talk page section · click here to open one", then note that. Copyedit the submission using our coordination guide. After you check it, change the header template to " |Copyedit-done = yes". Now either go post to the newsroom talk section, or click to open one as you noted. Say something about the piece you reviewed so that other editors can review whatever is most sensitive or could use more opinions.
Address any item in the Suggestions queue
Address any item in the Submissions queue

90+ minutes

Make a submission, again at Submissions
With any frequency and no commitment issue to issue, take on any of the requested regular features. The general pattern with all of these is that you personally find interesting activity in Wikipedia, you ask the people involved for comment, you try to recruit them to write anything, then you fill in the blanks for a story. Popular and unstaffed currently includes Discussion report (summarize any interesting discussion anywhere in wiki), WikiProject report (summarize any group activity of any WikiProject), or the Arbitration report (summarize any arb proceedings, whether case or anything else).
If you figure out any of those reports, then you will have the skills to work out other kinds of reporting. Other kinds of possible reporting include WikiConference reports (at least 2/month, most not reported), giving a community view on how to respond to the WMF's many requests for community input, and getting out the vote for elections including picture competitions or mass reviews for user rights, or rallying for petitions including in Meta-Wiki or cross languages.
Revive any other story format in Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Content_guidance
Help with Signpost administration. Current needs include rallying consensus for an AI policy, picking one of the 20+ Signpost software tools and documenting how it works and what it accomplishes, or going through the talk newsroom archives for the past year and resolving any unresolved problem

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]

Jumping in versus seeking consensus

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]

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Comix

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Essay

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In the media

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Discussion

5W PR

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]

Medium post

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

News and notes

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Discussion

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]

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]

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Op-ed

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Opinion

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Technology report

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Discussion

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]

Community Tech team disbands, controversy erupts - ideas for the article

@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

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]

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Traffic report

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On the bright side

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Discussion

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]

Community view

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@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]

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Op-ed

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∑ 1 items | Query runtime: 0.02 s | Last updated: 03:50, 9 June 2026 (UTC)

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