Wikipedia talk:In the news

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The ITN is the least dynamic part of the Main Page currently

And I think this is a problem. A significant part of editors, I believe, visits the main page at least once a day, and what do they see there?

WP:TFA is updated once a day, with links to few previously featured articles, usually no more than 3
WP:DYK is updated four times a day
WP:OTD is updated once a day
WP:POTD is updated once a day

WP:ITN is expected to be updated at least once a day, as its timer suggests, but this timer seems to have been red too often recently, with no updates for very long periods, up to several days. This results in the template often featuring some topics, which are no longer in the world news actually. Recently the news about the Tongan general election, 2010 and Pike River Mine disaster were held over a week. In the course of this week the contents of all other templates have fully changed several times, but ITN still has been lagging with some non-fresh news, which obviously were not so much important as to have them on the MP for such a long time. With most events, if they are recent and not ongoing, the interest of editors is held high just for one, or two, or three days, and certainly not for a week, and having the outdated news on the ITN certainly does not serve the central purpose of Wikipedia—making a great encyclopedia. The space on the MP could be used more effectively by changing the news items at a less turtlish speed.

As far as I can see, in Russian Wikipedia the slow pace of ITN updating resulted in complete removal of the template from their MP. I think nobody here wants the English ITN to meet the same fate. To prevent this and to improve the quality and dynamics of the ITN, I believe, we should either attempt to encourage editors to bring more worthy nominations to the WP:ITN/C, or try to treat these nominations without strong personal attitude to their importance, and/or without excessively formalistic approach towards updating related articles. GreyHood ^Talk 22:15, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We've just had a couple of slow news weeks (but we've just had three new items over the course of 4 hours). A month ago, things were fine; I imagine that it will pick up again soon. Admittedly the number of candidates on ITN/C has been fairly low for a while now, especially when compared to a year ago, but I don't see what we can do about that. We've managed to maintain a roughly 24 hour posting time ever since the ITN update template came in, talking about removing ITN from the MP seems massively premature. Modest Genius ^talk 22:37, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) although i agree with you that it should be changed a little faster. but your definition of dynamic is wrong. ITN changes dynamically according to the current events that happen. not by forcing events that shouldnt go up just because timer is red. 3 items were added today and i think one more should make it. so we have good days and bad days. but yeah i do agree that we may have to tone down the opposes a tiny bit let more articles through. -- Ashish -g55 22:39, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I was thinking about posting something similar. If you look at User:DC/Playbox I've compiled the stats from the first ten months of 2009 and 2010 (note that November hasn't been archived yet). In the period I analyzed, we posted 55 less stories this year than last. I think part of the issue is that as we reject more stories, the ITN standards appear tougher, and even more stories get posted as a result. DC T•C 23:18, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Look at the statistics:

There is a huge interest in an article just for a pair of days, then the viewership goes down significantly (the usual situation with most news off wiki as well). And if you look to to the edit histories, you'll see again that most editing is done at the first days after the news got to the ITN, not a week after. There were just 40 news items in November, that is 40/30 = 1.33 per day, which means that contents of 6-item sized ITN template are fully refreshed in an average time of 4.5 days! That's slower than TFA with its previously featured articles. Instead of bringing more newly created articles or the currently updated articles into prominence and encouraging editors to work on them further, the ITN displays stale news for 4.5 days average or even for a week. I haven't seen any respectable news agency to do so, and no other part of the MP does so. GreyHood ^Talk 23:40, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Well we'te not a news agency so we don't play by their rules. They post crap that's of no encyclopaedic relevance to keep their front pages looking fresh. For example, BBC News has "England miss out on [football] World Cup", snow, WikiLeaks, a murder, and a forest fire in Israel. The New York Times currently has ethics violations from a politician, unemployment, tax cuts, WikiLeaks again. Of all of those, WikiLeaks on currently on ITN and the rest are far too trivial. We can only post events when there are events to post and we can't control that. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:50, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the ethics violations you mentioned, censure in the House of Reps is actually a big deal given how rare it is. I'd nominate it at ITNC, but it doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of making ITN. DC T•C 00:17, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm aware about WP:NOTNEWS and my main concern is the comparison of the ITN with other parts of the MP. Still we should not ignore the general news agency practice, that the news generally should remain in focus of interest just for one-two-three days, not for a week. This is a matter of psychology and efficiency. And while I agree that the trivial stuff should be avoided, I still think it is inappropriate and ineffective to have week-long stale news on the ITN, and at the same time discard nominations that are pretty encyclopaedic. The snow is encyclopaedic enough, btw, and the related article has been significantly updated recently; the only question is the importance of the events - many people on the ITN discussions don't think that this exceptionally cold winter is interesting or important enough. That looks very much like personal POV-based evaluating of topics which are obviously in the center of attention of the world news and are thus well sourced; inserting too much of editor's POVs instead of evaluating the existing off-wiki interest to the event may actually turning WP:ITN into a kind of news agency wich has its own news policy. But let me cite the first words on the WP:ITN:

The In the news (ITN) section on the main page serves to direct readers to articles that have been substantially updated to reflect recent or current events of wide interest. ITN supports the central purpose of Wikipedia—making a great encyclopedia.

So basically, current events + major recent updates or new article + wide interest + possibility of making Wikipedia better (by encouraging editors making further updates) = ITN-worthy article. However, there is often a situation on WP:ITN/C when such worthy articles are discarded because they are not important enough in eyes of some editors despite obvious wide interest in the world news; and despite people trying hard to update the articles and make Wikipedia better, such articles still are not posted. This is sad, and this is actually discouraging, not encouraging. GreyHood ^Talk 01:20, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Also, I just have to point out that BBC News, the New York Times and other Anglophone countries media are not the only sources to establish the news currently in focus of interest in the world. I believe that English language news outlets from Mexico, Brazil, China, Russia, EU, India and other large countries and macroregions should be taken into account as well. GreyHood ^Talk 01:20, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Lately someone questioned if Xinhua can be considered as a reliable source so... –HTD (ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens.) 02:42, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So what? As far as I know, lately there was an issiue with China Daily, not Xinhua, and the claim was made that the news agency under control of the Chinese Communist party is unreliable. But this actually means that all or almost all Chinese news agencies may be deemed unreliable on the same basis. However, what do we have as an alternative? American or British news agencies, called "independent", but in fact under control of big business and political parties. Not that I suggest to consider all big news agencies unreliable, of course. I just propose not to select reliable ones on the basis of their national or corporative allegiance. American or British sources naturally should have priority, but the others shouldn't be discarded, and if we want to reflect a truly global picture of the world news, we simply have to use the news agencies from non-Anglophone countries as sources for determining notability as well. GreyHood ^Talk 13:49, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

For me, the purpose of ITN is the following:

Highlight good Wikipedia articles relevant to current events in order to increase their viewership
For people who want more information about a current event, provide an easy to locate the corresponding article (this can sometimes be really difficult without ITN; for example, to find the article about the first flight of Boeing's new space plane, you need to know it's identification USA-212, which most people don't).

Regarding Greyhood's concern of too slow updating, I agree in part. It should be updated more often, but that should not lead to more minor accidents and deaths to be posted. Sometimes the criteria for inclusion is ridiculous, like in science articles, where some people demand that the research has to be peer-reviewed first, although this section is In the News and not Headlines of Peer-Reviewed Science. This completely ridiculous criteria prevents good science items being posted while they are in the news, and when they get peer-reviewed, the media no longer cares. I think an item staying on ITN for a week is definitely too long. I would say 3-4 days would be best.

In my opinion the solution to the updating problem is to be more bold and post different or untraditional news more often. Let's say we have a good article about an author from Central African Republic, who is famous in his country but not known internationally. Then let's put it on ITN to highlight the good article. On the other hand, when a minor flight accident occurs (less than 5-10 people dead), and the article is just a stub, let's not post it - there's no reason to highlight a bad article if the news isn't major. Offliner (talk) 03:52, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We probably also need to stop being quite so anal about what gets posted, maybe we should actually post more stuff (like the Science above) rather than opposing it for not being important enough - and we should probably take the article's quality more into account, if we have a really good article on something pretty minor then we should post that. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 08:34, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Peer-review is an absolute requirement that we should not compromise on. The vast majority of genuine scientific advances are reported in the media at the same time as the peer-reviewed paper is released. There are two main exceptions: presentations given at scientific conferences, which are usually descriptions of ongoing and uncompleted work; and 'scientific' stories of the 'item X prevents cancer' type, which often turn out to be non-scientific studies funded by whoever makes item X. The requirement for peer review ensures that the science stories we post are indeed genuine science, conducted by competent scientists. If some sections of the (mostly tabloid) media ignore the need for genuine science to be peer reviewed, that doesn't mean we should follow suit. After all, those media also have an obsession with 'celebrities', talent shows and crime, which we don't consider appropriate either. I'm willing to entertain the need to be less harsh on some stories, but we already have enough items on sport and disasters, so should probably look elsewhere. Modest Genius ^talk 14:08, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If a reliable source like the BBC publishes science news story, then it's good enough for me, and it's good enough for ITN. Offliner (talk) 14:13, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Quite, the tabloids aren't treated as reliable sources by Wikipedia anyway. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 18:19, 6 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I for one do not consider BBC News to be a good source for science news. It's clearly a top quality august institution, but their science output is mostly recycled press releases. I'd rather rely on something like New Scientist, Nature News, or even the Guardian. But peer-review is still the gold standard for science stories. Modest Genius ^talk 02:45, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I held off on commenting because everyone who's been on ITN for a while knows what I'm going to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. Two problems have been discussed on this page recently: ITN isn't getting updated enough, and some of what we do put up links to poor articles. The reason for both of these things comes down to editors putting too much emphasis on a very academic idea of "importance" rather than on the other ITN criteria. A national election has to go up because it's a national election, even if the article is crap, but a UK party-leadership election can't go up, even if it has a great article, because it's not a general election. Everyone recognizes that trivial items should not go up, but ITN should not be about deciding which events are the most important based on attempts to retrofit the news to logical standards. Instead, we should have a minimum level of importance, or non-triviality. Once an item meets that threshold, the key should be article quality, timeliness, reader interest and whatever else we consider to be ITN criteria. Any item that is important enough, for example, to go on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post at the same time should meet the ITN importance criterion. That doesn't mean it's necessarily appropriate for ITN, but it shouldn't be dismissed on that criterion alone. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:16, 8 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Prime example: the current South Sudan Independence Referendum. Extremely important event, fully fleshed out and well developed article, appearing in reliable sources and media all over the place, and it's being held off the page by rule-bound Wikipedians.

Hainan Eastern Ring Railway

So sorry if this post is in the wrong place. An editor suggested that the DYK just submitted might be appropriate here (instead). Anna Frodesiak (talk) 08:33, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Posted on the candidates page. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:43, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I'll remember that for next time. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:58, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

new ITN-only admins

the apst month weve ahd several 24-48 hour no updates on ITN. Would it be possible to nominate some ITN-only admins? that way the whole admin process is not needed and specialist ITN ediotrs can nominate someone who regularly features these edits.(Lihaas (talk) 01:23, 3 January 2011 (UTC)).[reply]

This idea has been brought up several times in the past couple of years, and I think it would be a great idea if it would help ITN flow more smoothly. --Plasma Twa 2 01:29, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There's no way we could sell it to the wider community, though, unfortunately. However, some form of protection that locks out almost everyone but allows a handful of non-admins to edit it might be possible, but it'll require a lot of discussion and developer intervention. The best option is to encourage good candidates to stand at WP:RFA. In the meantime, if there's an item with consensus and an update that I've missed, feel free to come and pester me on my talk page. I also have several admin talk page stalkers who might help out. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:37, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that there has been a serious lack of admins over the past two weeks, and at other times throughout the year. It's not just ITN, but WP:ERRORS has had very slow response times, with items often rotating off before an admin passed through. I thought RFA had been very hostile to people coming in and saying they only wanted to work on one area (eg ITN)? That's certainly been a large reason why I haven't run. Back on topic, there's no way a whole new set of user permissions or protection levels are going to be implemented just for ITN's convenience. Modest Genius ^talk 02:40, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

also the WP:Whitelist (its somethign ive looked and trying to answer here adn there that is notoriously slow with just 1 admin regularly monitoring). Isnt it possible (theoritcally at least) to allow a [seudo-admin to handle? if thats affirmative i think we can discuss a candidcate here because this gets the itn regulars. (who are most versed int he specifics)(Lihaas (talk) 03:32, 3 January 2011 (UTC)).[reply]

Aside from the fact that splitting permissions is probably impossible in the Wikipedia political climate, I'm not sure it is even needed. A lot of items suggested simply do not gather the consensus necessary to post it, or are unsuitable to post due to content issues. Neither one of those can be addressed by a separate permissions package. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:56, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

i think affirming a specific criteria is easy. to keep admin pov off we can also agree that anythign with a majority support after say 24 hours (and majority beign reasoning other that "support"/"support per nom") should be listed regardless of what the admin thinks. that is ultra-neutral to me.

(sure we get pissed our isses are not on, but it seems the most neutral even itn/r issues woudl then eed that)(Lihaas (talk) 04:24, 3 January 2011 (UTC)).[reply]

Well, one of the problems with new items in the recent days was that there were no items with enough support or they were not ready. Otherwise, if no itn admin is around and something needs to be posted, one can always ask for assistance at WP:AN that is monitored more frequently. --Tone 08:04, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One way is to allow trustworthy non-admins (like rollbackers) to edit protected pages. –HTD (ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens.) 14:37, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Which, again, would require software modifications (the addition of a new protection level), and which would require broad consensus for developers to consider implementing it. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 21:50, 4 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

we're back, 28 hours...

Wouldnt it be possible to have specific-admins. much like this reviewer/rollbacker, or one of those things i think that i am.(Lihaas (talk) 19:29, 5 January 2011 (UTC)).[reply]

So, if you could post, which article would you post right now? The current candidates all have received objections of some sort. It's not because admins aren't watching the page, but more because admins don't want to post something that has no consensus. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 19:49, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Lihaas' proposal to post anything with "majority support" within 24 hours is exactly why editing the main page should be reserved for those who can demonstrate to the community the ability to judge consensus. And of course it's completely impossible from a technical standpoint so there's no point considering it. It's early January. It's a slow news time of the year. So ITN moving slowly shouldn't concern us. --Mkativerata (talk) 19:33, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ive also previously said on the nom page that "blind support" shouldnt eman a thing (unfortunately it does). its been said that supprots/opposes need a reason. and with that then a reasonable level should be accepted. the main pont being that more ITN-specific admins (or any other specialiraty) should be made.Lihaas (talk) 19:29, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

2010 Côte d'Ivoire crisis

2010 Côte d'Ivoire crisis is of sufficient global importance to be 'in the news'. Might I suggest

Laurent Gbagbo remains in charge of the army during the 2010 Côte d'Ivoire crisis.

Wizzy…☎ 08:01, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

To nominate an item, go to WP:ITN/C. Spencer^T♦C 21:27, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

ITN review

like dyk, i think we should/could have at least "reviewers" if not admins (then any online admin could be called to post). This means all those who nominate musst review another nomination for its acceptability to ITN. we can then develop some base criteria for review. See the DYK nom page's yellow banner on the top(Lihaas (talk) 19:33, 6 January 2011 (UTC)).[reply]

Uh, I get your idea but I guess the DYK team decided to work like this because of the heavy backlog and because there are tens of nominations per day. Here, rarely have more than 5 nominations per day and they are easily checked by anyone who is monitoring the page. Also, DYK has other requirements, if the article is long enough and referenced and with no other issues, then it can go on the Main page. On ITN, we still need some agreement about what to post. Or are you concerned about the occasional lack of admins to post items with sufficient support? --Tone 19:45, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

i think it might be interesting to have trustworthy people here who can sorta pick and create a final blurb and have it ready for admin to post. then create a section above on ITN/C for pending blurbs that any admin can come in and post (even those who never come to ITN/C). credits or whatever can be taken care off when a regular admin comes along. the point anyways is to get more items through and not to worry about clock and credits. -- Ashish -g55 19:59, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly support suggesting a blurb early in the nomination, this makes it much easier for the posting admin (at least, in my case, it is sometimes time consuming to read all the discussion, consider all important aspects and form a good blurb that is accurate, grammatically spotless and short.) --Tone 20:09, 6 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Im not saying we bypass voting. Just saying one of the reviewers see if the section/article is adequate to ITN and then a blurb, etc. Which should be the prerequisite to postine.(Lihaas (talk) 05:19, 7 January 2011 (UTC)).[reply]