Wikipedia talk:In the news

What's the point is adding deaths when there's a list underneath?

As it is... it ends up looking like there's a hierarchy of deaths, where some end up being more prominent because... more people decide that? I mean, unless a head of state was murdered, or such... I don't see the point, otherwise, if the whole process was equitable, the news section would be one death after another... 80.42.137.100 (talk) 20:59, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the criteria are at WP:ITNRDBLURB.—Bagumba (talk) 01:01, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello. The point of RDs is to highlight recent deaths - that is deaths In the news. Of course, not every recent death is featured on the RD section (which is what I believe you are hinting at), however, that's largely due to quality issues that prevent the devoted articles from being posted on the main page (which you have to remember gets 5+ million views daily, so subpar content cannot be highlighted). - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 01:03, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

This is a very good point and no strong reason has ever been presented why we need to highlight the death of certain people by posting blurbs. You’re absolutely right that the process isn’t equitable and it produces bias. For instance, the German Wikipedia community never posts death blurbs, unless the person in question was assassinated or died in an accident, because of their RD section.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 14:21, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

The German Wikipedia has a separate Obituary section on its main page in which every death gets a one line blurb. That's obviously far better for the reader than the English RD ticker which, by just listing names without any description, is too abbreviated. Andrew🐉(talk) 20:21, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

That won't work on en.wiki main page, where every featured link is expected to point to articles representing our best work. That's why we still have a pointer to the current events portal where there is no such limitation on quality, just verification. Masem (t) 21:58, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

The idea that the English Wikipedia can't do something which is done every day by the German language Wikipedia is absurd. Other languages such as Spanish do this too. Get real. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:34, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

The distinct behavior of the two sites was established through decades of collaborative refinement. If you want to throw out quality standards for the Main Page, propose it and gain consensus. I think we all know how that discussion will go. In the meantime, mind your manners and don't bite at the editors who are actually trying to be productive. GreatCaesarsGhost 14:53, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

As I said, I'm all for demolishing the "major/transformative figures" criterion so as to prevent it from becoming a contest of who has the biggest legacy/has the puffiest obituary/reminds Wikipedians the most of Nelson Mandela. But as long as that criterion exists and there is a consensus to keep it, yes, there is going to be a hierarchy of deaths around here. The solution to that is to propose an RfC to remove the criterion and to give a compelling argument for doing so. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:45, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. I’d go even further to require the existence of a stand-alone article documenting the death (e.g. Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II) or the event in which the person in question died (e.g. 2020 Calabasas helicopter crash). By doing that, we’d restrict blurbs only to persons whose deaths are the main story that merits a blurb and solve the problem with the bias.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 15:04, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Jim Brown note For future reference, this thread is probably a reaction to posting the Jim Brown blurb. FWIW, his death did make the front page of The New York Times print edition. Whether or not one agrees with the post, that hopefully indicates some level of extra significance, as opposed to an arbitrary vote pile.—Bagumba (talk) 14:59, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I don’t see it as a reaction to that particular nomination. It’s a highly relevant question that needs to be discussed and eventually resolved. The truth is that we’re biased no matter high much the community disagrees with.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 15:04, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Agree it's a relevant question, but this timing seems spurred by Brown. —Bagumba (talk) 16:49, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

We shouldn't care where a death notice is given - the same criteria for normal blurbs. But a NYTimes long long form death notice should be very much incorporated into the article to improve its quality (particularly the update), which should better justify the reason to post. Masem (t) 15:06, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Ok, but if one wants to treat them like "normal blurbs", many non-RD blurbs have been at best C class, with little structured text for a layman to understand the significance, if they weren't already somewhat familiar with the topic. The "legacy" aspect of RD blurbs is a step above that, which could be fine. But let's not fool ourselves that iTN ever treated all blurbs equally alike. —Bagumba (talk) 15:37, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I fully agree that we need to improve our criteria on all articles suggested for blurbs, though moreso for any RD blurbs for certain. Like in the case of Jim Brown, the discussion was starting that "oh , he's a civil rights icon" but the article at that time made nearly no mention of it. Now it has it, and written decently for as fast as it was completed. Could the article quality be better? Sure but at least when it was posted it was at least a B-class that was fully comprehensive. There have definitely been blurb RDs that have been posted that have been less-than-desired quality without any clear reason for legacy or impact because we have many non-regulars !vote for posting for the reasons we already state not to !vote for, on popularity and fame, which swings the !vote on pure numbers the wrong way. Masem (t) 16:28, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Now we can also consider how Tina Turner's death is being handled. I will point out the article was at GA standards when nominated, and (to me) highlighted why she had a legacy and impact on the music world, without having to hunt and peck through the prose. The legacy section can only get better incorporating long form obits that are certain to come. Is her death likely to get a separate article? No, as it was known she had a terminal condition, and its not expected to have much pomp over her funeral. Masem (t) 19:26, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

GAs ready for RD blurbs are more the exception than the rule. It's always hard to gauge if people object due to quality because of a lack of a "Legacy" section, or if they use its absence as a re-affirmation that the subject is not a "major figure". I have no objection for Turner (I didn't !vote), but we'll never know if the obligatory opposes would have come if it hadn't been posted one hour after the nom, and then the thread was preemptively closed another hour after posting. —Bagumba (talk) 08:59, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Turner was obviously posted as a blurb because she was a superstar singer in the same league as David Bowie and Michael Jackson. FYI, her article is vital level 5 and the number of views on the first day was 2.6 million. She had a long career and continued to perform into old age -- our picture shows her at age 70 -- and so her fame was multi-generational. With an arduous life and multiple biographical works such as movies and musical, she ticks all the boxes as a major figure. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:23, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Level 5 is the lowest level of vital articles, so that's not a predictive indicator.—Bagumba (talk) 10:47, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Survey for updating ITN/RD criteria

Note that this survey is not intended as an official vote/!vote for whether or not to strike out a significant criterion for posting recent death blurbs, but rather as an informal poll to see if people would be interested in having that discussion. That area of WP:ITNRDBLURB as it relates to death blurbs for major/transformative figures reads as follows:

Major figures: The death of major figures may merit a blurb. These cases are rare, and are usually posted on a sui generis basis through a discussion at WP:ITNC that determines there is consensus that the death merits a blurb. Comparisons to deaths of prior persons (we posted John Doe, so we should also post Jane Smith, or conversely we didn't post Bill Jones, so we cannot post Susie Johnson) are rarely considered sufficient to post in absence of consensus. One should also be wary of puffery in obituaries for a recently deceased person - using terms such as "legendary", "greatest of all time", "household name", etc.

If removed, there would be only two criteria by which a death blurb would be posted - one where the death is the main story as a result of major events and funeral services, or one where it is the main story due to the unusual nature of the death (evidence of suicide, foul play, etc.). Any discussions regarding the significance of the individual would be limited to only insofar as the death is of an encyclopedic nature, in which it warrants its own article. --⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:15, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

• Tentative support of having a formal vote. --⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:15, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support having a formal vote.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 15:19, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose There are deaths that are significantly in the news but where they are not as sufficiently in depth to have their own standalone article, nor are part of a major event. Robin William's death is an example, failing the two remaining ones but satisfying this one. What is needed is emphasis on that last sentence - that "world famous" and other factors do not come into play, and importantly that any death article suggested for a blurb must be some of highest quality, showing clearly why the person and/or their death has had a legacy or impact on the world. --Masem (t) 15:40, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  Masem, I will always admire your stalwart consistency with regards to your principles on ITN. I still have to emphatically disagree with your take, because that last sentence - however important it is - is not being taken into consideration by our !voters. The major problem as it stands with this criterion is that there are very few "must's", "shall's", and "only's", and too many "may's", "should's", and "usually's". It is an ongoing pitfall with ITN in that, by not committing ourselves to any sort of reliable objective standard and by insisting our guidelines are descriptive and not prescriptive, our consensus rarely aligns with the guidelines.

  And even then, our consensus is never unanimous and rarely a supermajority, which leads to gripes and complaints. This is why I unsuccessfully tried earlier to define significance. I predict that in the future, if our guidelines remain unchanged, we will have !voters who say "Well, we posted Carrie Fisher, Betty White, Robin Williams, and Jim Brown before, but those were all mistakes and we shouldn't do it again." And we'll continue to have this discussion again and again. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 17:01, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  Well, we posted Carrie Fisher, Betty White, Robin Williams, and Jim Brown before, but those were all mistakes and we shouldn't do it again: The elephant in the room is that those are all Americans. Are we willing to constructively discuss why that's a lighting rod? —Bagumba (talk) 01:02, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I think reporting of funeral services invariably gets back to the "major figure" criteria, and each region has differing criteria on state funerals, if that is going to be a new blurb criteria.—Bagumba (talk) 16:01, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support Having RfC and !vote. Please. This criterion is subjective by design, and while so are ITNC discussions, ITNRD blurb discussions take it to uncomfortable levels of arguing whether a - recently deceased, remember - person was a world hero or a boring commoner, rather than accepting that they were a notable person and sensibly debating it in degrees. Whatever one thinks of blurbing RDs, that is a conduct issue that ITN has created and should try to control. Kingsif (talk) 16:13, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  Perhaps a better solution is to address the behavior (Wikipedia:General sanctions?) instead. —Bagumba (talk) 16:46, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  I don’t think this is the right approach. Why to be corrective when we can be preventive? Why to engage editors in cheeky discussions when we can direct them to produce content? Why should some people be treated differently than others? Our job is to present the readers all available knowledge about persons in reliable sources, not to hint at who was more notable for what and why. In the same way as being a “major figure” isn’t a criterion for a GA/FA, it shouldn’t be a criterion to mention someone in a blurb on the main page while someone else is treated differently at the same time. The main problem here is our bias and lack of equitable process. Masem‘s argumentation above is a very good explanation of where that bias comes from. What prevents the death of Robin Williams to be documented in a stand-alone article when his death was covered in zillion reliable sources and it’s already the longest section of the article that justifies a split? WP:CFORK is the most misapplied policy we have. Death articles have the importance as obituaries published by news outlets and will surely be well received by our readers. So, instead of allowing editors to argue whether someone is a “major figure” and clamp down for incivility (another fully biased concept), we can direct them to produce content and come with it to demand a blurb showing that the death itself is notable.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 17:34, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  Our job is to present the readers all available knowledge about persons in reliable sources, not to hint at who was more notable for what and why: Except ITN, by its very nature, already determines what events are more significant than others to post. —Bagumba (talk) 00:55, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  To post or not to post is different than posting a death blurb versus posting to RD. There's no objective explanation what makes some people more notable than others when they're all considered notable enough to have articles. But requiring a stand-alone article documenting the death is an objective criterion to tell people apart and justify posting a death blurb.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 13:45, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  In the current culture if WP today, where edutir rush to create standalone articles that are better suited as part if another more comprehensive article, asking for a page on the death of a person for a blurb is both gameable, and ignores editors that know how to write comprehensively. The is no reason that Robin William's or Jim Brown' death to require a separate article due to the lack of pomp compared to the Queen, Thatcher, or Michael Jackson. Yet these people meet the major figures standards and have clear article content now to explain that. The separate article on the death is asking for too much trouble. Masem (t) 13:50, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  Agree. I'd anticipate WP:REDUNDANTFORKs consisting of WP:NOTDIARY content and excessive quotes.—Bagumba (talk) 14:03, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  We have RfDs as a mechanism to halt posting and prevent WP:GAME as an article considered for deletion cannot be posted until the request is open. This will naturally filter people whose death is truly significant to be blurbed (an RfD for Death and state funeral of Fidel Castro or Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II would be snow-closed in a couple of minutes, so it won’t delay posting at all). I don’t see any obstacle to document the death of Robin Williams in a stand-alone article because it was widely reported in reliable sources with many published obituaries and clearly meets all bullets at WP:GNG, especially considering that the death section in his article is as long as the “Personal life” section (see Death of David Bowie as a perfect solution). Basically, all people whose deaths are major news with wide coverage in reliable sources merit stand-alone death articles. Finally, as I mentioned above, WP:CFORK is the most misapplied policy we have, and those articles would be perfectly justified per WP:SPINOFF.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 16:03, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  Could a Death if Robin Williams be made and be notable? Sure, but it is important to recognize that there was minimal funeral ceremony beyond various tributes. The death is far more comprehensive with the death discussed as part of his life, which is a major goal of how we should be writing articles. In contrast, Bowie's death, including his knowledge of his terminal condition, had a lot of pomp and ceremony comparable to the state funerals of the Queen and Thatcher, so a standalone makes sense. Again, we need to push editors to think about comprehensiveness rather that creation of articles, and that plays importantly herr. Masem (t) 16:27, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  As already mentioned here, I’ve made a proposal on more comprehensive death updates some time ago, but it didn’t succeed to make any changes and was subsequently archived. Technically, we need a content-based criterion because that’s what can objectively tell people apart (more notable deaths/deaths of more notable people abound with coverage in reliable sources, which should require more detailed death updates).--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 17:08, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

• @Kingsif: ITNRD blurb discussions take it to uncomfortable levels of arguing whether a - recently deceased, remember - person was a world hero or a boring commoner, - Absolutely spot on. I feel this way also. It's one of the most morbid and disagreeable exercises that Wikipedians engage in. While the rest of the world, or at the very least their close loved ones, is mourning and writing obituaries in honor of the deceased, Joe Bloggs from Croydon says "Who? Not notable, never heard of 'em. No blurb." And while they may or may not be right (with the criteria as it is, it's hard to tell one way or another), it's an awful response for us to have just from the standpoint of humanity and decency. I know decency is not a policy on Wikipedia (although civility is), but we can certainly do better for ourselves by not engaging in that sort of gratuitous ritual. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 16:52, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  This is why I stress that the article that is suggested for a blurb should make it crystal clear why the person was a major figure, si that those that never heard if amX should be able to read the article and understand why this is true. That is part if the article quality we should expect from death blurbs. Instead we get handwriting without verifying the article confirms thus. Masem (t) 13:19, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

• Id prefer something less subjective. The problem with ITN is that it is based on people arguing based on their personal belief. What should happen, imo, is demonstrating weight through sourcing. Establish something like to post a blurb on a recent death, multiple full length obituaries from national papers of record, from multiple countries, ideally in multiple languages, should be provided. We're just replacing one subjective criteria with another slightly better one here. The reason people wont agree to objective criteria is that it makes it impossible to oppose things they want to oppose, like those mass shootings that are so widely covered that even editors supposedly retired come back just to oppose their nominations on ITNC. But death blurbs based on significance of the person dont have that problem, so maybe we can establish something that can be objectively measured for that at least? nableezy - 17:49, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  This is an interesting comment, which opens up a wider topic. Setting objectively measurable criteria may promote impartiality, but it also has its own cons. Firstly, people will learn the criteria and manipulate ways to achieve them with little efforts and less quality. Secondly, quality updates are difficult to measure, and we’d still be subjective if we have to decide whether the criteria have been satisfied. Thirdly, if we have objectively measurable criteria, we’d have to abolish WP:ITNR. Also, it’s very difficult to weigh the pros against the cons.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 18:10, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  There are two independent parts, significance and quality. Both can be measured objectively. And no, I dont see how ITNR would have anything to do with this. I am just saying how we should establish significance for a blurbable death where the death is not the notable event itself. I say if it is breaking news in, for example, NY, London, Paris, Sydney, and Doha, and all of them quickly produce an obituary, that would satisfy "significance". nableezy - 18:14, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  I’ve recently made a proposal to precisify some criteria based on quality, but it was closed without any resolution. Overall, I agree that we need clearer criteria.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 18:44, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  I think at a certain point, if our proposals are garnering minimum participation except from those who are willing to participate, we need to adjudicate whatever consensus there is and, if all else fails, just WP:BEBOLD and then discuss any reversions. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 18:51, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  The ultimate solution we should be looking for is one that would decrease the time editors spend discussing nominations and increase the time they spend producing content.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 20:25, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  If you focus on objective qualities that determine outcomes you reduce the temperature overall here. So why not try to focus on that, what objective criteria could we use to determine if a person's significance by itself merits including a blurb about their death? I gave my suggestion, all ears for pros or cons and other options. But I think this current setup where its whether or not theres a super-majority in support otherwise all we do is ITN/R items to be manifestly bad. nableezy - 00:51, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  I generally agree with you with the caveats mentioned in one of my previous comments above. Can you give some examples of objective criteria that you think would work?--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 07:51, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  Thats what I did at the start. Here, for clarity, this is what I think should be the standard for a blurb for death when it is not an otherwise unusual event: multiple full length obituaries from national papers of record, from multiple countries, ideally in multiple languages, should be provided. Absent that, RD. With that, blurb most likely. nableezy - 14:42, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  This seems like a good standard to me. Blaylockjam10 (talk) 04:35, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

  Objectively, the article about a person should be written and sourced to a high expected quality (GA standards), there is a clear expansion of the article upon the death of the person, and likely with that, some type of legacy or impact section that clearly establishes why the person is a major figure, Moreno than just being famous or popular. Thise are nearly objective criteria with some debate in regards to the extent if the legacy or impact (eg like trying to compare Jim Brown to Pele) Masem (t) 13:54, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  No, that has nearly nothing to do with how significant a person is, only with how an article is organized. But it is based on our article, not on the sources. Plus we dont require GA standard for any of the articles in ITN currently, why would we require it for a death blurb? The simplest way to determine significance is to to see how significantly our reliable sources are treating it. When somebody's death is breaking news across the world and full length obituaries are published in the leading papers in several countries that should tell you that the sources consider that death significant. And yes, having an obit on the front page of the NYT is definitely more significant than a blurb in the last pages of section A in the Lincoln Journal Star. nableezy - 14:40, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  We require a basic quality check (sourced well, no glaring orange-tag problems, etc.) for non-blurb RDs. For a blurb RD, I would expect that the significance of the person should be based on the existing quality of the article, which should go above and beyond the minimum standard for an RD, and based on the coverage from death from multiple sources, an expanded section that either discusses the death, reaction to it, or the impact/legacy a person has, all that gets incorporated into the article to bump from the arbitrary B-class standard for non-blurb to a A- or GA- level of quality. Because we are meant to feature WP's best work that happens to be covered by the news, particularly in our blurbed content. Masem (t) 12:24, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  No, we feature WP's best work in the sections Featured Articles and Featured Pictures. Here we showcase articles that yes have a minimum quality, but are topics that people might be interested in because they have seen them in the news. Your insistence that it does not matter how widely covered or where something is sourced to is fine to have, but it is not a view I share. nableezy - 16:29, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  That is completely contrary to why ITN was created. We still are here to feature WP's best work on topics that happen to be in the news, as we are not a news ticker. Any bolded links off the Main Page are supposed to represent WP's, and with ITN, that gives an opportunity to showcase new articles orupdates to existing ones within a short period of time after the relevant news breaks. (Eg think how fast and well the 9/11 or Jan 6 articles came together to be put on the main page) . We do want to make that topics are of interest to readers, which means we are looking for global or wide ranging impacts and avoid local or niche stories. Masem (t) 16:37, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Idk why you keep saying this. Now I dont have access to the main page pre accidental deletion, but here is the earliest version of the ITN requirements I can find. It is not long, but nowhere does it have anything about quality beyond article must be updated to reflect the new information. And as far as why it was created, also based on nothing but your imagination. That part of the main page, if my wiki history diving is good enough, was put up within minutes of the 9/11 attacks. It was put up prior to any quality article existing. So no, your nostalgia on the higher purpose of ITN is not accurate, sorry. nableezy - 19:17, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  I wouldn't get too obsessed into why anything was originally created. After all, WP:CCC. It's more important if the rationale still makes sense and continues to have support. I agree with some quality requirements, as it's a good incentive to improve WP, having volunteers put work in and in exchange have the page linked on the Main Page. I'm a bit uncomfortable with apparent different standards for general blurb page quality versus RD blurb quality. AGF, but sometimes the discrepancy for an RD blurb can seem like stonewalling the nomination. It would be good to agree on standards, if there is consensus for it to be different for RD blurbs, and document it at WP:ITNRD. —Bagumba (talk) 04:40, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

  In regards to this. I think we may need a straw poll or RFC to reestablish ITNs purpose. We know it is the intersection of quality articles and topics in the news, but what emphasis it has is what leads to lots of debated. If we are quality focused (like I suggest) then we are focused on quality, with the news worthiness should be supported in the article. If we are here to focus on the news side, then various suggestions to prioritize news coverage seems to make sense. Without establishing which part we focus on clearly, we will keep having debates over significance. Masem (t) 15:06, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose WP:ITNRDBLURB is an information page, "It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, but rather intends to describe some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices." As such it should honestly describe our customary practices rather than providing misinformation. The recent case of Jim Brown demonstrates that the paragraph in question is still valid. A vote would not change this. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:58, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  Wow, that is not how consensus works around here at all. The only reason WP:ITNRD exists in its current state in the first place was that a !vote and RFC took place in 2016 for that very subject. This IS how we do things, otherwise nothing would ever change and we'd still be beating each other with sticks. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 22:46, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

  The way consensus works around here is that Jim Brown got a blurb. That nomination discussion was closed emphatically as "Consensus will not change". It's therefore a poor time to try to claim that consensus is otherwise. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:44, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Try to stay on topic, Andrew. We are discussing this survey, not an individual blurb. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:16, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Discussion should be based on evidence. Jim Brown was the proximate cause of this discussion and now we have the fresh example of Tina Turner which further demonstrates that the "major figure" clause is still the way this works. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:13, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: we need to have a significance criterion for blurbs, and that includes deaths. Attempting to find a way to remove it is foolish and ultimately damaging. I acknowledge that significance is subjective, but all other blurbs have their significance assessed, and we need a way of deciding which deaths are as significant as the other blurbs we post. I'm not opposed to having a discussion about which phrasing we use for the death significance criteria (I would argue for holding a high bar, roughly the Thatcher/Mandela standard), but removing them entirely would do more harm than good. Modest Genius ^talk 14:22, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support a discussion via supporting the removal of the aforementioned clause. In my mind, it is time. We've had this talk way too many times in the past. Death as the main story is consistent with general ITN standards. Any other deaths can live in the RD section. DarkSide830 (talk) 17:13, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  So Pele wouldnt be blurbed then? What about Mandela? Both of those are old man dies. nableezy - 17:55, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, they wouldn't be. You can debate whether or not that's valid, but what is the issue with a consistent standard here? People will still read about them and see the RD item. DarkSide830 (talk) 18:06, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  I dont have an issue with a consistent standard, I just dont think thats the one to have. Basically I think we should evaluate how widely covered and in depth that coverage is for pretty much all news stories, including deaths. When a news story, including old person dies news story, is breaking news around the world I think it should be blurbed in our ITN provided we have a decent article to point to. nableezy - 19:00, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  Well, the question then becomes how do we define "around the world", and if a beloved American actor or musician happens to be the one getting those worldwide plaudits from Düsseldorf to Whanganui, are we still holding ourselves to that standard even if their names aren't Mandela or Thatcher? And then we go right back to the root of the problem that prompted this conversation to begin witht. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:52, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  There's no "Mandela/Thatcher" standard at WP:ITNRD, so it's not a closing factor as far as strength of argument. Then it mainly boils down to a !vote count. —Bagumba (talk) 16:27, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  I dont think that is really a problem to be honest. If somebody shows a full length obit from the paper of record of multiple countries/continents and even possibly languages then I think that will be easy to objectively judge. As far as the last sentence, well yes, that is why I said standards generally wont be agreed to, because the editors who currently oppose things that are objectively widely covered around the world because of where they happened or who was involved wont be able to do that. And so they will oppose. nableezy - 16:28, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose the current death blurb criteria is working at an acceptable level. We post very few death blurbs throughout the year, so it's not like this clause is permitting a wave of death blurbs that shouldn't be there. The only major issue I see is that those discussions can get a bit verbose at times, but that's the nature of borderline cases and it's not as if these discussions are adding significant cost to the running of Wikipedia. NorthernFalcon (talk) 18:36, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Absolutely not. If we don't blurb the death of major figures, we aren't going to blurb them just because there was a big funeral. That's a ridiculous threshold. GreatCaesarsGhost 20:18, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose I have been neutral on most RD blurb votes I have participated in, but I think it would be a bad call to do away with them unless there's a big event or funeral involved. We should probably have a consistent standard for who raises to the level of a blurb, but it should not be this. To me, this seems like a nuclear option in a situation that does not call for one. Doc Strange ^MailboxLogbook 02:42, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. I’ve always found “old man dies” to be an extraordinarily weak rationale to not post a blurb, and the idea we’d leave out Pele or Mandela is ludicrous. The Kip (talk) 04:33, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
• Comment I don't understand why some of these above editors think Pele or Nelson Mandela wouldn't get blurbed if we use the above criteria. The proposed criteria says one where the death is the main story as a result of major events and funeral services which is still true for Mandela or Pele, as we probably could make funeral articles for these two. Natg 19 (talk) 07:24, 23 May 2023 (UTC)
• Every solution proposed to eliminate the acrimony of death blurbs is basically "let's not fight, let's just do it my way." We've been through every permutation of these proposals, including this exact one three times in the past 20 months (four months ago by the same person proposing it here). People need to accept there is a difference of opinion here on what should be posted. GreatCaesarsGhost 14:34, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  So we all agree then that there was a consensus that Jim Brown was blurbworthy under our current criteria. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 16:11, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  It was posted. And the only post pull was of the tired "only one country" variety.—Bagumba (talk) 16:24, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  Sure. And I think that every specific way to improve death blurbs (including eliminating them completely) has been proposed and rejected. Which is fine! It's a funny situation: each of us individually believes that death blurb criteria needs to be improved upon, but all in a different direction. It is what it is! I do feel that in effect, the result is largely okay. The borderline cases may or may not be posted. Each of us will have one case that rubs them the wrong way (Bill Russell for me), but accepting that there is no actual definition of a blurb-worthy death would help us all sleep easier. GreatCaesarsGhost 18:29, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose I think Nableezy's proposal that people should merit RD blurbs if they have multiple full length obituaries from national papers of record, from multiple countries, ideally in multiple languages makes more sense. Blaylockjam10 (talk) 04:48, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

• Support having a vote, but oppose as currently written - as Nableezy (talk · contribs) hinted at, this is still somewhat poorly defined (what does a result of major events and funeral services mean?). I somewhat agree with @GreatCaesarsGhost in that just having a big funeral shouldn't be enough to post the deaths of major figures, and I think we should lead to a more objective proposal. I'm not entirely opposed to the Nableezy route, but I would frankly prefer if we restricted blurbs to suicides, assassinations, etc. or former heads of state, since that's more of an objective criteria, rather than the rampant WP:POV pushing that persists in ITNRD blurb discussions. Honestly I like the idea of the current ITNRD blurb criteria, but like a lot of ITN policies, you can very clearly tell that it was designed in a time where ITN was actually more fluid and updated with greater frequency. I think much of the opposition to ITNRD blurbs today stems from the current state of affairs, where stories can remain on {{ITN}} for weeks on end, which means that people are more opposed to blurbing deaths due to not wanting to bloat the page as well as the standards of posting that have been raised in general. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 14:12, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

  I dont agree with the only blurbing heads of states or unusual deaths route, but I do agree with the staleness of the section seeming to raise the stakes. If blurbs were there for a day or two instead of a week or two people maybe wouldnt see this as something to argue about so heatedly. nableezy - 16:52, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

  Why is there a perception that having an RD blurb up for 1–2 weeks is somehow worse than a non-RD blurb being up that long? It seems bad all around for any blurbs to be up that long, RD or not, if quality articles are available to be posted. This might be an indication that "not a ticker" has become too extreme. —Bagumba (talk) 18:14, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

  Think thats true for all of them, not just death blurbs. nableezy - 19:31, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

• Comment Given that Tina Turner was blurbed as a major figure after one hour, and then their ITNC thread was closed preemptively one hour after posting, it seems unlikely there will be support to strike the "major fingure" criteria altogether. However, it could alternatively be worthwhile to have a workshop to gauge how the selection process can be made more objective.—Bagumba (talk) 10:57, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

  That was a situation where if we must have the transformative figure criteria, then that is exactly the type of person the criteria was built for. Stephen Hawking's blurb similarly bulldozed its way onto ITN when he passed away. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:50, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. I'm not convinced anything is broken that needs this remedy. If an incredibly important world figure in the public interest has passed away, we should highlight that with a blurb, as we do today. What is not desirable is moving the criteria to: "one where the death is the main story as a result of major events and funeral services, or one where it is the main story due to the unusual nature of the death." The former is not practical, as we would have to judge the "funeral services" which does not coincide with the news cycle, and the latter is an undesirable focus on the way someone died. - Fuzheado | Talk 16:07, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Sub-survey for eliminating blurbs

May I request a pulse on this specific binary: "Assuming no other adjustments can gain consensus, would you prefer removing death blurbs altogether or maintaining the status quo?" Specifics on execution are unimportant, as this is not a proposal. This has been suggested a number of times, but the topic tends to get distracted by alternate proposals. The question is would you actually prefer no death blurbs to the current situation. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:07, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

• Comment There are no death blurbs on the German Wikipedia because everything goes in their RD section, so it sounds sensible to replicate their model.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 12:53, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

• I agree that this is the most sensible way forward – eliminating contention and improving the readability of the entries for all deaths. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:49, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose - like it or not, some deaths are news that is covered worldwide, and some are not. It doesnt make sense to me to say this class of news stories cannot be blurbed because it treats some of the stories as bigger than others. Thats true for every genre of story. We treat some sport events as more worthy of coverage, we treat some company failures or takeovers as more worthy of coverage, this is no different. Im sorry that it wasnt news when my fourth grade teacher passed away, that doesnt mean it wasnt news when Tina Turner did. nableezy - 13:08, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
• Support per my prior comment above. As much as celebrating great people is fine, we can do it in RD, or just expand the "Deaths in x year" articles. DarkSide830 (talk) 18:01, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
• Comment we are asking the wrong fundamental question here. We need to refresh and make sure what us ITN's underlying purpose, which I've alluded to before. If our focus is on showcasing high quality articles that happen to be in the news, we'd want death blurbs for well written articles with clear significance (like Tina Turner). If instead we'd want to focus on news coverage, then it may make more sense to keep deaths in the RD line. --Masem (t) 20:24, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

• RD now operates as a ticker reporting routine deaths that are neither outstanding for their newsworthiness nor their article quality. For example, see Rick Hummel, which is currently at RD. It's an ok article but nothing special (graded start class). The death likewise seems quite minor and routine as news. The nomination didn't attract much comment and was damned with faint praise, "Article looks good enough for ITNRD". But the big problem is that the RD information given to the reader is just a name and so the reader has little idea who they were and why they should click through to find out more. So RD is failing in every way – it's not informative, it's not big news and it's not big quality. It's RD that needs reworking, not the blurbs. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:50, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

  Respectfully, I disagree with the notion that RD is a problem. As I stated in a different thread from earlier this month, RD is working more-or-less as intended. Curbon7 (talk) 16:26, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

"high quality articles" is a bit inacurate. ITN serves as a drive to improve an article to around a C-class article (the talk page rating may not get procedurally updated ) with decent sourcing. GA or FAs are nice to showcase, but haven't been a requirement. —Bagumba (talk) 08:08, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that's the reality of RD – it's a workflow for editors who make routine updates in response to routine death notices. The nominations likewise get routine processing and, overall, it seems quite mechanical. But ITN is supposed to be about significant events in the news. RD is a different thing. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:28, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

These are notable people, so it's significant in their immediate domain, at a minimum. But sure, we all will die, if that's what you mean by "routine". At a high level, anything that gets articles improved is a positive for WP, and I think ITN does that. Masem raised a good point earlier: I think we may need a straw poll or RFC to reestablish ITNs purpose. We know it is the intersection of quality articles and topics in the news, but what emphasis it has is what leads to lots of debated...Without establishing which part we focus on clearly, we will keep having debates over significance. —Bagumba (talk) 09:02, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

The proposition here is to fold all death blurbs into RD. That's not going to happen while RD is just a perfunctory name ticker. I'd like to see RD expanded so it can then give all deaths better treatment and the argument about blurb/not blurb goes away. This should then enhance the work of RD editors like Bagumba by giving it more space and recognition. Editors like working from obituaries – I do so myself – and so we should reinforce this natural tendency and build on it. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:21, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Nableezy said it better than I could. Some deaths are clearly at least as newsworthy as other blurbed events so there shouldn't be any prohibition on blurbing them. It would also lead to ludicrous situations where if a major figure (e.g. Donald Trump) died suddenly we could only have an RD if the death was from natural causes, but (presumably) could have a blurb if they were assassinated - and can you imagine the arguments if the cause of death is not immediately clear or is disputed (say he died in hospital a week after being injured in a car crash that may or may not have been deliberate - and even if it wasn't you can be sure there would be conspiracy theories)? Thryduulf (talk) 10:43, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. As per Nableezy and Thryduulf, clearly we should have the ability to blurb a person given their significance on the world stage. As Andrew Davidson mentioned, RD is already a very busy "perfunctory name ticker" that would be even more crowded with entries if we said "no blurbs" for significant obits. - Fuzheado | Talk 16:18, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose Along with others thoughts, I also believe that some people are so famous or are so in popular spheres that if their death was suddenly announced, that folks come and check it on Wikipedia, and seeing it there helps confirm it as such. Maybe a checklist that very clear on "what defines a death blurb, the status they had to be at time of death" so on, may help with making it clearer by saying Andrew Lloyd Webber per say fits it better than say Dan Quayle, although in this case I doubt Quayle would make it. TheCorriynial (talk) 18:55, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support with exceptions; I would prefer that all RDs get listed without blurb except for specific categories such as current heads of state/government or former heads who are particularly noteworthy for some reason. - Indefensible (talk) 21:31, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose. Some death are ITN, you'll notice it when you are just overwhelmed by the obituaries (inspired by Nableezy above). Then there will be a discussion and we'll see what consensus says.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 06:33, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Straw poll: The purpose of ITN

This is something I've been considering in light of many past discussions. We all can probably agree that ITN is the intersection of 1) quality WP articles 2) topics that are currently reported on in mainstream media and 3) some type of significance aspect, though qualify this is a bit more difficult.

That said, in considering the first two points - quality and in the news, I think there is a large difference of opinion between frequent participants. This comes down to whether our first priority is to feature quality articles which happen to be in the news, or to feature newsworthy topics that happen to have quality articles. There is a difference in how ITN is handled from these. The former is more along the lines of "ITN is not a news ticker" and rationales for why we tend to look to significance to make sure we are featuring a broad array of topics. The second would be where past proposals of quantifying ITNC by how widely something is covered, and diminishing the importance of quality and significance in favor of timeliness. There are also likely intermediate views too.

I think before we can decide questions like about RD blurbs and handling of ITNR items, as well as the significance question, we need to reaffirm what ITN's goal is. Hence having non-binding straw poll before any type of RFC to know how to frame things.

So the straw poll question: what is ITN's primary function, is it featuring quality articles, or is it featuring newsworthy items, or some other focus? Masem (t) 03:21, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

ITN's purpose is to showcase recent topics - I firmly believe that ITN should and was established to be more akin to a news ticker. Firstly, in the way ITN is constructed, ITN literally imitates an actual news ticker and was clearly designed to be closer to what many here call as "being a ticker." Looking at old ITN archives, the standards for posting were a lot more loose than today, and the significance standards that existed clearly had community consensus and weren't just up to whoever showed up to vote. Hell, something demonstrative of this is all the drama revolving around ITNR and blurb RDs, where looking at how they are documented in ITN's information pages, you can clearly interpret that they were from a time where ITN was much more fluid and see that the current drama clearly arises from how as ITN's standards has swelled and become less defined, people are now fighting over these guidelines that are still stuck in 2012. ITN should focus mostly on the recentness of a topic and its quality (as in not having some stubby, orange-tagged, unsourced nonsense being posted to the main page), which achieve ITN's goal of showcasing contemporary topics that readers are either looking for or may not be but be nonetheless intrigued and educated by, foster greater topical and geographic diversity in topics covered, and reduce staleness. To restate, our goal should be posting newsworthy items. It appears as if the majority of folk on ITN are opposed to the idea of ITN being a news ticker, however, I've yet to see consensus on what ITN is then (which I just remembered is the point of this poll). - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 04:52, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

ITN is for featuring newsworthy items and we should do away with the quality criterion. If something gets a lot of coverage worldwide, that's sufficient to post. If anyone's unhappy that orange-tagged articles or w/e end up on the main page, they are always free to fix the articles themselves (or just delete the tag and reinsert it after it rolls off, as has happened in the past). Banedon (talk) 05:19, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

If we completely did away with the quality criterion, we'd have to remove ITN from the Main Page. Per Wikipedia:FAQ/Main Page,

It is true that Wikipedia has a systemic bias towards topics of interest to computer-literate males from industrialized English-speaking countries, resulting from a skew towards this demographic in its editor base. The Main Page generally reflects the bias of Wikipedia as a whole, although people tend to overlook biases that they share.

It is important to remember that items selected for the Main Page (boldfaced links) are predominantly chosen based on article quality, not on how important or significant their subjects are. as bolded. Masem (t) 12:26, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Or we do away with that item in the FAQ as well. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 15:03, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Good idea, remove the entire main page so we stop featuring a censored version of Wikipedia. Banedon (talk) 02:06, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

ITN is for featuring newsworthy items. I disagree that we should do away with quality requirements, but I do feel that ITN should be a "news ticker". As mentioned above, the title "in the news" sounds a whole lot like a news ticker to me. The harder part is deciding what is worthy to post, and what has wide significance to an English-speaking world. Natg 19 (talk) 05:46, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

The purpose of ITN is to showcase quality articles on topics that are in the news, so both. I'm not sure what the point of this is, as I see the issues that have made ITN dysfunctional recently stemming from the debate of what is and is not considered significant rather than this. The notion that we should get rid of bare minimum quality standards (WP:ITNQUALITY) for the mainpage is first-of-all ludicrous and second-of-all a complete non-starter. Curbon7 (talk) 05:52, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Why I think it matters is that what is considered significant will change depending on whether quality or newsworthyness drives the process. If quality drives, then i think we would encourage a broad range of topics both geographically and by field, even if only given a small bit of coverage from RSes, like scientific discoveries (this is in part supported BY ITNR). If newsworthy ness drives, then we need to consider the breadth of coverage among newspapers, which will have lots on geographical and field coverage. Masem (t) 17:59, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Both quality and newsworthiness There is no reason they should be mutually exclusive. For reference, Wikipedia:In the news § Purpose currently reads:

• To help readers find and quickly access content they are likely to be searching for because an item is in the news.
• To showcase quality Wikipedia content on current events.
• To point readers to subjects they might not have been looking for but nonetheless may interest them.
• To emphasize Wikipedia as a dynamic resource.

I think WP:ITNSIGNIF is the area that is too subjective: It is highly subjective whether an event is considered significant enough, and ultimately each event should be discussed on its own merits. The consensus among those discussing the event is all that is necessary to decide if an event is significant enough for posting. We have no common ground on how to factor areas such as importance and prominence.—Bagumba (talk) 08:39, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Both quality and newsworthiness per above. While Wikipedia:In the news#Purpose doesn't mention newsworthiness, WP:ITNCRIT has been pretty clear: "a) the quality of the article and its updated content, and b) the significance of the developments described". One should not be preferred over the other per WP:NOTNEWS, they balance each other out. I don't think there's a compelling reason to scrap the existing guideline and then set some primary ITN purpose. Brandmeister^talk 09:34, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I equated the ...content they are likely to be searching for because an item is in the news part to be "newsworthiness".—Bagumba (talk) 09:42, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

• ITN is for quality encyclopaedia articles about topics that are in the news, all aspects are equally important. ITN is not and should not be a news ticker, we have Wikinews and Portal:Current events for that purpose. Accordingly it is not enough that lots of people are looking for something - there must be enough encyclopaedic information available that we can write an article or section about it (or enough to significantly update an existing one) and we must have already done this to at least as reasonable (circa C-class) quality. Thryduulf (talk) 10:06, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  ...it is not enough that lots of people are looking for something - there must be enough encyclopaedic information available...: If there is a dedicated page on the subject and C-level quality, are there situations that it should still not be posted? —Bagumba (talk) 11:12, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  Yes. The first examples that come to mind are where there is already an entry in ongoing, where there has been no update to the article, where the article is currently at AfD, and where there is no consensus that it is in the news; there may also be others. The requirements are are necessary not sufficient. Thryduulf (talk) 11:57, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

ITN's purpose is to encourage development of the encyclopedia, by providing the carrot of a main page audience. The notion of what is newsworthy is somewhat impossible to define: what's frontpage to you is not even reported to me. If recent events result in enough depth of coverage to create (or significantly improve) an article, that target should qualify. GreatCaesarsGhost 11:25, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

...what is newsworthy is somewhat impossible to define...: Bear in mind that if we can't make it more objective, it basically boils down to a vote count of whoever shows up, as there's otherwise no basis to guage if one argument is stronger than another.—Bagumba (talk) 11:31, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

...if we can't make it more objective...: There's no "if" about it; it cannot be done. Accepting this, we might put our efforts to better purpose evaluating quality and treating significance as something of a binary. But as this poll and my earlier one show, there is no common belief that should even be our target. GreatCaesarsGhost 17:57, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

• ITN's main purpose is to highlight quality articles about recent events. We are not a news source, we merely are here to provide links to articles that people are already seeing in actual news sources. --Jayron32 11:53, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• ITN's main purpose is to help readers find quality content about topics that are in the news, and notably ought not based on the perspectives of individual editors with all of their differing backgrounds and viewpoints. Admittedly, it is that way from now and seems to be as a result of long-standing consensus. Nevertheless, our aims should always be to provide content to the readers and not to ourselves. I hasten to point out that our current environment really is not so conducive to user-friendliness for readers and new contributors. I feel that so strongly that I actually went and wrote a guide to explain what Bagumba pointed out above, that it's almost a farce attempting to define significance as anything more than a counting of heads. I know Masem has made good and valid points as to how we ought to define significance, but that is almost never how it works in practice. --Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:56, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Everyone knows that ITN's purpose is to report whoever won the latest tournament of sportsball in an English-speaking country. All other topics are secondary and can be safely ignored ;) Nosferattus (talk) 16:47, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  As the top story on ITN is currently the conclusion of the Indian Premier League. Fine argument! Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 17:30, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

• Important News The first version of WP:ITN gives the basic purpose of ITN as the listing of important current events. It explains that this started when September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack was listed within minutes of the attack starting. As that was important breaking news, ITN's focus is therefore upon speed and importance rather than quality.

When we check the quality of the current listed items, we see that it is quite patchy and only one entry is of good quality:

1. 2023 Indian Premier League final – C class
2. 2023 Indianapolis 500 – Start class
3. Tina Turner – Good article
4. 2023 Mahdia school fire – Start class
5. 2023 PGA Championship – C class
6. Jim Brown – C class

Andrew🐉(talk) 17:18, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Good quality ≠ Good Article class. Good quality for the purposes of ITN simply means the article is well-sourced and holistic in its coverage. Curbon7 (talk) 17:23, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I would not use the letter grading here to measure quality as assessment is not an automatic or rapidly updated process. Eg Jim Brown's article at the time it was posted easily merited a B class assessment. Quslity needs to be evaluated ignoring amy assessment, though we still want to be using quality aspects like B class or better as milestones to compare against. Masem (t) 17:25, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

An article being A class, Good, or Featured will certainly increase the chances of a faster posting to ITN, but it otherwise nary correlates with the quality criterion in any meaningful way. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 17:28, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

If you guys don't agree with the Good article criteria which are used by the rest of Wikipedia, then you need to go make that case at WP:GA. Per WP:CONLEVEL, "participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope". Andrew🐉(talk) 17:35, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

DYK has its own set of criteria, one which does involve recently promoted GAs, but also includes "arbitrary" quality tuned to DYN for recently created articles. We can and should use established GA assessments to measure quality, but most of the articles that come up are new, and thus similarly we can choose an appropriate measure of quality for ITN. Masem (t) 17:51, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

DYK's focus is new articles and so is prepared to compromise on quality. Even so, DYK has quite a precise and rigorous process for checking its quality threshold. I usually use the {{DYK checklist}} myself and find it quite good for ensuring that copyright, neutrality and other key details are checked. ITN has nothing like this. And note that DYK is currently running three GAs to ITN's one (1;2;3). So, ITN processes and output are not as good as DYK and so the claim that ITN is primarily focussed on quality is just not supported by the evidence, history or practice. Andrew🐉(talk) 18:47, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Again, quality for ITN's purposes does not mean having passed Good Article review, quality here means well-sourced and holistic in coverage. Curbon7 (talk) 18:49, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Holistic? That word doesn't appear in WP:ITNCRIT and articles like 2023 Indianapolis 500 are not at all holistic – they are incomprehensible to someone who is not a fan of those sports and already understands all the jargon and rules. That's why it's graded Start class and its quality is correspondngly poor. The reason that article is being run is because the event happened recently and ITN/R gave it a free pass on importance. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:22, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

"Holistic" in this sense (if I'm interpreting it correctly) means that the article covers every aspect of the subject. It is not missing major details. In that sense, the Indy500 article is clearly holistic, is covers the event and its background and aftermath thoroughly. Whether or not it's accessible to you as someone who perhaps isn't familiar with US motorsport, is a separate question. And on THE GA vs main page quality question, in theory one is a subset of the other - any GA should automatically meet the weaker requirements stipulated by DYK, ITN and OTD. The caveat is that (a) sometimes GA reviews are not thorough enough and issues get missed, and (b) the article drifts away from its GA-approved version over time and perhaps now has some unreferenced or subpar prose in it. In these scenarios, GA articles would be rejected at ITN. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 15:26, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Since many ITN candidates are about events that have just occurred in the last 24 or 48 hrs, most of these articles are going to be new and no where close to reaching a GA review (which is backlogged in the first place). Maybe ITN should establish what minimum standards are for ITN articles, akin to DYK. However that is a question beyond thus debate. It is just important that when we talk quality on ITN, it is not meant to equate to the letter grade assessment quality process. Masem (t) 19:23, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

ITN doesn't have a system for assessing or measuring quality and "you can't manage what you can't measure". So the talk of quality here is literally meaningless because it is not defined. By rejecting the standard assessments of quality, you're then left with a chaotic system in which random !voters make snap-judgements in an arbitrary, opinionated way. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:41, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

You are missing my point in that, as a result of this poll, we might want to define a quality standard for ITN, instead of the current situation. It likely will not align with grade assessment, but would be similar to DYK's guidance. That is, I am agreeing with your concern about a current lack of a quality guideline for ITN, and am proposing a possible fix. But that goes beyond the bounds of this poll. Masem (t) 19:54, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

The poll presents a false dichotomy of quality vs newsworthiness. We obviously require some minimum level of both and the devil is then in the details – exactly how much quality and how much newsworthiness. That's why I harp about article assessments, vital status, readership level and so forth – they provide metrics for a meaningful, evidence-based discussion. So, what's the next stage? Andrew🐉(talk) 20:27, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I pointed out in the question that intermediate positions that balance both quality and newsworthiness may be possible. It wasnt an either-or choice Masem (t) 21:20, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

The question posed was "what is ITN's primary function?". The answer is still that its primary function to list important current events. Quality is a constraint or implementation detail; it's not the primary goal. The main page sections which have quality as their primary goal are WP:TFA; WP:TFP and WP:TFL. They aim to provide the best quality and ITN is different. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:00, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

As I pointed out from the Main PAge FAQ, as a main page section, we are expected to feature quality articles. Just because we presently don't have an explicit quality statement in ITN's instructions doesn't mean one doesn't exist in practice or that we can document in the future, if you feel we absolutely need that type of statement. So no, quality cannot be absolutely ignored. Masem (t) 03:18, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

The main page FAQ addresses ITN directly.

Wikipedia:In the news lists the criteria for articles to be included on "In the news". It is important to remember that Wikipedia is not a newspaper. A current event needs to have international importance, or at least interest, to warrant an article being written about it. Relatively small news items should not be put into articles, and those type of news items should thus not be displayed on the Main Page. Discussions are held at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates to determine which items should be listed, with both the importance of the event and the quality of the associated articles (including those for recent deaths) being evaluated. All items are listed chronologically and, given the timely nature of "In the news", some items may never be listed if the articles are not sufficiently updated in time. Remember that we are all volunteers!

The accuracy of this summary of ITN is debatable. For example, 2023 Mahdia school fire seems to be a relatively small news item without international importance but we're still running it. So, the FAQ is not prescriptive policy or process; it's just a help page. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:59, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Look under the FAQ section "I think that the articles chosen for the Main Page are awful and much more important articles should be there instead. Isn't the Main Page biased towards certain topics? What can be done about it?", where it says, in bold It is important to remember that items selected for the Main Page (boldfaced links) are predominantly chosen based on article quality, not on how important or significant their subjects are., eg applying to ITN and all other sections.

I do agree to a point about "small news items" and that's something that may need to change to reduce conflict in ITNC discussions, but I think that's more a question to ask once we decide if we favor quality or newsworthiness. Just that it seems we can't escape quality from the main page's requirements. Masem (t) 12:45, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

That FAQ is mainly explaining why sections like TFA and DYK often run obscure and quirky topics such as Paint Drying and Somerset County Cricket Club in 1883. It's not so much help in understanding ITN and why it runs so much death and sport. ITN is explicitly biased towards certain topics and has a list of them at WP:ITNSPORTS. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:50, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

• ITN is for the promotion of quality articles on topics currently receiving attention in the mainstream press/media. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:30, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• Promoting quality articles which happen to be in the news. When we start debating what is or is not a "newsworthy topic", our personal biases overwhelm us and we favor what we think is newsworthy, which may not be representative of Main Page readers. We get hard-headed, some of us anyway, and that encourages BATTLEGROUND behavior. It should be more of a news ticker that showcases quality content without worrying as much about the long-term "significance". – Muboshgu (talk) 18:42, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• I find Mubosghgu's take practical: "Promoting quality articles which happen to be in the news". Reaching consensus on quality appears to be much easier here than agreeing on newsworthiness. For several predictable reasons, e.g. different notions of newsworthiness or varying views on WP's systemic bias and on the need or means to counterbalance it. "... which happen to be in the news" works well for me. I don't expect the main page to inform me about all the important and relevant things going on in the world, and nor do I expect a collective of Wikipedia editors to decide what is globally relevant and what isn't. ---Sluzzelin talk 19:30, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks. That's a good addition to what I wrote. We are not a newspaper and should not pretend to be one by putting so much emphasis on the long-term significance of items. But we should have some sort of a floor there so we don't turn ITN into a gossip rag. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:36, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  I don't know. Have we tried defining an (extensive) body of 'serious' news media, and allowing to promote articles on news featured in a defined number of these media, or in a defined number of different regions these media are based in etc? I wouldn't oppose such criteria (they're easily verified, and give some sort of benchmark regarding 'global relevance' or 'newsworthiness'). We've seen discussions where stories (with high-quality articles) didn't get consensus despite a number of links to very prominent and acclaimed news media. If something like a consensually developed 'standard' for newsworthiness is applicable, I'm all for it.

  Regarding gossip news, it is occasionally also presented in the NYT or Le Monde etc. or even the WSJ, and I don't think we should exclude such news from ITN solely on the basis of 'just' being about celebrities, for example. But of course we want to keep a smart balance among different news sections, different parts of the world, different degrees of gravity etc. ---Sluzzelin talk 21:49, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

  Another example that falls in "gossip" news is the current debate about the US debt ceiling. It is nearly front page material for the last month in most venues, yet I am 100% certain it would never be posted at ITN - barring a default that bankrupts the country. Masem (t) 03:15, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  I imagine this in terms of WP:NOTEVERYTHING. IMO, there isn't enough detail about the debt ceiling that would be interesting to a reader 5 years from now. If we then think of ITN's purpose as encouraging quality improvements to the encyclopedia, we can understand how significance is not so much about global impact, but the extent to which events can sustain a quality article (or update). GreatCaesarsGhost 10:33, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  A LOT of what we post or get nominated are stories that 5-10 years out aren't going to be remembered, such as a lot of these "small" disasters (such as the current 2023 Astore avalanche nomination). In the past we've just said its okay if these get to bare minimum quality to post, but I think part of this discussion involves those types of articles. Particularly considering the view that Jayron and Mubosghgu have written, in that if we are to showcase quality articles that people have seen already in the news and may be looking for more information. I still also think we have to worry about possible systematic bias that is created from this approach too, but that's probably a bigger discussion. Masem (t) 12:43, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  I often find the dicussions on newsworthiness, the way we conduct them now, to be unproductive. But if we can agree on some sort of minimal and easily checked standards, all the better! ---Sluzzelin talk 21:49, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

• I think its purpose should be to direct people to articles that are widely covered in the news so long as there is some minimum quality. But being a quality article doesnt make something worthy of posting here, it should also be news that people are looking for more information on. nableezy - 19:41, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• People who have heard of a thing in the news look for more information, come to Wikipedia, and ITN can helpfully point them to it without the need to search further. Of course, access is a lot different now than when ITN was created - Wikipedia is indexed at the top of some searches so most people will be finding the articles they're interested in directly. This doesn't answer Masem's question, because this scenario sees different users to focus on different parts: the relation to the news, or the promotion of the articles. It's probably both, but as Wikipedia isn't a news outlet, I lean to the promoting our articles side. The question is whether that means we should be more or less selective when it comes to which news items for which we post related articles - that will take a whole new straw poll. If anything comes of this discussion, I hope it's that people look more at the article in debating whether to post, but where our standards should be is another debate - do sports and awards really need prose updates when we know readers are looking for all the numbers on a convenient page? ITN philosophy is probably too deep for the amount of clicks it gets... Kingsif (talk) 23:09, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
• ITN's purpose is to do exactly what it's doing now. There can never be any simple priority placed on "quality" or "newsworthiness" because there are plenty of sucky articles about newsworthy events and plenty of quality articles about mundane topics. The way I see it, most higher-quality about newsworthy events encompass most of the concerns people have regarding ITN. Most such articles should help direct people towards pages they are looking for anyway and I believe "newsworthiness" to be a sufficient enough analogy for "highly covered". DarkSide830 (talk) 01:38, 31 May 2023 (UTC)
• ITN is for featuring newsworthy items in the public interest. People looking for Wikipedia content related to world events should be directed to relevant articles that are non-terrible. The article quality should be secondary. - Fuzheado | Talk 15:35, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  Fuzheado, articles that are non-terrible is article quality in the case of ITN. Curbon7 (talk) 16:30, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  It's not the same. The bar for anything in ITN or RD is currently very high - no orange tags allowed and no citation needed warnings allowed. Any filmography or discography needs to be completely referenced or it verboten. - Fuzheado | Talk 15:03, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

• The variety and diversity of the responses presented here certainly inform the nature of the disagreements we frequently have at ITN. Although article quality and newsworthiness both seem to be acknowledged as a general tenet we ought to stand by, the priority placed on one over the other varies, as well as the threshold bar as to when an article is considered good enough or newsworthy enough. Honestly, I'm most perturbed by the different significance/newsworthiness thresholds that everyone has. Some people think the topic needs to be of major importance to humanity, others are willing to be more lenient. Technically, we don't have a consensus on that. --Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 16:08, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

There used to be something in the general criteria that said (paraphrasing): The two criteria are quality and significance; a surplus in one can balance out a deficit in the other. I don't know why that was stricken, but I think it gets at the spirit of a lot of what was said here. GreatCaesarsGhost 16:59, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

It was WP:BOLDLY stricken because it was proven not to be the case in practice, and no one contested the removal. We had brilliant articles about low-interest items - FAs, even - that were rejected on significance. Conversely, no admin here would have the stomach to post a stub-class article about a major event, even if the consequences were incredible. A particularly egregious example of the former, here and here. I !voted oppose on that and I still feel sick to my stomach about it. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 17:20, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

...no admin here would have the stomach to post a stub-class article about a major event...: That's because WP:ITN explicity says: Stub articles are never appropriate for the main page On the otherhand, there's nothing where an admin could discount a strong majority of editors saying a current event was great quality and "significant enough".—Bagumba (talk) 11:35, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

• ITN is for featuring newsworthy items in the public interest per Fuzheado. Our first priority ought to be reader interest, and helping direct them to articles on current events. A distinctly second factor is article quality. We don't want to feature a stub, nor do we want BLP violations, but it's not going to sink the world if a start-class article that's still being updated goes up. (It might even be a good thing as people see us editing in real time.) The main page has clear divisions: TFA has quality, DYK has newness, OTD has history, TFP has visuals, and ITN has current events. Let's stop muddling them. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 17:16, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

While TFA is about exceptional quality, all of the main page sections have quality as a requirement to some degree. GreatCaesarsGhost 19:16, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

To add, if we go by the arguments above that ITN should help readers to learn more about topics they see in the news, providing a subpar article that fails quality metrics would not be helpful. Masem (t) 20:47, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

This is not a convincing argument. People get a lot of value from "subpar" (whatever that means) articles in Wikipedia all the time. In fact, we depend on people visiting "subpar" articles in order to improve them and participate. - Fuzheado | Talk 15:05, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Then that comes back to a fundamental question as to whether ITN is for readers or for editors. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 16:45, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Ironically, what Fuzheado wrote there could be an argument that posting in-progress articles helps both readers and editors. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 20:46, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

However, there's no reason that ITN couldn't return to its original better-defined purpose as you stated above: "The two criteria are quality and significance; a surplus in one can balance out a deficit in the other." We can set people's expectations in that they go to DYK, FA, and OTD where quality is priority, whereas at ITN, we will show work in progress and non-excellent content because, well, because news is constantly changing. It's silly to say we will only showcase complete and high quality news content when news is anything but that - its very nature is that it is incomplete, ever-changing, and the best version at the moment. - Fuzheado | Talk 15:10, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't see an issue with have articles that are being developed or in progress at ITN with the intent to draw readers to improve. But I think these articles need a strong enough backbone in quality so that newer editors will instinctively know how to contribute. So asking for at least a minimum size and reasonable comprehensiveness and sourcing commitments are still necessary. This also serve those coming here for info on the news topic Stubby articles without those may improve but aren't at a state to encourage editing and thus should not be in the ITN block in that state. Masem (t) 15:22, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

As a point of reference, 2023 Odisha train collision was recently posted at 1809 B and 297 words.[1].—Bagumba (talk) 07:01, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

Which was well expanded since. Another example is that dam destruction, in a short time (at the speed of news) the article reached a stage that readers if they wanted to contribute for the first time could easily follow. And if course it is still growing. One aspect that comes out if this is the reasonable degree that we could expand an article based on the scope of coverage. Several events that occur in less populated places with mild death tolls may get limited coverage and difficult to expand past a stub in the time they are featured at ITM (if they are at all). That's why both the quality and potential for expansion should be high value aspects. Newswirtiness is captured by both aspects (numerous sources coming out the pipeline to expand) Masem (t) 21:32, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Also interesting that "newswirtiness" was not part of that guidance. I've suggested before that newswortiness is folded it article quality in reflect how well we can expand a new article or updated section through more coverage if the event. Masem (t) 16:07, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

• I think newsworthiness is more important than quality. In the News should feature articles that are in the news. Articles should not have to be perfect, just respectable. I feel that we need to slightly expand how many articles are featured- unless it's a very boring fortnight, we shouldn't have articles that simply roll off due to staleness; rather, they should be getting replaced with new stories before staleness sets in. -- Kicking222 (talk) 14:36, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
• Newsworthiness should be given more primacy over quality. While obviously there should be some minimum bar so we don't have stuff like BLP violations, copyvios, stubs, or large portions of uncited text, this bar is currently too high right now. The most egregious example may be requiring that filmographies and discographies of artists be fully cited despite this being quite time consuming, of minimal benefit to readers, and rarely uncovering any errors. We should be directing viewers to pages they want to see and some minor imperfections here and there aren't a major issue (and in fact might draw them in to edit and fix issues themselves). ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 15:32, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

  Asking for sourcing on a RD is a minimum requirement to meet WP:BLP. That editors have forgotten to do this over time is not ITN's fault. Masem (t) 15:47, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

  Indeed, and I'm not sure why the issue of sourcing has come up in this discussion, which was supposed to be about whether newsworthiness or encyclopedic significance was the greater draw here. The quality criterion, and its links to WP:BLP and WP:V are basic main-page standards, which aren't and shouldn't be up for negotiation.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:04, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

  This poll is looking between quality and newsworthiness, putting significance as a separate discussion after that. Masem (t) 16:47, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

• Newsworthiness and reader interest is more important per others. It's not that quality isn't important, but it's that we have the FA section and recent GA promotions going to DYK for that instead. The existing standards that forbid articles in poor shape from being featured on ITN are fine, but as long as the article isn't so bad as to be cleanup tagged, if it's an important event being covered in major media outlets, it's fair game for ITN. SnowFire (talk) 06:00, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
• Newsworthiness and reader interest per Ed. Quality is non-negotiable. I would strongly oppose any proposal that attempted to remove the quality requirement. Nothing poorly sourced or unverified should ever appear on the mainpage, however allowing for more lenience with what we consider suitable (in terms of "ITN notability") will improve the reader experience. If we can promote slightly obscure topics like space news then we might be able to have some variance from whatever sport recently concluded or which European country had a recent mass shooting. It's important to note that we still do not want to be a news ticker of every US shooting or controversial F1 race, but it would be nice to deviate from the norm occasionally. Anarchyte (talk) 10:55, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Newsworthiness of public interest presented in a reasonable quality. I am of the view that ITN should inform about events that touch the feelings of as many people as possible.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 06:54, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Brainstorming an idea

I don't consider the poll yet complete but results are definitely split on quality vs newsworthiness, but I do appreciate the comments on "readers coming to learn more on topics in the news". I do not have this idea fully gelled, but what if we replaced the Ongoing with "Trending" for topics that have shown both high pageviews and continued news covers (such as the Canadian wildfires story). Long term news topics that have clear significance and still get media attention and page views, like the Russia Ukraine War, would be pinned under the ITN header (similar to when we did Covid). Then we have things like the World Cup or Olympics in Trending. There would still be some need for significance here, like if that would include the few weeks ahead of the next US presidential election. But that way, we can justify having links to quality articles in the news that readers are looking for but that fail to meet a higher significance for a blurb.

This us only throwing out an idea to brainstorm based in the current feedback. --Masem (t) 17:35, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I know this goes beyond just an ITN discussion, but I think the best way to get a "Trending" section on the homepage is to have it be it's own dedicated section. For example, could we cut "Today's Featured List" down to only a part of the total page width and shove a trending section on the right or left (right side feels better to me). I mean, I love a good list, but I think that would be a better use of space on the mainpage overall. DarkSide830 (talk) 01:09, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

A plain "Trending" without any other filters would be a bad idea, in that we would be listing pages that may be popular but haven't been vetted for quality, which is non-negotiable for the Main Page.

I don't know if my idea of Trending the best word but it is a way to avoid blurbs but pointing to articles (for example, the Trump indictment) that are in the news and of good quality but where we'd normally not have a blurb. Masem (t) 02:01, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

I mean, can we just do the "Deaths in x year" thing where we link to such a page? Not sure if that's allowed, but could be a way of solving the problem. DarkSide830 (talk) 18:09, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I guess Fuzheado's idea is pretty much that. Well, I'd put myself down as supportive of their idea. DarkSide830 (talk) 18:10, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Reimagining the ITN box

I like the idea of re-imagining the ITN box, though I wonder if there might be some simpler, evolutionary solutions.

Something I never understood is why the "Ongoing" link just below the ITN headlines links to a fairly unexpected page: Portal:Current events. Why is this odd?

1. If you are looking for current events being covered by Wikipedia, clicking on "Ongoing" is not particularly intuitive or expected. Also, with the new default skin that has the main menu hidden, people don't see the "Current events" sidebar like they have in the past. And for mobile users, "Current events" is completely missing in their menu.
2. If you click on "Ongoing" you expect to see stories similar to those listed after the colon, currently, Russian invasion of Ukraine • Sudan conflict. But that's not really what you get.

One possible solution: adding an explicit "Current events" link inside the ITN box would be more compliant with the principle of least astonishment. For example, it might look like this:

More current events | Ongoing: Russian invasion of Ukraine • Sudan conflict

Recent deaths: Astrud Gilberto • Yukiko Takayama • Kurt Widmer • Robert Hanssen • Cynthia Weil • Natasha Al-Maani

This way, immediately after the high profile ITN stories, a link to Portal:Current events provides a smooth transition to a more exhaustive list of articles related to current events, which they may be overlooking today. This would serve the average reader much better in terms of discoverability. It could also reduce the stakes of the debate at WP:ITN/C of having to get something list in the ITN box for fear that users will miss reading about newsworthy topics. - Fuzheado | Talk 02:37, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

I like the idea of linking to More current events, but I think it should be placed in the bottom left corner, immediately below Recent Deaths.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 13:45, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. I could see that working. It would be interesting to make this modification for a trial period and see what traffic patterns emerge. - Fuzheado | Talk 20:38, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Moving my comment from a different thread below to here.

We have tried this change a few different times and failed. Including in October 2021. Martin (user:MSGJ) had even kindly made the change before it was reverted. I would say if an admin is up for it -- go ahead and make the above change and we can iterate on the go. Anything that we put would be better than the easter egg that currently exists. Ktin (talk) 18:33, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I've added the proposed change to the sandbox for testing (testcases here). Not fond of the pipe between events and ongoing. Anarchyte (talk) 08:29, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

The other option is removing the pipe and the text "Ongoing:". The line would read something like the below. Tagging @Stephen who had some opinions on this topic in the past.

More current events: Russian invasion of Ukraine • Sudan conflict

Recent deaths: Astrud Gilberto • Yukiko Takayama • Kurt Widmer • Robert Hanssen • Cynthia Weil • Natasha Al-Maani

Ktin (talk) 16:25, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Or go something like this:

Current events portal: Russian invasion of Ukraine • Sudan conflict

Recent deaths: Astrud Gilberto • Yukiko Takayama • Kurt Widmer • Robert Hanssen • Cynthia Weil • Natasha Al-Maani

Ktin (talk) 16:28, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I'd prefer the portal link as "More current events", as that hides the details of how WP is organized (eg the portal) from the average reader. We should normally try to keep the backstage hidden from the audience. --Masem (t) 17:16, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I am good with that. The only consideration is going with More current events: Russian invasion of Ukraine • Sudan conflict can make it look like More current events is referring to those conflict events and that is the end of it. Will not create a call to action on the portal link. But, maybe I am overthinking it. I think we should just change it to More current events and track traffic changes. I am happy to help with the numbers once the change is done. Ktin (talk) 17:20, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

A concern I have is that internally, the process is known as "ongoing". Changing the MP won't affect that, but it might confuse people interested in helping out at ITN when they go to propose a "current event" item. Anarchyte (talk) 08:42, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

For readers, "More current events" doesn't explain the items following the colon. How are they different from the blurbs? It's lost that they are events that have been ongoing. —Bagumba (talk) 08:50, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Checking to see if there is still an appetite to make a change on this front. @Fuzheado @Bagumba @Masem. Ktin (talk) 17:15, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

yes, we should change it. Masem (t) 17:16, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

No, per my stated concern. Also, why the specific pings for us only? —Bagumba (talk) 17:37, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

OK. Re: the pings, I replied to include the names in the immediate thread above. I seem to have missed Anarchyte and Kiril Simeonovski. Re: your concern, I see it is as internal to the ways of working and less to the external world. But, maybe, I am understanding your point wrong. Ktin (talk) 19:27, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with your idea and I would like to suggest a Trending events/articles below. As for me ITN should focus on big, influential news like G7 summit, Champions of tournaments, a big disaster etc. And in the trending one we could post articles like the one on the Titan submarine, Taylor swifts concerts, the articles that are seen as good. There is currently quite some criticism on the tremendous media coverage about a few in comparison to the lesser one on refugees in similar situations. Of course Wikipedia can give the readers the correct answers on trending news as I believe Wikipedia is often more accurate than the media, but that Titan submarine is in the same section as the important news, well, we can choose between aspiring to become similar to a New York Times and the New York Post. The tabloids are full of disasters. Wikipedia is not a tabloid. And it will also show the contrast of the peoples interest. What is trending and what is really going on in the world. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 17:57, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

I believe we could use a bit inspiration of the serious newspapers, like the ones that are credited of being a credible one. How about we look at a bit the reporting of Die Zeit/Frankfurter Allgemeine, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Le Monde?, El País, The Herald Tribune and/or similar?Paradise Chronicle (talk) 13:49, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Election process

The nomination Parliamentary election in Montenegro is a trainwreck because of a procedural dispute. This issue is whether nominations can or should be made when the articles are not yet complete or perfect in some way. My view is the process clearly expects there to be problems and so we should be reasonably accommodating. Anyway, as there's a dispute, we should clarify the instructions. Here's a relevant quote:

The maxim "Nothing avails but perfection" may be spelt shorter, "Paralysis".

— Winston Churchill, Road to Victory

Andrew🐉(talk) 06:53, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Comment - not sure if it actually is and the title is just not clear enough, but this should be broadened to include all news items since this is not the first time this dispute has been had, with one example from last month tackling a standard blurb nomination. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 07:10, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• The issue often arises with elections as they usually have a well-defined timetable but there's often a significant delay in completing the formalities and so nominations may happen when:

1. The polls close
2. Exit polls are published
3. One side concedes
4. Some intermediate stage is reached -- perhaps there are recounts, reruns, or further rounds of voting

So, if we focus on elections we may get some clarity. If the discussion is too general, covering every type of topic, then it may be hard to establish a clear consensus.

Andrew🐉(talk) 07:34, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

• In my opinion, any RD or ITNR items should be nominated regardless of the article's quality as it will bring attention to the article and might encourage editing. One-off nominations (like the recent Trump ones) should only happen if the article is in decent shape or is in the process of expansion. In those scenarios, commenters need to judge the ITN notability and quality, so providing a well-written article will smoothen the nomination process. ITNR and RD is just assessing quality, so commenters can ignore it if they think it's poor and don't want to help. We've also then got a decent log of past ITNR nominations in case someone wants to review the list. Anarchyte (talk) 10:40, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
• Comment I'm surprised this has been raised as a problem. Virtually all election nominations happen shortly after exit polls (or at a similar stage) and need refinement / some more writing. Montenegro might need more updates than usual, but it's not per se different from other election nominations (I recall the US mid terms even got posted despite quality issues). I also agree with the point that nominating it early will potentially encourage people to help improving the article. People that couldn't be bothered can just ignore the nomination. Khuft (talk) 11:28, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
• We do not expect nominations to be of quality, but encourage that before the nomination is made. The idea being that other editors watching ITNC may want to help jump in to improve an article that they see is an appropriate ITNC in terms of significance. --Masem (t) 12:23, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

  Agree. The number of articles that have been collaboratively improved after nomination is quite high and enabling that collaboration come together has been one of the big wins of this project imo. Ktin (talk) 14:47, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

• ...whether nominations can or should be made when the articles are not yet complete...: Nevermind "complete", {{ITN candidate}} has an |updated= parameter that accepts "no". I do notice some unsuccessful nominations where the nominator never edited the article; not sure how frequent that is, or if it's even a problem. I personally usually only nominate pages if I've worked on them, or occasionally I didn't work on it but seems ready to post or close to it.—Bagumba (talk) 16:23, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

When should we blurb authors?

The current discussion around blurbing Cormac McCarthy has been quite heated. I have sympathy for both sides. On the one hand, I would also prefer if we would blurb people who passed away that come from the cultural sphere, and not just political figures or people from the entertainment world (e.g. Tina Turner) or sports figures (e.g. Pele). At the same time, I agree that we need some criteria in order to judge how important those cultural figures have been. If we just go by their fanbase on Wikipedia (as seems partly to be the case with Cormac McCarthy), we'll just be introducing new biases into our process. For instance, if we blurb Cormac McCarthy, shouldn't we have blurbed Kenzaburo Oe, or Martin Amis, or Hilary Mantel? If we did blurb any of them, on what basis did we do so, and not the others?

Fortunately, Literature does have a few objective criteria that we could use to guide us. There are a few recognised literary prizes that we could use as a basis to identify notable people (e.g. the Nobel Prize, the Booker and the International Booker, the Pulitzer, maybe others?). One may like or dislike literary prizes, but at least they are a somewhat objective (as compared to the opinions of Wikipedians) gauge we could use. Any thoughts? Khuft (talk) 15:36, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I fear that establishing general criteria for assessing notability of writers would be extremely difficult. The Nobel Prize has relatively low regard due to the multiple controversies regarding the omission of world-class writers. If using the other prizes makes sense is a valid topic of discussion.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 18:02, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

• Some in the past have suggested level-4 and level-5 vital articles (WP:VITAL) as a proxy to determine importance. Ktin (talk) 18:05, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

The author needs to be extraordinarily recognizable, not just within their home nation but across international borders. In fact, it's probably helpful if the writer has some credits or notoriety outside of their field, such as being a public figure in other areas as well. Examples of that throughout history: Maya Angelou, Günter Grass (whom we indeed blurbed), Salman Rushdie, Alexander Pushkin, George Orwell, Stephen King, Haruki Murakami. I think it needs to be considered that there are very few authors who are worth that declaration of being sui generis transformative nowadays, and rightly so. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 19:17, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Seconded. The list itself is also quite good. DarkSide830 (talk) 05:23, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

It’s hard to say on some notability when it comes to certain authors. When it relies on the people’s knowledge, it can be difficult to say because it depends on how much the people read and what genre’s they read. For example, Murakami is a world renowned author no doubt but I know a significant amount of people that don’t know his name at all because they may because it’s not their genre, they don’t read due to social media, or because they never learned about him in school. However, for those that have a fair amount of interest in non-genre specific literature, he is one of the first modern authors you may know. Others may be more known because of content based on their books (for example: Stephen King is a highly world renowned author but some may only know him because of the popular film adaptations of his books. I agree, if the person is only well known in their country, it’s not blurb worthy. There needs to be a notable news posts (not necessarily breaking) from other countries to say it’s blurb worthy, at very least (to go to McCarthy, obviously there is a lot of US coverage, but there is also some coverage in places in British news stations, BBC being one of them who said he had global fame). The Wikipedia article on McCarthy states a many things about how McCarthy was one of the greatest authors from the United States, which has some merit (obviously it’s not a full reason but it’s worth noting). Kybrion (talk) 02:22, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

The article has naught but 3 opinions (which include Stephen King's) that speak to him being "one of the greatest", but that's not really a great merit for a blurb, as we really want someone that is internationally one of the best and where we can demonstrate impact and legacy. For McCarthy that just instead there; the name's recognized but that doesn't equate to a lasting impact on the world, literacy or otherwise. Masem (t) 02:34, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• Many thanks to all that commented. In principle, I like the "vital articles" idea from Ktin, but - based on a discussion further below - it seems that those vital articles are currently compiled together in a similarly subjective way as death blurbs are decided here. The one thing I would add re authors (and possibly other artists) is that whether they were transformative or not will likely only be known many decades after their death. Many authors that are popular today will be forgotten 10 or 20 years from now (I fear this might be the case with famous genre authors like Stephen King or Dan Brown) while others may only get recognised long after their death (e.g. Fernando Pessoa died virtually unknown but is now considered not only a canonical Portuguese author, but even a canonical world author). Khuft (talk) 19:29, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Sports saturation

Let's have an open discussion about the volume of sports stories at ITN. This has been a looming problem, as we are seeing more of the ITN slots (typically 5 or 6 items) fill with sports stories. For example, we currently have this situation:

• June 13 - Stanley Cup Finals – Posted (ITN/R)
• June 12 - NBA Finals Denver Nuggets – Posted (ITN/R)
• June 11 - French Open 2023 – Not posted, but usually posted (ITN/R)
• June 11 - 24 Hours of Le Mans – Not posted, stale (ITN/R)
• June 11 - ICC World Test Championship Final – Posted (not ITN/R, but likely to be added)
• June 10 - 2023 UEFA Champions League final – Posted (ITN/R)

It was a very real possibility that all blurbs would be sports blurbs. Varoon2542 brought this up here, which got collapsed, but the concerns are real.

To be clear, I'm not anti-sport. I watch and enjoy them, but we need to give this a rethink. Some thoughts:

• We have an emergent phenomenon on our hands – ITN/R produces an increasingly large stream of sports stories that it was not specifically designed to do. This is not anyone's fault - we add recurring items individually to reflect the diversity of global sport. But the cumulative effect is that we have approached a tipping point of saturation. In short – Do we have consensus to add a particular sporting event to ITN/R? Yes. Do we have consensus that sports stories should dominate the blurbs? No. But the fact is, the side effect of the first is causing the second. An unanticipated externality, if you will.
• There are a number of ways we might address this, ranging from easy to hard. We could re-evaluate and prune what is on ITN/R so the volume might be lower. We could break out another section for sports stories altogether, given its prominence, so that it doesn't compete with other types of headlines. We could recommend carrying more than 5-6 blurbs. We could propose a cap on the number of sports stories, in relation to the overall ratio. None of these seem easy.

I don't know what the right solution is, but we should start the conversation sooner than later. Thanks. - Fuzheado | Talk 15:49, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

We can't help it that a number of highly important sports competitions conclude in mid-June. I don't think there's any other time of year that this happens. The stories will roll off the main page in due time, as they always do. I don't see this as an issue. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:11, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

On the contrary, it does happen a few times a year. It would be good if someone could run the metrics to see where the dense time frames are. It's certainly an issue, it's just that folks may disagree on how serious it is. - Fuzheado | Talk 16:22, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

It's not our fault that so many club soccer things happen at the same time. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:54, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

For sure it's not our fault. No one said it was. :) But we need to be able to react to it. - Fuzheado | Talk 18:16, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

There's also a period where several major film awards occur within a two-week period, and we post all the Nobel Prizes as separate blurbs. This chunk period happens in multiple fields, not just sports. I don't think there's anything to be done. Kingsif (talk) 03:16, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

It's absolutely untrue about all Nobel Prizes being posted. Science Nobel Prizes have at times not been posted because the quality of the article for each individual winner was not deem good enough and by the time, they were, the information was stale. I raise the issue every year. Varoon2542 (talk) 07:29, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• There's clearly a problem here and it's WP:ITNSPORTS – the guideline which insists that so much sport should be fast-tracked onto the main page. This is directly contrary to WP:NOTNEWS which specifically says that routine sports coverage is not appropriate for an encyclopedia. As that's a policy, it trumps the guideline. The situation is like all those sports notability guidelines which were created by sports fans and which are now being pushed back.

This wouldn't matter so much if it were easy to get other types of topic into ITN. But it isn't, is it? ITN has another big problem in that, when it isn't running a flurry of sports events, it isn't running much of anything and so it's often stale. It needs a reboot so that it flows more freely and posts several items every day like Portal:Current events.

Andrew🐉(talk) 16:48, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

It needs a reboot so that it flows more freely and posts several items every day like Portal:Current events. It's the !voters dictating this with essentially "I never heard of this", "it's not in my country", "it's only in that country", "they're not Mandela/Thatcher", "not enough dead", etc. arguments. What do you suggest?—Bagumba (talk) 09:47, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

You obviously start by getting rid of the voting free-for-all per WP:NOTAVOTE. This has turned ITN into a forum/drama board and is quite unproductive per the coefficient of inefficiency; design by committee; mob rule; &c. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:46, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

It is supposed to be the job if the posting admin to determine what !votes do not contribute to assessing the portability of an item, disregarding those like those you point out, and particular when they also are absent of quality concerns. But UTN must still remain curated as required by the main page for quality and reasonable significance. Masem (t) 17:07, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

You are over reading routine in regards to yearly events. It is meant to apply to day by day events, so that individual regular season play games don't get their own articles or coverage unless their is notability beyond that of just the game like Bottlegate. Otherwise every yearly or regularly occurring event would be taken as routine, includingbthe Olympics, the Oscars, and general elections. Masem (t) 17:16, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Andrew is well-aware he’s “over-reading it,” considering his past opinions on ITN and sports I’m not convinced his opinion here can be taken as good faith. The Kip (talk) 19:12, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

• My preference is to only show sports results for one or two days. Nearly all media only report sports results within a day of the event because there are no more news, and interested people have already seen the results they want and moved on to other things. It looks silly to show a week-old sports result as "news". 2023 Indian Premier League final (29 May) was listed 30 May to 9 June where daily page views had dropped 97%.[2] PrimeHunter (talk) 17:11, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

  That's an interesting idea - having a defined time frame for the sports articles. So if other stories arise, the sports articles could age out faster than other news. Thanks for bringing stats and metrics to this. - Fuzheado | Talk 18:20, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

  Can't this be applied to virtually every story on ITN? Due to the declining frequency of blurb updates, a lot of items wound up staying on there for a week+. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 21:11, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

  Good point. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 21:15, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

  But, updates for sports stories will drop off very rapidly, while a great many other types of stories experience rolling updates for a week or so as more information rolls in: this applies to most current affairs, politics, disasters... Iskandar323 (talk) 11:02, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I think there are a few things going on. I am typing this on the go, and the response might not be well formed, but hopefully, you will get the gist.

1. At the risk of stating the obvious, the articles that make it to the mainpage are a mix of a) articles that meet hygiene standards are nominated and manage to get the buy-in of a majority of editors and then are posted (ITNC route) and b) articles that are already vetted for mainpage significance and have to still be improved to hygiene standards. (ITNR route)
2. We know by now, at least empirically, and we had some rough numbers earlier that I am now not able to recover, that articles coming in through route a (ITNC route) face an uphill battle and this has increased in complexity over a period of time. We post less as a % of nominations now than before. We should be able to get data on this one.
3. We should not be changing the composition of the ITNR events just because the ITNC process has become more divisive (substitute the word with any other of your preference).
4. We should instead be focusing on widening the pool to attract more nominations (perhaps wide-interest articles) and make the nomination process streamlined and perhaps more collaborative.

Tl;dr - because we have not been widening the funnel as much as we ought to, we should not tinker with the items that are coming through the funnel. Ktin (talk) 17:15, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

How can we widen the funnel? Some easy ways a) encourage newer participants into the project, b) make the process less abrasive so the participants who come in are encouraged to submit nominations, c) post more of the "no-regret" kind of stories. Ktin (talk) 17:20, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

And unrelated -- a no-brainer, we should really remove the easter egg to the Portal:Current Events and replace it with a more prominent and direct link. We have tried that a few times and failed. Ktin (talk) 17:24, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Interesting, I would never have guessed that the "Ongoing" text in the ITN panel links to Portal:Current events. Agree wholeheartedly with this suggestion. Natg 19 (talk) 17:31, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Ktin for reiterating this idea (first discussed at Reimagining_the_ITN_box). This seems like an obvious upgrade we could do right away that would be a clear improvement, while taking away some of the pressure of having to have every important story in the blurb list. - Fuzheado | Talk 18:24, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

We have tried this change a few different times and failed. Including in October 2021. Martin (user:MSGJ) had even kindly made the change before it was reverted. I would say if an admin is up for it -- go ahead and change the text "Ongoing" to "Other current events" or "Current events" or something equivalent and iterate on the go. Anything that we put would be better than the easter egg. Ktin (talk) 18:33, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer to that effort. It seemed like there was widespread interest in trying it, and most of the best options were discussed. It might be made easier by proposing it for a temporary testing period to see how it operates, or if any metrics might show any benefits. - Fuzheado | Talk 01:00, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

I think what you propose upstream is reasonable. The two design considerations to think of are -- 1) Will the line wrap more often than not and is that a poor design. 2) This will now have a bold text that is not a link. If those two are alright, I would suggest asking for a quick show of support here and then have an admin make the change. This is such an open-and-shut case imo. I think last time we ran against participant fatigue and disinterest because of the meandering thread.

More current events | Ongoing: Russian invasion of Ukraine • Sudan conflict

Recent Deaths: Astrud Gilberto • Yukiko Takayama • Kurt Widmer • Robert Hanssen • Cynthia Weil • Natasha Al-Maani

Ktin (talk) 01:07, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely spot-on. I've stated multiple times that the reason why ITNR items get posted frequently and get applied to seemingly obscure stories is that we've severely tightened the standards for posting since many of the ITNR items were made such. This also is partially why ITNRD blurb items have also become excessively controversial recently. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 21:10, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Aren't the UEFA Champions League Final and strong intranational soccer finales usually earlier in the calendar? They're probably only so late this year cause the cities stopped playing so long to accommodate the unusual World Cup time. The Test Championship doesn't happen every year. The NBA and NHL championships are A-A–B-B–A–B–A seven game serieses that play only one game per 2 (short gaps) or more (long gaps) days, if either loser had won more than one game the nomination would've been delayed by multiple days per game.

So these six events (all pretty important by sports standards) will be more spread out much of the time. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:45, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

So you personally rushed to post the Stanley Cup despite it not being ready, despite most supporters not even mentioning a quality check (the only thing that matters on an ITN/R). Then you rush over here to complain about there being too many sports stories? I dunno man; it's a real conundrum. GreatCaesarsGhost 18:58, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

You have your sequencing wrong - this message was put up before I posted the Stanley Cup blurb. It's important to get facts straight. - Fuzheado | Talk 20:48, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh okay, let me get this right. The message was posted, you rushed to post the Stanley Cup, then rushed over here to complain. Got it. Cheers, atque supra! Fakescientist8000 21:28, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Not at all. I posted: "Let's have an open discussion... I don't know what the right solution is, but we should start the conversation sooner than later." That's not a complaint, that's a call for discussion and conversation. - Fuzheado | Talk 22:12, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Always happens around this time of the year, nothing we can do about sporting calendars. Especially when items are posted before they're ready, can't think who might have done that. Black Kite (talk) 19:08, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Personal snark aside, your observation does nothing to address the issue that ITN/R will expand, but the blurb list size doesn't. - Fuzheado | Talk 20:50, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

It looks like ITN used to have more blurbs posted at the same time. Blaylockjam10 (talk) 00:37, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

It would certainly help if we had the flexibility to make the list of blurbs longer. However, I think we are currently constrained by having to keep it short to keep the height on the Main page even with TFA and DYK ala WP:ITNBALANCE. – Fuzheado | Talk 00:53, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

If you wanted to make ITN longer, DYK (in the other column) could also be made longer, you could suggest that. The same limit-to-keep-it-equal problem has been noted over there when there's been a lot of DYKs waiting to be posted. But what with needing to check them all, I don't know if everyone would go for a proposal. Kingsif (talk) 03:19, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Or shrink WP:OTD—it's got limited participation.—Bagumba (talk) 09:54, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Last time I saw, it had a pretty high conversion rate though. I would think twice before suggesting shrinking of OTD. Ktin (talk) 16:58, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

As brilliantly stated by @Ktin, the reason why ITNR items like sports seem to be posted with surprising frequency is that we're viewing it through 2023 lenses. Most items on ITNR were made such a decade or more ago, when ITN was a very different place in terms of consensus and posting requirements. ITN was a lot less loose on posting in general back then and if you nominated the same events today, many would likely fail to reach consensus (hell, just look at the recent waves of ITNR removals as a primal piece of evidence). - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 21:14, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

I think it’s hard to place a dividing line on sports because of the impact it has on so many people from countries (US, UK, France, not to mention EU and global sport events). We could try possibly adding a blurb section specifically for sports, something small (like the Ongoing or RD sub sections). That way people can be updated about sports but it could make a better focus on non-sport related recent events. However, that would be a huge change to the format (also, it is coming from myself who hasn’t had a profile for very long). Kybrion (talk) 02:38, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Sports blurbs requirements and WP:ITNQUALITY

The nomination of the Stanley cup has become a shitshow (to be frank) due to dispute that is at heart about what WP:ITNQUALITY entails. Prior to the posting, some raised concerns regarding the uncited tables in certain parts of the article. Fuzheado (talk · contribs), the ballsy individual he is, posted the article on {{ITN}}, prompting some users to call for a pull (which Amakuru (talk · contribs) did). Fuzheado and his ilk his supporters stated that they didn't agree with this since prior nominations never had similar requirements. The pro-pull side responded by invoking WP:ITNQUALITY, claiming that there haven't been any newer standards, and that the level of sourcing they're calling for are standard practice that should be expected for an item to go on {{ITN}}. The fundamental conflict is whether sports items, specifically table lists like the final appearances of specific players, team roster sourcing, and the like, should be subject to the same rigorous standards of sourcing as other items, even if precedent on other articles indicates otherwise? I would like to quote WP:ITNQUALITY's take on sourcing.

Articles should be well referenced; one or two "citation needed" tags may not hold up an article, but any contentious statements must have a source, and having entire sections without any sources is unacceptable. Biographies of living persons are held to higher standards of referencing because of their sensitive nature, and these rules also apply to those recently deceased. Lists of awards and honors, bibliographies and filmographies and the like should have clear sources. Sources themselves should be checked for reliability. Generally, "orange" and "red" level clean-up tags are signs that article quality is not acceptable for the main page as well.

Pinging all those from the past Stanley cup discussions from 2023, as well as 2020, 2021, and 2022 (all of which were linked to in the 2023 discussion): @Bongwarrior, @Destroyeraa, @Orbitalbuzzsaw, @Masem, @Joseywales1961, @Ktin, @Howard the Duck, @Black Kite, @NorthernFalcon, @Pawnkingthree, @Hawkeye7, @GaryColemanFan, @Modest Genius, @Zagalejo, @45.251.33.82, @Spencer, @RandomCanadian, @Muboshgu, @InedibleHulk, @AllegedlyHuman, @Royal Autumn Crest, @Bongwarrior, @Indefensible, @Kaiser matias, @PCN02WPS, @Canuckian89, @Joseph2302, @Vacant0, @Jehochman, @Fakescientist8000, @The Kip, @Bagumba, @Alsoriano97, @Hcoder3104, @Vaulter, @27 is the best number, @Blaylockjam10, @Zzyzx11, @Conyo14, @GreatCaesarsGhost, @Semmendinger, @Fuzheado, @Amakuru, @BattleshipMan, as well as notifying WikiProject Ice Hockey. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 05:32, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• Important note and clarification: It may not have been your intention, but I take issue with the phrasing "Fuzheado and his ilk" in implying a cabal or faction has been coordinated, when it has not. Additionally, when you said "prompting some users to call for a pull," it was one person. If this conversation is pinging so many people, it's important to have a good faith account of the situation. - Fuzheado | Talk 10:31, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  I didn't mean to imply that you guys were some malicious cabal attempting to coordinate something, by "ilk," I merely meant "the people who supported Fuzheado." That's what the term literally means (see Wiktionary:ilk). Of course often times it is used in a derogatory fashion, but I apologize if it came off as such. Additionally, for the pull statement, I though GreatCaesarsGhost (talk · contribs) had also voted to pull, but I confused it with his oppose. Either way, it can reasonably be interpreted that while technically incorrect, they would have called for a pull anyway and Amakuru (talk · contribs) simply beat them to it (hell, you could state that could count as some users. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 21:58, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  @Fuzheado, I've striked the term "ilk." - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 02:25, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

• I don't touch anything sports-related with a ten-foot pole, but I would generally be in favor of tighter standards for readability, maybe similar to how we deal with elections? This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk) 05:49, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
  • I think there should only be who won any championships in any major leagues in the news template without such issues, which secondary sourcing should count. Fuzheado does not get what their actions had done and is obviously too stubborn to see what should be put in the news template and it's sourcing. The sourcing should only be focused on who won the Stanley Cup rather do a game-by-game statistics and such, which is beyond frustrating, among other things. BattleshipMan (talk) 06:02, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

    Fuzheado initially posted the article. Amukuru pulled it. Blaylockjam10 (talk) 06:08, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

    If we had discussed prior to pulling, I'm certain this would not have been as big an issue. Conyo14 (talk) 06:14, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

    It would have been even better if it had been discussed before it was posted - there is never any rush to post news items (within reason) and this one was posted prematurely. People are always - understandably - going to be annoyed if their work is posted and then pulled but they're far more amenable to being asked "hey, can you fix X and Y and then we can post it?". Black Kite (talk) 07:18, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• It seems like there’s tension between previous precedent & strict adherence to the guidelines. I can see both sides of the dispute & I don’t necessarily think that pulling the article was a good idea, but I think it’s best to focus on improving the article so that people can be happy that it’s reposted (it may already be good enough to be reposted). Blaylockjam10 (talk)

• Recent discussions indicate that the supposed quality is being assessed in a purely mechanical way by requiring every sentence or table entry to have a footnote, regardless of whether these footnote actually verify the contents or whether the facts are actually correct. Other quality issues such as accuracy, balance, copyright, coherence and so forth are just ignored. It appears that this surrogate measure of quality is being done because it's easy – you just visually scan the article looking for footnote numbers and oppose if you find a line that doesn't have one. Large articles such as Berlusconi's are not actually read through nor the hundreds of citations checked.

This is not the way that quality is assessed in our more general reviews per WP:ASSESS or WP:GACR. Some ITN regulars have developed their own idiosyncratic ideas about quality and these seem to be just a local view rather than following the general principles used by most Wikipedia projects.

Andrew🐉(talk) 07:07, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

This isn't true I don't think. In fact, the affected passages at the hockey article are superficially sourced, if your approach is to just look for cites. But the issues came to light because editors actually dug in and noted that the refs in question didn't really fully verify everything in the paragraph. This is something I would hope would be raised at GA too, and is fairly commonplace for main page content, to ensure that WP:V, a core policy, is met for content we showcase to our readers.  — Amakuru (talk) 07:36, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, tags for specific text were reverted as "Little overzealous with the Cn's", claiming it was sourced to 4:59 of a non-obvious embedded video in a cited article; a lot of it ultimately wasn't. —Bagumba (talk) 07:50, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

...requiring every sentence or table entry to have a footnote, regardless of whether these footnote actually verify the contents or whether the facts are actually correct: If erroneous citations are added, the issue seems more on the editor if they are gaming the system, than the volunteer reviewers that might be AGFing too much.—Bagumba (talk) 07:55, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• There is a massive difference between a random article going through GA and an item that will appear on the Main Page. This isn't restricted to ITN - items nominated for DYK and the day's FA are treated the same, as you can see from discussions at i.e. WT:DYK, where submissions are regularly pulled. This isn't idiosyncratic in the slightest - if you want the content on the Main Page, source it properly. Black Kite (talk) 07:18, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
• WP:V says:

  ..any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports

  If it's challenged now, then it needs to be cited—now. Past WP:OTHERSTUFF or oversight is not an exemption. This isn't sports specific. Admittedly, it's a daunting task if unsourced content has been allowed to accumulate for weeks, and then evryone scrambles to clean it up immediately after the series ends. For the 2023 NBA Finals, as an example, the community was good at updating and patrolling the page day to day, so the task was minimal to get it posted when the championship was decided.—Bagumba (talk) 07:42, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• The problem is that the rote patrol at ITN challenges everything in an indiscriminate way without actually reading the article and focussing on the facts which are controversial, POV or otherwise disputed. This is facile and is not a serious review of quality. And it's contrary to the spirit of WP:V which is that inline citations are only required in special cases. Providing citations for everything is a waste of effort because readers don't use them. It's just busywork. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:10, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• Very few of the actual facts in a sports article are contentious. On that basis, you could have something that is effectively pretty much unsourced on the Main Page. The sourcing requirements are there to make sure that material on the MP with its massive visibility is correct (or at least reliably sourced). Black Kite (talk) 09:17, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

...because readers don't use them: Speak for yourself. Of course, the running joke is "You can't trust anything on Wikipedia". —Bagumba (talk) 09:35, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• The fact that most readers don't use citations is well established – most of them don't even read past the lead. For topics with an obsessive fan-following like sport, the main protection against error is not citations but many eyes. Fundamental facts like rosters and the scoreline are well known to the fans and will soon be called out if they are wrong. What sports articles need are not otiose citations of obvious facts but other quality content such as pictures of the event, explanations for the general reader, policing of promotion and the like. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:53, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  Whether a certain shot was deflected off the glass is not "obvious", and these pages' readership is not limited to fans in the know. Of course, one can argue that it's trivial content, and should just be removed, but it's not a level of review that ITN gets into.—Bagumba (talk) 10:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  This is actually a good point. Fans will always see the same call differently. Just listen to how home team and visiting team sports announcers call any college football or baseball game. Good example of that was when Ronald Acuña Jr. was beaned by José Ureña in 2018. The Braves announcers called it for what it was - a dirty pitch - while the Miami announcers were confused by the call and instead focused on Acuna supposedly being rude and starting trouble. You can find both calls on YouTube quite easily. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:56, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

@Knightoftheswords281 FWIW, InedibleHulk, Joseph2302, Vaulter, and Random Canadian cannot access this page as they are all either TBANned from it, or banned in all. Also, AllegedlyHuman vanished a couple years ago and hasn't edited (to the extent of my knowledge) since September of 2021. Cheers, atque supra! Fakescientist8000 10:22, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

So, I had this experience recently where I tagged a user who was topic banned on WP:ITN and was chastised. In my defence, I had no way of knowing. There was nothing that I could do. If there is a better way of recording these topic bans, that would have been helpful. Even better still, a way to prevent tagging of banned editors. Perhaps wishful thinking. Ktin (talk) 15:13, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

@Ktin I do have either a preference enabled or a plugin installed where I get to see topic banned/blocked editors with dots underneath or a strikethroughed and italicized name respectively. Cheers, atque supra! Fakescientist8000 19:20, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

@Fakescientist8000 name of said plugin? - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 20:31, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

@Knightoftheswords281 Not a plugin, but in the Special:Preferences page, there is a preference that is described as "strike blocked users' names out". Hope this helps. Cheers, atque supra! Fakescientist8000 20:35, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

• WP:CCC. ITN has been more aware of article quality as an issue across the board and for the case like the NHL finals where most of the article can be written days ahead of the time it should be actually in the news (last finals game played) there's little excuse for a sub-quality article, in contrast to a breaking event. In this case, one big issue editors say was this "Finals appearance" tally in the roster on the page, which at this point doesn't appear like something documented by any other source in whole - you can go through and construct that column from other sources, but that's basically original research, and thus a problem. --Masem (t) 12:17, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• Well, I think the Stanley Cup winners should be posted by the last game because winning championships in any major sport leagues should be posted first hand, not in a matter of days because of sourcing issues, which I find that policy issue stupid and lazy. BattleshipMan (talk) 14:28, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  Then start a discussion on the Main Page to eliminate the quality requirement. Masem (t) 14:36, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  This is probably a silly question, but where is this main page overall quality requirement actually documented? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 17:04, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  Its in the FAQ on the main page's talk page. Masem (t) 18:14, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  That's what I thought you'd point to. A FAQ isn't exactly a policy. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 18:26, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  To be clear, my argument here is that ITN has wide leeway to set its own quality standards. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 00:58, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

  I did look and because the Main Page itself lacks a real talk page (nearly all discussions related to the main page end up at one of the VPP pages), its hard to trace when or why quality of articles matters. But I consider the original purpose of ITN is that editors were able to come together to make high quality (Not up to GA standards, but far better than C-grade) articles about topics in the news in a short period of time, as to be consistent with other featured content on the Main Page, and don't see any reason to weaken these standards.

  Mind you I do consider factors of timing here. For a new, breaking news event that we have no article for already (such as the boat disasters that have been posted), I expect a minimum length and reasonable sourcing to get posted; it doesn't need to be close to B-class but should still be C-class or better. For deaths (RD or blurb) I do expect that BLP standards to be met, but am forgiving on the overall quality. However, for news on an existing topic where we know when the topic will be in the news, such as the results of a sporting event or election that was known to happen months in advance - I expect that the article standards to be higher, well sourced, comprehensive, well organized, and the like. There's no excuse not to have the article all but ready save for final results, and we see lots of ITNR events that have failed to do that (like the tennis or golf articles at times). Masem (t) 15:06, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Honestly if that is the only issue, the people who want this ITN should remove it. I have no issue with that. After all they can easily put it back in after like a week. The only issue I see is when WP:OVERKILL is in play, such as verifying each goal, save, or important event happened. Conyo14 (talk) 14:37, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Removing content that is failing quality, only to put it back in after the article drops off the main page, is purposely disruptive. This is the same problem with trying to offload filmographies from the articles of actors for RD to separate articles to avoid sourcing issues raised at ITN. Masem (t) 14:49, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

You would absolutely be correct. Not saying it would happen, but I also doubt that a majority of people would care once it's out of the main page. They certainly haven't in the last 20 years of Finals coverage. Conyo14 (talk) 14:53, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• I apologize for being a bit too spicy on this topic recently. As someone who contributes very little here, I am very defensive of WP:VOLUNTEER and grateful to those who contribute more, especially those who take on the thankless task of Admin. But if the same admin keeps getting called out for posting too quickly, I would hope they would take that to heart. ~ More directly to the point, I think ITNR is anet negative on balance. But it does have a great value in giving those editors interested in FP glory the confidence that their work will not be torpedoed by significance discussion (my own contributions here are overwhelming for actor RDs which are low effort vs. reward). In this, it serves the primary purpose of improving the main space. For us to now circle back and say these events do not need to be of quality misses the entire point of ITN (and WP more generally). The suggestion by many here that citing your sources is rubber-stamping busy work is disheartening. GreatCaesarsGhost 14:40, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  I think the main question is, where do we draw the line between WP:OVERKILL and WP:V. I agree that sections without sources are not of quality, and specific events not carried by the source are especially contentious, but there has to be some level of quality where we say it's good enough. Conyo14 (talk) 14:50, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think some policies behind this shouldn't be a factor with putting the Stanley Cup finals winners on the ITN template. Removing that has cause big time controversy that is pointing in the wrong direction by certain users. Championships in any major sport leagues should be on the ITN. Certain users want to have game-by-game type deal, We could actually use a news source of the Stanley Cup champion winners rather than do that because it's too frustrating to do all the game-by-game stuff on any Stanley Cup Finals articles. BattleshipMan (talk) 17:49, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. I empathize with the editors working on the article here. I agree with the editors arguing for the mainpage (at least the bolded links) to be sacrosanct from a quality standpoint (i.e. everything that is posted is referenced WP:V and all that, there is completeness of coverage, and there are no colored tags). In addition to the other reasons why this is important, I believe that going lax on some of these expectations is a pathway to a downward spiral. Also, remember that at the end of the day, the editors evaluating an article can not be as comprehensive as a GA reviewer simply because of the time availability. However, we throw multiple editors at the problem and hope that collectively we can be as comprehensive as we can reasonably be in the given time window. I understand how the editors working on the article can feel through this process -- i.e. a roadblock that stands between the article and the article reaching the homepage. I had this issue recently when I nominated the 2023 ICC World Test Championship Final. The article was all but ready for the homepage and should have found its place with a photograph of the player of the match. But, then, a topic banned editor went in and splashed an yellow / orange banner on the broadcast section (well referenced) of the article. Immediately the admin here removed the ready tag (and rightly so). The broadcast section was a standard fixture in prior year's articles as well. But, what can we do. We removed the section because the orange tag asked us to. Had to wait more than 18 hours again for an admin to come available and read the page. We lost the photo spot to the next news item that came in. C'est la vie. Such is life. What are we to do.

Tl;dr - Do your best. Do not take these things to heart that it impacts your personal well-being. Keep the mainpage standards sacrosanct. My best wishes with all of you. Ktin (talk) 15:32, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Update 1: I am sure the editor did not mean it that way, but, just because there are studies that show that "most" readers do not click on the citations, we should not relax the citation / referencing rules and standards. Just like if most readers do not read past the lede section, we do not trim the articles to just have the lede. You get my drift, right? Cheers. Ktin (talk) 15:34, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

• The existing primary standard of WP:V says that you only put inline citations where they are needed – for controversial statements and quotations. Scattering citations everywhere, regardless of their need or usage, is clutter which impedes both editor and reader. Therefore we should not do this. See also WP:TLDR and diminishing returns. Andrew🐉(talk) 18:24, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  I respectfully disagree with you. I do not agree that citations are needed only for controversial statements and quotations. Ktin (talk) 21:08, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  Indeed. The days when you only had to cite controversial things ended around 10–15 years ago. Technically WP:V says to cite all material which is "challenged or likely to be challenged", but the reality is that I, along with many other reviewers, am likely to challenge pretty much everything now, except statements in the obvious SKYISBLUE territory.  — Amakuru (talk) 21:17, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  The key is challenged. Unsourced material is accepted (WP:AGF), unless it is challenged. We don't want editors blindly deleting unsourced material without attempting to WP:PRESERVE it. But tagging unsourced material, or limiting its presence on the MP, is not counter to PRESERVE. —Bagumba (talk) 04:46, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

  Well, then I think we need to get the people involved in writing policy to make some changes, because clearly the written policy does not reflect current practice. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:12, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

  @Bagumba and @WaltCip: This one is way beyond ITN. Goes to the nub of WP itself. Do you all think adding unsourced material to WP is alright? Keep the mainpage aside for now. I clearly am with Amakuru on this one. Adding unsourced material to WP other than for The sky is blue kind of statements is not alright! Ktin (talk) 21:40, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

  @Ktin: Personally, my edits are intended to be verifiable, and usually cited inline, or occasionally in an edit summary. Others may not follow that, but there are policies and guidelines to address that. I'm not looking for any immediate P&G changes, but don't see a problem with ITN, DYK and the like being more restrictive as a way to improve content with the incentive of editors having their work gain MP exposure. —Bagumba (talk) 22:59, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

  The question is not whether adding "unsourced material is alright", the question is whether every sentence needs an inline citation. And I'm not convinced that it does, if the overall content of the paragraph can be generally sourced. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:23, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

• I haven't read every comment so far, but there's definitely a trade-off to be had. In modern sports there should be some official statistics report out right after the event, a source that can be used as a catch-all for all the kinds of tables and line-ups. I know that some editors may also choose to cite such things to a television broadcast of the event or not even do that, with the idea being that what happens in the sporting event is akin to a film plot (and we don't have to cite those)... of course, match summaries are usually sourced so it should be hard to get away with that reasoning. Kingsif (talk) 22:15, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  Heck, today most popular sports championships have a running blog that could be used for a final game recap source. At the same time ITN makes no promises to be timely and waiting a 12 or 24 hr news cycle for more sourcing to arrive is fine. The goal is that we don't want featured articles at ITN to look sloppy so that readers who want to edit don't follow the bad patterns Masem (t) 22:27, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

  • Any of the four traditional North American professional sports league championships or other world-class level championships (UEFA Champions League, FIFA World Cup, etc.) should be in ITN and it's incumbent upon us as editors to make sure those are quality articles. Given how many editors there are out there keeping track of those events, I still find it hard to find that those articles would not be high quality despite everything said here. And given the timeliness of ITN, I think there would have to be pretty serious citation issues to keep something that large off ITN. Royal Autumn Crest (talk) 22:57, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
  • The exception to use primary sources for plots come from Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction. Sporting events are not fiction. Without knowing or getting into the history of WP's sourcing for fiction, I see no reason why mainstream sports even need to rely on primary sources, given the prevalence of secondary sources. The scenario, I imagine, is fan on couch (or desk or bed) watching a "cool" thing and wanting to write about it, or wishing to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS on "horrible" press coverage. There's some other editors that can't wait until after the end of a game for secondary coverage, who update Wikipedia real time based on WP:PRIMARYSOURCE play-by-play transcripts. In any event, waving to a video as a "source", without a relevant timestamp, is not acceptable.—Bagumba (talk) 04:36, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
    • I don't want to hear any more of these issues anymore. We need to ensure that all professional sports league championships and other world-class level championships will be put on ITN right away, no matter what the sourcing is. I don't want them pulled out of them because of complaints about sourcing and such. BattleshipMan (talk) 14:07, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

      Just like the rest of WP, there is no deadline at ITN, and we are not going to rush to push a poor quality sports finals article just because the event is done. We are not a news ticker. Masem (t) 14:26, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

      Hey Masem, just as a hypothetical, if we were to post an article like Tuck Rule Game to the main page, do you feel it's currently in good enough shape to do it? I want to explore the current prose and sourcing standards that we are applying to new sporting events now versus ones that have occurred in the past. It might be that editors are confused due to uneven application of standards. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:54, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

      No, half the article's prose is unsourced. While the box score is sourced, the other tables are not. The one thing that is going for it is that the tables are supporting the prose, not that prose is written around the tables. Masem (t) 17:23, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

      Okay, that explains a heck of a lot. I understand where I was having the disconnect now. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 17:31, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

• What I find quite curious is for all the fuss made about citing certain things in the 2023 Finals article, many corresponding citations are missing from the 2022 page. For example, the team rosters section from 2022 was completely uncited, as were the shots by period. Personally, I think the issue here is that the Finals articles have a lot of imfomation to cite that may feel ticky-tacky. The pull was reasonable at the time, and the issues have been resolved. I don't think we need to make any changes because of this situation. DarkSide830 (talk) 18:46, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

  WP:CCC namely that over the last year we have seen several subpar sports final articles that are basically all tables among other problems. Masem (t) 20:45, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

  The content is reflective of the reviewers, and to some extent the poster, at the time. Legitimate quality concerns should be looked at as reviews being too lax before, as opposed to being too excessive now. We get on election pages for unsourced results tables without prose and bios for unsourced discographies. Why should it be more lenient for sports? —Bagumba (talk) 23:16, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not arguing for leniency. What I believe our hurdle is where and when a citation is required, particularly within a table. For example, should one need several citations for the team rosters? Additionally, I believe the Finals articles also include an additional degree of detail in some places that requires a painstaking number of citations, such as the column within the rosters section noting a player's past finals performances (which, even for me as someone who likes hockey and stats, asks "why is this here"). Truth be told, we wouldn't have this issue if the people writing these articles would just cite them. And yes, I have to thank these writers for doing what they ended up doing, but I can't fathom writing game summaries and providing rosters without sourcing them. In fact, a certain argument would suggest that the very fact that most ITN items require sourcing additions is indicative of a problematic lack of citations applied across the cite. Rant over. DarkSide830 (talk) 05:29, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

  Regarding the past finals appearances column, Masem made an earlier point (above): ...doesn't appear like something documented by any other source in whole - you can go through and construct that column from other sources, but that's basically original research, and thus a problem. —Bagumba (talk) 11:36, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

  I think sourcing the team's roster is bit overkill for Stanley Cup Finals to be honest. It should be tuned down or something like that. BattleshipMan (talk) 05:12, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

• Comment - Looks like I got pinged here by User:Knightoftheswords28. The initial post in this discussion references "X and his ilk". I have never seen this word used on Wikipedia except in a pejorative sense by people who have no intention to engage in a good faith discussion. I'm aware of the definition of "ilk", but I'm not going to be convinced that anyone uses the term in a neutral sense while looking for a consensus. I do not wish to be involved further in this discussion, through replies or pings. GaryColemanFan (talk) 22:38, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

  Ironically enough, this reply here completely flies in the face of WP:AGF by immediately using a small phrase in my point to jump to the conclusion that I was being "malicious," when ironically enough, I actually supported Fuzheado more when I made this. But go ahead, make sweeping, snarky generalizations about editors based on single statements (that were clarified, might I add). Crass. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 15:05, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

  Generally, mass pinging can be considered invasive. I know you've done it a few times, and it tends to rub people the wrong way. (Actually, I'm surprised Wikipedia doesn't have an essay on ping etiquette.) Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:22, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

• CommentIn my opinion, everything should be sourced, also tables. There is a rule for it already established and it was followed, great.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 05:58, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

NOTVOTE

With respect to WP:NOTVOTE, is a !vote of plain "not significant" any different from a longer one like "does not reach a status of signficance that merits a blurb"? —Bagumba (talk) 10:23, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

No, there's no operative difference whatsoever. The vote is perfectly valid. It doesn't fail any of the "please do not" criteria. No one is currently required in this system to provide any justification for why they feel something is significant or insignificant. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:13, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Agree. Ktin (talk) 21:41, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

However, if every other !vote has a rationale for why they think the ITNC is significant or not significant, or similar reasons, then these terse !votes aren't as helpful to weigh consensus. I agree the two are not necessarily different but in this manner of how to determine consensus they are not as helpful as more thought-out !votes. Masem (t) 21:45, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

@WaltCip @Ktin @Masem While the !votes are valid, should they be discounted or not, compared to !votes with a plausible rationale? —Bagumba (talk) 23:06, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

If there are stronger !votes out there, yes. If those !votes represent the best rationales given, then not necessarily. Masem (t) 00:21, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

It raises a problem: Let's say one person gives a thoughtful, detailed, KOTS-esque rationale explaining the significance of something. It's a very compelling argument. It's difficult to counter rhetorically or structurally. Then five other people !vote "oppose, not significant". Which argument is the admin going to favor? Think really hard about how it works in practice around here. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 00:59, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

The problem, at least with your original question, is that you are conflating a longer response like "does not reach a status of signficance that merits a blurb" with a well thought-out response while the truth is it is just as templatized as a response like "not significant". Ktin (talk) 03:04, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

The "problem" is that these are the type of !votes we see in most discussions.—Bagumba (talk) 10:41, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

We have to work with what we have. Irrespective, my feedback to your original question is that a comment like "not significant" is exactly the same as a longer one like "does not reach a status of significance that merits a blurb". Ktin (talk) 02:12, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Talking about !votes is missing the point. Wikipedia consensus is not found through !votes, but through arguments, particularly those based on WP:P&G. If someone just says "does not reach a status of signficance that merits a blurb", they have not provided an argument and it should be weighed minimally. For some reason ITN isn't very good at keeping up with this as compared to, say, RfC closes. At a certain point, personal opinion !voters are going to need to be informed that if they can't base their arguments in policies and guidelines, then they're not going to be heard. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:44, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that WP:ITN, as currently written, is fairly subjective. Most RfCs are based on WP's P&Gs, which are more objective, where a closer has more basis to judge strength of argument. —Bagumba (talk) 01:13, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

What Bagumba said. It should be weighed accordingly. But by WP:ITNSIGNIF's rules, it is not. It does not need to be. The weight of a vote count will always carry the day, because everybody has their own internal definitions as to what constitutes significance. The only way a consensus to post is reached is if those people who do contribute are satisfied on the whole. Even though the rule says: Any user may, of course, support or oppose a candidate for any reason, but be aware that the following arguments have historically not garnered much support: (bolded mine), consensus can change and if a majority of users feel as though those arguments have merit, whether or not they were historically sound arguments is meaningless. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 19:36, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Influx of death blurbs?

A regular contributor to ITN has noted recently that we seem to have an unusually high number of death blurb nominations. I think we've all noticed this too; Daniel Ellsberg, Glenda Jackson, John Romita, Sr. and Cormac McCarthy. I guess among other things there really seems to be a concern that Americentrism is gripping ITN/C's discussion processes. It could possibly be as a result of most of our users tending towards being American, straight white male demographic, etc..

Anyway, the point comes up as to whether it is worth creating new rules or guidelines to deal with this sort of influx. What should we do? One idea that comes to mind is imposing a moratorium on blurb discussions if there is no immediate, clear consensus within the first few minutes of the nomination. However, I'm not sure how we'd implement that. Another idea would be to just amend the WP:ITNRD guidelines altogether, although we've never reached a consensus on this in the past.

I personally don't think we have a problem, but I'm also an American citizen (of Kiwi birth) and it's possible that I am biased. On the other hand, maybe it really is just overblown and we just happen to have some especially notable people dying in quick succession... We have had that before.

Looking forward to hearing people's thoughts on this. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 00:54, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Just an FYI Glenda Jackson is UK. Noah^Talk 00:58, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for correcting me. Struck. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 01:00, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict)In fact, I've struck multiple sentences. I missed the whole point of HiLo's argument. He wasn't arguing against American death blurbs... just the influx of death blurbs in general. --Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 01:01, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Its not a nationalism issue. RD blurbs are supposed to be exceptional, which means that we have a high quality article and clear evidence of the person's importance/legacy/impact (which absolutely must be demonstrated in the article, no handwaving). Editors are seeing the deaths of people in fields they have strong interest in and want to suggest a blurb, but either the article quality is way off, or the reasoning is not strong. If editors considered both aspects before even suggesting a blurb, and instead simply focus on the RD quality to get posting, with the possibiilty of a blurb coming through ITNC discussion, that would be far better. Masem (t) 01:01, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I maintain what I've said in the past: ITN doesn't actually have real WP:Guidelines in the Wikipedia sense of the term. Informal rules are created haphazardly and applied inconsistently, creating an environment where everyone talks past one another and things get WP:BITEy. ITN still doesn't even have an agreed upon purpose, so there's no way we're going to find agreement on what makes a good blurb. This problem will continue, both with death blurbs and more broadly, until clearer procedures for ITN are written. Unfortunately, past discussions here and at the village pump have shown that the community considers ITN reform to be a low priority. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:24, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Years ago we used to have daily arguments about whether someone who had just died was important enough to crack a mention here at all. That was seen as a bad thing, so we introduced Recent deaths. Now we are having daily arguments about whether someone who has just died is important enough to get a blurb. That too is a bad thing. We really haven't progressed at all. I recommend no blurbs at all for dead people. HiLo48 (talk) 02:03, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

We've just established in your (and I know that this isn't your proposal, but @HiLo48's, and you, WaltCip, are just doing it on his behalf) poll on "having a discussion" on removing the ITNRD blurb criteria (which by the way WaltCip, while I semi-applaud you for creating, I do think it was a little foolish of you to think that a poll for having a discussion to remove it would not just devolve into the actual discussion itself) and @GreatCaesarsGhost's subsurvey that we shouldn't do away from eliminating ITNRD blurbs, citing the widespread coverage and "leader in their field" arguments, which, despite the enormous opposition, few of them actually established any definitive standard for blurbing. The recent influx of ITNRDBs are a direct result of this; at the end of the day, to the opposition on those survey's this is your creation. I'd call for largely doing away with the ITNRB criteria, but as @Thebiguglyalien brilliantly pointed out, ITN can't even agree on it's purpose, so it's futile to even attempt to implement major, sweeping reforms at the moment. In fact, maybe we should just implement a moratorium on all major discussion on WT:ITN until that question can be solved, since I can't imagine any productive debate when we have multiple parties that can't even agree on a general, centralized concept of ITN. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 02:19, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Keep it simple folks. Aim for blurbs for level 4 vital WP:VITAL articles and above, with the odd exception when the designation is not available.

Nothing screams more in poor taste than members here squabbling and fighting over someone’s death, and worse still, speaking poor of the dead. Ktin (talk) 02:56, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

As someone that tried working on the vital articles project, I can say that its selection process is even more arbitrary than ITN's. I also reject the idea that someone being dead should change how we engage in discussions; Wikipedia isn't an obituary. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:46, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I can buy the first part of your response since I do not know the WP:VITAL project as well. Re: the second part of your statement, kind editor, are you in denial? We do not have discussions re: blurbs, we have squabbles and petty fights. Ktin (talk) 03:55, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough! I suggest we stop having those for all topics, whether it be about living people, dead people, or ducks declared dead in absentia. The question is how to make that happen. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:34, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Many editors including myself have asked that question in the past, e.g. see here. To be fair, we have actually made some progress in the last year, but, I think we have more than some distance to go. We are not there. Ktin (talk) 04:57, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Calling someone "not transformative" is hardly speaking ill of the dead. DarkSide830 (talk) 05:23, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Saying "too bad, so sad, old man/woman dies" is getting a bit close. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:12, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Seeing too many thoughtless noms without any rationale nowadays. I personally assess on the basis why a simple RD will not do: nature of death/death itself being a news factor (old age deaths can simply be discounted), article quality (GA and FAs should be rightly considered) and lastly on significance. The latter is where the discussion stalls (without consideration of the prior issues) and becomes highly subjective with superficial votes such as never heard being a common feature (though the counterpose is that a lot of these noms are also made on that basis only).

RD is being rendered useless by such noms, and these blurb noms are actually downgrading and disregarding it entirely. RD posts are just as important as the rest of ITN and I would not mind if death blurbs are done away with entirely. Would raise RDs profile and let editors focus on actual article issues. Gotitbro (talk) 09:19, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Significance is very important here, but a lot of the recent blurb noms have handwaved that or have based the significance on "fame" or "well-known". I've suggested before, those that clearly get blurbs have high quality articles with a Legacy or Impact section that clearly spells out what influence they had on the world, which should make it clear to these "never heard of them" !votes to understand at a glance why the blurb is being suggested. Masem (t) 13:15, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

• Level up not down

Discussions of blurbs for major figures like Daniel Ellsberg or Glenda Jackson seem quite natural and appropriate. The OP's proposal that such discussions should be settled in the first few minutes seems bizarre and it's contrary to WP:CONLEVEL and WP:CCC which make it clear that consensus can change and the wider the consensus, the stronger it is.

And consider the other RD nomination which was made on the same day as Ellsberg: Gino Mäder. The name means nothing to me and the nomination gives no details because it doesn't have a blurb. So, I passed this by and the discussion has only attracted two comments. And if this person is posted at RD, our readers will likewise have no reason to click on the article and investigate. But, in this case, there's quite an interesting story as this is not a routine death due to old age but was a fatal fall during a downhill descent. RD's lack of a blurb fails to communicate any of this and so it's largely useless.

So, instead of dragging down major figures to RD where they will be ignored too, we should be giving all deaths more context and space – levelling up rather than levelling down.

Andrew🐉(talk) 16:02, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, you've convinced me. It really doesn't seem as though we need to do anything regarding blurb discussions. If they happen, they happen. I like the idea of prioritizing interesting stories, but unfortunately that will require us to overhaul our ITNRD guidelines, which I don't think is likely to happen. In any case, you're right about WP:CCC; discussion is not inherently problematic. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 20:14, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Nah, that would be dedicating more space to something that people might not be interested in anyway. Deaths in 2023 accomplishes this purpose fine enough and is always a TOP25 item, so you know people are finding it fine. Mäder's item reads as follows "Gino Mäder, 26, Swiss Olympic road cyclist (2020), race collision." That line tells you all you need to know. DarkSide830 (talk) 17:08, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Should ITN be a newsticker? (ITNP Poll I)

@Thebiguglyalien's comment in #Influx of death blurbs? really resonated with me, in that he accurately pointed out, with the current state of @Masem's #Straw poll: The purpose of ITN, its now become official: there is no consensus on what ITN is or ought to be. Henceforth, having further discussion on major topics like WP:ITNRD, defining significance, closure policy, etc. is likely a mute point since it's been formally established that the concept of ITN is fractured. As such, I call for a series of discussions regarding the structure, objectives, and scope of ITN, since its futile to attempt to make any sweeping reforms (which I think there is, at least on the surface, a vague consensus to do so) when these are still in uncharted territory.

I figure that part of the issue with Masem's above poll was that it attempted to tackle a question that definitely was in need of an answer by the community, but was simply too grand and also in limited scope (only having two options) to really forge any clear consensus. Thus, I'm thinking that instead of tackling this issue in a sudden manner, we ought to operate on an incremental basis, answering key sub questions individually to gradually mold together an end result that would be a clear concept of ITN: In the news' purpose (ITNP).

This will be the first of a series of questions I'll ask y'all as part of the process. As indicated by the header, it's regarding the debate on whether ITN should be a newsticker. This is a frequent debate regarding the weight and substantiveness of an ITN item and how often they should be posted. Many oppose, saying that ITN should strive to be better and "more in depth" than that, while supporters of the idea claim that ITN was clearly supposed to operate like one and did a decade+ ago. The questions go as:

Question I: What would In the news as a news ticker be?
Question II: Should In the news be a newsticker?

Question II.a: If not a newsticker, what should In the news strive to be?

Question III Is WP:NOTNEWS a valid policy to invoke in posting discussions?

- Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 16:15, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

You've misjudged the goal and outcome of the poll. We have a good answer that there is a near 50/50 split between having quality be first and having newsworthiness be first. There are ways to resolve that to make sure both aspects are taken into account. We haven't even had a chance to discuss various options towards that, so this seems overly premature.

The whole problem with even thinking about a news ticker is that normally that a news ticker has no filter on it, giving what are considered by media as the top stories 'of the day. But we're an encyclopedia, and we don't worry about day-to-day news but what arelasting events. So a news ticker may have all the machinations of what's happening in the Trump documents case, but we as an encyclopedia won't care about that until the decision by the jury and/or sentence (eg the NOTNEWS factor here). The other problem with considering a news ticker is that we are still bound to have quality control on our articles if we are going to feature them on the main page, and it is quite clear that some "top story" articles fail to meet basic quality.

We already have the closest thing to a news ticker on WP being the Current Events portal (which we should be clearly linking to in the ITN box). There's no quality requirements there, and that page is suited to discussing incremental updates to ongoing stories, to a degree. So it doesn't make sense to try to push ITN in that direction. Masem (t) 16:48, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

No. We already have the WP:CURRENTEVENTS portal. We need to do a better job of linking to it. Not the current WP:EASTEREGG that it is. ITN is fine the way it is or should be replaced by a new WP:TRENDINGTOPICS panel. But, no reason to become a "ticker". Ktin (talk) 16:59, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

@Masem

You've misjudged the goal and outcome of the poll. We have a good answer that there is a near 50/50 split between having quality be first and having newsworthiness be first. There are ways to resolve that to make sure both aspects are taken into account. We haven't even had a chance to discuss various options towards that, so this seems overly premature.

I heavily doubt that a 50/50 split on what can be ascribed to be ITN's core conflict is workable. I mean, it's essentially the status quo, and said status quo is why you even asked the question in the first place. I just don't see an effective compromise being devised over two wildly different parties. Additionally, we're edging on that poll's one-month-anniversary, so we've had time to do it, but the closest was #Brainstorming an idea, which has largely been stale for the past week, save for #Reimagining the ITN box. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 18:29, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Knowing that there is a 50/50 split is extremely helpful, and just because one idea was put out there doesn't mean there are no other ideas. This is how the consensus building works. It is also why pushing on one option that ignores half the votes is not helpful. Masem (t) 18:45, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

• As we've established that there's no consensus, further discussion will just go round in circles while achieving little. What's needed is some bold experimentation and this can only come from a strong-willed admin like Fuzheado. Other main page sections have coordinators who are able to make such executive decisions without too much opposition but ITN seems to have too many cooks for this to be an easy option. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:14, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

  I agree with sentence one. I agree with the first half of sentence two. Unfortunately, there might be some truth to sentence three. How much, I do not know. Ktin (talk) 17:24, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

  Case in point -- we have not been able to fix the Current Events easter egg for all these years, despite everyone agreeing that it needs to be fixed. Ktin (talk) 17:25, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

  @Andrew Davidson, k, well that hasn't occurred yet, and as ballsy as Fuzheado can be, I don't think he would do it, considering he's already kind of been buried himself into shit with the community. Any bold action would almost certainly just result in an immediate WP:ANI thread and possibly a WP:ARBCOM fiasco, and I don't think he, or frankly many admins, have the time, energy, and or interest to do it. Until ITN gets that bold Augustusesque admin, this is the best thing we really can do. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 21:01, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

  Ah yes, we haven't done enough by jumping the gun on consensus on blurbs, so let's go from bold to disruptive. Nice. Cheers, atque supra! Fakescientist8000 21:30, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

  @Fakescientist8000 where did I or Andrew advocate for disruptive behavior? Per Wikipedia's on policy on disruptive behavior, a user's actions only cross that line when they hinder development of the encyclopedia. Of course, the issue I guess comes in defining what it beneficial to the project, but I digress and still maintain that I'm not in favor of needlessly disrupting ITN. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 23:23, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

  I would have thought "bold experimentation from a strong-willed admin" is fairly obviously disruptive if it concerns an area the community has already discussed at length and reached no consensus about. Admins are given a (metaphorical) mop, which they wield under the authority of the community at large; they are in no sense dictators, or even leaders, and have no authority to implement solutions that the community hasn't endorsed.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:35, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I know it is anathema here on EN Wikipedia to discuss what other Wikipedias might have done, but has it ever been considered to completely split off Recent Deaths into its own section (with added info for each person mentioned) like on German Wikipedia? It would give RD the prominence that many editors seem to think it deserves (if I consider the amount of RD nominations versus "normal" nominations) and it would eliminate these tiresome Death Blurb discussions, since the new RD section would provide more background on who the dead person was. Khuft (talk) 19:22, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, that's a great idea. The main thing preventing this currently is that ITN is usually the section which is most constrained for space. One way to resolve this is to switch the positions of the Featured Picture and ITN sections on the main page. The FP really belongs at top right, balancing the FA. The current FP slot is full width and FP usually doesn't use it all so ITN could make much better use of that space, giving RD the room that it needs. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:21, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

  A mock-up might be more convincing than just talking about it. —Bagumba (talk) 07:36, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

  The way German Wikipedia does it can serve as a basis for discussion, no? Khuft (talk) 11:07, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

  I agree, the German Wikipedia seems to solve several issues, one of which would be the question of disambiguators for RD currently being discussed at WP:ERRORS. And would also obviate any need to put death blurbs in the main ITN section. I imagine that death blurbs could be replaced by "sticky" RDs, which don't roll off as soon as a newer death occurs, but not sure how the de-wiki handles that. As noted, we do need to mock it up if we're to have a serious discussion on it though.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:37, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

  It's fine for me. However, some people might warm up if they saw what the whole Main Page would look like, with the other en.WP components. Otherwise, the German idea has come up many times before. —Bagumba (talk) 11:42, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

  Using browser translation, this page [3] describes the metrics used for how they populate that box, and I point out this line "Only enter people about whom there are informative and detailed articles" are included. And to that end, doing a comparison with the full list of recent deaths, they are also looking for quality (eg Big Pokey is not listed on the front page but on the subpage).

  So the issue would not be changing ITN's process directly (beyond eliminating death blurbs) but require major Main Page reorg. Masem (t) 12:14, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

  If RD is split off ITN, it would get its own Candidate & Talk page, presumably. While the ITN process could be carried over at the beginning, the editors of "Separated RD" would be free to develop new processes, if they can find a consensus for it. ITN, on the other hand, would focus solely on "non-obituary" news items. Khuft (talk) 19:50, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Comment: News ticker doesn't give me the impression of something serious. Wrong format in my opinion. How it is now it can stay a showcase of some of the good work Wikipedia has.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 06:19, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

How about a number of unblurbed articles (preferably GA or better) in a sub-section of Trending news (similar to Ongoing). Like this we can display the quality work also in relation to ongoing "trending" news. Might lead to some upgrade in Wikipedias credibility. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 13:44, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Reconciling ITN with the requirement for sustained coverage

For an event to have an article, WP:SUSTAINED and WP:CONTINUEDCOVERAGE both require coverage to continue beyond a single news cycle before a subject can be deemed notable. This comes in direct conflict with ITN, which incentivizes the creation of articles and promotion to the main page(!) before notability requirements are met. WP:EVENTCRIT provides two exceptions where the event itself can be considered instead of the coverage:

• WP:LASTING says that events which have a noted and sourced permanent effect of historical significance are likely to be notable. This includes, for example, natural disasters that result in widespread destruction, since they lead to rebuilding, population shifts, and possible impact on elections.
• WP:GEOSCOPE mentions that events that have a demonstrable long-term impact on a significant region of the world or a significant widespread societal group are presumed to be notable enough for an article.

Both of these are far beyond most things posted to ITN. How do we reconcile the requirements of notability guidelines with ITN procedure? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:15, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

There are new events that we know are typically associated with long tails of coverage - terrorist attacks, large scale disasters, transportation disasters (like commercial plane crashes), usually because there's a "cause and effect" analysis done by some type of gov't agency, so there's a very strong likelihood that sustained coverage will be proven out. On the other hand, events like domestic violence crimes, small scale disasters (where the death toll may only be in the single digits) are far less likely to have that long-scale coverage to necessitate a standalone article. There is definitely a grey area here, for example, the current Carberry highway collision is such an example, and unfortunately it is impossible to set any type of objective bounds between these. But we definitely should be thinking if NEVENT/GNG will be met 1/6/12/120 months out from the event before supporting them for ITN. Masem (t) 16:41, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't know if I'd consider the government working on a report to contribute to notability. Investigations, trials, or routine follow ups could easily be categorized as a development within the context of the event itself (rather than a subsequent event or a secondary analysis). But the fact that there's no guidance on that sort of thing is part of the problem, and I wonder if WP:SUSTAINED itself needs clarification. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:01, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

There's a broad problem on WP that editors tend to jump the gun in creating articles on current events, against the principles of NEVENT. What I'm saying here is that I think the combined wisdom of ITN editors can readily judge the potential longevity of events. Masem (t) 21:35, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Disagree with this analysis. I don't see how any of the articles we typically past on ITN conflict with EVENTCRIT, which is a notability guideline. If so, those articles could just be deleted via regular processes. Natg 19 (talk) 00:16, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

This is what I used to say. It turns out, people get really, really upset when you AfD non-notable recent events articles. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:40, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely agree with this. There is a widely held belief that notability concerns cannot be raised at ITN/C and must be directed to AfD, and this needs to end. AfD will keep an article specifically because it documents a recent event and may eventually prove notable, which is in direct conflict with the way it is being invoked at ITN/C. GreatCaesarsGhost 15:16, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I imagine people sometimes want an AfD as a put up or shut up, when they suspect notability is just being brought up to poison the well on an ITNC nom. —Bagumba (talk) 19:37, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Ironic timing seeing as we just posted an ITN item that will probably be forgotten within a year. DarkSide830 (talk) 17:05, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

Without taking a position on the blurb, as I posted it, it does seem fair to note that people love to learn and read about unexplained disappearances. And "will be forgotten in a year" applies to a decent amount of what we post. That's the nature of the news. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 00:14, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I disagree. Most of our items are memorable. Sports finals results and elections are generally remembered, and while maybe not every person will remember each natural disaster, it stands to reason that many still will. This situation is a good comp to Murder of Kim Wall, but seemingly without the true crime angle. DarkSide830 (talk) 17:33, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Admin availability

I know we have discussed this in the past. Are we running short of admin availability and capacity? How can the other editors help? Ktin (talk) 00:13, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Considering how the Tony Awards didn't get posted despite being marked ready for a day or two plus, I'd say yes. I think we should really move to having a set group of ITN admins like every other part of the main page. Part of the problem is that whenever, for example a nomination is being missed, the question comes over who you even ping? The ironic thing is I wonder how we would be able to implement reforms like ITNRD and the like when there's no coherent structure or leadership here. It's just leadership by committee and mob rule as @Andrew Davidson brilliantly pointed out. There's a reason why every other part of the main page has a group of leading admins. Additionally, I know for whatever reason, people on ITN don't like the argument of "everyone else on the MP does it." Well, there's a reason why ITN is unique for the MP content pieces for garnering a reputation of idiosyncrasy and toxicity. At some point, we ought to lay our jingoism and parochialism to rest and analyze indeed why everyone else on the MP does stuff that we don't. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 01:43, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The Tony Awards article still needed citations when I looked at it. Admins are people too and we have lives. Some of us, anyway. There is a shortage of admins, so if you want to see the issue rectified, one way might be to apply for the mop yourselves. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:52, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, with only 5,000 edits, having less than 20% of my contribs be in either of the Wikipedia spaces, and not having really made a name for myself on Wikipedia, I don't think I would be handed the mop in an RFA.... not yet at least. Either way, I don't see how this defeats the purpose of having ITN admin coordinators; if anything, with the site-wide admin shortage, I'd see having a set group of admins as a benefit. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 02:00, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

@Muboshgu: -- firstly, I appreciate all that you do. My request to you would be that if you see some citations being needed or if the article is not ready for whatever reason, please flip the tag that says "Ready". That way, other editors know that here is an article that needs editor attention as opposed to admin attention. With a tag like "Ready / Admin action required," I for one was under the impression that all that was needed was an admin coming by and posting to main page. Ktin (talk) 02:08, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Understandable, I had not done that. Then I saw that the item was deemed stale anyway. Shame, but it happens. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:11, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I looked over the Tony awards after you made the thread above and decided against posting. Quite a bit remained uncited to the point where we wouldn't have posted an RD with the same level of list sourcing (I note it now has a couple refimproves). Also, it was so close to being stale that I doubt many ITN editors would've wanted to devote that much time to it. IMO all ITNR items should be nominated the day of the event just so people see the articles, even if they still fall to the wayside (like Le Mans).

I don't agree that ITN runs off mob rule. Sure, there are definitely regular commenters, but it's not a hivemind. DYK needs better management than ITN because they're bigger. OTD is basically run by one editor last time I checked. Anarchyte (talk) 05:53, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Technically, the Tony Awards nom didn't have any formal support !vote. —Bagumba (talk) 17:32, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

What really has not helped is the new skin, because it hides the headers of news items in the TOC and makes it hard to quickly scan the page. Masem (t) 03:14, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

@Masem Shortly after the new skin became available, I realized I didn’t like it as much as the previous version, so I set it up so that I went back to the previous version. Given the problem you mentioned, you might want to think about making the same change. Blaylockjam10 (talk) 03:30, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

For those following along, this may interest you. Anarchyte (talk) 06:09, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

For @Masem, @Blaylockjam10, @Anarchyte and others who might benefit from this -- we received a solution to this problem. While not as clean as what existed before Vector 2022, this one does solve the problem. Please have a look and adopt as appropriate. Ktin (talk) 03:31, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

@Muboshgu, Bagumba, and Ktin:, well on this topic, I was browsing Category:Wikipedia In the news yesterday and a stumbled upon {{@ITNA}}, a template created by Coffeeandcrumbs (talk · contribs) in January 2020. It doesn't seem to have caught on, being used sporadically between then and September of that year, but how it works is that any admins active on ITN can edit the template to add their name so that they can be pinged using that template. That would likely lessen the issue of the lack of coordination with admins here on ITN. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 17:19, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I understand your concern, as I too am an editor. Sometimes a nomination I was involved in is marked "Ready", and can take up to 2 days to post. However, everyone is a volunteer on Wikipedia. The "lack of coordination" is somewhat by design, as it's nobody's assigned job, yet everyone volunteering when they can has generally gotten the job done for ITN —Bagumba (talk) 09:07, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

At the singular level, we all are volunteers, and I agree with that. But, as a collective, work needs to get done. The wheels need to keep moving. How can we do that? Ktin (talk) 03:33, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

I was unaware of that template and have just added myself to it. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:44, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

• I know it is sometimes a thankless job, but, my unsolicited guidance to admins will continue to remain the following:

1. Evaluate and post from the bottom of the page. Bottom upwards.
2. Avoid batching up posts.
3. Post often, spread out your postings. Lean on other admins. Collectively, do not go beyond 12 hours without a posting. Our average 'ready' throughput used to be between 3-4 hours. Have not measured this recently.
4. Editors are your friends, use them and allow them to help you. e.g. evaluating articles, marking ready etc.

Good luck. Ktin (talk) 02:18, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

• There are lots of admins active at ITN but the natural competition which then arises tends to make them cautious and risk-averse. But I think the main issue with the Tony awards is that it was nominated several days after the event and, as ITN has had a flurry of postings recently, it got squeezed out. There was a big spike in readership on the day but that dropped off quickly. And the article still has an orange cleanup tag so I'm not sure why people think it was ready. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:45, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

  What is the "natural competition"?—Bagumba (talk) 09:10, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

• Alert. 42 hours since the last RD posting. There are at least a few which are ready for admin attention. Ktin (talk) 19:47, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

• ~50 hours since the last RD posting. There are at least a few which seem to be ready for admin attention. If admin availability is low -- we need to call this out right away. How can the other editors help? Can not remain in a state of suspended animation. Ktin (talk) 02:15, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Submarine Titanic posting

It's about the posting of the submarine incident within a few hours even though there were quite many wait votes and after several people called for a pull the discussion was closed. I would like to give the people who are a bit surprised the possibility to keep on discussing and the poster and closer of the discussion the possibility to explain their rationale bit further.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 13:18, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Indeed, I was quite surprised that an item with so many calls for it to be pulled was closed. Consensus has to exist to post, the default is don't post, something that seems to have gone out of the window lately in the new rush to impose "guidelines" on ITN...  — Amakuru (talk) 13:46, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

That and a few admins who don't patrol ITN that often, wading in and posting stories prematurely. Having said that I'm not sure of the utility of re-opening the discussion because you'll just get a ton of extra people coming in with "Well it's in the news so it should be posted". Black Kite (talk) 14:10, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I was looking at the blurb last night and decided against posting at the time, but said to myself that it'll probably be ready within the following 12-24 hours. In my opinion, the posting was probably fine at the time (weak consensus in support), but is definitely fine now. Anarchyte (talk) 14:19, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I'll clarify and say that "definitely fine now" statement is my opinion as an editor, not an admin (the "probably fine" statement is the inverse). I disagree with the premature close of the discussion, so consider this nothing more than a post-posting support. Anarchyte (talk) 14:23, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Having said that I'm not sure of the utility of re-opening the discussion because you'll just get a ton of extra people coming in with "Well it's in the news so it should be posted".

Doesn't that imply that consensus did exist to post?

Additionally, I'm not sure why we should be discouraging other admins from being on ITN; if anything, as indicated in #Admin availability, ITN (and the whole project as a whole) is suffering from a lack of admin bodies, not overburdence with them. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 17:26, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I am concerned about the close rational being "its the top news story"...ITN us nit a news ticker and just because the media are heavily covering a story means zilch for how ITN handles it, outside if meeting the "in the news" criteria. That rational and the numerous support !votes work against the criteria we need to use to avoid sensational or simply popular stories getting ITN coverage. Masem (t) 15:18, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Posting admin here. Paradise Chronicle and Black Kite, I have this page watchlisted, but I'd appreciate being pinged when you have questions about my actions. And to Black Kite, there's no need to subtweet me. If you have concerns, my talk page is open.

Looking at the pure numbers alone, at the time I posted there were 13 supports, 7 waits, and 1 oppose. 12 of those supports came at the end of the discussion, interrupted only by the oppose. Beyond the numerical swing, I found that the arguments in favor of posting were stronger than those advocating to wait. WaltCip's comment in particular seemed to sum up the feelings of those in support. With consensus no longer in favor of waiting, I posted. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 15:27, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for not having pinged you Ed, ping to MjrootsParadise Chronicle (talk) 15:55, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

The ed17 Actually Ed, I was more referring to other admins that have come charging in recently with terrible postings (those who follow the page will know who I mean), though this one could have been usefully left open a litle longer considering nothing had really happened between all the "Wait" comments and now (and still hasn't). There's no rush. Black Kite (talk) 18:31, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

My apologies for misunderstanding your intent, although in context I imagine you can see why I read it that way! I'd also push back on your second point. At the time I posted, there was a clear consensus in favor of posting now over waiting for later. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 19:56, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm a little concerned about this predilection that some admins have of giving more weight to "pull" !votes that happen after the posting rather than the "oppose" or "support" votes that happen before the posting. There's said to be a similar problem at RfA with surges of votes that happen towards the end of a discussion getting more weight in the eyes of some crats. At a certain point, when the newsworthiness of an item is as high as it's probably going to be, looking back on a consensus and challenging it with arguments that have already been made is problematic. Not to mention if an item is pulled, it confuses readers who had seen the item on the template one day and then it's suddenly gone the next. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 16:00, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I closed the discussion because, IMvHO, it was in danger of heading towards disruptive territory. As I see it, not one of the "waits" was an outright oppose. Time had moved on since the waits were posted, and it had become apparent that there was a consensus to post. Closing to prevent further drama seemed to me to be the right thing to do. There is a process to challenge such closes - open a discussion either at WT:ITN or on the closing editor's talk page. Mjroots (talk) 16:53, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, here we are, discussing it. Really, what is ITN supposed to do when such a sensational story makes the news and we have an article? Is it on the level of Apollo 13? Probably not. But if an article is in decent shape and the world is hanging on every development, I trust our contributors to appropriately weigh significance. It's why we would post this story but not celebrity gossip or a Trump tweet. Someone is certainly free to propose one as a test case; I wouldn't consider it POINTy. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 17:19, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Going to my poll and brainstorming idea above, this type of story would be better suited on trending news" line, not given a blurb but listed to help readers find that story. I personally think that the entire media coverage of this is overblown (given that the entire trip was a luxury cost by wealthy) and the type of story that, while WP can't turn a blind eye to, we can significantly cut back the intensity of the coverage, and by at least acknowledging the story rather than a full blurb, we keep ITN within alignment if BIAS. Masem (t) 21:05, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I highly doubt consensus was changing and I say that as someone who voted "wait" but has never leaned "support" on this nom. However, I would really hope Admins could just keep noms open until things are really getting exhaustive. Nothing wrong with discussion as long as it's civil and relevant. DarkSide830 (talk) 17:29, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies. I guess it comes down to what kind of news is supposed be showcased in ITN, trending news or influential news. I tend to support the influential news version. Influential news = concern many people or the peak of a performed act (sports, elections) by many people etc. The argument that a GA goes well with an ITN doesn't work for me, then Taylor Swift would be in ITN quite a lot. Brainstorming on Masems idea...a trending news section with unblurbed articles seems tempting.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 09:28, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

@Paradise Chronicle: Please feel free to propose a "trending news" ticker be added to ITN. I would imagine it would be something similar to "Ongoing". It might just fly. Mjroots (talk) 12:12, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Taylor Swift trapped in a deep-sea submersible might just get in. But it would never fly. 86.187.226.26 (talk) 12:21, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

That would make sense. Submersibles tend to be sea craft that can swim, dive, or float. But to fly, you need an airplane or a space rocket. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:39, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh yeah. I never thought of that. But we all know she'd just Shake It Off. 86.187.226.26 (talk) 12:49, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Boldly reopened what I (and quite a few here) considered to be a premature closing. Cheers, atque supra! Fakescientist8000 16:49, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

To be honest, even as someone who asked for this to be pulled, it would probably not a great idea now that it's already on the front page and we're probably about to find out the endgame (not that this is has been difficult to predict). Black Kite (talk) 16:59, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

@Fakescientist8000: It's surprising how many edit warriors consider "but I'm being bold" a defense against edit warring. Floquenbeam (talk) 17:06, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not going to revert it again, but opening a RfC here seems like the right move, not reverting discussion close on the main page. Kcmastrpc (talk) 17:12, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Now that's bold. Cheers, atque supra! Fakescientist8000 17:15, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

I've expressed my annoyance at the re-opening of a closed discussion. The closure was for a good reason, which I have given above. No further administrative action needs to be taken over this, but a repeat will not be looked on so kindly. Mjroots (talk) 19:27, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Found a few interesting articles focusing the interest on the interest of few in the submarine in comparison to the refugees in Mediterranean. yahoo, abplive, cnn, Boston Herald, As, Barack Obama on CNN. Might give some supporters of the posting something to think about. Paradise Chronicle (talk) 17:30, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

• Sub-sections There's often more than one thing to discuss about a particular item. Whether to post it; where to post it; whether to pull it; workshopping the article quality; the wording of the blurb and whatever else. In this case, we have a separate nomination for (Closed) Proposal: add article links to the passengers of the Titan per WP:ITNRDBLURB. To avoid confusion, it would be best to keep everything under one heading and have separate sub-sections for each discussion point. Andrew🐉(talk) 06:15, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  The background is that it started off an a new RD nom for the individials, than got converted to a blurb update.[4] —Bagumba (talk) 09:28, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Poll: Should we add shortcuts to WP:ITN/C/H?

Discussion on WP:ITN/C frequently reference what I like the call "the blue box," or the series of guidelines and instructions on how to nominate and voter conduct on ITN/C. The "blue box" is transcluded onto ITN/C by a subpage: WP:In the news/Candidates/header.

Since, as stated, we frequently reference the contents of the blue box, yesterday, after having hinted of my intentions in the past, I WP:BOLDLY edited WP:ITN/C/H and added a series of {{shortcuts}} to the page so as to make the process of linking to these guidelines easier for users on ITN/C. After all, most, if not all of the other MP projects have these sorts of things and even WP:ITN does. After 20 hours, Stephen (talk · contribs) reverted my additions, stating that there’s no consensus to add all that crap.

Before I added them, I actually checked the WT:ITN archives to see if this had been brought up before, which it hasn't. So I'm here to gather community consensus on the issue. Should we add shortcuts to ITN/C's blue box? - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 14:58, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

Support, why not. Can't do any harm. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:17, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support don't see why we wouldn't do this. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 15:43, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
• Comment all the crap: After a Stephen revert (mentioned in another thread above) with their edit summary of nonsense?[5] Chill a little.—Bagumba (talk) 16:21, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support Agreed that one such cosmetic change can’t do any harm.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 16:36, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support Can't hurt. Cheers, atque supra! Fakescientist8000 16:46, 22 June 2023 (UTC)
• Sure. No reason not to. -- Kicking222 (talk) 02:57, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
• List required The proposer should please provide a list of the shortcuts that they want to add so we can understand the detail of what's being discussed. When we have a WP:BRD situation then good communication all round helps matters go smoothly. Andrew🐉(talk) 05:54, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  Presumably the same ones in the linked revert diff. —Bagumba (talk) 06:07, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  See pig in a poke... Andrew🐉(talk) 06:32, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  LOL. WP:AGF. —Bagumba (talk) 08:37, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  Good faith is not the issue; it's clarity about what we have consensus for. See WP:MINIMUMDEATHS for a current example of a disputed shortcut. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:59, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  Bagumba is correct; it's the same thing that are listed in the linked diff. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 18:37, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

• Comment - While we are on the subject; what is the problem with being BOLD and making changes (cosmetic or otherwise) to the ITN pages? Looking at WP:BRD, I see that KOTS has made the right decision in tabling this here for discussion, but in my opinion, crass reverts are not helpful, and I don't see what they are intended to accomplish. I have a lot of respect for Stephen, but it's still a shame to see this. --Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:25, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Reverted the revert - since there was unanimous support for including them and it's unlikely that will change, I've reverted Stephen's revert on WP:ITN/C/H now that there is indeed consensus for this crap. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 18:39, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think I'd ever have the courage and fortitude to do that. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 20:18, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose The proposer has refused to explain their proposal in detail and just edit wars instead. Trying to steamroller this is not acceptable. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:28, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

  It's the same shortcuts shown in the diff. To be more clear, I'll highlight them more clearly in a direct link to my last revision before Stephen's revert. Every section in the blue box contains a shortcut, usually a single one but some have two. In addition, the frequently referenced guideline regarding the location of ITN stories in the "Please do not" sectionis referenced with two additional shortcuts made via {{anchor}}. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 01:38, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support ITNCHOW, ITNCVOICE, ITNCDO, ITNCDONT, ITNCUP. Oppose the other three. Anarchyte (talk) 07:12, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support ITNCDONT, and ITNCDO for consistency. Oppose the others, including the pointed ITNCUSA, as location is covered in ITNCDONT, and we’ve never needed to point anyone at the subsections of the instruction box as far as I can remember. Stephen 22:47, 24 June 2023 (UTC)
• Comment. Seems fairly innocuous set of changes, but, does anyone have information about the usage statistics on these shortcuts? Need to have an idea of what we are chasing here. Ktin (talk) 02:11, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support all but ITNCLOC/ITNCUSA and ITNCVOICE/ITNCOP which are covered by ITNCDO and ITNCDONT. Since people reference these parts frequently, especially WP:ITNCDO and WP:ITNCDONT, these will likely be useful. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 14:13, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose the attempt to implement this looked terrible, bloated way too much. I've put up the bizarre ITNCUSA up at RFD, as a user tried to use it, apparently unaware that it wasn't any longer in use. We should probably RFD ALL these links, that were created prematurely. Nfitz (talk) 18:56, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Disambiguation of Bob Brown

The recent death of Bob Brown (offensive lineman) generated discussion during the nomination and at WP:ERRORS. The issue was the need for disambiguation in such cases to avoid confusing and concerning our readers. A lot was said at WP:ERRORS but that's an ephemeral forum which doesn't keep archives and so we should record the issue for the record here. There was also repeated flip-flopping at the {{In the news}} template. See WP:WHEEL... Andrew🐉(talk) 08:08, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

As a reference point, Bobby Brown (third baseman) was piped as "Bobby Brown" on RD.[6] The primary topic, singer Bobby Brown, averages over 6,000 views/day. There was not one complaint. We generally do not pipe on RD, except for the one or two times a year that an editor who knows someone by the same name, expresses shock and cites WP:BLP, and requests it to be piped. Then we go back to not piping for months. There are limitations to the current plain list format of RD. People have suggested the German WP format. Perhaps. But let's not patronize readers as being clueless to knowing that names are not unique. And disambiguators with say born 1950 are not that distinguishable from someone with born 1955.—Bagumba (talk) 08:34, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

We never seem to come up with a consensus on this particular issue. I for one would support, but I understand the reasons why we would not. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:47, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

We should only disambiguate if there is clearly a living person with at the same if not greater notability as the RD. In this case, because there is a more notable Bob Brown (the Australia politician), disambiguation was the correct thing to add. If it were the case the Australian politician had died and not the athlete, then we'd not need disambiguation. --Masem (t) 12:54, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, but then we run into the same problem as we do with death blurbs: weighing where that "greater notability" threshold falls. Apologies to HiLo, but I've actually never heard of Bob Brown from Australia within the States (and as one who follows New Zealand news). If I haven't heard, I can imagine there being an open question in the minds of other ITN/C contributors.

That's not to say that he isn't especially notable, but I can see it becoming a predicament in the future in other edge cases. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:56, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

I would trust the decision to those that are involved in naming and renaming to assure PRIMARYTOPIC is followed. Masem (t) 14:59, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Bob Brown politician averages ~100 views/day. Not the type of household name that's going to cause an uproar of confusion. And what if we had say 4 non-primary topics of that same name with say 60-70/views each that were still alive? Seems silly to then not worry about the other readers who would be "shocked" that "their" Bob Brown was really alive.—Bagumba (talk) 14:35, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure why it was only done in this case. We should either always do it or never do it, full stop. DarkSide830 (talk) 15:11, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

I not only favor disambiguation but don't particularly understand why it's a hot-button issue at all. I fully agree that "Name (born ####)" doesn't cut it, but "Name (profession)" seems perfectly fine to me. -- Kicking222 (talk) 15:43, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

To clarify, Australia's Bob Brown is not just a run-of-the-mill politician. He is the now retired, long term head of the Australian Greens. Unlike Green parties in other countries, Australia's political system means that the Greens there have considerable political power. They currently hold 11 out of the nation's 76 Senate seats. They routinely make the headlines for the stances they take in parliament and elsewhere, and annoy the bejesus out of members and supporters of other parties. They made national headline news again just in the past week. Being retired, this Bob Brown himself no longer makes the headlines all that often, but his is a name known to all adult Australians with any interest in politics. He has an elder statesman status in the country. When he dies, it will be news. I won't insist that all other editors here come to regard him as any kind of god, but just hope this explanation adds some perspective for them. HiLo48 (talk) 01:49, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! That does provide perspective. In reading over the article and his lengthy list of accomplishments and life events, I can understand now why the disambig may have been needed. It certainly does reinforce how tricky and subjective that the significance criteria can be, given that up until today I was unfamiliar with his work. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:23, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Adding a link to WP:25 in ITN

A lot's been made about adding a "trending topics" section to ITN. However, an issue that has been raised is that many of the articles that attract high viewership are nowhere near MP ready, and thus cannot be directly linked from the MP.

So, in response, I'm proposing that we instead link WP:25 from ITN, which in effect is basically what folks here on ITN are already clamoring for; a page dedicated to trending articles with high viewership. This would combat the issue of linking to potentially ass articles by instead linking to a list of the top read articles instead of directly linking to said problematic articles on the main page. Of course, this would likely involve coordination with the WP:25 coordinators (there doesn't seem to be a set group of them, but @Igordebraga: has written every recent one from what I've seen) and also there may be some concerns regarding time, in that the list is only updated weekly, and I've also noticed that occasionally, they run the list a little late.

Do y'all support this, or would you support another type of "trending topics?" Alternatively, should ITN not have one? - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 04:27, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

• Comment. In the past, we have had a pretty good discussion on this topic of setting up a "Trending topics" similar to what exists on the iOS app. Details can be seen here and also here. I think we should follow-up with either WMF or someone who understands the technical details for the implementation. As for this specific group's remit, I am going to be provocative and say that we have not been able to make a simple label change to change "Ongoing" to "Current events" to avoid the easter egg. So, I think expecting this group to make a larger change is entirely misplaced. I might be wrong, but, there it is. Also, my personal opinion is that WP:TOP25 is a humorous article meant to be a tongue-in-cheek look at the top pages. It is not appropriate for the mainpage as a significant link. Ktin (talk) 04:41, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

  For what it is worth, in the past, @ARamadan-WMF and @Whatamidoing (WMF) (both of them from WMF) were quite kind and had offered to make connections with the right technical folks to help implement a "Trending topics" panel / widget. Ktin (talk) 04:49, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

• Timeframe The WP:25 doesn't show trending articles because its timeframe is the last whole week rather than the current activity. You can reduce the timeframe to the last whole day at pageviews but that still doesn't show you what's trending right now. So, while the Top 25 report gives a reasonable medium-term view, the word "trending" should not be used as readers will expect this to mean a real-time report like you get on Twitter and other sites. I suggest a phrase like "Popular pages" or "Top 25 pages". Andrew🐉(talk) 08:02, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

click to zoom in

• Top read view Note also that there are different views of the main page depending on your device. Most of our readership uses the mobile view and then there's the desktop view and then the Android and Apple apps. Here you see the current view for the Android app as it looks on my Chromebook. This is similar to the view that a reader would get using an Android tablet. This uses our main page content such as ITN but the developers have added other features such as a Top read applet too. This is based on the daily pageviews and notice that this includes trend lines which are quite cute.

Notice also that the app filters ITN so that only the latest blurb is shown. That's done because the app view has a daily context and you can scroll to see the view on previous days. Most main page sections change every day and so as you scroll back through the days, it shows you the FA for each day. But ITN doesn't change much from day to day and so the app only shows ITN when a new blurb is posted. Ongoing and RD are ignored.

Andrew🐉(talk) 08:02, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

• I would be strongly opposed to any main page links to WP:25. It's a humour page, which is not what we want linked directly from the most viewed page. It's a very useful judge of what is popular, but it is contrary to the purpose of ITN. I would very much be in support of a "Top read" component like on iOS/Android. Anarchyte (talk) 12:04, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

  Clarifying that I agree with Stephen: I like the idea of a main page trending list, but not within ITN. It'd need to go elsewhere. Anarchyte (talk) 03:39, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

• Agree with MasemAnarchyte. Is this box at the top of WP:25 not true? This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous. Such material is not meant to be taken seriously. Natg 19 (talk) 17:49, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

  I do not see a reply from Masem though I have no reason to believe that they would say any different. Did you mean Ktin or Anarchyte? Ktin (talk) 19:23, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Whoops, I meant Anarchyte. Natg 19 (talk) 21:44, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

• Strong oppose ITN is absolutely not about popularity or viewership. It is about making sure we showcase reasonable quality articles that are in the news to help direct readers to them. Heck, WP as a whole cares not one iota about popularity of topics or articles. --Masem (t) 20:06, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

  Then considering you were calling for a trending section in #Brainstorming an idea, what do you think it should look like? - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 01:37, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  A curated trending news section is what I was describing, which would be for posting stories with quality articles without necessarily posting blurbs (how we should have handled the sub and the wanger group stories), in effort to help readers find topics in the news but that aren't typical ITN stories. TOP25 has no assurance of any quality. Masem (t) 02:11, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose adding a link to a “humorous” POV page to ITN. Even a trending articles page, if added to the main page somewhere, should not be in ITN, as trends are often driven from non-news sites. Stephen 02:06, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose linking from the MP to a page that self-identifies as being "humorous" (WP:NPOV).—Bagumba (talk) 08:56, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per Bagumba and Stephen. Humorous pages, by nature not meant to be taken seriously, should not be linked to from the Main Page. If you want something like TOP25 on the Main Page, it will need to be a practical endeavor with encyclopedic intentions rather than just regurgitating "clicked" content, otherwise you are going to have loads of people complaining we're turning into MSN or Yahoo. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:50, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

  If you want something like TOP25 on the Main Page, it will need to be a practical endeavor with encyclopedic intentions rather than just regurgitating "clicked" content, otherwise you are going to have loads of people complaining we're turning into MSN or Yahoo.

  Are you advocating for a curated trending section or are you advocating for a WP:25 without all the excess opinionated commentary? - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 20:25, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per Bagumba, WaltCip, and Stephen. We're WP:NOTYAHOO. Cheers, atque supra! Fakescientist8000 20:44, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
• Comment I'm open to a link to trending topics. We're here to benefit readers, after all—a fact that some seem to forget—and the content wouldn't be directly on the main page. However, WP:25 is not that link, as its writing style is too fundamentally different from what people expect from Wikipedia. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 21:09, 26 June 2023 (UTC)
• OpposeDidn't know that page existed and I do not believe it's the right format. Some seemingly personal views are included. I'd support though a section of some sort of trending articles for which I suggest that our quality articles (GA or better) should be favored. For regular articles we have already ITN, OTD and DYK (also in part GA). Like this we could showcase the quality work of Wikipedia in relation to trending news.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 00:54, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
  • Frankly, there is a choice to be made there: we can have trending or we could highlight good articles. The two are nearly always going to be mutually exclusive. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:36, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
    • Note that the WP:25 report has a class column showing the assessed quality of the listed articles and so does a more thorough job than ITN. For example, the Ted Kaczynski article is shown to be FA quality and also had over a million readers in the period. Its blurb for the article is sensibly free of attempts at humour and seems a reasonable summary. A much better treatment than ITN gave to this high-quality, high-readership, in-the-news topic. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:04, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

    I need to sit down when I'm at a proper keyboard to spell out my ideas of trending news topics line, but it is very much possible to curate, for ITN, high news visibility/large readership article which are nearly always kept to fundamental quality standards. But curating is critical to this, and simply saying, "this is popular we need to list it" won't work. Masem (t) 15:06, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

• Per the iron triangle, "Good, fast, cheap. Choose two." The essence of Wikipedia is that it's fast – that's what the word wiki means and it's a fundamental feature of news topics. And we don't have much resources or budget so that dimension is fixed too. So, expecting high quality for everything is unrealistic and just means that little is done. Andrew🐉(talk) 15:47, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

  "Wiki" has nothing to do with speed, it is about collaborative editing.

  But my idea is not about requiring trending news topics to be "high quality", just reasonable...that would mean that the relevant article is well beyond a stub (if it truly is a trending topic) and there are no significant definancies in sourcing, and basic fundamentals of NOR and NPOV and met. I would expect such an article to be in a shape to will allow it to grow more, both from published info and new info as it brbreaks would not expect much beyond C quality for these (compared to a higher standard for blurbed topics). I don't see this as unrealistic as we have easily done this on numerous breaking news topics. Masem (t) 16:42, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

  I think Andrew is referring to the word Wiki which iirc is derived from a Hawaiian word meaning fast or quick.Ktin (talk) 18:24, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

• Comment - regardless on what you think about specifically linking to WP:25, the fact is that unless you a proponent of Masem (talk · contribs)'s idea of a TT section (which seems to be a minority opinion), under current MP guidelines, a trending topics (TT) section would have to be linked to on the MP instead of plastered/transcluded on it since via having an authentic TT, you're opening the floodgates for low-quality articles to get on the main page. I initially advocated for the link to WP:25 since it's already the closest thing Wikipedia has with a TT and creating a new one for the MP would do more to override it than supplement. The only other option is to implement a curated one, which I will strongly oppose since it will likely just be abused as a dumping ground for all the stories that didn't make it onto ITN (I can already imagine the "this is ITN, not trending" diatribes that would be levied like the "take it to DYK" ones we see now) and completely ruins the point of a trending articles section; the purpose is to highlight high readership articles to inform our readers of popular topics that they may take interest in, not become ITN without blurbs. - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 20:12, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

  There are topics that are clearly in the news, that appear to have drawn reader interest, and have quality articles as for featuring on the main page, but which we don't need blurbs for. "Ongoing" should already foot this bill to a degree. I think topics like the Titan sub don't deserve a blurb but due to massive news and reader interest, not providing a link to that on the main (whole the search and rescue were happening) would be reasonable. When the Trump trial starts in FL, that's certainly going to fit that bill too. We just do t want to fall too much down the "popular topic" hole, like the Depp v. Heard trial. Masem (t) 20:19, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

  Having thought about your idea, I've slightly warmed up to your proposal, but still oppose. This comes off more as a glorified ongoing, or again an ITN without blurbs than an actual trending topics. I was actually going to go on a diatribe regarding the last point you made, but before then, I'd like to ask; would this be organically defined, pulling from data on the most viewed topics or be voted on like ongoing noms? - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 21:19, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

  Would still need consensus to avoid pop culture/celeb type stories and to judge quality. Masem (t) 21:26, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

  I can understand not wanting celeb news on blurb ITN, but what exactly is the harm of allowing it on a TT? - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 21:57, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

  We are an encyclopedia and should be covering encyclopedic topics. Things like the sub s&r or the Trump trial are clearly such topics, while celeb news, while something we do document to a degree, is general against what are encyclopedic topics. Or as another example. The next big MCU film will clearly be trending, but that makes little sense to feature just because its popular. Masem (t) 23:13, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

  To add as another example, though I dont know how we'd present it yet, the two nominations dealing with the SCOTUS decisions, or even the last week of decisions, would make for a good trending topic, though what we would link to, I don't know immediately. Masem (t) 17:34, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Introducing specialized templates for ITN

I hereby propose that we use specialized templates for closing ITN discussions.

Currently on ITN, we use the standard {{archive top}} and {{{archive bottom}} to close discussions (demonstrated below).

(Posted) Planet 9 discovered

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Article: Planet Nine (talk · history · tag)
Blurb: ​ Astronomers announce the discovery of Planet Nine (artist's depiction pictured). (Post)
News source(s): NYT
Credits:

• Nominated by Knightoftheswords281 (talk · give credit)

Nominator's comments: Ninth planet, what else to say. - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 23:25, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support - textbook example of scientific discoveries. - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 23:25, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support - frankly, this should be posted immediately. - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 23:25, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose - Rock gets discovered, not encyclopedic content. - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 23:25, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
  • That's a body of gas to you! - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 00:09, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The specialized archive would look like this:

Planet 9 discovered

The following is an archived discussion for an In the news candidate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made at Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors or Wikipedia Talk:In the news.

The result of the discussion was posted. Consensus emerged to post. Any opposition comes off as WP:POINTY. - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 23:25, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

---

Article: Planet Nine (talk · history · tag)
Blurb: ​ Astronomers announce the discovery of Planet Nine (artist's depiction pictured). (Post)
News source(s): NYT
Credits:

• Nominated by Knightoftheswords281 (talk · give credit)

Nominator's comments: Ninth planet, what else to say. - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 23:25, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support - textbook example of scientific discoveries. - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 23:25, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support - frankly, this should be posted immediately. - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 23:25, 29 June 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose - Rock gets discovered, not encyclopedic content. - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 23:25, 29 June 2023 (UTC))
  • That's a body of gas to you! - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 00:10, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

The In the news nomination above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors or Wikipedia Talk:In the news. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

• Note that the part of the archives that say "Wikipedia talk:In the news" are bolded because that's the page we're on currently; it links to the page and will display in a standard format on another page.

Introducing specialized templates for ITN (discussion)

I think the specialized ones are better. Firstly, the specialized ones removed the grey box, centralizing it and making it pop out more IMO. Removing the grey box also removes the issue of squishing the nom box and having it remain at full margin. Additionally, the specialized descriptors for {{ITN archive top}} and {{ITN archive bottom}} links specifically to WT:ITN and WP:ERRORS, which would make navigation easier and would give guidance to newer users.

This isn't a new idea; in fact, DYK, FAC, RM, and other facets of wikipedia all employ a specialized closure template. I think having our own specialized closure templates would be a net benefit to ITN.

What do y'all think? - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 23:25, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose closing a discussion as posted, when the header contains (Posted) and the admin signs the nomination with Posted, and using a special 'ITN closure' template to do so, seems to me to be rather unnecessary. Stephen 04:17, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

  I think the proposal is to use {{ITN archive top}} instead of {{atop}}, but not to increase its usage from status quo. Or is it? —Bagumba (talk) 04:23, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

  The example above, and some closures that OP did on ITNC, were all for posted items. Stephen 04:53, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, we generally don't close posted items per WP:ITNA:

  Posted nominations generally are not closed so that the nomination can be used as a workspace for an item (beyond the scope of WP:ERRORS) or if there is a possibility of additional voters later requesting that the item be pulled.

  —Bagumba (talk) 06:13, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

  Those were just test runs I ran for the template; in a normal setting, posted discussions wouldn't be closed unless for the usual reasons (i.e, post-posting convo that won't go anywhere). - Knightoftheswords (Talk · Contribs) 16:31, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

• Comment I have nothing against introducing ITN-specific templates even though this would be a minor change, but I stylistically prefer to keep the closer's comment in the grey box in the top right corner.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:13, 30 June 2023 (UTC)