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Does Wikipedia need to start pre-addressing suitability for ITN (on an individual basis) for "old person dies" blurbs? The quality issues aside, a few editors seem to think it was rushed or inappropriate to post a blurb and are suggesting that "support blurb, obviously" comments be discounted. Which is backwards; the stronger the case for a blurb, the less of an argument is needed. Also, it would be much easier to limit these discussions to "article quality" if the "Not a head of state, not a head of government, so not sufficiently notable" style comments did not have to be rebutted. [[Special:Contributions/217.180.228.138|217.180.228.138]] ([[User talk:217.180.228.138|talk]]) 16:02, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
Does Wikipedia need to start pre-addressing suitability for ITN (on an individual basis) for "old person dies" blurbs? The quality issues aside, a few editors seem to think it was rushed or inappropriate to post a blurb and are suggesting that "support blurb, obviously" comments be discounted. Which is backwards; the stronger the case for a blurb, the less of an argument is needed. Also, it would be much easier to limit these discussions to "article quality" if the "Not a head of state, not a head of government, so not sufficiently notable" style comments did not have to be rebutted. [[Special:Contributions/217.180.228.138|217.180.228.138]] ([[User talk:217.180.228.138|talk]]) 16:02, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
: Or, if that is too distasteful, there could just be two headings for discussion on "RD/Blurb" discussions; "quality" and "blurbiness". [[Special:Contributions/217.180.228.138|217.180.228.138]] ([[User talk:217.180.228.138|talk]]) 16:07, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Revision as of 16:07, 30 November 2023

Click here to nominate an item for In the news. In the news toolbox

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)[reply]

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). Brandmeistertalk 19:13, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
I've tossed a request at Bot Requests for this. Masem (t) 13:15, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
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)[reply]
  • @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)[reply]
    @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)[reply]
  • a question: is <small> used in ITN? —usernamekiran (talk) 16:41, 15 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @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)[reply]
  • @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)[reply]
    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)[reply]
    @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)[reply]
    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)[reply]
    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)[reply]
    @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:
    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)[reply]
    @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)[reply]
    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)[reply]
  • 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)[reply]
    @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)[reply]
    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)[reply]
    @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)[reply]
    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)[reply]
    @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)[reply]

RD batching

We need to do a better job of batching these. Matthew Perry was on the main page for barely 5 hours because of how long it took to promote articles of people who predeceased him. The current run has 5 of 6 people who predeceased him and 1 who died on the same day.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:50, 29 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Ideally, a promoting admin should be starting at the bottom of the ITNC list and adding those first, than top down or other "favoritism" reasons. Eg in this case this edit from Ad Orietem jumped to Perry, then Stephan later went through to add several others that were also already ready but just lower down the list when Perry was ready (at the time of this diff). (In this case IAR to get Perry back in line with those other new noms would be reasonable.) Masem (t) 00:10, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Masem. This rotation was particularly abrupt (and on a Sunday, to boot). Readers will be looking for Perry (far more, I warrant, than any of the other listings), so IAR, reinstate him at the front, and give him another ride on the merry-go-round. Moscow Mule (talk) 00:39, 30 October 2023 (UTC) (But nothing of the above should be construed as anything other than the utmost respect for posting admins' tireless work.)[reply]
Perhaps we should create a process that gives us a better idea of how long RDs have been up without having to look at diffs. – Muboshgu (talk) 00:40, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
While we do not date RDs in the template (since they can be posted at any time within 7 days of nomination and are posted in the order promoted), perhaps it would be good if the "first" RD addition of a given day (after 00:00 UTC turnover) should be invisicommented to date that, with all subsequent RDs assumed to have been posted on that same day. Masem (t) 02:41, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we should codify WP:ITNRD that we can leave extra RD entries beyond the usual six if items have been up for < 12 hours, instead of leaving it to IAR.—Bagumba (talk) 07:08, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is a good idea. Curbon7 (talk) 20:40, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
A while ago (I think last year), an admin boldly added an invisible comment after each entry indicating the time it was posted, but this was reverted by another admin. Curbon7 (talk) 07:21, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I sort of vaguely recall seeing the diff, but don't remember why it was removed. If, as I suspect, it was because it seemed unmaintainable - well, my template-fu is about fifteen years out-of-date, but I've got a prototype template in my sandbox that turns *{{subst:itnrd|[[Matthew Perry]]}} into *[[Matthew Perry]]<!--leave until 05:23, 30 October 2023--> (i.e, 12 hours after the edit substing it). ({{rd}} and {{RD}} are already taken.) I don't post RDs myself; I mostly work with articles in much worse shape, so don't trust myself not to miss something in the quality check before posting, especially if there's only been one or two comments. Admins who do post RDs: would you use this? Would you prefer more elaborate format like *{{subst:itnrd|Joe Schmoe (electrician)|Joe Schmoe|nowrap=yes}} → *{{nowrap|[[Joe Schmoe (electrician)|Joe Schmoe]]}}, or just *{{nowrap|{{subst:itnrd|[[Joe Schmoe (electrician)|Joe Schmoe]]}}}}? (Prototype can't handle either quite yet.) —Cryptic 03:56, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The readers looking for his article weren't bothered by this. It's spelled the exact same way his name is, can't miss. Those unaware were the real hypothetical victims here. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:36, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've restored Perry. We often IAR with a 7th (even 8th) RD item to ensure an entry stays up for 12h min. —Bagumba (talk) 00:50, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I feel it is a good service to have it restored. I don't know how long restoration to 7th position will help, but it is better than 5 hours.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:53, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's a shame we can't do some HTML magic where we show 5 or 6 deaths at a time, but then also have a "More Recent Deaths" button or link ahead of that, which would then expand or "unfold" 2 or 3 or however many more qualified recent deaths onto the template, similar to how hats work for expanded content. It'd be useful during surge periods, while also still maintaining balance on the Main Page for the first time that it loads, as the "More Deaths" portion of the header would be collapsed until the user clicks that link. And we'd only need to do that in unlikely scenarios when we have something like 7 or 8 RDs posted within a 24-hour time span. The button could be labeled "Show more..." or "Continued..." or something like that. Duly signed, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:50, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We already have a "more recent deaths" button. It's the link to Deaths in 2023 which is concealed by the "Recent deaths" title. That page is usually quite up-to-date and comprehensive, listing many notable deaths for each day. And it's usually a top-read article as it averages over 130,000 views every day. It seems to be so effective because discussions are exceptional and its editors are able to edit. ITN's RD is just a fraction of that content. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:28, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Other language Wikipedias such as German, French and Spanish, include the date of death in their equivalent sections and naturally list the entries in that order. The Spanish one has quite a lot of entries. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:06, 30 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So as an idea for batching, let's say that we should only post RDs in one batch every 12 or 24 hours. This is up to the posting admins to make sure they are not stepping on other admins' toes. When an admin posts they would be required to go through the entire ITNC page, from bottom up, to add items to the list as one batch. Other editors (not just admins) can mark RDs as ready to help the process here. The "downside" that we will not have rapid updates of RDs of articles that are already in good shape, but that's maybe 25% of the RD ITNCs from my experience? --Masem (t) 01:26, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we have enough active admins to ensure a systematic post every 12–24 hours. I've seen RDs marked "ready" that I was WP:INVOLVED with that took a while to post. We don't need more barriers to timely posts. If Perry had been left as the 7th RD, there wouldn't have been an issue. —Bagumba (talk) 14:51, 31 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
As I pointed out, if when Perry was posted that the posting admin started from the oldest "ready" RD and added those before adding Perry, we also would have avoided this situation. We need admins not to play favorites or to rush newer "popular" noms before reviewing the older ones waiting to be posted. It basically boils down to admins taking more responsibility and carefulness when posting. Masem (t) 00:35, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps this suggestion could be added to WP:ITN/A. Curbon7 (talk) 01:07, 1 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Masem, forgive me if i am misunderstanding you, but i think that, had the posting administrators posted the rds in chronological order, we still would have had the same problem. i believe the only difference is that perry wouldn't have been the one bumped. dying (talk) 18:59, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Correct, and quite possibly no one would have noticed. Stephen 21:15, 6 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • For some reason, I have spent an inordinate amount of time (perhaps more than many others here?) thinking about this topic over the last few (three?) years. At the end of it -- I have come to the conclusion that the better is the enemy of the good, and have made my peace. So, let's start from somewhere, here goes.
  1. Should we at least ensure that an RD stays 24 hours on the carousel? Yes, if we can. Unfortunately a few proposals were made on that front and 'community consensus' did not emerge on this topic. So that failed.
  2. Can we pass this responsibility to posting admins and ensure that they have a look at the RD falling off the carousel and perform an WP:IAR if the falling RD has spent less than 24 hours and allow that one to stay for a few hours longer? Some admins already do that. However, we all know that admin capacity is super hard to come by and we cannot mandate this. A proposal to solidify this approach also failed, iirc.
  3. Can we add a timestamp as a comment in the posting template so that it is easier for an admin to see when the falling-off RD was posted? Seems a simple solution to add a timestamp, but, we could not find out how this was to be done. Conceptually it sounds simple to add a timestamp as a comment next to the article title on the ITN template.
  4. Can we add a couple of extra RDs on the carousel? This proposal failed because we could not align on screen sizes and did not want RDs spilling over to three lines on some screens.
  5. Today (or at least a couple of months ago) we have an issue that our posting curve is not smooth. i.e. we do not post at regular intervals. Even when we have articles marked as a ready, they stay in that state for a very long time. This is primarily because of available admin capacity. We had run the numbers and had seen that the entire ITN project is reliant on a handful of admins. Definitely thankful for their time. So, the answer is a) we need more admins to participate, or b) explore a new role of an 'admin without tools', or c) technology solutions to create a staging / holding area where non-admins move content to and a script posts at a pre-defined interval e.g. 4 hours. Unfortunately none of these solutions have found takers for some reason or the other.
  6. With all of that said, where are we right now? Answer is -- we make do with what we have. -- Admins are encouraged to:
  1. Post more often
  2. Not batch the postings but post one at a time
  3. Evaluate articles from the bottom of the page
To conclude, like I mentioned earlier, sometimes better is the enemy of the good. And, we have something that is working, however flawed. I continue to remain in awe of the number of articles that are improved to main page levels of quality in this project and that is an absolute WIN for Wikipedia at large and there are no two ways about it. Happy Diwali to all those who celebrate. Ktin (talk) 18:29, 11 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Should we at least ensure that an RD stays 24 hours on the carousel? Yes, if we can. Unfortunately a few proposals were made on that front and 'community consensus' did not emerge on this topic. So that failed.: Keeping them up for at least 12 hours seems to be a common WP:IAR practice. A few mentioned 12h (instead of 24h), because that's the minimum amount of time that DYK hooks stay up. —Bagumba (talk) 07:45, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
iirc that proposal didn't pass either. Ktin (talk) 20:05, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Remove sign parameter from Template:ITN candidate

Currently, {{ITN candidate}} has a |sign= parameter that almost everybody uses. However, I don't see why this should be in the template instead of having the proposer just add their signature after the template (which is what this currently displays as) and handling such signatures that are parameters inside the template is quite harder for many discussions scripts to do. For example, Convenient Discussions would mistakenly reply inside the template. I don't see at all why this exists and I want to remove this. My topic on this at Template talk:ITN candidate got no replies and I'm not comfortable changing such a widely-used template, so I proposed it here based on Cryptic's suggestion from WP:VPI so we can hopefully discuss this and next steps. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:33, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The "nom cmt" and "sign" parameters to this template don't actually do anything except prefix "Nominator's comments:" to stuff that would appear after the template anyway, and maybe - maybe - make it less likely that very new users forget to sign. I can't see how that's worth the genuine problems it causes with tools; if it means we have to paste in {{xsign}} templates a bit more often, there's enough extremely experienced users watching ITNC to do so. —Cryptic 02:57, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If it is the case that the signature in the template screws up the newer tools used for replying, then we should get rid of it or change something (I think doing a template subst might be overkill). We'll also need to make sure that experienced users are reminded to add their signature outside the template when nominating. Masem (t) 00:04, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Cryptic also proposed that when/if we make this change, we also update the examples to remove the mention of |sign= and |nom_cmt= since most users appear to be copy and pasting from the examples. Should I do this right now? Aaron Liu (talk) 01:35, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
No, because we still need a way for editors to sign nominations, or at least to make sure they are aware of the steps they need to comment and sign nominations. Masem (t) 01:59, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I forgot to mention also including <!-- Additional comments go here -->~~~~ at the end Aaron Liu (talk) 02:03, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, yes, in the two copy-paste boxes we have. Yes, I think we can make that change then, but check our guidance doc to make sure that's not also in there. Masem (t) 02:22, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I would change it, and run it as a pilot, keeping a close eye on new nominations for a couple of weeks to see if problems arise. And be prepared to revert if it causes unforeseen problems. Stephen 02:16, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(I actually proposed changing the example usage without immediately changing the templates, so the old format still worked. Obviously the examples will need to change if we remove the parameters entirely.) —Cryptic 02:21, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, that brings something else up - we'll need to do something about the existing transclusions. Either leave the parameters there forever, which defeats the purpose to some extent, or subst the existing ones both on WP:ITNC and all the archives. I'd vote for substing, if that works out cleanly, since most of the archives are over the transclusion limit already. —Cryptic 02:24, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've just merged the sandbox, which aims to optimize around transclusion limit and also removes altblurbs 5 and 6, into the main template Aaron Liu (talk) 02:37, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There've been times when there have been five or six altblurbs proposed and discussed before, and you've just made those invisible in the archives. —Cryptic 02:48, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, let's undo this, that's going to cause problems. We may have to make a new template to avoid that. Masem (t) 03:10, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Preserving the appearance of the archives is the most important thing as they are huge and are often searched and referenced. And I already find it confusing when the older archives don't work properly due to some other structural change. In this case, the signature parameter seems unimportant as it is usually defaulted and so I'm not seeing a good reason to fiddle with it.
Note also that the title for this section currently contains a spelling error: "parmater" while at the template talk it's misspelt "paramter". Editors who make but do not notice such glaring errors should not be messing with templates as they will tend to break their syntax. See The Era of “Move Fast and Break Things” Is Over.
Andrew🐉(talk) 10:07, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This is relevant, how, exactly? Fixing templates isn't editing articles; two of the most brilliant programmers I've ever worked with couldn't spell worth a damn. —Cryptic 04:39, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
An obvious simple workaround would be to create a new nearly identical template. This preserves the integrity of the archives, and I think everyone just copy/pastes the parameters from the candidates page anyways. Curbon7 (talk) 10:18, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I have updated the examples. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:59, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
So far, we’ve got one person who did it correctly and one person who didn’t. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:41, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I just created a nomination at ITN/C. I did so by copying the example in the documentation at {{ITN_candidate}}. The main work required was to identify the relevant article, compose the blurb and identify the updaters. The signature required no effort at all. So, my experience is that this isn't a problem that needs fixing and so we should do nothing.
Note also that the template currently says emphatically that "This template should not be substituted." per {{nosubst}}.
Andrew🐉(talk) 15:14, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I do not understand your argument. Why can’t we change the example? Aaron Liu (talk) 15:20, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that, since this is both not substed and the signature appears within the template parameters rather than after it, any attempt to reply using discussion scripts also puts the reply in the template parameters. You using the template isn't the problem. The person responding to you using the template is. —Cryptic 04:36, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Govvy @Kiwiz1338 @Golan1911 Is there any reason y’all aren’t signing your nominations and any way we could make the hint more intuitive? Just asking. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:00, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, hiya there, I think I fail to copy the last line from the RD template, sorry about that. Govvy (talk) 18:24, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, it’s ok. Is there some way we could make it better? I tried making the template close on the same line as the last line, but that evidently hasn’t worked out. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:37, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Wait a second… I’m crazy! They’re on different lines! I’ll try that first. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:38, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Reviewers' attention needed"

If there's anything to show that ITN and RD should be cleaved apart... we aren't even paying attention to RDs anyway. JM (talk) 16:31, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Even if we split it, I bet that RDs would still go unattended because of the fact the newest default theme eliminates the TOC to that level. The old style allowed one to see at a glance any "READY" or "NEEDS ATTENTION" in one spot, now an admin has to either unfold each date on the left or go through the entire page. I know there's an option to modify the CSS to force this table, but this shouldn't be the solution and won't be friendly to new admins that want to help at ITN.
I am wondering if we have a daily bot that can look for special tags in short templates (like "itn ready" or "itn attn"), or even if just using using simple catches of "(Ready)" and "(Attn)" in the H4 headers to list out ITN items that need admin attention for posting. Masem (t) 01:24, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I still think the new display theme wastes too much screen space, ITNC or not. I set Preferences->Appearance->Vector legacy (2010). —Bagumba (talk) 01:48, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think any are being missed from posting, but there do seem to be occasional batches of barely noticeable people that are plucked from Deaths in 2023. Those often remain unreviewed as there's not a great deal of interest in assessing relatively obscure biographies. The blurb nominations get all the interest and commentary. Stephen 03:43, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't usually pay much attention to RD as it's just a list of names, like the phone book. Today, these are:
What I mainly notice is that these are all Anglo-American but I've not heard of any of them and have no interest. Bob White is a common name and so needs disambiguation but doesn't get it.
Looking at the latest full day in Deaths in 2023, we have:
This seems much better in that it explains who these people were, provides a reference for each death and is much more comprehensive, timely and global in its coverage. It also includes someone that I've heard of – the prolific SF author, Michael Bishop. He would probably stand little chance at RD because, with many works to his credit, some jobsworth would insist that each of them must be cited.
So, on this evidence, RD should indeed be separated from ITN so that it might flourish as a separate obituary section, as we see on the front page of other Wikipedia languages. It just needs to follow the model above to be far more informative and productive.

References

  1. ^ Basudeb Acharia: প্রয়াত বাঁকুড়ার প্রাক্তন সিপিএম সাংসদ বাসুদেব আচারিয়া (in Bengali)
  2. ^ Mexico's first openly non-binary magistrate found dead at home
  3. ^ Former President Donald Trump's Sister Dies At 86 In New York
  4. ^ Muere el arquitecto Héctor Benavides, presentador de noticias, a los 82 años (in Spanish)
  5. ^ Michael Bishop (1945-2023)
  6. ^ El dramaturgo y director Fermín Cabal ha fallecido hoy en Madrid (in Spanish)
  7. ^ Ex-MP Akram Hossain Chowdhury passes away
  8. ^ Michel Ciment Dies: French Film Critic & Historian Was 85
  9. ^ Fallece exfutbolista de la UCV tras balacera (in Spanish)
  10. ^ Muere Abel Cuevas Melo (in Spanish)
  11. ^ IDF eliminates senior Hamas officials in Gaza
  12. ^ Nie żyje Krzysztof Kamiński (in Polish)
  13. ^ Умер экс-министр обороны Грузии Тенгиз Китовани (in Russian)
  14. ^ Suri Estonia teatri kauaaegne ooperisolist Ivo Kuusk (in Estonian)
  15. ^ Kabar Duka, mantan Bupati Kotabaru meninggal dunia (in Indonesian)
  16. ^ 中国热能工程领域的先行者与奠基人秦裕琨逝世，系哈工大“八百壮士”代表 (in Chinese)
  17. ^ A tribute to Gordon Wallace
  18. ^ Former Fresno State football player Devon Wylie dies, family confirms
Andrew🐉(talk) 09:08, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
How many of those articles at Deaths of 2023 are of quality to post on the main page? Certainly we should try to pull those that are in good shape to post via ITN's RD, and not bring those that are miles away.
But we are not going to change our approach to accommodate for more recognizable names over others. RD is about 1) quality of the article and 2) the death can be verified in reliable sources. Masem (t) 13:16, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It would be a nuisance to update RD with so many entries a day, especially for the involved admins. DarkSide830 (talk) 15:53, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
some jobsworth would insist that each of them must be cited why should we allow unverified information into articles linked from the main page? Masem is right, RD is about the quality of the article. JM (talk) 15:56, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Editors, I am thinking more along the lines of "RD is suffering under ITN" because people take more interest in blurbs than in RDs which is why it ends up with someone going through and marking so many of them as "attention needed". I've also noticed since I started this section that people keep confusing blurb standards for RD standards and acting like significance or fame has any effect on whether something is qualified for RD.
I'm NOT saying we should listen to Andrew and have a whole new obituary section and have to reorganize the main page; the RD section on the main page should be left alone, but I do think RD would do better with a separate project page. Those actually interested in RD can go there and see nothing but RDs to review, and there's nothing else on the project page like blurbs to draw people away from them.
(A further development of this would be that RDblurbs would be proposed in ITN as a blurb separately from being proposed for RD; and thus could end up having the same qualifications as normal blurbs (i.e. notable death not notable life, per most recent discussion on that matter)) JM (talk) 16:07, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
ITN overall has an issue where only "popular" or "important" topics get significant attention from those that do not regularly participate in ITN, which affects both RDs and normal non-RD blurbs. A major disaster but not one in the US or Europe? We struggle to find !votes, but make it a much smaller incident in the US and Europe and people !vote from all over. It wouldn't be as bad if these non-regulars were !voting and addressing quality issues, but 90% of the time (my estimate) they are only their to !vote feeling the topic is important to them and ignoring any quality concerns. Splitting off RD will not solve that, you will still only have people flock to popular or important people (eg compare the !votes for Matthew Perry to others of late). Sadly, that's a "WP is voluntary"-related problem that is not easy to correct beyond slapping notices everywhere that quality is a key metric (and effectively the only metric for non-blurb RDs). Masem (t) 00:51, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Stale blurbs?

All of the ITN blurbs currently displayed are at least a week old, with the oldest (2023 Nepal earthquake) being 13 days old. Furthermore, there are no new ITN blurbs being suggested/voted on (not including RD). Should some of them be allowed to leave, or is it a matter of the news cycle not being especially eventful this week? ChaotıċEnby(talk) 16:07, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't seem like anything new of major national or international scale is really making the news lately. Most newsmedia coverage is focused on the current Israel-Palestine War and its periphery covered in ongoing. JM (talk) 16:31, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There've been plenty of blurbable events, enough in the past week alone to fully replace T:ITN. Some of the articles aren't in good enough shape. More aren't worth nominating given the disfunction at ITNC. —Cryptic 16:45, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Most of these seem to be covered by the ongoing wars (Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and Myanmar), local politics, or elections (like in Madagascar or Liberia) for which the results aren't there yet.
Also genuinely asking, what's the dysfunction about? If it's related to people not !voting for lesser-known topics, I feel that having them at least nominated would be a good first step? ChaotıċEnby(talk) 16:51, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Actually this is a great argument, and I don't even think we have an issue. It might be time to abolish the whole "included in ongoing" argument as it's nebulous what is included in ongoing and to a certain extent, why should it matter? Side note, where is this policy written anyway? I can't find it in ITNCRIT. DarkSide830 (talk) 20:49, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely a point I agree with. If these are the most high-profile ongoing events (unfortunately wars) with many developments, why are they relegated to a small link each with no news, much less visible than "mere" blurbs?
A solution that could work and avoid overflooding while giving a reasonable amount of place to these news would be to give a small update (one line or a few words, maybe just a link) to the last "event" part of that ongoing. Like:
ChaotıċEnby(talk) 21:32, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
IMO I would like this as opposed to the current usage of the bottom half of the box for the traditional "Ongoing" and RD sections. Maybe use the Ongoing section and drop RD down to one line. I know people love RD, but we already link Deaths in 2023, and given the debatable nature of what constitutes an "Ongoing" event, targeting 2-3 key ongoing events as you've described may be more desirable. DarkSide830 (talk) 02:58, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There needs to be a limit, but yeah, I definitely think we could do with some laxing on the whole “covered by ongoing” point, especially considering that there are certain stories where the community decides is blur worthy even if related to an ongoing event. — Knightoftheswords 17:58, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is it's gospel to some. Yes, war generates notable events en masse as part of the larger event, but many events within larger conflicts are massively notable, and simply saying that we are "already covering it" is lacking key nuance in my mind. DarkSide830 (talk) 02:55, 28 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I thought of nominating the Indian bus crash but figured it was pointless because the community just rejected an Indian train crash on the basis that they happen all the time now. JM (talk) 17:01, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think we should slowly roll off some of the blurbs if they are around 2 weeks old, but it seems like the current status quo is to keep blurbs until they get bumped by other topics.. Natg 19 (talk) 17:27, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We cannot control when news happens or doesn't happen. That leads to periods where blurbs may only be on the list for a day, or when we have stale blurbs. There is nothing we can really do about this. Masem (t) 22:42, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There are stories out there, but I can see them being shot down as domestic politics only (Rwanda asylum plan) or not quite up to main-page quality (2023 Spanish government formation). I'd let them through, but only because the blue-capped NASCAR chap is beginning to Fernando Lugo me. Moscow Mule (talk) 23:10, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Same, I just want to still submit them because that blue guy being there for over a week is getting annoying. ChaotıċEnby(talk) 23:40, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And the deed(s) is/are done. OK, let's see how it plays out. Moscow Mule (talk) 00:36, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There are definitely stories that are also off the normal path of politics, wars/conflicts, disasters, and elections. For example, today the UK was the first in the world to approve a CRISPR-developed medication, which is well covered in mainstream sources, but the only place I see this mentioned on WP is over at 2023 in science. I have enough scientific knowledge to know this is important but not enough to write about this, so I don't see any way it can be promoted as an ITNC. And that's a volunteer problem too. Masem (t) 03:03, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'll try to add it to the CRISPR article so it can be submitted as a blurb! ChaotıċEnby(talk) 21:32, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Update: CRISPR gene editing feels like a more natural choice! ChaotıċEnby(talk) 21:44, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Created a nom for the Indian tunnel collapse and ongoing rescue. Surprised this was not nominated, but maybe it is too small scale. Natg 19 (talk) 22:01, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Per WP:ITNSIGNIF:

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.

The community has full control to nominate and allow new items to be posted, replacing older items. However, the status quo has been to be restrictive to the extent of sometimes having old posts linger.—Bagumba (talk) 01:35, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
"The community is in charge" is a complete non-answer to a very real issue: except for sports (thanks to ITN/R), there are very few news actually getting posted on ITN, with even major events being relegated as "local news". ChaotıċEnby(talk) 23:27, 19 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
'The community is in charge' is a complete non-answer... Wikipedia operates on consensus, for better or for worse. What would you propose as an alternative? —Bagumba (talk) 01:27, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that no-one is really in charge. Editors can't do much because the key page is protected. And the admins can't do much because there's quite a few of them and so they tend to be cautious and conservative. The discussions which supposedly power and drive the process are hopeless because key issues like significance are based on personal opinions rather than objective criteria and evidence.
There are many ways that this might be done better. These can be seen operating just fine elsewhere and include:
  • Portal:Current events which has much the same goal and works better because editors are free to edit it.
  • Deaths in 2023 which is likewise a page that anyone can edit – the way that Wikipedia is supposed to work.
  • Did You Know which runs so many new articles that it is often overloaded. Its process is based on clear criteria and a checklist. Other key features are that there's usually just a single reviewer per article and the set building doesn't require admin powers – admins push a button to promote the prepared queues in a more automated way.
  • The trending topics pages which are based on readership stats which are readily available. See WP:TOP25, Top Views and the Official App to see some examples.
Of course, these other examples are not perfect but they don't have to be. As Churchill said,

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

Andrew🐉(talk) 23:45, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but consensus is built at different levels, and we have various guidelines and criteria to know what we should or shouldn't do. My point is, the debate shouldn't have to be had from scratch at every nomination. ChaotıċEnby(talk) 18:52, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Revising sports recurring items - Motorsport

Hello everyone - I had a look here WP:ITNSPORTS and I was left wondering how could such a specific sport as motorsport be featured most often? There are 150 countries where association football is the most popular sport while there is not a single one where motorsport is [1]. How could they be on equal terms on Wikipedia then, I don't understand. Below is the summary table with all the sports featured more than once per year, and you can see that all of the sports below are Olympic, but not motorsport. Moreover, looking at top-50 2022 sport events in the US[2] you can see that it's comparable to basketball, baseball, hockey – sports that are featured much less frequently on Wikipedia.

Therefore I would like to hear community's opinion on why it is so. I suggest maybe that the allocated spots for Motorsport are revised to 3-4 per year. The freed spots could then be reallocated to some other sports which are never featured at all, such as for example figure skating

Sport Entries per year
Football (ass.) 6.5
Motorsport 6
Golf 4.5
Rugby union 4.25
Horse racing 4
Tennis 4
Basketball 3.25
Football (other) 3
Baseball 2.25
Events 2.25
Cricket 2

demistalk 10:30, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • The problem with motorsports is that it's not just one sport. Formula One, rallying and Motorcycling are obvious three completely distinct sports that just happen to share the fact that there's a motor vehicle involved. The one that stands out as being removable is the Indy 500 - yes it's an iconic race, but it's just one of a series of races leading to a championship that actually isn't ITN/R itself! It's always struck me as a bit odd, and I think the nearest similar example is The Boat Race, which we removed not long ago. Black Kite (talk) 11:07, 20 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not sure about other motor sports but Formula One is huge now globally and so there's an argument for reporting each Grand Prix, like the current ballyhoo in Las Vegas. The main problem there is that it would soon get repetitive as it has either been "Lewis Hamilton wins again" or "Max Verstappen wins again" for years.
As such sporting results are so formulaic (pun intended) and there are so many of them, then it would make sense to put them all on a separate line like Ongoing and RD. That's what professional news media usually does – put the sports into a separate section.
Andrew🐉(talk) 11:12, 20 November 2023 (UTC) (edit conflict)[reply]
Tried to make it work, here's a preview if you want! ChaotıċEnby(talk) 19:08, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That looks quite nice! I'd like it if icons were put before each row, but I also get that the main page doesn't have items and this looks good enough. Perhaps the sports section could be put above ongoing or below RD so there is a clear separation between seriousness. Aaron Liu (talk) 22:11, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Overall, there are too many sports blurbs compared to other news blurbs. Some of the problem may be too many ITN/R sports events, but some of the problem may also be that there are not enough other blurbs. JM (talk) 14:15, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, the priority should be getting more "other" blurbs rather than removing sports blurbs, although I also like Andrew's plan of putting them on a separate line. ChaotıċEnby(talk) 17:14, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Something like:
Sports: Grey Cup (Montreal Alouettes) · Cricket World Cup (Australia) · NASCAR Cup Series (Ryan Blaney)
ChaotıċEnby(talk) 17:19, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's really diminishing the relative importance of sports blurbs. We can argue there's too many, but we shouldn't try to treat them as substandard. What's next, doing the same for the various awards? or natural disasters? or elections?
The issue is the volunteer problem of developing and nominating quality articles about topics that happen to be in the news (not necessarily groundbreaking news stories) that would be appropriate to post, as to dilute the sports area more. Masem (t) 19:32, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I support doing both, actually. It's not treating sports as substandard any more than RD is treating deaths as substandard - just cutting through the fluff, as most sports blurbs are formulaic and nearly always structured the same. Plus, this allows us to both fit more sports events and leave breathing space for other blurbs (see demo). ChaotıċEnby(talk) 20:02, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
But the issue is that we aren't getting additional blurbs, and thus when sports events happen back to back, they appear to dominate the ITN box for some time. It would be different if we were rotating blurbs off daily, and still has an excess of sports blurbs, then this solution makes sense. But that's just not the case. Masem (t) 22:10, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Very good point! Agree that the priority should be getting other blurbs up and running. Maybe get more people on Wikipedia to participate in ITN? ChaotıċEnby(talk) 01:13, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Somewhat echoing what Masem said, but the problem is twofold:
  • ITN, already not exactly diverse in content, effectively becomes a disaster/politics ticker with the occasional unusual story sprinkled in.
  • As a result of the that, complaints are then magnified further over the already-existing issues of:
    • How it’s just a disaster/politics ticker, even more barren of content than the current accusation of disaster/politics/sports ticker.
    • How blurbs become on average even more stale than they already are, because there’s fewer new blurbs to push old ones off.
I can certainly see the argument for paring down the list of ITNR sports (I myself voted to remove The Boat Race from the ITNR list some months ago), but to reduce it to a singular RD-esque line is to solve a problem that doesn’t exist and in turn make existing problems worse. The proposed solution of “well, just have people contribute other blurbs” is overly optimistic at best and poorly thought out at worst; we don’t control the news, and we can’t just simply force people to come up with new blurbs. The Kip 02:11, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The solution of "have people contribute to other blurbs" isn't perfect but there is definitely work to be done, especially since important news are often missed by ITN. A few days ago, I proposed a blurb for the first CRISPR gene editing drug being approved, which got exactly one !vote and got stale... ChaotıċEnby(talk) 02:34, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also, we can't force people to come up with new blurbs, but we can definitely put up a message to encourage them to suggest unusual blurbs outside of the sports/disasters/politics trio. ChaotıċEnby(talk) 02:36, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with this concept. We shouldn't be striving to post news because it's interesting - DYK is a perfect venue for that. Politics and disasters are important. Maybe sports aren't, but I don't think we should be intentionally posting less. DarkSide830 (talk) 23:13, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • I agree with Bagumba. Motorsport is a family of sports involving a motor vehicle in the same way as football is a family of sports involving kicking a ball with the foot to score a goal. For better comparison, we expect to post 10.5 football stories a year if you include the American, Australian, Canadian and Gaelic variants. Nonetheless, one thing worth discussing is why we’re inconsistent in presenting the ITN/R items on these clearly different sports, i.e. why we use bullets for the motor sports and sub-sections for the variants of football.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 22:03, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's completely irrelevant if rugby union should be added as a variety of football or not, and whether we'd have 10.5 or 17.25 football stories per year. The point is that we're inconsistent in presenting the ITN/R items. Separating them in sub-sections is better, but that's not the case with the motor sports. The least we could do is unify the style so that we don't need to discuss this again in the future.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 12:09, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • There's probably some changes that should be made to ITNSPORTS – like, do we really need eight rugby events, but only one for American football? I've always found it puzzling that we don't list the college football championship which is regularly one of the most-viewed sports events (no. 2 in the US each year, per chart in the opening comment), even moreso than the college basketball championship which we post each year – at User:BeanieFan11/random notes I've started comparing the viewership of different events listed to see how popular each is. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:26, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I think "rugby" covers a few different sports (rugby league with 13 players and rugby union with 15, plus variants) but you do make a good point. Great job with the viewership statistics, by the way! ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 09:54, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Number is not a reason to pare down ITN/R. Personally, there are a lot of things in sports that seem kinda silly to me, and the motorsport events are not among them. Do we need snooker, darts, handball, volleyball, or yachting? Can't say I know a single person who has ever said they had any interest in watching these sports, or that they did. And if we want to go after quantity, do we need 8 rugby items? The 6 motorsport items are all different types of motorsport. I don't see what the issue is with this. DarkSide830 (talk) 19:31, 24 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yet snooker and darts are incredibly popular participation sports and the finals of those ITNR entries get big TV audiences; also, they're only contributing 1 story a year so I don't really think they're the problem. My knowledge of handball, volleyball and yachting is fairly minimal, so I'm not going to talk about those. I do notice, however, the one of the biggest participation sports in the world, badminton, doesn't even feature. Meanwhile, I do think we could trim some of the others. I don't think we really need;
  • The three national soccer leagues; yes, the Premier League does get massive audiences worldwide and that would be the one to keep if any, but all three of those often don't get posted because the articles are terrible.
  • The European Rugby Champions Cup or Super Rugby; that would leave us with the World Cup (4-yearly) and the two premier Northern and Southern hemisphere yearly tournaments, both of which get huge audiences.
  • Japan Series Baseball (as per the soccer leagues above)
  • EuroLeague Basketball
  • Do we need the Kentucky Derby and the Triple Crown (which the former is a part of)?
  • The Indianapolis 500, as I said above - yes, iconic, but so are a number of other single races (i.e. the Monaco GP)
  • American college sports, though we all know that's unlikely to happen
  • On a strictly numerical basis, the Triple Crown seems pretty harmless to include. It's only been won 13 times in the past 104 years, with some large gaps. That also makes it a lot less predictable and formulaic than most other ITNR items. 98.170.164.88 (talk) 10:05, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Handball and volleyball are internationally popular Olympic sports. Snooker and darts may not be internationally popular, but there are large audiences in the English-speaking world with growing popularity elsewhere. Yachting is a form of sailing, which is another Olympic sport.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 23:23, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I disagree that being an "Olympic sport" makes something worth including. The Olympics have a lot of sports, many niche. I don't think that handball, volleyball, snooker, and darts are not popular, it's more of interest in the professional game. ie, I enjoy playing volleyball and darts and really couldn't have told you for sure without looking at the list that there was a world championship for volleyball or that the professional game for darts was very popular. I'd retain snooker and darts based on Black Kite's analysis though. DarkSide830 (talk) 23:51, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I disagree that being an "Olympic sport" makes something worth including. Yes, that line of thinking once made all Olympic athletes inherently notable, which has since been removed by consensus from WP:NSPORTS. —Bagumba (talk) 02:26, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @DarkSide830 and Bagumba: Olympic sports are globally widespread and internationally popular—that’s why they’re Olympic. The thing is that being Olympic, i.e. globally widespread and internationally popular, isn’t the sole criterion for inclusion. You can make an argument that American or Canadian football are more popular than handball or volleyball, but that’s simply not true unless you live in an area where no-one watches those sports. Handball and volleyball are amongst the main school sports across Europe (except the British Isles), most of Africa, Iran, East Asia and parts of Latin America. Volleyball is also a popular sport in the United States. Those areas have much more population than the areas where American or Canadian football are played. In addition, one of the main surprises at the 2023 World Men's Handball Championship was the United States team primarily composed of US-born players, who were complete underdogs but qualified for the second group stage and scored two wins, which clearly indicates that the sport has growing popularity there. So, your call to revisit the ITN/R status of those sports just because you don’t know anyone who watches them should be dismissed (in the same way, Indians may argue that basketball should be revisited because it’s likely that they don’t know anyone watching that sport).--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 10:05, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    So, your call to revisit the ITN/R status of those sports just because you don’t know anyone who watches them should be dismissed: Except I never said that. What I did comment on is over inflating an ITNR item because the sport happens to be an Olympic sport. —Bagumba (talk) 10:28, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The quoted line was addressed to DarkSide. I don’t say that the Olympic status should be the main criterion, but it’s an indication of international popularity, which is exactly what weakens DarkSide’s argument above. I personally don’t know anyone watching Gaelic football or even rugby, but that’s not a reason to call for revisiting their ITN/R status.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 10:40, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think Olympic status should matter - flag football is going to be an Olympic sport: are we going to post the IFAF Flag Football World Championship (something that I, a massive football fan, had never even knew existed until recently)? BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:31, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Olympic status is an indication that a sport is globally widespread and internationally popular, but it’s most definitely not the only criterion for inclusion. I mentioned it in response to DarkSide’s argumentation above, not that it’s the main criterion that we should hang on.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 10:27, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    But "popularity" is A. debatable and B. does not confer interest by involved parties in related world championships or the professional game. That was the gist of my earlier comment on darts and volleyball. Do most that participate in these sports have an interest in viewing their top-level competitions. Seems to track for darts, I'd say, but the point is general popularity as far as it relates to ITN is debatable. DarkSide830 (talk) 16:36, 26 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Breakdancing is also an Olympic sport as of next year, and I doubt there’d be any support to add that to ITNR. The Kip 17:49, 27 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dealing with "popular" or "well-known" deaths

Ignoring the question of a blurb or not, and the issue it being pulled and then reposted, the Kissinger death ITNC shows a long-standing problem that we have people that generally don't come to ITNC and !vote support just because the people is someone well-known, famous, beloved, or a whole host of other reasons related to fame and popularity. We can't prevent editors from throwing support votes this way, but we do have the problem is that is all they are !voting on without considering the quality of the article, which in this case, led to pre-mature posting (only 3-4 !votes made comment on quality and of those, they were all warning about CN tags).

What's happened with the Kissinger nom doesn't matter in the end, but it is this pattern that is too too common about drive-by !votes that only want to throw a support for someone they recognize but do not even both to talk quality. It would be different if multiple earlier !votes said the quality was fine, then we don't need every single other vote to point that out, but we need more eyes to look at quality - yay or nay - before the focus on importance for posting. We have the disclaimer in the template box but that's not clearly being seen.

Is there any way we can guide infrequently !voters to say more than just a "Support" and get quality issues addressed sooner than later? I don't know, I'm trying to brainstorm here. Masem (t) 05:32, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

We do have WP:ITNCDO/DONT, but it could be a good thing to add at least a short version of them to the page's editnotice, which for now is only useful for people wanting to add a new topic (i.e. not at all the majority of editors only voting). ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 05:46, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
How about we just have Admins do their job properly, and ignore inappropriate posts supporting the nomination? As for the blurb, this must also apply to all those posts that effectively said nothing but "OBVIOUSLY deserves a blurb". (MY emphasis.) Obviously is NOT a reason. HiLo48 (talk) 05:52, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support InedibleHulk (talk) 07:40, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
WP:BLUESKY. nableezy - 15:27, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Also concerning was the nominator's comment, which said nothing but "Been waiting for this day" instead of, you know, actually commenting on the significance of the event or quality of the article. It got no better when they gave a !vote on their own nomination of nothing but "support obviously as nominator". This was followed by, as you said, a parade of !votes all being variations of "support, well known highly influential major figure" ignoring the 10+ CN tags it had at the time. Amazingly, 3 different people !voted support for the blurb with the sole justification being "obviously". The admin was right to pull at the time, consensus was not reached as CN concerns voiced by multiple editors were not addressed at the time. I don't exactly see a way to address any of this except to just have other editors call people out for these things. ITNCDO/DONT is already at the top of the page. JM (talk) 06:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
ITNCDO/DONT is neither at the very top of the page, nor as an editnotice, which may be a problem for people directly skipping to the relevant section without reading the wall of text in-between. ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 06:11, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It's in the lead above all the nominations and the archives. I would call that "the top of the page" but whatever. JM (talk) 06:19, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
It is not in the lead at all? It's in the third section of the article, below the table of contents and a bunch of text, and doesn't show up when you load the page. ChaotıċEnby(t · c) 06:35, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm confused, are we talking about the same thing? On ITN/C on desktop, I see an introduction followed by a big blue box containing "How to nominate an item", "Headers", and "Voicing an opinion on an item" which consists of ITNCDO and ITNCDONT. Underneath that is archives followed by nominations. Off to one side is the ITN toolbox and template, and off to the other side is the table of contents. Definitely shows up on my page. JM (talk) 06:43, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is that you're assuming these editors are !voting to support in ignorance of the quality issues, rather than deciding that the quality issues are not sufficient to prevent posting and !voting despite them, which is permitted by the wording of WP:ITNQUALITY.
I don't feel that is appropriate - and by extension, Spencer's decision to pull was, I feel, an inappropriate super vote. BilledMammal (talk) 06:24, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Spencer's pull was fully appropriate. A few CN tags in an otherwise fine article is acceptable, 10+ is not. Curbon7 (talk) 07:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) If y'all have a concern with my admin actions, my talk page is open and you're free to ping me. There's no need to type obliquely. I've already explained my reading of consensus over at ITNC, but to repeat myself, WP:ITNQUALITY allows citation needed tags to appear in blurbed articles. Moreover, editors are free to !vote support without explicitly declaring their assessment of an article's quality. That comes with the territory of being a free and open wiki. In this case, I assessed that there was overwhelming support in favor of posting, and that those individuals were clearly not concerned that 5% of the article being tagged violated the minimum quality standards as they are written (even if, as became apparent, it did not measure up to what a few editors think they should be written). To the larger question raised by Masem in the OP, I do think it would be helpful to encourage editors to explicitly state their position on the article's quality in addition to its significance, even while !votes that miss one or the other should not be automatically discounted. Rather than adding more content, perhaps a solution may be found in shortening the wall of text that leads the page (nearly 1000 words, by my count). Ed [talk] [OMT] 06:26, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There's an admin issue too (and not just Ed but for all admins that post these without taking into account the quality issue or when these concerns are raised by a few !votes, hence why I am not addressing that), but the larger issue is non-regular editors that appear when a popular or well-known person is up for RD/blurb, or even for popular blurbs. Maybe a few of these could be read as an implicit support acknowledging the quality is fine, but knowing the typical arguments we've seen in the past from non-regulars and regulars, most support !votes lacking a statement about quality are only considering the significance factor and are not taking into account quality (whether good or bad). Masem (t) 13:07, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
This isnt some walled garden where the "regulars" decide to overrule the wider community. It is good when we get non-regulars involved here, maybe it will turn this place into something that reflects actual consensus instead of the handful of people willing to stomach the the nonsense that happens here. That isnt how this or any other page on Wikipedia work, this is not your fiefdom and you and nobody else gets a bigger role in deciding what gets posted than anybody else. nableezy - 15:33, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I.have no issue with non regular participation, its just non-regulars not being well versed on what we expect from !votes. Its trying to figure out how to make them better informed. Masem (t) 15:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. Nableezy seemed to take that comment completely the wrong way for some reason. JM (talk) 15:49, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
And whenever Jimmy Carter dies there will be an even larger flood of editors ignoring WP:ITNCDONT. JM (talk) 12:43, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There’s an easy remedy that I’ve applied once or twice, and other editors followed on a couple of more times. It’s called moderation. Just close the discussion on significance with a note that it’s been clearly established and direct editors to improve quality. By doing it, you give a warning sign that posting would be pre-mature because of article’s quality, and you also guide editors to focus on quality and stop with the drive-by votes based on significance.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 14:43, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is a great idea. I participated literally only because there were people saying it wasn't significant enough for a blurb. I wouldn't have bothered to participate if the significance could have been marked as established while we work on the article. Valereee (talk) 14:47, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I think this method can do more harm than good if it ends up prematurely ending a discussion. Not long ago we had that beatles song nomination that had like 10 supports and 0 opposes, was posted, and then had like 17 or something post-posting opposes and was pulled. The point being that you close a discussion on significance it prevents people from later coming in and opposing based on significance, and same for quality, and you end up doing something the community may not want once all is said and done. JM (talk) 14:53, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That’s not a problem. Once quality is improved and the article is posted, the discussion on significance will be re-opened so pulling wouldn’t be impossible if a number of well-justified oppose votes accumulates. After all, we all strive to improve quality, and temporarily putting significance on the back burner shouldn’t be harmful.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 15:21, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Quality checks I'll note that WP:ITN/A makes no mention of quality. However, I've always done cursory checks (no orange tags, minimal Cn tags, RD with sourced death, etc), and don't post if not met, often posting a related oppose/comment about the finding in the nom as well. The question for the community is whether to codify some minimal quality into ITN/A, which I believe is generally already the de facto practice by admins. For example, ITNA does have explicit instructions on images not to post at Wikipedia:In the news/Administrator instructions § Images—Bagumba (talk) 07:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It might be an exaggeration, but if anyone in a "ministerial" post like State of Secretary could come as close as possible to effectively running a country in terms of its foreign and global policy, that person would be Kissinger. He does fit the sui generis standard, there are very few famous Secretaries of State (save for those who would themselves eventually become President). That being said, I think we did ITN a huge disservice this day. Not because he should not have been posted; he absolutely should have been. But the posting happened about 70 or 80 minutes after nomination when it was far from clear that we had a unanimous consensus on quality and significance. Then it was pulled. Then re-posted. Then closed outright at 07:15 GMT by a non-admin, Curbon7. The silliness could all have been avoided if we had suggested (not mandated, just suggested) at least a 12-hour discussion window considering this was far from a sure shot. Duly signed, ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:09, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

12 hours to post something obviously worthy is a waste of about 11 hours. nableezy - 15:30, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I do get it, though. Time zones, and the general level of feeling that American editors overestimate significance of US-related topics. Valereee (talk) 15:34, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There is no deadline. We should not be in any rush. – Muboshgu (talk) 15:53, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I get it too, Im the one that raised that UK/EU editors were still sleeping. But the Elizabeth blurb was posted in seven minutes. You really want to say anybody would have demanded twelve hours for that? That there is no deadline and no rush? nableezy - 15:58, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think Elizabeth's article had unsourced statements regarding the impacts of her bombing campaigns at the time of her death. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:00, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, I don't think this was some sort of absurd crisis. Two Admins disagreed on quality. Ed believed it was there and Stephen did not. If the calculations were true and it was in fact ~5% uncited, I can see how that would be a grey area. I voted against quality at the time the nom was pulled, but it was more or less out of abundance of caution. Personally, I see no need to rush to post an item that isn't of the very best quality. ITN gives you roughly 7 days to improve a new nom's quality. I'm behind what HiLo's putting down - Admins are empowered to ignore a wave of "supports" when quality is not present. I think that principle just needs to be applied more consistently. DarkSide830 (talk) 15:44, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I believe it was Spencer, not Stephen. JM (talk) 15:46, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Deepest apologies to Spencer on that one. Knew I should have made sure I got the right name on that one. DarkSide830 (talk) 15:57, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Does Wikipedia need to start pre-addressing suitability for ITN (on an individual basis) for "old person dies" blurbs? The quality issues aside, a few editors seem to think it was rushed or inappropriate to post a blurb and are suggesting that "support blurb, obviously" comments be discounted. Which is backwards; the stronger the case for a blurb, the less of an argument is needed. Also, it would be much easier to limit these discussions to "article quality" if the "Not a head of state, not a head of government, so not sufficiently notable" style comments did not have to be rebutted. 217.180.228.138 (talk) 16:02, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Or, if that is too distasteful, there could just be two headings for discussion on "RD/Blurb" discussions; "quality" and "blurbiness". 217.180.228.138 (talk) 16:07, 30 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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