Wikipedia talk:In the news

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Time to close ITN?

It's been six days since we've had a new story. We have at least two stories updated and with 60% or more support after two or more days discussion. Both should be posted. μηδείς (talk) 04:36, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's definitely time to stop counting votes, and to look at quality of argument. It's also time to do something about our systemic bias so that items from outside the exclusive interest areas of the majority of our editors get some proper attention. HiLo48 (talk) 04:44, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, and a slow news period, period. We don't post stories based on vote counts, I agree the practice of encouraging it/demanding it should stop. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:09, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see where Medeis called for vote counting; they said that two stories with significant support should be posted, not that a story that has 7 votes for and 6 against posting (as an example) should be posted. No admins have made any statements that the support those stories have is invalid or otherwise a poor argument. 331dot (talk) 10:34, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

7 for and 6 against is mathematically 54%, not far off 60% you'll find. I guess "8 for and 6 against" would be fine then? Or 9/6? Or should we leave it to someone capable (and responsible for) assessing consensus? The practice of declaring a "consensus" based on a mathematical assessment of vote counting and proportioning, and marking as ready should be stopped, and consensus based on argument left to admins to decide. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:44, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Vote counts should mean nothing. All that should matter is the quality of argument. Fifty shallow votes saying "I don't like it" should be able to be overridden by one decent, rational, coherent, positive argument. HiLo48 (talk) 10:52, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And who decides what an "IDONTLIKEIT" is? Unless that's what the person expressing their view states, most people don't feel their argument is that. To TRM, the exact math isn't really relevant to what I am saying, which is that if a nomination is evaluated and the arguments in support(even if more of them) are weak, I don't often see anyone stating that. Now and then I see an admin point out quality issues with an article that prevent posting, but not with supporting arguments even if there is more of them. If there is a reason not to post a supported nomination, someone should say what it is. 331dot (talk) 11:07, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You brought the math into it, "significant support" and "not a story that has 7 votes for and 6 against" are only 6% different.... Anyway, very few admins will make comments on votes unless the article they're relevant to is being considered for posting. In the meantime, the vote counting and statistical analysis is quite unnecessary and actually distracting from the business of assessing consensus based on quality argument. As I said, it should be left to admins to determine whether an article is ready. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:10, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think closing it may be too drastic, but it's definitely in need of a major revision or even a relaunch. Hot Stop 04:47, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Relaunch sounds good: how about an ITN that is focused on educational value, rather than replicating popular media? That is instead of only focusing on #1 of Wikipedia:In the news#Purpose let's consider seriously #3. --ELEKHH^T 10:12, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You know, what I can't find in that list is:

To be a persistent reminder and public display of our systemic bias. HiLo48 (talk) 10:17, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Mind you, educational value would at least relieve us of a good half of the detritus clogging up ITN/R that we continually battle to remove. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:19, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Generally what is "educational" and what is "in the news" determine by mainstream media will be at odds with each other. ITN's purpose should be to 1) feature articles that have a solid written base already so that readers can learn more from them and help to improve them (like all front page matters) irrespective of subject, and 2) are presently predominately featured in mainstream news sources. The problem with ITN now is that #2 tends to take precedence over #1, trying to push breaking news over article quality. --MASEM (t) 14:51, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've never really participated here and am not really familiar with the ITN process, but I have to say it has seemed particularly poorly managed lately. It seems like the same items and images linger for days on end, the Ukraine story in particular is a good example. Russia is being accused of launching an invasion of the Crimea and for some reason that doesn't make it to the main page, we just get to see an old item on the subject and the only mention of Russia is about he Olympics that ended a week ago. That's not because of a slow news cycle, it's because something isn't working right behind the scenes here. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:10, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's a poor example. There are various issues with ITN, but one of them isn't its failure to post about things that haven't happened yet. Formerip (talk) 17:52, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Or that are widely speculated but not strongly confirmed. --MASEM (t) 17:53, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Vote counts and so forth are irrelevant to my concern, which is solely that we haven't posted a new story for an entire week now. The only item that isn't stale at this point is the Ukraine. One or two of the stories with lesser support should get published, rather than leaving up stale stories so we aren't embarrassed by the blank space. μηδείς (talk) 18:05, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If news doesn't happen, it's not our place to create it. If ITN is empty because the world was at peace for a whole week, that's just fine. It's better than trying to say "we don't have fresh stories, lets promote something to a full story that would otherwise never be accepted." --MASEM (t) 18:28, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There's no absolute criterion for what counts as news. There is and has to be a judgment of relative newsworthiness. It's one thing to be opposed to the relative merits of a story, it's something altogether invalid to say we are making the story up. μηδείς (talk) 18:44, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, as soon as you make it relative to how much ITN is sporting at the moment, then you are going to have lots and lots of problems in the future. We should not be posting ITN stories on slow news days that would never be considered on busy ones. (When real news channels hit slow news days, you can see how the quality of reporting breaks down). The "importance" line has to be constant at all times. --MASEM (t) 18:46, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Medeis - Plenty of news has happened. If some of the events had been in the US they would have been nominated and posted. The ones I'm interested in weren't in the US, so I don't bother nominating them any more. HiLo48 (talk) 20:26, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't nominate something, it has zero chance of being posted and you have zero chance of making any sort of systemic bias argument. Instead of using systemic bias to tear other stories down, it should be used to promote stories for posting. 331dot (talk) 21:03, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think you'll be destroyed for that comment. HiLo48 has made a number of nominations, most of which have been overlooked as they're not US-centric. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:07, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't seen one from them in a little while, though I don't follow their every move. HiLo also just said that I don't bother nominating them anymore". Thanks for your opinion, but if HiLo want to "destroy" me for their own words, well, they can say what they wish. I think I've said that(my original words) to them before. I don't think a Spanish Guitarist, Czech Holocaust survivor, a UN report on North Korea, a Hero of the USSR, a new government in Lebanon are US-centric. There is room for a lot of improvement, but we haven't done a terrible job in posting a geograpically-wide spectrum of stories. 331dot (talk) 21:58, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, I never suggested that HiLo48 would be doing the destroying, just that it's been pretty obvious that several items he's nominated have been given short shrift by the systemic-bias-brigrade. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:03, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Then I apologize for what I said to you. 331dot (talk) 22:20, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Glad to see that we'll not be seeing any further vote counting, let's leave it to the many admins here who are charged with such a thing as determining consensus. In the meantime, as the world is reasonably newsless, so much the better as very little news is ever good. Mind you, the next up will be a mass knife slaughter in China, so normal service will be resumed, hopefully without the premature "consensus assessments". The Rambling Man (talk) 21:01, 1 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Update recommendations and vote counting

Just a quick note to remind everyone that we have "recommendations" here for update criteria, for both ITN and RD, and we have no "requirements", there's no "policy". Continually and incorrectly quoting such things should be strongly discouraged in editors and admins alike. We don't promote based on a % support or number of supports, nor is there any policy-based requirement before anything can be posted to ITN. We have (some) competent admins left who can judge whether items should be added to the main page. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:33, 2 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How about putting a link on the Main Page?

Alot of these problems (no one updates, not enough !votes, not enough nominations, too few topics) are caused by too few people. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 14:53, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Great idea! HiLo48 (talk) 15:47, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, as DYK has "Nominate an article" for example. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:51, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a good idea to me which might get us some more users. 331dot (talk) 15:52, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I can't believe no one has thought of this before. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:27, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. Mohamed CJ (talk) 17:31, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I support the idea too, at least on a trial basis. I should point at that this has been discussed before, but I was never convinced by the rationales cited in opposition. Hot Stop talk-contribs 19:00, 6 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to agree with this too. I recall that, when I first started noticing interesting stuff on ITN and wondered how it worked, I couldn't find the candidates page at first (not really being very familiar with the behind-the-scenes side of Wikipedia at that time). Neljack (talk) 07:34, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I fully agree with this proposal. I also second the suggestion from The Rambling Man above, and see no real reason why the "Nominate an article" text couldn't be used as a call to action, placed to the right of the link to the current events portal. Pedro : Chat 15:24, 7 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As I commented when this was proposed previously, DYK's outward appearance doesn't tend to trigger assumptions about the underlying selection criteria, so users have no choice but to familiarize themselves with the process before taking part. Conversely, ITN is commonly mistaken for a simple news ticker. So if we send the main page's visitors directly to ITN/C, we can expect the page to be flooded with inappropriate nominations by editors whose resultant disappointment discourages further participation in the project.

I would support the addition of a link to a newcomer-friendly introduction page (focusing on both the nomination process and the article creation/improvements on which it relies). —David Levy 14:54, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

DYK has its introduction on its nominations page, much like we have some information on our page; perhaps instead of a separate page we could better define what we want on ITNC. 331dot (talk) 15:30, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Of course we can start with More current events – Nominate If a bold and more obvious word like More current events – Nominations or even More current events – Suggest a headline would increase awareness of where they nominate too much then we can't make them unknow it. (Maybe we'd even get troll/real ultranationalist/racist noms/comments) If it looks like one of those purge your cache things then people who overlook things and the less interested/curious will be less likely to enter. Also, I think seeing a big, inviting Nominations/Suggest a headline makes ITN look like it was put together and voted by a bunch of random people on the Internet, even though the process is higher quality than that. The way it is now makes it look authoritative. If you overlook the fact that the "news" is sometimes really old and systemically biased) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:23, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Excellent suggestion. I also like the idea of a Main page link to an ITN page that is newcomer-friendly, and that makes it easy for first-time editors to participate at whatever level they would like. It would be helpful to explain both the process (from nomination, !voting, article improvement, "ready" and posting stages) and the established etiquette here. Jus da fax 18:33, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the way to improve participation is to not berate people who read and comment on articles, to not call them stupid, to not accuse them of making up rules or pushing an agenda, not calling them "jeering spectators", not suggesting that they didn't read the article if they disagree with it's notability, to not suggest that they're not helping to improve the project, to not put up walls of text and to not wikistalk them around the project. Just a suggestion... --76.110.201.132 (talk) 23:34, 17 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any point...

...in me nominating Roy Higgins for RD?

He was probably Australia's greatest ever jockey, but that's nearing the limit of my knowledge. And his article is crap.

I have little interest in horse racing, apart from on the first Tuesday in November when every Australian becomes an expert, so I'm in no position to fix the article.

A reminder. This isn't about me. It's about posting the right items and getting our balance right. HiLo48 (talk) 07:48, 9 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I would say the article is "crap", but it does need a little help; I don't know too many jockeys from anywhere who are an MBE and he is in a Hall of Fame, so he would seem to meet DC#2. 331dot (talk) 08:41, 9 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Chiquita item needs evaluated

The Chiquita item needs evaluated. It appears to have consensus and has been improved since first nominated. If it is lacking in either way, an explanation would be nice, but most likely it has simply been overlooked due to the slowness of the article work. Thanks --ThaddeusB (talk) 01:00, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks to Bongwarrior for taking care of this. --ThaddeusB (talk) 13:57, 14 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]