Wikipedia talk:In the news/Archive 51

ITN needs clearer criteria

As it is the page WP:ITN merely discusses the significance of content briefly. I think we should have guidelines that go into more detail about what things are and aren't significant enough to post. In the absence of such guidelines, ITNC will continue to be a magnet for personal opinions about how this or that event is or isn't significant. Everymorning talk 21:14, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

That's what the nomination discussion is for, to determine what people think is significant enough to post and figure out what the consensus is- and admins weigh the arguments in the discussion in deciding what to post. I'm not sure how you could keep personal opinions out of it. I'm fairly sure what you are suggesting has been tried and failed before, just FYI. 331dot (talk) 21:17, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

That's why I don't see why you undid my close. Unless an item belongs to the group which shall be more or less authomatically posted I don't see much room for a closer to overrule a (clear) majority which say an item is not significant enough for the mainpage. I don't think an admin should have a special say when that say will not be based on policy, but mostly personal preference (and maybe informal practice). Iselilja (talk) 21:29, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I didn't object to you closing it in and of itself; I objected to the reason(a vote count), as determining consensus is not a vote count, but a weighing of arguments. 331dot (talk) 21:34, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

But how to weight arguments about significance when the policy hardly say anything about what constitutes significance? Any weighting of arguments will then pretty much be a supervote. None of the other current closes seems to have any reasoning given either; probably for this reason. (It will be easier to give policy reasons for why an article is not of adequate quality for the mainpage, but that's moot if the article is not deemed significant). Iselilja (talk) 21:51, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

This is why admins should evaluate and close discussions. Throughout WP, how consensus in a discussion to be determined is not trivial, and this in part is why people are reviewed and put into admin positions, based on past experience of evaluating consensus with an eye for policy and not just vote counting. There's no answer one can give for how to do this consistently. --MASEM (t) 21:56, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Your answer is very arrogant; but doesn't answer the question. Iselilja (talk) 22:06, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

There is nothing arrogant about what Masem wrote whatsoever. 331dot (talk) 22:44, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, as 331dot points out, I wasn't writing that arrogantly. This is how WP works, period, per WP:CONSENSUS. It's not easy, which is why admins are evaluated by peers before they are given those rights. ITN is nothing special. --MASEM (t) 22:50, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm going to go with Iselilja here: There's no reason why an admin is needed to judge consensus. Admins should only be considered when their tools are needed, and non-admins are allowed to judge consensus for discussions they did not participate in, the same way Admins can. Admins have no special status in this regard. That being said, that doesn't mean that this specific, one, closure was proper and good (and saying that also doesn't mean it was wrong), just that having (or not having) admin status is not something that enters into the evaluation. Admins who do a bad closure are not immune from being reverted, and non-admins should not be held as "suspect" in their closure rationale merely because they aren't admins. Both should be held to the same standards. Again, if this was a bad close, then we deal with that. But someone's admin status should not be used to poison the well against a discussion on the merits. --Jayron32 14:06, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Yep, as 331dot states, the whole point of ITNC is to discuss the significance of an item. What's significant to one person may not be to another. That's why we have admins to who judge consensus to post items to the main page. It's always going to be about personal opinion. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:24, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Others have said what I agree with above - the entire purpose of ITNC is to throw out opinions on significance and let an admin determine. I will say that there are some opinions that we have repeated asked not be used (such as "This is the xth US-centric story in a week" or "This only affects a tiny # of people of this country" etc.) since over time we're aware of that ITN generally does not account for these aspects. What's core to remember is that ITN should be about featuring decent-quality articles that happen to be in the news at the time, it is not about presenting news to the reader. --MASEM (t) 21:45, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

• Criteria is clear, it just doesn't allow some people to keep material off the main page related to countries they don't like. The criteria is simple: If prominent news organizations are treating it as a major news story, AND we have a quality article about the topic, someone can nominate it, and barring major problems with the article, it should be posted. We don't decide ourselves which items we think are "important enough", based on what we want the world to care about. We follow the sources in the same way as the rest of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not supposed to be a personality-based endeavor, we reflect the world at large. If we just did that, it would all go fine. Things only get bad when people oppose for purely ethnic, national, or otherwise spurious reasons. --Jayron32 13:58, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

• As others have said, it would not be feasible to decide the importance of potential stories in advance, nor is it plausible to give guidance on the subject. There is simply far too much judgement involved with each individual story. Only through experience can one get a good idea of the community standards. --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:27, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Manoel de Oliviera

Is there a reason Manoel de Oliviera's name was removed from this template as a recent death? If there is, it wasn't provided by the editor who removed it. Oliviera is certainly important enough to be mentioned in the news template and his article is good enough to be linked on the front page, IMO, so I'm not sure why it was removed. Please re-add it, asap. --ThylekShran (talk) 06:10, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

See WP:ITNC for a discussion. In short, there's some missing references that should have kept it off the main page. When it was posted, it had orange-level maintenance tags, which needed to be addressed. Many of them have in the intervening hours, however at this point there's still one small section that needs refs, but it's pretty necessary, with WP:BLP implications. If you can provide cites for that one, small section, this will be returned immediately. See WP:ITNC for more details as to what needs to be fixed. As soon as you fix it, it gets reposted. --Jayron32 06:13, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Recent deaths

Err the 'recent deaths' link that is always on ITN on the main page appears to have vanished...? GiantSnowman 07:31, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

There are no current RDs (existing ones were stale and removed). There's a few pending in the queue. --MASEM (t) 07:35, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

The standalone link to Deaths in 2015 (which appears when no individual recent deaths are listed at ITN) remained commented out. I just restored it. —David Levy 07:54, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Link P5+1 in the Iran entry?

Can the "six other countries" text link to P5+1? They are the countries that negotiate with Iran, and it would answer if a reader is wondering what those six countries are. HaEr48 (talk) 03:39, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

I'd suggest bringing this up either at WP:ERRORS or the entry's nomination at WP:ITNC. 331dot (talk) 11:12, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

 Done Spencer^T♦C 19:44, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Minimum sourcing for ITN/C articles

Given this has come up a few times over the last few weeks, I think we need to describe what we are considering the minimum requirements for sourcing of an article that is going to be given as ITN. As has been described, as a feature of the main page, articles that are focuses of ITN should be in a good enough shape that they reflect core WP practices to allow new users, interested in adding to the article, to do so with basic understanding of minimum expectations, particularly on sourcing.

This is less a problem with breaking events (which generally are well-sourced from the moment of creation, and just need word count improvements), and more for things like RD, competition results, or the case of when an older topic is in the news for some reason.

I would argue that at minimum:

• All quotes must have an inline source immediately afterwards. This is a no-brainer and a requirement of WP:V
• All paragraphs of prose outside the lead should have at least one citation. More may be necessary for GA/FA quality but for ITN, this at least minimum.
• When we talk sections like list of awards, recognitions, bibliographies, filmographies, etc. only where there is non-linked entries should these be sources, if sourcing for the entire list cannot be sourced in a single source. (Blue-linked entries, one can assume that the blue-linked article will have the required sourcing.
• No "citation needed" tags should remain in the article, and removal of material that is important but tagged as CN is not a recommended action just to get ITN.

I dunno if there are others but we should have something like this spelled out to prevent this being a continuing complaints at ITN/C when people point out article quality issues. --MASEM (t) 22:38, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

How many instances, per paragraph, can one use the Encyclopaedia Britannica as a source? Or perhaps you could recommend other equally "lame mirrors" of Wikipedia for use in ITN candidate articles? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 23:00, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

If we have to source to EB, so be it, it should be sourced. That said, if EB is used nearly all the time to source an article, that's a problem too (we should be using the sources EB uses if not more), but one that I've not seen. As the glue to get an article that is almost-but-not-fully sourced, EB is reasonable as a crutch to hasten the ITN process. --MASEM (t) 23:08, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for starting this discussion. I think no {{citation needed}} tags anywhere in the article is asking too much. Anyone can add them, and one or two requests on content unrelated to the update shouldn't be a big deal. (By the way, in case it went unnoticed, I made a slight change to the criteria because of the Cervantes nomination.) -- tariqabjotu 01:28, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I am aware CNs are added with both earnest attempts for needed sourcing and for simply being bitey. I would say that long standing CN tags should be dealt with, while those that pop up during the nomination period - unless they are dealing with significant problems like citing a quote, we could overlook. --MASEM (t) 02:04, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

• I would say this all looks good except the last one. I would say that occasional "cn" tags should not keep an article off of the ITN ticker, but having large numbers of uncited paragraphs, or many "cn" tags or having entire sections with no references is bad. I'm always leary to put forth numerical standards on this, but a rough standard of no more than one "cn" tag per full screen page of text (or, similarly, for missing citations someone hasn't bothered to tag yet, but should be tagged) is probably not horrible and not going to keep something off of ITN, but once you start to get more of that, it's a problem. One or two cn tags in a long article, which is otherwise fine, shouldn't be a hold-up, so long as the cn tags are not eggregious BLP-type stuff. I would say that sometimes it is appropriate to remove rather than reference something, especially when the information is trivial, inconsequential, or even potential BLP-type problems. But I don't think we need to demand that every cn tag be dealt with. One or two shouldn't hold up a nomination, though too many would. --Jayron32 14:26, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
• in addition to quotations and sensitive statements in BLPs, I consider that opinion-type statements always require a source (A was responsible for X innovation; B is Y's greatest contribution; C writes in Z style; &c&c). This is often a major problem in partially developed but long-standing articles on people who have recently died. I sometimes put in tags to indicate statements I consider particularly problematic in such articles. I'm not sure any number of tags is the relevant metric, but rather (1) the importance of the uncited material, and (2) the importance of citing it. If the material doesn't really need citing then the tag can safely be ignored or even removed. If the uncited material is trivial then the uncited statement can be removed. Otherwise, they really do all need dealing with. Espresso Addict (talk) 00:19, 26 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Possibly building on this, if the article's lead is uncited (which is allowable per LEAD), should minimum sourcing for ITN be an assurance that all statements of even potential subjective nature are appropriately cited where they are mentioned in the body? As you mention this is is very true what happens with RDs that there's a lot of statements of importance in the lead but the body may not reflect that well. --MASEM (t) 00:28, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

• Interesting point. It would depend how subjective, perhaps? "...best known for appearing in [film]" might seem reasonable if 50% of the article were devoted to that film (assuming the article is properly balanced), or "made important contributions to the understanding of atomic structure" when the article discusses in detail their discovery of the neutron, would both seem ok to me without an explicit citation. "...best known for appearing in [film]" where its relative importance is not apparent from the article would probably need an explicit source, either in the lead or in the body. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:32, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

• True, there are likely to be lead statements that are agglomerations of several facts/opinions given in the article. I think what I meant to say is that if , for an RD for example, someone comes and says "John Q Smith is considered one of the best American actors" and the article is completely devoid of any sourced statement that makes that point, that's an issue for ITN-quality sourcing. Taking the example you give of a scientist that may have contributed heavily to the structure of the atom, if there's sourcing to describe his volume of work towards that, or noting of a major award towards that, that's fine. Key here, going back to my start, is we want the ITN-posted article to be reasonable example of what sourcing to expect so that new editors can add to it without reading mounds of policy, while at the same time preventing poor sourcing from holding up an otherwise appropriate ITN nom, and this is part of what seems to be a streamline process. --MASEM (t) 02:40, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

We have a general aim, which is to provide "quality" articles at ITN. That often means a subjective look at articles before they're posted. I see two massive issues right now. (1) People support the story (e.g. "Support important issue.") but don't examine the quality of the article, and their support is usually accepted as "I support both the significance of the story and the quality of the article". Which is mostly incorrect, as evidenced by the recent posting of an RD which didn't even have a reference for the death of the subject. (2) People don't agree on what is considered a "quality" article. That's where this proposal comes in, and I welcome the discussion. We used to have a criterion that required a "B-class" article (I guess in an attempt to maintain the "quality" standard of ITN posts) which was summarily ignored for the past few years, hence it's been removed. In response to that, we have seen poorer and poorer articles posted to ITN. It's the only section of the main page where this is allowed to occur (other than DYK which is like the wild west). TFA, TPA, OTD, TFP, TFL all have quality control which seems to supersede ITN. I realise ITN has time-related issues, but we also have a sister project in Wikinews for ticker-style updates. Either we now accept we are replacing Wikinews and allow a "no holds barred" approach where we allow users to support and admins to post sub-standard and poorly referenced articles, or we stick to our guns and uphold quality standards which we used to be proud of. Or worse, we can take extrapolative steps and bring the abuse of children into it, which one admin has done recently in a foul attempt to compare edits with infant castration. I may be abrasive in my approach, but at least I don't delve into that cesspit. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:13, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

The problem is always someone else, isn't it? Do you not see how often even people who agree with you have to preface their comments by saying that they don't agree with your tone? How often we're not just talking about the potential issues you bring up but the tenor that amounts to attacking other editors? No, you don't. Of course. The problem is always someone else's action. And when you take issue with someone else's actions or remarks, we hear about it over and over and over again in often irrelevant threads (and edit summaries!), like here, for months on end. The Glee guy. Those basketball dudes. Alleged pro-American bias. And now this.

Well, I can take care of that last one, as if it'll stop you from referencing it in an out-of-context and exaggeratory fashion until Christmas. But, you know what, I'm tired of deciphering why you choose to act in this manner, as from literally the moment you first encountered me, you were abrasive and combative. You can chase away me or Coffee (talk · contribs) or anyone else you want until you're the sole arbiter of what happens on ITN. It seems the community is satisfied with just periodic condemnatory comments and threads on your behavior, even though they have no real effect. As long as it chooses that approach, as is its prerogative, it's obvious who they prefer around here. There are far better things I can do with my time on Wikipedia or otherwise. Good luck to you all. -- tariqabjotu 04:21, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Spare me the pseudo-lecture. Your abhorrent comment really and truly shines a light on you and it's welcome that you won't be continuing to make such vile comparisons in the future. As for competence, if you don't have it, don't edit the main page. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:23, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Getting back on track, if I were to simplify these based on the above as well as incorporating other suggestions, I would say that the "minimal sourcing" for ITN-quality articles should be;

• All quotes are immediately sourced via inline citation, as required by WP:V.
• All strongly contentious material about a BLP is immediately sourced via an inline citation , as required by WP:BLP.
• Each paragraph outside the lead should have at least one inline citation appropriate to find that information.
• For what should be factual lists - like bibliographies, filmographies, lists of awards, etc., which cannot be sourced to a single work, either each item should be inline sourced individually, or should have a blue link to an article that confirms that information.
• Articles should be - but are not required to be - devoid of citation needed tags, with the understanding that the number/frequency/location of these will be evaluated at ITNC. "Citation needed" tags on quotes and BLP issues must be resolved. Long-standing "Citation Needed" tags should be dealt with.
• Article-level or section-level maintenance tags related to sourcing should be dealt with so they can be removed. Ideally achieving the sourcing requirements above will allow these to be met.

Any additional suggestions? (I would anticipate this to be language on WP:ITN) --MASEM (t) 16:11, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Those criteria seems acceptable. I am leary of codifying quality, because it tends to leads to box checking rather than actual editorial judgement applied. However, historically (I can't speak about the last few months as I haven't been active on ITN) most comments either don't check quality or don't care about quality. Thus, Iam inclined to give defined criteria a try. --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:24, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree we don't want these hard objective lines - outside quotes and some BLP factors. But they should be reasonably minimal standards we should eye each article with as recommendations. They should be taken with a healthy dose of IAR. --MASEM (t) 17:51, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Suggestion: avoid "Oppose" !votes for when article improvements are the limiting factor

Objecting to ITNC posting due to article quality is a common thing, and still needs to be done, but I wonder if we can better encourage language like "Support with article improvements" or similar language as the !vote text over "Oppose" when that is the only issue, as that is generally more encouraging and makes it easier to highlight why there is an issue and hopefully encourage editors to fix it. "Oppose" would best be left for when the ITN item is believed by the editor to not meet the importance factor for ITN. When there's a bunch of "opposes" that are a mix of both importance and article quality, it can be hard to figure out what is actionable (fixing the article) and what isn't. --MASEM (t) 17:57, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Fully agree. ITN is a sick mess. There should be two separate !votes - one for suitability and one for quality. That way consensus can be quickly achieved on where effort should be placed to improve quality. But then, I am speaking as an embittered and jaundiced lapsed voter. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:18, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

For me it's simple. Oppose is the answer...... I really believe that (subjective analysis) 75% of supporters vote for blurbs and RDs without ever looking at the article. Right now we have a couple of great examples, where we even have an "experienced" Wikipedian strongly advocating the posting of an RD which is one of the most under-referenced I've ever seen. But I will modify my own approach to ensure that I oppose all articles that aren't of sufficient quality but will subsequently qualify them to note I would support if the item was of a reasonable quality. But I agree with Martin, (and that's how I usually vote), one for notability, one for quality... The Rambling Man (talk) 21:25, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Masem, for your good suggestion. Should we write this down somewhere or just rely on ourselves to spread the word? 331dot (talk) 22:35, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree that opposes pending improvements should be avoided. Wait or Support pending improvements or support in principle are much better options, as they allow the posting admin to assume support and post if the admin feels the improvemnts are sufficient. Such opposes are often not revisited by the editor who made them, to the point where you're left pinging the author to ask "do you still oppose after these improvements: [diff]?" μηδείς (talk) 22:48, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

I think closing admins are able to take into consideration the merits of specific opposes and supports. If an article has obviously been updated and there is an older oppose based on article quality, that won't be taken into consideration. Spencer^T♦C 08:13, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

• It is not so much about admins and more about other editors. If I come and see a nom has a number of bold "supports with article improvements" (or similar language, that might incline me to see about fixing that, compared to if I see a nom with a bunch of "opposes" where the reason for opposing is the poor quality of the article. Or if I see that a given topic would have had support for ITN posting on merit but failed on article quality, I'll have a better idea of what are good topics to propose in the future. It's a perception issue, not so much process or the like. --MASEM (t) 13:40, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Agree per Medeis and Masem's reasoning. There is a real problem, as The Rambling Man frequently (and explosively) continues to point out, with subpar articles being "rushed to market", as it were. But using the "oppose" !vote to signify quality-specific objections dilutes the value of "oppose" and confuses the issue. We should encourage participants to register "wait" or "support pending improvements" !votes instead. -Kudzu1 (talk) 17:16, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

• All ITN items are required to 1) meet certain quality standards; 2) have an sufficient update to reflect current events; 3) be deemed newsworthy enough to post. If an article is lacking an in of those 3, an oppose is an appropriate !vote. Newsworthiness is not the primary criteria with all else being secondary (as forbidden opposes for other reasons implies), but rather equal criteria. For example, a story that is only somewhat notable can still be posted if the update and article quality are very high. Furthermore, what if I am neutral on the merits of the story? Does that mean I am now forbidden to point out quality problems because I am supposed to vote "support if improved" instead of "Oppose on article quality"... This whole discussion is silly. Admins are not robots and can easily see that an "oppose on quality" !vote is outdated even if the opposer hasn't had ac chance to strike it yet. Other editors aren't robots either. If someone is interested enough in a subject to potentially improve the article, they will take the time to read the comments and not just the bold text.

As for me, I personally only write "oppose" when it looks like previous supports may have actually overlooked content problems. That is, I use the bold text to draw attention to the problem. If that is not necessary, I will bold "Comment" instead or even write "Support pending improvements" if it looks like the support is needed. I should not be rigidly told how to phrase my quality objections. --ThaddeusB (talk) 17:31, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

[Resolved] Objection

Hi, gentlemen. I was shocked this morning to find my nomination had been closed. When I went to sleep last night it was marked ready. (In the closed discussion, I count 5 supports and 3 opposes.) Tone, I admire your work here and think yours has to be one of the hardest jobs on Wikipedia. Still, the evidence suggests that one oppose from Mellowed Fillmore could have made your decision. Also I don't buy his point that "nobody cares" about women's basketball. PBS Newshour put a spokesperson for women right next to a spokesperson for men last night. I took responsibility for the fact that the article had not been updated. I don't believe that Wikipedia always has an updated article ready for the news. I don't want to return to an argument here but would just like my objection noted.

• 23:56, 8 April 2015‎ Kudzu1 (talk | contribs)‎ . . (236,782 bytes) (-1)‎ . . (→‎[Pulled] NCAA women's basketball: article improved, looks like a strong majority support combined blurb, marking ready) (undo | thank)

• 04:54, 9 April 2015‎ Mellowed Fillmore (talk | contribs)‎ . . (209,506 bytes) (+371)‎ . . (→‎[Ready] NCAA women's basketball: no way, never, no) (undo | thank)

• 06:49, 9 April 2015‎ Tone (talk | contribs)‎ . . (214,161 bytes) (+109)‎ . . (→‎[Ready] NCAA women's basketball: closing) (undo | thank)

Thanks for listening. -SusanLesch (talk) 13:17, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

• To be fair, gender equality is not a valid rationale for posting on ITN.--WaltCip (talk) 13:30, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Countering systemic bias is a valid rationale. There is no reason to post one useless men's sport and not the women's version, other than "systemic bias", which might well be the reason that one is more popular than the other. It is just as valid as posting elections from small countries, along with elections from big countries. We try to show diversity in coverage. RGloucester — ☎ 13:39, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

ITN is a news ticker, not a machine for social activism. Mellowed Fillmore (talk) 15:37, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

ITN is NOT a news ticker. We don't have news here. It is a venue for featuring encylopaedia articles that may be appearing in the news at a given time. This has nothing to do with "social activism", but with diversity of coverage. I am opposed to including any sport, but if one is to be included, we cannot be selective. RGloucester — ☎ 17:04, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

Well, my closure was mostly based on the fact that there was already a rather strong opposition to the men's tournament while the arguments presented in favor of it certainly don't hold for women's part. 3rd most watched sport event in the US? Far from that. I got a feeling that the whole discussion was just piling up from the unproductive discussion of the first item so I did my best to redirect the efforts to something more constructive. On the other hand, remember that we do post combined sport stories where there is a comparable level of coverage. Tennis or Alpine skiing World Cup, for example (I guess we forgot to add skiing this year). And there's the Women's World Chess Championship still with the open nomination. --Tone 15:25, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I won't argue there was consensus to post, but I don't think closing the discussion is warranted. That would mean there was no possibility of consensus to post developing, which doesn't appear to have been the case. --ThaddeusB (talk) 17:12, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree. I was disappointed to find the discussion closed so quickly. -Kudzu1 (talk) 17:19, 9 April 2015 (UTC)

I concur as well; imo this was prematurely closed especially since the nomination had only run for about 24 hours. Spencer^T♦C 04:08, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Based on the comments here, I have reopened this discussion. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:49, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for reopening my nomination, which is an unexpectedly good outcome. Overthinking is what closed this, not one oppose vote as I had thought. Now I think this whole thing is my fault because I decided not to say the article needed updating (based on assumptions, not on the facts). Thanks to Spencer who gave us a specific list of things that needed to be done. I marked this thread resolved. -SusanLesch (talk) 18:33, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Idea for a "In the News" event

Mario Draghi, head of the Central European Bank, was attacked by a female protester live on television during the monthly press conference today, 15 April 2015. Click here for the full story and more info. Best, Jonas Vinther • (speak to me!) 14:36, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

@Jonas Vinther: Please note that nominations are not made on this page; they are made at the ITN candidates page. Instructions on how to make a nomination are also located there. 331dot (talk) 20:53, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Surya Bahadur Thapa

Is there anybody in the planet who could develop Surya Bahadur Thapa and make it appear on main page for RD? There is a layout cleanup tag left.. Two barnstars for them!!!..-The Herald ^{the joy of the LORD}_{my strength} 15:42, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

The "2015 Russian wildfires" nomination

Has the nomination gone unnoticed lately? It's marked as "ready"; voters unanimously supported posting it on Main Page. --George Ho (talk) 07:15, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

This was posted by TRM, but there are two more marked ready now. Where have all the admins gone? TRM or myself has done every post this week, which is rather awkward when we have commented and/or worked on the article... Perhaps Spencer could take a look (who is the only other admin to post anything recently). --ThaddeusB (talk) 02:51, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

 Done. Apologize, off-Wikipedia work has skyrocketed this week. Thanks for the ping. Best, Spencer^T♦C 04:52, 21 April 2015 (UTC)

Nepal earthquake death toll

Toll rises to 1900. [1] --IEditEncyclopedia (talk) 04:27, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Please read the instructions for this page and use ERRORS for this kind of thing. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:18, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Protests over the death of Freddie Gray

Closed twice? I suggest we take another look. The situation is escalating and it appears to me the nomination was closed hastily. Jusdafax 02:14, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

You Americans should just accept the fact that the Boat Race would be a lot more easier to be posted here and that this doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell. –HTD 02:25, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

"4. Don't argue for the sake of arguing.". The Rambling Man (talk) 11:09, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

If the situation worsens (and I would say it would need to worsen a lot more, when you compare to riots and outlashes across the global) the a renom can be made. We sometimes have to remember that the whole world doesn't suffer from first-world problems. --MASEM (t) 03:36, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm not American but I've noticed that the current situation in Baltimore is a subject of major news all over the world (along with Nepal disaster). Both the articles Death of Freddie Gray and 2015 Baltimore riots are acceptable for the main page. It would be a good service to our readers to give them a comprehensive summary of what's going on. Any possible bias of mainstream media is a subject of another discussion. I personally more than agree with this opinion, but if the media feed the public exactly with this kind of news we should not act as censors. We have to provide information, explain and clarify in a neutral way, no matter if we talk about the first or third world. I'm for re-opening and for posting. --Vejvančický (talk / contribs) 08:22, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

However, a problem is that the two articles are duplicative of each other. There only should be one target here (taking the 1992 Los Angeles riots as the template here). The bulk of text of the current riots article is just copy and pasted from the death article. That's not a good practice. And again to stress: ITN is not a newsticker, it is to highlight articles in decent shape that happen to be in the news of wide importance. We're not at that point with these articles and the "wide importance" so far is questionable. --MASEM (t) 13:27, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

The National Guard has been called into Baltimore. [2] Also, a state of emergency has been declared in Baltimore by the governor of Maryland, [3] and Obama has weighed in [4]. Seems to be a big and growing story. Everymorning talk 18:09, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, yes, all of you. No-one is stopping any single one of you from renominating it. This isn't the page to discuss the suitability of articles for inclusion in the ITN section, that's WP:ITN/C as, I think, all of you know. Move back there, create another nomination, and deal with it properly, not in the background here, or with irrelevant strawman "arguments" about other stuff. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:58, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Quote from the discussion on the Candidates page:

Once again, what part of "[lengthy quote omitted]" don't you folk [emphasis added] understand?

—The Rambling Man

Careful with that axe, Eugene. 71.183.129.212 (talk) 21:20, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Um, yeah, whatever. Don't add discussions to archived discussions... Simple, you would think. Doesn't stop new nominations being created. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:29, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Georgia wins World Women Team Championship

@DragonflySixtyseven: is this news Georgia wins World Women Team Championship don't worth to be shown ? --g. balaxaZe★ 11:47, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

A) From what I understand, it's only really stuff that gets into ITN if there's a recently-updated Wikipedia article about it; B) Why are you asking me ? I'm barely involved with ITN ! DS (talk) 12:01, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Please try things out at WP:ITN/C. –HTD 12:03, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

Purported deaths

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

---

Easy discussion point. We've had a couple of "death" claims which have resulted in nominations for (usually) an RD, and sometimes a blurb (which is odd). Can we gain a consensus here, RDs should only be posted if they are confirmed by RS, not just "claimed" or "suggested"? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:17, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

I think this is a given, per WP:BLP any death notice in any article should require a reliable source... and not just some tabloid or twitter crap, but rather one with some actual reliability. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 20:08, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Well so do I, but I'd like to see a little bit of consensus so when I close a "purported death" RD, there's no mega-backlash. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:13, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

• Had this gone up right away, pulling it might have been embarrassing, but we do normally require at least four supports without an oppose and a good six hours. The system seems to have worked well in this case. μηδείς (talk) 23:50, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
• Only when confirmed by a reliable source. This is how it's always been done in the past, with Osama bin Laden for example. Spencer^T♦C 17:22, 29 April 2015 (UTC)
• I agree that we should not post "claimed", "suggested" or "purported" deaths; only confirmed deaths should be considered; I don't think we need to write that down as we should be using reliable sources anyway for confirmation. 331dot (talk) 20:04, 29 April 2015 (UTC)

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

Suggestion: Page info box to note/categorize potential/noted ITN targets?

Just an idea, but what if we were to have a notice box (not necessarily a maintenance tag) that an article was either nominated and/or posted for ITN, or that it is likely going to be nominated at ITN when appropriate (eg a sporting championship), that notes that any editor that can help improve the article is welcomed to do so. This box would also drop the page into a category so that people can find these.

The box would be removed after either the closed non-posted ITNC , or after the story feel off ITN if it was posted. For upcoming ITNC that are not yet nominated, the box shouldn't be added too far in advance (for example, it would be silly to add it for the next Super Bowl game which is 9 months away). And via the category if the box lingers without ITNC is can be removed.

This just helps editors that might not visit ITNC that they can help push an article along to help to resolve sourcing issues faster with more potential eyes on it. --MASEM (t) 19:21, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Not the worst idea I've ever heard. But then again I thought the existing maintenance templates would be sufficient to motivate supporters to actively work to improve articles. Sadly, we have a large crowd of "commentators" at ITN, who are happy to support/oppose, but actually never do anything to improve the quality of our articles. It would easily work for ITNR when we could tag an article with "soon to be considered for main page inclusion, as long as the quality is up to snuff" (rephrase as appropriate), but for spontaneous ITNCs, I think, given my observations over the past decade, wouldn't help. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:51, 2 May 2015 (UTC)

Curtis Culwell Center attack

This should be reopened because ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack [5] and the attack has received sustained news coverage, e.g. it's still on the main page of the BBC. [6] Everymorning talk 12:27, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

You're allowed to start a new discussion. --Jayron32 12:32, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

2015 Knurów riots

i have made an article 2015 Knurów riots. There is an abundance of sources and it can be expanded into a giant article, I just do not have the time or the man-power. It has been headline-grabbing news for several days now in Poland though. It is an ongoing event, although I am unfamiliar with what criteria are used to post it on the main page as an ongoing event Abcmaxx (talk) 18:56, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

You would be better off discussing this at the nominations page, WP:ITNC- but Ongoing events are those which have incremental updates which individually would not merit posting on their own. 331dot (talk) 19:00, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Hidden Text

Should the hidden text that tells you to upload a local version of the files be removed since the cascading protection applies to Commons too? (I think, see c:Commons:Auto-protected files/wikipedia/en. Or was there a reason for this that I missed... EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 14:51, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

The list to which you linked is populated by a bot, which doesn't act instantly and sometimes fails entirely. This has resulted in multiple instances of image vandalism (some of which involved hard-core pornography) on our main page.

The Commons task was created as a fallback (better than nothing when an unprotected image is accidentally transcluded on the main page). It wasn't intended to function as a first-line protection method. Nonetheless, we've come to use it as such for most of the main page sections. I'm not fond of the practice (due to the bot's periodic outages), but the relatively long lead times (stemming from the content's preparation/protection well in advance) makes it mostly safe. Conversely, ITN is updated on the fly, so reliance upon the Commons bot is never appropriate; even under ideal circumstances, a window of opportunity exists for vandals. In fact, for reasons best left unexplained, a prompt response from the bot could actually make matters worse. —David Levy 16:07, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

2015 Park Palace guesthouse attack

Hi, sorry, I don't know where to post this but I just accepted this article from the AfC process and maybe someone from here knows what to do with it: 2015 Park Palace guesthouse attack (with regards to Wikipedia:In the news and/or Portal:Current events). — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 17:20, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Please use WP:ITN/C for nominations. –HTD 17:45, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm not nominating it though, I haven't even read through it. — Jeraphine Gryphon ^(talk) 17:50, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

The person who requested the AFC may want to nominate it ITN/C. Let's just wait for him/her if s/he does want it to be nominated. Thanks fgor ther heads up though. –HTD 17:55, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

For what it's worth

I know that there is too much of X at "In the news" is a common complaint, so I would just like to say (belatedly) that when I opened Wikipedia Monday morning, something gave me the feeling that there was a beautiful balance to the items that were listed in ITN. (see this diff). This is purely my opinion, but I think it would be great if we could strive to keep the sort of balance that was presented, namely:

• Two "social" stories (Ebola and Mark Twain's letters)
• Two "political" stories (Mubarak and Cameron)
• Two scientific discoveries
• One "accident" story
• One sport story
• to complement the above, war and natural disaster in ongoing,
• and not to forget the important sub-category of recent deaths

One more topic is business, which did not have any articles on Monday but currently has two under consideration at the nominations page. Of course I am not suggesting quotas for stories, but I would like it if ITN regulars could bear in mind that whilst showcasing Wikipedia's ability to produce quality articles on current events, we shouldn't forget that the broad variety of topics found in the realms of Wikipedia is also something worth displaying to the world. Just my two cents... AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 01:44, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Whilst I'm waxing lyrical, I'll also note that the location of the stories were one in Africa, two in the Middle East, two in the UK, three in Asia, one in the US, and even one from the Arctic Ocean. This is also a fairly nice spread. Wouldn't it be great if we could say it was somewhat intentional! AtHomeIn神戸 (talk) 01:51, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! --ThaddeusB (talk) 20:02, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Coding for RD

Is anyone in a position to be able to re-code the ITN template to enable us to have something as simple as RD1=, RD2= and RD3=, which would be followed by the RD names, which naturally falls back to just adding Recent Deaths to the template if all three RD1, RD2 and RD3 are blank? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:46, 10 May 2015 (UTC)

@Edokter: are you able to help with this request? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:01, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

I will have a look tomorrow (tuesday). Gives me a chance to make the template foolproof. I will probably split the 'logic' code into a subtemplate. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:04, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Forgive me, but you're a bloody legend. Thanks! The Rambling Man (talk) 19:33, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, this would be great. We have no shortage of fools to test it. Stephen 23:33, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Edokter! I suggest (and based on your reply, you might have something like this in mind) using conditional numbered (unnamed) parameters, thereby enabling administrators to simply add and remove entries without renumbering the others. Example:

{{In the news/RD
| [[Cornelius Schindleplat]]
| [[Elizabeth Smith (Australian politician)|Elizabeth Smith]]
| [[Pat DeBunny]]
}}

Also, before you go to any unnecessary trouble, I'd like to gauge consensus regarding this layout change (which didn't appear to generate any controversy). The "tiny error" factor is about to be rendered moot, but I believe that a consistent location for the "Recent deaths" link (with the colon omitted when no names appear) is desirable.

Thanks again for all of your hard work. —David Levy 05:28, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I plan to throw all that in {{in the news/footer}}, and there is lots of potential for simpler code. I do like the consistent placement of the Ongoing/RD links, probably to the left. What I would like to ask is: is it really necessary to hide the Ongoing link on the portal page? -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:16, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

@Edokter: Thanks for cleaning this up, as too often I see ugly white space at Portal:Current events. I think it's fine to display the "Ongoing" line on the portal page whenever there are one or more events in the list. The point of the nocurrenteventslink parameter was to avoid linking the word "Ongoing", since it gets displayed there as double-bolded text. When there are no ongoing events, then the line should be hidden from the portal. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:57, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

If it's only the 'Ongoing' link going double-bold (selflink), that has been remedied in Common.css some time ago. The line already appears only when events are passed (which is the entire point of this excersice). We can also choose to hide the entire foorter on the portal page. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 09:11, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

I hate to be that person, but there is nothing wrong with the way it is currently... and I personally can't see the benefits of this either. But feel free to enlighten me. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 05:42, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Right now, the template requires special care when switching between listing Ongoings/Recent deaths and not listing them, adding and removing HTML comment markers, which often goes wrong. When the recode is done, the footer will handle that and editors only need to list/delist items without having to worry about messing up the code. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:16, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Bingo. I'm not suggesting the current coding doesn't work, I'm suggesting it's currently too intricate for some of us to get our heads round in the circumstances that Edokter describes. It would be much easier if we had a simple syntax to follow, as suggested by David above. Of course, EoRdE6, should you wish to update the template daily (or whenever required), that would be very helpful indeed! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:12, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Layout

Before I continue, please review {{in the news/sandbox}} for a proposed layout. It uses a horizontal list markup, so you can pass straight wikilists to the footer. If the list is empty, it would show the right-alighed line (also showing). -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 19:58, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

• Comment I like it, the dot rather than the en-dash will be cause for contention no doubt, but it has my support. Thanks again for taking the trouble to help with this. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:13, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
  • At least it is a proper list, which aids accessability. I think all MP sections should adopt it. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 22:14, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
    • I agree. Why do we use en dashes for this purpose? I'm guessing that there isn't a particular reason, apart from tradition/inertia.
      I see that the matter was discussed briefly (but obviously, nothing came of it). —David Levy 06:10, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
      • Yes, I also think it's a good idea to use the accessible list format, ought we therefore replace the en-dash in "Recent deaths – More current events..." for consistency? The Rambling Man (talk) 06:20, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
        • Done (on the test page). -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 08:01, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
          • Gets my vote. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:02, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
            • Maybe it's just me but I would prefer to keep the dashes if possible since all of the other Main Page sections use them and at least have a threat at Talk:Main Page before changing it here. Otherwise, looks great, thank you so much Edokter! Spencer^T♦C 08:29, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm happy to bring it up, but it shouldn't affect our 'freedom' to do so. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 09:14, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

I'm in favor of switching from en dashes to middle dots, but only across the main page as a whole. Arbitrarily changing a single section seems counterproductive. —David Levy 10:40, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

I finished the logic in {{In the news/footer}}. You can see how to use it when editing {{In the news/sandbox}}. In order to use a horizontal list, the Ongoing and RD line are themsenves, a list item (but I have hidden the bullets). On the main page, the language lists use the same format. When both items are empty (try by renaming the parameter and previewing), the Ongoing/RD links appear to the right. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 09:25, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

This looks great! Thanks so much Edokter, this will make posting items much, much easier. Spencer^T♦C 00:46, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Postings

The Saudi nomination has had unanimous support for longer than the euro-centric singing contest came along and is updated. What's the policy on posting here?120.62.25.15 (talk) 12:53, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Items get posted once they are supported (by assessment of consensus of an admin) and once they are updated sufficiently (by assessment of quality by an admin). They are posted when an admin gets a chance to do both of these tasks. If there's a problem there, feel free to log into your account, and offer to help out by signing up for a lifetime of criticism with no thanks whatsoever at WP:RFA. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:56, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Proposal: All sports items go to a sports "ticker"

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

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With a nod to Medeis, who first suggested it, I formally propose that ITN send all sports related items to a permanent sports "ticker" on the ITN feature. Jusdafax 23:50, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

• Support - as proposer. This is a simple concept, so let's try to keep the !votes simple, with no badgering, insults or walls of text. Thanks. Jusdafax 01:23, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose, propose elimination of sport from ITN – Sport has no encyclopaedic relevance, and must not be given special treatment. In fact, it must be eliminated. It is a pollution of the encylopaedia. RGloucester — ☎ 01:46, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Comment I have wondered if we should have special sections of ITN for at least two broad categories : sports, and then science/nature/medicine/space. (One could suggest entertainment, but that starts to get into tabloid-ish nature). There's enough stories, or opportunity for enough stories to highlight these areas specificaally, like with do with RD, leaving the main ITN block for stories that have more immediate impact - natural/manmade disasters, politicial issues, and the off-piece of news. I would rather set that up now for all specialized sections (could there be more?) rather than just pulling out sports. --MASEM (t) 01:50, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't oppose the science idea either, but I think the sports issue is problematic. science ticker would increase science postings, while a sports ticker would decrease the dominance of sports postings among main blurbs. The next issu would, of course, be side elections in minor jurisdictions. μηδείς (talk) 03:21, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

• Support idea of breaking ITN into categories. So on a given day we might have an ITN section with subsections for sports, science, politics, international relations, natural disasters, etc. If we have no stories for a particular section on a particular day, leave it off. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 18:30, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

• Support removing sports lets be honest, what place do annual sports events have in an encyclopeadia? It is my opinion that ITN should cover big science and technology news that will have an impact in the future, and of course natural disasters and killings, with the occasional smattering of big business news and mergers. Sports don't belong. EoRdE6^{(Come Talk to Me!)} 03:07, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Support God be praised. We simply don't need more that three sports items at a time, or two sports blurbs at ITN. Dead athletes and minor events really should just go on a ticker, and that would allow a few major (multi-billion EU) items to be posted per sport/area. No one really opposes the listing of good players, and they would be much more easily posted this way. μηδείς (talk) 03:17, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - What problem is this supposed to fix, and how exactly would this fix it? This proposal is about as clear as mud. --Bongwarrior (talk) 03:32, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Support either adding a sports ticker or eliminating sports postings on ITN, with no prejudice towards domestic or international sports. Let's leave ITN for actual news rather than for regularly scheduled ceremonies.--WaltCip (talk) 03:37, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• I have. A quick question, would this be a hard and fast rule or would their be exceptions for certain events like the World Cup and major sports figuerd such as Pele or Mhammad Ali who would like be known by people who are do not usually follow the sport in question?--70.27.231.57 (talk) 04:29, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose please could somebody perform some analysis of page views and indicate which type of articles are most popular with our readers, without whom we may as well shut down the project. The Rambling Man (talk) 04:39, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

We must give the masses what they need, not what they want. Tripe is served in other establishments, but it may not be served here. RGloucester — ☎ 04:42, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

There are so many things wrong with this statement. Isa (talk) 05:15, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

RGloucester is being sarcastic. Either that or he fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of this encyclopedia and would be better off frequenting Britannica. The Rambling Man (talk) 05:49, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Looks like R-Gloc just found our first ticker candidate: "Blackpool South FC Under-15s now sponsored by the Tripe Marketing Board": [7] Martinevans123 (talk) 10:50, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose sports don't belong in an encyclopedia because... why? I have yet to see a sensible explanation. Mellowed Fillmore (talk) 04:48, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Support: A ticker seems like the appropriate way to handle sporting events, which often seem to come all in a rush that swallows up a lot of ITN space. I would continue to support posting notable athletes and other sporting figures to the RD ticker. This proposal seems like a good compromise, and I hope it is judged as such; it would be a shame if this became another "remove all sports" vs. "post all sports" zero-sum argument. -Kudzu1 (talk) 04:59, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose Why specifically make sports second-class? If you want to clean up common items, I'd suggest a catastrophe or politics ticker. I suspect some of the supports would like more good old-fashioned Arts and Science, but those are not exactly "in the news". Isa (talk) 05:04, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose I've seen some really ridiculous "but it's sports!" decisions on the BBC website and elsewhere, where *anything* affecting a sports-related person/organization/thing got shunted off into sports-coverage-land. If an 5-mile wide asteroid hit centred on Bramall Lane it would be reported as a sports tragedy, only. Sorry, I've no humor at all for "but it's sports-related!" Shenme (talk) 05:06, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose Sports are an important part of society, and therefore an important part of this project. More people really care about sports than care about far-flung calamities or politics. Thus why billions of dollars flow into sports every year. Sports enthusiasts are a large chunk of our readership, and sport topics are often some of the better-updated articles here. Mamyles (talk) 05:23, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. Like others, I don't know what problem this is intended to solve (particularly given the counterproductivity of finding ways to reduce the turnover of ITN blurbs) or why sports-related items have been singled out. —David Levy 05:43, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - A solution in search of a problem. RD was created because (somewhat) significant deaths happen frequently and year round, whereas sports are mainly seasonal.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 05:45, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - There's a certain irony to the fact that in order to preserve the "not a ticker" status of ITN, we should want to produce numerous sub-tickers and ongoing headlines to keep news that isn't "worthy" from ITN. If that's really what's necessary, then I propose that the current process has simply failed, in which case we should be looking at overhauling ITN from the ground up, not a bandaid solution. - OldManNeptune ⚓ 09:18, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. The idea that sports "pollute" the encyclopedia is absurd on its face, unless the idea is to excise all sports articles from Wikipedia(which will never happen). Such an idea seems like IDONTLIKEIT to me. This is indeed a solution in search of a problem; if we have good articles on a subject(or the ITN nomination motivates improvements) we should want to highlight them and want to have some turnover in postings. 331dot (talk) 09:23, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose Feels like a knee-jerk to the recent example of several sports stories in the ITN section. Each current sporting event can be judged on its merits via the current process. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 11:15, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Support The recurring sports events such as the Superbowl or Wimbledon have simple, familiar titles and so don't need a blurb to provide context. Anyone who wants details or results can click through to get them. Having a separate line for sports would be giving it a special status but that's not unusual as most news media present sports separately so that readers can take it or leave it. Andrew D. (talk) 12:05, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. I don't see the way to implement this in a reasonable way. Just saying Wimbledon or Superbowl on the ticker (the way we handle RD) is not very informative to the reader who is interested in who won. Writing a full blurb is no different from what we have at the moment - having a line that says "Recent sports" would just eat more of space in the box. --Tone 13:49, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Tone, are you seriously suggesting that users (1) don't know how to click on hyperlinks, and (2) just come here for the blurbs, not the articles? μηδείς (talk) 16:23, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

When interested in sport events on the Main page, I don't want to click the Mayweather vs. Pacquiao link and read the article to find out who won, I want to see that straight away and then proceed to the article if I'm interested in further details. --Tone 05:22, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. Per David Levy and others. Spencer^T♦C 14:27, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose removal, Neutral on ticker Sports has a high level of interest for our readership; probably as high as any other topic we post with regularity. That we wish sports were not as important to society is irrelevant. It is an high interest topic, so we cover it with due diligence. --Jayron32 17:27, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - we ought not to be excluding news based on its category, sport or otherwise. — foxj 18:07, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

In response to Jayron32, there's no formal proposal of removal to oppose. Something positive I think we should consider is the absurd 48-72 hour delay we have in posting a lot of sports items. I would think a ticker might help us get items posted as soon as we have the results, not after a long acrimonious debate. Posting on the same day with a seven-a-week turnover would allow the most recent items almost immediate posting with a two-day listing. μηδείς (talk) 18:32, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose any change - the world treats sports as important. To arbitrarily decide we know better is POV (removal) and to reduce a result to a single word is not helpful to anyone (ticker). --ThaddeusB (talk) 19:32, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose as I think the practical difficulties of realising this make it more trouble than it's worth. Prioryman (talk) 20:15, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose We have a huge number of sports articles and sports-interested readers. It's a big part of who we are, and sports articles are well-suited for a blurb saying who won. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:40, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose with deference to the highly intelligent people here wishing for an egalitarian society based only upon intellectual pursuit and discourse, sport is highly popular for a majority of the world's population resulting in well-formed articles that are in the news. It's what ITN is for. Stephen 05:54, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose per Spencer. Plus, that would turn ITN into a newspaper, giving obituaries, ongoing and sports different heads. We just provide headlines. -The Herald (Benison) • ^{the joy of the LORD}_{my strength} 13:26, 20 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose I'm yet to agree to any reason to split up ITN further. Miyagawa (talk) 22:08, 22 May 2015 (UTC)
• Comment May I suggest someone uninvolved close this? Consensus against seems clear. Isa (talk) 06:22, 23 May 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose Creating further divisions within the ITN box will complicate things and a brief sports ticker will create ambiguity for the reader. Removing one type of news item but keeping every other is illogical. Perhaps reduce the number of sports-related items if you believe there is bloat or a bias towards sport but the debate on whether a particular sports item is significant enough to be added should continue to be discussed at ITN/C. Gizza ^(t)(c) 11:46, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Prototype for such a ticker?

How would such a sports ticker be rendered? I'm specifically concerned about posting something like the yearly champion of the Premier League. It does not have have a postseason, playoff, or any type of knockout tournament (like many other sports leagues around the world) to determine its annual champion. The league title is instead given to the team with the best record during the [regular] season. Earlier this month when this year's champion was determined, "In English association football, Chelsea win the Premier League" was posted.[8] How would have this been rendered on such a ticker? Merely posting just a link to 2014–15 Premier League would be ambiguous because the season lasted from August 2014 to May 2015, and would give no clear indication that Chelsea clinched the league title. Zzyzx11 (talk) 06:56, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

• A simple link of that sort would be good for events which have an ongoing aspect over several days such as the Olympics or Wimbledon. There's a mass of detail at such events - medal tables, champions for mens, women's mixed, &c. Simplest to leave the detail on the page for the event and just have a link on the main page. Andrew D. (talk) 12:05, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

The point seems moot, given (As Kudzu1 feared) the plurality votes above are either for the status quo (half our news should be sports results) or the removal of sports entirely! That being said, I envisioned something like RD:

In Sports World Cup, Mayweather vs. Pacquiao, Belmont Stakes.

μηδείς (talk) 16:20, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. Well, the idea is now out there, and may be eventually adopted as a compromise between no sports and the current occasional glut. Thanks. Jusdafax 01:23, 20 May 2015 (UTC)

Your proposal is borderline snow close, are you content to withdraw it or allow me to close it, or do you want it to carry on for a while? The Rambling Man (talk) 20:08, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

• I think we can close, as the initial support was overwhelmed. Thanks for asking. Jusdafax 23:36, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

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

A little help

Hi guys. Some text was added to the TFA column 8 hours ago, taking the column up to 1410 characters (the sort-of-negotiated limit is 1250). I just got up and saw this; as a first step, I've reverted until I can find out who's on board and who's not. My understanding is that the practical reason for the 1250 limit is that the Main Page appearance shifts and you guys may have to add items to even up the columns if we go way over. Would it be a problem for the rest of today if we go up to 1410? - Dank (push to talk) 10:53, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Well when I added a story this morning, I left the oldest in place just to keep the MP balance in place. I don't currently see any issues. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:08, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Long-term, I think we need a change to the edit notice for TFA. Short-term, if the size of TFA shifts a bit today, let me know if it's a problem. - Dank (push to talk) 12:00, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

DYK & OTD can vary pretty widely, so ITN is used to adjusting our number of entries. Thus, it is no big deal if TFA varies a bit too. --ThaddeusB (talk) 15:11, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Great. I've made some recommendations to Brian and Crisco going forward ... bottom line is that I'd like to bump our self-imposed character limit from 1250 up to 1300 to help avoid the problems we saw yesterday, and I'd like for us to encourage people to make more reports at ERRORS and fewer substantive edits directly to the TFA text on its Main Page day. If my recommendations are accepted, hopefully that will mean you guys will have less juggling to do. - Dank (push to talk) 18:59, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Dank, don't stress it too much, we are rotating stories almost daily right now so we can tweak the length according to the TFA, it's something we've always done so don't think you're placing an extra burden on us. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:02, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

I do stress over stuff like this, but only until it's resolved, then I forget about it. Thanks for the support. - Dank (push to talk) 19:19, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

Images for ITN

This discussion is in parallel with and exclusive to the one debating where and how images and their captions should appear.

I tried to follow the "admin instructions" to upload the suggested image of the Eurovision song contest winner, but fell foul of wizards and licensing and attribution. I absolutely cannot thank David Levy enough for his time and effort in ensuring we have the appropriately protected images up at ITN, but if we had a precise, by which I mean completely one step at a time, a to b to c set of instructions which even an idiot like me could follow (including negotiating the latest wizards....) then we could at least rotate the images quicker than when David (or a similarly able admin) is unavailable. Any chance we could re-visit the admin instruction set and make it "ITN image upload 101: the step-by-step, inch-by-inch guide"? And apologies if I'm the only one who can't fix this sort of thing up, I'd really appreciate a learner list of steps that matches what Wikipedia currently requests, because I'm stupid, and ultimately don't want to destroy Wikipedia from within.... The Rambling Man (talk) 21:01, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

I'll do my best to author such instructions. It might require some feedback-based revisions, as persons familiar with a process sometimes fail to recognize sources of confusion/ambiguity for others. (This, of course, is why I frequently find myself shouting "Why can't you just break it down into simple steps?!" at my computer screen.

I'll note that in this context, the wizards are best ignored. For transferring the necessary information, the simplest method (on which I'll elaborate in the instructions) is to copy the description from the edit window at Commons and paste it locally (with minor modifications). —David Levy 23:41, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

In preparation, I just requested a bot task to address a nasty complication that sometimes arises. —David Levy 01:19, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I wish there was a way we could easily gain Commons Admin privileges so we could just protect the images over there and not have to upload them locally. Spencer^T♦C 02:58, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

That would, indeed, be quite helpful. Perhaps we should discuss the possibility at Commons. —David Levy 03:36, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I would be interested in exploring this option. Is Commons:COM:RFA the best place to bring this up, or elsewhere? Spencer^T♦C 05:07, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

I suggest trying COM:VP. (The "proposals" subpage appears essentially defunct.) —David Levy 05:34, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

In the meantime, I just set up the next best thing. Via invisible transclusion at Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow, any Commons file added to the list at Wikipedia:Main Page/Commons media protection will be cascade-protected when KrinkleBot updates Commons:Auto-protected files/wikipedia/en. In my test, this occurred within four minutes. (That's roughly typical, but KrinkleBot sometimes takes significantly longer and occasionally fails entirely, so it's important to confirm that the file has been transcluded at Commons:Auto-protected files/wikipedia/en before using it on the main page.)

I suggest adding an image to the list when a related item proposed at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates is almost ready to be posted. That way, the image probably will be protected when the time comes. —David Levy 04:51, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

This is excellent, particularly as images can be identified early on the nomination process. Good work David. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:53, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

David Levy this appears to be a fine solution, would you be okay to add a new section to the admin instructions as an alternative to the current "uploading locally" instructions? Thanks again. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:05, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

You're quite welcome. I'll expand the instructions. —David Levy 18:34, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

• So if I understand correctly, if I wanted to add an image to {{ITN}} (or switch out another image on the main page, where tomorrow's main page is not useful), I could manually add it to Wikipedia:Main Page/Commons media protection, wait a few minutes for KrinkleBot to notice it, and when I see it's been added to the correct cascade-protected page on Commons, then add the file. Right?

While I'm here, I've been locally uploading the file here, adding {{C-uploaded}} only (no other licensing stuff, not copying all the other stuff from the Commons page), and calling it good. I think licensing is taken care of because one of the things {{C-uploaded}} does is provide a direct link to the commons page. That's actually fairly easy; is there something wrong, licensing-wise, with that approach? --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:54, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Gah, forgot to ping @David Levy:. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:55, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

p.s. I meant to say I know about the tiny-print note at the bottom of that template, but I can't figure out why that would possibly be true. I don't think it is. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:57, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Your understanding of the Wikipedia:Main Page/Commons media protection setup is correct.

Regarding the source information and license tag, I'm insufficiently knowledgeable in that area to comment on whether/why their inclusion is necessary. —David Levy 21:10, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Wikipedia:Main Page/Commons media protection is a clever idea, kudos. --Floquenbeam (talk) 21:34, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Require a blurb before ongoing

Seeing that the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup is about to be posted to ongoing, it seems that its actual purpose is still somewhat muddy. My understanding is that it was created to provide a place for events that fall off the list, but are still in the news and regularly updated. Would it make sense to require a blurb before an item can be placed on ongoing? Isa (talk) 23:39, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

• That is how it usually works, but on a number of occasions we have decided to post an item to Ongoing without a previous blurb. I see nothing wrong with this. For instance, in some cases, there may be a story with considerable international media coverage over a period of time, but where it is hard to isolate a particular development as blurb-worthy or compress what has been happening into a blurb. In such a case, posting to Ongoing without a previous blurb seems sensible. Neljack (talk) 22:18, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Baku 2015

Please, add European Games 2015 to ongoing events.--Eminn (talk) 11:14, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Please feel free to nominate it at WP:ITNC. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:16, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Dates for deaths where there has been a period of silence/mourning

While I don't expect this to affect the current Christopher Lee nomination, I'd like to propose that when a person that would qualify for RD has died but friends and family have opted to keep the news quiet to give them time to mourn and prepare for the likely flood of press inquires, that we consider that news release date as the date of the news items for purposes of sorting. It's more often that there's a death in a non-English country that takes a day or two to make it to English sources though has been reported by the non-English media, and that's still the case we want that death on the date it happened. But with Lee, it is clear that the news was only reported 4 days later so the day the death was announced should be the tracking date. It's definitely not so much an issue on Lee who has already been posted, but I can see a case developed for lesser-known but RD-meeting people where a 4-5 day period of mourning before the news broke would mean we'd only have 3-4 days to discuss before it would be called "stale". (We should be able to tell using the high quality sources like BBC and New York Times when they report the obit). --MASEM (t) 21:34, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Seems very sensible. Agree. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:42, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

I would also agree, however they would need to be tagged in the RD section of the template so they aren't inadvertantly removed by an admin unaware of the delay in reporting (mostly I just go by the date of death and 7+ days is "stale")... The Rambling Man (talk) 11:17, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Also agree with this. Jusdafax 09:22, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Indo-Bangladeshi enclaves

Majority supported posting the story in the front page, but it's not yet posted due to article quality. However, the quality has been improved, so the nomination is almost overdue. --George Ho (talk) 00:16, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Ultimately, it's at admins' discretion when and whether to post. -Kudzu1 (talk) 02:15, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

I that case, it needs more transparent accountability.120.62.26.151 (talk) 14:18, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

There's nothing to be accounted for. This is a volunteer project, and volunteers not voluntarily doing volunteer work is not a scandal that needs "transparency". It's perfectly transparent. Nothing happened. Like, there was a nomination, and no one did anything about it. What more information do you need? --Jayron32 14:23, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Greek withdrawal from the Euro

It's looking increasingly likely that Greece will exit the Euro. I note that we have the Greek withdrawal from the eurozone article, which isn't quite the same thing. There is a possible EU exit in the air too.

Should either (or both) of these happen, IMHO, we should post the story to ITN. The Greek withdrawal from the eurozone article is in good shape, with only one unsourced "fact". This minor problem should not prevent a MP appearance. Raising for discussion and consensus forming so we can be ready to act quickly. Mjroots (talk) 17:27, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

plain image with caption

Please see Talk:Main Page#I was bold. I have instituted the use of {{plain image with caption}} for TFA and OTD and after 2015-06-18 00:00 UTC I would like to add it to DYK and ITN as well. Sorry for the late notice. I figured if no one actually took action, the perennial discussion of how to resolve the "can't figure out what the image is of" problem for ITN and OTD would just dissolve into nothingness as it always does. True, DYK and TFA don't really need it, but I thought it would be good if all four sections of the Main Page were in sync. Thanks. —howcheng {chat} 22:18, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Zhou Yongkang

I have to lodge a complaint here about the manner in which the Zhou Yongkang ITN post was handled. I thought in this case the consensus tipped the balance in favour of "support" but the item was removed from contention simply because it was too old. Is this really a fair way to manage how ITN items are determined? I was not aware that "staleness" was a legitimate reason to not post an item especially when there were strong arguments presented shortly after the event occurred in favour of posting the item. Additioanlly, the [attention needed] tag was placed three days before the discussion was unceremoniously closed. (cc @Zanhe:, @Sca:, @Everymorning:, @Trust Is All You Need:) Colipon+(Talk) 17:55, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm confused, you do know that 7 days for an RD is considered the limit? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:10, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

It was not an RD... Colipon+(Talk) 18:14, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Oh, my mistake. Well typically once the nomination drops off the nomination page, it's no longer valid, that's been the case, at least as far as I know, for as long as I've been around ITN. If this is the one and only case that we've experienced where an editor didn't get the desired outcome, we're doing pretty well. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:21, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

It happens now and then that an article doesn't get posted even though there is consensus. FWIW, there is no ill-intent involved in these cases. Sometimes by the time the story does achieve consensus, it is stale. Mjroots (talk) 18:38, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

That's exactly the point. We're all volunteers. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:40, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I am not trying to pin the blame on anyone specific - but let's face the facts here; the vast majority of comments required to "achieve consensus" on this post was made two or three days after it happened, at which point it was not yet 'stale'. It's not as though we took a long time to reach this consensus and that was the reason it got stale. Colipon+(Talk) 21:12, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't know how hard it is to administer this page, so I won't criticise. But I agree with Colipon, that candidates are classified as "Stale" feels subjective—when is one candidate classified as stale? What requirements does a candidate need to be classified as stale? --TIAYN (talk) 22:40, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

After seven days, nominations are automatically removed from the ITNC page. That's when they're considered stale. The Rambling Man (talk) 04:41, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

@The Rambling Man: Except that it's not been seven days yet, and it's still on the ITNC page. But someone manually closed the discussion as stale, which should have been reverted. The article is high quality, and the trial, the most significant in Chinese history since the trial of the Gang of Four in 1981, is highly notable. -Zanhe (talk) 05:36, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Then unclose it. Be bold. The Rambling Man (talk) 05:47, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Never mind, I did it myself. And look at the magic. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:34, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Admins ignoring nominations

This experience with the Dusty Rhodes nomination has left a bad taste in my mouth. It was nominated June 11, and it did have some opposition but it was mostly from users who hadn't heard of him and didn't realize how big he was in the wrestling world. The only actionable opposition was from The Rambling Man over quality concerns and several users (including myself and Nikki311 worked hard to improve the article. On June 14, TRM admitted "there seems sufficient consensus to post but the sourcing is still really poor" (which Nikki and myself worked on). And yet, a neutral admin didn't even voice an opinion. On June 15, after the meaningful discussion was over, I came to a realization and wrote "It's been four days since he died and there hasn't been much discussion in 2 days [...] And yet no neutral admins have sounded in. Is the plan to ignore this, then reject it because too much time has passed?"

This is an editorial tactic that I've seen used before in various places around Wikipedia. An admin disagrees with a nomination or doesn't care enough to comment so they leave it. Before long, too much time has passed and they can act like they didn't do anything wrong. I even posted here on the talk page a couple days ago and it was ignored. This is ridiculous. I'm not upset that it wasn't posted, if an admin had felt he wasn't notable enough, I would have disagreed but at least respected the decision. What does anger me is that it was completely ignored like this. Several of us worked hard on that article and for the regular admins here to pull this is disrespectful. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 12:39, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

What evidence do you have that nominations are being deliberately ignored for some nefarious or negligent purpose? We are all, even admins, volunteers who come here when they can. There aren't legions of admins standing by to post ITN items. You can, at any time, find an active admin and request that they assess consensus of an item. 331dot (talk) 12:59, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes it needs pinging an uninvolved admin, on ITNC right now I see Thryduulf, Spencer, Bagumba, Tone and Black Kite, as well as me, who have posted items in the last week. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:18, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm not an ITN regular and I'm not particularly active. One shouldn't have to be a member of the club to get any admin assistance. You guys want the mop, you want to help at ITN, then make sure every item gets attention. It's not like it takes 24/7 monitoring and a herculean effort and there are dozens of admins that monitor this page. We're not talking about an item being ignored for a few hours or days. We're talking about a whole week, which is unacceptable. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 14:03, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't know to whom you're making that address ("you guys"). I had made extensive comment there and wanted an uninvolved admin to close it out. It really isn't a big deal to ping a few people, to see if they'd help out. By the way, some of us do make sure every item gets attention, both at the nomination page and the articles involved. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:10, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

That was addressed at 331dot. You've always been one of the better admins. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 14:30, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

@Scorpion0422: If you want to see something posted, you need to do the work to get it posted, which can include getting the attention of an admin who can do so. You don't have to be a member of a "club" to do it. There is not some nefarious plot to exclude this or any item. 331dot (talk) 14:16, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I don't monitor ITN regularly, I don't know who to ask. I shouldn't have to. If asking an admin to post an item is part of the normal process, then it should be in the instructions. But it's not and I was foolish enough to assume someone would look at it without harassment from me. That's why it's a club. It has special rules that only the regulars know how to take advantage of.

And if there isn't some "nefarious plot" then post the item right now. It has consensus. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 14:30, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

I think it's more about the fact that the further down the page and more text that's added, combined with early votes which aren't revisited, you get a situation where items which are nearly dropping off are simply overlooked. Human nature I suppose. But as I suggested, why not speak with Spencer or Black Kite or another of those I've noted who have been active in the past week. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:37, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

(ec)I am not an admin so I cannot post something. You don't have to monitor or participate in ITN regularly- but if you want to see something done, you need to work to get it done. That's the case with all of Wikipedia, not just ITN. Until we all get paid to edit here, people will do what they can when they can get to it. Sometimes stuff slips through the cracks; we are all human beings and not perfect. If you have evidence of a deliberate plot to not post this item, let's see it, otherwise, it is a baseless accusation. 331dot (talk) 14:41, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Well, I DID post something here asking for an admin to take a look. Okay, if asking admins to look at ITN nominations is simply part of the process (like you claim) then I propose that it should be listed in the "How to nominate an item" section. And there should be a list admins that one can ask for help. That way those of us unfamiliar with the process will be on a level playing field with those that are. Also, what's the point of keeping nominations open for a week if they're deemed too old after a few days? -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 17:10, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

My thoughts were just that, thoughts. I would do the same if I was in that position, just like people take issues to AN for closing things out across Wikipedia. You're right, there's no point in deeming nominations to be too old after a few days, we do (or at least some users do) tend to close down discussions that go stale after 48 hours of no comments, but there's nothing written down about that. Your feedback is useful here, I'm sorry the community didn't serve your primary request better. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:57, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

My apologies for not checking here frequently enough. For future reference, there is a category Category:Wikipedia_In_the_news_frequent_administrators (unfortunately, not many admins who are involved with ITN are listed on there) that may be useful. Spencer^T♦C 19:34, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Dusty Rhodes

It's been five days so could someone please make a decision on it? I think there's consensus to post now. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 11:37, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Same with Zhou Yongkang, please. Colipon+(Talk) 00:45, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Was the decision ultimately to ignore it until enough time had passed, and then let it be archived without any action? GaryColemanFan (talk) 20:43, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Not from Ireland nor a cricketer. Plays a fake sport. Is American United Statesian. Next! –HTD 20:51, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

This discussion has been superseded by one below. Please take your "contributions" there. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:55, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

Another case

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

---

I'm following suggestions to post here an exchange from Spencer's talk page, which relates to the matter of timely action on ITN nominations. Sca (talk) 17:59, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Zhou posting

Hi, Spencer. I'd be interested in your rationale for reopening and posting this ITNC, now a week old – which I closed 6/17 for that reason. Such tardy, belated postings make WP look amateurish, IMO. Sca (talk) 14:20, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

If an article is still eligible (not older than the oldest item) on the template, I see no reason it can't be posted if it's suitable for posting. I have posted "late" items before. I also don't think nominations should be closed on the basis of being "stale"; they should be closed if there is consensus not to post the item, IMO. But perhaps this is a discussion for WT:ITN. Best, Spencer^T♦C 14:23, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

And to be clear, Spencer didn't reopen the nomination, I did as there was clearly still interest in it. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:27, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Clearly? Well, Zanhe noted on 6/15 that it had five supports and three opposes, and said, "I guess it's the admin's call." No one posted any further votes, and no admin did anything with it for two days.

From a news standpoint – and we are talking about In the News – it was clearly an outdated story. Although I supported posting (on 6/12), it seemed obvious by 6/17 that its time had past, and indeed it was no longer in the news.

Oh well. Soon it will slough off ITN anyway. Yawn. Sca (talk) 14:49, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

As of 15:56 it was already gone. So it was on ITN for 10 hours. Rather a futile bureaucratic exercise, IMO. Sca (talk) 17:59, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

See WT:ITN if you have a genuine interest in this. Otherwise, addressing consensus seriously is far from amateurish. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:55, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

• Comment: My position on closing ITN noms is to only close if there is consensus not to post. If an item is stale, it will rotate off ITN/C as the bot removes nominations that are older than 8 days, but until then, the article can always be improved up to that point and still posted. Sometimes ITN has high turnover, with all of it's items from the previous 2 days and other times there's stuff on there that is 2 weeks old. I'm always willing to post an item that is younger than the oldest item on the template if it's updated and has consensus to post. Spencer^T♦C 18:36, 18 June 2015 (UTC)
• Comment nice to see Sca doing nothing constructive here at all. I particularly like the "Yawn" comment, that's really helpful. Well done. I look forward to seeing more comments of such a nature in the future so we can all see how ridiculous you are being. Plus ca change. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:54, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

WP:NPA, WP:CIV – Sca (talk) 01:10, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

• Comment: I agree with Spencer that nominations should not be manually closed as "stale" – that's the job of the bots. And the item was newer than the oldest ones on ITN, so it wasn't too old to post. I don't get why Sca thought it was "amateurish" to post it. -Zanhe (talk) 05:29, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Collapsing nonproductive side discussion. SpencerT♦C 01:43, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Because "it seemed obvious by 6/17 that its time had past, and indeed it was no longer in the news." As mentioned recently, news is like fish and visitors – they all begin to smell after three days. Sca (talk) 13:43, 19 June 2015 (UTC) Incorrect. Page views dispute your claim. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:50, 19 June 2015 (UTC) About 150 years of journalism norms, lore and practice (since adoption of the telegraph) support my view. One further point: I did not call our competent, congenial colleague Spencer "amateurish." That's a distortion of what I said. I merely expressed my opinion that "tardy, belated postings make (Wikipedia) look amateurish." Which they do, IMO. Sca (talk) 14:15, 19 June 2015 (UTC) Page views don't. This is WIkipedia. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:42, 19 June 2015 (UTC) Wikipedia exists, and competes, in a media context and cybersphere much, much larger than itself. AUT TACE AUT LOQUERE MELIORA SILENTIO – Sca (talk) Indeed, take some of your own advice, three times daily, preferably before thinking about editing. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:16, 19 June 2015 (UTC) WP:CIV – WP:HAR – Sca (talk) 19:01, 19 June 2015 (UTC) Sorry, who posted the Latin sleight? Time to get a grip and stop the nonsense. The more you harass me Sca, the more likely you are to be banned. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:25, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Let's discuss the issue at hand. I would say that a simple solution to this issue is to introduce a "ping admin" button at the top of the ITN/C page, or for every admin who checks the page to check daily for an 'attention needed' tag. It is a legitimate concern when a story reaches a rough consensus on day 3 but no admins bother to check it until day 7 when it is too late to post. It's not anyone's fault really, and it has an easy solution. Colipon+(Talk) 19:03, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Admins have all kinds of reasons to get involved or not get involved. As you can, some editors have real grudges and will call foul whenever and wherever possible, even in Latin. If you guys want to do something actually practical, WP:RFA is that way. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:25, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Please continue this dispute elsewhere. 331dot (talk) 17:08, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
... some editors have real grudges and will call foul whenever and wherever possible.... TRM, please stop your personal attacks and threats now. – WP:NPA – Sca (talk) 00:42, 20 June 2015 (UTC) Stop attacking me, even in Latin. And there are no threats at all. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:06, 20 June 2015 (UTC) Threat: "The more you harass me Sca, the more likely you are to be banned." Sca (talk) Oh, that, that's just a fact. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:01, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

@Colipon: TRM is right, the problem is there are not enough administrators, especially ones familiar with non-Western cultures. If you do decide to take the RFA route per TRM's suggestion, you'll definitely have my support. -Zanhe (talk) 04:18, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

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

Freedom Flotilla III

Hello, is what someone might add the event on Freedom Flotilla III that is in Portal:Current events. Thanks.--Mohatatou (talk) 09:01, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

@Mohatatou: If you want to nominate an event for the ITN box, please visit the nominations page and follow the instructions there to do so. 331dot (talk) 09:22, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

To give a first opinion, I don't think the article is sufficient enough as it is to be posted on the Main Page. Zwerg Nase (talk) 09:23, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

What is the current policy re: admins posting items they have already !voted on?

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

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It's a simple question, but a serious one, and it brought out some interesting response at the James Horner nomination. Namely: are admins allowed to post items they have already !voted on? What exactly is the policy here? I have further questions, but I want to take this one step at a time. Jusdafax 08:56, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

• As I mentioned, I have already promoted probably dozens of items that I have supported (or even opposed). It was only ever done when a clear consensus (excluding my position) was evident. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:05, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

  How many admins are there? I get the feeling that things should get posted faster than they are atm, so I would tend to say, if a consensus is clear (meaning the admin's vote is not decisive), he or she can post it even if they have supported or opposed the nomination. Zwerg Nase (talk) 09:21, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

• I have no problem with administrators who have voted on a nomination posting it if consensus is clear. WP:INVOLVED states:

  In straightforward cases ... the community has historically endorsed the obvious action of any administrator – even if involved – on the basis that any reasonable administrator would have probably come to the same conclusion.

  Given that we have a fairly limited number of administrators that regularly post ITN items and most of them also participate in ITN/C discussions, preventing administrators from posting in such cases would exacerbate the difficulty of ensuring items are posted in a timely manner. Neljack (talk) 10:49, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
• I agree with the comments above. If consensus is clear, it's fine for an involved administrator to post the item.
  Of course, a pattern of misjudgement regarding the clarity of consensus is problematic, but this seems more common among uninvolved admins (perhaps because those who've participated in a discussion are mindful of the need to post the item only when the outcome is obvious). —David Levy 11:10, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
• I agree with the points made above. If consensus in favor of posting is clear, then it is not a problem for someone who has commented in favor of posting to post it. If there is significant disagreement about posting (or about the terms of the posting), then someone new to the discussion should weigh in. (The alternative is for a supporter of an obviously postworthy item to hang back and refrain from supporting posting, so that he or she can become the "uninvolved" person who actually does the posting. This just delays reaching consensus and doesn't help anyone, which is especially undesirable on a page where timeliness is a virtue.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:34, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
• Per Neljack, it depends entirely on the situation. A unanimously supported ITNR item, with dozens of commenters, which has been waiting at least 24 hours would be entirely non-controversial, and no one should ever have a problem with a voting admin also posting. There's nothing at all wrong with that. However, if there are close calls, or items which have not been settled yet, it's usually best to avoid posting if one has voted. There is no blanket rule one way or the other. --Jayron32 15:43, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
• I agree with everyone above; no problems at all if consensus us clear. In particular, no conceivable problem posting as RD and allowing discussion to continue for blurb, if consensus is unanimous for one or the other. I think this question is answered, perhaps it's time for the next of Jusdafax's further questions. --Floquenbeam (talk) 16:56, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

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

June 18th

2 items under the June 18th heading require admin attention. Additionally, just fyi to the rest of the page, I will be out of country with unknown Internet access until mid August so I probably won't be available if you ping me for help regarding ITN items. Best, Spencer^T♦C 02:53, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Time to add the Cuban Thaw

The Cuban Thaw has today culminated in a reesablishment of full diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba for the first time in over 50 years. Pandeist (talk) 17:21, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

We posted this at the beginning, I believe. --Bongwarrior (talk) 17:25, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

That said, today's announcement might merit a re-nomination, or we may want to wait until the embassies actually re-open. --Bongwarrior (talk) 17:31, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I was going ask, beginning of what? It was announced just hours ago. Pandeist (talk) 17:33, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

WP:ITN/C. I was thinking of nominating this myself, though I'm ambivalent as to whether or not it should go up. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:36, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

@Pandeist: I was referring to this, which we posted back in December at the beginning of the whole US/Cuba thaw. --Bongwarrior (talk) 00:38, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Technically that's to a different article, since it was decided that the thaw itself was an historically notable event worthy of individual coverage, apart from the more general "relations“ page. My guess would be that it will end up covering a period up to the lifting of the embargo, after which we'll be all thawed out. Pandeist (talk) 06:05, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Nicholas Winton

It is unacceptable to "close" an item that is still on the main page. Anything on the main page remains open to debate (whether it should be at ITN at all, whether it should instead be an RD, or its exact wording) until it is removed. There is opposition to this item, which in my opinion does not meet the criteria for being at ITN at all. Blurbs are reserved for heads of state and those of equal fame. His exact role in the alleged events seems vague and debatable; also, he "did not discuss his efforts with anyone; his wife found out what he had done only after she discovered a scrapbook in their attic"(!). Tadeusz Nowak (talk) 12:37, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

There is no guideline or policy stating that debate must go on endlessly or that posted items must be kept open. In fact, endless debate can be disruptive and create acrimony and animosity. I understand that what you believe is your opinion, but it is just that, your opinion, which did not seem to sway many people. There is no policy saying that 'blurbs are reserved for heads of state and those of equal fame'; they are typically given to those who either die unexpectedly or who are tops in their field. 331dot (talk) 12:45, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

After my comment, I count around 7 editors opposing the blurb, so that is obviously not true. The only thing that can be disruptive is closing a debate to curtail the consensus-based process and open debate. The discussion was also closed after much less than a full day, which is clearly unjustified. At the time the discussion was closed, several editors (as in: over half a dozen) had just started opposing the blurb, so it seems clear it was closed merely to prevent editors opposed to the blurb from weighing in. Tadeusz Nowak (talk) 13:10, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

So you would like it kept open until you get the result you want? Are you also in the mind of Mjroots to know what his reasons were for closing? It's not a vote count but supports for a blurb also came in after your comment. The opposition seems to boil down to WP:IDONTLIKEIT which does not stand up against the reasons for support. 331dot (talk) 13:16, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

The user who marked the discussion as closed clearly stated his personal opinion that the blurb should remain regardless of consensus. Also, closing a discussion after just a few hours (and much less than a full day) with the explicit, stated purpose of preventing opposing views from being voiced is clearly against the procedure. The blurb was at that time opposed by 8 editors, whereas those supporting it did not provide any other arguments than WP:ILIKEIT. Tadeusz Nowak (talk) 13:30, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Please link to where Mjroots specifically said that his purpose in closing was to stifle or silence further opposition. Plenty of opposition views were stated; the discussion is not a vote count but a weighing of arguments. Support is not just ILIKEIT but reasoned, logical arguments relating to what the man did and what sources state about him. 331dot (talk) 14:11, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

While I don't necessarily agree with User:Tadeusz Nowak, I think ITN ought to have the flexibilty to allow "lesser known" notable deaths to feature for a shorter time with a blurb. I so no reason why every item has to wait until it gets pushed off the bottom of the list. I'd be happy to see Nicholas Winton move back to RD after a day or two. Just my opinion. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:49, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

I closed the discussion because, IMHO, it was becoming disruptive. For the record, the original nomination was for RD, but another editor said that it warrented a blurb and suggested one. I and a number of other editors supported the blurb. At the time it was posted, there was not a single "oppose blurb" comment, they only came after it was posted. Winton may not have been famous worldwide, but that is because he did not see himself as a hero, and kept his head down for many years before the story even came out. As others have said, he can be considered to have been at the top of his field (humanities). There is not rule that states only heads of state get a blurb, although it is almost certain that they will when they pass away. Neither is there a set time limit that a discussion should be open for before it is posted. These things are played very much by ear on a case-by-case basis. Those yelling "pull" and "RD" need to have the grace to accept that it got a blurb, and move on - much the same as I accept that the Formula E blurb ain't going to make it to MP. For those who want to make it a straight count, I make it 14 for blurb, 8 for RD and 2 pulls. A clear consensus for blurb by this method (not taking into account the strength of the case put forwared for the vote). Mjroots (talk) 14:15, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

There was not left enough time to debate this item. All discussion, including the pull comments, took place within much less than a full day. As you point out, he was not "famous worldwide" (I had never heard of him), and blurbs are generally reserved for people who are. I very much doubt that people of other nationalities with a comparable impact (e.g. an Indonesian person involved in the Indonesian civil war, or a Polish person involved in the anti-Soviet resistance) would make it to ITN. Tadeusz Nowak (talk) 14:49, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

If you would like to place a minimum time constraint on items, then you can suggest that. There's a systemic bias towards English-language interest items here, so you're probably right, an Indonesian would have more trouble getting support on this Wikipedia for the ITN item than an Englishman or American with similar credentials. But we have plenty of Wikipedias where I suspect English or American items of interest aren't posted routinely, but more local stories of interest are. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:44, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Would the death of somebody that saves 669 Nigerian kids from Boko Haram, or 669 Iraki kids from ISIS get posted on ITN? If tomorrow somebody nicknamed "[countryname]'s Mandela" should we post it? I think this is a fairly obvious English-centric example, where even people in the US (that are usually somewhat aware of UK events) had no idea this person existed before the "UK's Schindler dies" popped out in headlines. I wonder if he was actually widely-know in the UK either. Nergaal (talk) 17:36, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

@Nergaal: Winton was reasonably well known in UK following his appearance on That's Life!. Mjroots (talk) 17:52, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

It's a kind of "OTHERSTUFFEXISTS" argument. When I posted the item, there was a clear consensus for a blurb. A clear one. Please let me know if otherwise. Subsequently we had a few dissenters and a few post-posting supporters, as some ITN candidates suffer. All this "well if it'd been an Indonesian" or "if it was a ISIS saviour" argument is pretty much a waste of time. We need to actually assess each item individually. I can pretty much (personal opinion warning) guarantee that if news arises of an individual saving hundreds from ISIS or saving hundreds from Boko Harem then it would be well worth us posting it. In the meantime we just get on with things, post per consensus and discuss subsequently. If we need a change of process that mandates we wait, or mandates that nominations remain permanently open so they can be continually pulled/reposted/pulled etc based on new votes, then that should be proposed here. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:58, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Re: "... if news arises of an individual saving hundreds from ISIS or saving hundreds from Boko Harem then it would be well worth us posting it": It's not the event in itself that was posted, it was the death of a person claiming (or claimed to have) credit for it, over 70 years later, who does not appear to be that widely recognised for his role (compared to e.g. Nelson Mandela or other obvious ITN candidates). During the 1930s, enormous amounts of people died or were rescued, we are talking millions of deaths in Soviet-ruled Ukraine before WWII alone; in that perspective, I wonder which events of that era we would actually post. The number of refugees in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s is tens of millions, I suspect there are tens of thousands of people who could claim comparable credit as the subject of the article in question. Tadeusz Nowak (talk) 19:04, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

So his living those 70 years somehow lessens his achievement? My word. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:07, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

No, not doing anything else in these 70 years that is news-worthy lessens his stake at taking an ITN spot. Nergaal (talk) 19:26, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

So in order to get posted to ITN someone must be continually famous their entire lives? One-shot wonders need not apply? (or people whose fame was not immediate?) 331dot (talk) 19:28, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

(ec) None of this is really important. Arguments starting "I suspect...." and "I wonder...." don't achieve anything I'm afraid. We base our promotions to the main page on consensus. We had that, we still have that. Personal opinions and strawman arguments are allowable, but will not necessarily be acted upon. If there's a criterion in the ITN process that needs changing, feel free to make a proposal. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:30, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Maybe someone should have started another World War or two? Martinevans123 (talk) 19:32, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Give it time... The Rambling Man (talk) 19:36, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

• I think when it comes to RDs, if you have to explain in the blurb why the person was famous, they should not get a full blurb. Am I missing something? Nergaal (talk) 14:01, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

  Seems like a reasonable thought, but it's certainly not written in guidance anywhere. Moreover, consensus will trump this kind of opinion. And this kind of thing will probably serve to reinforce systemic bias rather than act against it. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:27, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

  You may be right. The problem with the item in question however was that it is an example of systematic bias. If he was known to any degree at all, it was only in the UK (I'm not convinced he was that widely known there either). Tadeusz Nowak (talk) 14:49, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

  That he was possibly known only in the UK is of no relevance to ITN. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:51, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

It is irrelevant where he is famous. If you say "Mandela died", or "Actor Robert Williams died", or "Pavarotti died" the large majority of readers from anywhere in the world will know about it. If instead you have to take 3 lines on ITN to explain why he is famous, then you are way too far off from the standard set by the likes of Mandela, Williams or Pavarotti. Nergaal (talk) 15:19, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Notable people are not all equally notable, even when they die. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:26, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Then suggest a criteria that says if we need three lines to explain it, it shouldn't be a blurb. Consensus in this case is against you. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:47, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Isn't it part of Wikipedia's mission to educate? Mjroots (talk) 22:04, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. Meanwhile 150,000 people viewed his article in the first days of July, and it hasn't resulted in anyone coming to ask why it was on the Main page. Stephen 22:41, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

"it hasn't resulted in anyone coming to ask why it was on the Main page"? Actually, we are right here, questioning why this is on the main page, and why the discussion was closed after just a few hours, when a significant number of editors (8) had just started opposing the blurb and when it seemed likely that the consensus would at least determine that it should be an RD at most. Tadeusz Nowak (talk) 11:14, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Who's more important, editors or readers? The Rambling Man (talk) 11:43, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

I like to think of myself as both an editor and a reader. In order to bring something up on a talk page, you have to be an editor. Tadeusz Nowak (talk) 18:20, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

We have hundreds of thousands hits per hour to the main page yet the handful of complainants are all regular editors. Go figure? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:24, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Can we move on from this? I nominated Winton as RD, it got posted as a blurb -- I'd rather it have been RD and I said so, but done is done and we should move on, unless somebody has a policy change to propose. -Kudzu1 (talk) 19:00, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Is it policy to keep all blurbs in the list until they fall off the bottom? Or is it just a convenience, to avoid having to run a whole other set of !votes to remove or demote to RD? Martinevans123 (talk) 19:05, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

As far as I go, blurbs remain until they're knocked off, RDs are removed seven days after the death date. I'm not aware of anything in the guidelines that discusses demoting blurb to RD as that usually is never necessary, blurbs moving slower than RD staleness. I'm also unaware of any commonplace reduction of a blurb to an RD in other circumstances. That doesn't mean to say it hasn't happened, but I'm pretty sure there's nothing in the ITN instructions that include these scenarios. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:19, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

I guess these questions don't often arise when you try to run a fake newspaper? Martinevans123 (talk) 19:25, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

No, that's Wikinews you're talking about. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:28, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Add back oldest news blurb ITN?

There will be an upcoming Queue set of DYK, which may outbalance the Main Page. The oldest blurb I see is some rocket or spaceship explosion. Add it back? (I don't want to ask a vacationing admin, id est Spencer, at the moment. I decide to post here instead.) --George Ho (talk) 21:01, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposal: Change title to "In News and Sports"

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

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This is a very simple proposal, and I hope people will treat it as such, with no walls of text or badgering. As we have discussed here previously, at times this feature contains more sports blurbs than news. Changing the name to "In News and Sports" is merely a more accurate reflection of what the feature actually is.

• Support - As proposer. Most news outlets make a distinction between hard news and sports items. Since we have no way of doing that, I'd suggest we make it clear in the title that our blurbs, which of course we place in chronological order, a fact not readily obvious to the casual reader, cover both subjects equally. Jusdafax 20:01, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
• Comment This feels rather passive-aggressive. You also had a proposal in May about having a sports ticker. May I ask what it is that bothers you so much about having sports in this section? I don't understand what the problem is and I don't feel I can either support or oppose this without understanding its purpose. Isa (talk) 20:07, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

"Truth in Advertising" is the operative principle. You now have a feature called "In the News." What the first thing you sometimes read? A sports item. Sometimes several in a row. No matter how you may "feel", my proposal is an improvement. And, no matter how much you insist sports is news, it's just sports. That's why news shows have a sports section, online news papers have a sports section, and so on. Jusdafax 03:44, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

"Truth in Advertising" is the operative principle

I don't know what this means.

What the first thing you sometimes read? A sports item. Sometimes several in a row.

You read an item that's in the news that happens to be about sports. Sometimes there's several sport events that are in the news.

No matter how you may "feel", my proposal is an improvement.

This is a rather odd thing to say. By definition, the proposal is an improvement if it has consensus.

online news papers have a sports section

They also have politics, business, opinion, technology, science, health, arts, food, travel, environment, etc. I don't think you'd want to split ITN in so many sections. So again, why sports? Isa (talk) 04:26, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose the items that are sports items that are featured at ITN are "in the news". You could expand the proposal to say "In News, Sports, Politics, Natural History, Science and Hairdressing" but the simple fact is that we post newsworthy items to the ITN section, based on consensus, whether they're "news" or "sport" (or, indeed, "hairdressing"). The proposed distinction is unnecessary and marginal, and doesn't seem to be serving our readers – where has this so-called "fact not readily obvious to the casual reader" been noted, beyond this thread? And Isanae makes a good point. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:11, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose this name choice for the reasons TRM states; where I live notable sports events often make the front page of the 'news' section if they are significant enough(Super Bowl, etc.) I think any new name should reflect that we aren't trying to be a newspaper but trying to highlight decent and updated articles. 331dot (talk) 20:33, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose - I proposed the separate "Sports" window, which was opposed. Same for this proposal. I don't like renaming the whole project. Now that GA articles are part of DYK, perhaps propose renaming it to "Did you know and Good Articles"? George Ho (talk) 20:48, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose per TRM. Sports results are part of news, like it or not. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:59, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. Normally, I'd explain why, but I wouldn't want to badger Jusdafax with a wall of text. —David Levy 04:30, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. For many people, sports are news. Calidum T|C 04:34, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. And I would appreciate if we would take it more seriously and post less sport that is not actually news, like the Tour de Suisse. Zwerg Nase (talk) 11:38, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

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

2015 anti-china protest in Turkey

Not sure why ITN for Xinjiang_conflict#2015_anti-China_protests_in_Turkey was closed without a single comment. This story is part of Xinjiang conflict with wider implications for China–Turkey relations. 198.16.164.205 (talk) 23:28, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Very poor quality article, and adding a duplicate nom and then edit-warring over it doesn't look very good for you. Notability doesn't seem to be present. -Kudzu1 (talk) 00:33, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Stop the personal attack. You must not be talking about this 'Very poor quality article' Xinjiang_conflict#2015_anti-China_protests_in_Turkey which is in very decent condition. Also have not been edit-warring as shows you must not read the summary comments. 198.16.164.205 (talk) 00:34, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

You're...joking, right? -Kudzu1 (talk) 00:55, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Do you mean 2015 anti-China protests? --George Ho (talk) 00:56, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Kudzu, No I don't edit on Wikipedia to joke with you particularly. George, I mean Xinjiang_conflict#2015_anti-China_protests_in_Turkey which is in very decent condition. 198.16.164.205 (talk) 01:39, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

It needs more development. Otherwise, it's just one sentence. --George Ho (talk) 01:36, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

You mean two but you have to take account of the whole article which is in good condition. 198.16.164.205 (talk) 01:41, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Pointing out how your situation appears is not a "personal attack". ITN does not just look at the quality of the article, but the quality of the update, which as has been pointed out, is just not there. News coverage of this relatively small protest is also limited. 331dot (talk) 06:38, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

China issuing travel warnings to Europe that is a big news. 198.16.164.205 (talk) 15:00, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Many countries issue travel warnings frequently for many reasons; warnings are not prohibitions against travel. Now, if Turkey or China recalled ambassadors or broke off diplomatic relations, that might merit posting. Something more than a relatively small protest. 331dot (talk) 17:02, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Protesters did attack tourists so that takes it to another level. 198.16.164.205 (talk) 18:29, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

You wanted this posted to ITN. The answer is no. Sorry, but it happens. Learn from what you're being told and apply it next time -- a better target article, a more noteworthy development, a less quarrelsome attitude -- and let this one go. That's my advice. -Kudzu1 (talk) 02:51, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Please stop it. 198.16.164.205 (talk) 06:12, 8 July 2015 (UTC)