Wikipedia talk:In the news/Archive 71

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Update?

Seven days as top news item for the announcement of a new snooker champion is, quite possibly, overkill? Any chance of an update? BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 18:40, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

@Bastun: There is no one more qualified than you for fixing this problem. It's a short, 3 step process for you to fix it.
1) Find some article at Wikipedia that is related to a recent major news story.
2) Update the article with information about the story, and clean up the article as a whole so that it is of sufficient quality to appear on the main page
3) Nominate the article at WP:ITNC.
That's it. In a few hours to a day or so, it should be posted. --Jayron32 18:45, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
Fair point, well made :-) BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 20:51, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
I made a suggestion in 2013 at Wikipedia talk:In the news/Archive 44#Shorter stays for sport but it got no support. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:10, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
It's completely rolled off, what's the problem again? The Rambling Man (talk) 21:22, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
You wait seven days for a bus, and then four come along all at once....  — Amakuru (talk) 21:25, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Israel-Gaza conflict is wrong. It's a story from last year (same date).

"At least 29 people are killed in clashes at the Gaza–Israel border." is from May 14 2018. Not 2019. Suggested change: coincidentally, Eurovision's first semi-final. Alex.osheter (talk) 20:15, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

There's been renewed conflict this year eg [1]. probably purely coincidential on timing and events. --Masem (t) 20:27, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
This is from May 5, and no longer in the news since a ceasefire was reached. Alex.osheter (talk) 20:45, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
Yes, but until another news story is posted which will make this one roll off, it'll stay there. If you view the source of ITN, it clearly states the story applied as of 6 May. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:47, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
Understood, thanks. I don't usually deal with ITN, I was just on the main page, saw this and thought it meant this is today's news. Being from the area, I know this is not up-to-date and thought it was some kind of mistake :) Feel free to nominate a new ITN, it'd be greatly appreciated, if not.. I guess we'll just wait until someone else does. I learned something new today, so that's pretty cool too. Thank you. Alex.osheter (talk) 21:50, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Jens Beutel

I noticed that Jens Beutel had died, couldn't update right away but a day later, nothing happened, updated more another day later, 3 supported, marked ready, but again nothing happened. We call it recent deaths, no? - I sadly had to nominate the next already, and just noticed a third who'd deserve it but has no aricle yet. - Are there secrets about posting that I don't know? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:38, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

He's posted now, but - due to what I described - close to the end. What can I do better nect time? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:16, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
No, we have few admins working, especially over the weekends. The main page is low priority, it's more about presence at ANI, making big waves at Arbcom cases etc, and less about serving the readers. There are a handful of decent admins left, but they deserve some time out from this. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:29, 13 May 2019 (UTC)

Anatol Herzfeld

I hear you. Anatol Herzfeld, no weekend now. Can you support? - Was known only 12 May, written 13, question to reference pictured art 14, done that, - and now? RexxS, here's work for you ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:01, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

I asked above what I should do better next time. The question is more urgent now that Jayron closed it. There's some unfairness in going by date of death rather than by notification, and then not processing a nomination faster. What should I do better next time? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:22, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

We just need more diligent admins. I'd be delighted to help but .... The Rambling Man (talk) 15:26, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
I don't complain that two users invested a lot of time to meet the (excessive? - at least they eat up time) expectations of ITN referencing, but that a great person was thus not exposed to the limelight. Will have to create Wächter (Anatol). Frustrated. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:16, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
Yes, it is very frustrating. I'm sorry the situation seems to be getting worse rather than better. I do my best to get to each ITN candidate, and return when I can if pinged to those I object to, but the admins are too busy. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:18, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
In the process of writing the article "aus Trotz" (in defiance?), found these images. No, we don't show such a person (and I feel that it's my fault, I was too slow), but others several days in a row. Can we change that??? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:43, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

ITN Bot

I've asked Anomie who has said that an ITN tagger similar to the current OnThisDayTagger (handled by AnomieBOT) is doable. Some articles end up not getting tagged, like Talk:I. M. Pei, the recent election in Australia, etc. So, this sounds like a relatively simple thing that can be handed off to a bot, like ITN/C archiving already is. Thoughts? --qedk (t 桜 c) 09:48, 18 May 2019 (UTC)

Please add Support/Oppose/Views, etc. below

  • Yeah, I guess this is probably a good idea. There is something nice about getting a personal message from the admin who did the update, but it's not very reliable. I didn't get a message for my recent ITN so I cheekily sent it to myself 😉 It might also be nice to do one for POTD because photo uploaders don't currently get credited when their pics appear on the MP.  — Amakuru (talk) 09:55, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
    • I was actually thinking of a bot that tags the articles. But, from my experience, Anomie can do anything you ask (6th pillar of Wikipedia), so expanding it to credit ITN authors is not a problem. There are already certain parts of POTD, AnomieBOT I and III manages (adding and deleting pages), so adding this would be plausible. To be quite fair, AnomieBOT has a foot in every part of the Main Page already. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ --qedk (t 桜 c) 14:12, 18 May 2019 (UTC)
  • About the only issue I can think of is when an article gets posted to ITN and then pulled shortly afterward for whatever reason (misreading of consensus, lack of updates, dueling admins having a tiff, etc.) but apart from that, I don't see an issue with it.--WaltCip (talk) 15:59, 20 May 2019 (UTC)
    My guess is the botop can keep certain provisions in place for that, but removing it manually once added isn't too much of an issue either. --qedk (t 桜 c) 18:20, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Started new article on recent news story. Help if you like, ignore this message if you don't want to help

I started an article on a recent news story, and people interested in improving such articles often watchlist ITN. See 2019 Brazil prison riots. I intended to expand it considerably, but I have suddenly run into an IRL thing that's taking up some of my time. If anyone is looking for something to work on, the article could use some work. I've left enough refs there to expand the article considerably, I just suddenly ran into something that doesn't give me the time to deal with it. Thanks! --Jayron32 15:46, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

"Policy about notability of mass shootings" discussion at Village Pump

By now most people on ITN probably already know about this, but just in case, there is currently a discussion at the Village Pump regarding the establishment of a policy regarding the notability of mass shootings on WP:ITN. I'd presume those most familiar with ITN's workings would want to participate or weigh in.--WaltCip (talk) 12:23, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

WP:CEN is now open!

To all interested parties: Now that it has a proper shortcut, the current events noticeboard has now officially opened for discussion!

WP:CEN came about as an idea I explored through a request for comment that closed last March. Recent research has re-opened the debate on Wikipedia's role in a changing faster-paced internet. Questions of WP:NOTNEWS and WP:Recentism are still floating around. That being said, there are still plenty of articles to write and hopefully this noticeboard can positively contribute to that critical process.

Thank you for your participation in the RFC, and I hope to see you at WP:CEN soon! –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 19:06, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Upcoming ITN/R suggestions (Apr-Jun)

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

April

May

June

Other resources

For those who don't take their daily dose of news from an encyclopedia, breaking news stories can also be found via news aggregators (e.g. Google News, Yahoo! News) or your preferred news outlet. Some news outlets employ paywalls after a few free articles, others are funded by advertisements - which tend not to like ad blockers, and a fair few are still free to access. Below is a small selection:

Newspapers

News agencies

News services

Unlike the prose in the article, the reference doesn't necessarily need to be in English. Non-English news sources include, but are not limited to: Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País. Which ironically are Western European examples (hi systemic bias). Any reliable African, Asian or South American non-English source that confirms an event took place can also be used.

Happy hunting. Fuebaey (talk) 16:53, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

This isn't really "In the News"

If this was really a page about what's in the news, it should principally be concerned about timeliness and newsworthiness. pbp 15:14, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

This is an encyclopedia, it should principally be concerned about quality. The Rambling Man (REJOICE!) 17:34, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
Jesus louisus, is it imperative that you shout down everything I say? pbp 17:43, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
No, but this is Wikipedia and it means the community are entitled to their say, and that includes you and me. And I see no good reason to bring Jesus into this. Cheers now. The Rambling Man (REJOICE!) 17:47, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
An encyclopaedia is principally concerned with the total sum of knowledge. Principally within that, with the accuracy. And quality thereafter. ~ R.T.G 10:33, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
We just had a long discussion about this above, unfortunately. Banedon (talk) 22:29, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

Sorry

... but I'd like ITN credit for Werner Müller (politician) because it was tough for me ;) - Could a bot be trained to do that, btw? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:02, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Done. Stephen 22:52, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

A limited consensus

I visited this site thinking that I might try to add more stories on science, but what I found is a bit discouraging. The criteria for significance include the number of unique articles, types of news sources, length and depth of coverage; and there is an extended discussion of prominence, warning the reader not to "assess whether a story is "prominent" or not based on where you see it reported on major news websites". That paints an intimidating picture of significance.

In practice, however, most of the stories are pretty obscure. Looking through the archives for the previous four months, I see that 56% to 78% of the articles are about people who just died. A typical example is Philomena Lynott, notable for being the mother of Phil Lynott; her death was reported in Raidió Teilifís Éireann. Meanwhile, 0-2 articles per month are on science. A current proposal for a story about the Dragonfly mission, covered in depth by just about every major news source (and the only story on the main pages of both Science and Nature), is opposed by the regular voters because the $1 billion dollar award could be rescinded in the future.

The bottom line in the guideline is that consensus trumps all other considerations. To the ten people who are doing almost all the voting on this site: kudos for putting in a lot of work, but have you perhaps strayed from the purpose of this site? RockMagnetist(talk) 17:15, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Consensus is how 99% of Wikipedia operates. Why should ITN be different? 331dot (talk) 17:23, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Also, what is obscure to one person is top level news to another. 331dot (talk) 17:25, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I am entirely in favor of consensus, but consensus on Wikipedia is not simply the result of a vote. As the policy states, it is a way of assuring that Wikipedia's goals are achieved. In most discussions, that means the five pillars. Here, it is presumably the criteria: updated content, significance and article quality. The statement "what is obscure to one person is top level news to another" is not in the spirit of the top part of Signficance, which emphasizes broad, in-depth coverage by major media sources. RockMagnetist(talk) 19:01, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
The consensus against the nomination (so far) is not a close call; you are the only one expressing support for it. 331dot (talk) 22:19, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm using it as an example to make a general point. That's why I'm saying these things here and not at the nomination. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:32, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Gatekeeping is serious stuff. Sports, dead white guys and disasters outside of the US are easily accepted by the gatekeepers. Everything else needs 2:1 vote consensus. Delaying unwanted news stories is also preferable, as it's inevitable Sca will comment "Stale" at some point after 6,000 words of discussion. Howard the Duck (talk) 21:26, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Or some dick will bring up The Boat Race time after time after time. Yes, it's true, life actually is a rollercoaster, so you really have to ride it. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:46, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
I was hoping that I would stimulate serious discussion, not personal attacks. RockMagnetist(talk) 21:58, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
What is it that you hope to achieve? 331dot (talk) 22:17, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
First, an acknowledgement from the regulars that In the news shouldn't be dominated by bios of dead people. If that level of introspection is achieved, we could have a discussion about how the process could be improved. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:32, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
It’s not dominated by bios of dead people. They have their own couple of lines at the bottom, with almost automatic posting if the article is in good shape. Stephen 22:43, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
^^^ Which was determined by an RFC (as noted in the RD ITNC template). --Masem (t) 22:50, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Do you mean Template:ITN candidate? I'm not seeing any mention of an RFC there. RockMagnetist(talk) 23:12, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Per this RFC and further discussion, the nomination of any individual human, animal or other biological organism with a standalone Wikipedia article whose recent death is in the news is presumed to be important enough to post. Discussion should focus only on the quality of the article. See also WP:ITNRD. seriously? The Rambling Man (talk) 23:20, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
RD was created precisely to avoid ITN as a whole filling up with bios of dead people. 331dot (talk) 23:21, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Oh, I see - it's not in the docs but the output of the template. O.k., I withdraw my criticism about the RD candidates. Thank you for your patience. RockMagnetist(talk) 23:46, 29 June 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the wonderful world of ITN, where everyone knows something is broken, but nobody can get consensus on how to fix it! Banedon (talk) 00:30, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

@RockMagnetist: I would love to see more science stories here, and try to work on them where I can and post them where I see consensus to do so. Access to the sources is a problem, as is understanding exactly what the significant increment is, particularly when accessible news sources (eg BBC, Guardian) are often inaccurate/misleading. Commenting yourself on proposed items would be one way of helping. Espresso Addict (talk) 03:35, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Commenting may be one way to get used to this site and what people consider suitable. It's very different from DYK, which is very straightforward. I have 22 successful DYK noms in a row. RockMagnetist(talk) 03:43, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
DYK is entirely different, as it is based on the quid pro quo system that tends to encourage minimal checks and positive reviews by a single editor. In my experience it's quite difficult to get a DYK rejected, and that probably goes 10-fold in the current climate. Espresso Addict (talk) 04:07, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Wow, that's cynical - not the way I operate. RockMagnetist(talk) 04:10, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
I'm not particularly cynical, just realistic. I participated in DYK for years before QPQ was introduced (as I recall, it was the major reason I accepted a nomination to stand for adminship) and genuinely do not feel it has made the section work better. I'm aware that's an opinion the current DYK regulars do not share, which is why I participate there rarely now except when dragged there by main-page errors. Espresso Addict (talk) 04:17, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
Regardless, my point is that the guidelines are clear and I know how to write an article so there is no doubt that any reviewer, however strict, would pass it. Here, as the guidelines themselves point out, "It is highly subject whether an event is considered significant enough," so I have no idea in advance whether a given nomination will be accepted. RockMagnetist(talk) 04:30, 30 June 2019 (UTC)
ITN motivates the creation and improvement of articles irrespective of them being accepted or not. The potential of rejection shouldn't stop you or anyone from nominating something, as the work still benefits the project as a whole. 331dot (talk) 02:21, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
I do think that ITN could be a motivator for some, but it's not working for me. I'm going to go back to editing articles based on my own interests. However, I'm not giving up entirely - if an article I'm working on becomes newsworthy, I will consider nominating it. RockMagnetist(talk) 04:01, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Long-term impact?

I was mistaken about the the dead people, but the way of choosing stories still troubles me. A lot of the arguments have to do with the perceived importance of a story. For example, in the Istanbul Election discussion, there are lots of statements that it's a local election and some "wait and see" arguments about its significance. But one of the stated purposes of this site is To help readers find and quickly access content they are likely to be searching for because an item is in the news. That would certainly have been true of this article:

  • It was covered by newspapers all over the world.
  • A 72,000 byte article sprang up almost overnight and has already had over 50,000 views. Another purpose of this page is To showcase quality Wikipedia content on current events.
  • Views of Ekrem İmamoğlu (the winner of the election) went from about 1500 to as many as 27,000 views per day.
  • Even the views of Istanbul doubled.

Cleary, readers were searching for this information, but they got no help from In the news.

A similar wait-and-see attitude was seen in the Dragonfly discussion. Despite this, views of Dragonfly (spacecraft) jumped from 163 to 5,289 in two days, while those of Titan (moon) went from 2085 to 12,449.

In view of the above, how exactly are these arguments about importance serving the purposes of this page? RockMagnetist(talk) 00:04, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, people don't agree on what the purpose of this page is in the first place, so ... Banedon (talk) 02:09, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
You seem to be suggesting that ITN be a news ticker instead of a means to highlight articles about topical subjects, and in order to do that there needs to be community discussion.. I might suggest that you peruse the archives as this sort of discussion occasionally comes up when someone is dissatisfied with the community not accepting their nomination. That probably sound bad to read, but I don't mean it that way. 331dot (talk) 02:16, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
That's a surprising read of what I'm saying. Contrary to your impression, I think that highlighting of articles is the most important goal, but when judging what is newsworthy the community should defer more to the media. After all, this is "In the news" and they are the sources. And voters should justify their comments with references to the purpose and criteria for this page. I did consider perusing the archives, but there are an awful lot of pages and I can't think of a good search criterion. RockMagnetist(talk) 03:53, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Example, Example. I'll just go ahead and say that although you think highlighting of articles is the most important goal, a sizable fraction of ITN editors thinks ITN is for highlighting good articles, per WP:NOTNEWS and all that, and quality takes precedence over significance. Like I said, everyone knows ITN is broken, but nobody can get consensus on how to fix it, because there's no consensus on what ITN is about anyway. Banedon (talk) 06:44, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
@Banedon: Thanks for the links. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:51, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Actually Banendon, the entire time I've been following ITN (several years now) there has been consensus that the point of ITN is to "to direct readers to articles that have been substantially updated to reflect recent or current events of wide interest". There are a small number of people who believe that quality should not be a significant criterion, but there has never been anything approaching a consensus for that view, which is why the requirements for posting remain the same, i.e.(1) being in the news, (2) being an encyclopaedic topic, (3) having an update of sufficient quality - all judged by consensus. There has also never been a consensus that ITN is broken - there are quite a few people who have expressed that view, but given that pretty much none of them have been able to agree on why they think it is broken (other than having a different opinion about whether a specific story was or was not posted), let alone how to fix it, the lack of consensus for the viewpoint is unsurprising. Thryduulf (talk) 08:13, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
What Thryduulf says. I'll only add that people usually only express their dissatisfaction with the process when their nomination (or one they care for) fails to achieve consensus for posting. But normally when one's nomination gains consensus quickly, there's almost 100% certainty that they'll not come here and question the process. I believe that's a strong indicator that what we have now works well. It's not perfect... of course, but then nowhere is perfect in the whole Wikipedia. – Ammarpad (talk) 12:15, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
@Thryduulf: are you sure? Do you have a link to a discussion which established that consensus? I've certainly seen a lot of threads started by different people who disapproved of the current system, except they've all stopped participating in ITN (and who can blame them). Also Ammarpad, I'm pretty sure a lot of people are dissatisfied even when it's not their nominations that are being rejected, e.g. RockMagnetist, which started this discussion before having nominated anything. Banedon (talk) 12:40, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
I'm not aware off the top of my head which formally established this consensus (The Rambling Man might, he's been around here longer than me), but going back as far as I can find the purpose of ITN has been to showcase quality encyclopaedia articles and there has never been a consensus to change that, despite multiple proposals. There have been multiple proposals to define "quality" more objectively (in multiple ways) and they have all failed to come up with any alternative that is workable across the board - a quality article about an expected event that has been building for years (e.g. US Presidential elections) is very different to a quality article about an earthquake yesterday in Japan is very different to a quality article about an earthquake yesterday in rural Indonesia is very different to a quality article about an air crash on landing in New York is very different to a quality article about an air crash en-route over the south Atlantic is very different to a quality article about a failed coup attempt in Ethiopia is very different to a quality article about the unexpected death of a former Egyptian president, etc.
There have also been many proposals about doing away with the significance criterion, but none have come up with an alternative way of distinguishing the final of the World Cup from the results of every professional sports match in every country, the results of every US collegiate sports match, the latest political scandal in every country, the latest notable criminal allegations, trial openings, trial updates, convictions/acquittals and sentencing in every country, the latest scientific papers in every field, the latest release of every computer game, games console, car, lorry, train, civil and military aeroplane, motorbike, boat, book, song, etc, etc. It's particularly notable that for all your criticism of how ITN currently works you haven't yet proposed a workable alternative.
When people come here complaining about an excess of X type of story or the lack of Y type of story, the usual answer is to nominate more of the type of story they want to see - how is it our responsibility if they choose not to do that? Thryduulf (talk) 13:13, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
@Thryduulf: Don't say I didn't try proposing alternatives. I did. Here is an example, and there are several more that I haven't bothered to search up. The irony is that there were people proposing alternatives in the opposite direction (where I prefer deleting the quality criterion, they prefer deleting the significance criterion), they didn't get consensus either (see the examples above). Like I said - everyone knows ITN is broken, but nobody can get consensus on how to fix it. I predict that this thread will be similar. I will be very surprised if something changes. Banedon (talk) 00:09, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@Banedon: no, "everybody" does not know that "ITN is broken" because there are plenty of people, myself included, who know that it is not broken but that removing any one of the three criteria would break it. It's also worth noting that I didn't say you had not proposed alternatives, I stated you hadn't proposed workable alternatives - there is a big difference between the two. Thryduulf (talk) 00:25, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@Thryduulf: okay, if you want to put it that way, then I'll say there are more people who think ITN is broken than there are who think ITN isn't broken. Also, I will also say that all the alternatives proposed are workable. Removing the significance criterion has already been done for RDs for example, and that has worked hasn't it? The reason it hasn't happened is because it cannot get consensus, same as every other change. Banedon (talk) 00:39, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Removing the significance criterion for RDs, but because RDs are qualitatively different to every other type of nomination - the existence of an article demonstrates significance. The reason why removing the significance criterion for all nominations is unworkable has been dealt with in detail (nearly?) every time it's been suggested, and I gave a brief reprise just above (I neglected to mention that it would also duplicate Wikinews and WikiTribune, making it pointless). Removing the quality criterion is unworkable because it is only a matter of time before we are showcasing gross BLP violations to millions of readers (DYK is bad enough at times, let alone something that's more prominent). As for your numbers argument, nearly (but not entirely) everyone you're counting as "knowing" that ITN is broken actually just believes that it is broken because a nomination (usually but not always one they nominated or are otherwise attached to in some way) was or was not posted when they think it should (not) have been, but rarely do they even attempt to articulate how and why they think it is wrong. Even among those who, like yourself, are serial complainers there is no consensus about how ITN is apparently broken or what needs to change to fix it (let alone how to fix it) beyond usually some vague "I think ITN should post more stories" or "I think ITN should post more of (specific type of story)" or, occasionally, "I think ITN should be posting fewer stories". And even among these people there is not consensus that the purpose of ITN should change. Thryduulf (talk) 01:06, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@Thryduulf: what is your definition of "unworkable"? Because I'm operating with the definition "unworkable = cannot be done". Under this definition we can certainly remove the quality/significance criterion, therefore they're not unworkable. For that matter here's another solution: remove ITN entirely. We can certainly do that too, we just don't want to do it (or do we?). Also, the very fact that there is no consensus about how ITN is broken is the reason there is no chance of change in ITN. If you live in the UK as your profile says you have, you should understand that very well: Brexit is similar. Everyone knows that's broken, too, but nobody can agree on what's broken about it. PS, your sweeping statements about how people don't attempt to articulate what the think is wrong or how to fix it is incorrect. Example. Banedon (talk) 01:49, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Unworkable = cannot work in practical terms, for the reasons repeatedly explained (and repeatedly hand-waveed away at best). There is nothing about Brexit that isn't broken and there is an obvious and easy fix: cancel it. I don't want to discus British politics any further though as it's so very far off topic that it's abundantly clear continuing the discussion would be pointless. Thryduulf (talk) 02:17, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
If your definition of "unworkable" is "cannot work in practical terms" then we're more or less done, because as I've repeatedly explained, the solutions presented are workable, we just don't want to implement them. If you consider them unworkable that's because of your subjective opinion, and I think it's pointless trying to change that, because you've clearly already made up your mind. Banedon (talk) 02:56, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@Thryduulf: I have seen "barbarians at the gates" arguments many times, and never been convinced by them. How many trivial stories are likely to meet all of the three criteria - updated content with a substantial quantity of directly relevant material, in-depth coverage by a broad range of high-quality media sources, and a high-quality article? And if a story meets those criteria, who are you to say that it's not suitable? It's like the difference between notable and important. RockMagnetist(talk) 18:09, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
There is enough media coverage of every (mis)step that President Trump does - and editors that follow that - to make articles that hit all three points , every single day for the most part. But we definitely do not want a Trump story every day on ITN. It's where understanding "not a new ticker" comes in. We have to be more aware of stories that have a more significant impact and are not just the daily news. --Masem (t) 18:44, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
As for whether this system is working - since I started this discussion, DYK has posted about 8 new stories per day, while In the news looks the same (except perhaps for some turnover in the RD column). RockMagnetist(talk) 18:14, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
So what's your suggestion to get more items through ITN, i.e. make it more like a news ticker? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:16, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Items don't get posted without consensus. So in answer to your question, all of us. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:15, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
And in reply to the ad hominem claim that only people whose nominations are rejected are unhappy - the Dragonfly nomination was not mine. My problem is not with it being rejected, but how it was rejected. A reasonable argument could be made that it does not meet the updated content criterion, but no one said that. Instead, there were a lot of irrelevant considerations. I have already proposed my alternative - just apply the criteria, and only the criteria, rigorously. RockMagnetist(talk) 18:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Hmm, it's not ad hominem @RockMagnetist; and I didn't say those who have their nominations rejected are "unhappy"; although ironically, that would have been more accurate description than what I said. Yes, Dragonfly's nomination was not yours, but I will urge you to re-read my comment to see why even though it was not yours we ended up here, I have explained that, no need to repeat. Another ironic (and well, interesting) thing about your comment here is how your words perspicuously convey the extent of your "unhappiness" about how it [Dragonfly's nomination] was rejected, further corroborating what I said. – Ammarpad (talk) 07:36, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
But the criteria have to be applied by humans (at this time) and if humans don't all agree that all three criteria are met then it won't get consensus to be posted. When WMF get the machine learning algorithms up and running to replace the thousands of pathetic human editors, all the items can be selected algorithmically without need to inconvenience a human. But for the time being we're stuck with dumb old humans judging it for themselves. *shrugs*. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:27, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
O.k., now you're getting dramatic. Consider how deletion debates go. Quite a variety of arguments are used, but there is a chain of reasoning on various pages about the likelihood of a subject being notable. If there is disagreement, an admin must make a decision based on the quality of the arguments (which basically translates to whether they are linked to that chain of justification). That's how dumb old humans can make a good judgement. I don't see that happening here. RockMagnetist(talk) 18:33, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Then the blame lies squarely with the assessing admins who should know what the criteria are, and apply them, rather than the rules all the hysterical "it's broken, it's borked!!" silliness. Anyway, I think mostly you'll find there are two arguments keeping articles off the main page in ITN: (1) it's not updated well enough (or the article in general is too shabby) and (2) the item is really not newsworthy (in the opinion of the voting public). The first is usually quite easy and objective to assess. The second is impossible, as you can see if you look back over the last few mass shootings in the US, where the consensus on newsworthiness is usually split down the middle. Deletion reviews are one thing, but what appears on the main page of Wikipedia is another - we should be applying much stricter quality control there, and I, for one, am glad that we're not a news ticker. Other sites are available: Wikinews, Wikitribune etc. My mini rule of thumb to determine newsworthiness is "would I expect to see this covered in a global 'review of the year's news'?" and if the answer's no, then I don't think it belongs on the main page of this encyclopedia. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:38, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
There is something to be said for the annual review criterion, at least as a way of assessing post facto how well the system works. It would be interesting to see how well the choices have lived up to it in past years - both in terms of what is included (which is mainly a matter of what has been approved) and what is not (which is mainly a matter of what stories are submitted). RockMagnetist(talk) 18:50, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Well you can help yourself to our own annual review, see 2018 and go through ITN. I think you'll find we posted more at ITN than is listed at the year article. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:57, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
I just realized that, in my previous answer, I was ignoring my own advice - to keep in mind the purpose of this page. Which of the purposes is served by an emphasis on importance in the long term? This page is ephemeral - once a news item is removed, it can only be found in the archives of the nominations. RockMagnetist(talk) 21:23, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

@The Rambling Man: The raw numbers back you up on that:

2018 Article ITN Difference
January 5 20 15
February 7 17 10
March 15 27 12
April 14 25 11
May 14 28 14
June 11 18 7
July 12 28 16
August 11 20 9
September 5 21 16
October 16 31 15
November 7 19 12
December 11 11 0
TOTAL 128 265 137

The numbers for ITN are approximate - I looked only at the title in the table of contents and counted only those that are marked as "posted", excluding those marked as being recent deaths entries. This means items posted to RD but not labelled as such anywhere in the section heading are included, any stories posted without a note being made in the section header are not counted. I was also doing all the counting by hand so I might have made a mistake here or there, but overall the figures should be accurate to within ±2-3. For the 2019 article I counted only the "Events" section, so death blurbs will be part of, but not the whole, reason for the discrepancy (it's very rare for there to be more than 2 death blurbs in a month, and there can be consecutive months with 0). For ITN the count is of posted nominations, for the 2018 article it is of bullet points. Thryduulf (talk) 22:13, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Thryduulf thank you, that's very timely and insightful. I hope RockMagnetist understands this. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:19, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes, thank you Thryduulf. It is interesting, but I hope The Rambling Man understands my point that it may not be relevant after all. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:59, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
I think you're now into "arguing the toss" territory so feel free to carry on with your personal endeavour, but I don't think there's any purpose in responding to you any further now you have the facts of the matter. Bye. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:09, 1 July 2019 (UTC)
  • The thing I find frustrating about this conversation is that I keep referring back to the purpose of In the news and the criteria for choosing stories, but the people responding talk about anything but. If the real purpose of the page is something else - like selecting the most important stories of the year - then the guidelines should be changed. It's confusing for newbies like me if you say one thing and do another. RockMagnetist(talk) 02:51, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Nobody knows what the purpose of ITN is, so yeah, it's a frustrating "discussion". Banedon (talk) 02:58, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Summary of how the process works: [person] decides that [topic] is worth featuring on ITN. (S)he finds an article on it and nominates it. Now people decide if it's 1) significant and 2) if the article quality is sufficient. If the answer is yes to both then it's posted, otherwise it isn't. That's it. Banedon (talk) 03:10, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
And the significance criterion is "highly subjective", and I guess it's going to stay that way. Once, Jimbo Wales visited a page I edit because of a news story, but I suspect if I'd submitted that story here they would have said "incremental" and rejected it. RockMagnetist(talk) 03:20, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes, significance is subjective. Quality is subjective too actually, and there've been articles that were posted then pulled because of disputes over whether or not the quality is sufficient. C'est la ITN. Banedon (talk) 03:25, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@Banendon: The link which you described as "Nobody knows what the purpose of ITN is" actually shows exactly the opposite - a very clear statement about what the purpose of ITN is. You disagree(d) with that purpose, which is fine, but that doesn't make your description anything other than intentionally misleading. Thryduulf (talk) 11:33, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@Thryduulf: I was using "nobody knows" metaphorically to mean "there is no consensus". Banedon (talk) 12:15, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Other than "nobody knows what the purpose is" and "there is no consensus that this should be the purpose" are completely different things, neither are true. Most people who wish to change ITN some way don't have anything to say about the purpose, and most who do agree with the purpose but feel it isn't fulfilling it for some reason. Thryduulf (talk) 12:19, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Maybe you don't, but I consider the position that "ITN as it currently is has no purpose" a legitimate one on the question "what is ITN's purpose". Banedon (talk) 12:24, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
No it is not legitimate. You may legitimately have a belief that it is not currently serving its purpose and/or that this purpose is not useful (although I disagree with this belief and it is contrary to consensus), but it very clearly does have a purpose. Thryduulf (talk) 13:17, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Thryduulf In that discussion, I do see a lot of support for the current purposes. And they may be useful. But I think that they are only getting lip service. The prevailing arguments about significance are attempts to judge the long-term importance of stories with a crystal ball; they seem to be conflating the quality of the article with importance of the story. I have been saying this repeatedly in various ways, but I feel like I'm talking to a wall. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:29, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
@RockMagnetist: I understand what you are saying: The purpose is good (on the whole at least), a quality criterion is a Good Thing and (by and large) that's working well, a significance criterion is probably/possibly good but (in your opinion) the way it is being applied currently isn't right and this means the purpose isn't being achieved. My point to Benedon is that your argument is very different to theirs and so is not evidence that there is a consensus for their position (their argument is that ITN is broken because there is a quality requirement for stories to be posted, and as the current purpose of ITN means a quality requirement that purpose is fundamentally incorrect and so should be treated as if it doesn't exist. Sometimes they apply this logic to the significance criterion, sometimes they don't). I disagree with you (RockMagnetist) that the significance criterion is fundamentally broken - it's not perfect but imo we get it right far more often than we get it wrong. Thryduulf (talk) 17:49, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Well, thank you for at least acknowledging the question. I don't think I'm likely to get a better response than that, so I'll rest my case. RockMagnetist(talk) 18:08, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

To sum up, if anyone here who believes ITN to be purposeless, or misdirected or misguided, instead of just repeatedly claiming it, perhaps make concrete proposals and get a consensus in support of it. It's very easy to state that one finds something personally wrong here, it's another thing to actually do something about it. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:35, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Factors in assessing significance or relevance include: magnitude of death and/or destruction, number of people affected, extent of political or cultural import, timeliness, rarity or unusualness, extent of media coverage, and to some slight extent human interest. Each nomination (except for RDs and ITN/R items) must be evaluated individually according to some combination of these criteria, and the technical quality of the target article must meet prevailing standards. Differences of opinion are endemic to the process, but no amount of debate (the present discussion comprises 5,600 words) will significantly change these factors. They are in the nature of news. – Sca (talk) 15:30, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Fundamentally, here are the problems with ITNC
  1. It's dominated by a small number of users
    1. What's posted and what isn't reflects what those users like
  2. People who aren't among the small number of users who comment religiously have a habit of being shouted down by the people who do
  3. It undervalues newsworthiness and timeliness

pbp 23:15, 18 July 2019 (UTC)

  • Well I can see where this has come from. You voted "Support" on a BLP (yes, people who have just died are still BLPs) which was grossly undersourced and frankly a BLP violation. When you were told this, you then accused another editor of "shouting you down". They weren't "shouting you down", they were telling you why that RD wasn't going to get posted in its current state. Frankly, if you think that posting an RD that has multiple completely unsourced paragraphs to the Main Page is a good idea, you probably shouldn't be commenting at ITN/C. You actually said this (and I'm still amazed by it) - my rationale is, "I believe this is notable enough to be on the main page, regardless of the quality of the article". No. We post nothing to the Main Page in that state, whether it is ITN, DYK or anything else. Black Kite (talk) 23:43, 18 July 2019 (UTC)
  • @Black Kite: I believe that in the general as well as the specific, and I will continue to vote on ITNCs based on my belief. I believed that long before I voted at the Stevens RD ITNC, so please refrain from making assertions about my motivations. pbp 00:39, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
  • If you are willingly stating your plans to continue to go against this page's concensus on the issues of quality of an RD and ignore that in your !votes, that's a potential trip to ANI as it is being purposely disruptive. You can try to argue to change the quality rules, but most of these are also coming from the Main Page requirements. --Masem (t) 02:25, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oh, Purplebackpack supported articles about a Supreme Court Justice, a prominent auto executive and a 7 magnitude earthquake being on the Main Page! That must be disruptive! Oh, good grief! pbp 03:27, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
  • It's fine to support any topic you feel like, but you have implied that you will ignore article quality in your supports, which is against consensus and is disruptive to the ITN process. --Masem (t) 04:10, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
  • It does seem slightly off to me that a long article on a more prominent person has a higher barrier for being included on RD than a short article on an obscure footballer. I also feel that "BLP violation" is an exaggeration here; there's no requirement for inline references on every sentence in the WP:BLP policy -- though there is one on the RD guidelines. The ten book references will almost certainly cover the details of court cases, and that doesn't seem to be "material challenged or likely to be challenged". power~enwiki (π, ν) 00:46, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I think that just goes to show that quality constraints are also arbitrary.
How to stop any article from being posted on ITN: read the article, find a plausible omission, and create a new section for it. Most articles will have it, e.g. one of the recently-posted blurbs concerned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and one could just create a section with "Termination" under the "Summary of provisions" section. Then tag it with Since the article is now orange tagged, from the ITN guidelines, it's now "subject to serious issues" and "may not be accepted for an emboldened link".
How to stop the above nefarious attempt to stop an article from being posted on ITN: simply delete the offending section and the tag. By WP:BRD, the person who added it cannot reinstate the section. He must take it to the talk page. Now while that discussion is being hashed out, mark the article as "ready [attention needed]" and get it posted. Once it's posted, even if you lose the argument on the talk page and the empty section is restored, the article is not pulled.
In the meantime, one looks at the tomfoolery going on above and wonders how the addition or removal of an ostensibly empty section can so dramatically alter the quality of an article. It's a fundamental problem with ITN really. Unfortunately even though most people will agree the process is poor, there's no consensus to make any changes. Banedon (talk) 01:50, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
If someone gamed orange tags like that, that would be a trip to ANI to talk about behavior. I do think it is fair to add an orange tag to a woefully undersourced section that just got nominated at ITNC. --Masem (t) 02:08, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
You know, Masem, you could have a post that doesn't mention sending people to ANI pbp 03:22, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Everything about ITN is arbitrary, not just quality. There's no criteria for newsworthiness and there's never going to be. So subjective. Look at the discussion of the Ridgecrest earthquake, for example: it's full of arbitrary ideas about what's newsworthy and what isn't. pbp 03:22, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
But at least that was "healthy" debate. That's how all of WP works. You're looking for absolutes that simply don't exist on this platform. (And the reason I'm mentioning ANI is that we're talking about disruptive behavior in this last case of purposely creating orange tag problems that didn't exist before), and ANI is where that is resolved. --Masem (t) 04:10, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
@Masem:, if there's no absolute rules for what's ITNC-worthy and what's not (and there aren't), there's not really any grounds for taking me or anybody else to ANI for "breaking" them. pbp 14:37, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
It's a content-vs-behvaior issue. There's no hard rules on what is ITNC appropriate - save for article quality, which is well-established and repeated reminded to editors participating. Blatantly supporting ITNCs that are clearly sub-par quality, and stating an intent to continue to support these, is inappropriate behavior. If instead we were evaluating how one !voted on ITNC outside of sourcing issues (Whether a topic was appropriate or not), well, that's where there's a lot of subjectivity and where its harder to say one's behavior is a problem. Its about the disruptive nature of the user. --Masem (t) 14:56, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
Particularly when the instructions (in particular for RDs) are abundantly clear and have been explained a number of times. The Rambling Man (REJOICE!) 16:41, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
@Masem: that's the problem - even if it's well-established that quality matters, it is not at all well-established what level of quality is acceptable. I'll give you an example after the arbitrary section break below. Banedon (talk) 05:43, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

I'm bemused at the exchanges above. We have a user stating they can support whatever they like, regardless of the state of the article, when it is absolutely fundamental that a certain threshold for quality is achieved before posting, especially in the case of BLPs. Pointedly and continually supporting articles which clearly aren't ready is disruptive. Best case the !votes will be summarily ignored, worst case, persistent offenders will be offered an opportunity to expend their energy elsewhere. We have another user talking about to "game" the system. When has this been a problem? Is there documented evidence that gaming is occurring, or is this just a hypothetical issue against which we already have plenty of safeguards, like a watchful community. Masem has it right in both instances. Should users repeatedly demonstrate either such behavioural traits, they will be dealt with at ANI. That's all pretty obvious. The Rambling Man (REJOICE!) 05:32, 19 July 2019 (UTC)

  • I think it was always implied that ITN is somewhat ILIKEIT. Both the facts of the article's inherent requirement to be on ITN (fairly subjective) and its quality (fairly objective) always play a role. Am I the one in the minority who don't seen an issue with how it is? --qedk (t 桜 c) 07:19, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
  • What a load of nonsense. The table says you posted barely over one item every three days last year, to represent world news, and you are not laughing, and you are not prepared to try things which fail. What a load of old tish. There is not a hope in hell none of you feel like there is a massive, gaping black hole void that you haven't put your finger, no chance, no way. Rubbish, bah, boo.
  • And I quote, "Boo! : Boooo! : That was the worst thing I’ve ever heard! : It was terrible! : Horrendous! : Well it wasn’t that bad. : Oh, yeah? : Well, there were parts of it I liked! : Well, I liked alot of it. : Yeah, it was GOOD actually. : It was great! : It was wonderful! : Yeah, bravo! : More! : More! : More! : More!" Rubbish! ~ R.T.G 11:19, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
    • Have you every actually followed world news on a day by day basis? I routine check the default Google News landing page multiple times a day. 90% of the stories are all political manuervering or complaints that while "news" to the average consumer, are not encyclopedia. (Such as, for example, the mess over Trump's tweets against AOC and the subsequently rally - it's dominating that page, but that is nowhere near encyclopedia for us to be highlighting). We purposely filter the news to topics that have encyclopedic endurancance and appropriateness (hence, "we are not a news ticker"), and that may mean that we're not posting a story a day. Also keep in mind that we do get more stories recommended both from ITNR and from general nominations, but no one bothers to update the article - eg we just had the Wimbleton results become stall because the smallest of updates (to recap the final rounds) was not made. We want quality articles that are in the news and that filters out what actually gets posted more. ITN is fully working in this consideration. --Masem (t) 14:21, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Nope. What you are talking about suits the one item per three days policy which is being implemented, but not really talked about. When the table was displayed above you all went, oh, is so revealing here! And then you completely didn't even talk about it!!. Not with any substance. So I am saying, "mass nonsense going on here!" Mass nonsense is understandable, and it must be stopped replaced. Why is ITN, after all these years, farther and farther away from a tandem with Wikinews? Is Jimbo off his head or something, paying and fundraising for WT? Of course not. Are you all doing some sort of bad thing here? Not really. Some heated emotions some times about this subject, but it's more a sort of, for want, a blocked flow. Blocked flow is going to kill you if anything else doesn't. You know this from a small age. There must be a way to lean into this valid perennial demand. Someone said something like, you could end up with a news ticker, and you wouldn't want that! Why not? Why not. The worst that can go wrong is that you fail. You are unlikely to damage it. It's a totally circular argument, hence the recurring frustration. How long has it been since ITN significantly changed? Nobody knows, right? I refer you to the quote by Statler and Waldorf above. ~ R.T.G 17:13, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
This discussion appears to have outlived any utility it might have had. While we have a community and while this is an encyclopedia, we will use consensus to assess notability and quality. It's obvious from the tremors that shook SF yet will have no lasting encyclopedic interest that opinion is important. That story might be of interest in the US or parts of it, but it's flat out nothing everywhere else in the world, and like it or not, that interest would be purely from a "trivia" perspective. If 100 people had died, or thousands of buildings had collapsed, a different story altogether. But no. I suggest that unless someone initiates a concrete RFC to propose changes to ITN, this discussion is dead. The Rambling Man (REJOICE!) 17:20, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Rambling Man, I think pointing out what ITN is not, is too easy. Don't you? After all these years, you could tell me what is missing better than I could tell you. This discussion is endless as far as you are concerned. Isn't it? Hmm. ~ R.T.G 17:33, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
I have no problem with ITN. It fulfils what an encyclopedia should do, and especially one which is driven by community consensus. Other users who rail against it have yet to offer any viable alternative. It's easy to complain, it's not so easy to provide any solutions to those complaints. The Rambling Man (REJOICE!) 23:05, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
Is not the word "viable" in your sentence interchangeable with the word "accepted"? You are unimpressed, but that's not very reasonable on its own in the face of a perennial request and an accepted deficiency. If some sort of change was made and could be determined a failure, you'd have something on this. If it could be deemed success, you'd have no less, as a result. It's not Wikipedias fault that the wider world isn't very appealing in some ways, right? Well that much seems to reflect to both sides of this discussion. ~ R.T.G 16:56, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
As far as I'm aware, there has been no proposal to change ITN which is workable. The perennial "request" is usually a perennial "whinge" and is often unaccompanied with any strategy which would still provide encyclopedic and notable content. The Rambling Man (REJOICE!) 18:14, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
As I recall, I brought you a story a couple of months ago about the decline in insect populations worldwide. I wrote it in myself, not featured content, but enough to tell the tale in good English, a good paragraph or so on the relevant page, which itself is huge, important, under-acknowledged by society, and all the papers are grabbing every inch of it they can get (i.e. it is a perfect subject to promote for an encyclopaedias work toward the news). It was laughed out. Insulted by people who, I do not doubt have intelligence, but didn't seem very clever just expressing "I don't like it" in terms of notability. So, that's me personally, and I am not talking about my satisfaction with the manner of interaction. I am talking about the news getting into the news, and merely by consequence the manner. It didn't. It didn't. You didn't run it. You comedied it out. I've seen it other times. I am not talking about biting, interaction, anything, except the broadness of coverage. You are lacking that. That is what the complaints are about. Consensus, what you are calling voting, is insufficient to guarantee coverage. Only a guarantee of coverage can do that. And that is a proposal to change ITN which you have yet to accept, I believe.
Nobody is going to come along and propose a perfect newsroom as a change, ever. MOS comes from university, not business. David Bowie once wrote, "Let the children play." He was a great entertainer, but a very practical personality, ~ R.T.G 22:15, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
No, we don't "play" with the main page. If you want to propose a new approach which can be sandboxed, in parallel with the existing main page approach, that's fine, but we're not going to play with our readers' primary interaction with the encyclopedia. And if you don't like the way I !vote, tough. As you may know, my rule of thumb is that if a news story is of sufficient notability to be covered in a synopsis of the world's events during the year, it probably belongs on the front of the encyclopedia. If not, it probably belongs on the front of a portal or at another section of the main page altogether. The Rambling Man (REJOICE!) 07:19, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
What was wrong with the suggestion of a ticker? There are many little gizmos can be made for cycling content, such as news, obvious modern standard. As long as you have no basis in a guide as to what you are trying to cover, it's going to keep coming around negative. Let the children play, I just mean let something happen with good supervision(). If I were to go through last years 150 or so, perhaps 50 of them are about government leaders and 50 about mass death, or at least 40 each, right? Good sir, such is morbidity! You cannot make it narrower. Maybe I should listen to the song before using it as a meme.. [2] I quoted it slightly wrong. It is pretty much an ode to those who wait for Jesus, but only if there's no homosexuality. Well, you are saying around here but not that a lot. I suppose I am starting to conclude, you'll clear this by defining what is notable news beyond what is on the fly, and that won't necessarily be easy to get right. You are a bull in a china shop at this stage. Break a plate man, it'll be like breaking a record, and a broken record at that, right? Smash it. It will be easy to sweep up before any customers come along. I can start you off... You could write a paragraph right now, better than anyone else saying, when a story about government leadership is ITN news, or when a mass death is ITN news. Next thing you know you'll have a page of such guidance, and next thing you know after that you'll be saying, "Well, what about a ticker?" ~ R.T.G 10:27, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
Wikinews was to be the newspaper side of WMF, using crowd-sourced reporting, keeping breaking news off Wikipedia. Now, most people consider Wikinews dead but its still a viable project. But still - that's a newspaper, en.wiki is not a newspaper, its an encyclopedia. Our purpose is to develop content that will stand the test of time while being current. This means that not every big major news story ends up as a quality encyclopedic article. The average of 1 new ITN per 3 days, given what I see out of the news on average, seems completely fine for what I expect out of an encyclopedia. Add that the table is showing that we're only getting blurb nominations about 2 every 3 days (and pushing forth half those). A curiousity would be to see how many of those failed nominations were due to quality versus "non-newsworthy". My gut would say that's around 50/50, maybe 40/60, but its still about equal. So if all those blurbs we denied were at quality, we'd be posting about 1 blurb every other day. That still feels right given the current news environment. --23:20, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
DYK accepts anything bigger than a stub, because they are trying to encourage content. How complex is, "more", Rambling Man? I dunno, I actually respect what you do here but you are definitely closed to some things, like this fear of trivia, and I can't imagine any regular here being plussed by a drive to include things like science more prominently, maybe a bit of nature. I came on here a few weeks ago and ranted on about trying good news or something, but in reality I am just trying anything to enlarge and expand beyond government leadership and death which is dominating, and that sort of domination of information is notorious, we all know that. My only insight is, you don't have to succeed if you try something. It's an anonymous hobby project, as is the whole site. I for one will be enraged if any of the regular contribs here are berated for experimenting. ~ R.T.G 00:40, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
One new blurb on ITN every three days seems a glacial pace. That means that things cycle out of ITN in about two weeks, which means that they haven't been news for between a week and a week and a half. No, there should be a new blurb added to ITN every day and they should cycle out in a week or less. And if we have to loosen our quality standards to do that, so be it. pbp 14:29, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
ITN is a Main Page item and quality is non-negotiable. We are supposed to be featuring articles that represent the best WP can be. So we're not going to allow a RD with subpar sourcing go through, for example, nor a notable sports final where no one has bothered to write any prose for it. And as being an encyclopedic, a lot of news related to politics, international disputes, and business (which to me make up about 80% of typical news coverage) are simply not topics suited for an encyclopedia. I would love to see more science and medicine topics, but the news doesn't cover those well, and we shouldn't be trying to alter the rules for one specific area to get in place. Realistically, one new item every 2 or 3 days (excluding RDs) matches my impression of what is actually reported that we can use.
And it should also be recalled that we don't try to force a topic or geographic "Balance" of news topics, and in that same fashion, we should not force a certain rate of news. There have been times that a ITNC has only has a day or so on the blurb list before it is cycled off due to a significant news cycle. We live with that. --Masem (t) 14:44, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

Coverage is guaranteed only by whim. Here is how the argument goes: "Coverage is guaranteed only by whim...." Response: "Ah but you must..." Rebuke: "Ah but we could define terms..." Response: "Ah but you mustn't..." Rebuke: "I don't think this thing is moving..." Response: "Ah, but we don't know who you follow..." Rebuke: "I'm confused now..." Response: "Ah, but you had nothing to say..." Obi Wan has nothing on WIPTN. I think you should do a subpage where people who can't stop smoking come and write, "I think I should just give them up and do something else instead..." and then they go away fixed, not really ever having had a problem to begin with. ~ R.T.G 14:20, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Quality is arbitrary

This is to elaborate on the idea that quality, even if agreed on as necessary, is pretty arbitrary. In 2016, there was a Women's World Chess Championship, which was nominated (Ctrl + F this archive). The article in question is Women's World Chess Championship 2016, which has barely budged since the nomination. Note that in the original nomination most people supported. Opposes were based on significance, with only one person (Jayron32) opposing based on quality. Jayron32's argument was that the prose summary was being added and was halfway done at the time of nomination; once the summary for each game was done (as is the case for the article right now) it would be postable.

Now compare this article to World Chess Championship 2018. It should be obvious that the WCC2018 article is better than the WWCC2016 article. There's more information on each game, more analysis, there are diagrams, there's an Aftermath section. But the article is orange tagged!! By definition that means it's not postable. But no, we posted it anyway. Of course at the time we posted it, it wasn't orange tagged ([3], but I still defy anyone to say that the current article is worse than the one that was posted, or worse than the WWCC article (which was ostensibly postable quality).

If one looks oppose votes based on quality, they are usually because of referencing. It's rare for someone to oppose because of omissions. This implies immediately that one can improve the article quality until it's postable simply by deleting the offending text. All this doesn't make sense to me. There's only one conclusion for me, which is that ITN is arbitrary. Significance is arbitrary and quality is no better. We could embrace arbitrariness and stop trying to pretend that we do anything else, but if we do that, nobody should call out anyone else for having lower quality standards than them. Banedon (talk) 06:01, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Not all orange tags are equal. The one on the current 2018 article is for expansion and the resulting text is not showing an empty section. I would need to see if someone added the tag, another added the text, and forget to remove the tag. And the reason that the 2016 one was not posted was that there became opposition that the Women's championship lacked the equivalent coverage of the Men's, creating a lack of consensus and thus became stale. I don't see outright quality issues brought up there. So I don't see the argument raised here about "quality is arbitrary".
If anything this reflects the fact that ITN like nearly all other places on WP is based on subjective evaluation of certain rules, and thus requires consensus to determine if something is ready to post. I know there are some editors that want hard and fast rules, and we have some like ITNR and RD, but this is simply not the environment for enforcing hard rules on significance and/or quality. --Masem (t) 14:05, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
Also, on the point of deleting offending unsourced text to get to quality, I have fought against this, commonly in articles on RD actors (most often) where their list of appearances is not sourced. Some have said "just sweep that into "filmography of X" but that leaves the problem there as well, and I reject that solution since it just defers the problem. Similarly removing essential/common parts of an RD or similar that are otherwise common to the same class, because of the lack of sourcing, is also inappropriate - eg if someone tried to remove the Judical views section on Justice Stephens article to get the RD to pass, I would strongly oppose that. There are times that an unsourced statement is trivial or not essential, that's fine to remove. However, the most common cases where referencing is a problem is when multiple paragraphs have no citations, or there's multiple existing CNs in the article that haven't been addressed before the nom was made. --Masem (t) 14:10, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
The point is that WWCC2016 article wasn't posted because it failed the significance criterion, not because it failed the quality criterion. That means that it was (is, since it has barely budged) of postable quality - in spite of it being clearly worse than the unpostable orange-tagged WCC2018 article. Also if the solution to the orange tag is to simply delete the orange tag, that just goes to show how arbitrary everything is and runs directly into the objection I had above about creating an empty section to prevent an article from being posted, except this time it's from the other direction. Banedon (talk) 00:37, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

Neil Armstrong

Explanation given. Stephen 03:18, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

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.

This section has been closed within 12 hours of opening, with three editors contributing. Isn't that a bit early since most of those who could express an opinion are part timers on different continents? Britmax (talk) 14:40, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

As an experienced admin here, I can tell you that that the close absolutely qualifies as SNOW - its just not the type of thing we post, in addition to being way out of date (learning there was a malpractice settlement from 6 years ago is not really groundbreaking). --Masem (t) 14:42, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
There are no arbitrary minimum discussion times or requirements for people from all parts of the Earth being given a chance to weigh in. 331dot (talk) 14:43, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
As the person who closed it, I concur with the above. Of course I do. The Rambling Man (REJOICE!) 14:53, 24 July 2019 (UTC)
Okay, when judges are ridiculed to the public in recent history, it is not for being biased, or making mistakes, it is for being out of touch with reality. That is a fact. ~ R.T.G 14:30, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Extended content
I guess Mercy Health Partners must have thought that was $6M well-spent, knowing that their malpractice secret was totally safe and would never come into the public domain. But how much influence would the judge have had in that settlement? The article doesn't say. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:22, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
If that was an inference... That's not ridicule.. but shame. Not a mistake, but a crime. A corruption. The judgement debated here is newsworthiness for WPITN. ~ R.T.G 15:59, 25 July 2019 (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.

RD: Brigitte Kronauer

Please check out her out (22 Jul) before it get's to late. I will be out most of the day, so the sooner the better. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:13, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Marked as ready. Well done filling this out. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 07:11, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
It's nearly the weekend, don't hold your breath... The Rambling Man (REJOICE!) 07:16, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
@Mjroots:<--- might be on line. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 07:19, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
Posted. Mjroots (talk) 07:32, 26 July 2019 (UTC)
Thank you sir. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 07:34, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

RD: Malcolm Nash

folks, Please take a look at Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates#RD:_Malcolm_Nash. Not sure why this nomination is neither moving forward nor getting any new comments or suggestions for improvements. IMHO it is ready to be promoted. Can someone do the needful to post it to main page, before it gets archived. --DBigXrayᗙ 06:08, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

ping User:Amakuru who has also contributed there for thoughts. --DBigXrayᗙ 11:26, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
I've just added a support !vote. As with the discussion above, I think you probably commented out some bits that weren't controversial enough to remove, but doesn't really matter because I've hopefully sourced it all now so good to go. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 11:28, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for your helping hand to improve the sourcing issues. User:Spencer used his bit to post it. All's well that ends well. --DBigXrayᗙ 05:53, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

August 3 RD: Joe Longthorne

I've been having a bit of a debate with DBigXray on their talk page, at User_talk:DBigXray#Commenting_out_unsourced_content, about commenting out sections of a BLP in order to allow it to pass the sourcing requirements for ITN. Before things get too antagonistic there, I'm therefore bringing the conversation here. It's true that a lot of it was unsourced, but many of the sections removed didn't seem to satisfy the "likely to be challenged" clause of WP:BLP, and IMHO should therefore have been tagged with {{cn}} rather than removed. As things stand, the article now has so little detail on his career that I've marked it as incomplete. Interested to hear other views, anyway. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 15:26, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks Amakuru for starting it here. I was planning to start this after some discussion on my talk page. Here is some more background to this and my point of view. We are all aware the ITN RD are extremely time sensetive eventhough improving a Wikipedia article has no time limit. The crowd at WP:ITN is very unforgiving on unsourced contents. After having several disappointments where despite lot of hardwork over several days in improving the article, the article failed to make it to ITN RD, simply because there were more recent entries already and the mainpage ITN RD has limited real estate. So when I come across an article that has the potential of reaching ITN RD, I remove highly controversial claims as unsourced, I comment out the less controversial (which still need sources to satisfy WP:BLP anyway). I would also note that "controversial" is also a subjective matter. After this I usually expand the article by adding new content and restore some of the commented out parts after adding the missing cititations. This strategy generally satisfies the folks at WP:ITNC and the article doesn't miss out its chance to goto main page due to time constraints. Other option is to move the content to the talk page, but I prefer the option of commenting, as it shows the content to reuse at a later point of time. --DBigXrayᗙ 17:59, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
I'm seeing a few sections removed from pre-Aug 3 state to now. One is clearly appropriate to remove, the Bankruptcy section, as that is definitely contentious material. The illness section was merged to personal life, good. That leaves the live performances, and while the sourcing is weak, that doen't seem like contentious material, and would be material we'd reasonable expect to see in the article. So I'm not sure about that removal to get this for RD. --Masem (t) 18:06, 3 August 2019 (UTC)
For seven hours today this article omitted Joe Longthorne's entire adult career, telling anyone hoping to read a topical, potted biography that he was a 14-year-old child actor who worked on local TV for two years, and later got ill and died. (I'm guessing the "three platinum album" line in the lead only survived because DBigXray missed it when blanking the same fact from the article body.) If we're gutting articles this misleadingly to hurry them onto an in-the-news page so that more people can read them, that doesn't sound like a net positive. --Lord Belbury (talk) 18:27, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Same was done by editor at Cliff Branch. Information that remains in the inbox was commented out in prose. These should be verifiable, and are against the spirit of RD to remove information just because it's not easily sourced by recent obituaries.—Bagumba (talk) 02:55, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

Bagumba if an editor raises concerns on unsourced content then the right thing to do is to find the reliable sources and give the issue its logical conclusion instead of arguing to keep the unsourced content. I am sure you are aware and honour the WP:V of wikipedia. --DBigXrayᗙ 06:10, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
@DBigXray: As others have commented, you are mistaking verifiable with sourced, and there is a legitmate concern that you are being overzealous in commenting out verifiable text merely to expedite an RD.—Bagumba (talk) 06:22, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
If it is "verifiable text" why on earth will I comment it out ? Please provide diffs of your accusations before making such serious ones. you are an admin and I should not be reminding you that you are expected to provide diffs while making accusations. As I said I comment out unsourced content only when I am unable to find a reliable source that could support it. If you dig into my contribution history you will find that in vast majority of the cases I always add missing citations wherever I was able to find one. --DBigXrayᗙ 06:29, 5 August 2019 (UTC)
Here is a diff where you blank the article's "Television", "Impressions" and "Albums" sections, parts of which could have been trivially sourced from the obituaries already present in the article. You could have reduced these to single sentences to match the bare minimum gleaned from those sources, and marked the sections as "needs expansion", instead of deleting them and making the article read as if Longthorne never worked on television or released any albums, the two main things he is known for.
It's good that you've gone back and improved this article in the days since, but the most important day for it was Saturday, the day he actually died, when we can now see that the article jumped from 150 hits to 80,000. --Lord Belbury (talk) 08:18, 6 August 2019 (UTC)
you jumped in the middle of my work and presented a diff. Why don't you also show my final diff from that article. [4], [5] ,[6], [7] I have already clarified my strategy above perhaps you should read it again. If you disagreed with any line that i commented,why didn't you add the source and unhid it? If you felt something was/is lacking in the article,then no one stopped you to be WP:BOLD and fix it with proper “trivial" sourcing. But instead you are here wikilawyering. The amount of time and efforts that you gentlemen have put into this thread, I wish you would have spent in improving Joe's article and Joe Longthorne article would have reached the main page by now. But clearly people have their own priorities.-DBigXrayᗙ 02:41, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
  • I understand I may have irked some of you who did not agree with some of my acts where I had commented out a few of the unsourced content as controversial, which you would have called uncontroversial. I will try to be less agressive in my commenting in future. for now lets drop down our diffrerences and give a final push towards improving Joe Longhthorn so that it can reach main page before it technically becomes stale (due to more recent entries in the promoted ITN page)--DBigXrayᗙ 06:41, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
I gave you credit for improving the article over the following days, but you asked for a diff where people thought you were being overzealous. I restored the trivially sourcable content when coming back online later in the day, after Amakuru pointed out (which I hadn't noticed, and which you hadn't reacted to) that the biography now omitted Longthorne's entire adult career.
If you don't see an issue with the timing here and are planning to do the same on other biographies, I think further discussion is needed. Commenting out most of a biography as soon the subject dies, quickly nominating it to ITN and then walking away and slowly restoring it with sources over the next couple of days might be super-effective for the ITN process (voting editors aren't perturbed by unsourced content, and you have plenty of time to fix it up at leisure) but it's unhelpful to the tens of thousands of readers who are simply reading Wikipedia in response to the breaking news of a person's death. --Lord Belbury (talk) 08:46, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
it was not my fault that the article had unsourced and controversial claims despite being a WP:BLP. What if someone had put in  incorrect defamatory information or a factually incorrect but non defamatory content. What if all these tens of thousands of readers would read that. Who will be blamed for that. I found one examplein the article itself. diff Someone wrote ROMANI without any source and no one removed it till today. I am a rational person and I am here to improve the Wikipedia. WP:V and WP:BLP are there for a reason and I respect them. If you are unhappy with some of my commenting out, feel free to add source and remove the comments. That is all I have to say to this discussion. --DBigXrayᗙ 08:59, 7 August 2019 (UTC)
I will try to be less aggressive in my commenting in future. @DBigXray: As I also noted at Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates#(Posted)_RD:_Cliff_Branch, your last "fix" again removed verifiable text, which I restored with added source. Based on the plea you left on my talk page to support the RD (Today is the last chance to promote this article since it has become stale ...), I continue to be concerned that you are being too aggressive in removing verifiable text to get an RD posted. I do hope you work on being "less aggressive", as you pledged. Regards.—Bagumba (talk) 08:34, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
Bagumba, I did make a lot of efforts in trying to source this quote. Failing which it was moved to the talk page, as I had concerns that it was WP:OR. I am glad that you were able to find an archive and added it up. I hope you do understand a basic difference that the quote that you are calling "verifiable text" above was unverified and unsourced at the time when I moved it to the talk page. I will also note that you have decided to ignore my concerns about wrong unsourced info that I raised in my comment above.--DBigXrayᗙ 10:27, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
Nobody wants incorrect text. However, the fact that it was verified means that it was verifiable when you commented out the text that was already tagged. A gentle reminder, you were notifed before that WP:BURDEN says: In some cases, editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references; consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step. Yet, you still removed already-tagged text that was ultimately verified. Nobody expects perfection when an editor removes text that they think is contentious, but your judgement has already been called into question by Amakuru starting this thread, and Masem and Lord Belbury have also identified text that you removed which they did not agree with. Jayron32 can correct me if I am wrong, but I also believe they were being facetious when they restored Pro Bowl and All-Pro honors you commented out at Cliff Branch and left the note: added prose from the contentious infobox information to the body of the article, and referenced it.[8].—Bagumba (talk) 11:07, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
No, I really did add the information to the prose, and I really did add inline references for it. I'm not sure why you thought I was kidding about that. See right here. --Jayron32 16:09, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
@Jayron32: Apologies if I was unclear. I knew you added it back. What I meant was that it seemed you were being facetious about it being "contentious" to have been removed to begin with.—Bagumba (talk) 16:36, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
I didn't make any judgement on that. Someone (not sure who, didn't pay attention) had indicated that they didn't believe that information, so I provided verification for it. I only assumed they were earnest in their distrust of the information, so I merely provided the verification for them. I hope that makes sense. --Jayron32 16:38, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
@Jayron32: Understood. In isolation, no reason not to AGF. Given the comments in this section (slightly TLDR, I know), perhaps you can offer your perspective on this overall topic. Cheers.—Bagumba (talk) 16:52, 8 August 2019 (UTC)
In general, my opinion is that there's a sliding scale of contentiousness, from "likely to be harmful if wrong" to "easily checkable via external links in the article, or a simple google search" and likewise there should be a sliding scale of responses from "remove right away" to "do nothing". It's not a black-and-white issue for me. I also personally believe in being useful, so if I can fix a problem someone has found in an article which they themselves cannot, I fix it. If I believe someone else can fix it, but I happen to lack the ability to do so myself, I tag it. If it is already tagged, and I can't fix it, I leave it for someone else. If I believe it could never be fixable, or if it is a BLP issue, I remove it. --Jayron32 17:24, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Global significance

"Global significance" is a rationale that I'm starting to see come up a lot in support/oppose rationales for ITN. This is despite the fact that the ITN/C template states "Please do not oppose an item because the event is only relating to a single country, or failing to relate to one. This applies to a high percentage of the content we post and is unproductive." In the case of the Jeffrey Epstein blurb nomination, this seems to have been strong enough of an argument to have the nom closed as no consensus. Is "global significance" a criteria for posting on ITN? Should we be changing the ITN criteria to reflect this?--WaltCip (talk) 16:05, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

With Jeffrey Epstein the debate was whether a Recent Death should be upgraded to a blurb, and in this case I think it is reasonable to consider "global significance", as the advice at WP:ITNRD says, In rare cases, the death of major transformative world leaders in their field may merit a blurb. But I don't think anyone is suggesting that regular nominations like an earthquake in China or a bomb attack in Afghanistan need to have "global significance." -- Pawnkingthree (talk) 16:11, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
There is more than just the "transformative leader" for when an RD may be a blurb: a death that is unusual or showing high interest in the news (beyond "this person died" type reporting) is also listed there. And Epstein's death definitely fell into this type of classification. --Masem (t) 17:05, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
Yeah, some of the people saying "5,000 people kill themselves in custody every year, Epstein was no different" were probably being deliberately obtuse; the other 4,999 weren't close personal friends with members of the Royal Family. Sceptre (talk) 20:24, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
I usually read "no global significance" as a near perfect synonym for "this story does not personally interest me". Significance is shown, not through our own feelings or assertions of those feelings, but rather like everything else on Wikipedia, by showing our sources. Assertions of significance (or lack thereof) are really only valid, like everything else at Wikipedia, by reference to source texts (or lack thereof). Someone is free to assert a lack of significance by showing, for example, that some proposed news item is only being covered by celebrity gossip sites, and is not being covered by serious, legitimate news. But just stating "this has no global significance" without any supporting rationale or evidence to back up such a statement is essentially worthless from helping reach a decision on whether or not to post. --Jayron32 16:22, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
I read "global significance" to show that there is coverage more than just in the country where it happened. If it is a US story, I'd want to see BBC, The Guardian, or CBC also covering it. If its a EU/UK story, I'd be looking for NYTimes or CNN coverage, and so forth. It definitely does not mean "this event will have global impacts", as that would immediately preclude most of the disaster articles we feature - however, something that does have a global impact should be seen as a more fitting candidate. --Masem (t) 17:05, 12 August 2019 (UTC)
The criteria section of the WP:ITN page seems to contradict even that particular argument - "The lack of coverage in a specific source is usually not sufficient to block an item from posting, nor is the inclusion of a topic in a particular source a guarantee of inclusion. Consider that many online news sources serve content based on geolocation, so not every person will see the same collection of front-page stories as others, making assessment of "front page significance" highly subjective". In other words, a US story being in the BBC or The Guardian may not necessarily indicate "global significance" if the website cookies are specifically configured to feed back US-centric content.--WaltCip (talk) 12:25, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
I'm not saying that it has to be the BBC or Guardian that covers a US story, just that they are going to be the more likely sources that will cover a US story if it has global significant - it could come from the Independent, Times of India, any number of sources, but 99% of the time, BBC/Guardian will be at least one source. This is more often a better measure when you have stories outside the NA/EU/AUS/NZ and SE Asia venues (South America, Africa, Middle East, Eurasia regions) where some might argue importance of local stories but that don't get the coverage in other sources. --Masem (t) 13:12, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Also, it seems that WaltCip has missed the meaning of a short but important word or phrase in the guidance. It says, and I quote, "a specific source". I'm not sure whether he is confused by the word "a" or the word "specific" or the combination of the two into the phrase "a specific", but what that clearly means is that focusing on a (meaning one) single (meaning to the exclusion of multiple other possible examples) source is not really useful, and instead we should look at the preponderance of proper news sources and not merely considering a single source to be what is required. --Jayron32 15:35, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
Claims of a lack of significance are easily cancelled out by providing links to sources that demonstrate significance. --Jayron32 12:29, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
Speaking of global significance: What? – no blurb on the astonishing split between Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth? Shocking, considering that Miley gets 6,700 words on Wiki. – Sca (talk) 13:46, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
That is because it is only being covered by celebrity journalism, and not in the more legitimate news sources. Yes, the Beeb may cover it, but not in it's world or national or similar sections. The reason why sources matter is that where a story appears can be used as evidence for its newsworthiness. --Jayron32 15:35, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
Lighten up, old boy. My comment was intended as satire on Ms. Cyrus's majorly overblown celeb' article, of which alas there are many lurking on Wikipedia. – Sca (talk) 21:58, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

headers on itnc?

Is it just me or should the date headers be H3 style rather than H2? I believe the bot that runs daily is adding them as H2, so just changing them won't help. --Masem (t) 13:22, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

But why should they be H3?. The current style gives collapsibility to mobile users and has worked fine for as long as I can recall. – Ammarpad (talk) 15:31, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
Okay, that makes sense. Mobile auto-collapses H3 and lower, but not H2, and that way each date can be seen. It just was odd that Suggestions is at H2, then dates at H2 and the actual candidates at H4, as we're skipping the level. --Masem (t) 15:39, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

July 27 RD: Keith Lincoln

RD nomination of Keith Lincoln can use some comments (none currently) before it becomes stale. Thanks in advance.—Bagumba (talk) 04:58, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

Now tagged "Ready", if an admin can consider posting or leaving feedback. Cheers.—Bagumba (talk) 06:18, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

How can I get started? BobIsPerfect (talk) 22:51, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

This is weeks old, so what are you asking? El_C 22:54, 19 August 2019 (UTC)
Bob's flown around the world in a plane, he's settled revolutions in Spain, the North Pole he has charted, but he can't get started with you ...♪♫♬ ---Sluzzelin talk 23:07, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Amazonian wildfires

It seems to me these should be nominated, but I'm struggling to find an appropriate target article; am I missing something blindingly obvious? It's in the news alright: BBC, CNN, The Guardian, CBS, Fox News, Reuters, Washington Post, etc. Vanamonde (Talk) 19:57, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Apparently they have been going for a while but it has not been a significant news story until now, so that would likely explain the lack of an article. You may need to make one for this as as while wildfires in the forest are not unknown (and usually attributed to manmade actions rather than natural ones), this year's are particularly intense and a combination s of many more factors. --Masem (t) 20:26, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
This is true; they've been gathering steam; but what baffled me isn't just that there's no article at 2019 Amazonian wildfires, there's no articles for "YYYY Amazonian wildfires", there's no articles for "Fire in the Amazon rainforest", there's no sections about fire at Amazonian rainforest or Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest or Deforestation in Brazil; in short, there's no substantive treatment of this general topic anywhere on Wikipedia. Whereas we have an article for a fire on the Canary islands, which could be dropped into the Amazon without making a splash. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:37, 21 August 2019 (UTC) Addendum: I guess there is a one-sentence section now. Stil...Vanamonde (Talk) 20:39, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
Simpliest solution looks to be to add a section to Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest under Impacts as "2019 wildfires", leading off that wildfires have existed before but because of conditions now (climate change, deforestation, loss of protection to combat deforestation, etc.) that there are massive wildfires going on, and expanding on that. 1-2 paragraphs would be sufficient for ITN, and except for one para early on, that article is reasonably sourced. --Masem (t) 20:42, 21 August 2019 (UTC)
@Vanamonde93 and Masem: There is an article now at 2019 Brazil wildfires. Needs a lot of work. We should discuss how to nominate before we take it to ITN/C. I am considering Ongoing. --- Coffeeandcrumbs 01:25, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Glad to hear the article I created a few hours ago 2019 Brazil wildfires might be part of In the News. I was thinking of submitting it but In the New is quite labour- and time-intense. I look forward to contributions to this article by other editors. I have only begun to integrate content from the RS already mentioned and there are so many more published today.Oceanflynn (talk) 01:59, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
@Coffeeandcrumbs and Oceanflynn: I've gone ahead and nominated this; I'll see if I can find the time to beef up the article tomorrow. Vanamonde (Talk) 02:10, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks

Need review of RD Princess Christina of the Netherlands

The major issues have been fixed, Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates#RD:_Princess_Christina_of_the_Netherlands. Asking it here for some more eyes since this is about to go stale. regards. --DBigXrayᗙ 18:21, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Now marked as Ready. Lets see if an admin reaches it first or the Archive bot--DBigXrayᗙ 06:41, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Tone has beaten the archive bot by an entire day. well done. marking it as resolved. --DBigXrayᗙ 12:05, 22 August 2019 (UTC)
Resolved

I want to propose an image change

Why is Wikipedia so confusing? Where do I go to suggest a new image to be added? --Bageense(disc.) 16:23, 22 August 2019 (UTC)

If you want to add it to the news section, visit WP:ERRORS. Brandmeistertalk 08:12, 23 August 2019 (UTC)

2019 Women's European Volleyball Championship

...should be added in Ongoing section. — SimplyFreddie (talk) 11:10, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

SimplyFreddie Ongoing is typically not for single-sport events in progress, however, if you can make a case for adding it, please visit WP:ITNC to make a nomination. 331dot (talk) 11:12, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Except for FIFA World Cup, but that's justified by the large # of participating countries and audience size. --Masem (t) 13:34, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

Reviewers and their comments needed

  1. RD: Babulal Gaur
  2. RD: Jagannath Mishra
  3. RD: Harry B. Luthi
  4. RD: Jack Whitaker

Please review these ITN nominations. The issues pointed have already been fixed. Without further comments these noms risk getting archived or stale. More eyes on them will be appreciated.--DBigXrayᗙ 18:14, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

A new batch of gelato

Italy crisis: PD and Five Star agree (to) coalition deal after talks. – Sca (talk) 20:28, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Afghanistan peace

I'd sure like to see the US–Taliban peace deal on the front page. ☆ Bri (talk) 19:30, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Then feel free to nominate it at WP:ITNC. The Rambling Man (Staying alive since 2005!) 19:34, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
You should make sure the target article is suitably updated - Afghan peace process has nothing much since August 12. Pawnkingthree (talk) 20:07, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

Attention of Admin needed

Attention of Admin needed on RD: Dennis Fentie. All the issues pointed by the reviewers have been fixed. Please see if this can be posted before archiving. --DBigXrayᗙ 08:12, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Spencer posted this. --DBigXrayᗙ 14:55, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
Resolved

RD: Carol Lynley

Hi Stephen, Can you please elaborate why you have closed this as stale ? The news of her death broke out on 6 August after which the news sites picked it up. for ITN RD purpose her death announcement should be considered. I see that there are 2 entries right now on ITN main page both from 6 Aug September. IMHO lot of effort has been made by me to make this article main page worthy, all the reviewers who had initially opposed have changed their mind and even supported. I believe RD nom should be posted on ITN instead of closing as stale. Please reconsider your decision. Opinion from others also welcome. regards. --DBigXrayᗙ 07:20, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

"6 August" is really stale, that's over a month ago. Even 30 August can be considered stale by now. Articles are normally stale between 1 to 2 weeks at most. The dates of the articles already on the template have no relation with the staleness of the not-yet posted articles. The template is updated organically as articles come up, there's no proportionality of time (like at DYK). Some articles spend only one day and then moved off completely others stay for several days because there's no new addition. In simple words: do not compare any article with the ones on the template, they have no relation. – Ammarpad (talk) 07:44, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Ammarpad, sorry I meant 6 September, I have corrected the typo above.--DBigXrayᗙ 08:27, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
OK, 4 days (3, in some places) is not really stale. Barring any quality issue, I believe it should be posted. – Ammarpad (talk) 09:26, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
We don’t micromanage dates unless there’s a significant delay in announcing the death in the order of a week or more. Many people have an obituary a couple of days later. Stephen 08:58, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
@Stephen: - if you don’t micromanage dates, then RD: Carol Lynley should be posted...? starship.paint (talk) 10:02, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Date of death is the date used for posting unless there’s significant delay in the announcement. In this case it’s 3 September. Stephen 10:13, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
  • Stephen Thanks for the kind reply. I do understand and agree with your point here. However I don't agree that is nom is stale yet (something Ammarpad also stated above). The article was in a bad shape and it required time to fix the sourcing and content issues. If you are not promoting this as there are more recent entries in the ITN, then IMHO the right thing to do will be to invoke WP:IAR and promote Carol Lynley, replacing an entry that has already been there for long. For Example Chris Duncan that I had nominated has already spent more than 3 days on main page as ITN RD. Both Chris Duncan (announced on 6) and Carol Lynley (announced on 6) are based on 6 September date. Please see if you can promote this as an RD as Starship.paint, Ammarpad and myself are requesting. regards--DBigXrayᗙ 10:17, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
    I can't see why date of death would ever be considered instead of the date of the report of death. The body may be stale but the news is not. The focus on the news is also "THIS PERSON DIED", whether she died on September 3 or September 6 is really trivial. starship.paint (talk) 10:26, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Sure, given you put a lot of work into it, I’ve posted it. As I’m on mobile would someone be kind enough to undo the close. Stephen
  • Stephen, I appreciate you, giving us a patient hearing and even changing your mind. Ammarpad and User:Starship.paint thank you for sharing your opinions. Marking this as resolved. regards. --DBigXrayᗙ 10:41, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Resolved

Death Blurb Criteria

proposal withdrawn by the OP. --Jayron32 12:44, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

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 understand that this is a contentious topic and that discussing this could open a can of worms. However I would like to make a narrow proposal that might add some objective criteria to selecting death blurbs.

My proposal is: if a person is a Level 4 Vital Article, then they should generally be considered notable enough to merit a blurb.

I've looked over the list and it seems exclusive enough that only "transformative figures" are on it. The only exception to that rule might be the sports section, which is weighted heavily towards living athletes compared to the other sections; we may have to make an exception for Level 4 athletes. I'll leave that open to discussion. The music section may or may not be too heavily weighted towards living musicians as well, as well as the entertainer section.

Some might consider Level 4 to be a bit too exclusive--for example, John Williams is not on that list and he seems like an obvious blurb--but we can always discuss individuals not on the list as we currently do. Another proposal might be to include Level 5 people as blurbs as well, but I believe Level 5 is a bit too broad. NorthernFalcon (talk) 17:17, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

I would actually rather that the criteria was based solely on the particulars of the death and its aftermath rather than the "importance" of the person involved (which is a nebulous quality). If we were inventing the criteria from first principles, and ignoring precedent (which is worthless here anyways, because our criteria has always been rather haphazardly applied in such a way that it is impossible to determine any useful guidance) here's what I would prefer:
  • If a person's death bears greater newsworthy explanation than merely "they died", they get a blurb.
  • If the death itself was otherwise unremarkable (a person died of being old) then the RD link is sufficient.
As some examples of the sort of things that might make a death newsworthy enough for a blurb:
  • If the person died in an unusual manner (suicide, accident, assassination)
  • If the person's death sparked other newsworthy events (protests, large memorial celebrations, etc.)
And as such, the blurb SHOULD mention those things directly. If all we can say is "So-and-so died at the age of 87 of heart failure quietly in their home. There was a small family funeral" then we don't need a blurb. The RD link is sufficient. IF we could say, instead "So-and-so was assassinated, sparking days of protests in the capital city" THAT would be why we would write a blurb. --Jayron32 18:24, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
I can't really get behind either proposal. There are some figures that are large enough that their deaths are a matter of interest even if they're not under unusual circumstances, and even if they don't become an event in their own right (Prince; Mandela; Thatcher; Castro). However, the "Vital article" status is subject to considerably less scrutiny, on average, than the ITN nomination; and so basing the outcome of the latter on the former seems backwards to me. Vanamonde (Talk) 20:31, 19 September 2019 (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.

Reorder Template:ITN candidate/syntax

I think this is benign, but I don't want to just do it w/o asking here first. The ITN candidate template has two fields which should not be changed "nominator" and "sign". I want to put them together at the bottom of the template to make it easier when I'm cleaning up unused fields. Anyone object? I'm going to take no objections as acceptance. --LaserLegs (talk) 18:05, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

The order of the parameters does not matter when transforming the template. You can shuffle them all and the template will display them in the standard order. So I don't think there's reason to oppose any useful rearrangement. – Ammarpad (talk) 18:35, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

(Closed) Chirac debacle

Quality guidelines are here Wikipedia:In_the_news#Article_quality and are unambiguous. "Biographies of living persons are held to higher standards of referencing because of their sensitive nature, and these rules also apply to those recently deceased.". No reason to waste any more time on this. --LaserLegs (talk) 01:40, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

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.

From the Chirac !votes/discussion. Chirac, RD, is not on our mainpage.

I complain that the criteria for "bad article quality" are inaccessible, and so not open for improvement/discussion/reply/etc. It's just !votes, noting to discuss about.

As for article quality, Chirac is class-B. I see no reason this prevents it from being on mainpage. However, how to discuss this in a !votelist?

To illustrate, these are the ITN RD's that curently are on mainpage, plus their AQ assessment:

My point: how to achieve a change in this editors's !vote (principle)? -DePiep (talk) 21:54, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

DePiep, there are many uncited claims in the Chirac article. That's why it isn't on the main page. It has nothing to do with article length or any quality assessment. I'd say the Chirac article reads as more of a C than a B to me. Add citations to reliable sources and it will get posted. – Muboshgu (talk) 21:58, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
These assessments (Start, B class, C class e.t.c,) don't have any official status on Wikipedia and the rating are done/can be changed unilaterally by any editor. So the first thing in understanding how ITN works, is to disregard them. The articles you listed are not posted because of their "class" but because of consensus of the participants for nomination of each article. Conversely Jacques Chirac is not posted, not because of its "B class" status, but because several editors raised important sourcing concerns about it. Once the issues raised are resolved, it will be posted whether it's labeled "B class" or C, or even Stub. The only classification that ITN regulars take into account is the standard universally-accepted GA and FA classes. I hope this helps.– Ammarpad (talk) 22:09, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
(ec) re Muboshgu: This is not what you argued in the "discussion". And, again: that is not what the !voters write. (This might be your personal point, but no way you can claim to speak for all !voters).
And that is my main point: the !votes are inaccessble. How to argue with such a statement? Anyway, I wrote this on Talk because it is a generic problem, not just re Chirac. I never met such a bad "discussion" page at enwiki. -DePiep (talk) 22:12, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
re Ammarpad: "sourcing concerns" is not what those !voters wrote. They simply wrote "bad quality", mainly (the word "source" nor "reference" does not appear that often in their "arguments"/!votes). They did not argue, they just !voted. -DePiep (talk) 22:24, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
DePiep, yes it is. I said the quality wasn't good enough. A quick perusal of the article shows the citation needed tags, and the big orange tags. We don't post BLPs with sourcing issues. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:41, 28 September 2019 (UTC)
The criteria I observe are simple: all facts with an inline citation. In a way: the simpler an article, the better its chances. It's kind of a religion. Biting my tongue to not say what I think about it. (First you feel forced to reference every bit, spend hours on the task, and when you finished, you are told that it took too long.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:33, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
The point is, Gerda Arendt: even if we'd allow personal criteria (by now, even WP:ASSESS is explicitly rejected in favor of personal lines): ~none of the !voters added such an argument. Nothing to discuss or improve. This pattern on WP:ITNRD is why I open this on the talkpage. -DePiep (talk) 22:48, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
I tried to explain that the simple rule seems to be clear to all: unrefenced paragraphes = no-no. Article class: not relevant. What the person did in life: not relevant. Sad. Today I improved the article of a person who died, but that one will also not go to recent deaths, because he died in August, - it only got known this late. I looked at Chirac and didn't even try: no chance to comply with teh rulez soon enough. What you can do: go over articles of people you expect to die and do the referencing in peace before they die. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:54, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
This, at minimum. And then if we're in a section talking about a person's influence, importance, controversies, etc., then I will be looking for multiple references per paragraph if needed if there are multiple thoughts being conveyed. And of course, all quotations need sources. Second term "Foreign policy" has a unsouced quote right there. --Masem (t) 23:15, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
Welcome to the wonderful world of ITN, where everyone knows something is wrong, but nobody can get consensus on how to fix it. You might be interested in, e.g., [9]. Banedon (talk) 01:24, 28 September 2019 (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.
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