Wikipedia talk:In the news/Archive 108

Archive 105

Archive 106

Archive 107

Archive 108

Archive 109

Archive 110

Archive of ITN postings

Hello. Is there an archive that contains all blurbs that have been posted to ITN? I am aware that ITN/C has an archive, but that also includes all unsuccessful nominations, which makes it harder to find just the ones that made it to the main page. The closest thing I am aware of to what I want is the revision history of Template:In the news, but that's not in an easily digestible format. 98.170.164.88 (talk) 16:33, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

No so far. People typically either use the search button in the archives or the browser's own search bar to find or pinpoint posted items (e.g. by typing "posted" in any given archive which makes it easier somewhat). Brandmeister^talk 19:13, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if there's an automated bot we could request to run across a date range that would create a list of blurbs and the date they were added, as long as there is a large enough character diff in between revisions. Then we can create such archives (even if not perfect) and have monthly new archive pages. Masem (t) 12:56, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't have the energy myself, but building such an archive does seem like a worthwhile project. Does the ITN recognition template we (sometimes remember to) put on article talk pages have a category associated with it? That could help too. --Jayron32 13:01, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I've tossed a request at Bot Requests for this. Masem (t) 13:15, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that! It would be quite useful to be able to see all the stories that appeared on ITN in a given week/month/year or to search through the full archive. (Discussion link for convenience: Wikipedia:Bot requests § Creating archive page for added ITN items, permalink.) 98.170.164.88 (talk) 04:10, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

For those following this, there is a test version of a bot producing searchable output from when things were added to ITN. It doesn't see the diff in changes to blurbs from the addition of blurbs, but I think that's something we can deal with. I would ask those to look and comment there if they see anything else. Otherwise I was going to this bit to create by month archives from past changes, and then run once a month to create new monthly ones. Masem (t) 17:38, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea. It has good statistical/analytical implications as well to have the individual blurbs that have been posted, as we can then start tracking or tagging these by region or subject matter. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:51, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we have a category for articles with the ITN talk template called Category:Wikipedia In the news articles. Scientia potentia est, MonarchOfTerror 14:32, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes great idea but we will have a problem what will the category Name going to be that's the problem we will have 41.114.234.69 (talk) 18:11, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

There is also Wikipedia:Main Page history, though that is for all of the Main Page, not just ITN. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 01:34, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

• @Masem the bot does see the diff, that's how it extracts the editor's username, and timestamp If you guys need a diff, then I think this would be possible too. But it will clutter the archive page. Kindly let me know if you guys have any suggestions or requests regarding the archive. We should discuss the technical side at WP:BOTREQ#Creating_archive_page_for_added_ITN_items to keep it in one place/ease of access. —usernamekiran (talk) 18:51, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

  @Usernamekiran, you could make the timestamp into a piped link to the diff, e.g. [[Special:Diff/1174852896|2023-09-11T03:03:52Z]]. Then it would be clickable but wouldn't take up any extra visual space. Edit: You could also do that with the verb ("added", "removed", "modified") instead of the timestamp, which may even be better. 98.170.164.88 (talk) 01:20, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

• a question: is <small> used in ITN? —usernamekiran (talk) 16:41, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

  @Usernamekiran: Best I know, not in normal postings to the template. The only special text is the bold (for featured article) and italics for the picture reference if used. Masem (t) 18:16, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

• @Masem: Hello. The program is almost finished. so far:
  • If a new line begins with *[[ or * [[ then the bot considers it as a recent death. If it begins with <!--, it considers the entry as news.
  • the bot excludes lines beginning with | (if there is a white-space after the pipe)
  • based on the date of first addition (from diff), the program adds the entry to header of corresponding date, including diff, editor, and time. If a news entry is updated (eg death toll), then the bot adds the new updated entry below the original entry.
    • in case the entry was first added on 30 September, and death toll was updated on 2 October, then the update entry will go in September's page.
  • so far the only issue is with "currentevents". They are being treated as normal news. But if we change MOS, then it can be resolved. eg, if current events begin with *<!--CE Mar 09 2022-->, then bot can differentiate between ongoing events, and news.
  • I created four archive pages with that logic: complete March 2004 (starting from second entry, as there is no diff for creation. we can add it manually), complete April 2004, few days of May 2004. I was paying my attention to other things, so I did not realise the timestamps in headers. I have corrected the timestamps in archive of Sept 2023.
  • as there were no particular standards/MOS back in the day, the archive pages of the early days will look a bit odd.
  • please let me know if you want more features/functionalities. I think one request is to add wikilink to archive page's day header (eg "September 23"), to corresponding date header of Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates. Is that correct?
• I think we should keep the discussion here, so that it will be visible to more editors that are involved in ITN stuff. —usernamekiran (talk) 17:36, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

  The archive from September 2023 looks very clean and organized, I like it! The bottom of the March 2004 archive is somehow formatted wrong, though. I think you might need to add code to balance out unclosed HTML tags so they don't affect later entries.

  I'm not sure what's going on with the images. The March 2004 archive has them but the September 2023 one doesn't. Personally I'm fine with it either way as long as it's handled consistently.

  Great work. 98.170.164.88 (talk) 19:44, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

  @98.170.164.88, as ITN was started in March 2004, there were no guidelines. The bottom of March 2004 is because of that. Apparently, "float right" was used with the entries. The tags were closed properly, but the bot gets entries for archival from diffs, the tags were misplaced. I dont know when the styling of ITN was formalised/stabilised, but from that point the archive pages would be neat. I have intentionally It is also very difficult to go through all the revisions and check for inconsistencies, and create code/exceptions for that. The better approach would be to first create all the archive pages, and then repair the archive pages with AWB, and similar tool. Regarding images, I thought they were not necessary, I think I could add the pictures.

  About Masem's functionality regarding linking the archive date header to headers of "Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/archive", I am not sure if it would be possible, or how to approach it. The blurbs/entries are not always added to template:ITN on the same day as of they are posted/nominated at the candidates page. So the headers' date would be a mismatch. —usernamekiran (talk) 23:31, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

  after observing source of ITN another time, adding images to the archives will not be good idea as there would be a lot of mismatches (caption of older picture going to newer one, or other way around), and breakages as well. As we are providing diffs, I think if someone wants to see particular image(s) then it would not be very difficult. —usernamekiran (talk) 23:39, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

  Actually, there's just an easier solution than the diffs and that's just to have the header of these results pages link to the ITNC archives, like Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/April 2005. That simplifies that - if the user needs to see a more detailed edit history they can then do a normal page search to the period themselves. Masem (t) 00:21, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Usernamekiran: Omitting images is fine by me, but for some reason the March 2004 archive has them included (maybe because the code used was "image:" instead of "file:"?). As for the HTML issue at the bottom of the page, there definitely is an unclosed tag in the wikicode that's affecting all subsequent entries. This section has three <div> tags and no </div> tags. As a result all blurbs that follow, even ones that never had anything to do with the float-right code (e.g., the story about Korea Train Express), are being affected. You're probably right that the best solution is probably to create the archives first and then work out the problems like this, as there may be a lot of different kinds of issues and writing code to handle them may take more effort. Btw, I notice that in the March 2004 archive a lot of blurbs are wrongly classified as RDs. In the September 2023 archive this problem does not occur.

  
  

  Regarding references to ITN/C: As a very simple solution that would save coding effort and capture most of the value, I think it's sufficient to just have one link at the top of the monthly archive your bot generates, where it currently says "ITN archive page for September 2023", that links to the associated ITN/C monthly discussion archive (maybe with clickable arrows going to the next and previous ITN and ITN/C discussion archives as well). I think this is Masem's idea directly above. Actually, it's perhaps even a better idea to make an "ITN archive header" template, so that if we decide the header format needs to be changed it can be done in one place instead of requiring every archive page to be updated.

  If you want a more complicated solution that I'm not sure is actually worth implementing, but might be slightly more convenient, here's my idea: handle it on a per-story basis, instead of a per-day basis. Every time a new story is encountered in the ITN page history (i.e., only when "added"), check the month's ITN/C discussion page (and if needed, the previous month's), find where the bolded article or RD name is linked/mentioned, and get the closest section name above that. If the link doesn't occur anywhere in the ITN/C archive, then skip it I guess. So then the output might look like:

  • Canada accuses the Indian government of killing Sikh-separatist Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian soil, causing a diplomatic crisis. added by The ed17, 05:33, 21 September 2023, discussion

  Again, not sure it's worth the coding effort, but it seems technically feasible to implement. 98.170.164.88 (talk) 00:36, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

  @98.170.164.88 second one is actually an impressive solution! I am okay with coding it, but I am not sure if it would be well taken at "bot request for approval", I mean, that is a lot of resources for an archival page (as the bot would run from toolforge/wikimedia server). So our best option would be to go with the first one. —usernamekiran (talk) 00:50, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

  in older archives, the images are being added because I am excluding the images by excluding the lines that begin with | This method also excludes a lot other unnecessary stuff. In current days, the images are included in another template "Main page image/ITN", and it has a pipe in the beginning, similar to an infobox. —usernamekiran (talk) 01:40, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

• update: kindly check the following archives, this is how the bot will create them, unless there are some other requirements. November 2022, December 2022, and partial January 2023. —usernamekiran (talk) 20:43, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Masem, Brandmeister, Jayron32, WaltCip, MonarchOfTerror, and Patar knight: do you have any suggestions, or should I finalise this format/bot? —usernamekiran (talk) 20:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  I should have checked this one earlier — but was busy offwiki. Do we think this is more valuable if we present a snapshot of how the ITN box looked on a particular day? If there was a reason we went with this — please ignore my comment?

  On an unrelated note, given that we have this granular data (which is great btw) can I ask for a separate request of dump of a csv, or a table with the following fields — article name, posted timestamp, rolled-off timestamp. Some of us were doing this manually, but, would be great to have a script do this! Thanks! Ktin (talk) 20:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Ktin: Hi. I am not sure where to get the data from (article name, posted timestamp, rolled-off timestamp). also, you said that was done before. Can you please provide a link, or example edit as to what you want. Sorry, I am not much familiar with the ITN stuff. Also, your userpage is very interesting. —usernamekiran (talk) 21:03, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks much! You already have all of that information in those links that you shared earlier — E.g. “RD <Article name> posted by <admin name> on <timestamp>”, “RD <Article name> removed by <admin name> on <timestamp>”. So, in these two examples the first time stamp is the “posting timestamp” and the second one is the “roll-off timestamp”. Ktin (talk) 21:29, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Ktin: oh, got it. But the thing with this bot task is, if an ITN entry/blurb/RD is updated or removed, then it looks for the matching entry in current month's archive, and in previous month's archive. ie, when a current event/RD is added, we get only "RD <Article name> added by<diff> <admin name> on <timestamp>". We do not get the corresponding "updated by"/"removed by" entry for a couple of days. So we cant use the same program for the task you suggested. However, a separate task can be created. So to create the dump, we will have to wait for at least two months (I think). I mean, in October, we should create create dump for August, and previous months, but not September, and later months. But given the simplicity (everything will be present on the archive page), a user script would be easy to create, and a better option. —usernamekiran (talk) 15:44, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

• I have posted the bot request for approval at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/KiranBOT 8. —usernamekiran (talk) 11:28, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Masem: Hi. We still have not decided the destination/target for archive pages. I am thinking Wikipedia talk:In the news/archives/January 2023 or Wikipedia:In the news/archives/January 2023. That way we can put/list all the archives on Wikipedia talk:In the news/archives. What do you think? —usernamekiran (talk) 11:31, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  Hmm. We currently use Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/Archives for the normal archives of the ITNC page. I feel it should be at "Wikipedia:In the news/<something>/Archives" but I'm not sure on "something". "Template" or "Posted" doesn't feel like it. Maybe "Featured"? Masem (t) 11:49, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  yes, for consistency with candidates archive, "Wikipedia:In the news/Featured/Archives" looks good. Also, "Wikipedia:In the news/Featured/Archives/January 2023" feels too long, but similar to the candidates, we can make it "Wikipedia:In the news/Featured/January 2023". —usernamekiran (talk) 13:07, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

  couldn't it just be "Wikipedia:In the news/Archives/January 2023"? JM2023 (talk) 22:39, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

  No, that's too confusing with the existing Candidates/Archive branch. Masem (t) 22:46, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

  "Wikipedia:In the news/Posted/Archives"? Stephen 23:27, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

  ​ I think "posted" makes more sense. I also have a question/request for all the regular updaters of the ITN. Currently, all the RDs begin with *[[, but there are rare cases when blurbs begin with wikilinks too. Would it be possible to change the method? I mean, in case it is an RD, it should be like it is currently (ie *[[), but in case if it is a blurb, would it be possible to begin with a space between the asterisks, and the square bracket, eg * [[? I guess, requesting "reword the blurbs so that they dont begin with a wikilink" is too much to ask. —usernamekiran (talk) 13:34, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  You would never have that rule followed consistently. Stephen 21:08, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

  @Stephen: If nobody objects, I think we should go with "Wikipedia:In the news/Posted/Archives". And regarding the rule being followed, you are correct. But there is one that can be followed: while adding the dates in the invisible comment, sometimes it is added as "Nov 5 In stock car racing ...", and later somebody corrects it to "Nov 05 In stock car racing ...". Would it be possible to request not to change the date once it is added? When the date is changed, bot considers it as a new/separate entry. Even if these two methods are not followed, the resulting margin of error is low. In the archive page, it would be "added by" again instead of "updated by", but rest of the details would be same/accurate. —usernamekiran (talk) 16:17, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

  Again, you could never mandate it. 05 is used so that the entries line up, and it’s fractionally easier to scan. Could the bot ignore posting a record if the blurb itself is exactly the same as a previous one? Stephen 23:26, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

  Although thinking about it, that wouldn’t catch when the date is changed for a blurb for whatever reason. Stephen 23:29, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

• ​ Should it be Wikipedia:In the news/Posted/Archives/January 2023 or Wikipedia:In the news/Posted/January 2023? —usernamekiran (talk) 17:24, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

  I think we can use the second form, since I can't see any other heirarchy of data under Posted. Masem (t) 04:31, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

  I agree with Masem, though I'm fine with either. 98.170.164.88 (talk) 00:04, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

This place is broken

I can live with nominations I make not being posted- this isn't about me- but what really shows this place is now broken is that we would rather have nothing current that post a quality article about a current event that is widely in the news. We have drifted from our stated purpose:

• To help readers find and quickly access content they are likely to be searching for because an item is in the news.
• To showcase quality Wikipedia content on current events.
• To point readers to subjects they might not have been looking for but nonetheless may interest them.
• To emphasize Wikipedia as a dynamic resource.

We also note "Please do not oppose an item solely because the event is only relating to a single country, or failing to relate to one. This applies to a high percentage of the content we post and is generally unproductive."

There is something wrong when an event that occurs six times in nearly 250 years that receives wide coverage is insufficient for posting. People aren't expelled from Congress every day. What would Mr. Santos have to do to get posted if being expelled from a national legislative body isn't enough? I know people say "it's the US" but I would love to support nominations about people being expelled from other national legslative bodies- if people update articles sufficiently, nominate them, and such expulsions are in the news. I can't speak for anyone else. But I would do it. It's like people are afraid to actually learn something or help other people learn something. Isn't that what we are here for?

Ideally I think this place would function just fine if it was more like RD. Too many postings is not our problem. I've considered formally proposing that and posted at the VP idea lab awhile back- but I don't think such a proposal would make it so I haven't bothered. But something needs to change here. OK- that's it, thanks for reading. 331dot (talk) 12:54, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

As others have noted below, you've probably chosen a bad example to make your point. In November 2017 I made a similar nomination regarding an Australian MP leaving parliament, however you opposed the nomination. I recognise that the MP in question resigned rather than being expelled, but as I stated at the time, that is just a technicality - he preempted his probable expulsion by resigning before it happened. Chrisclear (talk) 12:26, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I opposed it "until the government falls" which is an additional impetus on top of a mere resignation. If Santos has resigned, I would not have nominated it as he had been pressured to resign for months. But explusions are a very rare event as I've said already, and as such would be of interest to readers. 331dot (talk) 12:31, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

OK, but the 'mere resignation' of Alexander was just because he knew how the High Court would rule, based on its decision in Re Canavan one month earlier. It was functionally equivalent to expulsion ordered by the High Court. Chrisclear (talk) 12:36, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Because we're also a global encyclopedia and we're trying to avoid the systematic bias of English-based media sources that focus heavily on US and UK politics. If we only focused on what made headlines, what gets written about quickly by editors, and ignored the bias that would be introduced, ITN would devolve to a US/UK political news ticker. We are trying to encourage a broader range of topics and that might mean something that seems like a rare politic event is something we ignored. This is not just saying "its the US", its just recognizing that anything that happens in US politics gets overly magnified by the press and editors jump on that. That's part of our broader problem with WP:NOT#NEWS in that editors are far too excited about writing for current events and flooding those pages with excessive details but are forgetting the bigger picture to do a better job of summarizing the events and putting such things in content of the larger picture. As such, items like Santo's expulsion may seem huge and gets written up in depth, but on the global picture, its not a massive restructure of American politics as McCarthy being voted out as Speaker. Masem (t) 13:14, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Systemic bias should be addressed by working on underserved areas, not by suppressing stories. Kissinger has been up for far too long, but we would rather have that than something more current. 331dot (talk) 13:18, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Until we have editors that volunteers to work on news from underrepresented regions (as well as media to better support that), such that we are not hurting for selections of stories from those regions, the only other tool to combat global bias is to use a higher bar for stories from the US or UK , using stories that would likely be covered and/or posted if they happened in other countries. Masem (t) 13:22, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

We can't control the media, nor can we control volunteers. If we are going to have a discriminatory criteria for this part of the main page, then that should be spelled out in policy. 331dot (talk) 13:31, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

And I could kinda understand this if we were flooded with US and UK related nominations and posting right now, but we aren't. The only US story up right now is Kissinger, and I'm not really seeing a lot of US nominations in my quick glance. 331dot (talk) 13:33, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Incidentally, although it's important that we avoid systemic bias, I disagree with Masem. We are not serving our readers by posting less of everything while we "wait" for the rest of the world to sprout stalwart citizen journalists to cover regional political or scientific news from Indonesia or Lithuania. I think most of our readers are more likely to notice nuisances such as a race car driver being the face of ITN for 10 days, rather than whether or not news from the US/UK comprises more than 33% of the items on the template on any given day. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:33, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I also strongly disagree with suppressing US stories. The only weight on the scale should be regarding "RS coverage = significance" where coverage will always be greater in the US/UK. GreatCaesarsGhost 15:16, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

"We are not serving our readers by posting less of everything ..." Hear, hear. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 20:45, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I've been a proponent of posting significantly more and reorienting our project to the quality of articles written for a long time now. We're failing at least half of the ITNPurpose points by not celebrating detailed updates of more niche articles in this section. This type of discussion has been rumbling for years without any change, though. I'm still not sure if there's a consensus not to shift our values, or if these conversations just always derail and expand before fading out unceremoneously... ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 13:47, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

As I said above, it's like people are afraid of learning something new or in helping other people do so. 331dot (talk) 13:58, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I am of two minds about this. First, I believe you chose the wrong news item to make your point. We necessarily need to have a high bar on political news, particularly U.S. politics, since there's a pervasive belief that the news media has been conditioned to view even the most inane bit of political trivia as headline news/breaking news content to get clicks. That means our standard for this category of news is much higher than most of the others. The expulsion of George Santos from Congress will not go down as a historical event, compared to something such as the censure of Joseph McCarthy, whose dubious infamy left a major footprint in the political landscape. A lot of things do tend to happen for the first time in years, or even the first time ever, but that does not confer inherent notability.

Now that being said, I think all of the points you are making are valid. It is ludicrous that we post so few articles that are actually "in the news", and we've debated the title of this section many times, but "in the news" implies... new things, and we haven't been good about pushing content. And certainly I believe in loosening the WP:ITNSIGNIF criteria so that we don't get bogged down that way. However, our system as it currently exists is simply not configured to do so. Much as with RfA, many agree that there are issues with ITN, but most of us cannot agree on exactly what the issue is, let alone how to fix it. Quite a few editors, both regular and non-regular, feel that not posting the Santos story was an example of ITN/C working as it should have, and that posting it would have been evidence that ITN is severely broken, helpless to the marionette-strings of systemic bias.

It seems to me that a straw poll with one simple question: "Is WP:ITNSIGNIF working?" might help us make progress. Getting a consensus on that simple question would determine if there's even a stomach to make changes in the way that you are suggesting we do. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:28, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

And I do think that if there is going to be a "higher bar" for US/UK stories, that needs to be specifically spelled out in policy. 331dot (talk) 14:46, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It might also be worth asking the question: "Does ITN currently post too many, too few or about the right number of items?" to see what the consensus of those who don't regularly contribute to this talk page is. Thryduulf (talk) 14:51, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

This has been raised as a question numerous times, and it's always proved to be a point of contention. WP:ITN clearly states that the two main criteria are quality and significance. The last attempt to get insights on which of these two is more important was perhaps this straw poll, which effectively divided opinion with arguments on both sides. I think the problem is not whether we're able to make an exception and post an event with disputed significance on the merits of article's quality, but that those exceptions make precedents that people hang on to in the future when similar events happen again or anywhere else. In reality, people almost never digest the substance of the nomination to discern why something was posted and merely focus on the result. A very recent example was the death of the SCOTUS judge Sandra Day O'Connor, which was considered for a blurb in a discussion with support votes based on the fact that we blurbed Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So, it stands to reason that quality and significance should remain complementary criteria.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 15:10, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Santos is one of 435 people in a single legislative body. The reality is his impact is very little and this situation is a classic example of how the media is biased towards US topics. As a few others noted, there is an interest in taking noms for expulsions from other legislative bodies as well. I would say it's more of an "exclusion" based approach to bias rather than an "inclusion" based one. I would say I generally fit into this camp. I think rather then forcibly lowering the bar, we need more noms. One example is the CRISPR story that was nominated recently. That one unfortunately went stale before we could come to a conclusion on posting, which sucks. I don't think posting less items fails ITNPURPOSE, and honestly, citing this policy can in theory be used to support the nomination of ANY news item with any meaningful degree of coverage, which is a lot of news stories because there are so many news agencies that report on so much news each day. I will reiterate what I've said in the past - what we need to do is encourage more ITN participation - more nominations and more votes. If we are worried about community consensus, then the best way is to actually get enough participants in any discussion. DarkSide830 (talk) 16:51, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

There has been very few expulsions in the history of the US, and most of them were due to the Civil War. You can count on one hand the rest of them. My point here is less about my nomination specifically and more that we would rather not be current than post quality articles about subjects because, apparently, due to some unwritten rule holding US/UK noms to a higher standard. That should either be made a written rule, or we need to loosen up and actually fulfill our stated purpose. 331dot (talk) 16:58, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I disagree. My point on the Santos nom is the only reason it was nominated and got so much engagement was because it was a US story and therefore heavily covered. It was mostly voted down for being internal politics, and while we don't have recent context to say another such story in another country would get voted down in the same way, I have a feeling it would have. As I said, Santos was just over .2% of the total composition of a legislative body. I daresay this is not too far from the sort of thing we talk about when we discuss the concept of avoiding "celebrity drama" at ITN. US politics might as well be at this point, though examining some of the recent political news at ITN, I can't see this isn't true elsewhere as well. And for what it's worth, the historical context of expulsions in the US is interesting, but that is a great fact for DYK. DarkSide830 (talk) 17:16, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

We specifically warn against "it's a US story" as a reason to oppose a nomination. This is either "in the news" or it isn't. We had a great article to post and we apparently would rather leave Kissinger up than put something more current. This is deeply troubling. If we are going to have a discriminatory policy that US/UK stories have a strike against them before they are even nominated, that needs to be written down. This isn't the place to right the great wrong of geographic bias in the media itself. Wikipedia itself, we can do something about, but not the media. 331dot (talk) 18:45, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I categorically disagree that countering media bias is a WGR concept. We are not and should not be beholden to how well or poor the media covers a story. Yes, breadth of coverage is needed for article-level notability, but that is not what we are doing here. We in no way are required to nor should be required to cover what publications think is notable. Let's call it like it is - news agencies wish to make money. They made money due to readership. They care about what people will read, whether it's notable or not. Man bites dog is quite popular for this reason. I don't entirely disagree that we may be seeing stories from Anglosphere miss the cut because they are borderline and we are trying to avoid this bias, but I do not believe that are nearly as common as is claimed by some. I don't think there is any real case of us not permitting a Anglosphere item while blurbing something on the same scale outside of it. DarkSide830 (talk) 21:24, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

The main problem we have in changing ITN is that there is a big divide between the two groups here. There are some here that believe that ITN works as intended, to showcase quality articles that happen to be in the news. I disagree that ITN works as intended. I believe ITN should be a dynamic "ticker" type of project with quality articles. It is odd to me that ITN is the only project/portal on the main page that is not consistently updated. Though TFA, DYK, TFP, and OTD have different processes and teams, ITN should work to be like them and have more daily/weekly updates. Recent Deaths (RD) works well in this regard of being a dynamic resource.

Though we obviously cannot "make news", there is no shortage of news, as evidenced by Portal:Current events. At a minimum, ITN should have at least one or two new blurbs a week. But the current status quo is that there is usually a flurry of new blurbs (usually ITNR), and then blurbs stay stale for weeks.

I somewhat agree with others about the George Santos situation - that it is "not what is typically posted at ITN". But I feel this kind of reasoning just detracts from the bigger issue that ITN is often too stale. Natg 19 (talk) 17:37, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I've stressed the issue that WP editors, as volunteers, typically are not writing quality articles on topics outside of politics, sports, and disasters. Coverage of stories from science and medicine, business and entertainment, and other broader topics is typically poor. We want to have a broader spectrum of topics but the bodies of quality articles for those are just not there. Masem (t) 19:40, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

My concern isn't the broader spectrum of articles. It is the number of articles. Unfortunately, "politics, sports, and disasters" are typically what is in the news. ITN shouldn't be as static as it currently is. And maybe that is a participation problem, or maybe it is a stringency problem with the way that nominations are "!voted" on. Natg 19 (talk) 19:47, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

This is a case of how ITN can also be leveraged to help improve articles as well. Nominating an item for ITN tends to bring attention to the article's issues. DarkSide830 (talk) 21:27, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I'll give the most recent example of an "offbeat" topic that was well in the news but lacked an article, that being the first CRISPR-developed vaccine approval from about a month ago. There was not even a decent place in CRISPR to include that information. We're discouraged from bringing topics that lack articles or significant updates to ITN, and that definitely happened there. We've also had cases of some of the Nobel prizes this year fail to be posted because no one could work on improving the articles of the awarded researchers. (In the past I've been able to help but I really don't have that time availability that it would take for some of those articles). But, the latest political scandal in the US or EU and that's detailed with 400+ references. We've got the wrong focus as a body of editors overall. Masem (t) 00:58, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

That one missed because it ended up becoming older then the oldest blurb before there was a consensus, right? I'm not sure where quality ended up being on whatever the eventually chosen target was, granted, but that one was harmed by being nominated late and getting buried by other stories. Your point isn't invalid though. I think part of the problem is sports and election articles, as well as disasters to some degree, are formulaic. Personally, I'm not a profuse editor myself, and tend to focus on talk pages and editing. But I will say, updating stats, results, or death counts tends to be a lot easier then writing main-body material on a scientific article. And it doesn't help when a lot of editors see the science in question just fly right over their heads. I find myself not participating in some science noms because it's, well, beyond me to deduce what is actually being explained in them. DarkSide830 (talk) 02:01, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree that we often don't post stories that we probably should, but I can't agree that the Santos story was the poster child for that. This wasn't the fact that it was "just in the US", but for the 95% of the world outside the US it was utterly irrelevant ("who?"), and thus uninteresting, and it appears it was fairly irrelevant to many Americans as well. Consider; there are 350m people in the US, and the maximum pageview on any day was 350k (i.e. 0.1% of the US populace even if they only clicked once each), and it fell off quickly afterwards. And yes, I'm 99.99% sure that an equivalent story from any other country, even the UK, would have been voted down as well. Hang on, you'll say, what about elections in very small countries, they're ITN/R? Well, yes, but that's a discussion for ITN/R. Black Kite (talk) 19:39, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. I think I am on record opposing anti-posting US news bias I feel exists here, but something being rare doesnt make it a. interesting or b. important. Of all the stories to make the poster child for "ITN is broken", this is the worst one to choose. This was a kardashian and cspan crossover story basically. Who cares? Yes, ITN is broken, but is it broken because we didnt post the expulsion of one of 435 members of the House, a member who did absolutely nothing of note in his entire time as a congressman? Nah. nableezy - 19:54, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Yup. The clown car still has plenty of clowns. This story is a nothing burger. Jehochman ^Talk 20:08, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Nominations do not have to have Earth shattering impacts to be posted. 331dot (talk) 12:36, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

It's broken not because any particular nomination was not posted, but because we would rather be not current and topical rather than post something. If that's what we are doing, then this has ceased to be In the news and is just "what some group of Wikipedia editors think you need to know about that has an article". 331dot (talk) 12:36, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Current and topical would include all sorts of crap we would all decline to post. Celebrity gossip being the most obvious. You would certainly draw the line somewhere, but disagreeing where others draw the line doesnt mean that they are wrong. nableezy - 14:25, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

There is a difference between news and gossip(though Taylor Swift was just named Time magazine Person of the Year) but we shouldn't be afraid of working to improve articles about topics in the news and posting them. If it's not encyclopedic enough for ITN, it shouldn't be in this encyclopedia at all. 331dot (talk) 14:32, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Huh. She was named over... just about anybody else? Didn't even know she was in the news recently for anything. Normally Person of the Year awards are for people who have had a major impact on the events of the year. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:00, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I very much like the argument "If it's not encyclopedic enough for ITN, it shouldn't be in this encyclopedia at all." ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 15:20, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Thats not really a good argument. There are topics that are encyopeduc and are reported in the news but would never make sense forITN. Example is the announcement of Grand Theft Auto VI. Its all over the news, it will be an encyclopedic topic, but we'd never cover it at ITN barring a possible game of the year award following release. In part that we aren't using ITN for commercial promotion (we rejected stories on the latest iPhone for similar reasons). Masem (t) 15:29, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, that is silly. "Encyclopedic" is criteria for articles, not ITN. We are not and should not be nominating items because they are "encyclopedic". DarkSide830 (talk) 16:55, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

For all the worrying I tend to hear about how lowering significance standards would open the floodgates to celebrity gossip being posted, not once in the past few years on ITN/C have I ever seen such content unironically nominated, unless you count Trump which was a different "celebrity" altogether. I don't think there's an appetite for tabloidy content even if we do relax our standards. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:03, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

No, I don't think there is either; I think such fears are overblown. 331dot (talk) 15:11, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I remember one nomination when a celebrity got diagnosed with a terminal illness. That's pretty much it. I'm sure people consider the Beatles' final song a sort of celebrity trivia tho. There was also a book publication by a member of the British royal household. Either way, it's an overstated concern, I think. I liked those articles more than some of the other things we post. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 15:20, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Someone should run a "feedback RfC" at the pump asking "how is itn doing?" I suspect we'll learn that the local consensus at itn about what itn should be doing doesn't match global consensus about what itn should be doing. Levivich (talk) 00:44, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

You can be that someone! I have no idea to do what you are mentioning. Natg 19 (talk) 00:50, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Someone else can be that someone :-) Instructions for opening an RFC are at WP:RFCOPEN. Levivich (talk) 01:56, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Also what I mean is I have no idea what you mean by "feedback RfC". Natg 19 (talk) 02:01, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

One that asks a broad open ended question, rather than making a support/oppose or multiple-choice proposal. Levivich (talk) 02:23, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

We just had a recent straw poll within the year that tried to determine if ITN should focus on quality or newsworthiness, and the !votes were split down the middle. I don't think that CCC within just a year on that. Masem (t) 02:19, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, hence why I'm suggesting the opposite of a straw poll. Levivich (talk) 02:26, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Welcome to the wonderful world of ITN, where everyone knows something is broken, but nobody can agree on how to fix it. Banedon (talk) 02:30, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

The problem is actually that nobody can agree on what is broken about it. For example some people see not posting stories about things that get a lot of article views but are not actually that significant as a bug, others see it as a feature. Similarly the focus on article quality is for some people what ITN gets right and for others what ITN gets wrong. Unfortunately there are proportionately too many people who just seem to think that if they keep pushing their preference then maybe this time everybody will see how right they are, preventing any kind of resolution. Thryduulf (talk) 03:49, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Here's my 2c. We should have different editions of ITN, like news bureaus do with international and US or UK or regional editions. You can set a user preference if you want which edition which would skew the selection slightly but it will still appear on ITN and be otherwise ITN, just there will be more ITNs. Andre🚐 06:46, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

And the vast majority of readers are either IP editors or casual users who won't know that they can set user preferences for this. ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 20:40, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

"Pushing their preference" – Hrm, I do do that, I apologize... In a way, I'm not sure what else to do. How can we get to a consensus on any changes from the status quo when everyone has a different view of what ITN is/should be? Me repeating my stance every time it comes up doesn't serve much purpose, which I should've seen earlier. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 10:10, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

If we can agree that it's broken but can't agree on how or how to fix it, then maybe it's time to hang it up. 331dot (talk) 10:28, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

A wise idea. I wonder if we ought to apply the same logic to the continued existence of WP:ANI or WP:RFA. Though why stop there; as Douglas Adams himself said, “In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.” It's not that I am opposed to disbanding ITN, but at one point in time, ITN was "unbroken". It had operated well for several years without major issues.

One big difference between then and now is one of consensus and culture, rather than a broken process, as !voters apparently did not struggle to quickly collectively agree upon the significance of news items. Things most likely began to sour when more ideological !votes began persistently entering the picture, with not only the inherent disruption caused by the !votes themselves, but then later outside observers and new contributors reading the discussions and unconsciously assuming that such picayune demagoguery is an intended modus operandi for ITN/C. That's where we get the whole recurring argument about anti-American/pro-American bias on ITN; I myself have found that the temptation to become embroiled in those squabbles can be hard to resist, so I know I'm partly at fault for the environment we have created.

So I believe it's possible that the culture can be changed over time if we began more readily discounting ideological or tendentious !votes when weighing consensus. Of course it's true that ITN/C's criteria is subjective, but such !votes in general do not contribute to the consensus-building process, and in my opinion limiting their appearance will hopefully lead to discussions that are more amicable and better-focused. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:42, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

I think most of us agree that changes can and should be made, but is the bathwater so bad that the baby must be thrown out with it? DarkSide830 (talk) 17:34, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I should've written: "... but nobody can agree on what is broken (if anything is broken), let alone how to fix it." We've had this kind of discussion for years and years, and nothing changes, because when there's no consensus for change the status quo prevails. That's surely what will happen this time as well, hence I'm not bothering to opine; it's all pointless. Banedon (talk) 14:31, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

this is not unique to ITN, it happens everywhere all the time in the world JM (talk) 14:28, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

• The broken, dysfunctional state of ITN has been discussed in detail before. But there's one issue which the OP doesn't explain or address. ITN is primarily controlled by admins because they are the ones who make the decisions and update the template. The admins who do this are self-selected rather than being appointed or elected. The OP is an admin but their editing of the template has been quite limited so they are only #69 in the list of ITN admins. If they and other admins like Banedon think that the decisions being made are not correct or optimal then why don't they step up and be the one to make those decisions. What's stopping them? Andrew🐉(talk) 23:07, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

  You can use my name, it's okay.

  I've made no secret of the fact that I haven't been around as much as usual. But this isn't 331dot's ITN. It's run by consensus, and I can't just declare something to be wrong and do what I want. I wouldn't support me having the admin tools if I did that. That's partly why I'm here now. I believe George Santos should be posted, but I nominated it, and even if I didn't, there was not a consensus. Admins just interpret the consensus. 331dot (talk) 00:02, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  ...why don't they step up and be the one to make those decisions. What's stopping them? Everyone is a volunteer here. Nothing is required, much like nobody can force non-admins to apply for the mop. —Bagumba (talk) 01:54, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  I wouldn't blame admins.

  I think we're seeing the same problems that had led to the recent problem with civility, and that itself is tied to a different population of editors from compared to 7 or 8 years ago. Certainly there was contention in what was considered significant prior to that point, but it feels the issue of newsworthiness factors and trying to cover what was heavily covered by news first and foremost, rather than by quality, have been an increasing issue over these years and in part led to the incivility issue. (This also was about the time we started considering US mass shootings as too routine to include but I have no obvious evidence that's the case, just a gut feeling). But this also simply may be tied to how we've gone too far on the pendulum swing with respect to NOT#NEWS, due to the rising growth of right-wing extremism that has lead to a greater attention given to news, particularly political ones.

  How we fix that, I don't know, beyond knowing that we now look like we have two distinct camps of what ITN should be, and that's not any the fault of any individual or group. Masem (t) 01:56, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Agree a change in demographics of editors has changed things a lot here overy the past decade or so.... especially when it comes to discussions. Also think being dominated by Americans who do not get as much international news like smaller nations is always been a concern here. Always a new mass shooting or newly celebrated celebrity that deters American Media for reporting international news. But all that said..... Americans are our primary readers. Moxy- 02:33, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  (Minor note, don't underestimate how many Indian readers we have) ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 08:38, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Raw data Moxy- 15:20, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Well, as the number one in the list of ITN admins, I can only apologise for breaking ITN. Stephen 21:22, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  I did not mean to suggest that any one person is responsible for this. I don't believe that; it just happened, I think. 331dot (talk) 21:42, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

  Absolutely no need to apologize. I have had my fair share of gripes and run-ins with many admins, but, if there is one reason this place continues to move forward (in whatever state) is because of the tireless efforts of 2-3 (or maybe make it 3-4) admins. Each one of them should feel proud of the work that they are doing. You all know who you are. Ktin (talk) 17:31, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

  "admins make the decisions" is a pretty obfuscating way to put it, given that admins close the discussions based on consensus rather than based on their own personal preferences. ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 20:37, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

  How often do admins go against consensus on ITN when deciding whether or not to post something? JM (talk) 14:32, 14 December 2023 (UTC)

The significance criterion is not set in stone anywhere, so it is not necessary to run an RFC to lower it. If you want more stories to get posted, lower your personal standard for significance when you vote. If enough people share your opinion, more things will get posted. GreatCaesarsGhost 17:28, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Jacques Delors

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

---

I tried to nominate Jacques Delors who died yesterday for In the news but my proposal has been deleted by Black Kite with the comment "move to correct place". I thought this was the correct place. If not, can someone please place it in the correct place. I am not familiar with this procedure but feel strongly that Delors should be included asap. Perhaps The Rambling Man can help with this or explain the procedure to me,--Ipigott (talk) 12:17, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for this. I see he had already been nominated.--Ipigott (talk) 12:21, 28 December 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.

The Game Awards are not newsworthy

Are we really going to claim that "the game awards" is worthy of an international headline? Is this something on the front page of English-language newpapers in Japan? In the Congo? In Argentina?

I mean, seriously? Why is English Wikipedia, one of the most trafficked websites in the world, being used to prop up an industry back-patting event overwhelmingly aimed at people in Western societies, and more specifically, America? Are we reporting on news headlines, or creating them? GrandMote (talk) 21:53, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Have you reviewed the nomination discussion at WP:ITNC? 331dot (talk) 22:27, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

The Game Awards have now been posted three consecutive years. It's probably time for someone to nominate it for WP:ITNR. – Muboshgu (talk) 22:56, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Reactions like these are why ITN blurbs are updated only every couple days on average (I'm guessing). Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 00:53, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Yep, the "I don't like it" brigade, clutching their pearls at the demise of the site. Stephen 01:02, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps you might find a way to actually respond to the points a person raises, instead of defaulting to "find random way to insult this person." But I guess that wouldn't really be a part of "wikipedia culture", would it? GrandMote (talk) 02:05, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

You didn't exactly bring any constructive suggestions to the table yourself. The purpose of this page is to discuss ways to improve ITN's processes and by extension Wikipedia, not to be a forum for your personal opinions. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 03:07, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

What new points did you raise that hadn't already been made at the WP:ITNC discussion? Stephen 06:08, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

in Netherlands it is, maybe also many other languages Shadow4dark (talk) 06:37, 11 December 2023 (UTC).

• There's lots of arts awards in ITN/R that wouldn't make front-page headlines. This is because, as an encyclopedia, we want to represent our dynamic coverage of the arts specifically. We are not a news website. I have opinions on "The Game Awards" in particular but that's a different issue... ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 08:12, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Look, I detest this awards show but an industry bigger than movies or music or books is worthy of at least one mention. I would absolutely prefer a different awards show get mentioned (Game Developers Choice Awards or gaming BAFTAs for instance) but I regret to inform you WP is not a place to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS. Even in the case of the awards show the media and gamers grant the most authority. Omnifalcon (talk) 19:08, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Yup, this is what I was getting at with my last remark, yeah. We end up featuring the events with the most money going through it, because they get the most attention. It's all per our guidelines, but the advertisement engine of it all leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Wish we could feature smaller events alongside these. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 08:35, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

A few weeks ago I nominated the 2023 League of Legends World Championship, the largest annual esports event by far, but the nomination went down in flames. Curbon7 (talk) 22:02, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

I'm sad I wasn't around at the time as it sounds like the kind of thing I'd enjoy supporting, though the article looks a bit light on prose and heavy on tables. Quality articles is still an overwriting priority of course, and people seem to love writing about the Geoff Keighley Awards... ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 15:24, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

There still isn't a legit update in that article about the big game. There's the score and where it was held. No matter how widely viewed or bingo hallish a tournament may be, a world championship is a main event and a good recap is a good recap. I don't pretend to understand the lingo, strategy or even basic rules of this game, but I know it can be done, because it's been done for chess, boxing and F1 racing. Those aren't even the most obscure ones, just three almost entirely dissimilar leagues operating in the same fundamental universe of bare-bones or balls-to-the-wall reliably sourced play-by-play and commentary. As in all these kinds of things, never give up, eh? Visualize next year. If this "final" truly had that "big fight feel", history suggests at least tens of millions of people are going to tell their friends to catch it in 2024. Good luck! InedibleHulk (talk) 19:20, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

This quote from The Verge may be of interest (the article has hyperlinks to learn more):

The Game Awards isn’t the only video game award show in existence; it’s not even the video game equivalent of the Oscars or the Emmys. That distinction arguably belongs to the DICE Awards, which is organized by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, a nonprofit professional organization analogous to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) or the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (ATAS) — the professional academies that oversee the Oscars and the Emmys, respectively.

There are also the BAFTA Games Awards, the Golden Joystick Awards, the Game Developers Choice awards, and a host of smaller, regionally focused award shows.

But The Game Awards eclipses all of these shows by several orders of magnitude.

This year’s VOD has already racked 6.5 million views since its December 7th premiere. In contrast, the 26th annual DICE Awards VOD, posted in February of this year, sits at about 2,800 views. Basically, The Game Awards has all the prestige and viewership numbers of the Oscars and Emmys despite being the purview of one man: Geoff Keighley.

Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 03:28, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Having seen this conversation, I am not sure what the issue is.

1. If the issue is that there are other e-gaming events that should be posted, editors should nominate them and see the community view on posting them to WP:ITNC when the time comes.
2. If the issue is about should this event be included in WP:ITNR now that it has made its way into the main page for three years (did I get that right?) consecutively — sure, go ahead and nominate it for ITNR and let’s see the community’s view on that.
3. If the issue is that this topic should be in ITNR, but, editors are not able to identify which of the e-gaming events should be included in ITNR (assuming there is more than one), the answer might be to toss it to one of the projects like WP:VIDEOGAMES and ask them to weigh in.
4. If the issue is that this event was posted to main page by an incorrect read of community consensus by the posting admin, I do not think that statement is true. So, that’s that.

Ktin (talk) 22:51, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

I think the issue is that the editor specifically does not think the Game Awards are newsworthy, and that's it. Which, unfortunately for them, the consensus was to post. JM (talk) 06:31, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

References

Group Editnotice

Hello, has anyone noticed that the edit-notice that appears at the top when someone just opens WP:ITN/C for editing, it appears twice. I tried seeing {{Editnotices/Group/Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates}} but there is no problem in it. Any ideas? ─ The Aafī (talk) 05:44, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Doesn't appear twice for me. Must be a you problem. JM (talk) 21:07, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

New Pact on Migration and Asylum of the European Union

I just created New Pact on Migration and Asylum of the European Union. It seems like a major deal that may warrant mentioning on ITN, but it needs a ton of expansion which I don’t have time for today. I’m unsure what the title should be- I’ve moved it around. Thriley (talk) 21:15, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

If the agreement has an official name, that would be best. If not, I'd suggest something simple like 2023 European Union Immigration Agreement. -Ad Orientem (talk) 23:08, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

While it's just a thing people say, "new pact on migration and asylum" or "immigration agreement" should be lowercase, nice and commonlike. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:00, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Given the plan hasn't gone into effect yet, it might be best to wait until then to post. Given the backlash, one wonders if it might not be smooth sailing until that point. DarkSide830 (talk) 03:40, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Pin select RDs

IMO one of the reasons that blurb/RD discussions can get so heated is the dichotomy: one is a full sentence often posted for over a week, the other is just a name that can get bumped off in a few hours. Some candidates don't quite warrant a blurb, but an RD seems too dismissive. I'm wondering if there may be value in adding a midway option: pinning select RDs to the first RD position for 48 hours. GreatCaesarsGhost 20:00, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

I personally think this should be the case for all RDs - they should all stay on for a minimum of 1-2 days. It is jarring for an RD to be bumped off after few hours, regardless of how "famous" or not the person is. Natg 19 (talk) 20:13, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

It is jarring for an RD to be bumped off after few hours...: Quite a few posting admins try to ensure a 12-hour minumum for RD items to remain, keeping 7 or 8 RD items up, if necessary. The community can formalize this beyond WP:IAR by updating WP:ITN/A.—Bagumba (talk) 11:59, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I do support your proposal, but there can be a new problem - how do we select who is "famous" or not? Natg 19 (talk) 20:14, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, either every RD should remain for a minimum period or none of them should. Anything else is just going to lead to more arguments, etc. that was the reason we instituted the current system in the WP:2016 ITNRD RFC. Thryduulf (talk) 11:51, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

There is no solution for this. Best I could come up with is an algorithm like "article length divided by citation-needed tags plus GA/FA bonus" or something. Keeping stubs on the front page for a shorter time isn't the worst idea, but it's just such a blurry field that it's impossible to find a good solution here. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:16, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

To me this is a complete non-problem. If a death meets normal non-death blurb requirements, then it should get proposed and posted as a blurb. If it doesn't, then it should get proposed and posted as an RD. I don't see a problem with names not staying on RD for long enough, so I don't see a need for a "middle ground" where some names are pinned. The rest of the Main Page is only supposed to stay up for 1 day. ITN is the only part that works differently. This is yet another reason I keep saying ITN and RD should be separated. JM (talk) 16:35, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

This was a problem several months ago when Matthew Perry was an RD. There was a thread here that he got bumped off too early, so one of the admins IAR re-added him. Natg 19 (talk) 19:18, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

I am aware of that incident, I just don't think it was a problem. JM (talk) 20:58, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

It was a problem because he was posted selectively while there were several other older RSs that had been ready to go were waiting, creating the case where Perry was pushed off too soon. Masem (t) 21:03, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

"posted selectively" is subjective. Some will post with 0 supports, some have stricter standards on what is "ready". Sometimes you just miss it skimming the candidates. Some aren't marked (Ready)...What I do is check if an item has been up < 12h before removal. If needed, keep a 7th or 8th RD item up.—Bagumba (talk) 02:08, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Even if there was a problem, it was solved by IAR, and I don't see a need for any additional complexity like what is being proposed. JM (talk) 18:09, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

A) it is a problem if RDs are not getting sufficient time on the MP, because that is the entire point of this project. B) It was solved by IAR in this case because the person was famous. It goes unnoticed far more often. GreatCaesarsGhost 14:13, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Pinning RDs just creates a new problem of when a death is significant enough for a pin.

What we probably need to do is more on admins side:

• make sure that when RDs are posted, that the entire queue is checked from bottom up and add those ready to go in that order.
• date entries in the template.
• if it is clear that a new RD posting pass will kick some RDs that were on the list less than 24hr, then we should queue the newer entries up (via invisible comments on the template) and later add those in, or simply holding off changes. This goes back to the batching idea I previously proposed, but it does require care and attention from admins that add to the template. --Masem (t) 18:30, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

  Most posting admins put the RD item(s) in the edit summary. So I usually just go into the history and see if the last item has been up for < 12 hours. If it has, then I don't remove it, and just post the new item as the 7th (sometimes 8th) RD. Pull the extras when they've reached 12h.—Bagumba (talk) 02:01, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

  I think this is the most pragmatic approach to things. Ktin (talk) 19:27, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I like this approach, but I'm hearing 12 and 24 hours. If 24 is practical, we should go with that. GreatCaesarsGhost 14:13, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

A few months ago I started dating entries in the template, but this was actively opposed and the dates removed. I didn't push the issue, despite not understanding why it was at all problematic. Thryduulf (talk) 09:42, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

• The current RD format is so abbreviated that it's useless. If the person is famous, like Matthew Perry, then the entry is redundant because most everyone already knows. And if they are not famous, then just listing their name gives the reader no reason to click through and find out more.

So, what's needed is a larger obituary section like other languages have. This would resolve several issues:

1. Providing more space to explain who everyone is
2. Providing more space to list more entries
3. Eliminating the need to argue about blurbing because everyone would get the same format
4. Providing more space to have a picture for the recent deaths too

So, a restructure of this sort is what's needed, not just some minor tinkering.

Andrew🐉(talk) 23:46, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

This doesn't at all address the issue. Even with this approach, we would be limited to a few entries (even if it replaced the entire ITN box, you are still looking at only 6 to 7 at most), and at the current rate we are seeming RDs, the same problem can happen. Masem (t) 14:45, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Plus, we already have a larger obituary section and everyone knows it. More space, more entries and more space. There aren't any pictures (yet), but 75% ain't bad for equal formatting and (relatively) bygone bickering; any further attempts to bring such a pie-in-the-sky idea to its fullest potential should be addressed to (at least among) the fine folks already greasing the odd squeaky wheel at that Talk Page. I mean, if you please. It's not required or anything. InedibleHulk (talk) 20:08, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

No, ITN is not limited to a few entries. Just look at the French or Spanish languages to understand the possibilities. The French main page currently has 23 entries in its Nécrologie and their format has dates too. The Spanish main page has 16 entries in its Fallecimientos and each of those has the date and age of the deceased and a short description. And there's more than one picture too. So, all we have to do is think outside the box of our current cramped format. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:29, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

The "main page", as far as ITNRD goes, isn't even limited to entries with articles. There's a Spanish (Basque) actress getting all the attention Matthew Perry, The Iron Sheik or [insert cricketer here] got, filmography uncitation nothwithstanding. I'm not going to speak for "us", but all I have to do is take comfort in knowing that if somebody keeps letting "them" (readers who start at the splash page instead of the article they Googled) know that people they may or may not have heard of are dying each and every day, those with below average or higher intelligence and even the slightest interest in learning more will reasonably surmise exactly where to CLICK HERE NOW. Anyway, I tried. Felicitations and fallecimientos to all and to all a good night! InedibleHulk (talk) 18:18, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Either format from those other sites would require a massive redesign of the main page to include the expanded box(es). That would be a question to raise at the village pump, as ITN is limited by space (roughly equal to the TFA blurb length) Masem (t) 20:31, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Unlink "Ongoing"

"Ongoing" should be unlinked and the link to Portal:Current events can be added to the bottom, next to "Nominate an article", as a small link saying "Other current events". Currently, this is a WP:SURPRISE that "Ongoing" links to the current events portal. I remember this being discussed before, but I don't remember why nothing came about of it. Natg 19 (talk) 18:25, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Strong support for adding a “current events” link at the bottom. I personally have brought this proposal at least three times and it has failed all of those times. Let’s see if the fourth time (or is it fifth time?) is a charm. Ktin (talk) 20:36, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I have no strong opinion on this personally. I think the setup is fine as it is, and I don't think it's exactly a surprise that a bluelink associated with the word "ongoing" links to a page about events that have occurred recently. However, I think switching the word "Ongoing" to "Current Events", or even adding the link to the CE portal on the same line as the nomination link, but at the left of the box would be nice additions. DarkSide830 (talk) 21:16, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

The template already has this behaviour when there are no ongoing items, a link to Other recent events appears. Stephen 21:25, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

I am pretty sure we've said we should do this, but we've never figured out the right way to replace it. I think an issue is that if there are no ongoing stories, the template does not show that line, otherwise, it should be straight forward to replace "Ongoing" with "Other Current Events" linking to Portal:Current Events. Masem (t) 00:54, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Data can be our friend. Change the ongoing link to “Current Events” see the spike in visits to the current events portal (if any). Change to “Current Events Portal” and see the spike in visits to the current events portal if any. Lastly add a link with the text “Current Events Portal” or “Other Current Events” to the left of “Nominate article” link and check the spike in visits. After trying these, change to the one that is best for users. This is clearly an easy and low hanging fruit. Ktin (talk) 06:09, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Again, its not being a matter of wanting to do that (you can check the archives but I'm highly confident that there was agreement this should be changed), its a matter of the WP template system. The "Ongoing" line disappears if there's no ongoing stories, so just changing "Ongoing" to something else would mean that when we have no ongoing, the link to P:CE vanishes. It may just be better to link it off the bottom line and not worry about the way the Ongoing line is set up. Masem (t) 13:13, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

IIRC when the ongoing line disappears — an explicit link to other current events is added to the bottom row. Ktin (talk) 15:25, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Yes, as I said above. We should just remove the code tying it to ongoing, and have it always displayed. We're going to have at least one ongoing item as the norm now. Stephen 20:49, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

This is a fine solution to me. Can you make this change then, Stephen? Natg 19 (talk) 20:55, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

No, I'm not up to amending Template:In the news/footer, but if someone creates a sandbox version I'll copy it across when it's been tested. Stephen 23:42, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Did some quick testing and made changes to the code here: Template:Template_sandbox and User:Natg 19/sandbox. I swapped the positions of the "Recent deaths" and "Other recent events" in the footer line because for some reason I couldn't get the horizontal list to work otherwise, but this should do what we are looking for. I assume it will be rare when there are no RDs for the "Recent deaths" text to show up. I did not unlink ongoing from the current events portal, as that seems fine as long as there is a clear "Other recent events" link. Natg 19 (talk) 02:32, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Ping Stephen. Natg 19 (talk) 17:20, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Ah this diff (when there is no ongoing) is exactly what I was proposing: a "other current events" link. Natg 19 (talk) 21:01, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Yep, and this [1] is how it would appear today if we had no ongoing. Stephen 23:39, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

To me, this looks good. If we now go this route for having the text "other current events" at the bottom even when we have ongoing events, I think it would not be bad. Yes, we would have the minor issue of ongoing also linking to the same portal -- but, I think that is fine. Ktin (talk) 01:43, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

So, are we attempting this? Ktin (talk) 22:51, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

• Support Hiding the link to Portal:Current events seems like deliberate obfuscation contrary to WP:TRANSPARENCY. As the portal works so much better than ITN, it should be given more prominence. For example, yesterday, 16 news items were listed there for Dec 6 while ITN didn't list any new blurbs and so had to rerun all the same blurbs from the previous day. The portal helps readers find what's actually in the news rather than stale reruns. Andrew🐉(talk) 11:37, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

I don't really know why this has to be done. If it's not badly needed, would it really be advisable to make a change to a template on the Main Page? The law of unintended consequences and all of that. Templates can be deceptively easy to break. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 18:48, 7 December 2023 (UTC)

Echoing this. It feels like an unnecessary change for the sake of change, and I'm not particularly sold by the arguments above, especially with one from a noted contrarian. The Kip 08:56, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

• While there is an Ongoing section in the sidebar of Portal:Current events, it's very much not the bulk or focus of the page, to the point where linking to it as "Ongoing:" is actively misleading. Leaving the "Other recent events • " link always visible, meanwhile, costs us nothing: the link to ITNC it appears next to is always visible, and - other than the P:CE link if there's no ongoing, and Deaths in CURRENTYEAR if there's somehow no recent deaths - is always on a line of its own. (The current version in Template:In the news/footer/sandbox, which moves the "Other recent events" link to before "Ongoing:", is no good, though. See testcases.) So yes, support. —Cryptic 22:38, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

ITN terminology and archives

Hello all. In the older entries of the Template:In the news, I have seen some entries starting with {{*mp|February 5}}, like this one. I wanted to ask what does it mean, and if it is still in use. pinging Stephen as they were active around that period. If anyone knows, please feel free to respond. —usernamekiran (talk) 09:30, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

The docentation for Template:*mp says its deprecated.—Bagumba (talk) 09:33, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

yes, I saw that as soon as I posted here, and I also got further information at Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries. Thanks Bagumba. —usernamekiran (talk) 09:36, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

It was created to deal with a browser issue that screwed with image wrapping in the bulleted lists that we have on the main page. Stephen 23:25, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Idea: have RDs link to specific death articles if they exist

Saleh al-Arouri, a senior Hamas leader, was killed in an Israeli airstrike earlier today. In addition to his personal biography, as shown above, there is also an article on his assassination. I was thinking that for specific cases like this, where the death of figures is as notable as their lives, we could instead link to the specific death articles instead of the biographical articles, or alternatively (and IMO, a better option), we could do something like this:

Saleh al-Arouri (assasination).

I think that this would be a good way of fulfilling our newsworthy role in conveying recent events, by highlighting why exactly our topic is in the news. I've noticed also that with these types of situations, there are often futile attempts to blurb their death, and having this will hopefully help reduce the amount of unnecessary blurb RD noms here on ITN.

What do y'all think? — Knightoftheswords 02:00, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I think we can link to an article documenting the death only in case when there's no article about the person. Other than that, there's no need to highlight someone's death when the goal of the RD section is to post articles about recently deceased people. Our major problem is that we often don't have enough room to post as many RDs as needed to extend the roll-over rate, so taking room to link to the death article in brackets is most definitely not what we want to do. In some cases, a stand-alone article documenting the death may support the case for a blurb, though.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:52, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Kiril, but would go slightly stronger and say that an RD listing should never link to anything other than the biography of the person/animal listed. If they don't have a biography then they're not eligible for RD in the first place, if there is only a "death of" article then it can only be a blurb or nothing. If there is both a biography and a "death of" article, then that's a strong indication that a death blurb is appropriate - indeed I think I remember it being proposed that a "death of" article should be a requirement for a death blurb (although that obviously did not achieve consensus). Thryduulf (talk) 11:32, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Our major problem is that we often don't have enough room to post as many RDs as needed to extend the roll-over rate, so taking room to link to the death article in brackets is most definitely not what we want to do.

Desktop version

Mobile screenshot

Kiril Simeonovski, I definitely think that there is enough space to include a parenthetical link in an RD; looking at the images to the right, we can see that there is typically a substantial gap at the end of the RD listing. I'm not sure how it looks on different displays (this 1920x1080 display includes one as well), but I can imagine that (especially considering that this would be on a rare occasion) that we could be able to include a seperate link, attached to a shorter word (e.g, instead of (assassination), just have (death) or (read), or something), so as to minimize any disruption in main page balance. — Knightoftheswords 00:12, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

• Concur with Kiril and Thryduulf. RDs are links to biographies only. Polyamorph (talk) 11:35, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:ITNRD requires a biography:

An individual human, animal or other biological organism that has recently died may have an entry in the recent deaths (RD) section if it has a biographical Wikipedia article...

—Bagumba (talk) 12:10, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

There's always the possibility to invoke WP:IAR and post a person without a stand-alone article as we did with the Charlie Gard case.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 12:33, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

To be fair, seems that WP:ITNRD didn't have the "biographical" verbiage at that point. But sure, WP:IAR is always an option, subject to consensus, on Wikipedia—ITN or not. —Bagumba (talk) 15:21, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

There is almost no need for that separate article about the death of al-Arouri, in this case. This is the problem with how too far detailed we are writing about current events when at the end of the day we are meant to be summarizing them. All the details in this case can be included on the BLP. Masem (t) 13:16, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

• Generally speaking, RD's are links to biographies, not the event/article of the death. Other issue is, if we want to include the article of the death, it will always be recently created, and have {{recent event}} which reads at the top of the article: This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses, and initial news reports may be unreliable. The latest updates to this article may not reflect the most current information. So it is wise not highlight such article on the main page. In case there is no article about the recently died person, we can handle such incidents case-by-case. —usernamekiran (talk) 14:31, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

  Other issue is, if we want to include the article of the death, it will always be recently created, and have {{recent event}} which reads at the top of the article: This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses, and initial news reports may be unreliable. The latest updates to this article may not reflect the most current information. So it is wise not highlight such article on the main page.

  4 out of 5 of the topics featured on {{ITN}} rn have {{recent event}} featured on their page; in fact, due to there being talks of moving the 2024 Sea of Japan earthquake article, there is also a {{Requested move notice}}. I'm guessing the issue that you're proposing is that in article previews, it will read out the highlighted text, but the previews ignore amboxes and just head straight to the body paragraph unless the formatting for the amboxes is broken. — Knightoftheswords 16:50, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

• I understand the appeal of such a change, but I believe it might just make the box longer when it's not needed. Any bio article with a related death article should have a link to said article in it. Outside of the cases mentioned prior where a RD is a "death of" article because there is no bio article, I think this is taking up more space when it is not needed. DarkSide830 (talk) 22:05, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Holding area for future articles?

Is there a way to nominate an article for a future date? The legal case South Africa v. Israel (Genocide Convention), initiated a week ago, will have public hearings at The Hague on Thursday 11 and Friday 12 January 2024 - and will be headline news on those dates. Onceinawhile (talk) 10:59, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

No, typically nominate it the day it's actually in the news. —Bagumba (talk) 11:24, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Do we post ongoing court cases without final judgment? Howard the Duck (talk) 13:33, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

No we don't, we post the decision. Masem (t) 13:35, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

That's not a rule per se, but a common outcome. —Bagumba (talk) 13:38, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

If the ICJ decides to render provisional measure of protection, could that be posted? Onceinawhile (talk) 13:55, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Whether anything gets posted is subject to consensus. See WP:ITNSIGNIF. That said, what Howard the Duck and Masem wrote seem like common outcomes. But consensus can change. —Bagumba (talk) 14:02, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

When was the last time we posted anything from the ICJ? Howard the Duck (talk) 14:14, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

From a very quick search, it looks like not recently, if ever. ICJ rulings are non-binding(they've ordered Russia to stop their invasion of Ukraine, for example) and they have no armed force to enforce its rulings, so that's probably a mark against posting ICJ rulings, but it does depend on the coverage. 331dot (talk) 14:29, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

No, because that would be WP:CRYSTAL, which is also how I would characterize your assertion of "will be headline news". JM (talk) 02:38, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Cutting down on the number of sports blurbs on ITN/R

Realistically I don't think the world darts or snooker championships are something worthy of ITN. They certainly aren't covered in international news media and wouldn't be stories but for their inclusion. Would love to hear thoughts on what should go and what can stay. This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk) 06:30, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

I know little about darts, but Wikipedia talk:In the news/Archive 87 § (Closed) Proposal: Add PDC World Darts Championship to ITNR had strong consensus to be added to WP:ITNR in 2022.—Bagumba (talk) 06:57, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

For me, it’s kinda weird though. I don’t understand why you don’t have CFP but you STILL have March Madness in the ITN/R. Like, who cares about CBB? 2601:2C2:500:A440:4C4A:D068:7C9A:566C (talk) 13:04, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

There is no requirement that a story have an international scope, if that were a requirement, very little would be posted. Don't be afraid of learning about something new or unexpected. "Who cares" is a poor argument, as every topic has people who don't care about it. 331dot (talk) 13:49, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Artemis stuff

It is a bit early to ask, but can we get a straw poll going on whether people would like to put under "Ongoing" after Artemis 2 circles the moon in November? Bremps... 12:37, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I believe a likely situation will be to regularly blurb, and then bring it to on-going once it rolls off. Then perhaps a fresh blurb when it reaches the vicinity of the Moon. However, I think it will be fine to discuss this when the time comes. It's pretty much guaranteed that this will be featured, so the formatting will be the only thing we really need to discuss. (Unless you have grander ideas?) ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:47, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

• More than 10 missions are heading to the moon in 2024 and we have a nomination for one of them pending already. So, as these are becoming quite commonplace, the question will be whether any of them merit such attention. Are they to become routine entries at ITN like elections and earthquakes or will they all be consigned to the outer darkness? Andrew🐉(talk) 13:53, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

• I personally wouldn't mind them to be that regular, though we should probably not be posting moon missions twice every time. Regardless, they'd have a hard time overtaking politics, disasters, and sporting events. We haven't had that many spaceflight blurbs in recent years, I currently still think the concern is overstated. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 13:57, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't know about unmanned missions to the moon, but manned missions to the moon are still rare; we're still a year away at least from Artemis 2, which will carry people around the moon and have several firsts(the first woman, the first non-white person, and the first non-American). 331dot (talk) 13:57, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

It's sad that the colour of a person's skin is apparently relevant to whether they can be an astronaut. MUST we mention that? HiLo48 (talk) 01:22, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Rightly or wrongly RS report on this fact, and NASA has been clear that Artemis missions would have more varied crews that better represent America and the world. 331dot (talk) 01:30, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Such things are hot topics in the West right now. JM (talk) 02:32, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I expect an image like this will be appropriate for the frontpage to indicate the diversity of the team. A blurb that lists all four names might also be appropriate? If we can get their articles to look real good, at least. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 14:08, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't believe Andrew's question was really related to the Artemis mission; should've probably gotten a separate section... ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 14:00, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

• The latest news is that there's significant slippage in the Artemis schedule and it won't put boots on the moon until 2026 at the earliest. As I understand it, Artemis was cobbled together out remnants of the old Space Shuttle and Constellation programs which are both now antiques. Reality is now sinking in and, as this is a risk-averse government pork barrel rather than a move-fast-and-break-things startup, don't hold your breath on seeing results any time soon, if ever. It's crystal balls and so ITN should focus on what's actually happening. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:31, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

College Football Championship closure

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I don't think that a non-admin with only 6,000 edits who leaves "Help me!" messages on their talk page has sufficient experience to decide the consensus of this very contentious and large discussion. Especially since the discussion was only allowed to be open for two days and momentum felt like it was shifting in favor - only two out of the last 11 votes were in opposition. I think it should have had some more time, or at least an administrator should have decided the outcome. BeanieFan11 (talk) 19:06, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

At least you got your two cents in. I was still thinking of a nice way to put mine. I am still thinking! InedibleHulk (talk) 19:09, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Then I do think it should be allowed to continue if there's still editors interested in commenting, considering how short (two days) it was allowed to run. BeanieFan11 (talk) 19:10, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

It's not like whatever I might say would convince anyone of anything. That much was made explicitly clear. You gave it your best shot and that's all anyone can do; cheers! InedibleHulk (talk) 19:15, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

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Suggestion to add red sea crisis in on-going news

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The red sea crisis is on top news, i check international news in the meanstream media on a daily basis and the crisis is always on the top of them. It's been months since the conflicts began and tensions are escalating. 3000MAX (talk) 22:46, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Firstly, the place to request additions to In The News is WP:ITNC, not here. Secondly, the first item under 'Ongoing' is "Israel-Hamas war (Houthi involvement)". The phrase "Houthi involvement" links directly to Red Sea crisis. It's not the clearest arrangement of links, but it is very much there. GenevieveDEon (talk) 22:59, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Although someone should propose changing that link to read simply "Red Sea crisis" and un-bracket it. Can that be proposed on WP:ITN/C? It's not exactly a nomination, as it's already there, it's just an adjustment. As for WP:ERRORS, it's also not exactly an error either. What's the proper way to go about changing it? JM (talk) 23:37, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I was thinking of nominating the change on ITN/C, please go ahead! ChaotıċEnby(talk · contribs) 23:47, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Should I just nominate it like a normal Ongoing nomination even though it's really already there? Not sure exactly how to go about doing this. JM (talk) 23:48, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

@Stephen can an ITN admin change the Ongoing section based off of this discussion alone, or does this need to be proposed elsewhere? If elsewhere, then where and how? I have an Ongoing nomination prepared for it, but I haven't posted it because I'm not sure that it's the correct way to get this done. JM (talk) 01:51, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

My recommendation would be a new ongoing nomination, and explain what you want to do. The item went up as Houthi attacks in the context of the Israeli war, if it's now a crisis to be posted in its own right that probably needs discussing. Stephen 03:42, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Alright, I've done so. JM (talk) 03:46, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

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I want to nominate an article

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On 28th January, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso announced a joint decision to leave Ecowas. I believe somebody has made the edit to the ECOWAS article and I want to nominate it for the news section of Wikipedia. But I don't know how to. Heatrave (talk) 07:53, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

I've started the nomination. Please feel free to comment further there. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:54, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

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I want to nominate an article that happened on December 22 but is still In the news.

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A.FLOCK (talk) 14:45, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Which article? If it is ongoing, you can nominate it for Ongoing. If it isn't ongoing, well, it isn't ongoing. ChaotıċEnby(talk · contribs) 14:48, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Flag of Kyrgyzstan A.FLOCK (talk) 00:28, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

A flag change that goes through would be a nice InTheNews feature, though I expect most regular ITN editors wouldn't consider it "signficant" enough, which is a requirement that pushes much of this part of the front-page. Maybe if the article update is very detailed and of high quality, it would go through, but I sadly wouldn't count on it. Regardless, it would be a fine nomination if/when Kyrgyzstan does officially change its flag. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 09:45, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I misread the article and it's already happened. In that case, I'm afraid it's simply "stale" and won't make it to ITN anymore. If you want this to be featured on the frontpage, your next most-likely shot would be bringing the article to WP:Good Article status and nominating it for WP:DYK. That's a lot of work, however! ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 09:46, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

We'd probably need it to be specifically in the news for a flag change to be relevant regardless, but in this case it's not even really much of a change. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:32, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I initially got confused by the blue flag proposal, which would be a lot more significant (literally). I think even I would oppose a news story of merely "we made the rays straight." ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 11:05, 31 January 2024 (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.

I like it

I think at some point recently you guys switched from "top news" to "new news" as as organizational system and I just wanted to say I really like it. It seems more NPOV and it keeps the page fresh and above all it seems to cast a wider net, which I personally think is good. so...cheers! jengod (talk) 21:38, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

There's been no specific switch. The apparent improvement is just a consequence of what happened to be in the news and who showed up to nominate and support it. One factor may be the increase in international tension due to religious and nationalist conflicts, climate change and economic instability. We may live in interesting times... Andrew🐉(talk) 08:48, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

WP:ITNSIGNIF remains open-ended:

It is highly subjective whether an event is considered significant enough, and ultimately each event should be discussed on its own merits. The consensus among those discussing the event is all that is necessary to decide if an event is significant enough for posting.

—Bagumba (talk) 01:46, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Adding WP:CTOP Banners to ITN discussions pertaining to topics that have community sanctions

I've added WP:CTOP banners to the Eagle Pass standoff, the Ram Mandir inauguration, and the Red Sea Crisis noms (not the SA v. Israel case for that was added by Joseph2302 (talk · contribs), a trend that I noticed was started by Nablezzy (talk · contribs) some months back (even before the current situation).

I know that there has been chatter for this in the past (1 2) and I think that we should move towards making this a standard practice. Most of the topics that we delve into as Wikipedia's news section concern these very topics and are as such equally susceptible to disruptive behavior. Doing this would help squash WP:FORUMy and WP:BATTLEGROUND comments that ITN is all too well known for. — Knightoftheswords 18:09, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Ram Mandir definitely needed it, because people were warned and blocked for violating the India/Pakistan sanctions. My general thought is that if we're going to enforce contentious topic restrictions on WP:ITNC then users should be warned about it, rather than having their comments removed/hatted because they violated a rule they might not know about. Joseph2302 (talk) 18:23, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I like this idea, and I like Joseph's suggestion as well. HOWEVER I have to push back on the Eagle Pass nom. I guess it generally makes sense, but having all of American political content semi gatekept seems crazy to me. I guess if we are going to make a point of pointing out/enfocing CTOP then I guess we have to do ALL of it, but as the discussions on ARBAP2 show, a lot of stuff can qualify as US politics if you try hard enough to make it. DarkSide830 (talk) 18:28, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Applying a CTOP banner on any ITN item that even slightly falls under the realm of American politics is dirty pool, contrary to WP:CREEP and also with the intention of creating a chilling environment. It should only truly be necessary if actual disruptive behavior occurs, which would then prompt the need for a warning and enforcement of contentious topic restrictions. There's no need to give a preemptive warning on every thread if no actual disruption is occurring. Also; ITN wouldn't be "all too well known for" disruptive FORUM comments if the appropriate policies were enforced, and a warning banner that most people will skip over does not constitute enforcement. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 20:51, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd say a good compromise would be to put banners on those topics with an ECP restriction, as that's where a non-negligible amount of editors might unknowingly break the restrictions. ChaotıċEnby(talk · contribs) 23:19, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

It should at least be present for ARBPIA topics considering that its construed so broadly that the EC restriction covers ITN nomination discussions; the amount of random non-ECs who comment on every single I-P-related nomination would seem to further justify such a notice. That's obviously the big one, especially right now in the current context. JM (talk) 22:22, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

• I'm fine with it if commonsense says the topic is so hot that there is a real possibility that the discussion could get derailed. The ICJ nomination is a solid example of when to use it. But I think some discretion needs to be exercised. I personally would not have put it on the Red Sea nomination. -Ad Orientem (talk) 22:50, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

  Seconding this. The Kip 23:47, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Makes sense for things that will be blatantly controversial, such as the Indian temple. Marking every instance of AP2 is likely not needed. Curbon7 (talk) 23:20, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I would only add them if there is clearly statements bordering on violating the terms that those CTOP banners cover. I think implicit in working at ITN is that editors should be aware of the general types of restrictions that Arbcom and the community has placed on certain topics. Masem (t) 01:27, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Status of March Madness from ITN/R

College Football Playoff isn’t in the ITN/R but March Madness is. Both of these sports aren’t that important such as the NFL and NBA. There has been controversy about this thing going on right now in the nominations page, but I think it’s time to get rid of March Madness from ITN/R since the viewership of CFB is much more higher than CBB and CFP is bigger than March Madness. 2601:2C2:500:A440:4C4A:D068:7C9A:566C (talk) 12:58, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

• Comment I think this shouldn't be on ITN/R for multiple reasons (e.g. amateur event, business vs sport etc.), but we had similar discussions about revising its status last year. You should better check them carefully so that we don't go in circles and finally end up with a moratorium on this.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 15:34, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

ITNR is not an all or nothing proposition. Not every college sport may qualify just because one does. There are other considerations besides viewership. US college football/basketball athetes are little different from the "pros" other than they don't get a salary. If amateur status means that it shouldn't get as much attention, tell that to the millions of fans and reliable sources that cover it. 331dot (talk) 17:47, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose Removal. I think this says more about the CFB Finals being worthy of ITN then March Madness not being so. March Madness is more then just a viewing experience. I'd go as far as to say it's a cultural experience. A several weeks long basketball festival if you will. And viewership numbers are misleading here. The CFB Championship garnered ~17.2 million viewers last year. Yes, the March Madness final had only ~14.7 by contrast, but that was only one game. The first round also had ~8.4 million. Add all the rounds up and the viewership is easily higher. DarkSide830 (talk) 20:00, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

• Comment I'm not an American, and don't care about American football at all, but I do feel User:331dot and others have a point. College football seems to me to be amateur in name only, and to be a major sport in the US. We have lots of obscure sports on ITNR - it wouldn't really hurt adding this, and it would probably be of use to the American users of EN wikipedia (and to those who say wikipedia should be global: of course it should be, but that doesn't mean we can't nod from time to time to regions that have significant amounts of users). Khuft (talk) 21:23, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
• Remove. If you're going to take the Boat Race out of ITN/R on the basis that it's an amateur student event of limited interest, then there is no real argument for keeping this one. DarkSide830, you say 'it's a cultural experience': so was the Boat Race - and it had a hell of a lot more history to it too; I find it funny you voted to drop the Boat Race but keep this event. My thoughts on this amateur event can be summed up as "I fail to see anything in reading up on this event that demonstrates its importance even within the context of rowing basketball, much less sports and society as a whole", which was your rationale for removing the BR. The two are similar enough to draw a parallel in removing this for the same reasons. I'm sure this proposal will get voted down by the weight of US editors piling on to vote keep, but there is no reason to keep this one at ITN/R - SchroCat (talk) 09:08, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

  I voted to drop The Boat Race because it's niche as all get out. Basketball is a top 10 sport in popularity by basically any metric you can find. Not only is rowing not a high-interest sport, the Boat Race was neither a global nor a national level championship. It's a competition between two schools. I mean, posting The Boat Race would be like posting Army-Navy, which actually attracts about the same viewership. March Madness is notable for the cultural impact, but it's also well more popular in the context of one of the most globally popular sports. DarkSide830 (talk) 19:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  The Boat Race is limited to the same two schools every year. March Madness is an open 68-team field. This argument is a tired one pushed entirely by those salty about the Boat Race’s justified removal. The Kip 05:00, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

• They should both be ITN/R because they're both incredibly popular and get a massive amount of media attention (far more than many ITN/R sports items, though that's not hugely relevant). But also, as stated above, it's not all-or-nothing with college sports, and also also, ITN/R is dumb. -- Kicking222 (talk) 14:14, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
• Remove. Not that I expect it to actually happen... we argue about this every year but somehow "March Madness" got itself ensconced in the ITN/R and is very difficult to dislodge... but no harm in continuing to try. College sports shouldn't be included for the same reason as the FA Cup and other "secondary" events within a domestic sporting system should not. We don't even regularly blurb all of the European top-tier football leagues, and those certainly attract a lot of fans too.  — Amakuru (talk) 14:18, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
• Remove We shouldn't be posting sporting events involving students since they are amateur gameplay. We should include the top levels of competition for each country and the world. Including American college sports opens up a big can of worms about college events in other countries. Popularity does not mean something should be blurbed. ITN is not a news ticker. I'd agree with what Amakuru stated above. Noah, AA^Talk 15:07, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't see what can of worms you are talking about. If there are other college events with similar levels of popularity / notability as the NCAA basketball tournament or NCAA football championship, then we can blurb those as well. We are not all of a sudden going to post some random other college event. What many here don't seem to understand is that NCAA basketball and NCAA football have levels of popularity and cultural significance in the US as much as (or even more than) top-level professional sports. I suspect there are more viewers and followers of NCAA basketball or football than MLS or MLB. If we restrict sports events blurbs to only professional events, then that is fine, but we cannot just say that because college sports is amateur level, they receive less interest. Natg 19 (talk) 18:44, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

• Remove March Madness bracket pools are a cultural phenomenon in the US. The level of engagement for this cannot be overstated - everyone from toddlers and grannies are involved. The vast majority of entrants know nothing about the competition and have watched zero regular season games. By the end of the first weekend though, most brackets are "busted" and interest wanes. By the time the final occurs two weeks later, very few people are still engaged. If you stopped ten Americans on the street, you'd be unlikely to find one that could tell you last year's champion. GreatCaesarsGhost 18:20, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
• Comment this was discussed in March/April (March/April 2023), with a no consensus closure: Wikipedia_talk:In_the_news/Archive_100#Potential_removal_of_March_Madness_from_ITN/R. Natg 19 (talk) 18:52, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

  Consensus can change.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 19:04, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

  Not disagreeing per se, just noting the previous discussion. Natg 19 (talk) 19:05, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

  I noted that there were discussions in my first comment immediately below the original post. Agreed on adding the links, but the outcomes may sound a bit suggestive. Let editors visit the links to digest the whole discussions.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 19:26, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

• Retain WP:ITN/C#Please do not... Oppose an item just because the event is only relating to a single country, or failing to relate to one. We post a lot of such content, so these comments are generally unproductive. We have gone over this again and again. There's no reason to prohibit amateur competitions at ITN for being amateur other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:05, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

• But no-one seems to be saying it's because of a single country - the rationales so far are about it not representing a high enough echelon of sport. As to IDONTLIKEIT, I don't think that's the case at all either. Straw men arguments aren't going to sway my opinion or anyone else's probably. - SchroCat (talk) 19:10, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

  You made an argument comparing March Madness to The Boat Race, which is a different logical fallacy. I don't expect to change IDONTLIKEIT votes, just to point them out for whoever judges the merits of the arguments. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:18, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

• I'm sorry you seem to be going round in ever decreasing circles with this: I did not make a comment based on IDONTLIKEIT, despite the number of times you try and say so. Your time may be better spent arguing a positive case, rather than trying to trash others, because that line isn't working out. - SchroCat (talk) 19:28, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
• I tend to agree with SchroCat on this. WP:IDONTLIKEIT seems to be the main label for a view that someone doesn’t agree with. We don’t explicitly prohibit posting amateur sport events, but the fact that something is ‘amateur’ indicates that there’s something ‘professional’ at a higher level. That being said, the argument that we shouldn’t post amateur sport events is absolutely valid.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 22:57, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

• @SchroCat: I don't see where Muboshgu is calling out your comment? The IDONTLIKEIT point was generally about people's opinions on amateur sports and ITN. That's a line of argument which has been made by multiple people here and in the related ITNC discussion. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 08:35, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

• I'm not sure there is anything to be gained by going even further off at a tangent with this, except to say that I did not say he did say that. I was simply stating that my !vote was not IDONTLIKEIT, and that such a lazy line of argument shouldn't be used, but instead a positive comment about why this story should be included would be more profitable. I don't think pulling on this particular string is going to increase the effectiveness of the thread as to whether to remove or keep the story at INTR. - SchroCat (talk) 08:51, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  Indeed my IDONTLIKEIT comment was about opposition to this item in general. The logical fallacy of comparing this to The Boat Race is all on SchroCat. ITN should be about posting quality articles of interest to at least some group of people. Nothing is going to be of interest to everybody and yet so many oppose votes seem to be looking for that level of unanimity, making this place quite unpleasant and unproductive. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:06, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

• So people holding a different opinion to you makes it unpleasant and unproductive? Humbug. If there was more of a fixed rationale as to the type of article that should and shouldn’t be at INTR (or, heaven forbid, at ITN at all), it would remove much of the opposition to business events pretending to be a third-rate sporting contest. Put criteria in place first and the rest falls away. It’s not necessarily about ‘unanimity’, but in avoiding the silly double standards on display here. And thanks, but there’s no logical fallacy, just an unwillingness to see the parallels; and I don’t want to take the credit for drawing those parallels: they were being drawn last year when this was discussed and the BR was being removed. It’s a lot of people drawing the same parallels for you to be pointing the finger at me. - SchroCat (talk) 18:08, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  Not what I said. If only people could accept that the news items they don't like can still be posted because others are interested in them, it would be more pleasant and productive at ITN. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:04, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  So you don’t like people having an opinion that differs from yours, I get it. But that’s not the grounds on which I’m commenting here. Having a structure or criteria for posting would be one way of avoiding the current insular culture that votes on its own IDONTLIKEIT/ILIKEIT criteria while bemoaning the input of people who don’t try and keep their fiefdom to themselves. - SchroCat (talk) 21:03, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  If you're gonna misrepresent what I say, why should I respond any further? – Muboshgu (talk) 21:21, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  You don’t have to reply to anything, but I’m not misrepresenting anything. You have a view of how you want ITN to work, but so do others, but trying to say it’s unpleasant when people give their opinions is neither here nor there: no-ones single opinion should be ignored just because you don’t like it. - SchroCat (talk) 21:50, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  This may be a good time to drop the stick and stop bludgeoning the very dead horse. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 21:52, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  A comment was directed at me; I answered it. Feel free to step away if you wish. - SchroCat (talk) 22:02, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

• Wait I maintain that removal will be easier in the fall. InedibleHulk (talk) 19:33, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
• Retain I don't see the logical reasoning for keeping amateur sports out of ITN. ("But they're amateurs!" is not a logical reason.) Folks, ITN exists to serve Wikipedia's readers by showcasing what's in the news. If a sporting final is prominent, let's post it. March Madness certainly qualifies, and I'm very open to seeing a case made for those "European top-tier football leagues" mentioned above when the next one comes around. The last thing ITN needs to do is post less. +1 to Muboshgu as well. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 08:29, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
  • I'd also note that in 2023, the men's and women's March Madness finals averaged around 14 and 10 million viewers, respectively. The men's broadcast was one of the most-watched broadcasts in the US in 2023, beating every single game in the NBA Finals. The NBA is the US professional basketball league and its finals are ITNR. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 08:29, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
    • ITN has never been a popularity contest, as people keep telling Andrew every time he points out which are the most popular pages on news reports. Third tier sports just aren't suitable for ITN, and all those who clamoured for the Boat Race to be removed. "The Boat Race March Madness pales in comparison to most of the other entries on ITNR" as someone opined in the BR removal discussion. There are double standards being applied on this point, as there is a close parallel between the two stories. I don't have an axe to grind over the Boat race, but it's disingenuous to try and ditch one and retain the other: that's where an IDONTLIKEIT vibe is showing up. - SchroCat (talk) 09:00, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

      ITN is very clearly a popularity contest. The trouble is that the voters are just a handful of self-selected editors who do not represent our millions of readers, the population in general or any objective criteria. So, for example, women are usually unrepresented and that's one reason that sport gets undue weight. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:01, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

      Very frankly, SchroCat, it's more of an WP:IDHT vibe. :-) Thanks for weighing in. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 17:14, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I have no idea what you’re trying to say with that comment, but never mind. - SchroCat (talk) 17:21, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

• Last discussion was at Wikipedia talk:In the news/Archive 100 § Potential removal of March Madness from ITN/R, less than a year ago. Closed as "No consensus". There was another one just a few months before that at Wikipedia talk:In the news/Archive 98 § Verify status of NCAA Basketball for ITN/R—Bagumba (talk) 09:38, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
• Related RfC At Wikipedia talk:In the news/Archive 99 § (Closed) Request for Comment: Amateur sporting events, the conclusion was:

  There is consensus against a blanket exclusion of amatuer sports at ITN.

  —Bagumba (talk) 09:44, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  Another straw man. No-one is arguing for a blanket ban: it's a focused discussion on one entry. - SchroCat (talk) 09:49, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  No-one is arguing for a blanket ban...: Others above have cited other amateur events not being posted as reason to remove this one. —Bagumba (talk) 10:00, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  Saying other amateur events have not been posted isn't the same as saying there's a "blanket ban". Even the Boat Race, which is now removed from ITN/R, would be eligible for inclusion if someone happened to nominate it and it happened to find consensus. I'm not even sure "blanket ban" is a concept that exists at ITN. It would be like WP:ITN/N - the never list as opposed to ITN/R, the recurring list.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Amakuru (talk • contribs) 10:10, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  To clarify, my point was that others saying amateur evert XYZ wasn't posted seem to be implying that all amateur events should not be posted. Nonetheless, at a minimum, WP:OTHERSTUFFDOESNTEXIST applies. Argue this event on its own merits (or lack thereof). Regards.—Bagumba (talk) 10:19, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  And my intention is to remove it from R in the fall, neither ban nor exclude it. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:23, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  +1 on that from me. - SchroCat (talk) 11:25, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  CFP is rejected every year for being amateur, local, and not top tier in attention or competition. When people point out those same arguments apply to CBB, the response is OTHERSTUFFEXIST or IDONTLIKEIT. I'm okay with ITN not posting either or posting both (and TBR, too), but we should have consistency as a project. That requires considering "the kind of things we post." Arguing each event on its own merits is the problem; people decide whether or not they personally LIKEIT, then find the argument that supports that position. Since reasonable arguments could be made in either direction, it becomes a vote count. GreatCaesarsGhost 13:22, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

  CFP is rejected every year...: except when it isn't—Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/January 2020 § (Posted) 2020 College Football Playoff National Championship—Bagumba (talk) 16:29, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Not really making the point you think you are there. GreatCaesarsGhost 17:54, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

"Every year". Right.—Bagumba (talk) 18:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

You used the word yourself - "except". _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:19, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

The one thing that the basketball finals have over the football ones is that it *is* a proper tourney, with 64 teams vying for the title and most of those are based on statistically-best performance over the season, whereas even with next years' football being increased to 12 teams, the invited teams are still primarily going to be from the coach/press-picked top teams (which like this year can leave out undefeated teams in favor of bigger schools). However, I also think that with basketball being a more worldwide sport, that in terms of importance it is not one of the top pro-level competitions so we should not include it. Masem (t) 15:31, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

"Importance" is not necessarily tied to being "top pro level", which is why the prior RfC had a consensus against excluding all amateur sports from ITN. And there's no ITN guideline on what a "proper tourney" entails.—Bagumba (talk) 16:27, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

+1 to Bagumba's comments just above. These are made up bars created for this article to hurdle. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 17:11, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Another +1 from me. It'd be nice if we could just stick with "quality article of sufficient interest to at least some identifiable group" rather than invent our own personal criteria, which often are simply IDONTLIKEIT ("It's not 'top level'! It's not a proper tournament!") – Muboshgu (talk) 17:27, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

This is a mirror image of the IDONTLIKEIT voters at the Boat Race delisting. Pick a standard and stick to it, because there are double and triple standards being applied all over the place here. - SchroCat (talk) 17:52, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I didn't support delisting The Boat Race. I do agree that too many ITN voters apply inconsistent logic. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:44, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Importance is clearly and objectively defined by the professional level and breadth of competition of the championship. One might be arguing popularity for these college events, but Wikipedia purposely ignores popularity for determination of most content. Masem (t) 18:15, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Importance is clearly and objectively defined by the professional level and breadth of competition of the championship: Where is that consensus? —Bagumba (talk) 18:20, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Its not consensus, it should be common sense that these are objective measurements to whether a competition is important or not. Or at least, stressing that popularity is not the guideline for WP is a common aspect in P&G like WP:NOT and WP:N as well as ITN's own guidelines. Masem (t) 20:00, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose removal. If users don't understand how this tournament is different than the Boat Race, they quite frankly have no business commenting here. For one, March Madness includes 68 teams that have to qualify for the tournament. The Boat Race is a competition between two schools. We never put the Army-Navy football game or Duke-UNC CBB game on here. Jessintime (talk) 17:46, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

”they quite frankly have no business commenting here”. Ummmm... No. No, no, no, no, no. Don’t try and marginalise people from commenting just because you disagree with them. Someone could easy say ‘If you’re not able to understand where the similarities lie, you shouldn’t be here. This type of comment goes completely against all that WP used to be about. - SchroCat (talk) 17:52, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Though Jessintime's tone is poor, I agree with their sentiment. The Boat Race is a scheduled event between two set schools with limited scope, and limited interest, compared to basketball and American football. The NCAA basketball final (March Madness) and the college football playoff final are tournament style, with many schools involved. The only parallel between the two is that they are amateur (not professional) events. If we posted events such as El Clasico or the Army-Navy football game or Duke-UNC CBB game, then I would support The Boat Race being on ITNR. Natg 19 (talk) 18:51, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

What does the Boat Race have to do with anything? It isn't in ITN/R anymore. GreatCaesarsGhost 02:18, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

People keep citing its removal as reason for why March Madness should be removed as well, despite the two events having almost nothing in common besides being amateur in nature. The Kip 05:01, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose removal per Jessintime’s vote, and simply the fact this is a massive, popular event with widespread secondary coverage. This is very quickly turning into a ridiculous revenge push from those still holding a grudge over The Boat Race. The Kip 05:02, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

  Agreed. DarkSide830 (talk) 05:37, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

• ...I think it’s time to get rid of March Madness from ITN/R since the viewership of CFB is much more higher than CBB and CFP is bigger than March Madness. Flawed WP:OTHERSTUFFDOESNTEXIST logic. It could be that the error is CFB not being in ITNR, not that basketball doesn't belong.—Bagumba (talk) 05:55, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

  I fully am on this side of things. I think we've created a lot of silly arguments that have kept CFB off ITN in recent years that then serve as jumping-off points towards attacking other items such as March Madness. DarkSide830 (talk) 01:37, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose removal Widely covered, players come from not just the U.S. but all over the world, international interest. Has had quality articles the past several years as well. Spencer^T•C 05:30, 29 January 2024 (UTC)