Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 10:43, 25 November 2006

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This is a section of the newsroom for The Misplaced Pages Signpost. Below is a list of some Signpost stories in development.
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Next issue (November 27)

Please keep discussion to appropriate areas. Add a note here if you are planning on writing a story.

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The current time is Monday, 17:05 UTC. Update

• Special stories
  • It seems like the steward elections slipped by us; I just noticed it a moment ago (and I've placed it on Meta's Information Thread on the Main Page), and unfortunately, voting will begin on the 25th, before our next issue. Ideally, we should have mentioned this earlier, but I think the best we can do is to have a story on it this week (after voting has started), playing the "better late than never" card. The other option would be to either update News and Notes or include a special story prior to our next issue (before voting starts), like we did last time with the appointment of Arbitrators, if I recall correctly. If the latter option is preferred, I can write the story when needed. Let me know what you think. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 16:17, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
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• Regular features
  • News and notes - in progress. Flcelloguy (A note?) 16:17, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
  • In the news -
  • Features and admins -
  • Technology report -
  • Arbitration report -
  • Wikiproject report - Sorry ive missed it 2 weeks straight-see below (a short one this week due to time)

===Featured Wikiproject=== By ] This weeks featured Wikiproject is Wikiproject Australia. Wikiproject Australia is a collarabitive effort to improve ] related articles. The project is involved in 1.0 and has 138 members. We were unable to contact the co-oridinator. See ]

Ive started on next weeks already (Wikiproject Countries). Nathannoblet 10:42, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

• Discussion
  • I would like to get some information into the signpost about Wikijunior. Perhaps as a follow up to a story from 2005-05-23. That story was pretty bleak about Wikijunior. The situation is much better now, but we still could use more contributors especially people who have experience teaching or writing for kids. Here's a couple of paragraphs:

Do you know about chemistry? or about how things work? Do you have experience writing for or teaching children? Are you looking for new ways to contribute to Wikimedia's work? If so, Wikijunior needs you. Wikijunior is a Wikimedia project creating open content books targeted to children aged 8–11, and it is looking for contributors. The project aims to create non-fiction books that are both informative and interesting to kids. There are currently nine official titles in various stages of development.

The new book of the quarter for fourth quarter 2006 is “The Elements”. It is about chemistry and the chemical elements. In the first month “The Elements” has had many contributors and is beginning to develop nicely. The new book of the previous quarter was “How Things Work”. If you are looking for a real challenge, this book may be for you. If you think you can explain how an automobile engine, an elevator, or a television works to kids, Wikijunior needs your help!

Thanks, any comments or advice is welcome. Xixtas 03:02, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Something could be published on Wikijunior for next week, but it should be written in a newspaper style, not a "Wikijunior needs you" style. Ral315 (talk) 23:49, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Longer term planning

After a discussion with elian I'd like to put up for debate the issue how the interwiki report should look like in future. There's only the Russian report to be done (as far as 100,000+ article Wikipedias are concerned) so it might be the right time to think about the future format of the reports.

We agreed with elian that the current form, however informative, is a little boring and making next versions in the same form is not advisable.

One possible solution might be to create topical international reports on important issues across all major Wikipedias like:

• dispute resolution
• fighting vandalism and copyright violations
• editing tools, scripts and helpful templates
• and so on (what's your vote?)

This kind of report requires more time and effort, interviewing representatives from respective Wikipedias and sometimes advice from experts (software, templates, etc.) However if done right might give a broad picture to Wikimedia audience with potential implementation of some solutions in other projects. This kind of reports with real lasting value should be archived on the Meta.

Apart from these topical reports, regular "What's new" reports can be of use in future as well. Needless to say Wikipedias are very dynamic, bustling with various activity and interacting with the outside world so it'd be also good to inform the English-speaking Misplaced Pages community about it.

Kpjas 09:01, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd volunteer to take care of such a regular column. I can't promise to deliver a weekly report since each topic requires a lot of research, but it should be possible on a two week basis. --Elian 19:22, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

A very good point indeed. I'm not sure if taking a topic and comparing across Wikipedias is advisable (I expect they'll tend to go in the form of "X wikipedia does Y this way. Z wikipedia, meanwhile, does Y this way...") Perhaps spotlighting a language a week or two, as is the case today, but giving a broad look at things like this- I would imagine one could look at arbitration cases, things like featured articles, where I noticed the German community has only 20% less than us, etc. The other advantage to taking one Misplaced Pages at a time is that it's a lot easier to get in contact with one language a week rather than 5-10.

The only thing is that if we're going to change this, I want to do it for every report from here on out, not have one excellent report and ten comparatively horrific reports. Otherwise, I'm perfectly open to tinkering with the format on this. Ral315 (talk) 01:29, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the idea of comparing ways other languages deal with common issues is very useful and could promote Best practices across the Wikimedia Foundation. --Trödel 01:36, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

If it's a big issue, I agree. If it's something like "X has featured articles and good articles. Y has only featured articles", I can see it getting bad. Ral315 (talk) 05:13, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

For the next Dutch report, Cyriellie reads the Signpost and might be interested. Ral315 (talk) 05:13, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry - only just noticed this discussion. I agree that the current format has become a little boring, but there was no reason for each report to adopt the same template; I guess it was just easiest to write each one the way the previous one was done. The most interesting parts to me have been the discussions of evolving policy and recent issues.

It would be nice if we could build up a cohort of "foreign correspondents", with at least one in each of the other main non-English Wikipedias, who could report once a week (or fortnight, or month, or whatever) on local developments. Perhaps rotating each month would be best, with a report each week from three of the top 12 wikipedias, and irregular reports from the others? Or would this be too formal/difficult? We would need bilingual volunteers to write the copy, of course. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:39, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I for one have enjoyed all the interwiki reports and I'd like to seem them continue. I also agree that there's no reason for everyone to follow the same template - just tell us what's interesting. Haukur 15:21, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

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