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The following is an automatically-generated compilation of all talk pages for the Signpost issue dated 2013-08-21. For general Signpost discussion, see Wikipedia talk:Signpost.

Arbitration report: Proposed decision posted in Infoboxes case; Tea Party movement case continues (1,132 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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Clarify wording[edit]

As a party, I probably should not speak, but would like to clarify the wording "what is perceived to be some editors' aggressive addition or reverting of infoboxes to articles without discussion." - Evidence is of adding infoboxes without prior discussion (which I frequently do for short stories and compositions (as the normal way of editing), - never any more for composers because I learned that infoboxes for Classical music biographies are contentious). Evidence is also of reverting infoboxes with little edit summary and no discussion started. "Aggressive" seems not a good term for both actions. A way of defining and reaching consensus is needed, for articles or even topics (such as operas, where the project recently made a new template available). Feel free to read the talk page of the case and especially the workshop were promising ideas were proposed which didn't find their way to the decision page, if you ask me. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:20, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion report: Skyscrapers, Gibraltar DYKs, Four Award, Secure login, and more (0 bytes · 💬)[edit]

Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-08-21/Discussion report

Featured content: Afrobeat (1,406 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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Round of applause for the people generating all these Featured Articles. Seventeen in one week is impressive (although, considering how the vetting process works, it's seventeen from between several weeks and several months ago). My back of the envelope math says that over the last month, Wikipedia has averaged 1.5 Featured Articles per day, which is damn impessive. Sven Manguard Wha? 08:42, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Hear, hear, I'll second that!--ukexpat (talk) 14:22, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - Jesus as an FA? Never thought I'd see the day. bibliomaniac 1 5 00:05, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    - It's a word I often use. Tony (talk) 02:22, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

From the editor: Call for contributors (3,760 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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Months? Try years. I only recently worked my way back to the very first Signpost.— Vchimpanzee · talk · contributions · 17:23, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What about just releasing the Signpost whenever it is ready? So instead of holding onto a weekly release, with often a delay, release an edition about one to two weeks after the previous one. It's a bit silly to release the 21 August edition on 26 August (i.e. when the next one is supposed to be two days later). Just a thought... SPQRobin (talk) 21:05, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your idea. I suggested fortnightly editions way back in 2010, I think, and was howled down. I've since roundly accepted the weekly model, which is very important to the whole identity and function of this news outlet. The burden does fall on just a few shoulders, and when we have RL squeezes, as right now, it's a difficult job to get it done. The publish-when-ready model would sacrifice a huge amount, and we'd become more like the German WP's Kurier, which is a very different beast. The titular date of publication has never in my experience been the actual date of publication. Perhaps treat it as "week of [date]". Tony (talk) 02:29, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
When I noticed the the signpost was coming later than usual, I did consider volunteering time in this manner. However, after minutes of looking, I was not able to locate a centralized discussion area, the draft space for the post, or any real information of what needs to be done or how to get involved. Is this stuff deliberately hidden, non existent, or was I just not able to find it? Perhaps a how-to guide to contributing should be popularized for the next edition? I saw the words Google Docs floating around, why would we use this to do drafts rather than the wiki? I could not understand. --Nick Penguin_(contribs) 03:39, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Nick, ditto. XOttawahitech (talk) 19:49, 29 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@User:NickPenguin, User:Ottawahitech: if either (or both!) of you would like to contribute, I'd be more than happy to talk you through our process, which can get rather complicated. :-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 20:46, 29 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@NickPenguin: The centralized discussion is at Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost. You can also contact any of the lead contributors on our talk pages if you'd like to help in a certain section, of you can post on the talk page of our Editor-in-Chief, The ed17. I think some sections are drafted off-wiki because the lead writers for those sections like to surprise the readers at the time of publication. --Pine^✉ 07:09, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

News and notes: Wikipedia's Manual of Style marches into Manning's coming out as transgender (5,204 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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Mike Wood's piece is very good, but I think that he omitted one of the more crucial points, only addressing it in a reply in the comments section, and even then only partially. If you POV push or whitewash the article on your company, and you're caught, not only is the article going to be heavily monitored in the future, but the people that try to bring the article back towards neutral will often go too far in the opposite direction, creating an article that is more negative that it was before the whitewashing. In rare cases, the whitewashing even gets picked up in the media (usually tech blogs rather than major newspapers). While I haven't seen it happen regularly, that media coverage means that the whitewashing can be written about in the article that was whitewashed. Viewers then will not only will see the 'bad information', but will then also see that you tried to hide it. Sven Manguard Wha? 08:32, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm surprised there's no mention of the extremely active and extremely contentious move request on Chelsea Manning. Powers ^T 11:52, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I'd add it myself if I wasn't involved in the discussion. Marcus Qwertyus (talk) 02:07, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just so you know, the caption "Bradley Manning ... now female" is actually pretty offensive. It's like saying someone that comes out of the closet wasn't homosexual until they did so. --TKK! bark with me if you're my dog! 14:04, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Agreed, as it seems that she has privately identified as being female for some time. Nick-D (talk) 23:24, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- The "Manning's sex change" in the title is pretty bad too. Jessica Ryan (talk) 19:24, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I altered this caption. I agree that the title is bad - a "sex change" often refers to sex reassignment surgery, which is not the same thing at all as a public declaration of the gender one wishes to identify as. Dcoetzee 09:29, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- I've changed the title to "coming out as transgender". Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 18:46, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now female as a public preference or decision. Seems OK to me. Tony (talk) 14:33, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should hold off on using the obviously fair-use photo in this article until the deletion discussion is completed. Maybe comment it out? Marcus Qwertyus (talk)
This paper doesn't comment at all the fact that Wikipedia de, es, fr, ko, it, pl, etc. are using Bradley Manning as of now. Anything to say about that? Pldx1 (talk) 17:14, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am, frankly, shocked at Risker's behavior. Her over-defensive treatment of an article under dispute, claiming that "even typos" are controversial, is absurd. We have always permitted minor housekeeping edits to full-protected articles by administrators without prior approval, and it is part of their regular duties, not a flaunting of their authority. Without this ability, it is impossible to make systematic edits affecting many articles (e.g. file or template renames) in an efficient and comprehensive manner. I certainly hope this doesn't set a precedent. Dcoetzee 09:27, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The article mentions that Wikipedia Weekly 98 is now available, but I can't find the recording on the link given to the episode, only a description of the episode. Could someone please either clarify the link or fix the reference? effeietsanders 12:43, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You know, I get tired when everyone talks about the gender gap, and how this is a huge problem, but noone seems to ever discuss any possible solutions. We could do a lot about the gender gap - such as asking female Wikipedians what could be done to improve things - but, instead, we seem to fall into this idea that just saying there's a gender gap, and this is a problem, absolves us of any further responsibility. It's circular discussion at its worst. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 18:42, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Technology report: Generating musical scores with LilyPond (6,057 bytes · 💬)[edit]

Re Special:Mimesearch - Its not really meant for normal users. Its also not very useful in general (Getting a list of all jpg files is pretty useless when there are millions of them). Anything in particular you want me to document about it (and any particular place you'd expect to find documentation about it)? It pretty much does what it's name is. If you happen to know the MIME type for a file, you can get a list of all files of that type. For example, we recently started to allow wav files on commons - commons:Special:MIMESearch/audio/wav gets a list of them. I should note, special:mimesearch is not a new feature, it was just rewritten to have better performance. Previously it was just turned off on wikimedia wikis. Additionally it doesn't support wildcards at the moment, so you can't just get all "audio" files, you have to look at each type individually. Bawolff (talk) 23:00, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It could use a list of the filetypes that can be searched for, or at least the types, e.g. image/, audio/, etc. I realise it's not the most useful search tool. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 23:11, 19 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In theory you could search for any mime type (there are literally thousands). In practise there are very few actually in use on commons - commons:Commons:MIME_type_statistics. Bawolff (talk) 00:08, 21 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lilypond section - MediaWiki link is dead and goes nowhere. Apwoolrich (talk) 06:31, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- Fixed. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 07:07, 20 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Lilypond section FAQ - Section "How do I learn the syntax?" has a link to a Tutorial which is dead and goes nowhereApwoolrich (talk) 18:21, 22 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Has anyone tried using LilyPond to put sheet music on WikiSource? —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 08:29, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. There was a bug until very recently that prevented long works. However, Wikisource has a few things like "Accent" in A Dictionary of Music and Musicians or "Yankee Doodle" in The Child's Own Music Book. For a more complicated piece, which is still a work in progress, see National Anthems of the Allies, page 17 for Kimigayo (The Japanese National Anthem of 1917) - AdamBMorgan (talk) 11:56, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. After years of not editing WikiSource I just realized that I have no idea how to edit WikiSource with the new stuff that's been added since :) It is very cool though, I intend to learn eventually and add some PD piano scores. —Ynhockey ^(Talk) 07:57, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a tutorial on how to adapt an existing lilypond script to run in the score tags? I tried in vain to make Gymnopedie No 1 work. ~~I don't seem to see the score tag associated with the Yankee Doodle example above. A direct link please.~~(found the score example) Shyamal (talk) 14:01, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is a new feature, and, frankly, the documentation is still abyssmal. I believe most of the documentation presumed the user would be typing in the LilyPond by hand. This is never going to happen except for the shortest scores. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 14:57, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

PNG thumbnailer enhancements+fixes - too bad this did not include a fix for resizing animated PNGs while retaining the animation. Shyamal (talk) 16:04, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- PNGs don't have animation. I think you're thinking GIF. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:37, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Shyamal and Adam Cuerden: Actually, there's a format called "APNG" (Animated PNG) which Firefox and Opera support (but Chrome, Internet Explorer, most others don't) which is considerably better than GIF for animations; I created bug 53167 just last week to provide a way of falling back from APNGs to GIFs for users whose browsers don't support them. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:10, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    - - @Jdforrester (WMF) and Adam Cuerden: Animated PNGs extend the PNG specification in a such a way that older software that deal with PNG will show just the first frame. I am guessing that the problem has to do with the failure to resize the remaining frames. We have quite a few on commons:Category:Animated_PNG (the few "thumbnails" that are animated are because they were made at that size) Shyamal (talk) 02:25, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        Yes that's correct. You can use APNG in articles provided you specify the full sized image, and not a thumbnail (There should be a warning on the image description page of any APNG image). However APNGs are not supported in all browsers. Bawolff (talk) 05:11, 31 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Traffic report: Bad Cat (1,691 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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Stalemate is not the only (or even the most common in high level games) method of drawing a chess game.Tazerdadog (talk) 13:38, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What would be an appropriate word, other than using draw again? Serendi ^pod ous 15:13, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

split-point would be the term I would use, although it is fairly jargoney.Tazerdadog (talk) 03:52, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In addition, the page view stats for Chess is ... unusual. [1]Tazerdadog (talk) 02:41, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, it is suspicious, but there is at least a plausible reason for it to have been a topic of interest for that one day. Serendi ^pod ous 08:09, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Four India related articles! Seeing for the first time. Not bad. - Jayadevp13 15:55, 27 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject report: Today's article for improvement (2,158 bytes · 💬)[edit]

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Hmm. I thought the A was pronounced as in far.-Seonookim (What I've done so far) (I'm busy here) (Tell me your requests) 06:12, 26 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have seen the word "TAFI" before but never knew what it was - thanks to Mabeenot I become more wiki-educated Signpost by Signpost. THANK YOU.

As it happens, I just started a new article on a topic that I was amazed to find out was not on Wikipedia: Supermom. I wonder if it will be a good candidate for TAFI. Seems to me that it can fulfil the two goals: improving the article and appealing to new women editors who according to wp:Systemic bias are in short supply here. XOttawahitech (talk) 00:51, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Coin945, you have talked about recruiting people who frequent facebook, twitter, and google plus. Just wondering if you have also considered Linkedin, Quora and Yahoo Answers. User:Nihiltres has done a lot of good work at Yahoo so you may want to touch base with him/her. XOttawahitech (talk) 19:19, 28 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Ottawahitech: Thank you for your question. At the time (I have since stopped doing this job although I would love to start it up again), I was bound by the social media that Wikipedia actively engaged in, which was none of the ones you listed. I suggested status to be posted through Wikipedia's accounts on those sites, and the WMF people did the actually posting on TAFI's behalf. I actually just started a new discussion at TAFI about starting up the social media side, so i'd love for you to weight in here: Wikipedia talk:Today's articles for improvement#Social media blurbs.--Coin945 (talk) 12:13, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]