Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-11-01/Discussion report

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In the News

What is the lasting significance of the Trump event? Very little, I would guess. I don't think it will impact the election. (t · c) buidhe 21:45, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- I suppose it depends on how you define "significance". If it's entirely subjective among a group of 8 people in the middle of the night in the US, you may be right. If it means that experts judge that it affected the election, you'd probably be wrong. If you mean "will it be in his obituary", you're most definitely wrong. Or in the history books in 20 years, or in 50 years, or in the year end news summaries. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:46, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Quoting @Masem::
WP's not a newspaper, and ITNs not a news ticker, and people coming to WP's front page and ITN expecting to see a snapshot of world headlines are very much in the wrong place.
Why don't we have a data based approach instead of claims like this? The foundation has a huge budget compared to previously, I am sure there must be a study somewhere that asked users why they would they open up the Wikipedia front-page. And I don't think it is so outrageous to think that a chunk of them read the ITN section. Who cares if you call it a news ticker or not, it has existed for a long time, it should be possible to establish whether it has readership or not. --Ysangkok (talk) 21:55, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Ysangkok: I took the argument being made is less about user behaviors, and more a question of editorial/publishing intent. So it doesn't really matter how many people show up at the front page looking for news — the front page isn't attempting to be, or intended to be, a news service. So regardless how few or many of those people there may be, they're all in the wrong place.

IOW, I'm sure there are plenty of people who show up at the front page thinking Wikipedia is an internet search engine. I'm sure there are plenty of people who show up at Commons thinking it's a site to farm for images they can appropriate without attribution, then misuse in their private designs. All of those people, too — however many of them there are — are also in the wrong place. Knowing there's a lot of them wouldn't make it any more desirable to cater to them or reorient the site(s) in question around their desires or expectations. -- FeRDNYC (talk) 22:23, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose it means - how did those folks decide that "In the news" would intend to be news-free? As I understand it IYN goes back to 911. Did those people intend that ITN should ignore 911? Smallbones_(smalltalk) 22:51, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If you wanted to participate in the discussion, you were welcome to do so Smallbones, but I sense from the tone of this article that you feel the decision not to post Trump's COVID diagnosis at ITN was a wrong one. I disagree. The conclusion not to post the story was entirely within our usual conventions, and can easily be justified on several measures - (1) we don't generally post COVID stories, instead delegating that ongoing saga to the special box at the top of ITN; in particular, Trump is not the first world leader to contract the disease and we have been consistent in not posting any of them. (2) there is a convention to avoid stories about candidates in elections within a short time window before said election, to avoid accusations of bias. I'm not sure what your point about 9/11 is - obviously that would have been posted, but then again 9/11 is hardly comparable to the US president getting a disease and recovering from it within a few days. Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 22:57, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You may have received that tone from my part of the story. The two of us worked on it and likely mine's a little more sharp. ☆ Bri (talk) 00:20, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yes well of course I respect your opinion, and that of Smallbones. We are a broad church here. But for the reasons I've outlined, and which Masem has also mentioned below, this is hardly an open-and-shut case of "news-less ITN". The bottom line is that the community, in the form of those editors who participated in the discussion, decided that the Trump COVID story did not fit the standards usually applied to ITN so it wasn't posted. It is hardly the first headline-grabbing story to do so, nor is it the most contentious in our history. Cheers — Amakuru (talk) 10:54, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It should also kept in mind that we still are running the COVID banner (an unusual thing in the first place) which is meant to group COVID-related stories while this remains a major concern across the globe. Also, not noted in the Signpost story is that ITN did not post earlier stories about Boris Johnson or another major world leader (I forget who atm) getting COVID, and to post Trump getting it would have been a massive systematic bias problem as well. It is why when there is a US news story, we do have to take care to make sure if it is something that is being bumped because it is US media covering it as big as it is, or if it is an actual viable ITN entry that we normally would post. --Masem (t) 01:39, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I would imagine Bolsonaro to be the other – hard to tell how many times the man has had coronavirus given his science denial on the subject but it's at least once. I think the decisions to not include stories for any of these three men were all correct. Why do I care that the leader of a country was medically incapacitated for somewhere between a day and a couple of weeks? Happens all the time with routine illnesses and normal medical procedures. — Bilorv (talk) 12:35, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah ,that was the other. And to be clear, both Johnson and Bolsonaro were nominated for ITN and neither were supported for posting for ITN for pretty much the reason; we were ready to post if they were incapacitated and there was a permanent change of office head due to that (which would have been a standard ITN posting). --Masem (t) 16:55, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

((od)) I'd definitely suggest that anybody who is against a news-free ITN go there the next time they see some actual news that's not up there and express their views. There's no rhyme or reason needed - it's your subjective opinion that counts. So just tell them what you think. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 00:01, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I use ITN to get my cut of what's happened in the world that I have somehow missed on social media (or which doesn't make it to social media). Just saying. That's one reader who is apparently in the wrong place. (Get off your high horse.) --Izno (talk) 07:33, 2 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Bylaws proposal

The WMF had indicated that they specifically wanted the bylaws confirmed before expanding the discussion into defining exactly what "Community-sourced" would mean. ...WTF!? They want the new wording approved before they open up discussion of what the new wording means!? Are they trying to erode confidence in their efforts and squander community goodwill? Because that's how you erode confidence in your efforts and squander community goodwill! -- FeRDNYC (talk) 22:12, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- You make the mistake of assuming the WMF has any community goodwill. Wikipedia & the other projects often thrive in spite of, not because, of the Foundation's decisions. -- llywrch (talk) 19:13, 3 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  - @Llywrch: I guess so, because a statement like that is some next-level supervillain type stuff. Do they even hear themselves!?!? (What am I saying? Of course they do. Everything they say sounds great, and they look sexy saying it! Obviously. But, us haters gonna hate, rite?)
  Wikipedia & the other projects often thrive in spite of, not because.... Indeed. Fortunately I have some experience with that sort of thing, having attended a school that's evolved with that concept encoded right in its very DNA.
  
  (Although we didn't have it nearly as bad as the current students do. Today's long-reigning High Exalted Ruler — speaking of supervillains — was just a brand new hire when I attended school. Under her current regime, today's students suffer indignities the likes of which were inconceivable 25 years ago. But it's nice that I at least have Wikipedia to remind me what it was like.) -- FeRDNYC (talk) 00:43, 7 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]