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Per today's events at ITNC, with regard to LaMia Airlines Flight 2933 (posted) and the RD nomination for Cléber Santana (not posted), it's clear we need a caveat to the RD criteria to take into account when one or more notable individuals (by Wikipedia standards) die in an event that's already posted at ITN as a blurb. Interestingly, none of the objectors considered a situation where the blurb about the event wasn't posted, but notable people still died. However, the proposal is as follows (with thanks to WaltCip), to add the following to the RD rules:

• "In the event of circumstances where the deaths of one or more individuals (with articles) are caused as the result of an independently notable event already posted as a blurb, a recent deaths posting of all or most of the individuals can be forgone in the interests of avoiding redundancy."

The Rambling Man (talk) 18:52, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I have started (but not yet finished) what might become a proposal to significantly rearrange the organisation of WP:ITN for clarity and make explicit some things done by inference and convention only. It is not ready to become a proposal yet, and has not kept up with recent changes to the live page, but one aspect is relevant to this:

"It is sometimes contentious whether or not the death of a person merits a blurb or a listing in the "recent deaths" section. This is discussed in the #Deaths of people section, but a person's death will not appear in both sections concurrently."

In the mentioned "Deaths of people" section, I include the following

"For deaths where the cause of death itself is a major story (such as the unexpected death of prominent figures by murder, suicide, or major accident) or where the events surrounding the death merit additional explanation (such as ongoing investigations, major stories about memorial services or international reactions, etc.) a blurb may be merited to explain the death's relevance."

While I cannot claim to have thought about this situation exactly I think adapting this wording - particularly "a person's death will not appear in both sections [blurb and RD] concurrently." to the current organisation of the page. I find your (TRM) wording overly bureaucratic and slightly pointy. Thryduulf (talk) 19:59, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't call the wording pointy or bureaucratic, personally, but I think it could be simpler. If a blurb-worthy incident happens to kill one or two notable people, then we might say "A [something] in [somewhere] kills 10 people, including FamousX and FamousY". When a large group of notable people is killed, picking a couple of names either for the blurb or RD would be arbitrary and including them all would be excessive. "People who die as the result of an event posted as a blurb shall not be listed in RD, but may be included in the blurb if appropriate" would do it. Bencherlite^Talk 20:41, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I support this idea, and am agreeable with either TRM or Bencherlite proposed wording. Jehochman ^Talk 21:07, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Bencherlite Thing is, we wouldn't be picking them arbitrarily, we'd be picking them per RD guidelines, i.e. on the quality of their article. As I said three or four times at ITNC, there was no chance at all of RD being flooded with these souls because they either had no article or their articles were terrible. If this process encouraged people to make them worth featuring on the main page, that would be brilliant. Instead, we're now advocating that such individuals languish with a one line update. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:12, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

In the specific incident perhaps, but the point of discussing this here is to cope with the situation should it arise again. We need to work out how we will handle things if the next time this happens, there are 7 people all of whom have GA standard articles? Selecting a subset based on article quality will not work in that case. Thryduulf (talk) 23:26, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Hence my proposal!! The Rambling Man (talk) 07:56, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Thryduulf if you'd read the whole section I added, this is simply a cut-down version of the proposal made by WaltCip, so to accuse me of me proposing something pointy is unnecessarily inflammatory and detracting from the point of the discussion. Please redact your bad faith accusation. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:09, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I apologise, but my comments were not made in bad faith. Thryduulf (talk) 23:26, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I really don't feel we should try to single out specific people in the case of a disaster that kills multiple notable people. Let's say a plane crashes with the entire New England Patriots football team and front office on board, and kills every person. If we singled people out to post, which ones are we choosing? Tom Brady? Bill Belichick? Rob Gronkowski? Darrelle Revis? Robert Kraft? Others?--WaltCip (talk) 01:14, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose does this happen often enough to necessitate another rule? One contentious debate a pattern does not make. IMO WP:IAR + WP:COMMONSENSE ought to be used. It's impossible to capture all the edge cases. My two cents anyway. --CosmicAdventure (talk) 10:14, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

It's not that it happens often enough; it's more that we want a documented consensus in case this scenario happens again so as to avoid confusion.--WaltCip (talk) 20:59, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, as Masem pointed out, it has happened a few times in the past year or so, in which case I think we should simply caveat it out of RD. It's a low-risk, low-effort suggestion. All the furore above seems a little disproportionate considering we're simply looking to indoctrinate this particular IAR into guidance. Honestly!! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:02, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

That's sort of the point of WP:CREEP; if we indoctrinate every rare or unusual possibility into written rules, the rules become unwieldy and less useful as guidance. IAR is IAR for a reason; the rules and guidelines should exist for helping us navigate the stuff that happens every single day, all the time, so we can keep moving smoothly. We should never have a rule for the extremely rare, one off, and sui generis events and should instead merely have a discussion and come to an agreement in the moment for that one event, understanding that every such agreement is not a precedent. Write rules for what we do every day. Discuss the weird stuff on its own. --Jayron32 00:41, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Instead of trying to adapt rules for rare events, I rather like the idea of creating a "case book", noting the situation and how it was resolved -effectively indexing the archives of the most unusual cases that took some discussion to review and agree or disagree (this plane accident being a prime example). Case book doesn't define "rules" but at least provides a key reference to go back to and review. --MASEM (t) 00:48, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

No, no matter how many caveats you put in it, once you write it down, it's a rule. If you establish a list of precedents, they become instantly binding once they exist in such a form. That's how people tend to treat such things, which it is why it is best to not do it at all. The best guidance is "good judgement" and the best way to reach decisions is "discuss, compromise, and reach consensus" Once you put it into a form like you propose, you create a cudgel which people will use to beat people they disagree with instead of using reason and rationality. --Jayron32 02:12, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

We already do that. It's called WP:V, WP:N, WP:GNG, WP:CIV, WP:MOS, and yes, even WP:IAR. It's accepted that there are exceptions in which certain rules need not apply, but to avoid creating a fairly simple and limited rule because someone might abuse it is missing the forest for the trees.--WaltCip (talk) 13:36, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, we do it for the stuff we do every day; those rules establish expected norms for 99% of life at Wikipedia, which is why it was a good idea to write THOSE rules down. IAR is sufficient for the rest of it. You'll note that I stated "rules and guidelines should exist for helping us navigate the stuff that happens every single day, all the time," What I meant by that was "rules and guidelines should exist for helping us navigate the stuff that happens every single day, all the time," I never said we shouldn't have rules. If I had meant to say that I would have said that. I didn't. What I DID say was "We should never have a rule for the extremely rare...events" What I meant by that was "We should never have a rule for the extremely rare...events" --Jayron32 15:02, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

The point of the case book idea is not to be a rules, but a way to easily find cases of where there was an unusual situation in the news and we handled in this way to use as a starting point for consensus discussion at ITN. This is already done commonly at ITN/C (eg the football sexual abuse scandle pointed out that we did also post the onset of the Penn state scandal), so this is not anything out of what's already done, only to make it easier for all editors to refer to. It is not meant to say it is right or wrong - in fact we should make sure that ITN/Cs that were posted and then recognized to be bad posts should be included too, for reference. --MASEM (t) 15:19, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm afraid all too often we hear "precedents are not set" and "consensus can change", so I'm not even sure a history of past decisions is even that helpful. Our community evolves in time and what found a consensus last year may not this year. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:38, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

On the other hand, we do also hear "historically we've never done this" or "that's not what ITN is for" and "well we didn't post this so why post that?"--WaltCip (talk) 16:09, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

I've never said such a thing. --Jayron32 16:10, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

No, I know not you. But it's still a common refrain on ITN which can be confusing for posting admins who are not familiar with the process.--WaltCip (talk) 16:22, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

There was a proposal above that would have dealt with that, it died in flames. --CosmicAdventure (talk) 19:51, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Which is why I have always pushed for article quality to be the primary determinant, and other concerns to be of lesser or minor importance. --Jayron32 17:09, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

For the first time I can remember, 100% of ITN entries (all 6) have a body count. Dragons flight (talk) 16:57, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

That is a little depressing. I will look around for something less gory to nominate. We don't want to look like an online morgue. -Ad Orientem (talk) 17:13, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

We shouldn't bias just because all the stories are gory. There appear to have been 4 completely unconnected major disasters/bombings in the last 48hrs, which is a rarely but something that might happen. Just as we might have all 5-6 stories featured on events in one country/region should that be the case as well. As soon as we try to tinker on ITN because one type of stories seems bias, it breaks the process. --MASEM (t) 19:51, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

2016 has been that kind of a year. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:09, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

The bias is towards body count stories, not against. The train derailment, the church collapse, even the soccer bombing and the plane crash, nothing WP:SUSTAINED about them. I won't waste my time with AFD for them, but really, they don't deserve articles, let alone MP coverage. On the other hand, thank goodness we're keeping the Italian referendum off the front page! If you're feeling glum, I'm sure some European politics or sports tournament will make a mention soon (but no American sports please, that's more bias!). --CosmicAdventure (talk) 21:12, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

• Usually we get complaints (especially this time of year) that we are too slow in posting things; now we are getting the opposite complaint comment, or at least a variation of it (lots of the same type of story). 331dot (talk) 21:14, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I think we post too many of these body count articles. The reason is not because of bias, but simply because we have an article quality requirement. Body count articles are relatively easy to write an update, but articles such as Park Geun-hye are not. A supplementary reason is that we have somehow established a precedent where "if a large number of people die in an incident, it is post-worthy". In the current situation however, I don't see any way out except to oppose more body count nominations. Banedon (talk) 00:39, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

There was a suggestion above that would have let WP:N be the only notability requirement, opening the door for more diverse articles. It went down in flames. --CosmicAdventure (talk) 00:59, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

How would having WP:N be the only notability requirement help? The reason most other articles aren't posted are because of quality issues, not because of notability. Banedon (talk) 01:02, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, but no. Army vs Navy, the Italian referendum, the Capcom Cup and 60000 evacuees from a fire in Israel (called "inconvenient") were not passed over for quality issues, they failed to meet the strict editorial guidelines at ITN for euro-centric anything or body count. Thats not even considering the things regulars knew not to waste their time nominating. --CosmicAdventure (talk) 03:09, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Hmm, good point. Nonetheless I strongly suspect having WP:N as the only notability requirement will lead to more problems than it solves, so I still can't support the proposal. I would rather keep the "strict editorial guidelines" but lower the quality requirements, but I don't suppose many other editors will feel the same way. Banedon (talk) 04:25, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

I could see the argument that most breaking events do not have sufficient time to know if notability, per en.wiki's definition, really fits, following NEVENT. We are not supposed to be a newspaper yet people will create articles on breaking events all the time without considering enduring coverage. Notability can't really be judged in edge cases until several days or weeks later, and if that enduring coverage exists; if it doesn't come about, that article should be deleted.

In the case of the current disasters at ITN, these are all major incidents that based on past events, are going to remain notable, so I don't think that would have changed anything here. I've only seen a few similar events about disasters that end up seeming premature (non-fatal public transport accidents, for example). --MASEM (t) 01:24, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

"non-fatal public transport accidents" See that's what I'm talking about though. Look at all the furor over Asiana 214. As if modern long range jets operated by major airlines routinely have hull loss accidents at high tech international airports on clear days in broad daylight. Yet somehow in 2.5 hours enough people said "OMG a turboprop (with a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATR_42#Accidents_and_incidents penchant for incidents (one literally in Pakistan 4 days later that actually grounded the fleet)) crashed into a hillside" and it was rushed up to the main page. I mean, come on. Somehow the tragic death of 47 ordinary people at one time is considered "ITN worthy"? --CosmicAdventure (talk) 03:25, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Commercial air traffic accidents - even without fatalities - become major investigations because people want to know if it was a reproducable error that could affect another aircraft and threaten more lives. Other transport accidents do not have anywhere close to the same level of investigation, even train crashes (outside of some countries like the US or the UK). That's why any air disaster is likely going to be posted and likely going to have an notable article in the long term. --MASEM (t) 03:44, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

In general I don't agree. Some disaster incidents (MH370 & MH17 come to mind) do continue to generate lots of headlines, but others (like many of those currently on ITN) simply vanish into the mists of time. I don't know how many people find events like the Uyo church collapse interesting; I certainly do not. Especially uninteresting are events that are simple accidents. With those, simply reading the blurb is enough, no point reading the article. Banedon (talk) 04:25, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

"Enduring" coverage does not mean it will continue to appear in the news until the end of time, simply that it has a reasonably protracted period where it is featured in the news. Air disasters regularly met that as when the investigating agency reports its results. Other types of transportation accidents are here one day, gone the next. --MASEM (t) 05:14, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

There's nothing to see here. All of the stories were posted with significant community support. If you don't like what the community wants to see, this probably isn't the right project for you. Trying to change the rules to tailor which news stories appear just because you don't like what's currently showing isn't the right approach. The Rambling Man (talk) 05:51, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Also, we had at least two such instances of grim streaks before. Brandmeister^talk 18:27, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

If you don't like outside commentary on the community's bias, this probably isn't the right project for you. Using ambiguous "significance" criteria to tailor which news stories appear isn't the right approach. --CosmicAdventure (talk) 23:56, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I was going to make a separate suggestion about article quality related to RDs, but I noticed in reviewing the criteria for ITN, we have no explicit article quality criteria, despite this being one of the key points. We have the Update criteria, which is as important but is a separate issue; here we're generally talking about sourcing and any major faults of the article (such as, say for a sporting tourney result, summaries of previous games). We nearly always make it clear in ITNCs that as we are posting things to the main page, we do expect articles to be of some minimum quality, not necessarily FA or GA standards, but enough to show that these articles are generally some of the better works that we have (for a new article, how fast we can make something usable and helpful to the reader).

To that end, should we consider adding another criteria to spell out about article quality expectations? At this point, spelling exactly what should go in there would be a separate discussion, it's more a matter of if we actually should make quality a clear expectation. --MASEM (t) 15:27, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Quality is what we have the community to assess and one man's quality article is another man's barely-above-stub. Article quality minimums will vary from case to case, very obscure (but still notable by Wikipedia standards) BLPs may be briefer than say articles about bananas or Kim Kardashian. It also varies as to whether it's RD (where the article as a whole is important) or a blurb (where the sections covering the news item are most important, yet the remainder should be relatively clear of maintenance issues). It's for the community to decide when an article or RD is of sufficient quality, and it should stay that way. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:31, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

But the key is still that quality is a criteria. Now exactly what that quality is, yes, it will be extremely varied by article type but there are basic fundamentals (sourcing, particularly for BLP-topics, for example). The language you use above is the type of language that could be put into such a criteria to explain that there's no hard measures, but it is a matter of consideration. --MASEM (t) 15:33, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Quality assessment is inherent in the assessment of consensus to post (or otherwise) by the community. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:35, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

And based on several recent ITNC, there are editors that think sub-par quality articles are okay to post to keep ITN timely, which at least led to a couple premature postings which have had to be pulled. We don't spell this out at ITN that quality must be a point all editors should evaluate, just as with both the update and the topic significance. Yes, you could argue it is implicit in the need for consensus, but I think we need to be explicit. (Case in point, I was going to offer that we document the minimum standards that should be expected for sourcing on awards lists and film/discography lists on RDs, issues that have come up over and over again, but there is no place in ITN to include such suggestions). --MASEM (t) 15:43, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Sourcing on BLPs and sourcing on other articles is covered by Wikipeia policy, no need for an ITN version of it. Trust the community. If an admin is making roguish edits to prematurely post items, that's a different matter. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:51, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I think I agree with Masem here. We do say quality is required at WP:ITN, specifically "To showcase quality Wikipedia content on current events." and "Candidates for ITN are evaluated on... the quality of the updated content" and other places, but we provide no guidance at ALL as to what "quality" means in this regard. Let me lay out, below, a rough sketch of what is usually meant by quality. Lets use this as a work space rather than a vote, but clearly, it wouldn't hurt to let people know what we expect of a nomination with regard to quality. Feel free to add, subtract, multiple, or divide anything below. This is supposed to be an active work area so we can hash out what we mean by quality. --Jayron32 16:00, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

What does OTD and DYK use for quality requirements (if any)? --CosmicAdventure (talk) 20:05, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

• OTD is basically a one-man show, so you'd have to ask Howcheng. He does a damned fine job (judging by WP:ERRORS, we get few complaints) and as such, probably doesn't need any more oversight. The quality requirements are "One person runs it all, he does a great job and gets no complaints, so we leave him alone". DYK is the other extreme. DYK's quality control seems to be "Is there a speedy deletion template on the article right now? No? Run it!" I've stopped looking, the desire to inform readers comes secondary towards writing a misleading blurb. They basically put everything on the main page. --Jayron32 20:32, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

• And after thinking on it for a bit, the idea of "standardizing" whats "good enough" for the MP is doomed to fail anyway, so no bother. --CosmicAdventure (talk) 02:04, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Quality workshop

Based on observation of practices here, the following are clearly what we mean by "quality":

1. Article is not a stub, and of sufficient length to adequately discuss the subject at hand, not just the information in the blurb itself, but enough background information as well to provide the reader with a full picture of the subject.
2. Article is well referenced; all contentious or potentially contentious information has a reliable source, and while a few "CN" tags on minor points are not a deal-breaker, if large swaths of the article are unreferenced, that is a problem. BLPs and other biographical information is generally held to higher standards than other articles in this regard as well.
3. Article does not have any orange-level or higher tags indicating major quality concerns (though tag-bombing an article for the sole purpose of holding up a nomination or other WP:POINT violations are discouraged).
4. Article is generally free of major grammatical or spelling errors and is well written otherwise, tenses in articles should be correct for what is being described (i.e. generally all events which are ongoing or completed should be in the present or past tense. Future tense for such events is unacceptable).
5. Tables and charts are a supplement to prose, and NOT an acceptable replacement for prose. For example the results of major events such as elections or sports tournaments should be reported in natural prose, and be relatively complete as such, data in tables about such results is not sufficient.

• Two things on the above: we should be clear that nearly all RDs will fall under BLP (despite the naming paradox) since BLP oversight continues for some period after a persons' death. Second, I would make sure when talking about tense, that this points back to the "updated" criteria. --MASEM (t) 16:46, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Generally I agree, but I think it's worth noting that quality is largely independent of updatedness (just because something is up-to-date doesn't mean it's well written, and just because something is well written doesn't mean it's been sufficiently updated) and that different quality standards apply to the three types of content we post (blurbs, RD and ongoing) and that all are to some extent subjective. In my ongoing rewrite of ITN I have the following as general guidelines.

General

(these apply to everything) The article must be free of major issues, for example copyright and Biographies of living persons (BLP) problems. Articles with red maintenance tags are almost never posted, and those with orange very rarely.

Prose - blurbs

While articles on topics such as sporting events and economics lend themselves to tables of numbers, updates must be at least in part written in prose to qualify for ITN consideration. For sporting events, a prose summary of the event/tournament and the final match(es) (if appropriate) is usually considered a minimum requirement.

Prose - ongoing

It is normally preferred that updates to the article(s) include prose as well as simple updating of facts and figures, although this should happen as well. How much prose is required is subjective and depends on the individual event, but generally updates of several sentences to an article with at least a paragraph of prose is a minimum.

Prose - recent deaths

Articles nominated for an RD listing are usually held to a higher quality standard than other ITN content. Articles should be generally comprehensive with coverage of all major parts of the subjects life. Free from red and orange tags (e.g. for maintenance or disputes).

Referencing - blurbs and ongoing

Content should be well referenced. At a minimum, all the information given in the blurb and other major information about the event must be thoroughly referenced. A few ^{[citation needed]} tags in other parts of the article are usually not a barrier to posting, though the article should not lack references in any major section, and biographical information is given special scrutiny.
As with all Wikipedia articles, citations must be to reliable sources. References should be correctly formatted and not bare URLs.

Referencing - recent deaths

Well referenced, in particular all potentially contentious statements require a citation - the BLP policy applies to the recently deceased. An article with single ^{[citation needed]} tag will sometimes be opposed, articles with multiple frequently will.

I cover tense issues as part of what counts as updated rather than the general quality. Thryduulf (talk) 23:23, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Right now, per the recently changed criteria for Recent Deaths, we are currently posting items on RD without discussing their significance, as it is assumed any article on Wikipedia satisfies notability requirements. The problem is we are now debating verifiability requirements with a great deal of contention. It seems different users have different interpretations of what constitutes adequate sourcing for an article. So given that this seems to be a subjective criterion, I'm in favor of relaxing or even dropping the sourcing requirements for posting on RD, essentially making the process of posting automatic. It can be assumed that once an article is posted to the front page, there will be enough eyes on it to ensure that it is raised to whatever arbitrary standard is established for sourcing.--WaltCip (talk) 14:12, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Of course, there should be a minimum of one reliable source documenting that a death has actually occurred.--WaltCip (talk) 14:17, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

The biggest problem here, as far as I can see, is that the recently deceased are still subject to WP:BLP so any unverifiable claims in the articles should be sourced, particularly those which may be damaging to the individual or to others. This has come about as a result of a couple of actors whose filmographies were completely unsourced, which needed to be resolved. While I accept that many thousands of articles are in such a condition, it should not define what we consider of sufficient quality for the main page. Just today I stumbled on an article, Felicity Jones, not a featured one, not even a Good one, but one which treats the filmographies and television appearances properly by providing verifiable inline citations from reliable sources. That's all we need to do for these cases, and if the effort of those claiming we don't need to meet WP:V for actor articles was channeled into just adding references, there'd be no problem. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:42, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

It's not really subjective, as TRM says. RDs are BLPs, and BLPs are supposed to be meticulously sourced. We know this doesn't happen realistically for more BLP, as the information like filmographies tends to not be as contentious as, say, religious or sexual orientation. But that said, we're talking about article that are going to be featured on the main page; the sourcing doesn't need to be at GA or FA level, but they need to show that BLP has been adhered to. (I personally have no problem that as long as for films, TV shows, awards, books, etc. if that work is a blue link and it is clear from the lede of the blue-linked article the person is properly associated with that work, we don't need the inline cite for the RD, but any red-link, non-linked, and cameo/guest spot absolutely 100% needs a inline cite). Weakening the sourcing requirements for RD just to be timely is a slippery slope for the other side of ITN (blurbs). --MASEM (t) 16:33, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree that it is important for BLPs to be sourced, and some healthy discussion about that and verifiability isn't a bad thing in and of itself. 331dot (talk) 23:18, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

• ITN doesn't need another separate set of requirements. WP:V and WP:BLP are plenty good enough. I wonder how Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ian McKellen can be FA/GA articles without a fully referenced filmography. Hoffman made it to TFA and ITN in that state. --CosmicAdventure (talk) 20:29, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

  Odd isn't it? The community fails to observe WP:V time and again. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:55, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

  And to directly answer you question, Hoffman's filmography isn't part of his main article, and I've tagged McKellen as his selected credits is a joke from a verifiability perspective. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. GA review fails yet again! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:02, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

  Is moving the filmography off to a separate article not "indeed, a lazy option"? That approach could solve all the problems IMO.

  I tried to find refs for Alan Thicke. Turns out it's hard (w/o IMDB) to find a ref for a single TV appearance from 25 years ago. I guess what I'm wondering is why does it matter? IMDB doesn't satisfy WP:RS but every single film/television article links to it at the bottom. If it's not controversial, why not just let it ride? --CosmicAdventure (talk) 21:23, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

  You've answered your own question. If there's no reliable source for an appearance, it simply can't be part of Wikipedia. It matters because it's not verifiable per WP:V. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:31, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

  shrugs ok I've got two workable solutions then next time this happens and I can't find some NBC listing for the cast of a show thats been off the air since the 80's. TYVM. --CosmicAdventure (talk) 01:29, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

The interpretation of policy displayed by some editors this week, in which a lengthy and well-sourced article was argued to be unsuited for RD because there was not a source footnote for each entry in her filmography—even though most if not all the films were bluelinked to articles that themselves generally had sensible sources—is overly rigid and unreasonable.

As background, it is understood that to be mainpaged, an article should meet a reasonable standard of quality, including with regards to sourcing. It is also understood that holding off on mainpaging an article about a newsworthy development or a recent death provides a practical incentive for interested editors to improve the referencing, which might be less likely to occur than if the article were mainpaged with some of the references to follow. Exactly where the line should be drawn between the idea of perfect referencing, and the desire to get items onto the mainpage while readers still want to read about them as subjects in the news or as recent deaths, is one on which reasonable minds can differ and can be addressed through the consensus-building process on ITN.

But this week a reduction ad absurdum was reached in this thread. A small number of editors held up mainpaging the noteworthy recent death of an actress because each of her films was unaccompanied by a footnote. One editor, in particular, insisted that he was entitled to "demand" a reference for each and every film, and to prevent mainpaging the RD unless and until the citations were inserted, even though absolutely no issue had been raised concerning the reliability of the information, and even though no request for such references had been made in all the years the article was on-wiki while the actress was alive.

It is an often-discussed category mistake to assert that every one of the millions of statements on English Wikipedia that does not yet have an inline citation fails verification. The ability to request verification of any and every statement throughout the encyclopedia should not, any more than any other ability conferred by policies and guidelines, be interpreted and enforced in a fashion that provides a disservice to readers.

(As a sidenote, it has been insinuated that I work to skew policy in this area because I have a particular affinity to articles I support on ITN or RD. This is untrue, and in particular, I had literally never heard of the actress in question before I saw the ongoing discusson in ITN the other day.)

As it happened, another editor did ultimately provide the sourcing by adding a footnote to the British Film Institute page for each of the films, thus mooting the discussion as to whether the article should be mainpaged without that information. But this was manifestly a suboptimal use of a volunteer's time: it took several hours; of all the improvements warranted throughout the English Wikipedia, there is no way this was a high priority; and if links to these pages were going to be inserted anywhere, it would have been far more useful to insert them into the articles on the films themselves, thereby providing support for many assertions that we make about the films, rather than merely one actress's performance in them.

All Wikipedia policies are to be interpreted in a fashion that serves the purposes and goals of the project and in a reasonable and proportional fashion. An interpretation of the verifiability policy, the BLP policy, or the mainpage criteria that results in a situation like the one I have described would be unreasonable and counterproductive and cannot be correct. Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:58, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Ok, so reducing that TLDR to something useful, the crucial point made in the preceding comment was that, and I'm summarising, "a blue link is equivalent to a verifiable reliable source". That's, naturally, nonsense. Wikipedia is not a reliable source, nor is its myriad articles, especially those relying solely on external links to IMDB. That Brad continually, and often against consensus, posts BLP violations to the main page is one thing (and something we should address), but actually, and as I have demonstrated manifold, we have thousands of articles which do demonstrate a good and proper adherence to our core policies. Just because some individuals seem to be acting like rogues, or just because some people are too lazy or otherwise engaged to find the requisite sources, so what? Brad and some of his cohorts need to work harder on article content, and less on wikilaywering. What we've seen as a result of stronger adherence to V and BLP is vastly improved articles. That's what our readers deserve, not rushed-through unsourced non-consensual bullshit as we often see from some of our "admins/Arbcom members". The Rambling Man (talk) 22:27, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

By the way, this long ramble has one single word solution: But this was manifestly a suboptimal use of a volunteer's time: it took several hours; of all the improvements warranted throughout the English Wikipedia, there is no way this was a high priority; and if links to these pages were going to be inserted anywhere, it would have been far more useful to insert them into the articles on the films themselves, thereby providing support for many assertions that we make about the films, rather than merely one actress's performance in them. BOTH!!!!!!!! (How long does copy-and-paste sources take??!!)) The Rambling Man (talk) 22:29, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

Newyorkbrad, you note One editor, in particular, insisted that he was entitled to "demand" a reference for each and every film, and to prevent mainpaging the RD unless and until the citations were inserted, even though absolutely no issue had been raised concerning the reliability of the information, and even though no request for such references had been made in all the years the article was on-wiki while the actress was alive., and I know you refer to me. So, tell me, when WP:V talks of "challenging" a claim, what is your precise definition of a "challenge"? I mentioned, at least three times, that I was challenging the claims in the flimography, per the policy. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:33, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

To recapitulate what I said above, you insisted on an inline reference for each and every film in the filmography, even though most if not all were bluelinked to well-referenced articles, which had sources, and many of which included images of the film posters displaying Michele Morgan's name. There was, and is, no question as to the accuracy of any of the content and there was nothing controversial or reasonably disputable about any of the content.

You may or may not choose to believe this, but in the years we have discussed on-and-off these sorts of issue, you have partially persuaded me that it may make sense sometimes to delay mainpaging an article to bring about accelerated improvement of the referencing. But there are limits, and I still believe the hyperliteral fashion in which you have interpreted the relevant policies can be counterproductive and, in the most extreme cases, verges on unhelpful point-making.

Your constant references on ITN and related pages to other roles I may have within the project are not appropriate. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:47, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

To "recapitulate", unless someone has checked that there's a verifiable third-party reliable source at some point in this sorry tail of references, it fails WP:V, and you, as an admin and an Arcbom member should be acutely aware of that fact.

There is no "hyperliteral" (sic) interpretation of WP:V, although there is a rogue version, one with which you're well-versed.

The roles you fail to uphold and the manner in which you do that are subject to public exposure. References to your continued bypassing of consensus and general practice at the project are absolutely far from "not appropriate", in fact you already know that your own behaviour in this regard is "not appropriate". I'm glad to see you've declined from doing it recently, Arbcom election and all that, but be aware that your actions, particularly those in this regard, are under serious scrutiny. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:59, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

• Support It's a matter of priorities. The first priority is to be sure that the person in question is actually dead – it is essential to have multiple good sources for that. Then, for a great celebrity, the next priority is to get the entry up at RD because readers will already be reading the article in large numbers. By posting the entry at RD, we will help ensure that experienced Wikipedians are alerted, because they are more likely to be reading the main page than other folk. The experienced Wikipedians will then be able to attend to any issues which arise at the article. Sourcing sections like a filmography are quite low down the priority list because such citations are not usually needed. For example, tonight I was watching the movie Saving Mr. Banks, which is quite good. A related person such as Julie Andrews might die at any time and her article doesn't have many citations for her filmography. But it would be absurd to insist on a citation for her being in a movie like Mary Poppins because this is common knowledge. Adding citations in such cases is usually just busy work and there are usually more important things to be done. Andrew D. (talk) 23:21, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

  Sure, ignore WP:V and WP:BLP too. Easily written. Adding verifiable citations to Wikipedia is far from busy work but then some users clearly lack the competence to contribute satisfactorily. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:28, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

• Anyone who doubts my competence is welcome to inspect the article of mine which was recently on display at the main page – Bertha Bracey. As for WP:V, it is our policy that sources are only expected for controversial facts likely to be challenged and for direct quotations. I have had this understanding confirmed at that policy page – see archive 41, for example. Andrew D. (talk) 23:40, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

• I don't see anything like that from that discussion. It does suggest that highly evident facts, like "the sky is blue", sourcing is not needed, whuch for BLP I would equate to an actor being in a starring role in a film or tv program which itself is notable. Anything else needs a means to be verified by the reader, and that for RD like actors, guest roles or roles in non notable works do need some type of sourcing. --MASEM (t) 00:21, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
• I'm in complete agreement with Masem. You are welcome to ignore core policies but don't expect anyone else to hold such low standards. And by competence, do you mean the article into which you deliberately added a disambiguation link which I had previously fixed? Ho ho ho. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:48, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

A key part about sourcing quality is not necessarily just to feel self important, but given the number of new eyes and potential new edirors on said article, these people will be able to contribute by following by example. This includes referencing by example. This is particularly important on RD which are BLP. Having seemingly poor sourcing that might seem acceptable to established editors is a problem for front page visibilty. --MASEM (t) 00:14, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

• My only comment - As a published work, media are verifiable reliable sources about themselves. Films when credited are reliable primary sources on their casts. You can verify it by watching it. Proximity to and availability of said work is not a criteria for excluding it as a source. Published books are primary sources on their authors (with some exceptions), videogames are (most of the time) reliable for who made them, TV episodes are reliable for who starred in them and so on. If the *letter* of the WP:V and WP:BLP which requires inline citations is going to be demanded, then the work itself stands as a reference. Only in death does duty end (talk) 08:58, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
  • While this is essentially true, there is the aspect of WP:V that says that identification of where this self verification takes place should be made as easy as possible for the reader, and if necessary to cite cases where info may be "buried" or more diffucult to find if the reader has to consume the entire work to find it. So a named episode of a TV series (season and airdate) could potentially work to credit a guest starring role, but without an exact episode reference, you cant just throw that an actor guest starred un a random episode without a cite since the user has no idea where to look. --MASEM (t) 09:14, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
    • Such appearances are trivia and not a high priority. As a fresh example of such a topic, consider Carrie Fisher. That article gets thousands of hits every day and got over 300K yesterday because she had a heart attack. Her filmography has few citations and that demonstrates yet again the ready acceptance of such information without citations. Everybody knows that she appeared in Star Wars and there are enough eyes watching the article that the other appearances are likely to be right too. To check real issues of accuracy and BLP considerations, you should look elsewhere. For example, there's a one line statement that she says she had an affair with Harrison Ford. That's quite a big deal because he was married at the time. The source seems to be quite weak as it's autobiographical in nature and connected with the promotion of a book. That source says that, on other occasions, she has denied being romantically involved with Ford so when is she to be believed? It's the handling of issues like this that matters. Simply counting inline citations is just mechanical busy work that does not address such serious issues of accuracy and balance. Andrew D. (talk) 09:52, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
      • Sourcing things like claimed affairs are high important BLP sourcing requirements, no question (if sge actually died, no question this sourcing issue would have been called out first and foremost). However, the situation at ITN that occurs more often is that the whole of information in the body of the article is resonably sourced and accurate, but the filmograohy or allocades list has zero sources. That is what stands out as a problem to myself and others. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Masem (talk • contribs)
      • I'm not sure that anyone said anything about counting sources, that is highly inappropriate. What we're discussing is the provision of verifiable reliable sources for claims made in BLPs. Secondly we're appealing to not accept mediocrity as that is the enemy of greatness. Finally, if you see a BLP violation, please address it there rather than simply use it as a poor example here. Thanks!! The Rambling Man (talk) 11:49, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Right now, we put blurbs for the day they happen. So if a December 20 blurb (say) takes 5 days to get ready, it'll still be treated as a December 20 blurb, which might mean it's inserted several blurbs off the top (or even not inserted entirely, if the later few days had several new blurbs).

I propose we put all the new blurbs at the top of the template box, irrespective of date. This is not only more natural to me, it ensures every blurb gets similar amounts of "airtime", and it's easier to read since I find it a bit jarring to see four old blurbs at the top and a new one at the bottom. Banedon (talk) 07:52, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

It would then be difficult to know which events are current and timely, and we will get comments about the events being out of order. 331dot (talk) 23:13, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

The template is called "in the news", so of course all the events are current and timely. At least that's what it's supposed to be, isn't it? Banedon (talk) 00:37, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Major parts

As Carrie Fisher's RD posting implies, there's typically a mad scramble to add sources for filmography sections before posting. There were about 350 edits after her death was announced. Opposers usually referred to the lack of cites in the filmography sections. But I would like some clarification. @Masem: made it seem that a source wasn't needed if there was a blue-linked article and the person was in the list of stars. That was the case for Fisher, although many cites were added anyway. Were they all necessary?

Smaller parts

On another level, if an actor only had a small part, but they were still listed in the blue-linked article, is a separate source needed? Note that since IMDB is apparently not allowed as a RS, that would need a major effort in searching. So can we clarify that? It's the only website I'm familiar with that lists all cast and crew on one page.

TV parts

And if the actor also had hundreds of large or small parts in TV shows, does each mention need a RS?

Producers, directors, screenwriters

Then we have producers, directors and screenwriters, who would naturally be listed in a blue-linked film. Are those listings sufficient as a source in a bio?

Awards and nominations

One last question has to do with awards and nominations. The more active the celebrity was and the longer their career, the more such awards were received. I come across lists with few or no sources. And sourcing someone's award or nomination for all those TV awards is another major project.

Those kinds of questions need to be cleared up in one place, since the ironic result is that the more famous a celebrity is or was, the less likely they will be ITN, or certainly not speedily. I noted in an earlier post that an artist such as Corno, whose article was getting on average only 2 visitors per day, was put ITN after a few hours, since her bio was completely sourced, even if short. Yet Fisher's mother, due to her mostly unsourced but long filmography and awards sections, would be delayed indefinitely.--Light show (talk) 05:31, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Comments

• I'm in the camp where if it's on Wikipedia, there should be a reliable source (i.e. not IMDB or another wiki) backing it up. So, if a citation isn't available, that begs a couple of questions: one, is it really verifiable, and two, does it really need to be included on Wikipedia? Do our filmographies, discographies, and bibliographies really need to be über-tables containing an exhaustive list of every single role in a C-movie, appearance as a background extra, guest spot on a little-watched television show; every single 45 that was only released in Denmark, backing guest vocal, track on a widely ignored compilation album; every single academic essay, short story published in an almanac, half-finished poem in a limited-press-run compendium? We should consider what Wikipedia is not when we're curating articles about artists and producers. Maybe if we were more discerning, we wouldn't have these issues come up every time a famous actor, director, musician, producer, author, or poet dies and half the people on ITN/T want the article posted to the front page right meow and half the people on ITN/T insist that every single item in any table or list be followed by a detailed citation. -Kudzu1 (talk) 05:03, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

That would seem reasonable for at least the TV appearances, just remove them as mostly trivial. But what about the other topics noted about blue links? --Light show (talk) 05:11, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, there's two ways of looking at that. If you assume the blue link leads to an article with proper citations (even if they're bare-bones citations and the article is stub-class or barely above), then on one hand, the information is already sourced and all it takes is somebody clicking through to discover it; and on the other hand, it makes it incredibly easy for an editor to just grab the already-filled-in citation from the linked article and add it in. -Kudzu1 (talk) 05:15, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

• For purposes of ITN, my desire would be that if we are talking about a role to a blue-linked article, I should be able to affirm that by looking at the lede and no farther; if I have to look deeper, then you better have a source on the bio article to affirm it. In how Kudzu describes it, having the name in the lede for nearly all cultural works (based on guidelines for this project) means that that info should be easily source-able to a reliable third-party source, and that it is the type of information that would be obviously wrong and would stand out if it was included. Yes, this means for the ITN window, we might be making the assumption that something in the lede is correct without this source, and not falsified - which is generally a safe assumption since that falsehood would have to have been included in both the work and the bio article to be a problem. (Note that I am NOT including the infobox as part of the lede).
  For all other cases, an inline source is needed on the bio page.
  On the nature of awards, the awards table should similarly be sourced, but this will more often be to the organization granting the awards, which is is fine. So here, if a person has won a notable award and I can check the awards table of winners to affirm this, this should be acceptable without an inline source; all other cases need such. Ultimately, the sourcing HAS to be there (its supposed to be there from the start given we are talking BLP nearly in all cases), ideally on both the bio, work, and award articles to avoid fraudlent/vandaled entries, but in evaluating the ITN in a short window, I'm all for cases where our blue-linked articles obviously support the fact. --MASEM (t) 05:16, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't think we're much apart on this issue. Clearly, information has to be cited. But does every single minor role or work need to be included in a table on each person's Wikipedia article? If the standard is that all of them have to be verifiable -- and that should absolutely be the standard -- and reliable sources aren't readily available, at what point is it kosher to remove them without, as you said on ITN/C, degrading the quality of the article? Personally, I think unverifiable information (quotes, titles, awards, biographical details, you name it) already degrades the quality of an article. I have no idea, for instance, where the editor who added that Bing Crosby quote to Debbie Reynolds got it. I searched for the quote, supposedly from the liner notes of a long-since-out-of-print record of song covers from the 1950s, and found it cited only to Wikipedia and the umpteen hack-job cut-and-pastes of the Wikipedia article on third-party websites and other wikis. Assuming good faith, I doubt the editor who added it just made it up, but there's a reason we ask for citations of these things. If some piece of information was added long ago without a citation and none can be readily found, it should be removed. Thanks to the open-source nature of Wikipedia, there's nothing to preclude an editor from adding it back in later if a reference can be found. But we should be proactive in discouraging these articles from becoming a mishmash of trivia. That would go a long way toward addressing concerns over our sourcing standards. -Kudzu1 (talk) 05:26, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
    • Unless we are talking about some bit-part actor that has appears in non-starring roles across hundreds of shows, omission of guest spots would be a problem. I know there are some articles that on the main bio page that only list a subset of the works they appeared in with a larger filmography page elsewhere, but as TRM has pointed out recently, simply making this separate page to avoid the sourcing issue for the main page is also a problem. And you can't just omit "some" guest roles. If a person has a number of notable guest roles (Fisher qualifies here when I was trying to fix up her page), omitting the non-notable from the notable is biasing. The problem is that we have years of "sloppy" sourcing of these types of articles from hundreds of editors that simply added roles without sources, and now we're coming to where we're more critical of these conditions at RD nominations revealing these problems. Thus I do think there's shortcuts we should allow editors to take for major obvious works, but not for the smaller works, it just takes some legwork to fill in the blanks. --MASEM (t) 06:36, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
• Per WP:V if material is likely to be challenged, or has been challenged, it must be sourced reliably, inline. So it's simpler and better to just reference each appearance in each film or television show etc inline. To argue otherwise is simply to advocate laziness. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:54, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
  • Yet it's fully acceptable for active editors to either delete or tag such an addition at the time it's added with no source. So doing so years later, assuming at least some effort is made to source it, shouldn't be a major issue. It's also reasonable to consider all such bit parts in tv shows as trivia, and really not encyclopedic. Although I'd vote to allow IMDB's lists for tv trivia if all else fails. Note: Zachary Quinto says its "Hands down the most comprehensive website for industry information." Spike Lee says "When I have to get credits I use IMDbPro." And casting director Sharon Bialy says that "Being a member of IMDbPro is one of the most important things an actor can do." --Light show (talk) 07:01, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
• They are not hard to source. It can be time consuming, especially if they have a long career with lots of guest appearances, but it is not difficult. I briefly wondered about splitting the whole filmography section off into its own article with Carrie Fisher. Their decent roles were already mentioned in prose anyway, and the rest were just a collection of minor and non-notable ones. You could make a good case that this would significantly improve the Debbie Reynolds article given the size of her filmography. See Category:Actor filmographies for examples. AIRcorn (talk) 07:46, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
  • This raises an issue that is connected: lets say a bio article, well before the person dies, already has opted to split off the filmography to a separate page, and we have issues with sourcing in both. Then the person dies and they are nominated for RD which shows that their main page needs lots of sourcing, but because the filmography is already shuffled off, it might be ignored; compared to if the filmography is shuffled off after the RD nom is filed, where we definitely would be reviewing it as well. I think this stresses that when an RD for person X is made, reviewers should evaluate all associated "Filmography of X", "Bibliography of X", etc. articles that are attached to it. Note not every blue link, but the ones specifically about X. That's a separate point above and beyond the sourcing questions raised above. --MASEM (t) 15:44, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I continue to be amazed that the tiny RD ITN space can be filled with notices about total unknowns, such as Corno, who was getting just 3 readers per day or Shirley Dysart, who was getting just 2. Yet well-knowns, like Gabor, who was getting 4,000 readers daily, can still be RD-ified on the Main Page as if they were equally notable. RM said "We write this encyclopedia for "readers", not "editors".

But it doesn't seem like it. Readers seem be be totally ignored by this system, whereby people they are most aware of, can be left off or delayed for days after they hit the news. What's worse, the more that a notable celebrity, especially an actor, singer, or songwriter have accomplished based on their longer film or discography, the less likely they are to be posted ITN soon, since each and every item in their long lists of accomplishments must be cited independently of their blue-linked article.

I was also surprised that Corno was posted ITN after only six hours(!) and with minimal support. I would submit a suggestion to post only RDs for people whose articles were receiving over 100 readers per day average. That would at least limit the likelihood of crowding out more notable people, and would imply that it's the readers who we are writing for.--Light show (talk) 22:59, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

No, it was probably worth keeping that spare space or two at RD completely blank. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:01, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

By the way, the quality threshold hasn't changed. So if any article at RD was good enough before the change in criteria, it's still not good enough. The argument proposed makes no sense in that context. Nothing has changed in that regard, two years ago we still would or should have been arguing over the quality of a nomination. The actual benefit we have now is that all we discuss is the quality, not the "super notability". The Rambling Man (talk) 23:13, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

And finally, if you really want to do something about this, start an RFC to revert the strongly supported RFC to change the RD criteria. I think just saying it's wrong and yet doing nothing tangible to fix it is unhelpful. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:21, 23 December 2016 (UTC)

@Light show: You seem to be saying that it is a bad thing that you and others might learn about a subject that you didn't know about before. Learning something is a positive, not a negative. 331dot (talk) 00:50, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose WP:N is good enough for RD. TFA features a seemingly endless parade of WW I RAAF pilots and I (rightly) don't see anyone up in arms about it at TAFR or WP:ERRORS. --CosmicAdventure (talk) 01:28, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

• OK, I got the points, all opposed. I commented here only to suggest a readership criteria, not anything to do with quality. --Light show (talk) 03:19, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

Post-script: if you really meant "total unknowns" then please use the power of WP:AFD to excise this global encyclopedia of such a terrible scourge. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:49, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

• Hey Light show I just noticed this discussion here, and as I worked on and nominated both Corno and Dysart, who you mention above, I thought I'd give my two cents worth. According to the RD criteria, any person with an article of acceptable standard can be listed - it's accepted that anyone who is in this encyclopedia, and dies, lived a life that is worthy of showcasing. A fabulous upshot of this policy is that readers get exposed to a whole range of notable people that they might not have been otherwise aware of. Which is kind of integral to WP's mission, isn't it, to bring knowledge to people?? And in terms of comparing people, really, a person who dedicated her life to serving her community (like Dysart) is just as worthy and interesting as someone who got up on stage and sang and danced (like Gabor). If you don't think that, then you're simply perpetuating the cult of celebrity and implying that the honest, hard workers of the world don't deserve to be acknowledged. Finally, as TRM mentions above, if you really think Corno and Dysart (and Shirley Hazzard, who you've also taken a crack at recently) are not suitable subjects for WP, then by all means start a AfD request and let's debate. MurielMary (talk) 09:57, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

The basis for the post was simply to note that those articles you mentioned, which were examples, don't seem to meet the intended goal of being ITN: to reflect recent or current events of wide interest. Promoting unknowns to the tiny RD section obviously sets the bar too low. I seriously question your rationale that anyone notable enough to get a bio in WP, which would include nearly 1,000 porn actors, has an equal right to be posted on the front page regardless of that intended goal.

It seems you're also adding a new element to ITN postings, which promotes needs verses wants. I agree it's too bad that the media has created cults of celebrities, but if their RD makes the world news, ITN by its stated goal should reflect that. But by your standard, however, even total unknowns, so long as they have a WP page and were dedicated hard workers at something, should have an equal right to be posted. And you go further, implying it's WP's duty to use its RD space to give readers what they need: "isn't it to bring knowledge to people?" You imply that ITN should be an involuntary classroom with editors as the instructors, as opposed to a place where readers come voluntarily to learn what they want. --Light show (talk) 19:34, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

If we only posted what our readers wanted to see, it'd be porn stars and video games in the main. How encyclopedic. At least Jenna Jameson would make it to the main page at last, what with her article being featured and all that, yet banned just to appease the sensitive nature of a few of our "think of the children!!!!!" readers and editors. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:45, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Why isn't she listed on the MP in ITN? She was Princess Leia afterall. 2600:8805:5800:F500:9C9D:6AB3:CBF8:A317 (talk) 01:17, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

See this: [1] Banedon (talk) 01:17, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

What and why you guys list stuff with/without a blurb and in/not in RD is simply mind boggling.2600:8805:5800:F500:9C9D:6AB3:CBF8:A317 (talk) 03:01, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

If you disagree with what is posted or the manner in which it is posted, I invite you to participate at the candidates nomination page. 331dot (talk) 00:29, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Given the debates over Michaels and Fisher about blurb or not, I woulD like to propose that no RD qualifying death should ever get a blurb, unless that death triggers a ITN worthy event, or is part of an ITN event. For example, if the Queen were to die without abjuctating her throne, her death is part of a transfer of power, and thus would be noted that way. The assassination of a majorgov't official (like that one a week or so ago), or the death of a notable person in a major transportation accident that we'd normally cover too. But of we are just talkin about the death from health issues of a past world leader or beloved entertainer should just be sent to RD, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Perhaps the only exception here is if one can write a blurb about ceremonies and events dedicateD the the death, as the case with Thatcher, Noreaga, or M. Jackson. Just have a lot of people memorialize the person would not be sufficient.

This eliminates any potential biasing one might see in whether an RD is blurb or not. And with the current RD allowance, this makes it fair to all editors. --MASEM (t) 02:01, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I guess the question is what constitutes the kind of "sudden" or "unexpected" death (like an assassination or an accident that you mention) for which we'd break this rule you're proposing. And then we get into the gray area of what if there's a news ticker item about 60 people dying in a plane crash, including acclaimed actress Meryl Streep and/or outgoing Ghanaian President John Mahama -- why do we apply for them a different standard just because there's another ITN item to piggyback off of? And as for the rule on assassinations, what if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump dies of a sudden illness? What if beloved humanitarian and singer Bono perishes in a freak skydiving accident? Hell, what if Bono is shot to death while performing at a concert in Perth -- does that trigger our assassination exemption? I think there's merit in at least discussing the proposal, but if we were to adopt a rule like this, we need to be very clear in defining it, or we're just creating problems instead of solving them.

For the record, I don't particularly understand why Wikipedia maintains its own ITN section at all instead of just curating items from Wikinews. -Kudzu1 (talk) 02:12, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

In either your cases under my scheme. That would blurbs. Trump's passing would mean (I think) his VP becomes president - a change of power in a nation. If Bono was assassinated, that itself would be an event (a serious public crime) beyond just Bono dying. --MASEM (t) 02:20, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

What about Bono having a heart attack and collapsing dead onstage? -Kudzu1 (talk) 02:22, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Assuming that that's all that happens, no, that's an RD, regardless of how public the event was. --MASEM (t) 05:20, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

No, that would definitely be a blurb, if Debbie Reynolds now counts as notable enough, Bono would do too. The Rambling Man (talk) 15:06, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

This hypothetical is assuming that this approach was in place, nullifying all previous ITNC results. If this approach had been in place, neither of Michaels, Fisher, or Reynolds would have been a blurb. --MASEM (t) 15:09, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is like using a hydrogen bomb to kill a fly. There's no need to change our rules because some people disagree with a certain post. Calidum 02:27, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
  • It's not that: it is about consistency. The new RD rule is a similar example of having some type of consistency that eliminates subjectivity based on importance (as long as the person has an article, then the only barrier to RD is the quality of the article, and that itself is something I was trying to address in the sourcing requirements suggestion a few sections above). Same here; to blurb or not to blurb is highly subjective, and I doubt you'd find an active ITN editor that can't think of a blurb that we shouldn't have posted, or a blurb that we failed to post due to disagreements if the subject was blurbworthy or not. As trying to put all RDs as blurbs is unworkable (it would flood all other ITNs) it is better to not feature any at all, unless they are connected to another newsworthy event. Takes a lot of disagreements out of processing ITN, which in turn helps improve the overall atmosphere. --MASEM (t) 04:17, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
    • This is a textbook case of splitting the baby. This isn't actually a proposal that is going to satisfy people or "improve the overall atmosphere" at ITN, nor will it do any sort of service to Wikipedia's readers, some of whom -- shock of shocks -- do come here to learn things, including about current events. If the concern is how toxic and infuriating ITN/T is in general, and the proposal is (as I suspect) a good-faith effort to address it, I think that's a laudable goal, but I don't see this accomplishing much and I think it's just going to end up making a lot of people upset, as well as lead to more concerns about consistency and structural bias down the road. If we seriously want to improve ITN, we should nuke it entirely and build a template that displays the top news items from Wikinews, our sister site, instead of trying to duplicate their efforts and inevitably collapsing into a vituperative, accusatory, incendiary mire in so doing. My two cents. -Kudzu1 (talk) 05:11, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
      • First, ITN is not meant to be a news ticker, so the idea of mirroring Wikinews is a terrible idea. We're supposed to feature topics that are in the news that have mean a certain quality metric, which is a higher standard. The proposal to allow any RD that has a decent-enough article was a first step towards eliminating certain types of systematic biases. This suggestion is another way to eliminate systematic bias (such as how much attention the media gives to celebrities, politicians, and athletes and trivializes scientists, artists, writers, and others) by treating all RDs as non-blurb RDs, save when they are central to a larger event. --MASEM (t) 05:20, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
        • I'm not sure I understand the philosophy that ITN isn't a news ticker. Of course it's a news ticker. It's a display of what is in the news. We like to throw around this self-important "not a news ticker" BS and pretend it's about showcasing good articles, but that's not really what it's about. It's about providing a little window of information regarding what is going on in the world while pointing readers to pages at which they can read more about the subjects that are in the news. It's a news ticker just as much as it is anything else. -Kudzu1 (talk) 05:29, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
          • A news tickets posts things that are current, without regards to importance or quality. That's why we have Portal:Current Events which is also linked from the main page. ITN is featuring content that happens to be "in the news". That takes subjectivity and consensus, not rote repetition. --MASEM (t) 06:31, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose this is counter to assessing community consensus in every form. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:55, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
  • And so was the decision to allow any RD to be posted regardless of importance (barring article quality). We've already started down that line. --MASEM (t) 07:10, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
    • Not at all, community consensus was wholly in favour of that change. Sorry if you missed that very extensive and well-attended discussion. Every item should be discussed with the community, we should not put up artificial barriers which encourage systemic bias. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:30, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
      • There's no need to be sarcastic. Masem participated in the RfC, of course he's aware of it. Banedon (talk) 08:17, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
• The problem with consensus is that sometimes it just doesnt go the way you (generic you) want it to. Fisher was *always* going to have a huge amount of subjective support for *anything*. This is a website that is used extensively by people who are technically literate. The nerd/geek count amongst editors is always going to be above the norm. It is not surprising that a Star Wars actor had solid backing. To blurb or not is basically opinion based on how important people feel the subject is (like RD used to be). It was successfully argued that a single line mention didnt require super-notability - consensus was firmly behind the change to the RD criteria - but I doubt the same argument will get support to remove subjective importance from the Blurb section. Especially when other main page sections constantly run completely irrelevant and non-important articles. Only in death does duty end (talk) 07:44, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

  Yes, exactly right. The project is run by people who are interested in the project, and those people probably have more of an interest in Star Wars than the average Joe. Some stuff promoted to the main page in this case is because it actually genuinely interests those involved in the project and community consensus reflects that. Just because some people (myself included) don't like it, it doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to reflect the will of the community. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:47, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose - After giving it some thought I think I concur most with Kudzu1. We should just link the top entries of Wikinews and be done with it, OR we should rename ITN into something that emphasizes it is quality-curated (e.g. "high quality articles that are in the news" or whatever). That's obviously drastic. If we don't want to go that far then I don't see what's wrong with the current system. The (sometimes contentious) discussions may not be to everyone's liking, but it's easy enough not to participate, and more importantly WP:WINNING applies. Getting worked up over consensus being against you is pretty pointless.

In any case, there are objective ways to ascertain if the death of someone is important enough to feature as a blurb. As of time of writing, I'm seeing news articles with titles such as "George Michael’s Huge Net Worth Allowed Extraordinary Generosity" or "Here’s Why Carrie Fisher Actually Hated That Gold Bikini From ‘Return of the Jedi’", both dated a few days after they died. That's good enough for me. It might not be good enough for someone else, but that's why we have consensus, no? Also a remark about bias: I didn't actually know who these two people were until they died. Banedon (talk) 08:17, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

The goal of Wikinews is to be news; the goal of ITN is to encourage the improvement of and highlight articles on timely subjects; very different goals. 331dot (talk) 08:40, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose. This doesn't reduce debates, but merely shifts them to another subject. 331dot (talk) 08:40, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
  • I disagree: the debate is effectively removed, not shifted. We'd still be debating on article quality with or without this. --MASEM (t) 14:44, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose The important issue is not the blurb per se -- those few words don't usually add much value as they will be telling most readers what they already know. What matters most is the picture. Recent deaths should get a reasonable share of the picture slot and that usually goes with a blurb. Andrew D. (talk) 09:40, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
  • That's even more a reason to discourage blurbs. WP is not a memorial to recently deceased, though I do not argue that when a RD is a blurb, that an image can be used alongside that blurb. But blurbs should be exceptional, and thus we should not be promoting more blurbs just to alter the proportion of image types that appear in the ITN boxes (arguably that's even more a bias towards people with celebrity status over any other type of person). --MASEM (t) 14:44, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
• Weak Oppose While I appreciate the motive here, I think it is an overreaction to a problem that crops up only rarely. The recent and regrettable lowering of our standards is IMO an aberration resulting from the Star Wars craze. But this does not strike me as common, and there are legitimate instances where truly iconic figures die that I think do merit a blurb. I've cited Robin Williams in the discussion on Reynolds as the sort of figure who merited a blurb. The unhappy fact is that when you have a consensus based system sometimes you will end up getting it wrong (or at least wrong in our opinion). But again, I don't think this is a sufficiently common issue to warrant the rather drastic proposal. That said, if this becomes a trend then I may reconsider. -Ad Orientem (talk) 15:25, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Fisher & Reynolds – In my no doubt minority opinion, combining Fisher and Reynolds in one blurb smacks of emotion-freighted tabloid/supermarket pulp 'journalism.' Obviously the subjects were related, and their deaths were almost coincident, but their careers and personae were very different. Further, their deaths, though separately RD-worthy, are of little consequence to the contemporary world. Sca (talk) 16:00, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

PS: See these sensational front pages (will change on Dec. 30, U.S. time). – Sca (talk) 16:07, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Sensational, maybe, yes, but that's what is in the news, and your Newseum links are a perfect demonstration of that. As Banedon said, maybe we should consider changing the name of ITN instead of blundering about in our current state of confusion as to what it is and what it's for. I do think it is perceived as a news ticker (and I reject the idea that a news ticker is "rote repetition", as it is generated by people whose literal job it is in the professional world to have a nose for what is or isn't news) by ordinary readers and it is treated as such by probably a majority of editors who contribute regularly or occasionally on ITN talk. The beauty of Wikipedia is that we have a massive and ever-growing wealth of information where people can learn more about subjects, but since a lot of our actual disagreements on ITN/C come down not to whether an article is "good enough" but whether a proposed item is "newsworthy enough", maybe we should be talking to our counterparts at Wikinews to figure out how we can help one another. They have what is in the news and we have the articles where people can read more about what is in the news.

What if, for example, we had a template that grabbed the top headlines from Wikinews and then had a Wikipedia-generated section where we could display something like, "For more information on topics and subjects that are in the news, see [these good articles]"? That would focus our discussion here on article quality and improvements rather than on what is newsworthy. -Kudzu1 (talk) 16:24, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

In U.S. journalism, tabloid/supermarket publications usually are not considered what Wiki would term 'reliable sources' – i.e., are not suitable for recycling by mainline news-aggregation sites. The Daily News and Post may be widely read in parts of New York, but are famous (or infamous) for overwrought, melodramatic content.

You may not be old enough to remember the Simon & Garfunkel song Save the Life of my Child, which includes these lyrics:

Though it never made the New York Times

In the Daily News the caption read

"Save the life of my child!"

Cried the desperate mother"

Sca (talk) 16:54, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

The second track on Bookends, right? I know the lyrics. That's a good album. I also have some familiarity with news media. My argument stands -- our lodestar has to be something a little better than "not what the NYDN is doing" to justify our decisions, and our insistence on making those decisions separately from our sister site Wikinews, what we will and will not feature as being in the news. -Kudzu1 (talk) 01:05, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose. If the purpose of the proposal is to avoid having to debate borderline cases, it cannot succeed, because there will always be borderline cases no matter where the border is drawn. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:29, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
• Oppose. This would just make systemic bias problems worse by putting up high bars for all content. To pick an example from the archives I would have supported Chinua Achebe for a blurb, which it did not get, but this criteria would absolutely have ruled that out. ---- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 02:42, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Blurb vs RD still broken

• We haven't really fixed the problem though - it seems like there have been very few items since the iconic "Michael Jackson" death that elicited anywhere near full community consensus, and inordinate amount of time is spent on debating the "RD and blurb" distinction. To me, rather than engaging in further debate, I think we should simply follow existing rules, which are clearly outlined at WP:ITN/DC - debates should be about whether they follow existing guidelines rather than a subjective one-liner about how important that person is. Admins need to go against the grain of the majority sometimes, especially when systemic bias is involved, in the case of Carrie Fisher and George Michael. We need to tackle systemic bias to make Wikipedia a resource for all, not just the demographic that curates and edits this website. Colipon+(Talk) 15:27, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

  So basically you want consensus, as long as it follows your opinion. Your reasonings are flawed. You use bias to fight percieved bias.--BabbaQ (talk) 15:43, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

  I disagree with that implication. I think Colipon and others including myself recognize that the choice of RD to be promoted to blurb is far too influenced by the level of media coverage, which is 100% systematic bias that needs to be addressed. We do this for non-RD stories all the time, avoiding posting stories that may have tons of media coverage and the necessary article quality, because we don't want to bias topics that fascinate the world media over those that are more appropriate for an encyclopedia. We should be doing the same for RD blurbs; Fisher's blurb was escalated because of the current Star Wars hype (eg right after Rogue One's release), and Reynolds even more for being related to Fisher. When you strip away the media circus, neither actress would be considered exceptional in the field, but because the media loves celebrity, they were given an excessive amount of coverage. I would also in hindsight that we should have done the same with Michaels (even though I supported the blurb then) We have to avoid getting caught up in the media frenzy, and be much more extremely discriminating for RD blurb posts. --MASEM (t) 17:01, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

  Agreed, I'd extend it further to global perspective generally. I have always held a strong view that the English Wikipedia is the "flagship" global Wikipedia, indeed read the world over by many people who are not from the anglosphere, nor necessarily 'western' in cultural orientation. That is what many editors seem to have trouble grasping. I personally enjoy the Star Wars franchise immensely, but when I speak to someone from, say, Iran, it could very well be that they never heard of the entire series, let alone Carrie Fisher. Further to that, a Debbie Reynolds would probably be far less important than any Indian actor from the 1970s who has been nominated for that country's film awards if you take into account the number of people familiar with them as a household name, but of course we'd never give prominence to that Indian. When you compare someone like Carrie Fisher vs. Nelson Mandela, I am sorry, but they are not the same 'class' of persons every which way you look at it. ITN seems to have a tendency to combat American bias, without paying heed to the "pop culture bias" or Anglosphere-bias, or "western" bias, or youth-male bias. They are all real. They need to be dealt with in a professional way that doesn't so easily succumb to the mob. Colipon+(Talk) 18:00, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

• Neither Fisher nor Reynolds should ever had got close to a blurb in my opinion, the same is true of George Michael. These have undermined the concept of RDs as blurbs, but let's not kid ourselves, this rot started some time ago (more than three years ago) when American actor Paul Walker was listed in ITN, and the standard trooping of American actors and actresses to RD despite unaddressed quality concerns by our cadre of American admins, the parade which continues to this very day. Most of the community are American, most of the items posted are about Americans. Nothing's going to change that. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:45, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
  • Indeed - every new case simply sets precedent for the next case, and it all degenerates from there. Colipon+(Talk) 19:05, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
    • It's why I suggested the above solution, since we're dealing with a situation that, unless very strongly enforced by the admins determining whether to post or not, that we simply eliminate all blurbs about RDs, eliminating that slippery slope. Barring that, we need to otherwise set a principally objective line in the sand so that it cannot degrade via the slippery slope. --MASEM (t) 19:18, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
  • Whether by "community" you mean readers, editors or ITN/C opinion givers, is not clear. My own impression, FWIW, is that the majority of the ITN opinions usually come from non-Americans, especially for American RD discussions. What's the rough ratio for Reynolds? --Light show (talk) 19:27, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
• Fisher and Reynolds were both Oscar nominees, George Michael was a multi-award winning artist. Regardless of people's personal opinions, they were considered by their peers to be at the top of their field. Take a look at your average TV schedule and see how many actors and musicians have won, let alone been nominated for a major award. Granted its the holiday period so the re-runs of old films will have upped the count a bit... But arguments that Fisher, Reynolds and Michael were not stand-outs in their respective fields are extremely weak. Even a nomination for an Oscar puts the subject far far ahead of the average member of their profession. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:01, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

  Oscar nominees. Exactly, so not actually top of their field. There are hundreds of individual Oscar winners who you could consider top of their field. I don't think Bruce Dern will get a blurb, nor June Squibb, nor Barkhad Abdi, and that's from just 2014. Walker lowered the bar so far that it's now acceptable, even customary, to see these actors who really aren't "legendary" getting posted, and often rushed through by a certain element of the admin corps. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:22, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

  And there are hundreds of thousands of people in the same careers who cant get a nomination for best walk-on in the daytime soap extras awards. If you only consider people who actually *win* an award to be top in their field, you lump all the nominees with the rest of the mediocrity. You wouldnt consider someone considered for a Nobel to be an average member of their profession any more than you would label someone who was up for the Booker prize to be one of theirs. Its an extremely weak argument that relies on arbitrary unfair standards that do no reflect a person's skill in their profession. Only in death does duty end (talk) 11:21, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

  There's a very clear difference between a "long" career and a "legendary" career. Fisher, Reynolds, Michael, none of these are "legends", nor was Walker. I would never expect to see a blurb for a Nobel-nominee, nor someone up for the Booker Prize. It's in no way weak, it's fact. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:41, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

  I think another reason for these blurbs is their relative youth (and in the case of Reynolds, as an extension of Fisher) which can be argued makes their deaths more 'shocking'. If we were to go by this train of thought then certainly I can see any relatively notable actor who dies before the age of 60 to get a blurb. However that does not explain why someone like Christopher Lee might get one as he died from natural causes and was very old. Colipon+(Talk) 14:27, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

  On the other hand I expect to see a blurb for whatever people like the most. And I am rarely disappointed in this regard... But short of trying to remove *all* subjective opinion-based criteria this will continue to be the case. But then you will end up with a situation like DYK with a load of technical checkboxes and still crap gets through. Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:04, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

  If we don't want to have the ILIKEIT push of certain RD-blurbs which leads to a slippery-slope for later inclusion, we need a highly objective measure that may discount RD blurbs of people that really should have had a blurb (eg Thatcher or Mandela) in favor avoiding any type of favoritism. The fact that there's nearly always an intense discussion about an RD blurb when it comes up tells me that we really need strong inclusion measures so that we can focus the ITN/C on the quality of the article (since RD listing is still a guarantee for a quality article under the current system). --MASEM (t) 15:10, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

  Which would effectively mean agreeing a set of criteria for people that have to be rubber stamped. Do you genuinely think enough editors are going to agree on what constitutes blurb worthy for an actor? People were arguing against Thatcher for a blurb as I recall. I could torpedo any criteria discussion by finding a highly beloved but ineligible under the proposed criteria biography and saying 'Well so-and-so wouldnt get one' and it would drag on for months to no consensus. If (as an alternative) you ended up removing all subjective criteria, you end up with quality tick-lists which ensure the article is high quality, but would result in relative nobodies passing. Only in death does duty end (talk) 16:44, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

  And that's why I have proposed effectively eliminating RD blurbs all together, only mentioning the death of a person if that is tied to an otherwise ITN-appropriate story. I do think we can develop nearly objective measures for people that would allow for some healthy debate, but it would need posting admins to not be swayed by !vote counts for subjects that are decidedly outside that metric. --MASEM (t) 17:04, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

You don't like the outcome(s) of the current consensus-based process so you would prefer to build a consensus to change the process? I mean, okay, but doesn't that seem at least a little unlikely? If you asked a general cross-section of editors whether they think the rules should be adjusted so that figures like Carrie Fisher and George Michael are less likely to get posted as a blurb, how sure are you that they would agree with that? I'm not entirely sure what a neutral cross-section of editors would say, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility that the larger editing community is actually happy having more of these blurbs rather than fewer. Honestly, it is hard to judge. The community of people who show up at WP:ITN/C isn't a random cross-section of Wikipedia editors (and participants here at WT:ITN, even less so). However, I'm not particularly confident that the larger community actually wants fewer blurbs. As they say, democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others. There are a couple bright line rules at ITN, but almost everything else is either explicitly consensus-based or written in fuzzy language (e.g. "usually", "generally", "rare", etc.) that implicitly contemplates consensus-based exceptions. As long as that is the process, many decisions are going to be heavily influenced by whoever happens to show up at that time. For example, I posted the combined blurb for Fisher / Reynolds, because at the time I woke up and came online I judged there to be a consensus behind that outcome. If I had come to it earlier (rather than being asleep), I probably would have voted against giving Reynolds blurb space. In other words, it isn't an outcome that I particularly agreed with, but it was clear that most of the participants felt differently. Even given outcomes like these, I have yet to hear any suggestions for reducing the subjectivity at ITN that actually feels like an improvement. Dragons flight (talk) 18:56, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Save for a couple cases, I have generally found that debates on blurbs or not to avoid the usual bias that seems to occur at ITN debates, that being nationality. The fact that we're being more and more careful to avoid the national angle helps to assure that the discussion for consensus eliminates that bias (either direction it may go). But when it comes to entertainers, particularly in a case like Fisher, there is another bias that we have not figured out how to necessarily handle that being that most editors here are pop culture fans. It is very easy to let our "nerd-cred" seep through and deem some people more deserving of a blurb than others. This is not helped by the mainstream media that easily outweigh the coverage of deaths of celebrities over that of (arguably) more important contributors towards the advancement of mankind (eg like Vera Rubin as a recent example). And its a very difficult curtain of bias to see through.

The rest of ITN's goals are designed to avoid simply repeating the top stories in the news - which are tailors to mass market consumption - and instead distill to encyclopedic topics that happen to be in the news, and while there are still some difficulties at times, that process is pretty free of any media or editor bias. But now we're letting RD blurbs be posted because we've let the bias of the mass media and our own internal bias towards pop culture taint the process. We need a sanity check here. Clearly editors don't want to eliminate RD blurbs, but we recognize that we need to reset what is an minimum level of importance before a RD blurb should be posted. Its clear that posting of Michaels, Fisher, and Reynolds was likely a mistake, and as TRM's pointed out, even as far back as Paul Walker was a very bad post. Let's recognize that, and going forward, not play "but we posted X"/"we didn't post Y"-type arguments and instead focus on only having blurbs for exceptional people, keeping our discussions free of the bias that the media will have. --MASEM (t) 00:45, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

More evidence, IMO, that ITN doesn't really have a clear identity or purpose. It's entirely unclear to the layperson that ITN, contrary to its name, ostensibly is not to "repeat the top stories in the news". In fact, one of the commonly argued criteria on ITN/C is whether an item is or is not receiving major news coverage. And the condescension toward "mass market consumption" strikes a sour note -- as if noting the deaths of beloved and well-known Hollywood icons is too lowbrow for the front page of Wikipedia.

ITN should either be clearly relabeled as so to ensure it cannot be confused with a news ticker in any way, or we should embrace the news ticker approach (which I believe does drive some front-page traffic) by using the top headlines from Wikinews. We could also take a combination approach with a template that would take items from Wikinews while also allowing us to direct readers to particularly good articles that are the subjects of those news items. That would eliminate the otiose back-and-forths over what is newsworthy enough for us to deign to feature. I'm sure we'd find something else to bicker about, but at least we could put away our "PRESS" fedoras and stop wasting our time on an encyclopedia website second-guessing the news judgment of professional editors and publishers. -Kudzu1 (talk) 18:08, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

"In the news" should be sufficient to understand that these are article topics that happen to be in the news, not "the news" by itself. There's a "Current Events" link right there for the actual news ticker aspect. And the reason to be cautious of mass market consumption is that is part of the systematic bias we are supposed to avoid, which will favor Western culture and celebrity over other parts of the world. That's why blurbs need to be much more exceptional to those that have has a world-changing impact. --MASEM (t) 18:13, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Good luck with that. -Kudzu1 (talk) 19:13, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

All further discussion about Reynolds has been redirected here. How do images work with joint death postings? Does the second posted individual ever get an image, or is it only the first, or the more notable? I am guessing that in this case, the relative notability of Fisher will mean that Reynolds never gets pictured. Maybe some guidelines should be drawn up, or is the situation too rare to warrant that? Martinevans123 (talk) 17:16, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

When we had the March 2015 helicopter crash that took 3 notable athletes, there was daily pseudorandom image swapping between the three while the blurb was near the top and no other blurb above it warranted an image. I suggest that we should switch to Reynolds sometime in the next 12-ish hrs. --MASEM (t) 17:26, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Unless they get trumped, of course? Martinevans123 (talk) 17:29, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes. Note that I did think about having both images side-by-side (in a newly created composite image) but there's far too little room on the display of the template for that without drastically reducing the combined image size. Yet another option is if there was a free image of Reynolds and Fisher together, even if amid other people. --MASEM (t) 17:32, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I guess a virtual mash-up video of Debbie tap-dancing to "Good Morning", with Carrie tapping out a syncopated beat on a light sabre, is out of the question, then? Martinevans123 (talk) 22:43, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

It seems a picture of Debbie, by UK photographer Allan Warren, has now appeared. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:33, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Maybe this one? -> thumb|Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds in 2011 -A lad insane (Channel 2) 06:50, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Whomever uploaded that file does not seem aware about copyright. It's from an Assc. Press photographer, meaning it is a commercial copyrighted photograph and absolutely cannot be at Commons, nor would be allowed under our policies here (WP:NFCC#2 disallows such press images). So that doesn't work here. --MASEM (t) 06:59, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

I see that it has been deleted, then. -A lad insane (Channel 2) 04:28, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

At present, the ITN rules call for Recent Death items to be limited so there are no more than 4 items presented at any one time, and no death occurred more than 7 days ago. It occurs to me that having both rules might be a bit excessive. Removing either constraint would allow some items to be displayed a bit longer and hence increase the average exposure of RD items. For example, we could always have 4 items and just remove the oldest when new items occur. This is analogous to the main ITN space, where items are pushed out when new items are added rather than after any set time limit. Alternatively, we could set a firm 7 day limit, with the understanding that sometimes there would be more than 4 items. (Having more than 4 items is likely to cause the RD row to wrap onto a second line on some common display sizes, but that doesn't seem like a terrible problem to me. It already happens occasionally on my display if the names are particularly long.) How do others feel about setting the limit to focus on only one constraint, rather than two? Personally, I have a slight preference for only using a 7 day limit (as that provides each item a more uniform exposure), but I'd be nearly as happy just to have RD display the last four deaths regardless of how old the item is. Dragons flight (talk) 16:15, 24 December 2016 (UTC)

• Max 4 RD (for screen limitations) and max 7 days for exposure from accepted date of nomination works fine for me. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:43, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
• I wouldn't say I'm opposed per se but I don't really see the need for this change. 331dot (talk) 23:55, 24 December 2016 (UTC)
• In the old days, an RD item expired off when it was older than the oldest blurb. In the unlikely event that the RD box is empty, it pops off and leaves room for a blurb. --CosmicAdventure (talk) 00:11, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

  I think we should have more than four. That's not enough. For example I submitted an RD yesterday and it's been virtually ignored, probably because there's no need for an additional RD at the moment. I think that's a shame, especially as time is running out.Zigzig20s (talk) 00:32, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

  User:The Rambling Man: Could you please explain the screen limitations?Zigzig20s (talk) 03:05, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

  It's been agreed that keeping to 4 RDs maximises the chances of keeping RDs on a single line. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:16, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

  Why not have more than one? Two or three lines wouldn't hurt.Zigzig20s (talk) 11:04, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

  You'd have to ask the community, it's not my decision. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:07, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

• I prefer that we keep items up as long as possible, so 4 items is my choice, but once the number of hits has returned to the baseline, we don't need to keep an item up for 15 days just because there is space. So it should just be a guideline that length of listing is a relative, not an absolute good. Death Takes a Holiday μηδείς (talk) 05:41, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi! Silly question: Wikipedia:ITN archives goes from 2008 to 2011. Where can I find archives for 2012 and later? Thanks! Enterprisey (talk!) 05:57, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

They were maintained by hand and the user who was doing the work stopped. Stephen 06:24, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Enterprisey, on the ITN Candidates page, under the heading "Suggestions", there is a box with the words "Discussions of items older than seven days are automatically archived" in it. If you click "show", it will open and you will find month-by-month links to the archives, as well as a search box for searching them all. Here is a link to the box.[3] Neljack (talk) 06:27, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

The question was regarding archives of stories that were posted to ITN, the candidate archives are suggestions that may not have been posted. Stephen

Isabelle Huppert won the Best Actress Award at the 2017 Golden Globes. I wonder how we would make sure she goes on the main page. What gave me the idea is that we have Jessica Chastain as a featured article on the main page today, but she is less relevant. We should also strive to bring more international inclusivity to the main page.Zigzig20s (talk) 09:02, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

We can't "make sure she goes on the main page". The Rambling Man (talk) 09:05, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

(ec) Get it to a Good article status and nominate it for DYK. That is the fastest way. The longer one is to get it to a FA. As for ITN, unlikely in this case. We don't even post Golden Globes awards. --Tone 09:06, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

By the way, the main page today features the following:

• United States
• Malaysia
• Malawi
• France
• Polynesia
• Germany
• Canada
• Britain
• Turkey
• Russia
• Japan
• Iran
• Estonia

I think that's pretty "international", don't you? The Rambling Man (talk) 09:09, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Well, right now we have Rogue River and Jessica Chastain in plain view. I've also noticed that recent deaths are often just Americans--I've been trying (and succeeding) to add more inclusivity there though. Yes, I think a DYK might work, but it will take a while.Zigzig20s (talk) 09:13, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

TFA and TFL are completely indpendent of one another. If you want to see fewer "nationality clashes" you should spend time at those two projects working with the people there. You'd also need to work with WP:TFP to make sure there's an equal diversity in the pictures we display, although that may be more difficult because they operate on a first in first out principle. Oh, forgot to mention India, and two Orcas in that marvellously international list! The Rambling Man (talk) 09:19, 9 January 2017 (UTC)