The Smiths' former frontman Morrissey laments what he considers to be inaccuracies on the Wikipedia page about him. As reported by NME, Morrissey listed the purported inaccuracies about his alleged past affiliations to two different punk rock bands: The Nosebleeds – briefly active between 1976 and 1978 – and Slaughter & the Dogs – formed in 1975 and still going. Morrissey's "Madness" missive, posted on his own website on December 1, stated:

“Wikipedia confidently list me as an ex-member of Slaughter And The Dogs, and an ex-member of The Nosebleeds. I did not ever join The Nosebleeds and I have no connection whatsoever with Slaughter And The Dogs. Is there anyone at Wikipedia intelligent enough to set the record straight? Probably not.”

But somebody has been quick enough to edit out details about both bands from Morrissey’s article, with a few users engaging in reciprocal reverts. The page, which has been white-locked for a while now, no longer contains any reference to Slaughter and The Dogs; on the other hand, phrases about Morrissey’s ties to The Nosebleeds both in the introduction and the "Early life" section are now referenced by the NME article. The Wikipedia page about the Nosebleeds had also been modified to reflect Morrissey’s claims, before user Martey reverted the edits. The article for Slaughter & the Dogs has actually stayed untouched since October 21, and never included any major reference to Morrissey.

Morrissey is not shy about controversies, and he might have a point, so Stereogum put together a lengthy investigation on his past relationships with both bands. According to their report, in John Robb’s 2006 oral history Punk Rock, Slaughter & the Dogs' guitarist Mick Rossi stated that Morrissey auditioned for the band right after their first singer, Wayne Barrett-McGrath, had departed. Morrissey recorded four demos in the process, but none of these recordings have ever surfaced, and the artist never joined the group on a stable basis.

However, the game gets trickier when discussing The Nosebleeds. The Italian edition of Rolling Stone noted that the only significant reference to that band left on Morrissey's Wikipedia page, which mentions that Morrissey had agreed to join them as the lead vocalist in November 1977, is supported by a citation of David Bret's 2004 biography Morrissey: Scandal and Passion. The Stereogum report managed to find an even older source supporting this version: Johnny Rogan's 1992 biography Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance, where a mutual friend of the future Smiths leader and his fellow member Johnny Marr confirmed that Morrissey had briefly joined The Nosebleeds, while Rogan himself stated that the artist had even co-written several of the group's songs with guitarist Billy Duffy.

Duffy's website provides more evidence of Morrissey's involvement with the punk rock band, as he joined him for at least two live gigs in 1978, the latter of which was even reviewed by NME, and later recreated in the 2017 biographical film England Is Mine. To his credit, Morrissey did acknowledge this performance in his 2013 memoir Autobiography, but insisted that it was a one-off and that he was "lumbered" with the line-up for that evening being billed as The Nosebleeds.

So, while Stereogum tried their best to fact-check Morrissey's claims, it’s safe to say that the trip down his past music ventures is just as confusing as some of the various recent controversies. Still, as suggested by the magazine, if anyone manages to put the man himself "in touch with Mr. Wikipedia", maybe we can finally "set the record straight". Let us just make all those involved aware of the rules on paid editing and COI, and let a reliable source sort it all out before editing the articles again. – O

• Wikipedia-ing Kimchi snakes: "Wikipedia boyfriends" on celebrating their gloriously mundane online hobby "In a year of doomscrolling, dudes found refuge in 'the last good place on the internet'" GQ (UK edition) [1]
• More Wiki sociology: Shakespeare and dreck: Annie Rauwerda explains to Boing Boing why our Seven-year-long yogurt spelling war was longer than three Shakespeare plays, and why biographies of social media influencers are dreck.
• Wikipedia's coverage of COVID-19 deemed hard-to-read: Universal Access in the Information Society "This article analyzed the readability of COVID-19 information on Wikipedia. A total of 36 Wikipedia pages on COVID-19 were analyzed with 7 validated indices. The results revealed that the text in Wikipedia pages on COVID-19 is difficult to read and is suitable primarily for advanced readers. All pages are above the recommended readability level, and none of the pages are suitable for the general public."
• JPost reports on recent ArbCom verdict on Palestine-Israel articles: In "Wikipedia suspends pro-Palestine editors coordinating efforts behind the scenes", the Jerusalem Post commented on the recent Arbitraton Committee decision (see prior Signpost coverage), and media coverage of PIA. JPost states that "an arbitration committee set up by Wikipedia for 'Palestine-Israel Cases' has banned two editors indefinitely and imposed restrictions on three others." The Signpost notes that Ïvana was banned in a private-evidence case, but we're unable to find a second banned editor in the public case, Palestine-Israel articles 5.
• Xmas cram session "like reading War and Peace": Irish actor Nicola Coughlan said she didn't know anything about Doctor Who when she was cast for a Christmas special part, and cramming on the Wikipedia article was "like reading War and Peace". (Daily Mirror)
• Long Live Regina Claudia: Italian newspaper la Repubblica recently interviewed and made a reference to the it.wiki article for supercentenarian Claudia Baccarini [it], which is currently the joint-eighth oldest living person in the world (together with Izabel Rosa Pereira), according to the Gerontology Research Group. Baccarini, who turned 114 on 13 October, is also the oldest living person in Italy, having first gained the special crown following the death of Domenica Ercolani in November 2023.
• Blocked in Edinburgh: Schools in Edinburgh blocked Wikipedia, according to The Herald (Glasgow), but it wasn't clear it was intentional.
• Subtitle: Text text text.

This page is a draft for the next issue of the Signpost. Below is some helpful code that will help you write and format a Signpost draft. If it's blank, you can fill out a template by copy-pasting this in and pressing 'publish changes': {{subst:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Story-preload}}

Images and Galleries

Sidebar images To put an image in your article, use the following template (link): I understand the primacy of pure feeling in creative art. {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Filler image-v2 |size = 300px |fullwidth = no |alt = TKTK |caption = |image = }} This will create the file on the right. Keep the 300px in most cases. If writing a 'full width' article, change |fullwidth=no to |fullwidth=yes. Inline images Placing {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Inline image |size = 300px |align = center |alt = TKTK |caption = |image = }} (link) will instead create an inline image like below The significant thing is feeling, as such, quite apart from the environment in which it is called forth. Galleries To create a gallery, use the following <gallery style="float:right;" mode=packed | heights=200px> |TKTK |TKTK </gallery> Each line inside the tags should be formatted like File:Whatever.jpg|Caption). This creates: Art no longer cares to serve the state and religion, it no longer wishes to illustrate the history of manners. It wants to have nothing further to do with the object as such, and believes that it can exist in and for itself. If you want it centered, remove tstyle="float:right;" from the first line.

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Filler quote-v2
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Side frames

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. A caption Side frames help put content in sidebar vignettes. For instance, this one (link): {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Filler frame-v2 |1 = Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. |caption = A caption |fullwidth = no }} gives the frame on the right. This is useful when you want to insert non-standard images, quotes, graphs, and the like. Example − Graph/Charts Further information: Category:Graph, chart and plot templates Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. Updates on reimplementing the Graph extension, which will be known as the Chart extension, can be found on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org. A caption For example, to insert the {{Graph:Chart}} generated by {{Graph:Chart |width=250|height=100|type=line |x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y=10,12,6,14,2,10,7,9 }} in a frame, simple put the graph code in |1= {{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Filler frame-v2 |1= {{Graph:Chart |width=250|height=100|type=line |x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y=10,12,6,14,2,10,7,9 }} |caption=A caption |fullwidth=no }} to get the framed Graph:Chart on the right. If writing a 'full width' article, change |fullwidth=no to |fullwidth=yes.

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Article series

To add a series of 'related articles' your article, use the following code Related articles Visual Editor Five, ten, and fifteen years ago 1 January 2023 VisualEditor, endowment, science, and news in brief 5 August 2015 HTTPS-only rollout completed, proposal to enable VisualEditor for new accounts 17 June 2015 VisualEditor and MediaWiki updates 29 April 2015 Security issue fixed; VisualEditor changes 4 February 2015 More articles Draft namespace, VisualEditor meetings 25 December 2013 Sockpuppet investigations, VisualEditor, Wikidata's birthday, and more 6 November 2013 Last call for Wiki Loves Monuments; Community–WMF tension over VisualEditor 25 September 2013 Making Wikipedia more accessible 4 September 2013 Gallery improvements launch on Wikipedia 28 August 2013 The VisualEditor Beta and the path to change 31 July 2013 Defining consensus; VisualEditor default state; expert and layperson terms in article titles 31 July 2013 VisualEditor in midst of game-changing deployment series 3 July 2013 VisualEditor will "change world history" 12 June 2013 VisualEditor, elections, bots, and more 12 June 2013 The Visual Editor: Where are we now, and where are we headed? 25 March 2013 Visual Editor "on schedule" for July rollout 18 March 2013 Looking ahead to 2013 7 January 2013 The new Visual Editor gets a bit more visual 10 December 2012 Second Visual Editor prototype launches 25 June 2012 Visual editor demo launched, hailed as "most important change to our user experience ... ever"; but elsewhere over-hasty deployments criticised 19 December 2011 Full steam ahead on Visual Editor, the avoidance of lock-breaking and 1.18b1 release 7 November 2011 {{Signpost series |type = sidebar-v2 |tag = VisualEditor |seriestitle = Visual Editor |fullwidth = no }} or {{Signpost series |type = sidebar-v2 |tag = VisualEditor |seriestitle = Visual Editor |fullwidth = yes }} will create the sidebar on the right. If writing a 'full width' article, change |fullwidth=no to |fullwidth=yes. A partial list of valid |tag= parameters can be found at here and will decide the list of articles presented. |seriestitle= is the title that will appear below 'Related articles' in the box. Alternatively, you can use {{Signpost series |type = inline |tag = VisualEditor |tag_name = visual editor |tag_pretext = the }} at the end of an article to create For more Signpost coverage on the visual editor see our visual editor series. If you think a topic would make a good series, but you don't see a tag for it, or that all the articles in a series seem 'old', ask for help at the WT:NEWSROOM. Many more tags exist, but they haven't been documented yet.