c:file:ExAdminMop.jpg appears to be AI generated. I would highly recommend refraining from using AI content on the Signpost where practical. Some Wikipedians have strong opinions on AI, and when it is used, it can detract from the content of the article. Mitchsavl (talk) 07:43, 11 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Pine: There's gotta be something else we can use for that, right? There is going to be like 60kb of dung on the talk page if that runs. jp×g🗯️10:01, 11 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @Mitchsavl and JPxG: while making changes to the gallery, I replaced that image in order to comply with JPxG's request, but I prefer the previous one. On principle, I don't object to using generated content if it's an improvement over alternatives and there aren't legal problems with using the generated content. By the way, Mitchsavl, please ping me if you have some feedback regarding a Signpost piece that I'm working on. I might not have seen this comment until much later if JPxG hadn't pinged me. Thanks, ↠Pine(✉)04:51, 13 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I added a link to a Jerusalem Post story and a bare description of the subject, the IRGC. The story is about the IRGC-controlled media used as citations tens of thousands of times in four language versions of Wikipedia including enwp. The Post to their credit described the methodology well: they put together some kind of database query to get quantitative data on how many times 21 specific domains were cited. Unfortunately they did not list all the domains, but maybe they would talk to one of our reporters.
To do a spot check, I created a similar database query here, but with only five domains that were specifically mentioned. If we get the fuller list of domains, I'd be happy to update the database query.
It looks like the Reliable sources noticeboard has had a few discussions of IRGC reliability, none of them positive. I created another query here for use of over 100 IRGC-owned Internet domains that were seized by the FBI in 2020 and are still used as citations. ☆ Bri (talk) 00:10, 19 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Bluerasberry, Bri, and JPxG: At the top of Itm I found Bluerasberry's story very confusing and offpoint. Wikipedia was only mentioned once in the 2 sources, but in the writeup it was the very center of the story. In short I changed it - please do whatever you think is best with it.
Y@Smallbones: Your edits are entirely an improvement. Right - "in the news" is not the conventional place to put a piece like this, and I inserted my own views or wiki advocacy beyond what the sources state. The original articles are about Internet Archive. I do not think it is overstretching to have our own reporting focus on Wikipedia, but Smallbones, your rewriting is much more aligned with the normal way of doing things than my text was. Bluerasberry (talk)23:42, 30 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
If anyone has feedback on my submission then either edit it directly or share here. The attraction here is the videos but I also wrote text to present the wikiconfernece experience. Bluerasberry (talk)17:29, 26 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Yo Bluerasberry. Thanks for taking this on. The writing seems very clean and readable. There's a lot of text content, and I was actually a bit surprised when I scrolled past the videos and found it. Do you think presenting it a little differently might help prepare the reader for what's there? It almost feels like there's enough for more than one issue, but I'd understand if you want to keep it all together. ☆ Bri (talk) 01:26, 27 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Bri: Thanks for the review. I just split it, and now looking at it, there is a lot of content.
I am indifferent about having both of these in the next issue, versus publishing videos in this issue and the text article in the next. You suggested publishing across issues - would you please make the call of all now versus now some, later more? It is priority to get videos out now though.
Looks great, I think the Community view was a good choice of venue for the videos. It is probably the case that separating your personal statements from the reflections of the other participants is probably preferable, as well. ☆ Bri (talk) 04:39, 28 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I've uploaded my submission to the Disinfo report and marked in Ready for copy editing. It's a bit long at about 2,500 words. If you have feedback on it, please e-mail me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Smallbones (talk • contribs)
Noted that the paid-editing series sidebar was a bit out of date, so I manually updated the tags for a few of the sincewise written articles at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Author/Smallbones with paidediting. This should fill it out a little. If this is not what's desired, feel free to untag them, or whatever -- it's just the tags haven't been maintained in quite some time so they were falling behind. jp×g🗯️05:53, 31 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Bri: Sorry for the last-ditch report, but since now we know that Wikinews will shut down permanently from May 1, I can add a brief blurb to the column, if you'd like to... or else, we can save it for the next issue and provide some more in-depth coverage. Let me know which option you like the most! Oltrepier (talk) 15:38, 30 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Let's do both! Can you put a brief mention in the current issue? Also can you quick look at newsroom archive 45 to see if the discussion links provided there are still useful to include? Bri.public (talk) 15:56, 30 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
As usual, we are preparing this regular survey on recent academic research about Wikipedia, doubling as the Wikimedia Research Newsletter (now in its sixteenth volume). Help is welcome to review or summarize the many interesting items listed here, as are suggestions of other new research papers that haven't been covered yet. Regards, HaeB (talk) 09:41, 29 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The likelihood of me being available tomorrow for anything other than brief interstices is quite low. If anybody wants to publish tomorrow, I am happy with that, otherwise I will be available only on Monday. @Bri:jp×g🗯️09:49, 29 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I'll be in and out today but can check on status in the evening. Does Monday (U.S.) publication work better for you, JPxG? ☆ Bri (talk) 14:03, 29 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify, the publication deadline had actually already been set (perhaps by mistake?) to Monday, i.e. now.
Btw, I'm running late with RR, so feel free to publish without it, but I should have it publishable in a few hours otherwise. Regards, HaeB (talk) 20:35, 30 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
"Opinion" seemed a little sniffly so I went to one of those goddamned stupid sniffer websites and it said every sentence had GPTsmell except for, like, two. In the history I saw that those two were edited by Smallbones.
Wikipedians sure do be loving to accuse stuff of being slop, and yell at me for giant paragraphs upon paragraphs for being an evil piece of shit who hates America if we run anything that has slop in it, so if this is the case I don't want to run this. jp×g🗯️09:48, 31 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I am also, again, not running the Op-Ed because it is LLM stuff. I was very sternly convinced of this the last issue, and I guess the same article is just back. I really do not want to run this. Does anybody remember what happened the last time we ran some thing where a random person slopped their op-ed? Yeah, I know, it's their opinion so it doesn't make sense to say it isn't verifiable. Well, here is what happened: nobody gave a fuck. They just complained about it, at great length, and went to great extremes in declaring that the Signpost was cooked and chopped and washed and failing and dying, and everyone associated with it was a loser, and blah blah blah.
Mostly what I do on Wikipedia is log in every couple weeks and get screamed at for shit. I do not want to get screamed at for this. I do not give enough of a fuck anymore to get screamed at for this. I do not want to run a LLM op-ed for the sake of letting someone defend themselves when the main thing they're accused of is using LLMs in a way that pissed everybody off. Like, is this not the most obvious pulling-a-pin-out-of-a-grenade-and-shoving-it-down-your-pants thing ever?
I don't want to be anywhere near that crap when it goes off. I didn't want to be near the last one either, but there was just too much shit going on for me to close-read every submission (that had no actual thing wrong with it) and larp a noir detective by running it through a slopsniffer to joust at windmills. But this time I don't give a fuck anymore so I am just going to run every op-ed through a sniffer and if it ticks up too high then tough luck.
If someone cannot be arsed to just sit down and write a whole submission on their own, then I definitely cannot be arsed to agree as editor-in-chief to be subjected to a dozen and a half people trying to get the Signpost MfD'd over it and calling it a garbage rag sorry sack of slop shit that isn't worth the paper it isn't printed on for the money nobody pays. There is not time enough in the world to be the designated contact for this great wailing and gnashing of teeth over publishing a thing that could just as easily have been sat down and written by a person. I am not going to publish it. Please do not move it back to /Next issue/ because unless it is completely rewritten I am going to keep spiking it over and over until the sun burns out. jp×g🗯️09:58, 31 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
JPxG, I support your decision to decide what goes through your approval. Maybe we should start formalizing that. As in, a checklist of what op-eds are acceptable and what are not. For anybody who didn't look at the draft, it was clearly disclosed by the author as drafted with assistance from an LLM. But even so, I think the E-in-C has the final say on what they personally approve. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:02, 31 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@JPxG: Thanks for the clear feedback. I appreciate the hierarchy of having an editor-in-chief make decisions, and I also appreciate the explanation, even though I personally am already ready to take no for an answer without explanation for any submission. Like Bri, I support formalization of giving the last word to the EiC, even without explanation or discussion, because I know the circumstances without being told, I know that I am pushing boundaries with this submission, and I know how short on time all of us are. I think we have a good collaborative system here that works well.
Other thing to formalize - no AI submissions in The Signpost, so if that is the rule, then I like that. If we were to make an exception, then I could support publishing non-English submissions with AI-translation, whenever someone who communicates best in another language has something to say to English Wikipedia readers of The Signpost.
Thanks JPxG for editorial commitment and please let me know what I can do to keep this fun for you. I hope that you can think of this decision you just made as entirely enjoyable, productive, and having a useful impact on quality of journalism. Bluerasberry (talk)16:19, 31 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the explanation, even if the tone was rougher than I would have hoped for a submission that represented genuine effort and full transparency about its process.
I won't be resubmitting. I'm not willing to do a full human-only rewrite for the same reason I wouldn't write on a typewriter — LLMs are part of how I work, as they increasingly are for many contributors. If Wikipedia and its publications move toward rejecting that entirely, I think they will lose contributors, and I include myself in that.
I do want to support @Bluerasberry's and Bri's suggestion to formalize this as policy. Contributors deserve to know the rules upfront rather than spending time on submissions that will be spiked. A clear policy is better for everyone, including editors who don't want to be put in JPxG's position of having to make these calls ad hoc under pressure.
Looking at the calendar, we could do April 13 and 27. Otherwise, just one April issue. Thoughts?
As for myself, I'd rather steer clear of April 20 as a publishing date (or that weekend) as I'm signed up for the WP:420 collaboration (as is Bluerasberry). So if we just do one April issue, April 27 is preferable. Bri.public (talk) 16:59, 31 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Here we are on the threshold of the announced publication time. Is it going to be this weekend, or later? ☆ Bri (talk) 20:50, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Two weeks is kind of tight but I can get at it tomorrow if we think we actually have enough stuff to run with. jp×g🗯️04:07, 16 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Many sections are ready to go now. Exceptions include News and notes, and In the media, which are "content complete" but not yet copyedited. NaN looks like it's in good shape and just needs a signoff; In the media is a little rough around the edges. Bri.public (talk) 15:52, 16 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I think the issue is ready, modulo two pro forma checkoffs on copyediting sections which I'm too involved in writing to do myself. ☆ Bri (talk) 14:36, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, as stated in the discussion below, I boldly punted the "From the editors" piece for further review and discussion. By the way, given how this issue's publication has continued to creep past the deadline, I suggest keeping expectations modest for the number of issues published per month. ↠Pine(✉)23:52, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I posted news from today about Serbian Wikipedia editors banned
This is a development in a complicated multi-year story. These banned editors are highly active, with at least one each highly active in English Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Commons. I linked previous Signpost coverage here and have this framed to include a general explanation of what bans are and what they mean.
@Bluerasberry Believe it or not, I've managed to work on and complete the article myself, hopefully I didn't turn it into an absolute trainwreck... Feel free to make further edits! Oltrepier (talk) 20:58, 12 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Oltrepier: I have a document of private notes about this case. It is not intended to be sensitive - it is just a collection of public links including to popular discussions on Serbian Wikipedia and some notes - but also I am not confident enough to share it here because something might become sensitive if I posted it all without care and it got misinterpreted. Do you want them?
I don't think I would have enough time to properly check them out and add more details to the article, but if you do think they might provide some more insight, then go for it! I mean, you were the one who reported the news in the first place... : D Oltrepier (talk) 20:18, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Bri: I meant privacy with the intent to create safety. I have notes that I can share with another Signpost editor or trusted Wikipedian. I am trying to balance my own not knowing anything about Serbia or its wiki community, versus trying to include some useful amount of local community perspective on what is happening. I also want to balance respect for the Wikimedia Foundation's decision - which so far as I know is welcomed and accepted - against the Wikimedia community's wish to learn enough about what happened to be able to govern itself, detect if other such problems exist, and to understand effective moderation.
@Bluerasberry Done! I've tried to simplify some passages, and left a little note about the "concerned community" term you left towards the start of the article, since its meaning wasn't so clear to me. Oltrepier (talk) 20:36, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Bluerasberry, regarding the 17 April 2026 additions to the article, it might be useful to clarify that the Open Letter to Wikimedia Foundation is just an initial draft, proposed on 1 April. It is still under discussion, since several changes and alternative variants were also proposed. Provided links are useful, but only to those readers who will click on them, while others might be left with an impression that the "Open Letter" was already adopted and sent to the Wikimedia Foundation. Therefore it might be useful to add clarification: "an initial draft, proposed on 1 April, still under discussion", or something along those lines. Sorabino (talk) 13:52, 19 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Bluerasberry On the occasion of the global banning of six editors Марко Станојевић and SimplyFreddie is arbitrarily requested that the interface administrator and system operator rights be revoked, which was done. This wiki currently has 10 admins. ~2026-23876-90 (talk) 11:38, 19 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
On a side note, I've moved Bri's original blurb on the partial bans on AI-generated content from ITM to N&N, since we should do a better service to the readers by hosting it there. I'm afraid I won't have enough time to work on that myself, though, since I've already spent the whole day completing the blurb on the sr.wiki bans and re-shuffling the rest of the articles on In the media...
Politico's Eulogy for CIA Factbook does not mention Wikipedia, but it feels very encyclopedia-adjacent. Maybe it can be worked in somewhere? The closure of this and threatened blocking of sites to Internet Archive so close together seem to augur … something. ☆ Bri (talk) 13:55, 6 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Bri: perhaps the former piece could be mentioned in "In the media" or as a note in "News and notes" this time, and a more thorough piece could be published in the next issue. Another option could be to use another section like "In focus" or "Essay", if you and the EIC can agree, perhaps with a thorough analysis of how the Factbook is cited in Wikipedia, discussed on talk pages, etc., and opinions on what could or should be used instead on Wikipedia going forward for sourcing similar information. ↠Pine(✉)03:38, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I put a brief mention as a note in News and notes. Was there a discussion on-wiki? I could not find any. Oh, Politico was running the syndicated AP story so I credited it as AP and linked directly to apnews.com. ☆ Bri (talk) 06:04, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I usually report milestones in active administrators in News and notes. Could someone please double-check this before I include it?
Our last milestone (low) was 418 active administrators on 2024-10-07, reported in 2024-10-19 News and notes. We dropped below the former low point on April 10, and now are looking at 414 for a few days straight.
curprev 16:14, 13 April 2026 Rick Bot talk contribs m 9,749 bytes +7 Daily update, 414 active admins undothank
12 April 2026
curprev 16:14, 12 April 2026 Rick Bot talk contribs m 9,742 bytes +1 Daily update, 414 active admins undothank
11 April 2026
curprev 16:13, 11 April 2026 Rick Bot talk contribs m 9,741 bytes −58 Daily update, 414 active admins undothank
@Bri: Yes, we are at 414, and this is the lowest it has ever been since we started tracking the admin count in 2014. Your interpretation of the bot count is correct and besides that this interpretation matches the analysis on this that Signpost last published. Bluerasberry (talk)16:13, 14 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
We had an AI submission and declined to run it. The person whose piece was declined requested that we clarify Signpost policy to decline AI, and I think that is a good idea.
I have this piece framed as "from the editors". I invite anyone to co-sign on this, and also anyone to edit any or all of this text, including deleting or changing it.
I have this piece framed as "from the editors". - I seem to recall earlier discussions here about how this title can be problematic, or how Bluerasberry has at times tended to represent himself as speaking for "The Signpost" when that wasn't warranted. I am not quite certain who "the editors" of the Signpost are, but if I am among them, I need to say that I don't agree with this text in its current form. I invite anyone to co-sign on this - more than a week later, nobody has done so. I certainly won't.
I just got around to reading this piece and the discussion above that had triggered it. I do generally agree that we need to reject submissions more aggressively at times, in particular if there are concerns about their quality or in case the amount of pushback they are likely to generate is in no relation to their journalistic value (I have in fact been thinking about starting a discussion about the former, focusing on some other recent examples). But I disagree with this new policy as formulated by Bluerasberry here, and I also think it goes well beyond JPxG's (entirely understandable) remark above I do not want to run a LLM op-ed for the sake of letting someone defend themselves when the main thing they're accused of is using LLMs in a way that pissed everybody off. Bluerasberry could have posted his policy draft here or at WT:POST for discussion among the team, but decided not to. So I don't feel obliged to edit any or all of [his] text that he already lined up for publication, or to embark on a comprehensive review of possible unintended consequences of his policy wording. But just as a small example to demonstrate that I'm not making up concerns or trying to be difficult: While I have so far written all the text in my Signpost contributions by hand, I did, for example, use ChatGPT to create the table at Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2025-10-02/Recent_research (by compiling information about the WMF grants program there that are published in many different pages; and yes, I checked every table entry by hand but it still saved a lot of time). I think this was a valuable service for our readers, but under Bluerasberry's policy, this would be prohibited.
Again, I sympathize greatly with not wanting to run LLM-generated op-eds specifically, but also because I generally think that the Signpost has had too many low-quality opinion articles in recent years. (Happy to provide examples, but that's another discussion; let me mention though in that context that I'm also not convinced of the value of Bluerasberry's frequent exhortations to our readers to submit more opinion pieces - e.g. also in this draft, or in the last issue in a very oddly framed story draft involving AI that both Smallbones and I felt compelled to correct before publication. I do appreciate of course that Bluerasberry is doing lots of valuable work for the Signpost, also in managing submissions; for example he did us all a great service earlier this year by being the first team member to call out issues in a very problematic - and ultimately spiked - submission).
Hi @Bluerasberry:, while I appreciate the good intentions here, I believe that policy announcements should come from the editor-in-chief, and also that a piece framed as "From the editors" requires consensus, so I too disagree with publishing this as written. However, I'm fine with having a discussion about publishing this in a later issue after JPxG and others have a chance to form a consensus. For the purpose of avoiding having this piece go into publication without further discussion, I will boldly move it out of the queue for this issue. I could see a modified version of this piece being published in a later issue, whether as "From the editors", as op-ed, or in a "From the editor" statement from the EIC. Thank you for the time you put into this, and perhaps a version of this can be run in a later issue. ↠Pine(✉)23:18, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural note that I've WP:G6ed the blanked page in a effort to make it easier to easier to reverse the actions if folks want. With respect to this discussion, as a reader, I'm definitely in favor of some kind of such policy, though I do want to echo that "which were entirely created by humans and not by artificial intelligence" might be a harder bar than even those allowed by our article policies. Sohom (talk) 18:25, 19 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@HaeB: We have all the time we want to come to consensus. Under what circumstances could you be persuaded to co-sign onto this?
I can make the following changes and return it to you, if that would get your consideration to support.
The piece has my own imprecise phrasing of a no-AI policy. Instead, how about Signpost simply adopting English Wikipedia's well-established, well reviewed policy, Wikipedia:Writing articles with large language models. In my view, that prohibits AI creative writing, but allows things like the table formatting you wanted. I think that meets all our current needs and also is unsurprising because Signpost usually aligns with Wikipedia editorial expectations.
You requested more review in more places. I can solicit that as you suggested and also in more places.
You remarked that the way in which I invite other editors to respond in the articles themselves is excessive. I can remove that if you think it complicates or distracts from the point of this piece.
As always, thanks for any feedback or developments you have. I write and post and submit on the idea that it is easier for other to edit and improve my text, than it would be to have abstract side conversations about how to frame proposed stories, which then someone would need to write. I encourage anyone to edit anything I submit and see that as the wiki way. Somehow I sense that you prefer pre-drafting talks, and I would be happy to meet you by voice or video chat or any other channel if you liked, but I do prefer to just post and take comment here. If not for your tone, I would not see any problem with you pausing the piece and calling for suggestions, but I think you are trying to express friction here about the way I do things. Can you advise me on what I can do to make you enthusiastic, or at least neutral, about my contributions here? Bluerasberry (talk)15:18, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Just so you know, yesterday I made some changes and re-shuffled the blurbs at ITM, picking two or three that could serve as good lead stories (especially the Massachusetts ban), while also moving another story to the N&N column, as noted above.
Unfortunately, I don't think I'll have enough time to knock all of them out, since I need to focus on other tasks, but we should be able to bring the column to a decent shape... although we're already past the deadline. Oltrepier (talk) 15:13, 13 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
I am writing this topic in a sheer plea for somebody to address the issue that the current issue is two days late to the publishing deadline. I am requesting, (more accurately begging) for someone to start a discussion on how we can address this. Thank you. ~2026-11404-95 (talk) 17:33, 15 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there, this publication is not great with meeting schedule, but given that it's run by volunteers, there are limits to what can be expected. If the EIC wants to be more forceful about meeting the schedule, the EIC has some ability to nag people and/or punt pieces that have missed a deadline such as for writing or copyediting. I agree that this is an ongoing pain point, but there aren't a lot of levers available to pull. I have a possible option for how to improve this but it requires probably months of quiet effort that, again, largely falls on volunteers. ↠Pine(✉)23:22, 18 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
OK, following up on the more general discussion below, and in light of the lack of activity since the most recent deadline update, I just went ahead and updated it again in an attempt to bring it closer to the truth (whoever is going to carry out publication should adjust it further).
And I propose to invoke the by now well-tested EICAWOL protocol:
2. Bri confirms he should be willing and able to carry out the publication process once everything is ready (per 3. below).
3. Other regulars help out with approving sections for publication (as usual, preferably not those that one has been involved with oneself in a major way), standing in for the EiC.
4. Bri carries out publication, standing in for the EiC.
Copyedit done but I have a question for JPxG about the wisdom of the phrase "a drug-related bender at a Nevada brothel" in our publication. Even though it seems to likely be based in fact, it's a bit provocative for BLP. ☆ Bri (talk) 14:35, 17 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
While I appreciate some of the creativity with language in this piece, I'd recommend toning down some this a little in general so that it reads more like news piece. I'm not advocating for making it boring, but I'd recommend a little more restraint in a piece that goes into The Signpost as a news piece. Other sections of The Signpost, such as op-eds, would get more leeway from me in regards to use of language. I've had similar thoughts about other Signpost pieces but I haven't had bandwidth to bring this up for what probably should be a more general discussion in the Newsroom talk page. ↠Pine(✉)19:29, 19 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
The traffic report always comes in a little rough around the edges and I have basically accepted that each one will require a little sanding down the edges for most content and a belt sander for the political stuff. jp×g🗯️07:39, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, does The Signpost have a documented procedure for what to do for when the editor-in-chief has been away for a period of time, such as a week, and the publication process or other actions that the EIC should execute are not happening, and the EIC has not publicly delegated who should take the EIC's place for a temporary absence?
Also, in the event that the EIC is inactive in The Signpost for a longer period of time, such as a month, is there a documented procedure for how and when to replace the EIC? ↠Pine(✉)19:02, 19 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
To your first question: Yes, in recent years we have informally developed a process for this kind of situation and successfully used it to get several delayed issues out; search the archives of this talk pages for "EICAWOL". (That said, maybe it's time to document it more formally, IIRC Smallbones also suggested that earlier this year. I could take a stab at that next week.) Note though that right now we are not quite in this situation.
To your second question, yes, kind of, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Coordination#Editor-in-Chief. (I'd caution against the temptation to come up with overly formal rules like "after a period of X days of inactivity, the Secretary of the Council Of Regular Signpost Editors will invoke Clause 43b to start the Voting Period, to be administered by the EIC Appointment Subcommittee ...". It's more about gently setting expectations and creating legitimacy for those - like you here! - who raise the issue and propose solutions, and it's informed by the only real near-death-experience this little newsletter had in it over two decades of existence, where there was too much hesitancy to call out a dysfunctional situation with a respected but negligent - and long since departed - EIC.)
I think i agree with @HaeB: on just about everything here. I'll try to briefly add some practical suggestions.
The deadline is a very practical method of organizing a newspaper. It lets everybody know what's expected and when. Publishing using fake deadlines is very unprofessional and just doesn't work very well IMHO. That said, we've had some very good issues in the last 3+ years that I'd entirely given up on - so sometimes it has worked. But we need consistency as well.
There are some decisions that only the EIC can make. I've needed feedback on 3-4 of these in the last 3 years and haven't gotten adequate responses. Even "yes" or "no" would be adequate most of the time.
The real problem is that being EIC is a time consuming task with no letup. Burnout after a couple of years should be expected and planned for.
Maybe we should just always schedule a feedback/review session for EIC's on their 2nd anniversary.
The really difficult part is finding a new EIC to replace the old.
Perhaps we can redesign a few things about the job to make it easier or to make succession a more natural task. (ideas requested)
I'll leave it there for now. I'd also like to thank JPxG for all his work as EIC. I twisted his arm to get him to take the job. Now I'll give him a little nudge to take a few steps to make a dignified exit (whenever that is). Smallbones(smalltalk)00:31, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed about the importance of reliable publication deadlines in general (we've been over this topic many times on this talk page; I'm wondering if it might be useful for someone - e.g. a friendly LLM - to compile and summarize those past discussions to help reduce repetitiveness). I also think people may overindex on the fact that we've still muddled through, this ignores the costs and damages we incur from this unreliability (just speaking for myself, it has definitely made keeping up RR - as I've done for the last 15 years, more or less - more difficult). On the other had, it should be said that this was much less of a problem in some recent issues.
I think there is a connection between your second and third bullet point that you might not be fully cognizant of: The more often contributors impose difficult decisions on the EiC, the harder and more time-consuming that role becomes. Now, I certainly don't want to discourage potentially controversial but valuable stories (like many of your Disinformation reports), but I think this is also why I'm a bit less enthusiastic about the increased frequency of opinion articles, and wary about creating the impression that the Signpost is an open forum for every angry Wikimedian's rants (see also the discussion above about submissions and some team members' frequent, energetic solicitations of opinions from our readers). Conversely though, this also means that we can help make that job easier by e.g. weighing in on such decisions, e.g. raising problems in submitted pieces, following up with their authors to fix them, etc., before the EiC has to make the final call on them. Of course that is among the many things facilitated by a reliable publication schedule.
Like Pine, I disagree that JPxG should feel compelled to step down. He continues to do lots of good work as EiC and I hope he stays on. But yes, by now there is no need to politely ignore this particular shortcoming. I'm also a bit confused how subjecting someone to a (public, I assume) "feedback/review session" in that role would help with burnout, but then again that's what's already happening a bit here. One concrete thing that would be useful for JPxG to do more often *without* having to spend more time and energy is to delegate more often (but I'll stop here before I start sounding like an executive coach).
On that matter, and considering the continuing progression of time, I have now proposed above to invoke the aforementioned EICAWOL protocol to get the current issue out and get us back on track.
I'm not intending to suggest that JPxG should step down. :) The Signpost is a team effort, and perhaps with someone to fill the publication & newsroom manager role and/or if someone volunteers for an "Assistant Editor in Chief" role as backup, JPxG will be okay with continuing. There's a real risk that if an EIC steps down, and no successor is lined up, there will be an EIC vacancy which may be a bigger problem than having an EIC who is competent but has limited availability. The EIC, like most people involved with The Signpost, is a volunteer, and there are limits to how much can be expected from every volunteer including the EIC. ↠Pine(✉)00:59, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. I do think that @Bri: has essentially filled the role of "Assistant Editor in Chief" even though I don't think it was entirely voluntary and done mostly without notice. So we need some practical steps. Can we find a volunteer to be "Assistant Editor in Chief"? That might be enough for now, but I can't see the current situation continuing for another year. Another thing we might do is recruit a copyediting corps - but that takes time and effort and has no guarentee of success. Perhaps something like "guest EICs" or rotating EICs. It might help having a separate publisher and EIC - that worked pretty well during my tenure. I'll strongly suggest an automatic procedure to publish what we have ready 2 hours after deadline, unless the EIC is present and saying something like "We're waiting for the article from X, which should be ready in an hour". I do think that we should have a strategy for ongoing recruitment for all positions (reporters and editors). Let's get the ball rolling on this now, if not we'll have to do it later from a worse position. Smallbones(smalltalk)02:19, 20 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Back in '22 I was stoked as hell to be publishing every issue, although at the time I dragged my feet on it for a while because it sounded like a gigantic amount of work and I was concerned it would be too much for me to commit to doing on a regular schedule forever. At the time, this was resolved by having a co-EiC, who was Frostly, and with whose heavy lifting it was very easy to put out gigantic quantities of very good stuff on a regular basis. After a while he called it quits and it was just me. For some time this was basically fine; various factors in my life led to my being unemployed for a rather long period, and there was not really a whole lot to do, so I was happy to spend a lot of it on Wikipedia.
At the time I was very excited about taking a leadership position, about the Signpost, about journalism, about Wikipedia, about developing the MediaWiki ecosystem, and about my role in all of these things. I cannot really say I see a bright future for all of these things. Now it is 2026 and I have not really written an article in a very long time (either a mainspace Wikipedia article or a Signpost one). Mostly I log in on the publication date and then try to put out something that's not going to be false or have grave errors or create liability or get anybody screamed at or get me doxed again by that deranged guy on the message board (the left-wing one) or the deranged guy on Twitter (the right-wing one) who sends death threats under my name to random influencers. It is really impossible to overstate how much of the result of my interacting with Wikipedia is that weird assholes want me to jump off a bridge or call me woke or a Nazi or whatever. I pretty much never get an email or a talk page message from somebody who read an article I wrote and thought it was good, or funny, or whatever. It's not that having some random guy I've never met tell me I suck is some terrible fate worse than death, it's just like having a rock in your shoe: what's the benefit? Why would you put a rock in your shoe on purpose, if it didn't have one there to begin with? That is the question I ask myself when I log in. Well, if it was changing the world, then it'd be worth it. If I had to go invent the printing press, and I had to wear shoes to do it, and the only pair of shoes I owned had rocks in them that you couldn't get out, then I would just have to deal with it because the printing press is too goddamned important and changes the world so much and helps so many people and stops so much injustice that I couldn't stomach the idea of passing it up to bitch about rocks in my shoes.
But I am not 100% convinced that we are still trying very hard to be inventing the printing press, or write the Encyclopedie, or whatever. Definitely we are not doing that, but I'm not sure we are even really trying to be doing it anymore. I signed up for making the greatest and most comprehensive reference work in history. It feels like what we as a project are doing is too often random pointless mumbo-jumbo, and occasionally random pointless mumbo-jumbo that is directly inimical to that goal. Sorry to do a tl;dr soliloquy about life the universe and everything, but that is kind of how it feels sometimes.
An issue every two weeks was a very ambitious goal that was only possible with either two EiCs or one with drastically more free time and motivation than I've got available to me. I think the only practical thing to do is go back to once a month (which is what we did for many years previously) because anything faster is going to kill me.
I think part of the reality of the situation is that we just don't have as much stuff to publish as we used to; the old situation was that Frostly would do a bunch of posting and outreach to get people interested in sending stuff in, which would cause a bunch of high-quality stuff to come in. We do not really have much in the way of that now, which means all we have is a few sections; I don't really feel good about publishing this one just now because all it had was the bare skeleton of what you could possibly say was an issue.
I am really glad that people have been doing so much stuff to get things ready for publication, and specifically Bri who has done a very large amount of it. As far as I can tell he refuses the crown now and has done so in the past, or else I would insist upon his being listed as a co-EiC. I think the reality of it is that I am sometimes just not very good at this; I have previously said a few times that I would be open to and happy about sharing the role, or having some of its formal duties carved out, or whatever. As a first step I will set the next issue date to a month because I think picking at a scab every four weeks is less painful than every three weeks. jp×g🗯️07:36, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@JPxG I feel your frustration, and I gotta say we should show way more appreciation than we usually do for the care you're trying to put into this newspaper, even when you have limited time and low motivation.
I also agree that we should stick mostly to a one-per-month schedule for now, as it will allow us to gather more interesting bits of information, recruit new writers/reviewers (hopefully) and improve the overall quality of our articles. Oltrepier (talk) 16:04, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@JPxG:Aaron Swartz, Wikipedian and activist, said, "What is the most important thing I could be working on in the world right now, and if you are not working on that, why aren't you?" I submit to The Signpost because I sincerely feel that it is the best and most intelligent use of my time. I have been submitting stories since at least 2015, and your executive decisions as editor-in-chief have been an entirely positive experience for me and made major improvements in this publishing social machine. I am immensely grateful and appreciative for your technical contributions to The Signpost, including making the timer countdown for publication, sorting metadata for the archives, reforming the submission room templates, doing something that enables publication to be better staged and delivered to readers, and making that tool which identifies popular discussions in Wikipedia talk pages. I appreciate your editorial will to make executive decisions which conform the submissions and editors into a coherent tone, which allow plenty of room for controversial hot takes but also intuitively draw the line to a standard of respectability, restraint, and shared consensus. Editorial control is probably the least of your time commitment but also the most human and irreplaceable thing that you personally do, and that is what is putting you in the growing club of Wikipedians with crazy violent stalkers. I went to counseling for years only to talk about the threats and harassment I experience in Wikipedia, and there are lots of other people in Wikimedia LGBT+ and many other demographics who similarly experience this vulnerability and violent insanity. I say that I especially respect your editorial choices the most, even in the context of my recognition that your technical contributions are something that we or the WMF could not have hired a contractor to accomplish if we had $100,000 to spend. I also appreciate your submissions, like the recent description of the self-hacking incident, and while people may not be thanking you for that, I wish that you could interpret all the comments the article got there and in the social network of discourse to be an indicator of appreciation.
I want you here. I like writing under you. I hope you stay for as long as you feel that this is meaningful and satisfying. If you leave, I would love to do an exit interview with you to record your values and intents and wishes for this publication, because The Signpost is a bulwark against existential threat to Wikipedia and the the concept of freedom in the digital world generally. I think you are one of the most influential newspaper editors who ever lived. If it is not fun anymore then I understand that, but please believe me when I say that I appreciate a lot, and I think you should be proud of this publications dedicated readership and the esteem that this news source has. I take it seriously. Thank you. Bluerasberry (talk)16:12, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hi @JPxG: Agreed that one might expect more gratitude than people get around here, both in The Signpost and Wikipedia content activities in general. Around here are risks, complaints, arguments, power plays, and activities that feel a lot more like work than a fun hobby. The technical contributors are at least doing things that look good for their resumes. I'm not sure that anyone doing content activities will get gratitude or benefit unless they're part of an education program or GLAM. I feel that decades ago the world was a more optimistic place where there was slow but observable incremental progress over the course of years and decades, in many domains. These days technology is moving fast ahead but everything else feels painful when looked at with a wide-angle lens. This is my long way of saying that I think I feel similar to you, and my guess is that many other people do too. Hopefully we all make a little positive difference here. We can at least say we tried. ↠Pine(✉)03:16, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Seconding what Pine said. I think JPxG should continue as long as he wants to. It's not an easy job; several of us here have held it with varying degrees of longevity. @JPxG: If you know in advance you want me to handle publication for some time period, just say so. I'll make arrangements to be there. It's difficult to do at last minute, and like I said for April, I have been busy lately with the 420 Collaboration, especially now that (partial) U.S. rescheduling is happening.
For everybody else: I've contacted JPxG offline to offer commiseration/encouragement/acknowledgement of potential burnout, and encourage others to do so if they feel so moved. We regulars should treat each other kindly, as comrades at least. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:20, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
You guys are all way wiser than me, so I could not agree with everything you've said right above...
I was planning on providing some feedback on Serbian Wikipedia article, and I distincly remember that 22:6 issue was supposed to be published on April 22nd?
Draft page had a note on the top, saying "Publishing: 22 April 01:00", yet, it was published at 06:43, 21 April 2026, almost a day early.
Sorry, the deadline was the 20th (actually more like the 14th) -- it had been delayed substantially but I ended up staying up late to do it on the original (postponed) deadline. jp×g🗯️07:40, 21 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Can I get additional reviewers, comments, and evaluation on this opinion piece? I have staged it for publication in the last two issues but there have been some light blocks to running it.
I read this when it was in draft form. It came across as unobjectionable. If it were mine, I'd punch it up a little bit. I think the second-to-last paragraph has points that should be made up front. Especially this one – explain reverts, instead of just making them; ask for reasoning, instead of jumping to conclusions. Just my opinion but I think modern readers (even sophisticated Wikipedians) need something to grab their attention or they will drift away. Bri.public (talk) 14:58, 22 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Gosh, I didn't even realize it wasn't included in the latest issue! To be fair, apart from the slight corrections @Bri has already suggested, the article looks perfectly alright to me, and I did copy-edit it myself. Oltrepier (talk) 19:22, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Hey no problem pinging both, but you can just ping my primary account. Sorry I haven't clicked the link yet but what's the Wikipedia connection? Sorry for being lazy. Bri.public (talk) 16:14, 23 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]
@Oltrepier and Bri: the event schedule shows that several sessions will be offered regarding data products that may be of great interest to people who leverage US census data, including for AI. There doesn't appear to be a specific callout for Wikimedia projects or Creative Commons. Example session titles: "Geography Division Partner Portal (GDPP)", "Geographic Update Partnership Software (GUPS) Web", "2030 Local Update of Census Addresses (LUCA) Overview", and "Powering Artificial Intelligence (AI) Readiness Through Strong Metadata Practices". ↠Pine(✉)06:52, 24 April 2026 (UTC)[reply]