Wikipedia talk:In the news

Upcoming ITN/R suggestions (Apr-Jun)

Happy Easter/Fools Day! This post attempts to highlight potential nominations that could be considered and where else to continue looking for news items. The recurring items list is a good place to start. Below is a provisional list of upcoming ITN/R events over the next few months. Note that some events may be announced earlier or later than scheduled, like the result of an election or the culmination of a sport season/tournament. Feel free to update these articles in advance and nominate them on the candidates page when they occur.

April

• 1 April: Costa Rican general election, 2018
• 2 April: 2018 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship Game
• 8 April:
  • Hungarian parliamentary election, 2018
  • 2018 Laurence Olivier Awards
  • 2018 Masters Tournament
• 11 April: Azerbaijani presidential election, 2018
• 14 April: 2018 Grand National
• 15 April: Montenegrin presidential election, 2018
• 16 April: 2018 Boston Marathon
• 22 April:
  • 2018 London Marathon
  • Paraguayan general election, 2018

May

3 May: Dadasaheb Phalke Award

5 May: 2018 Kentucky Derby

6 May: Lebanese general election, 2018

7 May: 2018 World Snooker Championship

12 May:

• Iraqi parliamentary election, 2018
• 2018 European Rugby Champions Cup Final
• Eurovision Song Contest 2018

13 May: 2017–18 Premier League

19 May: 2018 Cannes Film Festival

20 May:

• 2018 EuroLeague Final Four
• 2018 IIHF World Championship Final
• Venezuelan presidential election, 2018

22 May: Man Booker International Prize

26 May: 2018 UEFA Champions League Final

27 May:

• 2018 Thomas & Uber Cup
• 2018 Indian Premier League Final
• 2018 Indianapolis 500
• Colombian presidential election, 2018

June

2 June: 2018 Epsom Derby

6 June: Soyuz MS-09

9 June: 44th G7 summit

10 June:

• 2018 French Open
• 72nd Tony Awards

13 June: International Dublin Literary Award

17 June:

• 2018 24 Hours of Le Mans
• 2018 U.S. Open (golf)
• 2018 NBA Finals

Late June: 2018 Stanley Cup Finals

Other resources

Recent deaths can be found at Deaths in 2018 Upcoming elections can be found at National electoral calendar 2018 Upcoming solar eclipses can be found at List of solar eclipses in the 21st century Upcoming space launches can be found at 2018 in spaceflight New chemical elements can be found at Timeline of chemical element discoveries News stories can be found at Portal:Current events For those who don't take their daily dose of news from an encyclopedia, breaking news stories can also be found via news aggregators (e.g. Google News, Yahoo! News) or your preferred news outlet. Some news outlets employ paywalls after a few free articles, others are funded by advertisements - which tend not to like ad blockers, and a fair few are still free to access. Below is a small selection: Newspapers The Australian The Globe and Mail The Guardian Haaretz The Hindu The New York Times South China Morning Post The Straits Times The Sydney Morning Herald The Daily Telegraph The Washington Post News agencies Associated Press (AP) Reuters Agence France-Presse (AFP) Agência Brasil Anadolu Agency Press Association TASS Yonhap Xinhua News services ABC News Al Jazeera AllAfrica.com BBC News CBC News CNN Deutsche Welle Euronews Unlike the prose in the article, the reference doesn't necessarily need to be in English. Non-English news sources include, but are not limited to: Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País. Which ironically are Western European examples (hi systemic bias). Any reliable African, Asian or South American non-English source that confirms an event took place can also be used.

Happy hunting. Fuebaey (talk) 18:05, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

RD section and posthumously created articles

Tyler Hilinski was a posthumously created article rejected by ITN/C for being posthumously created. It has to this date not been nominated for deletion. Zeke Upshaw was also created posthumously, nominated, and not posted, but it was taken to AfD during the nomination (and speedily kept). Yang Gui was posthumously created, nominated, and posted. Now Judy Kennedy was posthumously created, nominated, and looking like consensus will not support posting. There may be other recent examples I'm forgetting.

The discrepancy in reactions from editors on these noms shows that we need some clear standards here for how to handle posthumously created articles nominated for RD. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:39, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Please supply links to each of the discussions to enable us to assess the situation more accurately. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:42, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Certainly. Tyler Hilinski, Zeke Upshaw (the # messes stuff up so you'll have to CTRL+F. The Yang Gui and Judy Kennedy noms haven't been archived yet. The search helped me find Jill Messick, a posthumously created article that was posted. – Muboshgu (talk) 23:47, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:57, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

P.S. The hash (pound) doesn't normally screw things up, just don't put a space after it and the name of the section heading. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:58, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

The "[Closed]" in the closed ITNC URLs cause a rendering issue. You can use a tool like this to encode characters that are problematic to bypass the issue.—Bagumba (talk) 10:59, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

There’s also David Buckel, which I nominated about the same time as Judy Kennedy and which was posted with no opposition. Pawnkingthree (talk) 00:00, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

• Comment I think we're trying to deal with a non-problem here. Just because a couple of nominations were rejected for one reason or another, including concerns over notability, it doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater. Clearly admins could have assessed that the rejection of completely sound RDs on the grounds that they were posthumously created articles to be incorrect and posted otherwise, but they didn't, and so there's literally no problem here. Naturally, and as ever, if we don't like posting the way post RDs (which I think has been a 100% wholesale success, no need to thank me etc etc) then we can launch an RFC to debate it. These edge cases are worthy of discussion on their merit. Nothing more. The Rambling Man (talk) 00:07, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

The key is, if the article was created in the wake of the death of a person, we need to review the notability of the person to make sure that we're not violating things like BLP1E. Existing articles will be less of a problem since we generally presume that they have eyes on them, but we should still be able to raise concern if a RD comes along and there's a clear case of BLP1E evident there. --Masem (t) 00:36, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

• In the case of Judy Kennedy though, BLP1E wasn’t an issue - the objections seemed to be that she was a local politician and the sources were local. I don’t think RD is an appropriate venue for notability discussions. The article should taken to AfD instead. Pawnkingthree (talk) 00:47, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

• The problem is that if we tag it for deletion while it it is a ITNC, that immediately disqualifies it for ITNC. If editors believe notability is an issue, and the ITNC closes with no support to post because of notability issues, then an AFD (or other appropriate action like merging) should then ensue, but not before it closes. --Masem (t) 01:58, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

• There is no "problem". All the processes are working fine. If someone AFDs a new article, that's nothing to with ITNC but it'll disqualify it in the short term. So what? The Rambling Man (talk) 22:12, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

• I think its in the realm of WP:POINT to nominate a proposed ITNC RD to AFD, unless it is clear that the ITNC discussion agrees that the subject was non-notable. By putting a current ITNC RD topic to AFD, I've imposed my opinion (which may be wrong) in a means that blocks it from being posted to ITNC. It's a decision on the postability of an RD by a fiat, which shouldn't happen. I'd rather see the case that if there's no clear consensus that an RD topic is appropriate for a standalone but otherwise all other ITN boxes are checked, that we allow the normal ITNC process to go through, and only after the ITNC is closed (and if the topic was posted, after it falls off the page), a more formal AFD process can start. There is separately that someone who is not at all involved in ITNC may start an AFD, and we'd have a problem of how those processes interact but its not the same issue as if I were doing the AFD, since I'd be involved in ITNC that makes it POINTy. --Masem (t) 13:12, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

• It is not POINTy to AfD an article where WP:BEFORE was performed and there is due reason to believe it is not notable. It would be POINTy to AfD an article just to prevent it from being posted on ITN. As LaserLegs suggested below: "If you routinely refer articles to AFD that survive the process, there are tools for dealing with that."—Bagumba (talk) 11:16, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

• This is a non-issue. While I agree with the notion that editors should give newly-created articles extra scrutiny before commenting on the thread, extra scrutiny requires no comment. The "Oppose because this was just created" shows zero scrutiny, and is the opposite of what we should be doing. Assess the article text and the sources, and if it checks out and meets the requirements for an article at Wikipedia, that requires no extra commentary other than to support the article. Say "I checked the text and the sources, and this looks good to go..." It's the unthinking, unanalyzed vote which presumes that every newly created article should be instantly deleted, or that it should be instantly rejected out of hand, without looking at it, which is a real problem. Honestly, I check all article text to the same level of scrutiny; there's no harm in vetting old articles just as well. The attitude that Wikipedia should reject the creation of new articles based on when a person died in relation to when the article was created is beyond perplexing, and ultimatly antithetical to the purpose of Wikipedia, which is to include verifiable information. The presumption that everyone who is notable already has an article about them, and that we have never missed a notable living person, is preposterous. --Jayron32 11:55, 17 April 2018 (UTC)
• Comment I agree with The Rambling Man and Jayron32. Any issues with an article are independent of the article's date of creation. From the above examples, it appears that the current policy is to put the nomination on hold if a serious AfD is formally initiated against the article, and I doubt anyone has a problem with that. (The logical consequence of the current rules is that RD oppose !votes based on notability are invalid, so such opposers should launch an AfD instead, as noted above.) And, just to re-iterate what Jayron said, imposing a blanket ban on RD-postings of posthumously-created articles is an incorrect solution to a problem that doesn't even exist. Davey2116 (talk) 00:49, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
• Comment if you think an RD candidate fails WP:N nominate it for WP:AFD else STFU. If you routinely refer articles to AFD that survive the process, there are tools for dealing with that. #twocents --LaserLegs (talk) 21:51, 18 April 2018 (UTC)
  • So expressing opposition to current standing consensus warrants a "STFU". Glad to see civility is alive and well. </sarcasm>--WaltCip (talk) 01:57, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

• Editor's should do their homework Shaik Muzakkar (talk) 22:09, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

• This is an issue There has been fearmongering that an article created after a death is not notable, where WP:BEFORE appears to have been missed, as the article could have been verified to meet GNG. See the Tyler Hilinski nomination: "the fact that it was only created on the subject's death suggests that he may not have been particularly notable." The article at time of nomination has multiple sources of independent, significant coverage not including his death. Refer also to the Zeke Upshaw nomination: "I don't really have any knowledge of notability for US sports, but this is another example of a biography that was only created after the subject died." and "would have not qualified for an article under either GNG or NSPORTS prior to death." Again,the version at time of nomination had multiple sources of independent, significant coverage outside of the death. See its subsequent AfD nominated with rationale of "Was created after death, and posted at ITN (where it was rejected - [1]). Appears to fail WP:NBASKETBALL." The AfD was closed as "Snow Keep".—Bagumba (talk) 10:52, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

• I'm certainly a little reluctant to support RDs if the article didn't exist before the death. That suggests a potentially non-notable figure and an article which might not have been written to cover the person's whole life. It also muddies the water regarding what RD is for - I see it as pointing at articles that serve as obituaries, not a news story about the death (which is what blurbs are for). A posthumous article is a warning sign rather than a disqualification; however putting in a rule might discourage some of the rushed low-quality nominations we get, and we wouldn't be missing any high profile ones. Tbh I think there are too many RDs anyway, to the point that blurb-worthy news gets overlooked at ITN/C. Modest Genius ^talk 11:28, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
  • WP:RECENT applies to all things, from BLPs to plane crashes and prison riots. The easiest factor to consider is "is it in the news", after that, bias about importance or notability or whatever becomes irrelevant. --LaserLegs (talk) 15:06, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
  • All RDs, recently created or not, need to be of "sufficient quality" (WP:ITNRD). There are "rushed, low-quality nominations" with long-standing articles as well. The recent ongoing nomination of Verne Troyer is being rejected because it's career section is insufficient. Let's not obfuscate things by implying that recently-created articles are inherently of lower quality for RD. I do hope that reviewers of long-standing articles also perform due diligence to ensure it is not a non-notable article that had gone undetected for years, but is buoyed solely by recent death coverage. If that is already the practice, then there should be nothing inherently special about an article being recently created. Otherwise, methinks long-standing articles are being given a free pass when voting.—Bagumba (talk) 09:25, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
• Promising that the recent discussion and post of Agnès-Marie Valois occurred without one mention that the article was created after her death.—Bagumba (talk) 09:44, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
  • As long as a newly-created article shows that this was clearly a person we'd have an article on if they didn't die, and we simply never got to creating it (such as Valois as a well-decorated heroine from the wars), it shouldn't be an issue and probably why it wasn't brought up there. Its when the death is published that elevates the person that we'd normally not have an article about that we'd need to make sure that we're not violating BLP1E. --Masem (t) 13:05, 22 April 2018 (UTC)
    • It's fine to perform the ITN equivalent of WP:BEFORE and rule out BLP1E concerns. What should be discouraged is merely pointing out that an article is new, insinuating that there is an inherent problem. Discuss content or notability concerns directly; bringing up its age on its own smacks of innuendo. And yes, the mention of age is a concern, as shown by the "Snow Keep" of the Zeke Upshaw AfD. Are you suggesting it was a one-off?—Bagumba (talk) 11:28, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Articles not being posted

The article Agnès-Marie Valois (dead 19 April) has not been posted to RD even if all three comments are support. I am afraid if now is going to get stale, which is a bit discouraging since I frankly wrote the whole article to get it on the front page. What is the procedure for what gets posted or not? Iselilja (talk) 08:03, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

It's now posted. Please understand that administrators are volunteers just like you; please be patient. 331dot (talk) 08:07, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. I understand about beeing volunteers. My concern was that patience might lead to article becoming stale which I saw had just happened to another nomination which was considered "stale" after 2 days, even with three "supports" and none opposes. There seems to be an "overflow" of RD nominations currently, so I wonder if administrators then simply discard the less notable/interesting articles, and go with Avicii etc. ? That would be normal and could be sensible, but may go a bit against the "only criteria is article quality" rule which was the assumption I nominated the article on. Iselilja (talk) 09:04, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

If an RD nominated article is sufficiently improved and there is agreement that it has been, it should be posted. One RD is not more important than another. It wasn't stale because the oldest RD listing was from the 17th. ITNC is followed by a few, but not a great number of, administrators. I've only been one for a little less than a month, so there is two more eyes on it than there was. 331dot (talk) 09:08, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Choi Eun-hee, which received unanimous support after major improvements by Lenoresm, was ignored by admins. It remained "ready" for days while later nominations were being posted, and was eventually closed as stale. -Zanhe (talk) 18:49, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

That's how it goes sometimes. There's been a very steady and rapid queue of RD noms lately. Not everything can be posted, and administrators can't be everywhere at once.--WaltCip (talk) 21:38, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

• I know why it occurs and that Wikipedia is an entirely voluntary endeavour by all, but I'll also say that is is extremely frustrating when it happens. You get into the situation where you aren't sure if you should be bumping your nom or whether this is bad etiquette. It also makes you feel like actual content creation is less prized than the slinging of arguments around on ITNC, when the former is much more valuable to the encylopedia. --LukeSurl ^{t c} 08:55, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Tagging nomination section headers

This is going to appear nitpicky, but when a nom is posted or closed or whatever it's common to mark it [posted] [closed] [needs attention]. The thing is, the square brackets are reserved in the MW syntax, and it makes linking to things like this: "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates/March_2018#[Posted]_Kabul_suicide_bombing" a bit of a hassle. So either I'm doing it wrong, in which case could someone please help me, or can we use parenthesis instead (closed) (pulled) (posted) etc?

--LaserLegs (talk) 14:49, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes, this was also brought near the top of #RD section and posthumously created articles thread above. The brackets would otherwise need to be encoded to get the URL to work, so your suggestion might be a good workaround.—Bagumba (talk) 18:07, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

I will take that under advisement and only use parentheses going forward. – Muboshgu (talk) 18:21, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

You can use .5Band .5D to encode square brackets respectively. Have used it before. –Ammarpad (talk) 17:27, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Is in the news broken?

ITN appears to be failing to well post much at all. At the time of writing this the last Item was added 4 days ago and the item before that was added 5 days ago. This shows that there is no hard and fast criteria, just a lot of arguing and uncertainty as what to post resulting in little being posted. This is not helped by one item being pulled due to its uncertainty in recent days. There must be a better way for ITN to operate as opposed to nominate and nothing happens because of a lack of clear rules and guidance on what is and is not able to go ITN. Notability and significance are usually trotted out by opposers, but the news cares little about these things. ITN should simply be 1. Is the event in the news? 2. Is the event linked to a Wikipeidia article? 3. Is the article up to the standard needed to merit posting? Anything else is just opinion and has broken the ITN process. WTKitty (talk) 13:48, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

ITN has posted at this pace since it was introduced, and has always been a subjective content area. If you think it's broken now, then it was never working. One way you could help increase postings is to update articles that are significant but don't yet have adequate article quality. Personally, I'm satisfied with the current process. Mamyles (talk) 13:54, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

ITN has never been intended to have "hard and fast criteria". ITN is not a news ticker or source of news, it is a way to motivate the improvement of articles. Wikipedia is a project to build an encyclopedia, not report the news. If you want to work on and post news stories, you should contribute to Wikinews. Every so often I see this sort of comment, often from someone who is disappointed their nomination didn't make it(I don't know if that is the case here or not). Having lots of rules about what should be posted is just instruction creep and goes against the spirit of Wikipedia, where things are decided by consensus.

As noted by Mamyles, we can only consider posting what is nominated. In most cases we have absolutely no control over the timing of news stories. If you are dissatisfied with what is posted, you need to become more heavily involved with ITNC(which I would welcome), making nominations and improving articles for posting. 331dot (talk) 13:56, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

How can it be adequate to have little updating of ITN for days and in some cases weeks, it turns it from being ITN to I like this from the news. A lot of "voting" goes on as well and some nominations are flooded with I like/dislike comments. This is not fit for purpose and if this has been the way it has been from the start then it has been broken from the start. How can it be that a horse race which occurs every year gets a mention but an equivalent running race does not. Where is the consistency? WTKitty (talk) 13:59, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

None of the comments are on whether an editor likes or does not like the news. All of the comments focus on whether the article has adequate updates/article quality, and whether it's significant enough to post, using the criteria located at WP:ITN. Mamyles (talk) 14:04, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

often from someone who is disappointed their nomination didn't make it

see Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates#Third_child_of_the_Duke_and_Duchess_of_Cambridge Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:03, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Do you mind not going personal and sticking to the content here. The motives being doled out here are frankly offensive, and go against trying to improve wikiepdia. I would like the above to be withdrawn as its of no relevance. WTKitty (talk) 14:09, 23 April 2018 (UTC) That is how it should be but looking through an awful lot of the nominatiosn this does not appear to be what is happening. A contributor may dress up comments to look like they are substance but simply adding Per user X or this is not notable, does little to have an actual discussion. WTKitty (talk) 14:11, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

@WTKitty: We also have WP:ITNR, the recurring events list, where notability is presumed for posting(though it is not a guarantee of posting as article quality still is considered). The "horse race" you speak of is on that list. Various running races are there as well, if you feel an important one is missing, you are welcome to nominate it for inclusion in the list. As this is a volunteer project, we can only include what users choose to include. 331dot (talk) 14:11, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Thank you for the pointing in that direction I shall have a good look at the list. WTKitty (talk) 14:14, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

I would add that I don't think it was a personal attack to point out you have a nomination pending. 331dot (talk) 14:16, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

What purpose does it serve though other than to colour the discussion? I stand by my earleir comment that it is a personal attack. It has no bearing on the discussion ad is a comment on me and me alone. WTKitty (talk) 14:17, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

What seems to be little justified is that, after your nom failed, you immediately took to the ITN talkpage to attack the entire decision process on ITN/C. The consensus went against you. That you are unable to accept it is not a fault of the process.--WaltCip (talk) 14:24, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

• ITN posts sports and death mostly, but only if the WP:MINIMUMDEATHS is reached. For example, a few days ago a woman was blown out of a 737 at 30,000 feet and it was deemed "not newsworthy" despite the subsequent air worthiness directive and mandatory inspections of all CFM 56 engines. --LaserLegs (talk) 14:34, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Betteridge's Law strikes again. It does feel like the rate of new blurbs has been lower than usual over the last month or two, but that doesn't mean the entire section is broken. Encyclopaedic significance has always been a part of ITN assessment. Tbh I suspect many nominations don't get the attention they deserve because they're lost in a sea of RD nominations. Nevertheless, the best way to improve ITN is to nominate high-quality stories, help assess existing ones at ITN/C, and improve articles whose nominations are being held up by problems (which is a bigger problem than editor bias). Wholesale changes to the section's purpose are neither necessary nor desirable. Modest Genius ^talk 14:59, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

I've sometimes wondered if RD noms should be a separate page(I might have brought that up before) given the (good) number of RD noms we see now. 331dot (talk) 15:30, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

• ITN isn't broken just because the story you wanted to see posted wasn't posted. Sometimes I need to remind myself of that. – Muboshgu (talk) 15:35, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Can we all stop with this sour grapes garbage please it is unhelpful to collaborating on Wikipeidia and it is a load of crap. WTKitty (talk) 17:13, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

You don't have sour grapes, okay. I believe you. That said, would you have brought this up if your nomination had been posted? 331dot (talk) 18:10, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

@LaserLegs: raises a good point, how can a news story such as the one described not be in the news, how often does a plane engine explode in mid air and cause every engine of that type to be re-tested. Having a minimum death requirement is absurd it creates an unnecessary arbitrariness. WTKitty (talk) 17:23, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

We don't have a minimum death requirement, thus why that link is red. Though, it is true that for disasters the number of deaths correlates with perceived significance. Mamyles (talk) 18:11, 23 April 2018 (UTC)