Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Next issue/Serendipity

As a quick note for the editors, the main goals of each of us while adding up to this article should be: one, reflect on a positive change, a happy story or a personal achievement on-wiki we've been particularly proud of in 2024; two, highlight our favorite contributions to the Signpost (if we had to choose) also in 2024; three, what we expect to happen in 2025, both for this newspaper and Wikipedia as a whole, or maybe even in the real world!

I'm happy that we've been able to keep The Signpost running on a more-or-less continual basis throughout 2024, marked by 18 issues. There were some rough patches in the past, including the 2017 shutdown of the whole affair, occasional publishing hiccups since then, and even now Signpost staff's feathers can get ruffled from difficult interactions with each other or with the readership community. It feels like we are back on a solid footing for the future and have even onboarded some new regular contributors in 2024.

My favorite contribution may have to be the successful outcome of the administrator elections experiment, which maybe-just-maybe was influenced by a number of items I've written in The Signpost highlighting the seriousness of the decline in the number of active administrators.

My favorite contribution to The Signpost is Are Luddaites defending the English Wikipedia?, written with Adam Cuerden. Our report was mentioned by a media organization.

Reading the comment sections of published Signpost reports, including those I've written, I've noticed concerns about a lack of neutrality in reporting. Moving forward, I aim to focus on maintaining neutrality in its coverage.

I don't think I'll ever forget 2024. I learned the ropes as a new admin, interviewed many people for editor reflections, and became Wikimedian of the Year. My favourite Signpost piece would probably be the one I wrote reflecting on that experience. I don't write much for The Signpost these days, so my favourite contribution this year also happens to be my only one. I have ambitious plans for 2025, but only time will tell if I manage to fulfill them. We're definitely going to reach the seven millionth article milestone this year, so I'm looking forward to that as well. I'd also like to give some recognition to Elli, Significa liberdade, and Sohom Datta. I was honoured to nominate you all for adminship last year. I'm sure you'll go on to do great things (especially since one of you is already on ArbCom!).

Writing the Disinformation report for The Signpost seldom makes me "happy" in the usual sense of the word, but often I do feel a sense of accomplishment. Probably my best story this year was How paid editors squeeze you dry. It took about four months of research, gathering small pieces of the puzzle before I felt ready to publish it. Putting all the pieces together, though, resulted in a scattershot text rather than just one arrow in the middle to the bullseye. Sometimes, I just have to go with what I have.

It started with a mystery - a fairly non-notable person issued a press release saying that the Wikipedia article about themself would be published soon. Why would somebody issue such a press release? They were being ripped off by a company that likely suckers in thousands of such victims each year. The company takes their money and doesn't even try to publish the article on-Wiki. On the way to solving this mystery I learned about several Wikipedians who are trying to stop this scam. I also learned about some of the victims of the scam - who turned out to be real people with goals and strengths and foibles similar to those of most people I know. Boy, were some of them pissed off when I informed them how they were being scammed! Struggling to go through the twists and turns of that story was certainly worth it. It will be even more worthwhile when we figure out a method to protect others from the scammers. Don't worry, we will.

My other favorite articles were a two part series by Roy Smith about The long road of a featured article candidate. It's always a pleasure to read a well-written article about something that's interesting and that the author has worked hard on. This case was a triple pleasure with the two Signpost articles and the featured article that Smith wrote about, Fleetwood Park Racetrack.

I'm not a betting man, but I love to see the horses gallop, or trot, or pace as the case may be. The piece I most enjoyed writing this year was about a pacer named Wikipedia who came from near the back of the pack in the stretch to win the race while making the other horses look like they were standing still. Of course we need another Wiki-racehorse. Rumor has it that a Hawiian-bred thoroughbred with a similar name will be ready to race next season.^{[Citation needed]}

From a personal point of view, I must confess that 2024 has been a mixed bag for me, with some good memories, but also several low points. From a strictly "Wikipedi-esque" point of view, however, I couldn’t be happier of my achievements, not just because I've been working on a monthly column for Wikimedia Italy – and yes, you can expect to read more about that from me very soon – but also because I’ve joined the staff of the Signpost on a fairly regular basis.

It was very hard to pick my favorite contributions, but in the end I've decided to celebrate three "first times" I'm quite proud of: the first time I ever tried to be funny (and it got a surprisingly good response!); the first time one of my articles got cited by another media outlet; the first time I ever interviewed someone for an article, and for a very good cause.

I think 2024 has made a lot of us realize that we don't really know what the world is coming to, and 2025 might be a similarly challenging year for Wikipedia and the rest of the Internet. Still, I hope that I will keeping learning a lot from my peers at the Signpost, and that its team will be there for you to report on the most important bits of news with even more energy and professionalism than ever.