Optional: Give a short WP:LEAD-like introduction statement here.

Until its creation in the early wiki-days of 2003, until a point in November 2006, the article Gadsby (novel), about a work that is a lipogram, was itself a lipogram. In other words, both the novel, and the Wikipedia article about the novel, were written without the letter "E". There had been some attempts before 2006 to revert the article to standard English, but it looks like either the joke was too good to spoil, or the sense of fun and wonder in creating not just an incredible free contribution to human knowledge extended to the fun and wonder of trying out constrained writing.

What happened on that fateful day in November? Why did the forces of normality and mundanity win? Was it a sign of the future of a rigid, formalized, bureaucratized, and un-fun experience for contributors? Will another recursive word-experiment ever be possible again?

As for the original author, an anonymous editor, perhaps they joined us as a named account and are still around? The editor who broke the three-year E-less run is now an administrator.

Incomplete -- work on timelime -- back to lipograms in 2008? lipogram-izing the article was a Wikifun challenge in 2004 [2]. Now Wikifun was not exactly a big deal but it wasn't outlandish at the time, nor attended by the officially irredeemable. Remember when Wikifun was allowed? Or any fun? We all knew it was too good to last.

The anti-anti-lipogrammers used edit summaries like "Deleted non lipogrammatical sentence" as late as 2008. The word "novel" appeared in the lede sporadically, apparently shoving aside "work of fiction" to come home to roost for good in late 2008 or early 2009.

In-article comments requested that well-meaning editors who were not in on the joke not to add the dreaded vowel... until they were removed^[1] in January 2009. Things went on like that with strictly under-the-radar fun allowed until, late in 2010, an official, very scary editnotice, with promises of "administrator action or warnings" for those who dare to restore the fun was added (by an administrator of course [technically not of course because there is also a template-editor permission available to some who are neither sysops nor founders, etc.]).

What else happened in November ought-six, in what we now smugly call the oughts, safely distancing ourselves from a time of danger, risk and innovation?

• Google made its first billion-dollar purchase.

Coincidence, or are these both symptoms of the beginnings of the modern, corporatized, hyper-real, buttoned-down, no-fun-allowed (unless it's extremely profitable) World Wide Web? Or to use a more modern word "cyberspace" – whose usage has more often than not seemed to me to ironically miss the intent of the term's creator (or at least its popularizer), William Gibson, who was not praising a future digital Eden: quite the opposite, he was sharing his dystopian future visions with us as a warning.

This page is a draft for the next issue of the Signpost. Below is some helpful code that will help you write and format a Signpost draft. If it's blank, you can fill out a template by copy-pasting this in and pressing 'publish changes': {{subst:Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Story-preload}}

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Filler image-v2
 |image     = 
 |size      = 300px
 |alt       = TKTK
 |caption   = 
 |fullwidth = no
}}

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Inline image
 |image    =
 |size     = 300px
 |align    = center
 |alt      = Placeholder alt text
 |caption  = CAPTION
}}

<gallery mode = packed | heights = 200px>
|Caption for second image
</gallery>

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Filler quote-v2
 |1         = 
 |author    = 
 |source    = 
 |fullwidth = 
}}

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Quote
 |1         = 
 |source    = 
}}

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/block quote
 | text   = 
 | by     = 
 | source = 
 | ts     = 
 | oldid  = 
}}

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Filler frame-v2
 |1         = Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
 |caption   = A caption
 |fullwidth = no
}}

{{Graph:Chart
 |width=250|height=100|type=line
 |x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y=10,12,6,14,2,10,7,9
}}

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Filler frame-v2
 |1=
{{Graph:Chart
 |width=250|height=100|type=line
 |x=1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8|y=10,12,6,14,2,10,7,9
}}
 |caption=A caption
 |fullwidth=no
}}

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Signpost-block-end-v2}}
{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Signpost-block-start-v2|fullwidth=yes}}

{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Signpost-block-end-v2}}
{{Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Templates/Signpost-block-start-v2|fullwidth=no}}

Article series

To add a series of 'related articles' your article, use the following code Related articles Visual Editor Five, ten, and fifteen years ago 1 January 2023 VisualEditor, endowment, science, and news in brief 5 August 2015 HTTPS-only rollout completed, proposal to enable VisualEditor for new accounts 17 June 2015 VisualEditor and MediaWiki updates 29 April 2015 Security issue fixed; VisualEditor changes 4 February 2015 More articles Draft namespace, VisualEditor meetings 25 December 2013 Sockpuppet investigations, VisualEditor, Wikidata's birthday, and more 6 November 2013 Last call for Wiki Loves Monuments; Community–WMF tension over VisualEditor 25 September 2013 Making Wikipedia more accessible 4 September 2013 Gallery improvements launch on Wikipedia 28 August 2013 The VisualEditor Beta and the path to change 31 July 2013 Defining consensus; VisualEditor default state; expert and layperson terms in article titles 31 July 2013 VisualEditor in midst of game-changing deployment series 3 July 2013 VisualEditor will "change world history" 12 June 2013 VisualEditor, elections, bots, and more 12 June 2013 The Visual Editor: Where are we now, and where are we headed? 25 March 2013 Visual Editor "on schedule" for July rollout 18 March 2013 Looking ahead to 2013 7 January 2013 The new Visual Editor gets a bit more visual 10 December 2012 Second Visual Editor prototype launches 25 June 2012 Visual editor demo launched, hailed as "most important change to our user experience ... ever"; but elsewhere over-hasty deployments criticised 19 December 2011 Full steam ahead on Visual Editor, the avoidance of lock-breaking and 1.18b1 release 7 November 2011 {{Signpost series |type = sidebar-v2 |tag = VisualEditor |seriestitle = Visual Editor |fullwidth = no }} or {{Signpost series |type = sidebar-v2 |tag = VisualEditor |seriestitle = Visual Editor |fullwidth = yes }} will create the sidebar on the right. If writing a 'full width' article, change |fullwidth=no to |fullwidth=yes. A partial list of valid |tag= parameters can be found at here and will decide the list of articles presented. |seriestitle= is the title that will appear below 'Related articles' in the box. Alternatively, you can use {{Signpost series |type = inline |tag = VisualEditor |tag_name = visual editor |tag_pretext = the }} at the end of an article to create For more Signpost coverage on the visual editor see our visual editor series. If you think a topic would make a good series, but you don't see a tag for it, or that all the articles in a series seem 'old', ask for help at the WT:NEWSROOM. Many more tags exist, but they haven't been documented yet.