Wikipedia talk:In the news/Archive 28

Future Events

I support BorgQueen's move. But could we transcluse the 2009 page and the 2010 into the original?  Cargoking  talk  15:09, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

 Done.  Cargoking  talk  18:26, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Windows 7

The release of a consumer product is worthy of ITN? Really? I know it's a fairly important consumer product, but still. Not only does it not at all seem notable, but it almost reads like advertising. ^IIIV_IX (Talk) 06:43, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Seems fine, it's the next generation of a product that 90% of all Internet users operate. Covered by an enormous number of media outlets. It's very notable. RxS (talk) 16:27, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

According to the current criteria, it seems to fit, however I am of the opinion that product releases should not be in ITN. Much of the media generated is a function of the marketing department, more than the actual underlying importance of the event itself. I think it is a discrepency in the interpretation of "importance" that is at hand. One forgets that many news outlets simply pull aticles in from a single source, such as AP or Thomson-Reuters, so "international importance" can be readily achieved for events that are not that important in a historical context. Same-sex marriage in a church, the discovery of a new dinosaur, a constitutional crisis and a suicide bombing are more actually important events (I did leave out the grand prix, but lets not open that can of worms ;) ) User A1 (talk) 00:47, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

The prorogation of a monopoly certainly is not fine. Nick carson (talk) 07:13, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Scientology

A blurb about the Church of Scientology being convicted of fraud in France has gone up on the main page and I can't seem to find any discussion on the candidates page for it. Has it been bypassed? - Dumelow (talk) 23:13, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I assume the editor who added it is not familiar with how ITN works, but I see no reason to argue with it. Scientology is a (somewhat) major religion, and a religion being commited of fraud seems to be rather important. --PlasmaTwa2 23:18, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't find any discussion either, so I've removed it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 23:20, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

There should be some sort of warning (hidden message or editnotice) on the template (i.e. Before posting a news item, please gain consensus at WP:ITN/C).  Cargoking  talk  09:27, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

You mean, something like this? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:36, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

Does that appear to admins? I only see an annoying notice telling me I am not worthy.  Cargoking  talk  09:19, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

It looks normal to me when I log out. J.delanoy^gabs_adds 15:39, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Which looks normal... the ITN editnotice? I don't get that in either Safari or Firefox. Are you using IE?  Cargoking  talk  15:44, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Are you kidding Plasma? Scientology is not even a recognized religion in most countries - it's a business. And describing it as 'major' is a bit of a push. Its members are mostly celebrities looking for more fame and with money to waste. Thankfully, because of its history of abuse and secrecy it is banned in some places and should be everywhere.--217.203.156.244 (talk) 23:16, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Well said. Nick carson (talk) 07:15, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Car bomb

Why are you giving this attention I'm sure it already has enough. This sort of thing happens for attention, who ever put that on the main page should be locked up and castrated. AJUK ^Talk!! 21:58, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

wow -- Ashish-g55 17:53, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Please refer your comment to the suitable admin, who can be seen here.  Cargoking  talk  21:20, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

The President of Tunisia can be seen there... --candle•wicke 22:01, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Well it agreed with General criteria , also we had a discussion about it at [1]. No items goes on main page without a discussion. So I think you should had discuss it there.--yousaf465' 01:53, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

Gubernatorial elections are important!

I don't know why I keep butting my head against the wall, but it really bothers me that somehow we've developed this standard whereby a dispute involving Fiji gets approval to go up, on the grounds that it's "international," but important gubernatorial elections in the United States are laughed at on the grounds that they're "local." This despite the fact that the Fiji thing has 618 Google News hits and the U.S. elections more than 7,000. This is another example of ITN's ridiculous attempt to try to make the news fit mathematics-style logic rather than to try to judge news value the way any publication does anywhere.

We have an article on news value, but it really comes down to two elements. One is How many people in our audience care, and how much do they care? The other is Is this important -- that is, how widespread and how intense are its effects?

Whether a news event is "international," "national" or "local" (governor elections are really "state," not "local," but whatever) doesn't, in and of itself, have any impact on news value. Or rather, the fact that an event is "international" doesn't automatically give it more news value than a non-international event. If Togo and Benin have a dispute over harmonization of underwater-basketweaving regulations, it isn't a bigger news event than the assassination of the premier of Quebec. Why? Because more people care in our audience care about the latter, and because it will have more of an impact on their world. Period. News events must be judged on a case-by-case basis, using the news-value criteria explained above. No publication in the world uses fixed "rules" of the sort that "All events of type X are bigger than all events of type Y." If one did, it would be out of business quickly, replaced by a publication that looks at news on a case-by-case basis to print prints what its audience actually wants to read.

Note that I'm not particularly against the inclusion of the Fiji thing. I kind of like how ITN sometimes has quirky, obscure items that the major media miss. But it should also include the major items in the news in major media in the countries that provide most users of the English Wikipedia.

Now let's look at the reasons why the U.S. election news should have been included:

1) States are important. This is no mere "local" election. States in the U.S. are very powerful. Most of the laws that affect Americans' lives are made at the state or local level, and the vast majority of Americans' interactions with government take place at the state or local level. (And local governments are just creatures of the states.) It's not a perfect comparison, but in many ways states are the U.S. equivalent to individual EU countries, where the EU is similar to the U.S. federal government. In fact, in some areas states have even more power vis-a-vis the U.S. federal government than EU members have vis-a-vis the EU. Should we therefore declare national elections in, say, the UK to be "local" and therefore unsuitable for ITN?

2) A lot of people live in Virginia and New Jersey. The population of New Jersey is 8.7 million, and that of Virginia 7.8 million. The population of Fiji is 849,000. True, a lot of people live in Australia, but I can't imagine the Fiji thing is as much on the minds of Australians as the elections are on the minds of Virginians and whatever you call people from New Jersey.

3) This is a national news story. Had any of the naysayers bothered to see how the story was being played in the media, they would have seen that the three races mentioned -- the two governor elections and the New York State Congressional race -- were considered bellwethers for the national political pulse. A lot of effort was put into the races by both parties, and President Obama invested some of his personal capital in the losing governor candidates. Republican victories in the two major statewide races has "energized" the party, according to the New York Times, and threatens the Democratic agenda on health-care reform and other major policy priorities. Thus, this isn't just a story for 16 million people -- it's a story for 300 million people.

4) This is the English-language Wikipedia. With the U.S. accounting for two-thirds of native English speakers, and, being a wealthy country, having a high percentage of Internet users, it is probably safe to assume that roughly half or more of Wikipedia users are American. While American news should not dominate ITN, there should be a healthy amount of American news on ITN to attract the interest of that half of our audience. An event of interest to up to half of Wikipedia's audience makes a better ITN item than an equivalent event in, say, China, which has four times the population of the U.S. but comparatively few English speakers and hardly any Wikipedia users. Therefore, a China news item should only be included if it is of interest to a lot of people outside China.

5) That it's not big news in your country is irrelevant. No news item is of interest to everyone. Sports news is of interest to sports fans, celebrity news is of interest to celebrity fans, politics news is of interest to politics fans, etc. If a publication were to avoid any news that much of its audience didn't care about, it would have to print nothing but blank pages! It works the same way with geography. Few news items are going to be major stories in the entire world. What all international media do is report some items of interest to country A, and some of interest to country B, some of interest to country C, etc. The Economist, for example, has a "United States" section, an "Americas" section, an "Asia" section, and so on. Think of it this way -- the Fiji news is of virtually no interest in my part of the world. Should I demand its removal on those grounds?

6) New Jersey gubernatorial election, 2009 is a decent article. Have we forgotten what ITN is for? It's to feature Wikipedia content about current events. The article on the New Jersey election is a good example of recently updated Wikipedia content. The Virginia article could use a little work, but it's not bad. On the other hand, there is no article about the Fiji thing, just three paragraphs in the Foreign relations of Fiji article.

I've read that open-source projects are often user-unfriendly because, without an economic incentive to listen to their audience, their creators write for themselves rather than their users. ITN has become a shining example of that phenomenon. It's sad, really, because ITN could really be an asset to Wikipedia if the people running it tried to follow the lead of the real media instead of creating their own rules for news value out of thin air. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:25, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

"creators write for themselves rather than their users", well a lot of creators write to stuff their naive readers full of ethnic/religious propaganda. Yes a lot of people are interested in the US because of its power, but most of this relates to foreign policy and trade etc. Do these state elections change much to do with the world? Will state governments nationalise other countries' holdings or let their forces loose on the rest of the world. Maybe because CA/NY are so big, if they do a unilateral ban on fossil fuels or something that would make a big difference, but the rest? YellowMonkey (bananabucket) (help the Invincibles Featured topic drive) 00:46, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Nah, this is the reason why they put off the British local elections several months back to avoid a similar U.S. story. –Howard the Duck 01:24, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

The Fort Hood shooting was posted though so the United States has an ITN. :) --candle•wicke 13:01, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Eh, if that didn't happen, the U.S. would have no ITN entries, unless you blame the Japanese for winning the World Series for an American team.

I'll try to answer the points:

1. U.S. is a federation and the EU is something else by itself. Although a few "local" political news (and by "local" I mean news below the first-level subdivision of a country) are posted, such as assassinations of local politicians, elections aren't one of them.
2. A lot of people live in <insert densely populated area here>. If this gets in, more than likely (more like 100% likely), a European event of the same magnitude would get in while an event say in Asia or Africa won't, either due to bad sourcing or nobody just cares about it.
3. Want an example of national news story? Same-sex marriages being approved by national legislatures. I don't think they'll allow state legislatures, though. (When you think about it, countries with federal governments are quite few in number, so perhaps we can make an exception, but that includes the U.S. so that's an uphill battle full of snow.)
4. The people at ITN want cosmopolitan outlook. And that means supressing enough Anglo-related news in favor of non-Anglo once.
5. Miley deleting her Twitter was big news, it even made it to the late night newscast. Even if Emma Watson and the guy who is Harry Potter had a goodbye to Twitter sex video we wouldn't have that.
6. Decent article. Yeah, this is the most compelling argument. We should be like WP:DYK and WP:FA(!!!) and base "promotion" solely by basis of quality, not by international standards which is impossible to quantify. If FAs can do that, I don't see why ITN won't. In fact, since ITN blurbs stay for at least a week we should drop the international shit and judge nominations solely by quality.

As for ITN writers writing for themselves, I don't. Now, I don't even list my ITN contributions at my userpage, but I do list by DYK, FL and GA ones. See #6 for the reason. –Howard the Duck 14:52, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

by above points ALL US items should be posted on ITN no matter what they are. ive said it many times, why dont we just replace ITN with some CNN ticker and be done with it. -- Ashish-g55 14:03, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Mwalcoff makes some valid points, but I don't agree that the items in question should have been included. While these elections are of nationwide interest, they aren't of international interest. Basically, they're one step removed from that. (They stand to affect the United States political landscape, and the resultant events might have an international impact, but it's a stretch to trace it back that far.)

It's true that the "U.S. is just one nation" argument (which, if taken to its extreme, implies that an event pertaining to Tuvalu and Nauru automatically is of greater significance than one pertaining to the United States alone) sometimes is unfairly (though not usually maliciously) applied. But I don't regard this as such a situation. Barring extraordinary circumstances (e.g. a political party establishing a majority or a country's first election of a female/minority to a particular level of office), I'm uncomfortable including sub-national election results in ITN.

For the record, I'm a lifelong New Jerseyan who voted in the 2009 New Jersey gubernatorial election. —David Levy 15:12, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

This "international ramifications" argument was also used in the Connecticut Senatorial elections a few years back (when Lieberman lost the Democratic primary but won under the "Connecticut for Lieberman" "party". Check out the archives there was a nice discussion back then. –Howard the Duck 15:25, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

If the Fort Hood shooting didn't happen, the U.S. would have no ITN entries... why should the U.S. (or any country, region, etc.) be guaranteed an entry at ITN 100% of the time? Another shooting happened in the U.S. today proving again that shootings are regular occurrences there (Category:2009 in the United States is full of shooting incidents). However, today a shooting also happened in Japan where these events are rare. As someone watching on it does appear as though shootings in the U.S. are no different than suicide bombs in Iraq in that they are reported on such a regular basis that I don't feel very much more shocked than usual to hear of them anymore. --candle•wicke 22:13, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

In my defense, it wasn't me who brought out the "U.S. now has an entry in the ITN" card. –Howard the Duck 14:36, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

To begin with, I think the whole "internationalness" criterion is misguided, for the reasons I set out above. No real-world publication has only news that is of interest to everyone. They have a variety of news items that are each of interest to different people. As I've said a bunch of times before, ITN as a whole should be international, but not individual items. This is how "On This Day" does it, and I think OTD does a heck of a job. But even if we are to accept the "international interest" criterion, how should we interpret it? I think that it should mean that when we assess an item's level of interest, we should use the entire world as a gauge, not that items should simply be of interest to more than one country. If we are to interpret as simply "more than one country," than, as David points out above, a moderate flood affecting Estonia and Latvia would have precedence over Hurricane Katrina! If we accept my interpretation of "international," the prioritization of the Fiji thing or the Cambodia-Thailand dispute and exclusion of the U.S. elections doesn't seem to fly. Although there's probably not a whole lot of interest in either, I'd be willing to bet there is more interest in London and Cape Town in the U.S. elections than in the Cambodia-Thailand dispute. Just do a Google News search on /New Jersey elections site:*.uk/ and you'll see stories in every major U.K. news source on the U.S. elections and their ramifications. The Southeast Asian dispute doesn't get nearly as much attention in the British press. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 05:58, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

You speak the truth about the lack of attention in the British press but I find it quite interesting to learn about these disputes (probably because they don't feature very much in European or, it seems, North American media). I think that Cambodia-Thailand and Australia-Fiji-New Zealand are relevant. They certainly aren't Estonia and Latvia in either their size or location. So ITN should just follow what the US or UK press is doing? --candle•wicke 06:45, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

As I said above, I'm not necessarily against having some of these obscure items in ITN, provided that we also have the things that most Wikipedia readers actually care about. And yes, I think the best way to judge that is to follow the lead of the major media in the English-speaking world, especially in the U.S. and the U.K. That way we would be using "reliable sources" to determine what is "in the news" rather than making up our own determinants of news value. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 11:56, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

War in Afghanistan

I was wondering if a page had been created for the shootings in Helmand Province, where a police officer killed six British troops. If not, is it notable and what should the page be called? It would certainly be a candidate for ITN if it is deemed notable. 03md 01:09, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

You mean this? Perhaps Helmand province campaign may help? --candle•wicke 01:24, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Scandinavia map

The map on today's In the News continues a tradition of misunderstanding regarding the term "Scandinavia". Scandinavia includes just three countries (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), not Finland, as the map portrays. While many people mistakenly believe that Finland is Scandinavian, it's simply not correct, and this image makes us look unencylopedic. Can someone replace it? Unschool 18:42, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

It seems that usage of the term Scandinavia is not always strictly defined. Please see Scandinavia#Finland. --BorgQueen (talk) 18:52, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I'm quite cognizant of the loose usage of the term. But since those who are well-educated on the matter recognize that this is a loose construct; our completely unnecessary display of the term makes it appear that we know no better. Absolutely nothing would be lost by using a map that left the term "Scandinvia" out altogether, and nothing is gained by using the map that we have now. Why would it be a big deal to use a different map that left out the term and thereby satisfied both the erudite and the vulgar? (My hyperbole is intentional; no offense is intended.) Anyway, as I said in my original post on this matter, this is not the end of the world, it was just an observation. I'm not going to burn any more energy on the matter. Cheers. Unschool 19:27, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

It'd probably be best to exclude Finland from the definition. Nick carson (talk) 06:43, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman

I've removed the article Assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman from the ITN template, as it has three clean up tags. Regards, —Ed (talk • majestic titan) 22:56, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Increased rotation

Is it feasible and desirable to impose a limit on the amount of time individual items can stay up on ITN?

Any particular item, once it appears on the Main Page, can remain on ITN for no longer than 48 hours. Why 48 hours, you may ask? Well, because 24 hours seems too be too little time, especially when we consider the fact that not everyone checks for news the same day it happens.

If a major development occurs, then the item can remain on ITN longer than approximately 48 hours, but the hook should be updated. While the determination of what constitutes a "major" development would be subjective, I think that editors would be able to agree in most cases. For example, an increase in the death toll due to rioting from 100 to 120 would not be significant enough to necessitate an extension of the hook, though it definitely calls for an update. The resignation of a head of governemnt as a result of said rioting could be significant enough, depending on the circumstances.

This approach has several positive outcomes rooted in the fact that faster rotation of items would mean that more articles are featured on ITN. As a result:

1. Readers would be exposed to more items and articles;
2. Editors would be encouraged to update or create more articles;
3. We would be able to make our standards for what is and is not ITN-worthy slightly more inclusive, which would encourage editors to update or create more articles.

The biggest challenge that comes to my mind is that this approach would require more maintenance of ITN. The template would have to be updated more frequently, more items and hooks would need to be checked, and so on.

Is this desirable? Is this feasible (especially considering the discussion here)? –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 07:25, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

This idea is nice and all but there is a problem. Simply, we don't have enough people working on ITN articles to enable such a fast rotation. Besides, sometimes we don't even have enough stories that meet the guidelines. We would need to modify the guidelines first and this has proved tricky in every recent attempt. If you have a good plan how to attract more people, it would be great ;-) --Tone 09:51, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I suppose that neither bribery nor blackmail are viable options? :-)

I knew that there was a shortage of editors working ITN, but not much more in terms of details, and I can't think of a way to attract more capable editors to ITN and guarantee that they will stay around for any significant length of time. A post at the Administrators' noticeboard (and some other talk pages or noticeboards) could help, but I've no idea whether it would have a lasting effect. –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 08:58, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I suppose it can be argued that it is desirable, but I am reasonably certain that it is not feasible. First of all, we simply do not have enough people to work on that many articles on a daily basis—we already have enough difficulty in updating a small group of selections. As you see, the articles have to be updated first and featured, not the other way around. Second, I tend to be an inclusionist like you, but whenever I nominate borderline items it is usually met with fierce oppositions, in fact even you objected to featuring the recent death of Samak Sundaravej, who was a former head of government, yourself. Not that I am trying to imply your objection was wrong, but your proposal makes me wonder what kind of current events items you have in mind, if we can manage to update so frequently. I don't think we have that many notable items that can pass our current criteria. Even if somehow we can agree on more relaxed criteria, Main Page is not the property of ITN regulars—there are other people watching over our shoulders, and I don't think many of us want to live with constant noxious complaints on Talk:Main Page or WP:ERRORS. --BorgQueen (talk) 10:11, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

My objection to featuring the death of Samak Sundaravej was based on my interpretation of the current standards. I'm not saying that Sundaravej's death would or should necessarily be featured under a different system, but if the rotation of ITN items increased, then I think it's likely that our standards would becomes less demanding, even if for no reason other than that we could be faced with a shortage of otherwise-decent articles.

I must admit that I had not fully considered the oversight/criticism/complaint component that you mention. Thanks, –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 09:04, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

(echo) Not enough proposals get consensus for this to be even possible. There needs to be a complete reform of the imo totally infeasible and subjective inclusion criteria first. MickMacNee (talk) 16:00, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

I assume you are referring primarily to the "significance" criterion... My hope was that imposing a need for a higher quantity of articles to be accepted would result in a slight loosening of inclusion standards, but I suppose that there is no guarantee it would actually happen. –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 09:08, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Thank you all for answering my questions and giving me quite a bit to think about. For the time being, I think I'll just casually observe how ITN works in order to get a better understanding myself. Cheers, –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 09:11, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:FOUR Award - straw poll

Editors are invivted to vote in this straw poll about whether the FOUR award should recognise qualifying ITN contributors or not. MickMacNee (talk) 16:04, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

Unclear term in Indian Parliament story

That story currently reads "Leaked contents of a report on the destruction of the Babri Mosque cause a row in the Indian parliament." My question is, simply, what is a row? I've never heard of the term before, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. In addition, Row doesn't tell me anything relevant. I personally an appropriate article telling what this row is should be linked to.  AcroX  23:57, 25 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not the purpose of wikilinks to tell people the meanings of basic English words. If it was, every word on the main page would be linked to Wiktionary. Algebraist 00:08, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

After looking through Wikitonary, I discovered that row used in this way is considered unclear, and I've personally never encountered row used in such a way (and I bet I'm not the only one). Surely a higher-frequency word could have been used, like argument or controversy?  AcroX  00:23, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Link to Article or News Stories

Many excerpts in ITN don't include links to a longer article about the actual event. Why? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Quantumelfmage (talk • contribs) 03:33, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Could you refer to a specific item? An example would help me understand your question better. Thanks, Spencer^{T♦Nominate!} 20:01, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Blurbs lacking adequate context

In two recent items the blurb has been put up with what in my judgment is an inadequate contextual description,[2] or the blurb was altered after it was first put up to remove such needed context.[3]

The first case is the so-called Climategate. That blurb read: "Unidentified hackers steal and publish more than 1,000 private e-mails and 2,000 documents on climate change research, from a server at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. "

The second case was the Dubai World liquidity crisis (currently up). It originally read: "The investment company Dubai World, owned by the Dubai government, asks creditors for a six-month moratorium on its US$59 billion debt, giving indication of problems with the state's finances. " This, however, was changed to: "The investment company Dubai World, owned by the Dubai government, asks creditors for a six-month moratorium on its US$59-billion debt. " The edit summary given by Tariqabjotu was "last part of sentence (sounds like editorializing, redundant, avoids the state/emirate/country confusion), grammar)". I would like to point out that the editorializing issue had already been evaluated by BorgQueen in the nomination discussion where she wrote "...I wondered for a moment if "giving indication of problems with the state's finances" would be POV, but the fear it has caused on the market says otherwise. Your blurb does not show (to a layperson) why the moratorium is particularly significant."

I'm conflating these two cases and presenting them here in order to raise our attention about the problem we see here. On the one hand we don't want to get entangled in presenting one side of a potential POV issue, but being overly cautious we divest our news item of meaning to the reader who is not already familiar with the principles involved and rendering them bewildered as to why this is considered important news. __meco (talk) 10:17, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

"I would like to point out that the editorializing issue had already been evaluated by BorgQueen..." Okay. And? I disagreed with her. Obviously, this comes down to a matter of opinion, but I don't think the current blurb for the Dubai issue is any less informative than the original blurb. The blurb already says the company is owned by the government of Dubai, and it already says the amount of the debt is $59 billion, also known as a lot of money. That a government is requesting a moratorium on a debt that large should be significant as it is. But, if it's not clear enough, I think one of two components could improve the clarity: (a) state that it was the government of Dubai who made the request, making the connection to the government clearer or (b) state that Dubai World accounts for three quarters of the emirate's entire debt. However, I don't think the line "giving indication of problems with the [emirate]'s finances" adds anything to what is there now. Further, we should always let the facts speak for themselves. I understand the conclusion is not particularly far-fetched, and I doubt anyone will shout POV, but I think the message could come across in a more objective manner. -- tariqabjotu 12:53, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

I think that the alternatives you exemplify are good and that the original wording was not the best possible. Although the present minimal blurb does not leave much unsaid, I still think it would be preferrable to spell out the issue simply because the ability to conjecture is unevenly endowed upon our readership. And in the climategate case I still think omitting context is regrettable. __meco (talk) 13:13, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

You guys should've look first at P:CE since it is... right there. –Howard the Duck 16:06, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Huh? What are you talking about? -- tariqabjotu 17:55, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Those green boxes at WP:ITN/C... –Howard the Duck 18:37, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Ugh. Are you intentionally being stubborn, or do you think it's funny? I know what Portal:Current events is; it's just that "You guys should've look[ed] first at P:CE" is hardly a complete thought. If you're suggesting that we should have taken cues on what the portal said about this event -- namely "Dubai World, the state-owned real-estate and ports giant, asks for a moratorium on its 59 billion US dollars' in debt until at least May 30, 2010." -- then what you're suggesting is clearly a step back in informativeness. If what you're suggesting is something else entirely, then, forgive me, I can't read your mind. So, let's try again: what are you talking about? -- tariqabjotu 22:35, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Ugh. Do you have to be that retaliatory? The P:CE blurb I used for the SVG item came as perfectly fine. If you have an issue with the Dubai blurb, you should focus on that issue alone. –Howard the Duck 05:23, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

You're still not making any sense. What is SVG, and who mentioned it other than you? I did talk about the Dubai blurb, so what's the problem? Really... forget about it; I see this is heading nowhere. I already made my points, and I don't think the P:CE item on Dubai World is concise or more informative than what is currently there. -- tariqabjotu 18:31, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Howard the Duck is talking about the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines item. Obviously, his communication skills are not that good... --BorgQueen (talk) 18:36, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe it was a WP:Pointy post to explain why he thinks blurbs with inadequeate context is problematic? Nil Einne (talk) 09:41, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The LHC broke a world record.

Hope to see it on the front page soon. 66.65.141.221 (talk) 21:27, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:ITN/C is the place to make suggestions. --Tone 23:25, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Court orders wikipedia to disclose IP address

G & G v Wikimedia Foundation Inc (02 December 2009)

G & G v Wikimedia Foundation Inc [2009] EWHC 3148 (QB) (02 December 2009) The Applicants applied to the court for an order requiring the Respondent to disclose the IP address of a registered user of the website http://www.wikipedia.org/ ("Wikipedia"). The user in question had made an amendment to an article available on Wikipedia. At the end of the hearing the court made the order that the Respondent disclose the IP information. Ron Barker (talk) 10:50, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Sounds like something for Wikipedia Signpost rather than ITN. Especially as it was a default judgment where the Wikimedia Foundation were not formally represented. We have to treat Foundation issues with NPOV as well! Physchim62 (talk) 19:24, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Well put. Nick carson (talk) 07:25, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Archiving ITN/C

The below text is taken from User talk:Arsonal

Hi, I see you have taken on the archiving duties at ITN recently. I wanted to run an idea past you before suggesting it elsewhere. What if each day's candidates were on a separate page (e.g. Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/5 Dec 2009) and the last 7 days were automatically transcluded, using parser functions, on Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates. That would avoid the need for archiving and it would also leave the history of the page intact. It might also make it easier to create new days because we can use preload templates, etc. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:58, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

It might be worth the effort as that would definitely simplify things. I'm not sure if there are any guidelines to archive management, but if having an individual page for each day does not affect current functionality, I don't see why not. I'm a bit new to ITN, so you may also want to get the opinion of Cargoking who was doing it for a bit longer before me. He may be able to raise some points I'm not thinking about. Arsonal (talk) 13:58, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I have pinged him - hopefully he'll give his opinion. The only difference in functionality would be that each new comment would not show up on people's watchlists as they would be on separate pages. Indeed there would rarely be a need to edit the main candidates page. I don't think this would be a problem though. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:38, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I was just thinking of doing this myself a few days ago. I have moved this conversation to Wikipedia talk:In the news. I would very much approve of this idea.  Cargoking  talk  17:10, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

The below text not taken from User talk:Arsonal

I haven't thought of a reaction to this yet but it is almost a new year so 1 January seems like a good time to begin something new (if it is approved). --candle•wicke 17:39, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I've put some possible code on Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/sandbox. It uses Template:ITN candidates which was started by Pharos in May 2008 but not currently used. I've modified it so that the appearance matches what we are familiar with today. The beauty is that all the daily headings and translusions of Portal:Current events is done automagically. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:24, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

(I was directed here by a message left on my talk page by User:Cargoking) This sounds like a sensible suggestion to me, though slightly confusing for newcomers who hit the edit button (a similar problem exists with the current WP:ERRORS setup). The new pages could even be generated automatically with a bot. Sounds like we should go ahead and give it a go - the worst that happens is we revert WP:ITN/C to before the changes and carry on as before. Modest Genius ^talk 18:36, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I like Martin's sandbox. One question though, where's the archive?  Cargoking  talk  18:44, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

After thinking about the ptoposal, I'm leaning towards oppose. First, I'm not sure if anything is broken and if the change is merited. I'm not saying changes are bad, I'm open to them, but I'm not sure if it's necessary in this case. Second, I have ITN watchlisted and use this to see when new items are nominated, or when items are commented on, supported, or opposed. The multiple pages would interfere with this. Third, sometimes the same item is nominated under different dates twice, and the multiple pages would only increase confusion and make fixing of this a little more difficult. Fourth, sometimes items remain on ITN for longer than 7 days and still require an active candidates page so possible late wording changes can be made. If a page was archived, then comments and suggestions about existing items would be difficult if not possible if an arbitrary time was set for archival. And sometimes, with the different length of the Main Page, some items that have aged off are sometimes returned. Thanks, Spencer^{T♦Nominate!} 19:57, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Spencer. If it's not broke, why fix it? --PlasmaTwa2 21:23, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Generally, the idea is good since it makes things more organized. On the other hand, several subpages make it impossible to follow the development of the debate on the watchlist (what I do mostly and think would be a pity to lose). The problem with arhiving old debates could be easily solved using a bot that archives debates that have been inactive for a certain period of time. Maybe we should try that first. --Tone 22:56, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Can the bot move subpages? Can we have Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/Today created daily at midnight UTC, and moved to [[Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/<Insert yesterday's date>]] 24 hours later? Would this help keep discussions on watchlists? --PFHLai (talk) 07:02, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Can't advise on any of the technical aspects but I have to say that having the last seven days on one page seems to be far more convenient for ITN contributers than having separate pages. Normally, items are being discussed at least a day later anyway.--Johnsemlak (talk) 07:54, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

It seems like if this is imposed, ITN/C will be like Portal:Current events.  Cargoking  talk  12:37, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

I do prefer the way P:CE is set up though. When I first came on board ITN, I thought clicking the button that creates a new day would do the same in ITN/C. I realized later that is not the case. I've also noticed during archiving that oftentimes people don't add the new day to ITN/C when it has already been added for several hours to P:CE. Arsonal (talk) 08:58, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I have no real opinion on the proposed changes to the archive system but I would definitely prefer to be able to keep the candidates page watchlisted - Dumelow (talk) 14:13, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

There would be no need for bot archiving -- just leave the subpages in place, and there's your archive; just like POTD and TFA. If there's support for having more than 7 days worth transcluded on ITN/C, that can very easily be extended to 10 or 14 or whatever. Is the watchlist really that useful for such a frequently-edited page? Modest Genius ^talk 03:35, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I can't speak for others, but I find it helpful in seeing if there has been a new item nominated, or if a nominated item has been commented on. Spencer^{T♦Nominate!} 23:29, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Well I'm leaning towards support, the issue of debate spanning more than one day can be solved by linking to the previous day. This proposal will make it easy to search for a particular debate. Well this proposal is still under discussion so it should be implemented after a consensus is reached, or else we can run a beta version parallel to the current arrangement. --yousaf465' 03:50, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I think we have enough support for a trial at least. Say two weeks? I don't have much time currently, so perhaps the new year would be a good idea as Candlewicke suggested. A few points:

• Unfortunately it is not possible to run the two systems "in parallel" because that would need everyone to make their comments twice! However I am confident that the transition can be done smoothly.
• I need to sort out something before any trail: currently the [edit] links do not work properly as they link to the template not the actual discussion page. I think I know how to fix this though.  Sorted this out now, I think.
• Regarding the concern about comments not appearing on the watchlist: this can probably be achieved using Special:RecentChangesLinked. I will look into it. Would Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/watchlist be useful?

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:25, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

This transition has now been made and all nominations and comments from 1 Jan 2010 are on separate subpages. I suggest we trial it for a couple of weeks and if there are reservations about it after that, then it should be reverted and we'll return to the discussion. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:58, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

From organizational point of view, the change is nice. However, from editorial point of view, I am still missing a mechanism to track recent changes. There are around 20 relevant stories opened at each time and span over several days. To see what comments have been added since my last check, I simply select the relevant time interval and the changes appear. Now, this is impossible and I have to scroll through all the debates and look for new comments. If this can be solved, I fully support the new system. Otherwise, I suggest we move back to the old one. (the Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/watchlist link is not working, that's why I am saying this). --Tone 15:58, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Oops. I don't really understand why it didn't work, but it's now fixed and Special:RecentChangesLinked/Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/watchlist should be working. Hope it's useful. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:20, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

My initial reaction is that I don't like it: all the same, I'm in favour of giving it a go. My main gripe is that, when I make a comment, I don't go back to WP:ITN/C: as Tone points out, we usually have active discussions going on over two or three days. I know it's only a click away, but still, that's one click for everyone in order to save a once-in-a-day cleanup routine. Physchim62 (talk) 16:42, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

• I don't like this at all. I think you should've waited before making the changes, and not done it retroactively. ~ DC (Talk|Edits) 17:42, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I liked it the way it was. —  Cargoking  talk  17:55, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

My initial reaction to the change is also negative. But maybe it will work out in the end. --candle•wicke 19:12, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

There might be an issue with the ease of archiving. When one edits ITN/C, they see {{ITN candidates|daysago=6}} instead of the actual transcluded subpages. It's not as easy to do a copy and paste archive. Another issue I just realized is that someone might edit a certain day's subpage and not realize that it is now in the archive and that people may no longer be looking at it. Arsonal (talk) 19:30, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Neither of those problems seem too hard to fix. The person who archives could just move everything that says 7+ days ago to solve the first one. As for the second, we could use archive templates (like the ones used at AFD). ~ DC (Talk|Edits) 19:33, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

I certainly wouldn't want to try to force this upon people if they don't like it, particularly those who do most of the work for ITN. However I would still recommend giving it a proper trial before deciding whether to ditch or keep it. It seems possible that the new system is just different rather than worse the system we are used to. I am a bit confused about this talk of "archiving". One of the main advantages of this system is that it is not necessary to cut-and-paste into an archive! The nominations should stay exactly where they are, and it's easy to find the day you are looking for. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:44, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

The new watchlist link is now working well. Still, it's not possible to show all the changes at the same time but better than with no diffs. The problem, as identified before, is that debates older than 6 days are not displayed although discussions may still be ongoing. But let's wait until the trial period ends. End on January? --Tone 18:14, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

ahh ive been gone for a while. so i was all confused why my watchlist isnt working. ya i dont like this either. cant see the changes... i dont wanna open ITN/C everytime to see if there are any new developments or make new watchlists every day (if there is a better way please tell me). -- Ashish-g55 19:56, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Not going back to WP:ITN/C after an edit is rather annoying, but that's my only complaint atm. Lets run with it for a couple of weeks and see how it works out. Modest Genius ^talk 21:45, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Equatorial Guinean presidential election, 2009

Could we change the in the news blurb for this article to "Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo (pictured) is re-elected President of Equatorial Guinea in a contested election." See recent changes to said page and discussion as Talk:Equatorial Guinean presidential election, 2009. Thank You SADADS (talk) 20:19, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, there are many reliable sources giving doubts over the election. We had something similar for the 2009 Iranian elections where we added amid protests and allegations of electoral fraud to the end. I have no problems with adding "amid allegations of electoral fraud" to the end of our current blurb. To me "a contested election" could easily mean an election in which candidates contested (for) a position as opposed to one in which the result is contested. I will wait to see if anyone supports this solution before updating - Dumelow (talk) 23:38, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

"amid allegations of electoral fraud" is great. Thank you SADADS (talk) 23:42, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

OK I am going to change the main page wording as this is a fairly basic statement of fact and there has been support for this at the article talk page - Dumelow (talk) 23:47, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Romanian Presidential election results not validated

Attention! The results of the 2009 Romanian Presidential election were not validated yet by the Romanian Constitutional Court (as according to law) and are subject to massive fraud allegations. The opposition currently contests the result so I suggest removing the news until the result of the vote is validated. --Eurocopter (talk) 14:14, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I have modified the blurb on the main page so that it mentions the allegations of electoral fraud and the constitutional court. I have left it up as we have done so before in cases where electoral fraud has been alleged. Someone else can feel free to remove or change the wording if they like (I feel it could be improved from my effort) - Dumelow (talk) 16:35, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

ITN doesn't usually wait for all possible complaints to have been dealt with, but goes on official results (not exit polls) from reliable sources. Let's not forget that it isn't Wikipedia that decides who will be the next Romanian President, but at the same time we can use reliable sources as for any other article. The margin is very close (according to the Spanish press, it was decided on overseas votes, which is unusual for a national election). Perhaps the blurb could be modified to say that he won by only just over 70,000 votes (0.67%). Physchim62 (talk) 16:49, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Suggest: Traian Băsescu (pictured) is re-elected President of Romania by a margin of less than 0.67%: opponent Mircea Geoană contests the results. Physchim62 (talk) 16:55, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

The current form posted now on the main page seems ok to me until further news appear. I promise to keep you in touch with any updates. --Eurocopter (talk) 17:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

Abkhazian presidential election, 2009

Is coming up ah later today. Country is not widely recognised though. Should we mention it when we get results in?©Geni 02:06, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Please nominate items on WP:ITN/C. --BorgQueen (talk) 03:47, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Houston Mayoral Election

If Annise Parker wins the Houston mayoral election, it should be included because it would be the first Openly Gay person elected mayor of a major U.S. city. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.194.203.128 (talk) 19:33, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Notable surely, but there have been openly gay people elected to mayoral positions in other countries, even other western countries. Nick carson (talk) 07:20, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

PKK flag

I'd strongly advise to remove the PKK flag from the DTP ban entry. the PKK-relations issue is an ongoing POV conflict, and including the PKK banner is indirectly a quite strong statement. Either we have a symbol of the DTP there, or leave the picture out altogether. --Soman (talk) 07:43, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

North American snowstorms

Hi, I have recently created a stub for the snowstorms in America entitled December 2009 North American snowstorms. Can some people expand the article to a reasonable standard? 03md 22:48, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi, try asking some fellow users in your local area. There was really mainly 1-3 of us who did the bulk of the work for the Black Saturday bushfires article. You'd think people would be more interested but sometimes you just have to do it yourself :] Nick carson (talk) 07:22, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

December 2009 European snowfall

Someone please update? at least 80 deaths now [4] IJA (talk) 22:08, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. There are multiple sources listed at WP:ERRORS. HJMitchell You rang? 23:48, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

(I'm forum shopping; it's been several hours since leaving my comment at WP:ERRORS, yet the Main Page hasn't been updated.) On a related note, the death toll for North American blizzard of 2009 is reportedly 7, according to the Associated Press via The Guardian and The New York Times. APK whisper in my ear 03:55, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

Current main page picture

Per discussion here, and just from looking at the picture (Own work of the uploader, a community member, and not a qualified person), can we please remove the image of the planet from the main page? It is causing one too many people to repeatedly insert it on the article for the planet, and it constitutes WP:OR. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 03:29, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Done. --BorgQueen (talk) 04:04, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Timer

Would it be worth adding the {{ITN-Update}} timer to ITN/C? HJMitchell You rang? 23:37, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

It's there already! Maybe it needs moving down a section… Physchim62 (talk) 00:31, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

I moved it to the top of the page for increased visibility. --candle•wicke 23:30, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

ITN visitors Stats

Here some interesting stats for the current ITN items. They are in order of posting. The Supreme courts decision article seems to be going beyond normal.

1. Gävle goat
2. Hijras
3. Luis Francisco Cuéllar
4. Hussein-Ali Montazeri
5. FC Barcelona

--yousaf465' 02:54, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

The goat did pretty well as well, both of them over 50k hits when 10–20k is more normal for an ITN piece. All other things being equal, it's nice to have pieces which are a little more 'surprising' to our readers, IMHO. Physchim62 (talk) 13:25, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Contributions

Hi all. I know I'm not really as familiar with ITN as it's somewhat off of my beaten path, but I was curious if something got missed. Recently, North American blizzard of 2009 was featured on the main page; I created the article when I noticed it missing during the first night of the storm and maintained it for the next few days. However neither I nor the original person nominating an article for ITN (User:Physchim62, though the article had not yet been created) recieved any credit for it. I'm just following what's listed on WP:In the news about missed recognition; if there's any reason it wasn't given out please feel free to correct me, as I'm not really familiar with process here. Thanks. --Shirik (talk) 06:12, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

User:Tone is the admin who posted the item. You might want to contact him directly on his talk page, since this is not the first time he forgot to give credits. --BorgQueen (talk) 06:18, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

I left a note on his talk page, thanks! --Shirik (talk) 06:30, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi. I was never a fan of posting those credits... Could someone else do that? Thanks. --Tone 11:06, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

I did it. --candle•wicke 02:03, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

The purpose of these messages, as I understand it, is to notify editors that articles of their creation/nomination were linked on the main page. Shirik was aware that the article was linked on the main page and came here to inquire as to why he/she (along with Physchim62) had not "received any credit for it." In my assessment, such concerns (which I've seen expressed in the past) reflect the belief that these notifications serve as trophies, and I don't believe that this misconception should be reinforced. The motivating factor is supposed to be the knowledge that one's contributions benefited the encyclopedia, not that one was compensated with an award. —David Levy 13:49, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm in favor of discontinuing this uh... "service." Not all articles in Wikipedia has an equal chance to be included in the ITN anyway, unlike in DYK, where this practice originated, where virtually all new articles qualify. (It's like nobody can oppose a potential blurb there for being "too <insert country here>" or "too <insert country here>-centric.") –Howard the Duck 06:28, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I like them. Also I saw that a couple of people who received them came back to contribute to ITN. One of these things can be passed along you know to other people. I don't expect to return here to enjoy the argument (and don't recognize David Levy from ITN but rather from discussions about ITN). -SusanLesch (talk) 01:03, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Please explain what you mean by the above reference to me. (I've left a pointer to this request on SusanLesch's talk page.) —David Levy 01:19, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I meant exactly what I said. I don't plan to return to enjoy this argument. I recognize your name from discussions about ITN, not from daily ITN chores. Maybe that would explain your opinion of ITN notifications, I don't know but I do like them. -01:40, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

1. I understand the literal meaning of your statement, but I'm not clear on the underlying sentiment. Are you implying that my input should be discounted because I don't regularly participate in "daily ITN chores"?

Please note that I'm not referring strictly to ITN messages; I'm also referring to similar messages used for other main page sections.

2. You appear to be conflating my comments with Howard the Duck's, as I haven't advocated the practice's discontinuation.

I have no objection to notifying an editor that an article of his/her creation/nomination appeared on the main page, but when someone who already knows that it did complains that he/she didn't receive "credit" (i.e. a talk page template that he/she could post him/herself), it tells me that there is some degree of confusion regarding the message's purpose. —David Levy 02:26, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Apparently Susan is not the only one who likes them. [5] :-) --BorgQueen (talk) 03:46, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that there's a problem when users are conditioned to feel that their work is unappreciated unless they receive such "credit." We ought to do something to clarify that it's a notice, not a trophy. —David Levy 03:55, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:In_the_news#Recognition makes it clear these are credits as well as notifications. MickMacNee (talk) 20:37, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't notice that. We're actually instructing editors to post notes here if they feel that they've "missed recognition"? Was this discussed somewhere? Am I the only one who sees a problem with advising users that the absence of such a message means that their work has gone unrecognized? —David Levy 21:57, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

hmm the recognitions are only there to make new ITN users feel all happy about helping (atleast thats my POV). For self satisfaction regulars can just make their own list and edit it if they want. If admins post it then thats also great. but i dont think it should be mandatory or anything. This is all voluntary work at the end of the day... -- Ashish-g55 23:14, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for Xmas 2010

• The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) claims to track Santa Claus as he delivers presents to children around the world. (BBC) Physchim62 (talk) 13:46, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Is that even worthy on ITN? NORAD Tracks Santa#History says that it has been an annual tradition since 1950s. Zzyzx11 (talk) 18:07, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

I know this was definitely the case last year so it's not new at all. --candle•wicke 20:43, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, as Zzyzx11 mentioned, its been a tradion for many years. Not newsworthy at all.--Fyre2387 ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:10, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

"Not notable outside the US"

ITN is going to be the death of me. I admit the Urban Meyer item was not a slam-dunk like the November elections should have been. However, I'm still exasperated by the argument that even if an item is "encyclopedic" and reflects recently updated quality Wikipedia content, it can't go up if it's primarily of interest to Americans.

No one has been able to explain to me: Why do we care who isn't interested in an item if many users are? And why is there a particular hate for US-centric items when everything-else-centric items are allowed?

All items are of interest to some people and not to others. The death of the former Venezuelan president is of interest to South Americans and geography geeks; the vast majority of readers won't care. The National Reconciliation Ordinance is of interest to Pakistanis and maybe other South Asians; again, relatively few readers will be interested. Only space and other science fans will care about the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.

All of these items were worthy ITN items because some readers cared about them. Our goal should be to have a variety of items, each of which is of interest to different readers, along with those rare, obvious items that are of interest to most people. Some items of interest to astronomy fans; some to biology fans. Some of interest to sports fans and some of interest to those who like the arts. Some of interest to Europeans and some of interest to Americans.

The irony is, in excluding U.S. events on the grounds that they're not of interest to everyone, we include items, valid as they may be, that will attract far less interest. I'd bet that less than 1% of English Wikipedia users care about the death of the former Venezuelan president; less than 2% care about the Pakistani court ruling; and less than 20% care about the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. But if half our readers come from the U.S. and half of them care about football, that's 25% of our readership that's interested in the item. Note that six of the top nine Google searches from the U.S. yesterday were about Urban Meyer, according to Google Trends.

If you want to argue those other items are more "encyclopedic," that's another case, but that wasn't the argument that was made in shooting down the Meyer suggestion. When it comes to interest, the football story is clearly a winner.

Don't raise a strawman; I'm not suggesting that we only have items of interest to Americans. But considering that perhaps 50% of English Wikipedia users are from the U.S., what's the harm in having 30% or 20% or even 10% of our items being US-oriented?

About 25% of "On This Day" items are from the U.S., short as the country's history is, and no one complains.

The only answer I seem to get when I raise these points is, "That's the rules and that's how we've always done it." -- Mwalcoff (talk) 16:31, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Although I do want some U.S. items in there, but unfortunately, Urban Meyer wasn't it. I would've pulled for the Christmas storm to be added there, however, but it's too late so... let's wait for the 2010 BCS National Championship Game. That'll be a nice... uh, "watch." –Howard the Duck 17:47, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm not in favor with the "readership" criterion, too. –Howard the Duck 17:47, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Obviously the tipping point here is the Meyer resignation. But if that's going to be the rallying call for giving U.S. items more attention, your intentions are misguided. We all know most of the world doesn't care about most of the items on ITN at any given time, but the section is called In the News and so we should be drawing on what's in the news. Despite their obscurity, these "items we don't care about" generally make news widely -- and it is no different from "items we don't care about" from the U.S. Note, for example, that the Christmas Day snowstorm is still on the home page of the English version of al-Jazeera. It's also still the top story under Americas on BBC. So, that's a good example of a U.S. item that is in the news, and that may have been a good item for ITN but for the fact that blizzards in the U.S. are like ferry sinkings in Southeast Asia -- they happen all the time, and while they make the news each time they do, we really can't stand to have a U.S. blizzard story on ITN every couple weeks during the winter. Now, I'm not suggesting that every story that's in the news should be on ITN, but there are pretty much no stories not in the news that should be on ITN. The Meyer resignation has made news in the U.S., although you still have to dig for it on some news sites. But it has basically been nowhere at all on major news sites elsewhere. Al-Jazeera? No. BBC? No. It's not in the news, so it doesn't belong on "In the News". -- tariqabjotu 23:50, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

I agree that sometimes ITN has anti-US bias, but should mention that since Title IX, not everyone cares about men playing football. -SusanLesch (talk) 00:03, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

_{Yes, it's good to see we've come a long way in eliminating sexism in sports. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:15, 28 December 2009 (UTC)}

Tariq, if you're going to try to convince me that ITN should better reflect what's literally "in the news," you are preaching to the choir. I've been arguing that for two years! But using the Meyer example (and no, I'm not still pushing for Meyer to be included), that story has at least 2,500 Google News hits. In comparison, the Chinese high-speed railway has less than 250 Google News hits, the dead Venezuelan president fewer than 500 and the intersex Pakistani thing fewer than 200. So that's a completely separate issue than what's going on here. The question is whether a hypothetical item should go on if there is a great deal of interest in it, but that interest is concentrated in the U.S. My opinion is that the U.S. concentration of interest in an item should not automatically disqualify it, since most items we put up are going to have some sort of concentration of interest, whether geographical, lifestyle or subject-oriented. In other words, most items are going to be of interest to a small subset of the Wikipedia audience, so an item only of interest to, say, American sports fans should not be considered out of the ordinary. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:15, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

The world doesn't need another news agency! ITN should reflect what is in the encyclopedia and which also happens to be in the news. Otherwise, there's no point having it, we might as well just switch it for a Reuters feed (sorry, am I being anti-American for suggesting a UK-based news agency?) The our article of Hijras has had almost 100k hits in the last four days, with more than 50k in the first day alone: that puts it (roughly) in the top 20 articles for that day. North_American_blizzard_of_2009 peaked at about half those viewing figures – still respectable, but hardly evidence that our readership is being denied the local news that they would want to have. As we were talking about American football, I should note that Superbowl 2009 got the princely total of 5.5k hits on the day it was posted on ITN, and fewer than a thousand on the subsequant days. The moral of the story is that we shouldn't blindly repeat the stories tdat our readers could get from other news providers, because that's not what our readers (U.S. or otherwise) are actually interested in. Physchim62 (talk) 01:56, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Just to bring those stats bang up to date, Wuhan–Guangzhou High-Speed Railway [6] is currently beating Northwest Airlines Flight 253 [7] on peak viewing figures, dispite having been posted about four hours later. Would you have guessed that from a GoogleBattle? Physchim62 (talk) 02:07, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Super Bowl XLIII had a massive 215,200 hits on the day it was played. –Howard the Duck 02:19, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, Superbowl 2009 is a redirect to the correct name of the event, Super Bowl XLIII. -- tariqabjotu 02:24, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Ooops, my bad, should have checked that link. My argument still stands for the stories from December. Physchim62 (talk) 02:31, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

2009 BCS National Championship Game had a paltry 10,500 hits earlier this year. With that said, I dunno if this is "notable" enough for ITN. With that said (again), you guys posted the hurling item and I dunno how many hits it got. The college volleyball league in the Philippines sure had a lot more views. –Howard the Duck 02:28, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship got a completely negligible number of page views as a result of being on ITN – it peaked at 2.3k hits, but that was two days before its appearance on the main page! Still, if you read the archives for September, I don't think hurling's going up again in the foreseeable future. What some people are pushing for is the idea that we use Goggle hits to determine what our readers would be interested in, and that simply doesn't work, as the very examples that Mwalcoff bear out. Physchim62 (talk) 02:48, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Isn't it astounding that a redirect of a Super Bowl article had more views than an ITN item? And people were pushing for it to be removed. –Howard the Duck 13:09, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I was merely responding to Tariq's claim that the Meyer item wasn't "in the news" enough to be in "In The News." I was not advocating turning ITN into a news ticker. I'd like to get back to the original intent of this thread, which was whether events should automatically be disqualified because interest in them is concentrated in the U.S. and if so, why that is the case when we don't disqualify other items on the grounds that interest in them is concentrated in a subgroup of readers. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 04:22, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

But that's such a leading question. No, I don't think events should automatically be disqualified because interest in them is concentrated in the U.S. And that's not the case now. There are a lot of events, such as the Super Bowl, that make it to ITN when the interest is primarily in the U.S. But that interest also has to exist somewhere else, to a certain degree, which is, in fact, the case with the Super Bowl and not, in fact, the case with the Meyer story. I don't know where 2,500 hits for the Meyer story came from, but they certainly didn't come from anywhere outside the U.S. -- tariqabjotu 14:21, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

I would also point out that I expect I'm hardly alone, not being from the US or from South Asian or having great interest in either in finding the National Reconciliation Ordinance of far greater interest then this Meyer item (whatever it was, from a quick look of the article, it doens't look like anything significant). And I do consider myself a bit of a sport fan. I don't think this is anti-Americanism, I would completely expect the same if the Meyer item was the resignation of Graham Henry even though Kiwis would almost definitely care a hell of a lot more about that and it will receive far more attention in NZ (well we'd basically go apeshit over it I expect) then I expect most Americans care about this Meyer thing and I would consider this the same even if NZ was a lot larger then it is. Nil Einne (talk) 23:11, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

OK, OK, OK, OK forget Urban Meyer. Forget he ever happened. The question is: Should a hypothetical item automatically be disqualified solely because it is predominantly of interest to Americans? And if so, why, when most of our items are predominantly of interest to one group or another? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:16, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

2010 WikiCup participation

Hi, this is just a note that if you want to sign up for the 2010 WikiCup, then you have until 23:59 UTC on December 31 to do so. This can be done here. The WikiCup is a fun competition aiming at improving Wikipedia's content, with points awarded for featured articles, good articles, featured lists, featured pictures, featured sounds, featured portals, featured topics, good topics, did you know?, in the news and valued pictures. Over 170 people are already involved, but there's still time to sign up. If you have any questions, you are welcome to contact myself or one of the other judges on our talk pages or on IRC, or ask on one of the WikiCup talk pages. Hope to see some of you there. Thanks! J Milburn (talk) 18:02, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Chinese state execution and image of Cao Cao

Unintentional though it may be, the juxtaposition of Cao Cao's portrait with the current top news story about the execution of Akmal Shaikh is in poor taste, I think. --LarryGilbert (talk) 19:21, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

ZzzzZzzZZZZzz... (I'm expecting the "we need a replacement image" reply anyway so...) –Howard the Duck 09:10, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

I've just checked and it has now actually been replaced with a dead President. --candle•wicke 23:14, 30 December 2009 (UTC)