Mught need an Arbitration report... some unusual posting here and redaction of an arb by an admin (I think). ☆ Bri (talk) 23:50, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion over the POV/alleged-POV in Gaza genocide has become rather extensive on the talkpage, to the point where it's covered by many external media. I think The Signpost needs to cover this, and I'm recusing myself from doing it. I will however point out some things that I think are factual.

• There was an RfC in September 2025 that discussed the lead paragraph
• Jimmy Wales brought up what he determined to be POV in the lead paragraph in interviews, and on-wiki 2 November, after extensive outside complaints, including the Congressional inquiry we covered before
• The POV/alleged-POV wording appeared on the main page on 22 September 2025
• Wales was templated on his user page, in a way that seemed confrontational or unnecessary to him some, and was criticized there for bringing it up with several reasons and non-reasons given
  • Complainants said you can't relitigate the issue (ever)
  • Complainants said you can't relitigate the issue so soon after the RfC
  • Complainants said you, personally, as the founder, can't start the relitigation because of your oversized influence (I think I'm summarizing this right)
  • Complainants said that this reflected political pressure, not the needs of the community or the project
  • One complainant directly asserted Jimbo had been bought of by the state of Israel
  • You can't bring it up on your talkpage because so many people read it and it amounts to canvassing
• An administrator locked the article to allow only administrators to edit it, with exactly the wording that Wales called out as a POV problem
  • Many media mis-read this as Wales locking the article
• The talkpage discussion has been collapsed (today)
• Wales was taken to ANI for Self-promotion and other claims of wrongful behavior. The case was closed, and a new one re-opened.

Maybe you can tell I have thoughts on this that I think would not serve The Signpost's mission well in a neutral writeup. So I'm inviting someone else to think about it. ☆ Bri (talk) 18:25, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wales was templated on his user page, in a way that seemed confrontational to him Note that this is also a requirement of WP:AE. It's not clear whether that was the intent of the templating editor, I'd have to check. But that seems to be a thing more relevant to our Arbitration related systems than not. Soni (talk) 18:46, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm starting this off on Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/In focus. This or Special Report seems more appropriate than any other segment. It'll be a blend of ITM, N&N and Discussion Report, with maybe Opinion/Op-Ed depends on the tone taken. Such a blend seems less a "Discussion Report".

My current plan is to both summarise the events so far with Gaza, but also recap Wikipedia's special relationships with its co-founders Soni (talk) 07:12, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Soni I think "In focus" or "Op-Ed" would be the best places to talk about this, since @Smallbones is already planning to run a "Special report" on Grokipedia, as per the discussion above.

At this point, I think we could just turn the ITM blurb into a shorter note, or maybe even move it to the Brief notes. Oltrepier (talk) 08:04, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In Focus it is. I'm in favour of ITM having a short blurb just linking to "In Focus". Basically instead of two or three different coverages in various sections, all of them link to In Focus.

As i said in the mails, I'm not certain on my availability to flesh this out over the next couple days. We shall see. Soni (talk) 09:48, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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Jimmy Wales appears often in the media recently on speaking engagements related to his new book. Am planning to cover this relatively lightly. ☆ Bri (talk) 22:25, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again! It's been a while since I last kept in touch with you all, but I think I'll finally be able to help you work on the next issue.

I'd like to cover a recent controversy over at the Italian Wikipedia about an incident that supposedly took place during the Istrian–Dalmatian exodus; although the article has survived a Request for Deletion, many have raised concerns over the neutrality and the accuracy of a page that not only describes an event we're still unsure whether it's actually happened or not, but also involves a hot political topic – the it:Wu Ming collective actually were the first ones to report those issues.

Are you OK with it? Oltrepier (talk) 11:49, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, I hadn't heard of Wu Ming before. My take is yes, this is topical for In the media, maybe with some additional explanation for our English readers of the cultural context of Wu Ming to Italian society. ☆ Bri (talk) 15:55, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri Alright, thank you for the feedback: I'll try my best, then! : ) Oltrepier (talk) 20:51, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri I'm so sorry I haven't been able to submit my blurb, yet: I definitely didn't expect the rabbit hole I've put myself in to be so time-consuming to browse for information...

I'm confident I'll be able to finish the blurb off tomorrow, though! Oltrepier (talk) 22:21, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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(The comment below was moved from Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/News and notes. It looks like the customary Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Use newsroom template had been accidentally deleted there a while ago, which might be why Sdkb ended up leaving this comment in the wrong place - although they should also have seen an edit notice saying the same; if that failed to show, that might be a bug worth investigating. Regards, HaeB (talk) 22:30, 21 October 2025 (UTC))[reply]

@Bri, the entry on the apology letter currently reads a bit as if she's apologizing for the board's decision, but on clicking through I see she's actually apologizing for a previous email she sent about it. Could we clarify that (and maybe also link to the previous email)? Sdkb ^talk 19:49, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Skdb: Friendly reminder that while you may or may not be be acting on a volunteer impetus here, it might behoove you to disclose in such exhortations to the Signpost that you are also a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's Movement Communications team according to User:Sdkb-WMF (albeit not disclosed at m:Wikimedia Foundation/Communications/Movement Communications#The team), which presumably has been quite busy with this Board candidates affair in recent weeks.

Regards, HaeB (talk) 22:36, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@HaeB, that's a reasonable ask. To clarify, I'm acting entirely in my volunteer capacity here — no one asked me to comment, and I've long had upcoming issue Signpost pages on my watchlist and offered copy edits such as the above. If I were doing anything related to my WMF contracting, I would use my WMF account (per my userpage disclaimer). But given the potential confusion, I'll step back from these sorts of suggestions.

I'll reply to your parenthetical about the staff list at your cross-post.

Cheers, Sdkb ^talk 23:28, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Appreciate your understanding. To clarify just in case, my recommendation was about disclosure, not about refraining from such comments altogether. (In this particular case, while you are of course correct that this personal vs. board apology distinction is important, I would also agree with Bri below that this was maybe a bit to soon for an intervention, also because this very early draft didn't even convey such a wrong interpretation.)

Regards, HaeB (talk) 06:41, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No worries, that text is just a placeholder virtually copied from a Signpost talkpage. I plan to return to it for polishing. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:36, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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GP came out last night and I'd like to cover it with a Special report. This is Smallbones having computer problems again but I think they'll be over by tonight. There's about 900,000 articles. The few articles I've looked into in depth look like about 60-80% copies of Wikipedia articles, i.e copying most of the Wiki article, but having some changes. I'd like to get some statistics, but there's not a lot to work with. What I'm looking at mostly would be something like a book review. Look at a Grokipedia article and compare it to the Wikipedia article with the same title. It would be good to get a couple of people writing about their favorite WP article (that they've written?) and compare to the GP article 5 or six article pairs should give a good overview )Plus intro and conclusion. Anybody want to join in? Smallbones 204.13.204.194 (talk) 17:33, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I see some comment on this is happening over at WPO already. I have to say I was disappointed to see that its entry on the Yellow vests protests is better structured than the entry here (which was largely written at the time of the event and has not been significantly revised since). It also doesn't quite rise to the same level of rhetoric as the penultimate line of the 3rd paragraph of the introduction at en.wp: "Participation in the weekly protests diminished due to violence, particularly due to the loss of eyes, hands, and neurological disorders caused by police blast balls" 🤕 -- SashiRolls ^{🌿 · 🍥} 17:44, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Smallbones Hello, thank you for the heads-up! I can try to review one article myself, hopefully I'll have enough time in the next few days. Actually, I think I've already spotted a few notable differences in the GP article about the Detention of Johan Floderus. a page I originally created myself, so I think I'll stick to that.

Oh, and you can also find some interesting insights about the differences between Grokipedia and Wikipedia on The Verge, Wired and NBC News (among others), if needed. Oltrepier (talk) 21:35, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@JPxG, Bri, Rhododendrites, Oltrepier, and HaeB: - I think we need some editorial guidance on how to split the Grokipedia articles up. I'll suggest the basic news articles all go in In the media, perhaps divided up into 2-4 sections. Up top 1 section on the pro-Grokipedia news stories (this looks like it may be a bit short though), another section on the plain pro-Wikipedia articles, and perhaps split off a third section where the main point seems to be their surprise that Grokipedia looks like it's copying from Wikipedia (where else did they think GP was going to copy them from?). And then down in In briefs several true one-liners about unique takes. Perhaps. I could get something like this started and then see how it shakes out over the next week, but I'm pretty sure I won't be able to finish it 9 days from now. Rhododendrites should do the Op-ed, an overall analysis (however he'd like, without super-fine details) but 1000 words wouldn't be too long, maybe more if he keeps banging away at the main points. Also I'd like to head up a Special report. What can we do that hasn't been done in ItM and the Op-ed? Article comparisons of the obvious articles on GP vs. WP are already done in the press by "neutral parties". I think comparisons by Wikipedia editors on their favorite or self-authored articles would be something that a lot of people would be interested in. Oltrepier, go for it. Just some guidelines. Each should be 1 long or 2 medium length paragraphs. Is Grok CC licensed or attributing Wikipedia. Relative length. General impression, source quality, mistakes. Just let Wikipedians tell us what they think. But like I said, editorial guidance needed. With 4 or 5 co-authors I could definitely write the intro and conclusion before publication. Sign-up here folks! Smallbones (2600:4040:7B37:BE00:9CD5:D022:573B:B626 (talk) 15:55, 30 October 2025 (UTC))[reply]

The Times of India has a quip that I'd love to purloin for a blurb (but I won't): "a billionaire, a bot, and a battle for epistemic supremacy". Nice AI generated thumbnail, too. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:59, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri I'd suggest something like "The Grok, the Bot and the Wiki" as an alternative title... Oltrepier (talk) 20:53, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hell yes, and an image with the GBU movie poster with characters replaced by ... what, Robbie the Robot, Wikipe-tan, and something else? ☆ Bri (talk) 20:57, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Bri Sounds great! : ) Oltrepier (talk) 08:22, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Smallbones Copy that, I'll start working on my blurb for the Special report as soon as I'm done with the one about the it.wiki controversy. Oltrepier (talk) 08:27, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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