This is an archive of past discussions with User:Go Phightins!. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
I gave some personal thanks to Bryce, but I wanted each of you Signpost board folks how much I appreciated this issue. Not only was the op-ed outstanding and thought provoking, the news section was well above average and Tony's travelogue was distinctive and fun to read. For my part, I'd like to see more profiles like that which appeared in the blog. It's impossible to cover every noteworthy event, but the statistical analysis seemed to line up with my anecdotal recollection of the event as it unfolded. Having the opportunity to see such an event analysis on an occasional basis may prove to be a different cross section of exactly how we function in real time. I'm taking the liberty to copy this to each of your board members; please pass my good wishes among your entire team. Outstanding reading. BusterD (talk) 04:46, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
Thank you very much! I can't take too much credit for this week's issue; Gamaliel did the heavy hitting on that one, but it's always great to get such positive feedback. GoPhightins!02:42, 22 August 2015 (UTC)
A cup of coffee for you!
Wow, dude...Indians fan here who was delighted to see Jim Thome be today's Featured Article. Went through the talk page and you did so. much. work. Truly a prodigal amount, and so much of it gruntwork. Thank you!!! Mreleganza (talk) 05:22, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
He was my favorite player growing up, so it was a great first article project for me to work on. Seeing it as TFA is quite gratifying :-) Thanks for the kind words! GoPhightins!20:45, 27 August 2015 (UTC)
The finals for the 2015 Wikicup has now begun! Congrats to the 8 contestants who have survived to the finals, and well done and thanks to everyone who took part in rounds 3 and 4.
In round 3, we had a three-way tie for qualification among the wildcard contestants, so we had 34 competitors. The leader was by far Casliber (submissions) in Group B, who earned 1496 points. Although 913 of these points were bonus points, he submitted 15 articles in the DYK category. Second place overall was Coemgenus (submissions) at 864 points, who although submitted just 2 FAs for 400 points, earned double that amount for those articles in bonus points. Everyone who moved forward to Round 4 earned at least 100 points.
The scores required to move onto the semifinals were impressive; the lowest scorer to move onto the finals was 407, making this year's Wikicup as competitive as it's always been. Our finalists, ordered by round 4 score, are:
Cas Liber (submissions), who is competing in his sixth consecutive Wikicup final, again finished the round in first place, with an impressive 1666 points in Pool B. Casliber writes about the natural sciences, including ornithology, botany and astronomy. A large bulk of his points this round were bonus points.
Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points), second place both in Pool B and overall, earned the bulk of his points with FPs, mostly depicting currency.
Cwmhiraeth (submissions), first in Pool A, came in third. His specialty is natural science articles; in Round 4, he mostly submitted articles about insects and botany. Five out of the six of the GAs he submitted were level-4 vital articles.
West Virginian (submissions), from Pool A, was our highest-scoring wildcard. West Virginia tends to focus on articles about the history of (what for it!) the U.S. state of West Virginia.
Rationalobserver (submissions), from Pool B, came in seventh overall. RO earned the majority of her points from GARs and PRs, many of which were earned in the final hours of the round.
Calvin999 (submissions), also from Pool B, who was competing with RO for the final two spots in the final hours, takes the race for most GARs and PRs—48.
The intense competition between RO and Calvin999 will continue into the finals. They're both eligible for the Newcomers Trophy, given for the first time in the Wikicup; whoever makes the most points will win it.
Good luck to the finalists; the judges are sure that the competition will be fierce!
On 11 September 2015, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Ken Giles, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that Philadelphia Phillies' pitcher Ken Giles(pictured) routinely throws a fastball whose velocity exceeds 100 miles per hour (160 km/h)? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Ken Giles. You are welcome to check how many page hits the article got while on the front page (here's how, live views, daily totals), and it may be added to the statistics page if the total is over 5,000. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.
Hi Go Phightins! (and User:Gamaliel, who I'm pinging)
If one were to want to request/suggest that the Signpost cover something, where would one do that? Here? User talk:Gamaliel? Some subpage of the WP:SIGNPOST that I can't figure out? I closed the RFC on this year's ArbCom election, and one of the ideas that had some support was "there was some interest expressed here for the Signpost to do this [post interviews with all of the ArbCom candidates before the election], but it is left up to the editorial board (or editor, or Rupert Murdoch, or whoever runs the place) to decide whether to do it, and if so, how." Since the RFC obviously can't "make" the Signpost do anything, I just wanted to alert you to this interest expressed in the RFC, so you could do with it what you will. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:05, 30 September 2015 (UTC)
Hi Floquenbeam. Sounds like a great idea ... if someone wants to coordinate it. Right now, the editorial board is in somewhat of a transitional stage that inhibits new project acquisition, but certainly if someone has the time to put that together, it sounds like a noble idea. Thanks! GoPhightins!19:18, 1 October 2015 (UTC)
OK, thanks. I'm not volunteering, I'm just the messenger. Any suggestion on which section of the newsroom pages (I assume?) to post this on, so if someone is interested they can run with it? I got a little confused trying to navigate around the subpages for a "suggested articles" location. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:58, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
Hey Liz. I am going to try to publish Saturday morning, and am not sure how much time I'll have before that, but will help if I can. Thanks! GoPhightins!00:14, 8 October 2015 (UTC)
Greetings! I have a submission that may be suitable for The Signpost. I submitted it to Wikipediocracy but they have not gotten back to me. Its on a rather special, controversial topic and it is unclear if The Signpost would be the appropriate place but I figured it best to ask. It is investigative reporting into a world government manipulating Wikipedia. Would you be interested in looking at it? If so, what's the best way to send it to you? Or is there a better place to send it? Thank you for any information or guidance. DaltonCastle (talk) 21:15, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
This Feature has been in development for a while for the Video Game Newsletter. I'm wondering if this can be crossposted to the Signpost. I think its grand. I suggested this to Gamaliel as well, which I am aware that they (and I guess I too an extent) have had some involvement with. GamerPro6421:25, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
i have distributed this weeks Award. no-one responded so B7 asked me to do it. i probably did a half-assed job but what do you expect from a half-wit.Buster3.5 (talk) 15:26, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
Oh my. Sorry, I have been so scarce around here myself I didn't even notice this. Well, unfortunately I am not sure I can pick it back up right now. I'll see what I can do. Thanks. GoPhightins!10:41, 19 October 2015 (UTC)
Regarding this week's editorial: I'm a bit confused by the conclusion: But if you do care, you will only have to do one thing: get out of the way. ... If you do this, we'll fix the problem for you and preserve your sandbox for as long as you want to play in it. Editorials are usually written in the voice of the editors, so is the Signpost saying it will fix the problem? isaacl (talk) 01:50, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
WikiCup 2015 is now in the books! Congrats to our finalists and winners, and to everyone who took part in this year's competition.
This year's results were an exact replica of last year's competition. For the second year in a row, the 2015 WikiCup champion is Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points). All of his points were earned for an impressive 253 featured pictures and their associated bonus points (5060 and 1695, respectively). His entries constituted scans of currency from all over the world and scans of medallions awarded to participants of the U.S. Space program. Cwmhiraeth (submissions) came in second place; she earned by far the most bonus points (4082), for 4 featured articles, 15 good articles, and 147 DYKs, mostly about in her field of expertise, natural science. Cas Liber (submissions), a finalist every year since 2010, came in third, with 2379 points.
Our newcomer award, presented to the best-performing new competitor in the WikiCup, goes to Rationalobserver (submissions). Everyone should be very proud of the work they accomplished. We will announce our other award winners soon.
A full list of our award winners are:
Godot13 (submissions) (FP bonus points) wins the prize for first place and the FP prize for 330 featured pictures in the final round.
Cwmhiraeth (submissions) wins the prize for second place and the DYK prize for 160 did you knows in the final round (310 in all rounds).
Cas Liber (submissions) wins the prize for third place and the FA prize for 26 featured articles in all rounds.
Harrias (submissions) wins a final 8 prize and the FL prize for 11 featured lists.
Rodw (submissions) wins the most prizes: a final 8 prize, the GA prize for 41 good articles, and the topic prize for a 13-article good topic and an 8-article featured topic, both in round 3.
ThaddeusB (submissions) wins the news prize for the most news articles in round 3.
We warmly invite all of you to sign up for next year's competition. Discussions and polls concerning potential rules changes are also open, and all are welcome to participate. The WikiCup judges will be back in touch over the coming months, and we hope to see you all in the 2016 competition. Until then, it only remains to once again congratulate our worthy winners, and thank all participants for their involvement! If you wish to start or stop receiving this newsletter, please feel free to add or remove yourself from Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send.
You are receiving this message because you are signed up as a volunteer at the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard. We have a number of pending requests which need a volunteer to address them. Unless you are an inexperienced volunteer who is currently just watching DRN to learn our processes, please take a case. If you do not see yourself taking cases in the foreseeable future, please remove yourself from the volunteer list so that we can have a better idea of the size of our pool of volunteers; if you do see yourself taking cases, please watchlist the DRN page and keep an eye out to see if there are cases which are ready for a volunteer. We have recently had to refuse a number of cases because they were listed for days with no volunteer willing to take them, despite there being almost 150 volunteers listed on the volunteer page. Regards, TransporterMan (talk·contribs) (Current DRN coordinator) (Not watching this page) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:48, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
Signpost
Ben, I'm very disappointed that Signpost appears to be joining the ranks of the Red tops and encouraging rogue journalitic tactics and condoning gutter press behaviour from its contributors. --04:10, 20 November 2015 (UTC)Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk)
Hi Kudpung, well I'm not sure I agree with your characterization of what happened here. While I will stipulate that many of the questions are somewhat outlandish statements, the point is to offer voters a snapshot of the candidates' differences, which we have done similarly in past elections. One point I will concede is that the auto-recording of non-responses as a four would have been a mistake, and I will personally ensure that does not happen. Beyond that, I am somewhat confused by the perception that candidates are required to answer -- while I did not see the initial email Tony distributed, I can say that I am sure any implication candidates are required to answer was unintended. We do questionnaires like this because with as many candidates as there are, even allowing 100 words of prose per candidate quickly becomes an unreadable behemoth. If you have suggestions on how to improve our coverage of elections in the future, I am all ears. Thanks, Kudpung. -- Ben (GoPhightins!04:03, 21 November 2015 (UTC))
I 'm not saying t wasn't done in good faith, but that good faith was misplaced. You (Signpost) may have done this in previous years but as I was not directly involved in the elections I would not have noticed. The email I received , and the tone of the dialogue which followed left me (and others) in no doubt that this 'survey' is officially sanctioned and is more or less required. Not to metion the short deadlines tat are imposed as if the candidates don'thave enough on jeir plarers already. Like you, those candidates are volunteers.
I was extremely taken aback by the blatant accusation in public of being a liar by one of your colaborators. That does not reflect well on you, your editorial staff, or your 'free lance' contributors. Personally, IMO, good journalism would be to synthesise what candidates have said about themselves in their nomination statements, and which would be more than enough to let the electorate make up its mind. The questions asked were of such a kind that it does not guarantee that op-ed piece will not be an unbiased Signpost piece of private grandstanding. The questions clearly demand candidates to provide information that they have not deeed necessary to provide in their nomination statement and some candidates have already received warnings by email that if they refuse or decline t5o participate in this 'survey' it will be regarded as a negative towards their candidacy. As a candidate for a post that demands a high level of integrity, I would hope tat those involving thenselves in this election as candidates, controllers, or otherwise, would be happy to bind themselves to similar levels of action and behaviour. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 11:23, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
The behaviour of the Signpost in publishing a survey response I had publicly and privately withdrawn, without even noting that fact, shows a lack of journalistic competence, integrity, and honesty. As the editor of the project, it would be appropriate for to take responsiblity and corrective action. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 00:08, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
Hi, Hullaballoo Wolfowitz. I must confess that I saw your message on Mike V's talk page in passing, and this afternoon while we were spending stupid amounts of time troubleshooting markup/crosschecking data input in the table, it slipped my mind to include an asterisk next to your responses. My apologies. Will do so now. GoPhightins!00:26, 22 November 2015 (UTC)
Hello, Go Phightins!. Please check your email; you've got mail! Message added 19:09, 22 November 2015 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.
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