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Workshop: Defining significance

Yes. It's another proposal. Yes, it's our seventh in as many days. But based on the reaction to "Apply RD standard to blurbs" and "Establishing notability for current events", I think it's worth discussing a way to get rid of the ambiguity when it comes to how we define significance.

First of all, I recognize where I stand relative to the rest of everyone here. I know my criteria for significance is on the more lenient end of the spectrum, compared to others who are stricter. I know I've butted heads a couple times too, and I respect everyone's differences. But my intention is not to prescribe criteria, nor to ram through a raising or lowering of the bar for significance. Rather, it's to find ways to be more definitive in our significance for the benefit of new ITN/C contributors who want to know why we're posting some stories and not posting others.

Purpose

The Wikipedia:In the news significance criteria currently states that the following principles are useful for assessing consensus:

  • The length and depth of coverage itself
  • The number of unique articles about the topic
  • The frequency of updates about the topic
  • The types of news sources reporting the story

In my opinion, these principles would be excellent in determining whether a story is worth posting. However, in practice, we rarely see consistent adherence to these principles leading to the unfortunate outcome that consensus is usually based on a head count. Indeed, the threshold for "length and depth of coverage" could be narrow for some users (like myself) and wide for others. It's clear that demolishing the significance standard outright would not be workable either, for it risks creating the perception that WP:ITN is a news ticker. Yet at the same time, the current standard is contentious and the divides between users are deep and in some cases irreconcilable.

This thread seeks to workshop the idea of what a less contentious, less subjective criterion would look like. There is no point in attempting to prescribe a change to our procedures or guidelines as to what kind of items we should be posting to ITN, because there would never be any consensus to achieve this. Instead, the goal should be to find a common ground on rewording the current standard so as to reorient users towards a less adversarial approach to ITN/C.

Background

Let’s look at the things that presumed notable items do have in common, and those things that presumed non-notable items have in common. Note that all of these would have reliable source coverage:

  • Examples of notable items: National elections, national or international sporting events with large viewership, disasters that affect lots of people, first rocket launches for a nation, wars, assassinations of a major political figure.
  • Examples of non-notable items: Celebrity gossip, subnational elections, political intrigue, athletic records.
  • Examples of grey area items: Lawsuits between two major companies, business mergers, archeological or scientific discoveries, United Nations directives, moderate disasters in areas that are known for disasters.

By categorizing these items, we can see the following commonalities:

  • Notable items impact large amounts of people on a wide scale, whether it’s the population of a country or the whole world. They do not necessarily have to be injured or killed in order for this to happen, nor does there necessarily need to be international crossover, but it is an item that grabs public attention and may impact daily life in a significant way for those concerned
  • Non-notable items are usually ignored because they don’t affect as many people. Or if they do affect people, the impact is not very tangible and at times the news coverage outsizes the actual notability.
  • The grey area items fall somewhere in the middle, in that they affect a lot of people, but the actual degree of the impact is difficult to pinpoint for those outside of that sphere. This is the area that causes the most contention at ITN.

Proposed standard (DICE)

Therefore, it seems that rather than a significance standard, we should be assessing based on an impact standard. This would not change how we operate at ITN/C, as the assessment method is still the same. However, the focus would change to determining the degree and scale as to how people are impacted. We can measure this by assessing the news coverage and answering the following questions:

  • Impact: How does the story define the impact on people in the region affected, if there is any?
  • Consequences: For the news category this story is posted under (politics, art, science, sports, etc.), what sort of ramifications are there?
  • Encyclopedic: Is this a suitable item to either update or create a standalone Wikipedia article?

Functionally, the types of items that are being posted to ITN would not change, as we are still assessing the significance of the stories, but we now have a clear standard in which we can review items as opposed to an abstract personal assessment. In making the criteria more specific and objective, we qualitatively assess based on the above criteria, by actually reviewing the news coverage and exploring the details within it. From there, we can reach a consensus around whether these criteria have been satisfied rather than based on a head count.

The other advantage to this is that as we continue to use the DICE standard, the global consensus on ITN around what items are posted becomes clearer and more definable, which will help other users who might not understand what is required in order for a newsworthy item to actually be posted. Furthermore, we can document the changes over time as consensus changes.

Feedback

I hope that my ideas are clear and that they can gain some traction. If there is any further explanation needed, or any changes that would be most useful, I'm open to hearing them. And it may very well be that things ought to stay the same, per WP:CREEP and per WP:AINT. But I think this is still worth trying. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 16:30, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

I’m afraid that quality is gradually becoming a more important problem than significance (see my thread immediately above this one), so I think any modelling of significance should start off from how well the newly created or updated article demonstrates significance.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 17:28, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
Agreed, which is where the "encyclopedic" standard comes into play. If it's not possible to get the article up to a decent quality in the fashion of how we prefer things to be written on Wikipedia, then it probably doesn't fit the bill. --⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 17:31, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
The so-called DICE standard still suffers from a big issue with the current "significance" criteria, in that all points, save for the last one, are still subject to an incredible amount of ambiguity. I mean in real terms, almost every oppose vote on WP:ITN/C is based upon at least one of these four variables (e.g, "this is not major news in X part of the world," "this wont't have any ipact despite killing hundreds of people," "this action by Russia against Ukraine is just dick-measuring," "this item is not encyclopedic enough for an undisclosed reason," etc. in - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 23:07, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
It's ambiguous, but I believe it's better than the alternative, which right now is a free-for-all. What we're frequently seeing is a litany of !votes which amount to "support, this is significant" vs "oppose, this is not significant". We pay[citation needed] our admins to be stewards of the Main Page and to assess consensus, but there's not a lot that you can do when the quality of the !votes are akin to hardtack and gruel. Moreover, significance as it currently stands (and as you well know) is entirely subjective as outlined in WP:ITNCRIT. When that's all we have to go on, what choices do admins have? Every admin assesses ITN/C consensus differently. Look at how Fuzheado has been pilloried over the years for his interpretation of consensus vs that of Stephen or Tone. On one hand, he may very well have misread consensus in those instances. On the other hand, you can't really blame him when all that WP:ITN/A says is to check how clueful the votes are.
So is there still ambiguity with DICE? Yes, of course there will be, because it's qualitative and not quantitative. However, by asking our !voters to think in those terms when deciding whether to support or oppose, we do two things. Firstly, we reorient the thought process so it's less about personal point of view and more about overall impact in the area concerned, in order to offset the effect that regional bias has on one's voting. Secondly, even if we still have votes that are terse or insufficient, as outlined below, it will at least allow admins to assess the quality of the !votes and then accordingly sort out the ones that don't provide a thoughtful argument. Essentially we diminish the importance of head-counting.
I think it's an improvement. If you feel it's still ultimately subjective, I welcome your thoughts on how we can use a more quantitative or evidence-based approach. But like I said, I don't think we ought to waste our time on trying to lower or eliminate the significance bar entirely, because that idea is a non-starter for a lot of people here. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 16:22, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Oh, I don't deny that it's an improvement, but a key issue that I think we need to tackle is making ITN guidelines as specific as possible so that noms cannot be arbitrarily derailed by WP:BADFAITH, WP:OR, and WP:DONTLIKEIT arguments. As @DarkSide830 pointed out, it could be realistically argued that most folks on ITN/C, including the biggest disruptors, are technically already using a weak amalgamation of all the three. For example, POV is heavily impacted by overall impact, and often times vice versa. It's practically become apart of ITN lore that a story will occur on one side of the Atlantic, and the side of the Atlantic that it occurred in heavily supports its posted, while the other side dismisses it as irrelevant. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 12:38, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
I truly believe the only way to avoid such arguments impacting ITN, without being draconian and starting to ban people from ITN participation (which is the worst possible outcome here) is simply empowering Admins more to discard these comments when considering consensus. That shouldn't be an issue as long as we make a point of informing ITN editors that such action can be taken with inappropriate comments. Worst case scenario someone's opinion is not being counted. This is, however, not a democracy, nor is one's right to an ITN argument a fundamental human right. DarkSide830 (talk) 14:58, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
  • SO, I really have a hard time with items 2, 3, and 4 above; since they basically require people to ignore evidence and merely give their own experience, interest, or emotional response to a story. We should be discouraging that rather than encouraging. The only item that seems reasonable is the first, depth. Everything else amounts to "how do I feel about this based on my own very limited experience in the world", and that's a terrible way to make decisions for an audience. --Jayron32 11:03, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, but think about it; we're asking people to give their input on impact, consequences, and whether it's encyclopedic. But as opposed to the unconstrained process which we had before, where anyone can simply say "it doesn't mean anything to me", we're asking them to operate within the qualitative constraints of those three questions. I think people can be relatively objective if they are asked to assess the news coverage and the content and determine the impact and consequences, not necessarily to themselves but to the parties whom the news affects. It's a reorientation of perspective from "what does this mean for them" rather than "what does this mean for me". Do you see what I'm getting at? --⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:27, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Yeah, but they'll just vote by asserting those things as self-evidently true, which is all they do now. What we want is people citing sources and evidence, not making unfalsifiable statements that something just "isn't important". or "has no consequences" or "isn't encyclopedic". Anyone can just type those words at any time, and we need a process that gives less weight to typing words and more weight to providing evidence. --Jayron32 14:32, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
Well, that's kind of the direction I'm fighting towards, thus why this wasn't so much a proposal as more of a workshop. The baseline DICE criteria I provided allows us to orient ourselves towards that line of thinking where we provide evidence from within the news to support our claims. So now we just have to determine how we can quantify that evidence in context to DICE. In my opinion, this would require actually reading the articles and looking for statements within the news coverage that would indicate that. If it's a well-written article, it should do so, or at least allow us to critically think and assess the content. If it can't define the impact, then it's probably ticker content.
Let's use the Super Bowl as an example, to get an idea of how it would work:
  • Depth - Very high. Virtually every major U.S. newspaper covers the Super Bowl in detail, some cases on the front page but certainly on top of the sports section in U.S. papers.
  • Impact - According to Hollywood Reporter, 113 million viewers across all platforms viewed the Super Bowl. This amounts to a very large cross-section of the U.S. population.
  • Consequences - Permeates popular culture. Great impacts on the hospitality and sports industries. While no tangible physical impacts to people, it's by and large a "water cooler" discussion topic for those who watched it.
  • Encyclopedic - By and large meets WP:NSPORTS in that each Super Bowl receives its own individual article and prose.
Yes, it's qualitative. But using the above criteria, it explains why the item is consistently WP:ITNR each year. I think you will find that if we apply these same standards to other stories - ones that were posted and ones that were not posted - you'll most likely get assessments consistent with their outcomes. --⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:00, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
In addition, if we do get !votes that just tersely assess the item without providing supporting background evidence, then the admins who are weighing posting of the story should take that into consideration when weighing consensus. --⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:10, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I was just typing this same comment, though I was going to link to WP:DISCARD. These are especially applicable to "Encyclopedic", where there's an actual policy that decides what meets it and what doesn't. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:13, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I like the idea of having these standards listed somewhere for new editors, but I'm not sure it will change the minds of current editors (who, in theory, are using some weighted combination of these standards already). DarkSide830 (talk) 17:08, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
I generally like this new "scale". However, I wonder if this would cause less science articles to get posted. How does a scientific discovery, e.g. the discovery of a new element, meet these criteria? Natg 19 (talk) 06:42, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
Well if a scientific discovery doesn't meet these criteria than it isn't ITN worthy. New elements are also ITN/R. DarkSide830 (talk) 21:14, 30 April 2023 (UTC)
  • There being no policy basis for basically any post or oppose vote, these nominations almost all are closed on "consensus" by vote count, so I would support some way of changing that, but the fact is that any attempt at having quantifiable standards for posting will result in the posting of the more severe in impact US mass shootings, as they consistently have more depth and width in coverage across a range of news sources than most other things we post here. And for that reason any attempt at defining such standards is, unfortunately, doomed to failure due to the bloc of "if it happened in America it isnt noteworthy, but if the same thing happened in my continent it should be plastered across all websites on the planet" voters. You simply cannot design a criteria that is based on any objective reasoning that does not rule in a large amount of stories that a sizable portion of ITN/C voters consistently reject. And so they will reject whatever criteria is designed. nableezy - 15:31, 1 May 2023 (UTC)
    If the regular ITN/C voters (note the lack of "!") don't change their policy-violating behavior in the near future, then it will fall to the rest of the community to resolve this, just like any other case where a group of editors subverts policy for an extended period of time. Also, if someone creates an article about a mass shooting or a similar single news cycle story, odds are that it fails WP:EVENTCRIT and should simply be deleted. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:42, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

This is probably unworkable, but is it possible to come to a shared definition of significance (or at least depth) by

  1. Coming up with a list of the most important/largest/your adjective of choice world news sources, and
  2. Saying that X% having a story on Y topic automatically surpasses the criterion?

Note that the lack of this probably shouldn't automatically bar a nomination, particularly for non-Western events, but it could be a start toward easing the lengthy debates we keep having. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 01:15, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

This has been discussed in the past to no avail. Truth be told, this would probably lead to much bickering about what is or isn't a good news source to use. And I will note, my main issue with "Coverage" as it is generally defined is that most publications cover most events nowadays (due a lack of limitation on print space that may have existed in the past), including many trivial ones such as routine news, celebrity news, mundane crime stories, etc. Ergo, I believe any such proposal to be a non-starter, even if reasonably-conceived. DarkSide830 (talk) 03:56, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
For what it's worth, during all my time at ITN/C, I have never once seen anyone try to push through celebrity news (except those related to Donald Trump) of any sort with a straight face. The only time I have seen was an ill-conceived April Fool's joke nomination I made centered around Kim Kardashian. That was a bit of an embarrassment. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 18:31, 2 May 2023 (UTC)
And, quite frankly, that's why I'm fine with keeping the system as it is. But a blank check for any story that is "widely" covered is a problem. DarkSide830 (talk) 03:03, 4 May 2023 (UTC)
I think the amount of arguing that just took place over the coronation nom is proof that the system doesn't work as well as we think. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:13, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
To be fair, I don't ever see a scenario where another coronation meets posting criteria in any of our lifetimes (would love to say I'll live another 70 but can't guarantee that). That was one where I consciously went against my normal ITN positioning to prop up a less-impactful but rare event. And I understand the opposition to the coronation as well, though should the vast majority of OTHERSTUFF opposes have been disregarded, the point would be moot. DarkSide830 (talk) 03:00, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
I think a far simpler, more quantifiable approach is required. Much as Ngrams is an excellent initial gauge of WP:COMMONNAME when used correctly and common sense applied, Google Trends would be a very sensible tool for sorting the wheat from the chaff and gauging whether events have A) volumetric significance, B) geographically diverse significance. This would be a useful tool for gauging the significance of both blurbs and Ongoing items. For instance, if we take the Belgrade shooting and Manipur violence, a Google trends plot shows both the coverage spikes and geographical coverage spread. We see a pretty obvious Western hemisphere and developed nations focus on the Serbia news; a subcontinental focus on the Manipur news - inputs that could help (not necessarily here) avoid systemic biases. If we look at the recent coronations posting debacle, where we basically had an article good-to-go with few to no quality issues issues from the get-go, admitting evidence based analysis, such as relevant Google trends data would have ended the discussion pretty quickly - our earlier items, 'Belgrade shooting' and 'Manipur violence' are basically dead in the water versus the coronation - this like for like comparison is pretty instructive: if the latter two items are worthy of admittance to ITN then by God an event with the kind of impact factor as the coronation should. Also, from an Ongoing perspective, drop offs in news coverage are also pretty obvious, e.g.: the Serbia news has been posted as a Blurb, not an Ongoing, but the chart clearly shows the interest petering out. Or we can perform the same exercise with the actual current Ongoing entries (7 May), i.e. Israeli protests, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Sudan conflict, see [1], which is also pretty revealing at showing the actual practical levels of coverage of events from a global perspective. And while a shift towards a more empirical, data-based ITN assessment of significance might have its drawbacks, I'm pretty sure it would ultimately be fairer and less open to accusations of systemic bias as the current opinion-infested vote-fest and abomination unto WP:NOTDEMOCRACY that ITN has become. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:54, 7 May 2023 (UTC)
I'm intrigued by this proposal, but I have to address the elephant in the room, how would this be affected by spikes in trivial matters such as celeb drama. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 12:58, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
It's pretty simple. We just don't post celebrity gossip. Problem solved! --Jayron32 13:06, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
It would certainly be interesting to run a test case. What's a recent example of celebrity media circus that run amok at ITN or generally? I'd be happy to test an example against the actual ITN at the time. But, what I suspect might be the case is that a single celebrity event that makes waves in, say the US, might not impact global news trends as much as you might think. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:33, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
I compared two key entries from this ITN template in January, i.e. the plane crash in Pokhara and the election of Chris Hipkins, against two failed nominations and prominent US-centric events: the police killing involving Tyre Nichols and the Alec Baldwin shooting on the Rust set - so one race relations item and one celebrity story angle. The resulting Trends chart, while showing that both of those stories received considerable reach, they ultimately trended well below the major posted news items. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:26, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
  • This aspect came up in a recent nom but there is a certain difference of opinion of what ITN should do. Some believe it should highlight topics that are covered by the news in some rough proportion to coverage, with article quality as secondary. But the other way to see this, and why ITN was created and is on the Main page, is to feature high quality articles or existing quality articles with substantial updates of expected quality, that happen to be covered by the news. The amount or weight of coverage should not matter, though the more coverage a story has, the more expectations of a quality article or update. We should be looking at article quality first, deciding if this respects some of WP's best work. If the article isn't there nor likely to get there, then we shouldn't post it. This might mean that some disasters which have only minimal details known won't get posted. We also should be looking at the fact WP us not a newspaper and while we do want articles on new notable events, or significant updates, that there are stories in the news that are "business as usual" updates, such as most political stories , business news, etc. that we should not give too much sway in updating articles and certainly avoid giving space on ITN (recently, the EzpA suggesting some truth to the lab leak theory was all over the place on the news, but that was something we clearly wouldn't post). We basically should not be trying to judge the weight of news but instead make sure we are promoting high quality encyclopedic articles that happen to have news coverage. Going this way would help reduce the amount if debate on significance, because quality is often the most obvious problem that should be fixed first. Masem (t) 13:55, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
    I think Masem makes some very cogent points here. Quality, in its own way, does add much to significance in the sense that if there are not substantial, well-written sources to work from, then there won't be an article or an update of sufficient quality. --Jayron32 14:03, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
    Yeah, that was going to be what the "E" fork in my DICE represented, which was that is the news story such that we'd be able to develop a good-quality Wikipedia article out of it, or at the very least, a substantive update to an existing article. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:30, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
    Which is why there may be stories that are "significant" (such as violence in Africa and the Middle East, or natural disasters in South America and some Asian countries) but coverage is far from necessary to get a quality article up. This quality-over-newsworthiness aspect would also help better with RD blurbs decisions, supplemented by news coverage that helps establish the impact the person had which should be reflected as a substantial update to the quality article. The focus on showing how fast WP editors can come together to produce a great article in a day or so from recent ends is why ITN was made, and we've sorta lost sight as some push for trying to mimic mass media coverage. Masem (t) 16:38, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
    I don't see how this argument helps. There are a lot of high quality articles that may or may not qualify for ITN. The quality measurement is already being used on ITN, as low quality, stub type articles are routinely rejected from ITN. In general, contentious arguments are for articles that are high quality, but are based on subjective interpretations of "significance". For example, I presume the King Charles III coronation article was high quality, but few people argued for or against it being on ITN based on quality. Many mass shooting articles are good quality, but may not belong on ITN for other reasons. Most arguments on ITN/C are "I like it" or "I don't like it", so I hope we get some more clear guidelines on what should be posted on ITN besides "significant", which is very subjective based on people's biases. Natg 19 (talk) 19:04, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
    Yes, we still will have arguments on some topics where there is a high quality article but there is reasons we won't post it or at least argue about it, like the coronation. Or recently any if the US gun shootings, where we have established that these are too routine to post. but it would eliminate ITNCs on articles that have no chance to be improved significantly, whereas currently we tend to allow these if they get "good enough". It also points to making sure ITNR items have significant quality updates before they are posted. This approach doesn't solve everything but it pushes a lot of current issues away.
    Putting article quality first and foremost, with quantity of news sourcing represent by the depth of coverage in the article using those sources, gives a better spin if ITNs goal here and keeps us from being a newsticker. Masem (t) 21:03, 8 May 2023 (UTC)
    But a lot of the arguments, because of the looseness of the guidelines, have essentially descended into arguments about other examples. One of the most frequent arguments about the coronation posting was that US presidential inaugurations are not posted. Every time a US shooting pops up, this refrain goes out that US shootings are routine, without even really discussing the scale of the event or the significance of the coverage around it. The Texas mall shooting, for instance, was the second most deadly and had the second highest casualties this year, so if one were to mention a single shooting in the second quarter of 2023, that would be the one. On one level, it seems like there is such a fear of systemic bias towards Western world stories that ITN is overcorrecting in the other direction. Here is the actual Trends data, for instance on how that shooting compares to some of the other events, or the coronation. Iskandar323 (talk) 08:26, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
    Most people who vote in these discussions aren't interested in measurements and metrics and evidence. They largely only vote based on what is interesting to them and what they like and never make any effort beyond assessing significance outside of "is this a story I am interested in hearing about". That's a shitty way to run anything at Wikipedia, and yet here we are, and they have become entrenched in this corner of Wikipedia, having carved out their little niche and made this the place they try to play cultural gatekeeper, since no where else seems to let them. --Jayron32 11:51, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
    Let's put it this way - whether we use article quality (which I think will limit how many ITNCs we get) or news coverage as suggested at the start, we are always going to hit stories that have equivant article quality and news coverage but which we treat different. And I think trying to understand that situation would also be helpful.
    For example, personally, I see part of ITNs purpose to focus on a diversity of topics both in geographic space, but as well as topic space. For one, that's why we try to make sure that for stories that have continuing events afterwards that we are picking the right moment to make into ITN: normally that's when a new leader is selected and not their actual taking-of the seat of power, or in a high profile criminal case, when the person is convicted and not when they are arrested and charged, or for major business mergers, when the merger is announced and not when it is completed. Its also why we look for how "routine" an event can be. US shootings are far too regular nowadays that they are sadly routine, but I would also apply this to annual flooding in Asian countries, hurricane/typhoon landfalls, and similar events where the death toll is there but not great. All this is a bit more personal opinion and touchy-feeling, but we do have some unstated rules that we should try to capture as guidance (not policy) to ITN so that editors know what are selection processes are usually based around. Masem (t) 12:21, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
    To add to my point...whether we put quality first or news coverage first, we ate still going to run into cases like the verdict in the Trump v. E Carroll trial nomination, that as I write there is clear opposition to it, those reasons having nothing to do with quality or depth of coverage. There will always be a higher set of "rules" that come into play after determining quality and news coverage are met, and thus are far more difficult to articulate. Masem (t) 19:10, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
    But articulated they really need to be if they are to come off as anything other than somewhat arbitrary. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:31, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
    I agree with Iskander33. I thought the point of this (and other) proposals IS to try to articulate those "rules". Because right now, those "rules" are vague, and arguments devolve simply into discussions about geography or other inherent biases. Natg 19 (talk) 19:49, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
    I fully agree that above and beyond quality and news coverage, we need to present these rules with the understanding they have less enforceability than guidelines, and IAR can apply at times. But we need.to make sure we agree on those. Masem (t) 19:54, 10 May 2023 (UTC)
    It seems straightfoward to me. Wikipedia already has policies and guidelines, including one about how to determine WP:CONSENSUS and several about how to determine WP:NOTABILITY. If people are coming up with their own rules and standards of "significance", or if they try to enforce a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS that contradicts policies and guidelines, then their !votes are supposed to be WP:DISCARDed. Many editors have been sanctioned at ANI in the past for repeatedly trying to enforce their own non-P&G rules, and projects have been shut down for the same. If someone feels that there are ways to improve the current standard set by policies and guidelines, we have a WP:PROPOSAL process for that. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:33, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
    NOTABILITY governs the worthiness of an event to have an article created about it. ITN is not an article and is thus not beholden to such standards. And we have established that the creation of an article directly for an event that is to be posted is not always needed, even if ITN items frequently have standalone articles. DarkSide830 (talk) 03:04, 11 May 2023 (UTC)
    My concern is only that the topic is temporally relevant: is it something our readers are likely to be hearing about outside of Wikipedia during their daily lives. If so, ITN's only purpose is directing them to a Wikipedia article about the topic, so long as we have one that is good enough. I think reporting the news is not a concern of mine, or deciding what is important is not so much of a concern, merely directing people to additional information. --Jayron32 12:44, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
    So it's agreed to support the next high-quality article on a U.S mass shooting? —Bagumba (talk) 11:47, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Add to ITN/R - results of popular election of the primary executive

Proposal to add second indented bullet to the bottom of the elections section at ITN/R "The results of a popular election to this office" and delete the word "general" from the preceding bullet "except when that change was already posted as part of a general election".

  • Changes in the holder of the office which administer the executive of their respective state/government, in those countries which qualify under the criteria above, as listed at List of current heads of state and government except when that change was already posted as part of an election.
  • In Switzerland, elections of new members to the Federal Council, but not normally general elections of the Federal Council or elections to the Presidency, which are generally pro forma.
  • The results of a popular election to this office

The intent here is to address two minor gaps when the executive election is not part of a general election 1. the sitting officer being re-elected is technically not ITN/R and 2. a new person being elected is not posted until they assume the office. For example, the presidential second round in Turkey would not be ITN/R regardless of the result. Of course, we would likely post it anyway (as we did with Macron's re-election in France), but we should be applying the same standard for all countries. GreatCaesarsGhost 13:56, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

  • Would it be better to rephrase it as "Elections for which the the holder of the office which administer the executive of their respective state/government is decided, in those countries which qualify under the criteria above, as listed at List of current heads of state and government except when that change was already posted as part of another election." That way, it's not the change of office, but the completion of the election whereby the chief executive is decided, even if the chief executive is re-elected. --Jayron32 14:43, 15 May 2023 (UTC)
  • That would be very different than my proposal, as your language would exclude situations where the primary executive changes outside of an election (see the revolving door in the UK Conservative Party). I'm really just looking to have ITNR more accurately reflect how we actually handle this. GreatCaesarsGhost 17:04, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Jim Brown

Date

The nomination for Jim Brown has been put in May 18 but my impression is that the news broke on May 19. Shouldn't it go under the later date? Andrew🐉(talk) 07:31, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Nominations are by date of death not date of announcement, which will often be the next day, unless the announcement is a few days later. Stephen 12:17, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Agree with this statement. Ktin (talk) 19:42, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Nominations should be by date of anouncement per WP:ITNRD.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 16:18, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Where does it say that? I tried to carefully read ITNRD but don't see any guidelines on this. Natg 19 (talk) 18:34, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
It’s not clearly stated, but the last sentence in the intro reads "Recently died" means their death was announced within the last seven days., so the focus should be on the announement rather than the death itself. In some rare cases, a death may be announced weeks or even months after it happened.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 19:36, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
There is clearer guidance in the admin instructions: "Items are eligible for posting for seven days after the death (or occasionally the announcement of the death, if substantially delayed)." GreatCaesarsGhost 11:46, 25 May 2023 (UTC)
The only time we use the announcement date is if there significant time (like a week or more) that the death was not reported. A death that is reported the next day should be posted on the day of the death. Masem (t) 18:44, 20 May 2023 (UTC)
Agree with the above statement. Though, I would say -- we should not split hairs about this one. Ktin (talk) 19:41, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

Someone has closed the nomination discussion in the usual over-assertive manner. The trouble is that there's still things to discuss. For example, there's already a discussion about the wording of the blurb, which is now taking place at WP:ERRORS even though it's not an error. One might likewise discuss the picture. Some started the nomination with a picture which showed him in grizzled middle-age. I boldly changed that to the article's lead picture which is a collector card image, showing him in his prime. That seems to have stuck but I'm not sure why someone thought the other picture was better. And I want to post details of the readership stats for the record. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:29, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

I understand the discussion has been deemed "over" by the powers that be but as someone who is an African American (i.e., the demographic that would apparently be most expected to be familar with him), I literally had never heard of him in my life. I understand comparisons are being made to Muhammad Ali, but that seems improbable given that people who don't follow boxing knew who he was. It's a travesty that this has been given a blurb. --Varavour (talk) 18:45, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
Nobody compared him to Muhammad Ali, one of the most famous people on the planet over decades. And travesty? That a blurb for Jim Brown appeared on ITN is a travesty to you? Well, Im sorry for your loss I guess. As far as never having heard of him, click the link and read about him if youd like to. Itll help Andrew's stats too. nableezy - 19:46, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
These are things that should be discussed at ERRORS. ITN/C should be discussing whether an article belongs on ITN or not, and if there is a consensus (or discussion gets stale), then the discussion should be indeed closed. Natg 19 (talk) 19:41, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Stats

My rule of thumb for RD blurbs is that they will attract over a million readers so it's surprising to note that Brown hasn't reached that total yet. The number is 660,000 for the month to date which is quite substantial but not of a megastar size. I suppose that this is due to their age which is sufficiently great that they have outlived many contemporaries and they are not well known by Generation X+ who perhaps haven't seen movies like The Dirty Dozen. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:29, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you. ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 22:47, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Copyvio image

(NON-ADMIN CLOSURE)
Our (i.e. WP:ITN's) remit on this thread has been completed. Thanks for handling the deletion request at Commons, Bagumba. Marking this thread as closed. Ktin (talk) 21:44, 9 June 2023 (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.


The image of the Odisha train crash seems a clear copyright violation. It has been reported on AN/I by C messier, but perhaps someone here will be more familiar with how to remove it. CMD (talk) 09:18, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

The more I think of it, the Devon Conway image on the homepage is most likely a copyvio too. Ktin (talk) 22:18, 3 June 2023 (UTC)
@Ktin: Can you find the original? —Bagumba (talk) 03:42, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
It looks like a screengrab from the streamed interviews in the IPL press venue. From the arrangement of ads in the backdrop and the timing, it's likely from the Conway interview here: [2]. If it's not outright owned by the league or its broadcast partners, it's unlikely that anyone else in the room would release it under a free license, so it might be worth nominating at Commons. I've removed it from the automatically protected category in the meantime. ---- Patar knight - chat/contributions 16:23, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
FYI: I've started a Commons thread on how best to proceed in these cases.—Bagumba (talk) 17:32, 4 June 2023 (UTC)
Nomintated for deletion here.—Bagumba (talk) 10:54, 6 June 2023 (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.

Bolded WP:SEAOFBLUE

(NON-ADMIN CLOSURE)
Seems like the requested issue has been taken care of. Marking this closed. Ktin (talk) 21:38, 11 June 2023 (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.


The ITN section looks like a bolded WP:SEAOFBLUE. Shouldn't Canada and Haiti be unbolded and unlinked and so should some of the other words too. 119.152.232.148 (talk) 18:54, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Neutral on the decision, but isn't most of the main page (especially the non featured parts) a bolded WP:SEAOFBLUE? I do agree that Canada and Haiti should probably be delinked; we can just link the wildfires and flooding parts. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 20:18, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
Those were updated per a WP:ERRORS request. WP:SEAOFBLUE isnt applicable, because the countries are not linked separetely, they were merely added to the piped display. —Bagumba (talk) 01:43, 10 June 2023 (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.

Notice of soon to be stale ITN blurb item.

(NON-ADMIN CLOSURE)
Unfortunately, the item now seems to be stale. Next time. Ktin (talk) 02:10, 18 June 2023 (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.


The Tony Awards are set to become stale soon, but have been marked ready. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 02:58, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Is an admin available to take a look at this? Or, is this stale already? Ktin (talk) 17:21, 17 June 2023 (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.


How to handle or caution irregulars to ITNC on snowballing

This is specifically an issue on the current Berlusconi RD/Blurb nom. There is clear SNOW support for a blurb, but only a handful of regulars of ITN have addressed the poor quality of the article. How do we get these irregular to ITN to not simply pile on !votes where the portable outcome is clear and instead get them to look at the article and focus on quality? Masem (t) 13:39, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we can, not without forcing !voters on ITN to look at the rules and guidelines, and we really don't have mechanisms for individually enforcing a process other than directly replying to those !votes (which would come across as WP:BLUDGEONING after a certain point). I suppose one particularly aggressive option could be that once the consensus for a blurb is established, an admin may close the discussion stating that the consensus has been reached for a blurb, and that the article will be posted pending sufficient quality update. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:37, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
Agree with your observation. The latter is what I had in mind with my "consensus" reached edit – a soft version of "no more support needed, let's focus on quality." Perhaps your suggestion regarding this fairly infrequent edge case could be proposed as an addition to the guidelines. - Fuzheado | Talk 19:32, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
We can experiment by procedurally closing the voting part of the discussion and open up a workshop immediately below it in which quality will be discussed.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 16:28, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
We should definitely investigate this possibility. What you describe was something I was hoping would happen organically after Pawnkingthree and I noted the consensus was reached already. There's nothing stopping someone from continuing to post updates as Comments showing how close/far we are away from having the article be passable. I cannot recall that happening in the past. The sad thing is we have had articles that just did not improve enough and they never got posted even though we had consensus to post. I'd support trying some ideas: a "workshop" type section at ITN/C, or perhaps starting a new Talk:Silvio Berlusconi section specifically prodding folks to fix the article sooner than later, in contrast to WP:THEREISNORUSH. - Fuzheado | Talk 19:27, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
I like the workshop idea as long as the ITNC (regular or death blurb) has clear SNOW support. If the support based on significance or other factor is not a clear SNOW support, the discussion should go on as normal. Masem (t) 21:05, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
I agree, it has to be an overwhelming SNOW situation. (FYI, WP:BLIZZARD did not take me where I thought it would.) - Fuzheado | Talk 13:15, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
The complaint about potential !voters sleeping occasionally pops up, so assuming an outcome within hours can be dicey, which may or may not be the specific case in this instance. —Bagumba (talk) 16:40, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
Of course. This would assume an adequate length of discussion time has passed and if the consensus is abundantly clear, to the point that further !voting short of a concerted effort (which we have seen before) would not significantly alter the outcome. This would be consistent with the WP:SNOW doctrine. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 18:14, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
How about votes that do not mention quality are assumed to be neutral? Something like: Blurb/ready, blurb/wait, RD/Ready, RD/wait. GreatCaesarsGhost 19:32, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
Its' not so much towards !vote counting, just that after it's SNOWed, additional "Support blurb" without any commentary on the quality will not change the SNOW. Masem (t) 00:11, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
Comment - @Masem @Fuzheado, and @Kiril Simeonovski, well @WaltCip attempted to implement the workshop closure, but it was reverted by @Stephen here. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 04:22, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Election process

The nomination Parliamentary election in Montenegro is a trainwreck because of a procedural dispute. This issue is whether nominations can or should be made when the articles are not yet complete or perfect in some way. My view is the process clearly expects there to be problems and so we should be reasonably accommodating. Anyway, as there's a dispute, we should clarify the instructions. Here's a relevant quote:

The maxim "Nothing avails but perfection" may be spelt shorter, "Paralysis".

— Winston Churchill, Road to Victory

Andrew🐉(talk) 06:53, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Comment - not sure if it actually is and the title is just not clear enough, but this should be broadened to include all news items since this is not the first time this dispute has been had, with one example from last month tackling a standard blurb nomination. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 07:10, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
  • The issue often arises with elections as they usually have a well-defined timetable but there's often a significant delay in completing the formalities and so nominations may happen when:
  1. The polls close
  2. Exit polls are published
  3. One side concedes
  4. Some intermediate stage is reached -- perhaps there are recounts, reruns, or further rounds of voting
So, if we focus on elections we may get some clarity. If the discussion is too general, covering every type of topic, then it may be hard to establish a clear consensus.
Andrew🐉(talk) 07:34, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
  • In my opinion, any RD or ITNR items should be nominated regardless of the article's quality as it will bring attention to the article and might encourage editing. One-off nominations (like the recent Trump ones) should only happen if the article is in decent shape or is in the process of expansion. In those scenarios, commenters need to judge the ITN notability and quality, so providing a well-written article will smoothen the nomination process. ITNR and RD is just assessing quality, so commenters can ignore it if they think it's poor and don't want to help. We've also then got a decent log of past ITNR nominations in case someone wants to review the list. Anarchyte (talk) 10:40, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
  • Comment I'm surprised this has been raised as a problem. Virtually all election nominations happen shortly after exit polls (or at a similar stage) and need refinement / some more writing. Montenegro might need more updates than usual, but it's not per se different from other election nominations (I recall the US mid terms even got posted despite quality issues). I also agree with the point that nominating it early will potentially encourage people to help improving the article. People that couldn't be bothered can just ignore the nomination. Khuft (talk) 11:28, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
  • We do not expect nominations to be of quality, but encourage that before the nomination is made. The idea being that other editors watching ITNC may want to help jump in to improve an article that they see is an appropriate ITNC in terms of significance. --Masem (t) 12:23, 12 June 2023 (UTC)
    Agree. The number of articles that have been collaboratively improved after nomination is quite high and enabling that collaboration come together has been one of the big wins of this project imo. Ktin (talk) 14:47, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
  • ...whether nominations can or should be made when the articles are not yet complete...: Nevermind "complete", {{ITN candidate}} has an |updated= parameter that accepts "no". I do notice some unsuccessful nominations where the nominator never edited the article; not sure how frequent that is, or if it's even a problem. I personally usually only nominate pages if I've worked on them, or occasionally I didn't work on it but seems ready to post or close to it.—Bagumba (talk) 16:23, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Sports saturation

Let's have an open discussion about the volume of sports stories at ITN. This has been a looming problem, as we are seeing more of the ITN slots (typically 5 or 6 items) fill with sports stories. For example, we currently have this situation:

It was a very real possibility that all blurbs would be sports blurbs. Varoon2542 brought this up here, which got collapsed, but the concerns are real.

To be clear, I'm not anti-sport. I watch and enjoy them, but we need to give this a rethink. Some thoughts:

  • We have an emergent phenomenon on our hands – ITN/R produces an increasingly large stream of sports stories that it was not specifically designed to do. This is not anyone's fault - we add recurring items individually to reflect the diversity of global sport. But the cumulative effect is that we have approached a tipping point of saturation. In short – Do we have consensus to add a particular sporting event to ITN/R? Yes. Do we have consensus that sports stories should dominate the blurbs? No. But the fact is, the side effect of the first is causing the second. An unanticipated externality, if you will.
  • There are a number of ways we might address this, ranging from easy to hard. We could re-evaluate and prune what is on ITN/R so the volume might be lower. We could break out another section for sports stories altogether, given its prominence, so that it doesn't compete with other types of headlines. We could recommend carrying more than 5-6 blurbs. We could propose a cap on the number of sports stories, in relation to the overall ratio. None of these seem easy.

I don't know what the right solution is, but we should start the conversation sooner than later. Thanks. - Fuzheado | Talk 15:49, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

We can't help it that a number of highly important sports competitions conclude in mid-June. I don't think there's any other time of year that this happens. The stories will roll off the main page in due time, as they always do. I don't see this as an issue. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:11, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
On the contrary, it does happen a few times a year. It would be good if someone could run the metrics to see where the dense time frames are. It's certainly an issue, it's just that folks may disagree on how serious it is. - Fuzheado | Talk 16:22, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
It's not our fault that so many club soccer things happen at the same time. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:54, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
For sure it's not our fault. No one said it was. :) But we need to be able to react to it. - Fuzheado | Talk 18:16, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
There's also a period where several major film awards occur within a two-week period, and we post all the Nobel Prizes as separate blurbs. This chunk period happens in multiple fields, not just sports. I don't think there's anything to be done. Kingsif (talk) 03:16, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
It's absolutely untrue about all Nobel Prizes being posted. Science Nobel Prizes have at times not been posted because the quality of the article for each individual winner was not deem good enough and by the time, they were, the information was stale. I raise the issue every year. Varoon2542 (talk) 07:29, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
  • There's clearly a problem here and it's WP:ITNSPORTS – the guideline which insists that so much sport should be fast-tracked onto the main page. This is directly contrary to WP:NOTNEWS which specifically says that routine sports coverage is not appropriate for an encyclopedia. As that's a policy, it trumps the guideline. The situation is like all those sports notability guidelines which were created by sports fans and which are now being pushed back.
This wouldn't matter so much if it were easy to get other types of topic into ITN. But it isn't, is it? ITN has another big problem in that, when it isn't running a flurry of sports events, it isn't running much of anything and so it's often stale. It needs a reboot so that it flows more freely and posts several items every day like Portal:Current events.
Andrew🐉(talk) 16:48, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
It needs a reboot so that it flows more freely and posts several items every day like Portal:Current events. It's the !voters dictating this with essentially "I never heard of this", "it's not in my country", "it's only in that country", "they're not Mandela/Thatcher", "not enough dead", etc. arguments. What do you suggest?—Bagumba (talk) 09:47, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
You obviously start by getting rid of the voting free-for-all per WP:NOTAVOTE. This has turned ITN into a forum/drama board and is quite unproductive per the coefficient of inefficiency; design by committee; mob rule; &c. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:46, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
It is supposed to be the job if the posting admin to determine what !votes do not contribute to assessing the portability of an item, disregarding those like those you point out, and particular when they also are absent of quality concerns. But UTN must still remain curated as required by the main page for quality and reasonable significance. Masem (t) 17:07, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
You are over reading routine in regards to yearly events. It is meant to apply to day by day events, so that individual regular season play games don't get their own articles or coverage unless their is notability beyond that of just the game like Bottlegate. Otherwise every yearly or regularly occurring event would be taken as routine, includingbthe Olympics, the Oscars, and general elections. Masem (t) 17:16, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
Andrew is well-aware he’s “over-reading it,” considering his past opinions on ITN and sports I’m not convinced his opinion here can be taken as good faith. The Kip (talk) 19:12, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
I think there are a few things going on. I am typing this on the go, and the response might not be well formed, but hopefully, you will get the gist.
  1. At the risk of stating the obvious, the articles that make it to the mainpage are a mix of a) articles that meet hygiene standards are nominated and manage to get the buy-in of a majority of editors and then are posted (ITNC route) and b) articles that are already vetted for mainpage significance and have to still be improved to hygiene standards. (ITNR route)
  2. We know by now, at least empirically, and we had some rough numbers earlier that I am now not able to recover, that articles coming in through route a (ITNC route) face an uphill battle and this has increased in complexity over a period of time. We post less as a % of nominations now than before. We should be able to get data on this one.
  3. We should not be changing the composition of the ITNR events just because the ITNC process has become more divisive (substitute the word with any other of your preference).
  4. We should instead be focusing on widening the pool to attract more nominations (perhaps wide-interest articles) and make the nomination process streamlined and perhaps more collaborative.
Tl;dr - because we have not been widening the funnel as much as we ought to, we should not tinker with the items that are coming through the funnel. Ktin (talk) 17:15, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
How can we widen the funnel? Some easy ways a) encourage newer participants into the project, b) make the process less abrasive so the participants who come in are encouraged to submit nominations, c) post more of the "no-regret" kind of stories. Ktin (talk) 17:20, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
And unrelated -- a no-brainer, we should really remove the easter egg to the Portal:Current Events and replace it with a more prominent and direct link. We have tried that a few times and failed. Ktin (talk) 17:24, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Interesting, I would never have guessed that the "Ongoing" text in the ITN panel links to Portal:Current events. Agree wholeheartedly with this suggestion. Natg 19 (talk) 17:31, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Ktin for reiterating this idea (first discussed at Reimagining_the_ITN_box). This seems like an obvious upgrade we could do right away that would be a clear improvement, while taking away some of the pressure of having to have every important story in the blurb list. - Fuzheado | Talk 18:24, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
We have tried this change a few different times and failed. Including in October 2021. Martin (user:MSGJ) had even kindly made the change before it was reverted. I would say if an admin is up for it -- go ahead and change the text "Ongoing" to "Other current events" or "Current events" or something equivalent and iterate on the go. Anything that we put would be better than the easter egg. Ktin (talk) 18:33, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the pointer to that effort. It seemed like there was widespread interest in trying it, and most of the best options were discussed. It might be made easier by proposing it for a temporary testing period to see how it operates, or if any metrics might show any benefits. - Fuzheado | Talk 01:00, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
I think what you propose upstream is reasonable. The two design considerations to think of are -- 1) Will the line wrap more often than not and is that a poor design. 2) This will now have a bold text that is not a link. If those two are alright, I would suggest asking for a quick show of support here and then have an admin make the change. This is such an open-and-shut case imo. I think last time we ran against participant fatigue and disinterest because of the meandering thread.
More current events | Ongoing: Russian invasion of Ukraine • Sudan conflict
Recent Deaths: Astrud Gilberto • Yukiko Takayama • Kurt Widmer • Robert Hanssen • Cynthia Weil • Natasha Al-Maani
Ktin (talk) 01:07, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
Absolutely spot-on. I've stated multiple times that the reason why ITNR items get posted frequently and get applied to seemingly obscure stories is that we've severely tightened the standards for posting since many of the ITNR items were made such. This also is partially why ITNRD blurb items have also become excessively controversial recently. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 21:10, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Aren't the UEFA Champions League Final and strong intranational soccer finales usually earlier in the calendar? They're probably only so late this year cause the cities stopped playing so long to accommodate the unusual World Cup time. The Test Championship doesn't happen every year. The NBA and NHL championships are A-A–B-B–A–B–A seven game serieses that play only one game per 2 (short gaps) or more (long gaps) days, if either loser had won more than one game the nomination would've been delayed by multiple days per game.
So these six events (all pretty important by sports standards) will be more spread out much of the time. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 17:45, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
So you personally rushed to post the Stanley Cup despite it not being ready, despite most supporters not even mentioning a quality check (the only thing that matters on an ITN/R). Then you rush over here to complain about there being too many sports stories? I dunno man; it's a real conundrum. GreatCaesarsGhost 18:58, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
You have your sequencing wrong - this message was put up before I posted the Stanley Cup blurb. It's important to get facts straight. - Fuzheado | Talk 20:48, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Oh okay, let me get this right. The message was posted, you rushed to post the Stanley Cup, then rushed over here to complain. Got it. Cheers, atque supra! Fakescientist8000 21:28, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Not at all. I posted: "Let's have an open discussion... I don't know what the right solution is, but we should start the conversation sooner than later." That's not a complaint, that's a call for discussion and conversation. - Fuzheado | Talk 22:12, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Always happens around this time of the year, nothing we can do about sporting calendars. Especially when items are posted before they're ready, can't think who might have done that. Black Kite (talk) 19:08, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Personal snark aside, your observation does nothing to address the issue that ITN/R will expand, but the blurb list size doesn't. - Fuzheado | Talk 20:50, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
It looks like ITN used to have more blurbs posted at the same time. Blaylockjam10 (talk) 00:37, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
It would certainly help if we had the flexibility to make the list of blurbs longer. However, I think we are currently constrained by having to keep it short to keep the height on the Main page even with TFA and DYK ala WP:ITNBALANCE. – Fuzheado | Talk 00:53, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
If you wanted to make ITN longer, DYK (in the other column) could also be made longer, you could suggest that. The same limit-to-keep-it-equal problem has been noted over there when there's been a lot of DYKs waiting to be posted. But what with needing to check them all, I don't know if everyone would go for a proposal. Kingsif (talk) 03:19, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
Or shrink WP:OTD—it's got limited participation.—Bagumba (talk) 09:54, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
Last time I saw, it had a pretty high conversion rate though. I would think twice before suggesting shrinking of OTD. Ktin (talk) 16:58, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
As brilliantly stated by @Ktin, the reason why ITNR items like sports seem to be posted with surprising frequency is that we're viewing it through 2023 lenses. Most items on ITNR were made such a decade or more ago, when ITN was a very different place in terms of consensus and posting requirements. ITN was a lot less loose on posting in general back then and if you nominated the same events today, many would likely fail to reach consensus (hell, just look at the recent waves of ITNR removals as a primal piece of evidence). - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 21:14, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
I think it’s hard to place a dividing line on sports because of the impact it has on so many people from countries (US, UK, France, not to mention EU and global sport events). We could try possibly adding a blurb section specifically for sports, something small (like the Ongoing or RD sub sections). That way people can be updated about sports but it could make a better focus on non-sport related recent events. However, that would be a huge change to the format (also, it is coming from myself who hasn’t had a profile for very long). Kybrion (talk) 02:38, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

When should we blurb authors?

The current discussion around blurbing Cormac McCarthy has been quite heated. I have sympathy for both sides. On the one hand, I would also prefer if we would blurb people who passed away that come from the cultural sphere, and not just political figures or people from the entertainment world (e.g. Tina Turner) or sports figures (e.g. Pele). At the same time, I agree that we need some criteria in order to judge how important those cultural figures have been. If we just go by their fanbase on Wikipedia (as seems partly to be the case with Cormac McCarthy), we'll just be introducing new biases into our process. For instance, if we blurb Cormac McCarthy, shouldn't we have blurbed Kenzaburo Oe, or Martin Amis, or Hilary Mantel? If we did blurb any of them, on what basis did we do so, and not the others?

Fortunately, Literature does have a few objective criteria that we could use to guide us. There are a few recognised literary prizes that we could use as a basis to identify notable people (e.g. the Nobel Prize, the Booker and the International Booker, the Pulitzer, maybe others?). One may like or dislike literary prizes, but at least they are a somewhat objective (as compared to the opinions of Wikipedians) gauge we could use. Any thoughts? Khuft (talk) 15:36, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

  • Comment I fear that establishing general criteria for assessing notability of writers would be extremely difficult. The Nobel Prize has relatively low regard due to the multiple controversies regarding the omission of world-class writers. If using the other prizes makes sense is a valid topic of discussion.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 18:02, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
The author needs to be extraordinarily recognizable, not just within their home nation but across international borders. In fact, it's probably helpful if the writer has some credits or notoriety outside of their field, such as being a public figure in other areas as well. Examples of that throughout history: Maya Angelou, Günter Grass (whom we indeed blurbed), Salman Rushdie, Alexander Pushkin, George Orwell, Stephen King, Haruki Murakami. I think it needs to be considered that there are very few authors who are worth that declaration of being sui generis transformative nowadays, and rightly so. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 19:17, 14 June 2023 (UTC)
Seconded. The list itself is also quite good. DarkSide830 (talk) 05:23, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
It’s hard to say on some notability when it comes to certain authors. When it relies on the people’s knowledge, it can be difficult to say because it depends on how much the people read and what genre’s they read. For example, Murakami is a world renowned author no doubt but I know a significant amount of people that don’t know his name at all because they may because it’s not their genre, they don’t read due to social media, or because they never learned about him in school. However, for those that have a fair amount of interest in non-genre specific literature, he is one of the first modern authors you may know. Others may be more known because of content based on their books (for example: Stephen King is a highly world renowned author but some may only know him because of the popular film adaptations of his books. I agree, if the person is only well known in their country, it’s not blurb worthy. There needs to be a notable news posts (not necessarily breaking) from other countries to say it’s blurb worthy, at very least (to go to McCarthy, obviously there is a lot of US coverage, but there is also some coverage in places in British news stations, BBC being one of them who said he had global fame). The Wikipedia article on McCarthy states a many things about how McCarthy was one of the greatest authors from the United States, which has some merit (obviously it’s not a full reason but it’s worth noting). Kybrion (talk) 02:22, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
The article has naught but 3 opinions (which include Stephen King's) that speak to him being "one of the greatest", but that's not really a great merit for a blurb, as we really want someone that is internationally one of the best and where we can demonstrate impact and legacy. For McCarthy that just instead there; the name's recognized but that doesn't equate to a lasting impact on the world, literacy or otherwise. Masem (t) 02:34, 15 June 2023 (UTC)
  • Many thanks to all that commented. In principle, I like the "vital articles" idea from Ktin, but - based on a discussion further below - it seems that those vital articles are currently compiled together in a similarly subjective way as death blurbs are decided here. The one thing I would add re authors (and possibly other artists) is that whether they were transformative or not will likely only be known many decades after their death. Many authors that are popular today will be forgotten 10 or 20 years from now (I fear this might be the case with famous genre authors like Stephen King or Dan Brown) while others may only get recognised long after their death (e.g. Fernando Pessoa died virtually unknown but is now considered not only a canonical Portuguese author, but even a canonical world author). Khuft (talk) 19:29, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

NOTVOTE

With respect to WP:NOTVOTE, is a !vote of plain "not significant" any different from a longer one like "does not reach a status of signficance that merits a blurb"? —Bagumba (talk) 10:23, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

No, there's no operative difference whatsoever. The vote is perfectly valid. It doesn't fail any of the "please do not" criteria. No one is currently required in this system to provide any justification for why they feel something is significant or insignificant. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:13, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
Agree. Ktin (talk) 21:41, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
However, if every other !vote has a rationale for why they think the ITNC is significant or not significant, or similar reasons, then these terse !votes aren't as helpful to weigh consensus. I agree the two are not necessarily different but in this manner of how to determine consensus they are not as helpful as more thought-out !votes. Masem (t) 21:45, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
@WaltCip @Ktin @Masem While the !votes are valid, should they be discounted or not, compared to !votes with a plausible rationale? —Bagumba (talk) 23:06, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
If there are stronger !votes out there, yes. If those !votes represent the best rationales given, then not necessarily. Masem (t) 00:21, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
It raises a problem: Let's say one person gives a thoughtful, detailed, KOTS-esque rationale explaining the significance of something. It's a very compelling argument. It's difficult to counter rhetorically or structurally. Then five other people !vote "oppose, not significant". Which argument is the admin going to favor? Think really hard about how it works in practice around here. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 00:59, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
The problem, at least with your original question, is that you are conflating a longer response like "does not reach a status of signficance that merits a blurb" with a well thought-out response while the truth is it is just as templatized as a response like "not significant". Ktin (talk) 03:04, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
The "problem" is that these are the type of !votes we see in most discussions.—Bagumba (talk) 10:41, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
We have to work with what we have. Irrespective, my feedback to your original question is that a comment like "not significant" is exactly the same as a longer one like "does not reach a status of significance that merits a blurb". Ktin (talk) 02:12, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
Talking about !votes is missing the point. Wikipedia consensus is not found through !votes, but through arguments, particularly those based on WP:P&G. If someone just says "does not reach a status of signficance that merits a blurb", they have not provided an argument and it should be weighed minimally. For some reason ITN isn't very good at keeping up with this as compared to, say, RfC closes. At a certain point, personal opinion !voters are going to need to be informed that if they can't base their arguments in policies and guidelines, then they're not going to be heard. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:44, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
The problem is that WP:ITN, as currently written, is fairly subjective. Most RfCs are based on WP's P&Gs, which are more objective, where a closer has more basis to judge strength of argument. —Bagumba (talk) 01:13, 19 June 2023 (UTC)
What Bagumba said. It should be weighed accordingly. But by WP:ITNSIGNIF's rules, it is not. It does not need to be. The weight of a vote count will always carry the day, because everybody has their own internal definitions as to what constitutes significance. The only way a consensus to post is reached is if those people who do contribute are satisfied on the whole. Even though the rule says: Any user may, of course, support or oppose a candidate for any reason, but be aware that the following arguments have historically not garnered much support: (bolded mine), consensus can change and if a majority of users feel as though those arguments have merit, whether or not they were historically sound arguments is meaningless. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 19:36, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Influx of death blurbs?

A regular contributor to ITN has noted recently that we seem to have an unusually high number of death blurb nominations. I think we've all noticed this too; Daniel Ellsberg, Glenda Jackson, John Romita, Sr. and Cormac McCarthy. I guess among other things there really seems to be a concern that Americentrism is gripping ITN/C's discussion processes. It could possibly be as a result of most of our users tending towards being American, straight white male demographic, etc..

Anyway, the point comes up as to whether it is worth creating new rules or guidelines to deal with this sort of influx. What should we do? One idea that comes to mind is imposing a moratorium on blurb discussions if there is no immediate, clear consensus within the first few minutes of the nomination. However, I'm not sure how we'd implement that. Another idea would be to just amend the WP:ITNRD guidelines altogether, although we've never reached a consensus on this in the past.

I personally don't think we have a problem, but I'm also an American citizen (of Kiwi birth) and it's possible that I am biased. On the other hand, maybe it really is just overblown and we just happen to have some especially notable people dying in quick succession... We have had that before.

Looking forward to hearing people's thoughts on this. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 00:54, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Just an FYI Glenda Jackson is UK. NoahTalk 00:58, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for correcting me. Struck. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 01:00, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
(edit conflict)In fact, I've struck multiple sentences. I missed the whole point of HiLo's argument. He wasn't arguing against American death blurbs... just the influx of death blurbs in general. --Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 01:01, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Its not a nationalism issue. RD blurbs are supposed to be exceptional, which means that we have a high quality article and clear evidence of the person's importance/legacy/impact (which absolutely must be demonstrated in the article, no handwaving). Editors are seeing the deaths of people in fields they have strong interest in and want to suggest a blurb, but either the article quality is way off, or the reasoning is not strong. If editors considered both aspects before even suggesting a blurb, and instead simply focus on the RD quality to get posting, with the possibiilty of a blurb coming through ITNC discussion, that would be far better. Masem (t) 01:01, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
I maintain what I've said in the past: ITN doesn't actually have real WP:Guidelines in the Wikipedia sense of the term. Informal rules are created haphazardly and applied inconsistently, creating an environment where everyone talks past one another and things get WP:BITEy. ITN still doesn't even have an agreed upon purpose, so there's no way we're going to find agreement on what makes a good blurb. This problem will continue, both with death blurbs and more broadly, until clearer procedures for ITN are written. Unfortunately, past discussions here and at the village pump have shown that the community considers ITN reform to be a low priority. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:24, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Years ago we used to have daily arguments about whether someone who had just died was important enough to crack a mention here at all. That was seen as a bad thing, so we introduced Recent deaths. Now we are having daily arguments about whether someone who has just died is important enough to get a blurb. That too is a bad thing. We really haven't progressed at all. I recommend no blurbs at all for dead people. HiLo48 (talk) 02:03, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
We've just established in your (and I know that this isn't your proposal, but @HiLo48's, and you, WaltCip, are just doing it on his behalf) poll on "having a discussion" on removing the ITNRD blurb criteria (which by the way WaltCip, while I semi-applaud you for creating, I do think it was a little foolish of you to think that a poll for having a discussion to remove it would not just devolve into the actual discussion itself) and @GreatCaesarsGhost's subsurvey that we shouldn't do away from eliminating ITNRD blurbs, citing the widespread coverage and "leader in their field" arguments, which, despite the enormous opposition, few of them actually established any definitive standard for blurbing. The recent influx of ITNRDBs are a direct result of this; at the end of the day, to the opposition on those survey's this is your creation. I'd call for largely doing away with the ITNRB criteria, but as @Thebiguglyalien brilliantly pointed out, ITN can't even agree on it's purpose, so it's futile to even attempt to implement major, sweeping reforms at the moment. In fact, maybe we should just implement a moratorium on all major discussion on WT:ITN until that question can be solved, since I can't imagine any productive debate when we have multiple parties that can't even agree on a general, centralized concept of ITN. - Knightoftheswords281 (Talk · Contribs) 02:19, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Keep it simple folks. Aim for blurbs for level 4 vital WP:VITAL articles and above, with the odd exception when the designation is not available.
Nothing screams more in poor taste than members here squabbling and fighting over someone’s death, and worse still, speaking poor of the dead. Ktin (talk) 02:56, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
As someone that tried working on the vital articles project, I can say that its selection process is even more arbitrary than ITN's. I also reject the idea that someone being dead should change how we engage in discussions; Wikipedia isn't an obituary. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:46, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
I can buy the first part of your response since I do not know the WP:VITAL project as well. Re: the second part of your statement, kind editor, are you in denial? We do not have discussions re: blurbs, we have squabbles and petty fights. Ktin (talk) 03:55, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Fair enough! I suggest we stop having those for all topics, whether it be about living people, dead people, or ducks declared dead in absentia. The question is how to make that happen. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:34, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Many editors including myself have asked that question in the past, e.g. see here. To be fair, we have actually made some progress in the last year, but, I think we have more than some distance to go. We are not there. Ktin (talk) 04:57, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Calling someone "not transformative" is hardly speaking ill of the dead. DarkSide830 (talk) 05:23, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Saying "too bad, so sad, old man/woman dies" is getting a bit close. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:12, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Seeing too many thoughtless noms without any rationale nowadays. I personally assess on the basis why a simple RD will not do: nature of death/death itself being a news factor (old age deaths can simply be discounted), article quality (GA and FAs should be rightly considered) and lastly on significance. The latter is where the discussion stalls (without consideration of the prior issues) and becomes highly subjective with superficial votes such as never heard being a common feature (though the counterpose is that a lot of these noms are also made on that basis only).
RD is being rendered useless by such noms, and these blurb noms are actually downgrading and disregarding it entirely. RD posts are just as important as the rest of ITN and I would not mind if death blurbs are done away with entirely. Would raise RDs profile and let editors focus on actual article issues. Gotitbro (talk) 09:19, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Significance is very important here, but a lot of the recent blurb noms have handwaved that or have based the significance on "fame" or "well-known". I've suggested before, those that clearly get blurbs have high quality articles with a Legacy or Impact section that clearly spells out what influence they had on the world, which should make it clear to these "never heard of them" !votes to understand at a glance why the blurb is being suggested. Masem (t) 13:15, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
  • Level up not down
Discussions of blurbs for major figures like Daniel Ellsberg or Glenda Jackson seem quite natural and appropriate. The OP's proposal that such discussions should be settled in the first few minutes seems bizarre and it's contrary to WP:CONLEVEL and WP:CCC which make it clear that consensus can change and the wider the consensus, the stronger it is.
And consider the other RD nomination which was made on the same day as Ellsberg: Gino Mäder. The name means nothing to me and the nomination gives no details because it doesn't have a blurb. So, I passed this by and the discussion has only attracted two comments. And if this person is posted at RD, our readers will likewise have no reason to click on the article and investigate. But, in this case, there's quite an interesting story as this is not a routine death due to old age but was a fatal fall during a downhill descent. RD's lack of a blurb fails to communicate any of this and so it's largely useless.
So, instead of dragging down major figures to RD where they will be ignored too, we should be giving all deaths more context and space – levelling up rather than levelling down.
Andrew🐉(talk) 16:02, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Well, you've convinced me. It really doesn't seem as though we need to do anything regarding blurb discussions. If they happen, they happen. I like the idea of prioritizing interesting stories, but unfortunately that will require us to overhaul our ITNRD guidelines, which I don't think is likely to happen. In any case, you're right about WP:CCC; discussion is not inherently problematic. Cheers, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 20:14, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
Nah, that would be dedicating more space to something that people might not be interested in anyway. Deaths in 2023 accomplishes this purpose fine enough and is always a TOP25 item, so you know people are finding it fine. Mäder's item reads as follows "Gino Mäder, 26, Swiss Olympic road cyclist (2020), race collision." That line tells you all you need to know. DarkSide830 (talk) 17:08, 20 June 2023 (UTC)
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