The Signpost

From the editor

The Signpost needs your help

The Signpost needs you—just a few hours each week can make a big difference.

Contributing to the Signpost can be one of the most rewarding things an editor can do. The genre is refreshingly different from that of Wikipedia articles, and can allow writers to use a different range of skills. Our circulation is above two thousand for some stories, and reaches far beyond the English Wikipedia, speaking to Wikimedians from many languages and WMF projects. Page view counts show that readers still visit some pages up to months after publication. The need for an independent, volunteer-run Signpost continues to grow, given the increasing complexity and financial expenditures of the global Wikimedia movement.

Writing for the Signpost does require a level of commitment. Although we have all become used to a weekly Signpost delivered on our talk pages, our total number of contributors has faced recent and long-term losses. When combined with the increasingly limited availability of our current writers, the Signpost is in need of additional contributors. Help is sorely needed for "Featured content", a rewarding area that asks editors to recognize content contributors by summarizing their recent featured material and, should they desire, interviewing individuals. The page is influential among the many editors who are involved in featured-content forums, and is particularly satisfying visually, given the rich opportunities for deploying images and other files.

Editors normally contribute to their section on a regular basis or arrange weekly rotations depending on their circumstances. People willing to do only small parts each week, such as adding "in brief" notes to "News and notes", are certainly welcome too.

Internally, the Signpost itself has undergone some recent changes. I will remain in my position as editor-in-chief, but now that I have entered graduate school, Pine, Tony1, Gamaliel, J Milburn, and Jarry1250 have agreed to take on roles as editorial delegates. Rcsprinter123 has ably taken over the WikiProject report, Guerillero is restarting the dormant arbitration report, and Serendipodous and Milowent are sharing the load of the traffic report.

Signpost editors typically find interaction on the job socially rewarding as a close-knit group of editors with a common purpose: to see what is widely regarded as an essential service continue to thrive. We all look forward to hearing from interested editors, either on my talk page or through email.

The ed17, Signpost editor-in-chief


















Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-10-01/From_the_editor