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I think we should discuss setting some kind of minimum criteria for tropical cyclone nominations given the significant influx of premature nominations and noms for storms that didn't have a significant impact as of late. Noah^Talk 03:55, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Due to climate change, hurricanes have become the new normal. A storm like Hurricane Wilma occurring today would not get nominated. Count Iblis (talk) 07:25, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

It's usually best to take it on a case-by-case basis. If something is premature or not notable enough it won't get posted. I'm guilty of premature nominations, as are many of us, but discouraging discussions generally isn't ideal. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 07:46, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Agree with Cyclonebiskit. I nominated Iota when it did because it was a C5. Cat 5s are still really rare, and only 1-2 happen per year in the Atlantic; only a handful happen worldwide per year. The C5 Iota already affected land. So no, a Wilma would still be nominated, and discouraging cyclone nominations is counter-productive. ~ Destroyeraa🌀 15:12, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

As Count Iblis says, the vast majority of these storms are mundane and are really not noteworthy. We have dozens of such Atlantic hurricanes (for example) a year, and we really ought not to be posting half a dozen of them per year when all the news really amounts to is "people living in an area which is hit every year by dozens of hurricanes is hit by a hurricane and some stuff broke and some people died". I agree with a case-by-case basis (what makes a hurricane not routine or mundane? It depends...) and no more premature nominations. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 15:33, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

With Cat 5s becoming more common nowadays, Cat 5s are no longer classified as "rare". I'll oppose ITNs solely for Cat 5 hurricanes as they are not notable.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 07:58, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose documenting criteria as instruction creep. If there is a "problem" here it's the tendency at ITN to post death toll stories and to !vote count. Someone posting "Support - this is significant" doesn't make it significant and if there are compelling arguments to the contrary those ought carry more weight. Another important barometer would be identifying if the story is being featured by news media (vs just reposting wire stories in the hopes that search engines will drive impressions to their pages). Cyclones are just one type of disaster stub we post, and it could easily stand in for terrorist attacks, or plane crashes or prison riots. --LaserLegs (talk) 16:14, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose any limit You posted the hurricane hitting Greece, Cyclone Ianos, which only caused 5 deaths. Then you posted Typhoon Molave (2020) when it was at 12 deaths. Now you are saying we can't post this until it plateaus 50 deaths. ~ Destroyeraa🌀 16:51, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Posting those was an error unless that was something outstanding or different about them. The routine hurricanes which are in no way remotely interesting should be dismissed. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 17:11, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
    • I remembered the Typhoon Molave ITN candidate discussion which I chose not to join in. If Typhoon Molave were to occur today, I would oppose.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 17:17, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
• I believe nominations should only start when it reaches notability (i.e. when it has become catastrophic), not when it is forecast to become catastrophic.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 17:09, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
  • As for the notability itself, I agree that since cyclones have become more frequent, more intense and more damaging than ever before, the standard for a cyclone to be notable should also be set higher. Otherwise ITN will be nothing but cyclones.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 17:13, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
    • So this is true of many things. Fires and tornadoes in the United States, flooding in China and India ... these are routine weather events and are hardly notable --LaserLegs (talk) 17:45, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
      • Indeed. Iota can nick off.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 17:52, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
        • Wait, @The Rambling Man:, a hurricane hitting Greece at peak intensity is very very rare. Molave's premature posting - I don't mind if you have objections to. ~ Destroyeraa🌀 19:22, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
          • AS I SAID A FEW TIMES (!!!) if a weather event is remarkable, rare, unusual, seriously record-breaking, FINE, but otherwise, these routine events are like mass shootings in the US. No longer noteworthy. Let the Wikiproject write tomes about the progress and eventualities, but seriously, STOP NOMINATING THEM. Unless they are somehow groundbreaking. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 22:56, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
            • Actually, the Greece hurricane isn't so rare. I might oppose that news too. Cyclones are becoming more common in Greece with warmer sea temps, etc. **cough** Global warming **cough**--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 06:09, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose any criteria as hurricanes can have very little death count (Cross fingers for every one), but have high impact in the entire world. Elijahandskip (talk) 19:31, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
• Comment/Oppose (This is a second posting, but I am stating something as the Lead Coordinator of the Current Event WikiProject.) For the Portal:Current events, any hurricane that gains international attention (Basically any hurricane/tropical storm that makes landfall anywhere) will be posted in the Portal. I know the portal has a lot less requirements for items to be posted, however, having criteria would be bad. No one can put a price on human lives lost. {Also, a storm could kill 0 people but do like a trillion USD in damage.} Criteria might sound great, but would be a burden of technicalities in the future. (Lead Coordinator of WikiProject of Current Events) Elijahandskip (talk) 19:31, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Best to assess each hurricane/typhoon on a case-by-case basis. Checking if they have made groundbreaking feats. Could always be something other than merely ††† and $$$--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 20:01, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
• Perhaps when the Atlantic hurricane and the Pacific typhoon seasons "start" (first major storm to make landfall with damage), these can be ongoing until the season seems to be over (may be a few weeks after the last major storm to know for sure), with blurbs allowed for those storms with highly significant damage (100+ some deaths) while those go on. --Masem (t) 19:33, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
  • @Masem: It is very rare for storms to get more than 100 deaths in the Atlantic and Pacific, and even the Western Pacific. Most notable storms caused more than 20 deaths. They go on to cause several billion in damage. Also, I do not support the season article for ongoing, due to the original procedure being fine. ~ Destroyeraa🌀 19:51, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
    • Okay, maybe 100 is too high, but the idea is that during hurricane/typhoon seasons, these storms make landfall, cause death and destruction routinely in the same period each year. Clearly there's a line that too few deaths we're likely not going to post an individual, but to avoid anyone calling out bias (US vs Asia), it would make sense to just have both seasons ongoing - generally a period of a few months each year - and when the storm is truly major with deaths over some MINIMUMDEATH number, we'd actually consider posting that, while other storms that do still cause deaths are at least practically included via the ongoing line. I'd also consider even if this minimum death toll wasn't reached (but still caused deaths) storms that made landfall at high strengths like Cat 5 hurricanes would still be a possible blurb. The only issue I would see are the editors that seem aggressive wanting to remove anything in Ongoing if there's no "news" in that after a day or so, since these storms may be staggered out by weeks. --Masem (t) 20:01, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
      • Unlike the North Atlantic where there are "hurricane seasons", the western Pacific doesn't have a similar analogous term. Pacific typhoon seasons are 365 (or 366) days long. The 2019 season "started" on January 1st. Business picks up from May to December though, so if you guys are cool with a de facto ITNR ongoing item for 7 months in a year that's on you guys. Howard the Duck (talk) 20:41, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose to it all. No to ongoing (absurd, half the year??). No to numerical criteria for weather events: it's CONTEXTUAL guys, how many times? If we've posted half a dozen storms with limited interest, don't post another: c.f. mass shootings in the US. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 22:54, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Comment: I think ITNR can have an entry for any (natural) disaster with 100+ deaths. Disasters with less can still be nominated, but those with 100+ can get a speedrun at ITNC. 2601:602:9200:1310:E8C8:76F2:1FA3:A77C (talk) 23:05, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

I think that's a reasonable idea. If a natural disaster exceeds a certain number (e.g. 200) then it gets INTR and quality is the only issue. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 23:14, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Counting bodies isn't as easy as counting votes. Casualties in some awful disasters may never be 100% accounted for, and even if the body count approaches the WP:ITNMINUMDEATHS of choice, it could be stale already by then. Howard the Duck (talk) 23:32, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

But a major part of this issue is assessing the impact of the recurring weather events. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 23:54, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

We should be a bit careful, or at least recognize that there's also the flooding period in China, India and other Asia countries that frequently can kill in the thousands but over a period of weeks or months, making it hard to promote a single event. Not saying that we shouldn't post these, but we should be aware of what is the tipping point as well as to avoid a flood here, a flood there, etc. I also know from the past we do want to be careful of "grouping" unrelated disasters that may otherwise be seemingly related. A flood in China is probably not caused by the same source as a flood in India though we'd be tempted to treat that as one because of their shared geography. --Masem (t) 01:21, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure ALL floods in China and India with over 100 deaths that had acceptable articles passed ITN. 2601:602:9200:1310:41D1:D48E:77AA:4AE3 (talk) 02:17, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Single event floods yes, but the flood season in China often kills hundreds over a series of several months, but each event is small on its own. We've had problems when people nominate a "long-running disaster" of this sort in the past because most of that has happened in the past. --Masem (t) 14:49, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose ITN/R (and you should start a separate discussion if that's what you want) based on death toll. Killing 100 people in a densely populated developing country with lax enforcement of weak building codes is tragic but not notable. There was a comment above about "contextual" that's what's needed, not numerical limits. --LaserLegs (talk) 02:31, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
• Comment/Question we posted three typhoons in the Philippines in the last 30 days (the last one just five days ago) with no fanfare, why the sudden collective loss of shit? We post irrelevant disaster stubs all the time. Are we suddenly tired of hearing about tropical storms? --LaserLegs (talk) 02:40, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Essentially yes, too many cyclone ITNs. Deaths from cyclones occur too often year in year out. I'm raising the bar for cyclone ITNs to at least 100 deaths.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 06:06, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Comment - The biggest problem we have here with all weather related disasters, is a lack of knowledge over how relevant the impact of a disaster is on a certain area. For example, I would probabally be laughed at if I tried to submit Cyclone Tino for ITN, despite it being significant to Tuvalu and the World Bank having to provide $6 million dollars for the recovery of Tuvalu. This is why I proposed the creation of a Weather Wikiproject and articles such as Floods in Fiji or Floods in China earlier this year, as the information is out there but we have to find it and bring it into Wiki.Jason Rees (talk) 02:49, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Jason Rees and CyclonicallyDeranged: If you've read local Nicaraguan and Honduran news, they literally say that they're "in the hands of God." Those people are suffering very very badly, and this storm is probably one of the most impactful their since Mitch in 1998. More than 41 people are dead, 40 are missing. However, per CD, I have to wait for 50 deaths. ~ Destroyeraa🌀 13:46, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Destroyeraa: the entire world is in the hands of God. Find a better argument than this. I didn't say 50, I said 100.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 15:20, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Btw, Mitch claimed more than 10,000 which is 200 times more than Iota.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 17:15, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• November had 4 election blurbs, one of it in ongoing, but no one's raising a stink about that... Howard the Duck (talk) 14:15, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  See WP:ITNR. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 14:26, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• I believe our criteria needs to be as follows: A cyclone is considered generally worth posting on ITN if it meets the following criteria: 1) Reliable news sources are covering the cyclone and its aftermath to sufficient depth 2) The article is of sufficient quality for main page posting (generally comprehensive, well referenced) and 3) There is consensus in a discussion at WP:ITNC that criteria 1 and 2 have been met. What does everyone think about that proposal? --Jayron32 16:21, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  That's just a rehash of ITNC, replacing "item" with "cyclone". The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 16:25, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  The issue is that's true of nearly every cyclone/hurricane/typhoon, landfall or not (in both that these get coverage in news and as a credit to the WPians in this area, these are nearly always decent articles). The last few months have shown that allowing every single storm like this would be a problem. We'd be flooding ITN with storms that may have been of concern due to possible threat but no real damage. We need to be a bit more selective and recognize just as we're not a news ticker , we're also not the Weather Channel as well. --Masem (t) 16:27, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  Yes, but we haven't posted every storm. You're just inventing strawmen to knock down now. --Jayron32 18:25, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  Criteria as how you've put it would make about 10 cyclones in the last month worth posting on ITN (groan).--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 16:36, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  No, we didn't post 10 in the past month. So I don't know where you get that from. --Jayron32 18:27, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  I got that from your proposed criteria.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 18:32, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  Where are the 10 discussions that had consensus at WP:ITNC? If you can't produce those, then you're inventing windmills to tilt at. --Jayron32 18:44, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  @Jayron32: What I am meant to gauge at is that about 10 cyclones in the past month had significant coverage from a gazillion reliable sources (per your criterion 1). Then since cyclone articles are always created on Wikipedia, criterion 2 would pass easily. Then anyone nominating the cyclone to ITN would easily pass criterion 3 since criterion 1 and criterion 2 are already met. Then ITN will be polluted with cyclones. Big problem. Absolutely no windmills tilted at here.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 05:49, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

  Yes, but my proposal is the existing criteria for posting anything. We've been working under that criteria for like, a decade. And in that time, with the technical possibility of having 10 cyclones per month (by your estimate), we have done so (checks math... carry the two... divide by pi... take the inverse...) exactly... hold on... this can't be right... No, the math checks out... We've done so 0 times. It's never happened; it's never even come close to happening. So, you've invented a fictional problem, which has never happened, which nothing in our experience many years of Wikipedia, and in all of the past data would let someone predict would happen, and now your trying to create new rules to prevent something which has never happened, and which is likely never to happen. That's just silly. --Jayron32 12:50, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

  Then create a criteria that eliminates the possibility for something to happen. I am not interested in what has happened. If the criteria were to go on, the possibility for the unprecedented may become "precedented". So this criteria should not go on.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 14:04, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

  Why? Because you say there is a possibility for it to happen? I can write many things. It doesn't make them possible. I can write "there's a possibility a 10000 ton weight will drop on my head right... now!" Just by claiming it doesn't make it so. You've not provided any evidence such a thing will happen outside of your own vehement assertion that it will. We don't make arbitrary rules merely to cover the vehement assertions of random people. No matter how vehement those assertions are. --Jayron32 15:39, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

  There is plenty of evidence in 2020 that such things can happen. The only vehement assertion in this little discussion is your "10000 tonnes onto your head". With global warming quite evident and cyclones getting bigger and meaner, what I am suggesting might happen is quite likely, so watch out. With La Nina already declared in September, which increases cyclone activity in many regions of the world with a high population, the imminent threat is already there.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 20:32, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

  No one is saying the cyclones aren't happening. What we are saying is that we don't need a policy to prevent 10 cyclone stories from hitting the main page in one month because it has never happened that 10 cyclone stories were posted on the main page in one month. You've literally invented a problem that doesn't exist. --Jayron32 19:32, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

  Actually 5 cyclone "newses" happened in the past month which in my opinion is way too many. So I think something should be done anyway.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 19:39, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

  It probability didn't go to 10 cyclones this time around because I hypothesise that no one in planet Earth really bothered to nominate all 10 cyclones to ITN candidate. So it is human beings' so-called "I can't be bothered" way of doing things that ultimately led to less nominations than, in theory, what could have been...--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 14:12, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

  Yes indeed we're in proper weather fanboy territory here. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 16:37, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  The thing is that that past 5 cyclones - Molave, Vamco, Eta, and now Iota had more than 40 deaths. Goni had 26 but was the strongest typhoon at landfall in the world. I agree it's a bit too much, but many of these storms are notable in the world, not US-centric, and have significant coverage. ~ Destroyeraa🌀 17:25, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  They're notable enough for articles, but certainly not notable enough for ITN. Things like this which happen dozens of times a year (and that's the Atlantic season only) means the level of significance needs to be REALLY high for it to be posted. A few dozen killed across several countries is really nothing more than you'd expect for these regular weather patterns. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 22:22, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

  Yes because there is enough space in Wikipedia to document all the notable cyclones into articles. Meanwhile, ITN has only four slots to document current news across all realms of existence. Notability is set much higher for that to be on ITN. The current news could talk about the recent murder case near my local area and Wikipedia may report it. Let's put this news on ITN. Oh wait, a gazillion murders unfortunately occur anywhere in the world (over 400,000 in a year according to Wikipedia).--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 06:01, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

  As I would have expected TRM to correctly point out by now, that’s not an issue with posting too many cyclones, that’s an issue with articles in other areas not getting updated and nominated sufficiently often. Bzweebl (talk • contribs) 17:44, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

• One thing I've noticed is that a number of these nominations got kicked off because a single editor jumped the gun, as in the case of Iota. I know that The Rambling Man commented on how we all said to wait on that storm. We could cut down on such premature submissions by reaching consensus (perhaps even unanimous consensus?) on a storm's talk page before making any ITN submissions for tropical cyclones. We certainly should not be making submissions for storms that have yet to make landfall. The only exception I might see to that part would be storms beating all-time intensity records for their respective basin (e.g. an Atlantic hurricane surpassing Wilma). TornadoLGS (talk) 22:19, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
  • @TornadoLGS: I'm open to that, though some severe storms caused widespread damage without making landfall. Goni is an exception - it was arguably one of the most powerful typhoons on record by wind speed, so that will probably be a Wilma/Patricia case. ~ Destroyeraa🌀 00:09, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
• I came here because I saw TRM's comment on Iota's nomination that - it's barely interesting to have either of them on there, let alone to puff up the blurb. This happens every year without fail. It's not news, it's "life". For Eta/Iota, there's never been a season with two major hurricanes hitting Central America, let alone the same country, let alone both of them being Category 4 hurricanes, and let alone them being within two weeks of each other. If such an event starts being a yearly occurrence, then sure, that argument could hold weight, but not with how things stand. I think we need to look at these events with context. A simple Category 5 hurricane would not be news. A Cat 5 landfall would potentially - Dorian was posted last year when it became one of only three Cat 5 hurricanes to hit the Bahamas. These aren't just some arbitrary designation. A Cat 5 is the highest of a five category scale, meaning they're among the strongest storms on the planet. Regarding a minimum number of deaths, I suppose that could work, especially if it was applied to weather events worldwide, however some countries have worse infrastructure and are more prone to higher numbers of deaths. Floods in India regularly kill dozens to hundreds of people, sometimes from a single storm, sometimes from the monsoon season. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 15:38, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Context says too many hurricanes lately and too many hurricane ITNs lately, and the fact two hurricanes touching the same region within a short time very much confirms that. Moving on...--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 17:09, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
    • The point here is that unless these regular weather events (and as we can all see, we get two dozen Atlantic hurricanes per season) rise to exceptional compared with the "regular" hurricanes, we shouldn't be supporting their posting. In particular, there are 1,500 people per day dying in the US of Covid, there's some context needed really. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 16:12, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
• I never knew there were so many editors on Wikipedia with natural disasters in their usernames.--WaltCip-(talk) 14:59, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Mine isn't...--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 20:37, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Wait, what happened to WT:ITNR? Why does that long-established page now redirect here? That seems a very bad idea... Modest Genius ^talk 14:53, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:In_the_news/Archive_76#Redirect_WT:ITNR_to_WT:ITN. Unanimous support, but rather lightly attended. Seems kind of pointless to me. P-K3 (talk) 15:09, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Ironically the "light" attendance is probably the problem. WT:ITNR use to regularly get zero pageviews per day, so for more eyes on ITNR nominations and removals (which can be controversial, as we all know), it was deemed reasonable to host those debates here which gets about 80 times the traffic. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 16:04, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

There probably aren't too many reasons why you'd want to keep them separate. It's not as if there are ITN/R "specialists", who would want to watchlist that page and ignore all the other guff that goes on this talk page. It's a bit like at DYK, where all talk pages within the project redirect to the single page WT:DYK.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:07, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

I think some of us are singing from the same hymn sheet, but I'd be interested to know why Modest Genius thinks this is "a very bad idea"? The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 22:14, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

(replying to multiple users above) Redirected after just 48 hours of discussion, with no notification on WT:ITNR itself and the only argument given being more page watchers? Clearly I completely missed the proposal, and I doubt I'm the only one. That in itself is a down side to merging - there are so many threads on this page, most of which lead nowhere (the usual complaints about which items we did/didn't post, accusations of bias, misplaced nominations etc.), that it's easy to miss an ITNR discussion buried in the middle of it. This page is archived every 7 days, which is very short for an ITNR discussion. It's better to keep them separate so they generate separate alerts on the watchlist. The sheer size of the WT:ITNR archives shows that it justifies a separate talk page and merging breaks old links. There were plenty of different users commenting there, it's not like it was a dead page that no-one used. There's no reason why we can't have separate pages for separate discussion topics - the header of this page even tells users to go elsewhere for recurring items. This page is for general discussion about the ITN process, ITN/C is for nominations, and ITNR is for recurring items - these are conceptually different things, even though they're all part of the same project. Merging ITNR into this page makes no more sense to me than merging in ITN/C would. I'm surprised that no-one else thought it was a bad idea. Modest Genius ^talk 14:14, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

I guess most missed the proposal because very few people frequent WT:ITNR. Discussions there have often been left to rot for six months. It's sub-optimal. I agree that discussions probably ought not be archived after seven days of inactivity, we could easily make that fourteen, and that seems appropriate for closing ITNR discussions too. I also agree that the boilerplate be reworded accordingly. But if those aren't adopted, perhaps nominate for a move back to WT:ITNR? At least this venue will get more traffic!!! The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 18:13, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

No, people missed the proposal because it was never even mentioned on WT:ITNR, and closed very quickly. Modest Genius ^talk 13:18, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

So are we going to (a) do something about it or (b) drop the matter? Incidentally, this talk page has more than four times the number of watchers than WT:ITNR ever had...!! The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 13:24, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with TRM. Having a separate talk page for ITNR doesn't make sense given how inactive it was and how long discussions would stay open. I'm also OK with changing the archive settings for this page, but it's important to remember active discussions don't get archived regardless. -- Calidum 18:16, 27 November 2020 (UTC)

I also agree the redirection was a good idea. I don't care about the number of people who participated, consensus is consensus. The fact that several people missed the discussion (who'd have otherwise not, if it were held on this talkpage) is actually corroborating the fact that the place is a deadzone. I missed the discussion too for the same reason. – Ammarpad (talk) 16:36, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Are we sure there was "no notification on WT:ITNR itself"? I recall that the discussion was actually held there, and once executed THAT discussion was merged into the contemporaneous WT:ITN. Consequently, it became archived at WT:ITN rather than WT:ITNR. GreatCaesarsGhost 13:28, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

The history of WT:ITN/R shows there have been no discussions or notification there about redirecting. P-K3 (talk) 16:00, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Good grief. It can all be discovered here. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 16:27, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes I've given that link already. But if you did have ITN/R watchlisted but not ITN, for whatever reason, you would have missed it. P-K3 (talk) 16:51, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

Exactly. I have both watchlisted, but there are so many discussions on this page that I'm not assiduously checking them every 48 hours. Notifications for WT:ITN quickly get overridden by the other discussions. If there had been a notification on WT:ITNR I would have seen it. Modest Genius ^talk 13:21, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

The point is, practically nobody had that watchlisted. Listen, if people want to open another redirection discussion, please do so, but this conversation now is a waste of time. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 17:03, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

I'll try again: if someone is not content with the status quo I suggest they initiate a requested move. If not, let's just move on. What's fascinating for me is that this very discussion demonstrates why it's been a good move, to get more people involved. But hey, YMMV. But continually complaining about where discussions did or did not take place is not helpful. Suggest a move, or agree we can just about cope with this drastic change! The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 23:33, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Rightyho, the boilerplate still needs to be changed (unless someone is about to re-start a move back to the long-lost WT:ITNR location), and in the absence of the user who made the original move (they have been indef blocked lately), does anyone want to step up to the plate, or shall I just do it? The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 22:42, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

There is a recurrent scientific event know as CASP, Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction, that is a community-wide, worldwide experiment for protein structure prediction taking place every two years since 1994. This year winner has been AlphaFold an AI program that has solved with 90% accuracy a 50-year-old challenge in computer science. This is an enormous breakthrough, typically it currently takes an entire PhD to solve one sequence, and AlphaFold can solve the protein folding problem in a just few weeks.

This year winner and a major breakthrough news is stuck in ITN candidates waiting to be posted from November 30 (the article quality is perfect).

My proposal is to add the CASP meeting in the Science recurrent events, for the next years winners. Alexcalamaro (talk) 18:50, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

A common benchmark that is looked for when new ITNR entries are proposed is that the event has been posted under the regular ITNC process. I don't recall this having been posted before. 331dot (talk) 21:23, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

I was unaware of that requirement. So, in this case, I don't think that the previous editions of CASP were in the news. The remarkable one was this year because of AlphaFold. I withdraw my proposal then. Alexcalamaro (talk) 22:00, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

There's an open nom, with 9-4 support on the naked count (I didn't read all the comments). GreatCaesarsGhost 01:14, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

@GreatCaesarsGhost and 331dot: Yes, there is an open nom for this breakthrough science news with majority support. I don't know why has not been posted yet. Alexcalamaro (talk) 23:03, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose. There's news interest in the AlphaFold result that was announced at this year's CASP. That doesn't equate to interest in the CASP meeting itself, let alone every time it occurs. There aren't even articles on each year's event. Modest Genius ^talk 14:35, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

The recent addition of the vaccines link to the COVID-19 box has caused it to go onto two lines (at least for more; not sure if it's the same for everyone), which is fairly ugly. Should we put one of the other links on the chopping block, or adjust the design to make sure everything is handled on one line? ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 23:25, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

It's one line on my screen. --Jayron32 12:49, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

It will be entirely dependent on your horizontal resolution settings. I have squash my window down quite a bit to get it to two lines. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 13:02, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

If one link should go, then I suggest the "impact" link. But it would be good to look at the number of views of each page. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:43, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

NO I think we're catering for people with exceptionally narrow horizontal resolution. And two lines? So what? The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 21:02, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

It's been two lines for me for months. Users will see different heights depending on their device - I would be surprised if any phone showed it on one line, for example. If there's consensus to add or remove links based on their content that's fine, but the number of lines seen by some users isn't a good argument. Modest Genius ^talk 14:38, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

It has been two lines for me for months, as well. I'm using a FHD 1080p screen on a 13.3" laptop with the browser full-screened, which I imagine is a pretty common arrangement. There's two items needing to be culled to bring it to one line. Or we could finally just put it in Ongoing.130.233.213.199 (talk) 10:43, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

• I think it'd look better if "By location Impact Vaccines Portal" was all in {nowrap}. So it'd either be one line, or two balanced lines. Levivich ^harass/_hound 04:08, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

  It was nowrapped when I first made it (personal preference), I think it was then removed for accessibility (?) reasons by another editor (don't recall who). In any case, I don't mind how it looks - thought I'd explain why it was wrapped in the first place. --qedk (t 愛 c) 17:36, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

  Yup: wrapped in Special:Diff/974903322 and unwrapped in Special:Diff/975023277 by Stephen, but it looks like Stephen's change was more about putting it into an hlist for accessibility reasons. I also think the hlist kills my wrap-the-second-line idea but accessibility is more important than aesthetics (it'd be nice to have both but I can't think of a way). Levivich ^harass/_hound 17:26, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

• In a previous nomination, I posted some stats which showed that the Impact entry had a much smaller readership than the other linked pages. It could easily be dispensed with. But the current format is just one line for me anyway. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:33, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I quite frequently see sports items make ITN by virtue of their presence on the recurring items list despite having a dubious claim to importance. Do we really need to have six motorsports articles per year, or to feature events like the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship? I'm not enough of a sports person (or familiar enough with the relative importance of different sports around the world) to know exactly what to trim, but if someone else wants to go through the list, I think we're due for a large group nomination of removals to hold ourselves to our standards of significance. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 23:11, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

I generally agree with the OP, but let me make a few counterpoints. The numbers per year of particular articles ("six motorsports articles per year") assumes that each ITNR nomination gets a thorough update, references, and so on. In practice, the actual number of articles posted per year per category are less. ITNC has gotten very picky with the quality of sporting (and election, and awards) articles nominated under ITNR, which both cuts down on the actual number of articles posted under ITNR and assures a top-flight quality. Significance of particular events is often geographical; baseball is a good example. There's no way to weigh cultural significance for a particular sporting event ("All-Ireland Senior Football Championship") without having a conversation about that particular item. A good way to do that might be to have a month-long RfC, where all items in ITNR are opened for discussion, with a banner from the ITN box on the Main Page to attract editor attention.130.233.213.199 (talk) 06:19, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

I think too many sports news get onto ITN and more important news such as massacres in the world miss out. Right now, the baseball news on ITN, in my opinion, is less significant than a couple of recent massacres that are not on ITN.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 09:46, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

The same thing here. I am also recently noticing the disproportionate appearance of sports news. – Ammarpad (talk) 12:37, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

There's an easy way for you to fix a problem of some ITN item not appearing on the main page: improve the article to the point where it is main page worthy. If there is a massacre, for example, that you want to see posted, just make the article good enough. It will get posted. --Jayron32 13:03, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

It is not my job to go and doodle in the article in an effort to make it good. Articles especially like these have highly sensitive information. I am not obliged to 'work' here. Any of the billions of people in the world can volunteer to do so.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 13:16, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

What did you hope to accomplish by complaining that "more important news such as massacres in the world miss out"?—Bagumba (talk) 13:32, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

That ITN currently is shallow and ignores the bigger problems of the world.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 13:57, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

That's an opinion. It's not an action.—Bagumba (talk) 14:03, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Perfect. My opinion will continue to stand.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 14:07, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

"That ITN currently is shallow and ignores the bigger problems of the world." You are assuming that ITN is supposed to pay attention to the problems of the world. ITN is not a news ticker. Items don't get in because they are newsworthy or important. Items get in because the article shows some standard of quality and pertains to something currently in the news. If something is currently in the news, but our article on it is crap, we exclude said article from ITN. --Khajidha (talk) 17:52, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

It should pay attention to those. Isn't a news ticker the boring stock exchange and currency rates the news has to report all the time?--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 18:26, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

No, a "news ticker" is simply something that reports the news with little or no selection. ITN isn't that. ITN isn't about the news. ITN is about our articles. What you are complaining about is a feature, not a bug. ITN is working exactly how it is designed to. You can either 1) work on and nominate articles you think should be in ITN or 2) try to get the basic nature of ITN changed. You have refused to do the first and I doubt that you will have much luck at the second. At this point, continuing your complaining is just going to cause you more problems. --Khajidha (talk) 18:42, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Actually I have done number 1, I wonder why you haven't noticed that yet...--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 00:49, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Didn't you say "It is not my job to go and doodle in the article in an effort to make it good."? Sounds like refusing to do the work to me. --Khajidha (talk) 11:15, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

What I said is 100% true. What you interpret isn't. Simply put.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 12:29, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

You're right. You're not obliged to do anything. However, if you aren't working on articles, you really have no basis for complaining that things are not the way you like them. Wikipedia is a volunteer organization, and since you just spent all of these bytes telling other people that they aren't doing things the way you want them to be done, it seems rather incongruous that you don't seem to want other people to do that to you. What gives you the right to demand that other people do work to fix things you don't like, when you yourself aren't interested in doing any work to help yourself? --Jayron32 13:38, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps then that article quality is letting Wikipedia down in general.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 13:50, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Can you point me where it is not a right to complain?--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 14:00, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

You can complain, I suppose. I'm just confused as to where you feel like it should have any effect. --Jayron32 14:07, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

You wrote "There's an easy way for you to fix a problem of some ITN item not appearing on the main page: improve the article to the point where it is main page worthy." This is easier said than done. Editing is hard work. On a big problem of the world, even harder work.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 14:12, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

This is true, and yet, it is the only way to fix the problems you note. --Jayron32 14:14, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

A few thoughts:

• Which massacre articles have been nominated and not been featured?
• Why shouldn't the All-Ireland football article be featured if it is up to scratch? Did you pick that because you don't personally find it interesting?
• Why do you think a "group removal" is the way ahead here? Surely each individual article should be weighed on its own individual merits?
• I see a disproportionate amount of "weather" topics in ITN, surely that's even less significant than globally recognised sports events?

The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 13:02, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

I feel there are too many sports news and too many cyclones news on ITN lately. Just saying. Thanks.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 13:16, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

If you felt that sports articles were either (a) preventing other stories from appearing or (b) pushing other stories off too quickly, I'd buy it. Is that what's happening? If not, I can't see a problem: pretty much all of the ITNR articles have a consensus established that they are significant (unlike most of the hurricanes!!). The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 13:20, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't feel so much on that for the sports news, yet. Although in October I noticed (if my memory is correct) the NRL Grand Final was posted on ITN, while the AFL Grand Final missed out, which I thought was peculiar and interesting.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 13:27, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Were both nominated? The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 13:34, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

I have no idea.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 14:02, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

CyclonicallyDeranged If you don't like what is posted, but don't want to pitch in and help (which is your right to decide, of course) I'm not sure what you hope to accomplish by your comments here. We can only consider what is nominated. Feel free to make nominations; it would increase the chances of posting if you worked on the articles too, but it's not required. 331dot (talk) 14:20, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

@331dot: ever heard of "too busy", "too sick", "I'm working", "family business", etc? I can't be on Wikipedia all the time. Anyone could have nominated the news, unfortunately, many kinds of news miss out.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 14:38, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

CyclonicallyDeranged I didn't say you had to be here all the time, nor that you can't live your life. We all have other things to do. But it helps nothing to come here and say "X is a problem, you guys fix it". If there is something that you want to see done, you need to be the one to work on it. If you don't have time to address a perceived problem, or are just uninterested in doing so, that is your right/decision. But then I might rethink investing the time in bringing it up. 331dot (talk) 16:30, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

I guess no one else is interested in posting the more important news then. Shame...--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 17:01, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

It's not that nobody is interested. Like you, I'd love to see important and tragic events such as massacres posted in a timely fashion. But ultimately, I'm busy as well. And so is everyone else. The bottom line is, if you want to fix the issues then go ahead and fix them. But it's a little unreasonable to say you have no time to fix them, while also complaining at others for not doing so. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 17:31, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Actually I do have time where I could fix them. I don't believe I said I didn't.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 17:41, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

You said earlier: ever heard of "too busy", "too sick", "I'm working", "family business", etc? I can't be on Wikipedia all the time.—Bagumba (talk) 18:33, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Huh?--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 00:49, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Allow me to summarize the argument for your benefit: It's hypocritical to complain about other people not getting around to fixing things if you yourself don't have time to fix them.--WaltCip-(talk) 13:43, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

@WaltCip: Not the case when the other people have time to complain about hypocrisy when they could have fixed it themselves. You could have helped the massacre article instead of complaining over here...--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 19:01, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

A lot of things like mass shootings, especially in countries where they are common like the US, are not rejected at ITN/C because the articles are poor, but because there is a consensus that the events themselves are thus not sufficiently news-worthy (i.e. [1]). Black Kite (talk) 19:13, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Yep I've seen this idea come about before. Too many shootings in the world it becomes overwhelming. In this recent massacre in Nigeria it appears to be a bigger one.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 19:25, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

• I'm opposed to a group/blanket nomination as it would be chaotic and confusing. There should be one item discussed per discussion. 331dot (talk) 14:22, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
• Like 331dot, I absolutely oppose a blanket nomination. That's not how things are done. The sports events have been added because they were all presumed to be notable and newsworthy, and they are events like the Premier League, F1 championship and All-Ireland are all clearly of interest to a large number of readers. As for the more general point, I disagree that these sporting events are really displacing more important things. Massacres do get posted if the death counts are high and the article is up to scratch. And most items remain on ITN for a few days at least, sometimes more.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:40, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
• Howabout we 1) do away with the stupid 2 column layout and 2) split sporting news into its own section. --Khajidha (talk) 17:54, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

We often have slow news periods(now is typically one) where there are few events other than sports events posted because we have no control over general events in the world. If sports had a separate section, we would see even fewer ITN posts in the regular section than we have now. What you suggest would seem to need to be a part of a larger main page redesign(good luck with getting consensus). 331dot (talk) 18:47, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

• Many stories worthy of posting happen around the world each week that don’t get updated or nominated. As I’ve been correctly told in the past when making similar complaints, the solution is working on those rather than punishing the work of editors who prefer to focus on other topics. Bzweebl (talk • contribs) 18:55, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
• I'd rather not see us trim down sports but instead make sure that other appropriate recurring events in other types of areas (arts, sciences, entertainment) are appropriate added as balance. It troubles me when we have the issues over removing things like the Emmys and Grammys as we should be looking at top-tier recurring events that recognize the best from major areas, period, even if there's a general attitude that those awards don't mean much anymore - we should just make sure we're more inclusive there since we're so inclusive of worldwide sports. --Masem (t) 19:06, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

I suspect the overrepresentation of sports relative to other worthy recurring events might also be a case of gender bias. Bzweebl (talk • contribs) 19:29, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

Both that and systematic media bias that tends to let womens' sports slide. I think we've tried to do a good job that when there is an equivalent womens' title we have included that as well, but like, we have no womens' basketball titles because compared to mens' it simply doesn't get the same volume of coverage. --Masem (t) 20:16, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

• The number of ITNR sports events is ~60 a year, and of course a number of those don't get posted because they're not up to scratch. That's less than one a week. If there is an issue it's that we don't post enough news stories, not that we post too many sports stories. Black Kite (talk) 01:07, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Spot on. I don't see any evidence of a problem here. ITN is often criticised for not posting enough blurbs; I don't see how reducing the number of ITNR entries would help that. Modest Genius ^talk 13:23, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

• Comment in conclusion, if people want to nominate specific ITNR items to be removed, that is perfectly permissible. It appears that a "group nomination" has little-to-no support. There seems little, if no, evidence that sports ITNRs are preventing other ITN items from appearing. I think this discussion has run its course. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 07:43, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
• Comment – It's the same argument as always: "Why is x appearing instead y?" We follow what comes "in the news" and sometimes what we think of as interesting or notable isn't reported on as much. I personally don't find sports interesting, but it's a huge part of international culture and appropriate representation is needed. The slew of recent destructive cyclones being nominated has probably irked some regulars here, but that's a byproduct of WP:WPTC being a lively project with passionate editors. Some biases arise because of over-reporting, others arise because those are more active projects. How ITN/C operates may not seem ideal at the surface, but in the end it works and biases are eventually ironed out (usually). Restricting topics because you feel they are given too much attention generally isn't the way to go, expanding upon topics you feel deserve more attention is the best course and works in line with improving the site as a whole. I get that editing is a time-consuming and exhausting thing, I've been doing it for almost 14 years, but it's the core of Wikipedia and should be the primary solution over restricting topics. ~ Cyclonebiskit (chat) 19:35, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
  • Oh yes a bunch of active Wikipedia editors in cyclonic land, including me. While the other big topics of the world get snubbed badly. Good ol' bias. I'll just go on typing in the cyclone articles. After all I love following them.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 20:04, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
    • No one is snubbing anything. They are simply editing on what they are interested in. Or do you consider yourself as snubbing these other topics because you choose to edit on tropical cyclones? This is simply how a volunteer site works. We don't have people asigned to edit in certain areas. We have editors who work where they want and fo the best we can with what they turn out. --Khajidha (talk) 04:04, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

• Woah, checking back in on this, I'm glad to see that there's been some vigorous discussion. Reading through the above, I'm particularly interested to see the explanation about sports articles being more actively maintained and therefore more likely to pass the quality bar (which, of course, is also a systemic bias issue). I think it's very important to emphasize that, while the rules noting the existence of the quality threshold may be laid out in our internal pages, no non-editing reader ever reads those, and when they see a section labeled "In the news", they take that at face value and expect the selection there to reflect the items most in the news. So it's not enough to just say "well, if you want more on topic X, go create those pages," since ITN needs to serve readers, not just function as a reward for editors. This project has a tendency to make decisions about what is or isn't "in the news" that any of my non-wiki journalist colleagues would regard as crazy (example), and I have to say I see this as part of that larger pattern. I do realize that Wikipedia isn't a newspaper and that there are different considerations here, but still, there's good reason professional journalists make the judgements about newsworthiness we do. ((u|Sdkb)) ^talk 06:16, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

• Exactly! (with a million exclamation points) Most people who come to learn from Wikipedia do not care who is writing them, or how ITN's mechanism works.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 07:01, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

• Seems the problem is the reverse though. That several sports articles have been deemed to have a consensus for inclusion and are well maintained is not the problem here, the issue is that supposedly "significant" articles which may not be of sufficient quality are not making it through the process. Fix that and then complain if sports articles are preventing or pushing other articles off the main page. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 07:51, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

• I can't add any general comments that aren't already made by TRM above. Article quality can be a deal breaker for every nomination, editor attention is a limited resource, and people choose to put their attention where they feel they should. Yes, this is systematically biased, but it's also a free association. I would rather editors write about things they care about and have knowledge of, than things they don't care about and are ignorant of, just to satisfy a nebulous definition of "bias". Getting into specifics, the US election nom was placed on a wait because ALL election noms have the same process - they are posted when results are known and prose is added to the article. That is a clear example of article quality. The nominator and some editors were making IAR arguments relating to this specific election for posting a WIP to the Front Page. Others disagreed.130.233.213.199 (talk) 09:16, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
• As to the case of a naïve reader seeing "In the news" on the Front Page and believing that IT IS a news ticker, they only have to read the project page. Granted, it is a rather obtuse and counterintuitive procedure to get there by clicks ("Nominate an article" -> "Talk" -> "Project page"). THAT I think is rather confusing, that clicking "Talk" from ITNC and then back to "Project page" takes you to a different, 3rd page. Perhaps this should be a 1-click operation from the ITN box. I don't think a naïve reader's first inclination upon confusion is to navigate to ITNC (or it shouldn't be).130.233.213.199 (talk) 09:16, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

• That. If I had my way we'd rename "In The News" to something like "Topical Articles" to avoid the issue of people seeing the word "News" and assuming that these are "the issues Wikipedia considers most important today", but there's never any enthusiasm for renaming it. ‑ Iridescent 09:53, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support The sports items in ITN/R are explicitly contrary to policy which states that "routine news reporting of announcements, sports, or celebrities is not a sufficient basis for inclusion in the encyclopedia." The ITN/R sports items are, by definition, routine. If you stage a baseball event in Japan then, inevitably, a Japanese baseball team is going to win it. This is not surprising nor especially newsworthy. But notice that 2020 Japan Series has been the top blurb with a picture at ITN for about a week now. That article only got about 2,000 readers yesterday and was never big to start with, peaking at 4,000. These are tiny numbers for Wikipedia's main page and items in the news and it's a measure of ITN's failure that such an inconsequential item should have been highlighted as the top world news for an entire week.

The actual top news in my location currently is reports about the new vaccines for COVID-19 – test results, approval and anti-vax issues. I suggested adding a vaccine entry at WP:ITN/C recently but this was denied by the usual suspects. There's another nomination now and that's being denied too. And then there's the historic Chinese moon landing – also denied. The problem seems clear – a negative culture at ITN/C that shuts out the real news so that sports and weather dominate – the epitome of routine reporting.

Andrew🐉(talk) 10:42, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

No, this is wrong. There is no evidence that sports articles prevent other news articles from being posted. Removing ITNR sports articles en mass would not change anything other than to slow down the updates even further. Bravo. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 10:44, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

The routine sports and weather items give the illusion that ITN is functioning when it isn't. All the other main page sections rotate their entries every day or even faster. To have a stale sports item as the main headline for a week is so misleading that it would be better to have a blank space. The BBC had the balls to do this once, when they had high standards and "decided what was worth reporting on, and ... it was better to stay silent than to fail to clear this bar." Andrew🐉(talk) 11:18, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I guess I missed all the work you've done on getting ITN articles up to scratch and opining there. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 11:29, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, I haven't had an ITN credit since August and am just #50 in the list of ITN/C editors. The credit and responsibility for the current state of affairs should go to those at the head of the list. Bravo. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:07, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Classic "I don't like it but I'm going to do nothing about it" grandstanding then. Bravissimo! The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 12:35, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

I posted at ITN/C just now and a corresponding update was then made to the ITN template. So, it appears that I tipped the balance in this case while TRM was uncharacteristically silent during both of the relevant nominations (1, 2). Note that I also participated in an editathon about these vaccines and made a difference there too. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:05, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Well done you. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 13:10, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

This sounds like an objection to sports articles as such, and I agree that the guidelines at WP:NOTNEWS are contrary to actual practice. Ideally, articles concerning sports should include some measure of notability, superlative, etc. OTOH, I'm not going to take every sports article to AfD and get sanctioned for disruptive editing over it.130.233.3.185 (talk) 12:14, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

"when they see a section labeled "In the news", they take that at face value and expect the selection there to reflect the items most in the news." Then the problem is that ITN does not make clear what it is. --Khajidha (talk) 13:13, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Khajidha, I think that's a very good point. In The News is misleading; it's more along the lines of 'good enough articles that are in the news.' Not sure how to come up with a snappy heading for that, though. :) —valereee (talk) 14:46, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

@Valereee: "Wikipedia articles featured in the news"? Kingsif (talk) 14:52, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Kingsif, well...it's not the articles but their subjects that are in the news? Better for sure, though. —valereee (talk) 14:57, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Also regarding the argument that covering sport events violates WP:NOTNEWS I see that as missing the mark. My understanding is that it applies to not having articles for individual games sourced only to analysis from sports shows and not an explicit rule that bans major sport championships from being covered at WP:ITN. Also, if the rule was that explicit I’m sure someone would have enforced it years ago.--65.92.160.124 (talk) 02:58, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Is there a link to the most recent RfC wrt renaming ITN?130.233.213.199 (talk) 09:26, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

• The "In the news" (ITN) section on the Main Page serves to direct readers to articles that have been substantially updated to reflect recent or current events of wide interest. ITN supports the central purpose of Wikipedia—making a great encyclopedia. (emphasis mine). I think ITN does a poor job of achieving it's central mission: to encourage updates by rewarding them with a high profile placement. Far too often, we feature items with very negligible updates because they are seen as very important (thinking Booker/Nobel prizes). Meanwhile we spend all our time talking about the "relative" width of interest for events when this should be more of a binary. ITNR could actually help if we used it correctly - by focusing the conversation on quality updates. GreatCaesarsGhost 14:27, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

• Maybe it's time to consider instituting objective notability criteria, such as covered in x major news sources (I realize this exact criteria isn't perfect but hopefully others can brainstorm), to focus most discussion on article quality? So many important stories pass by without even being nominated or updated that ITN/C can't afford to be so obsessed anymore with only posting the "most important" news. Bzweebl (talk • contribs) 20:23, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

• No way, that's just a never-ending story as people have to debate what "coverage" is or what a "major news source" is. Once again systemic bias will come into play, as people will argue that The New York Times has more gravitas than The Hindu (for example), and then people will say "well it appeared on the front page of The Hindu but only in two column inches of the NYT"... There's no "objective" way to measure news, especially in the English language which covers large portions of the globe, not all of which are in the United States. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 22:37, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support/go further – I agree with GreatCaesarsGhost's comment a couple comments up: ITN as it is now does a poor job of fulfilling ITN's purpose as stated at WP:ITN (partly quoted by GCG). Most of the sports news that's posted to ITN is not of wide interest (and once a week is way too often; there aren't that many sporting events that are of wide interest). "Wide interest" can be gauged somewhat (e.g. by pageviews). I'd welcome taking a broad, structural look at sports at ITNR and maybe setting some guidelines about how wide interest must be to justify something being listed at ITNR, and then cull the list according to the guidelines. If we nominate these items one by one we'll be talking forever, plus every nomination will have arguments of "But it's more popular than that sport, which isn't being nominated!" I agree with a group or broad approach, but I think the first step is taking a look at ITN's purpose(s), modifying/reaffirming if they still have consensus, and then looking at how ITNR does or does not effectuate the purpose(s). Levivich ^harass/_hound 20:37, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

  No, the whole point of ITNR is to avoid inherent systemic bias where people say things like "but who finds the Tokyo baseball interesting?" because they probably don't even know where Tokyo is. It's just fine to "take forever" on this, there is no deadline. We're not posting 1 sports item per week, that would only happen if every single sport ITNR was up to scratch, which many are not, but given the glacial pace of ITN from time to time, it's actually the sports articles which sometimes keeps it going. I firmly think the focus of this whole discussion is completely backward. Rather than reduce ITNRs and thus reduce the speed of updates at ITN even further, why not focus on how to improve throughput and diversity by including more non-sports ITNRs or encouraging others to nominate ITNCs from areas they believe to be under-represented. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 20:46, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

  Statements like ...the whole point of ITNR is to avoid inherent systemic bias... is why I think we need to start by looking at what the whole point of ITNR and ITN is. The words "systemic bias" do not appear anywhere on WP:ITN or WP:ITNR. Levivich ^harass/_hound 20:51, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

  It's pretty self-evident that's what ITNR is about, per "are considered to have already satisfied the 'importance' criterion for inclusion on ITN" but sure. But you've nailed it that this has nothing to do with sports articles per se. About time we got rid of the Emmys too. So let's do it one article at a time. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 21:00, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

  It's not self-evident to me. First time I've heard of it actually. ITN is full of these unwritten "rules" that are "enforced" by its regulars. To Andrew's point above about sports being posted but China's launch not being posted, the unwritten rule was that these space missions get blurbed when they reach their mission destination, not on launch. So who decided that we can't have China's launch blurbed twice (or thrice, upon launch, mission objective, and return)? Who decided that baseball "already satisfied the 'importance' criterion for inclusion on ITN"? These decisions need to be revisited, in my opinion. On a structural level. Like: is the purpose of ITN to help readers find articles about subjects that are of interest to them because they are in the news, or is the purpose of ITN to fight inherent systemic bias? Or both? A discussion to have. Levivich ^harass/_hound 21:38, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

  To your first point, the community decided, based on norms and not publishing the same story three times (this is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid newspaper). To your second point ITNR entries usually link to a community discussion where notability has been agreed upon. Hope that helps!! FWIW, there is another option and that's to delete WP:ITNR altogether. Since it's clear that many people don't understand why it's here and how it functions and why, maybe clear the decks and start afresh. Every single news story has to gain its own support? At least that way we'll be completely overwhelmed by American news stories! The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 21:51, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

  Levivich I did what I suggested and proposed for ITNR to be removed altogether, and if not, suggest why it exists. Perhaps some of the "keep" rationales will explain its existence, who knows? The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 22:21, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

  Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, former president of France dies, posted as a blurb. Zafarullah Khan Jamali, former prime minister of Pakistan dies, posted to RD. Someone said something about systemic bias? The rationales for both of those ITNC's were rather divorced from anything written at WP:ITN and WP:ITNRD. Both of those should have been RDs, but we elevate France's politician because: important French politician... it's a G20 country... permanent member of UN security council... How many African countries meet those criteria? I read those discussions and I just see pure, unvarnished opinions about what's important and what's not important, always and inevitably colored by the views and experience of whomever happens to be online and participating that day. Some editors participate in almost every discussion, and their views and experience concerning what's important end up being Wikipedia's statement of what's important on the main page. I think ITN needs to revisit criteria all around. Levivich ^harass/_hound 21:28, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

  Test the water by suggesting that all former heads of state get a blurb when they die. I would support. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 21:36, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose since this has suddenly descended into a !vote. Sports ITNRs are a red herring here. What the vast majority of this discussion is revealing is that (a) it's not really "in the news" items being posted and (b) the turnover rate at ITN is too slow. Removing sports ITNRs will help neither of those aspects at all. And no-one has demonstrated that sports ITNRs have prevented other ITNCs from being posted or have forced other ITNs off the main page prematurely. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 20:49, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

Delete ITNR and judge every single nomination on community consensus at the time

Proposing this as it seems clear that the raison d'etre of ITNR has been lost and/or is not adequately defined. With ITNR jettisoned, we would be able to gauge community consensus for every story nominated on a case-by-case basis (which is the case for the vast majority of ITN candidates already) without the confusion over why some canoes going up a British river with posh blokes onboard or some Japanese folks playing baseball should get a free pass (assuming article quality is up to scratch). If you wish to oppose this, please at least supply a rationale which defines why we should have ITNR. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 21:55, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support as proposer, it's clear that a lot of ITNR hasn't been agreed with the community, and obvious that our readers don't get any visibility of this kind of thing and so may be mystified as to why The Boat Race gets posted while Donald Trump tweeting something inane to millions and millions of people doesn't get posted each and every day. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 21:57, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose The same people (mostly) with the same arguments on whether an event is notable will appear every year/period of recurrence. The exact same arguments in the same volume will have to be heard ad infinitum; ITNR serves a valuable function in preventing the need to rehash the same argument when events do recur. It also enforces a certain level of consistency on ITN in that an event within a certain scope isn't not-posted on notability when a similar event has been, or even the same event in different years. It's much more convenient to acknowledge that certain things that happen a lot are just going to be notable - while a case-by-case basis may be more fair in general, the recurring-ness changes the matter. It's not one case, it's every instance of events within the scope, and it keeps happening rather than being once, so the debates on the notability would have to span a much greater detail and level of significance than can really apply to each individual event (e.g. ITNR generally covers major sporting finals, if this wasn't the case then each time there was a major sporting final you would be debate the individual event's notability, as well as all the past instances of the event type, and then all the other sporting finals in that year, etc.). The RD line is a similar concept to ITNR in this way: deaths happen, just assume it's notable if there's an article. Major sporting finals happen, just assume they're notable if there's an article. Kingsif (talk) 22:12, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

  But what makes Irish football or Japanese baseball worthy of a free pass? The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 22:23, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

  If you're asking me, I don't know why Japanese baseball is considered parallel to the World Series, but if baseball is a major sport in Japan then it can. Irish football being Ireland's major sport gets it an in. Find any national sport it should probably be considered for ITNR. Now, TRM, onto the Boat Race ;) Kingsif (talk) 23:53, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

  Baseball is a big deal in Japan.[2][3][4] Taking away the Japan Series would increase systemic bias. – Muboshgu (talk) 00:18, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

  Hmm, exactly! The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 11:20, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose and trying to play off TRM's !vote, part of ITNRs aspect is to make sure that we cover recurring events that in the news, that typically have decent articles that get posted, that represent the top of their field but (and perhaps most importantly) may not be of equal importance to other news topics. As we've stated, ITN is not a news ticker, we are purposely selective to topics that have quality articles and get coverage, but also tend to be of topics with broader applicability and known importance. Breaking news stories (like what Trump did on Twitter the day before) don't have these factors, but the selection of ITNRs that we have made do. Having the established set of ITNR make discussion of these topics easier to prepare and get to the ITN box than if we had to argue a full ITNC every single time. (But would stress we have to consider that ITNR itself has some IAR play, like with the Chang'e 5 rocket due to timing factors). So ITNR has a very important purpose, and its just important to recognize it as a living list, items may be added or removed as things change. But we should be looking to have a good balance across all types of encyclopedic topics. --Masem (t) 00:57, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. I think ITNR solves more problems than it creates. Nothing is perfect or problem-free, but I think it would be harmful to eliminate it. Masem has some very good points. 331dot (talk) 01:27, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

  What problem(s) does it solve? The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 00:50, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

In most cases it saves a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy. I realize it is not perfect and there are legitimate issues but those can be handled on a case by case basis. 331dot (talk) 12:41, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

By "saves a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy", do you really mean "it suppresses current debate a topic which has a free pass to the main page assuming quality is there"? I wonder what it was really like in the "old days" before ITNR that meant community consensus was no longer required for ITNR items to be deemed notable enough for the main page. Was it like the Wild West with such fundamentally important items like the Nobel Prizes or the Oscars or the SuperBowl going year-on-year without recognition? Is that really what happened?? Or was it to increase throughput of niche articles that were systemically biased against? It's a genuine question. Is ITNR here to "reduce bureaucracy" or to "reduce systemic bias"? The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 21:09, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support because ITNC is fully capable of recognizing if something has wide interest, ITNR only succeeds in torpedoing legitimate dissent. The key issue for me is that we added things to ITNR years ago with the support of 1 or 2 editors. GreatCaesarsGhost 03:31, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

Please propose the removal of any such event with that as a reason. We have removed such things before. 331dot (talk) 11:21, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

I have, but we need "consensus" to change from the prior. I need to get 75% support to add something to ITNR or take something away. So a new event with 70% support will never get posted while an ITNR event with 30% support is posted in perpetuity. You can argue the numbers or claim we don't count votes (which is a pedantic distinction from how consensus is determined), but this is reality and it is a problem. Honestly, ITNR can stay if we can remove things by majority vote. It's absurd to argue that significance is "assumed" when we have a discussion showing that the majority disagree. GreatCaesarsGhost 13:28, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose No need to reinvent the wheel on canoes and the like every year. Fix individual ITNR items as needed. I suspect the actual controversy is ITN's general lack of objective guidance on evaluating "significance". Improve overall ITN guidelines first, if needed.—Bagumba (talk) 05:12, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

  What objective ITN guidelines do you think would be workable? The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 00:51, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

  Perhaps start with Wikipedia:In_the_news#Purpose—could we rank them so we are all using somewhat closer weightings?—Bagumba (talk) 05:54, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

• Can someone close this WP:POINT nomination? It’s clearly tongue-in-cheek but everyone is taking it seriously, which doesn’t make for a productive discussion. Bzweebl (talk • contribs) 06:03, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

  No it's not tongue in cheek. I want to see the community's explanation for the necessity of ITNR and then that can be mapped onto the discussion above about getting rid of all these purportedly unnecessary sporting events. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 11:19, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

• That’s effectively the same thing. I don’t think making nominations you don’t actually support for the purposes of scoring rhetorical points in another discussion is beneficial to the community. Bzweebl (talk • contribs) 00:31, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

• No, you're wrong again. It's nothing to do with rhetoric or point scoring. I'd be more than happy if ITNR was completely deleted. I'm also more than happy for ITNR to exist and do the job I think it does which is to avoid systemic bias, but given proposals above to remove a number of sports ITNRs wholesale, which I don't understand, I think it's important to re-validate the existence of a concept of ITNR. You are completely wrong that just because I don't believe in a proposal I can't make it. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 00:45, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

• I honestly cannot discern a practical difference between my concern and your explanation. Bzweebl (talk • contribs) 07:54, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

• Never mind, perhaps do something else for a bit and come back to it? The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 11:57, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support at minimum revisiting the items. We blurb a sporting competition even if everyone knew who was going to win, even if it was the upset in the semi that was the actual news? I'd also support treating ITNR as a certain level of support !vote; if there's no opposition, ITNR makes the decision, but if there's a certain level of good-faith opposition we need further discussion. —valereee (talk) 12:05, 5 December 2020 (UTC)

• @Valereee: That doesn't work, though, because a lot of editors are completely clueless about anything that happens outside their own experiences. We had editors who once opposed a cricket ITNR nomination because it was a "minor sport" (or something like that) despite it being the second biggest spectator sport in the world. If things like cricket get responses like that, what chance do actual minor sports have? Black Kite (talk) 12:36, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

  Black Kite, I do get that. But wouldn't those kinds of opposes not qualify as good-faith opposition? I mean, I'm not sportsy at all, and I'm in the US, but I know cricket is a really big deal. Of course, I'd never !vote oppose on a sporting event myself because, duh, I'm not sportsy at all. :) I'd have been like, and why is the victory over the Soviets bigger news than taking the gold? —valereee (talk) 13:05, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support A from-the-ground-up re-establishing of ITNR. Put every item in ITNR in jeopardy, and let consensus develop around those that will stay. Might even lead editors to suggest new items for ITNR that we've been missing. Run it for a month with a banner on the Front Page. The current problem is that ITNR reflects the bias of editors from years ago, and tension arises because both time and editors have changed since then. I support an ITNR list in principle, for the same reason that the RD notability criteria was changed.130.233.2.79 (talk) 12:37, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Users are free to propose events for removal at any time. A blanket discussion is problematic because, for example, User A will say "get rid of the list", User B will say "get rid of events A, B, D but keep C", User C will say "keep B and C but get rid of A and D", and so on. Judging consensus for a blanket discussion would be almost impossible. Each event should be judged through its own discussion. 331dot (talk) 14:19, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

I think you missed the IP's point. They're not saying "delete all the sports ITNRs", they're saying "nominate every item in ITNR for removal" each nomination being independent. I certainly have a lot of sympathy with the points that (a) some items never had consensus to be on the list and (b) many items need reviewing and (c) the raison d'etre of ITNR seems unclear to many people and (d) times have changed and therefore a refreshed view on ITNR could be necessary. Just look at what we did to RD, unchained the shackles and what a success. Perhaps now we need to do the same to ITNR. Reboot it. ITNR 2.0. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 21:17, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose as "throwing out the baby with the bathwater" issue. I'm okay with revisiting individual items (either en-masse if very similar or one-at-a-time if needed), and I'm also on board with creating a set of ITNR guidelines for what sorts of items should be on there, as well as what sort of criteria is used to determine that, but in general the focus (as always) should be on article quality over "significance", as the main purpose of ITN should be to highlight quality wikipedia articles on recent events. Getting rid of ITNR just increases (rather than decreases) the debates we have where whoever shows up gets to decide that something is or is not important to them personally, and those decisions get to write the narrative for what gets posted, irrespective of quality. We need less debates of what people are or are not individually interested in, and more assessing of article quality. --Jayron32 12:48, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

  So ITNR is there to protect items which maybe in the past (up to 11 years back!) "people were interested in"? The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 21:06, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support - A fair chunk of items on ITNR are not newsworthy or even encyclopedic, but are essentially grandfathered into being posted on ITN because ITNR is considered a waiver of that key notability requirement. I think this is right lousy. We should be evaluating each item on its merits.--WaltCip-(talk) 13:44, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Then we should be proposing the removal of items from the list, not destroying it and adding needless bureaucratic discussions. Even if something did have broad agreement for posting without an extensive discussion, it helps to have something written down to point to. If something is "not encyclopedic", then it shouldn't be on Wikipedia at all and should go to AfD before it even gets to ITN. 331dot (talk) 14:15, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Again, is debating the baseball in Tokyo at ITNC really "adding needless bureaucratic discussion"? Is it really? Or is it allowing the current community an opportunity to form a consensus over whether it should be featured in ITN, i.e. that it meets the ITN criteria? I don't understand this obsession with claiming that ITNR is designed to avoid "bureaucracy", this is not a paper encyclopedia, we have a community of a few sensible people dotted around the world. Why are we working so hard to stifle regular discussion over consensus at the highly active ITNC and sideshow it (formerly) at the lonesome WT:ITNR and now here....? The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 21:13, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. ITNR provides a very useful service: the main benefit is it determines which events are sufficiently significant in advance, allowing a) faster posting when the event occurs and b) detailed discussion of significance issues without the time pressure of a pending nomination or the limitation of only getting input from whichever ITN/C editors are around for those few hours. As added benefits, ITNR avoids us repeating the same discussions every year, ensures a balance between different topics (at least for sports, which have the most recurring events), and establishes institutional memory built up over years. Without it, we would post some events one year because those who happened to be around thought it was significant, then not post it a year later because a different group of editors were present and came to a different (rushed) conclusion. Having ITNR allows all sides to comment in advance and reach a true consensus. Binning it seems a very bad idea, and this proposal seems WP:POINTy, especially coming so soon after WT:ITNR was discontinued without notice. Modest Genius ^talk 14:14, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
  • PS. many of the support !votes above are objections to specific items on (or not on) the list, not the concept of ITNR in general. The right way to address those concerns is to make specific proposals of items to remove (or add), not burn ITNR to the ground. Modest Genius ^talk 14:20, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose A recurring event is either significant enough to post or it isn't; it shouldn't change from year to year so there is no point in discussing its significance every year. ITN/R saves time because discussion at nomination can just focus on the quality. Specific ITN/R items can be challenged and removed on a case-by-case basis.-- P-K3 (talk) 14:29, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose the existence of ITNR is supposed to save a lot of bickering about the notability of an event; God knows what would happen every Super Bowl without it. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 09:00, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

That's right, my primary ulterior motivation is just to get the Super Bowl up for a significance discussion the minute the game ends, just so I can strong oppose it on grounds of U.S.-centrism.--WaltCip-(talk) 13:55, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

• Slight oppose: I know for a fact certain sports never cease to lose its craze and obsession with its associated fans (AFL, Test cricket *rolls eyes*). Happens very much every year. Perhaps it is better to review what items are on the ITNR list, and trim the ones that are not so crazed or obsessed by millions of people in the world.--CyclonicallyDeranged (talk) 19:50, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose. Might as well nuke the entire ITN template from the main page if this happens, given how few stories would get posted. -- Calidum 21:15, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
• This discussion illustrates how dysfunctional ITN is. Support anyway. After all, ITNR is kind of pointless - if one dislikes a certain item on ITNR, one can always nominate that for deletion. If that deletion does not materialize, then it wouldn't materialize either at ITNC. Banedon (talk) 22:00, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Is there support for adding an exception to the maximum of six RDs if the oldest item has been up for less than 24 hours? I have seen this done before, but it doesn't seem to be officially mentioned anywhere. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:58, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

If it's been done before, it's normally because it's rare enough to be on a case-by-case basis. Consequently, there's no need to establish this as official policy.--WaltCip-(talk) 18:20, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't have an issue with formalizing it, as I generally already practice it with WP:IAR. I do see other admins removing before 24h, which I dont know if it's because 1) it's close enough to 24h, 2) they didn't realize it was < 24h, 3) don't agree with a 24h exception.—Bagumba (talk) 01:50, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Seems unnecessary to force admins to make this additional check. Admins already check other more important things before posting and we don’t need to add another arbitrary rule that will rarely apply. This can continue to be applied on a case-by-case basis by admins that wish to do so. Bzweebl (talk • contribs) 02:04, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

• Support in principle. Thanks for bringing this one up Martin. There are going to be challenges in the implementation detail.

Scenario: A new RD gets promoted to the Sixth position (rightmost spot) on the carousel, quite late in the game, because citing filmography was a challenge and then makes it in the nick of time. The next RD comes in to the first position. The Admin does the right thing by moving the sixth one to the seventh and holding it up there for some time. But, immediately a glut of 3 RDs come together, now do we pause xx hours (assuming the now seventh RD has been up there for less than two hours)?

I do see well meaning Admins such as yourself and a few others as Bagumba notes above, do the right thing by moving over to the seventh RD and then waiting for sometime before bringing in the other RDs. However, I agree, earlier today, the RD that came in stayed up there for less than a couple of hours (Was it Garry Runciman? I forget) and there was some urgency to reduce to 6RDs when we could have remained on 7 for sometime.

This is one of those more complex multi-entrant queuing problems, that looks deceptively simple. That said, one actual solution could be the WP:DYK approach of batching promotions. E.g. promotions happen only in 6/12/18/24 hour increments. That way an article definitely stays for at least 6 hours if thats the increment we end up choosing. However, this also has problems. Eitherways, I think evaluating from the bottom of the stack makes the most sense.

In summary, I think we need to encourage more Admins to exercise the 7th RD spot and sometimes WP:IAR and go to the 8th if needed. Afterall, on desktops, most often it doesn't make much difference and on mobile, we are already on line 3, and for sometime we simply go to line 4.

That said, I definitely appreciate the efforts of most Admins in keeping the carousel moving. Thanks folks. Ktin (talk) 06:36, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Small comment: delaying posting eligible items just to give older items more exposure is definitely not the right way of solving this problem! — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:08, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

• Comment. I've never understood why we don't just fill from the top, irrespective of date of death. Espresso Addict (talk) 10:54, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

  Guard against old news (WP:NOTNEWS aside).—Bagumba (talk) 11:07, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

  I would advocate for filling from the top, with nothing older than 7 days getting added. GreatCaesarsGhost 14:26, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

  I could also support that. Any deaths within 7 days are "recent" and there is no need to sort them further — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:48, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

  A seven-day cut off would work for me. Espresso Addict (talk) 02:55, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

• The fundamental problem is that removing the significance criterion for RDs has made the bar for inclusion very low. Entries are getting little time on the template because there are too many RDs. Others that would be postable are going stale before the article is brought up to standard, not because they're 7 days old but because we're posting multiple entries per day. Rather than constantly expanding the RD section (remember when it had only three slots?), until it looks like Deaths in 2020, I would prefer some consideration of re-imposing an importance cut. Modest Genius ^talk 18:06, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

  Modest Genius, with due respect, I think that is not the problem. If the barrier to quality is not lowered and we showcase more articles on the homepage / RD, that is a good thing imo. The problem comes in if we lower the quality barriers (which I don't believe we are) to showcase more articles on the homepage / RD. Cheers. Ktin (talk) 19:17, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

  I was initially opposed to losing the no-significance threshold but I think it's worked out rather well, on the whole. In particular, the ITN crowd improve a much wider range of articles on the recently deceased. The problem comes that hypernotable people, especially actors, controversial figures and people with only non-English sources, are much slower to source completely than shorter less-detailed biographies, which brings in a bias against notability. There again, the hypernotable deaths are well served by conventional media sources. Espresso Addict (talk) 03:06, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Should blurbed items be removed after 7 days, like we do for recent deaths? We currently have items from 4th, 5th and 6th December. This may create a problem with main page balance, but in general I think it would be better to have a space rather than leave these stale items in perpetuity. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:45, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Blurbs are removed as they are replaced. The end of the year is typically a slow period as there are few recurring events to post and we have to wait for events to occur. Things start to pick up in January typically as awards are given out and other events begin to occur. If you would like to see faster turnover, please make nominations and work to get them accepted. 331dot (talk) 09:51, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps you misunderstood my point (although it's always good to encourage more nominations). RDs are removed after 7 days regardless if there are replacements forthcoming. I'm proposing the same policy for blurbs. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:01, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

I think he understood, and was trying to explain that if we do that the box will be empty. We don't want an empty box, and since ITN is really intended to be article promotion rather than strictly the most recent news, it doesn't matter if they're a little older. RDs are removed because there are notable deaths every day. Kingsif (talk) 13:33, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

I think we should apply the blurb policy to RDs. GreatCaesarsGhost 14:24, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Agree with ^. The Rambling Man (Hands! Face! Space!!!!) 15:46, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

• Since we aren't concerned with turning ITN into a newsfeed, and our primary goal is to highlight quality Wikipedia content, I think it doesn't really matter how stale items are. I think that people who are concerned have all of the power necessary to fix it themselves by improving and nominating more high-quality articles to the ITN/C page, and if they are concerned about the staleness of items (I am personally not concerned, but someone who IS concerned may want to do this) then that is how they can fix the problem themselves. That process (fixing the problem by making better articles and nominating them at ITNC) has two important benefits a discussion like this does not 1) It improves Wikipedia articles, which is the entire point of being a Wikipedia editor, and should be our first and last goal here, as well as every goal in between. 2) It doesn't require any massive overhaul to existing processes, which are difficult, contentious, and usually result in no improvement. Instead, it just requires one person (or multiple people, if they arrive at such a need independently) to just do some work on their own. The ITNC page is always hungry for quality content, and more nominations will lead to more postings which will lead to less staleness. I cannot think of a negative aspect of this strategy, while other proposals to "fix" this non-problem are likely more trouble than they are worth. --Jayron32 15:53, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

I think that ITN (including ITNR and RD) is poorly designed for what we want it to do, performs poorly even at what it actually does, and should be removed from the Main Page entirely. --Khajidha (talk) 20:03, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Cool opinion bro. Kingsif (talk) 20:49, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

• "our primary goal is to highlight quality Wikipedia content"? That's not what WP:ITN#Purpose says. Staleness frustrates the purpose written in the first paragraph of WP:ITN: "to direct readers to articles that have been substantially updated to reflect recent or current events of wide interest." 2020 World Rally Championship is not of wide interest: [5]. (Just as an example that's on ITN now.) (I also agree with Khajidha's general comments.) Levivich ^harass/_hound 03:54, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

  You're glossing over the main point of that sentence: "articles that have been substantially updated." If there is any ambiguity about what this means, the following sentence reinforces it: "ITN supports the central purpose of Wikipedia—making a great encyclopedia." Indeed, the primary goal of ITN is to highlight quality content, thereby creating an incentive to create (or improve) that content. GreatCaesarsGhost 01:28, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

  "In 2016, the cumulative worldwide TV audience for WRC TV's programmes was more than 700 million. The programming was available in over 150 markets and more than 12,000 hours were screened globally." - I'd say ~1/12th the planet is pretty wide interest. Just sayin'. - Floydian ^τ _¢ 02:39, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

  Page views tell us what our readers are interested it. This article got 10k daily views at peak. There are so many (hundreds if not thousands) other articles that many more readers are looking for. Anything off WP:TOP25 would be a better choice for that prime ITN real estate than the Hyundai advertisement we've had up for the last week. Levivich ^harass/_hound 02:57, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

  Just to take an example: Zodiac 340 Cipher could have been posted on 12/12. Zodiac Killer got over 400,000 views on 12/12 [6]. 2020 World Rally Championship got less than 3,000 on 12/12 [7]. But Zodiac Killer wasn't posted because editors felt it wasn't important enough. Not important enough according to who?! Not according to our readers! They're interested in Zodiac Killer, not 2020 WRC. The page views absolutely prove it. (And that's just one example among many of better uses for the slot than 2020 WRC.) The community's decision to keep WRC up and not post Zodiac Killer contradicts what Wikipedia:In the news#Purpose says. Zodiac Killer is of equal quality as WRC (B class), but more readers are looking for it. It should "win" the slot. But editors at ITNC add this "importance" or "it's not really news" criteria that is nowhere in WP:ITN, and the end result is we put on the main page articles very few people are looking for, and leave off the main page articles that many people are looking for (even when those articles are equal or higher quality than what we're posting). ITNC does not promote quality articles that readers are looking for. Instead, it promotes quality articles that editors think are important. Levivich ^harass/_hound 03:27, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Hmm. I suspect some editors at ITN have an interest in Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, rather than a run-of-the-mill news outlet, and wish to draw attention to things people might be interested in, topics that might educate people, rather than popular clickbait, which the hits suggest readers are already successful in finding. If it's just meant to highlight items that are trending, we might as well just replace the entire section with the current top 10 articles.

To be honest, I'm not sure how well it does. Certainly I've personally long looked at ITN/C, rather than the main page, when I want to find interesting articles to edit. Espresso Addict (talk) 04:37, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

What's the difference between "topics that might educate people' and "popular clickbait"? Zodiac Killer is which? 2020 WRC is which? Who decides? Are we trying to help readers find what they're looking for, or are we going to decide for them which things they should be looking for, and which are just clickbait? There are some problems with putting trending topics on the main page (easily gamed if automated based on page views), but a "top-edited-pages" (which goes by edits, not page views) would be an improvement over "here's what's in the news that some Wikipedia editors think is important" which is what ITN is currently. I find it so presumptuous of us to decide what is worthy or serious or important, and what is clickbait or whatever. The worst is when editors say things like, "not enough people died to make this newsworthy" or "these kinds of shootings are routine in this country" or "this was an important French politician, but this Pakistani guy wasn't important enough". Who the F are we to be deciding these things? To be second guessing our readers? Are we here for our readers or are we better than our readers? What we ought to be doing, and what ITN says we ought to be doing, is connecting our readers to the information they're looking for. We shouldn't be second-guessing it or filtering it for importance. Levivich ^harass/_hound 04:52, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Who decides? Consensus at ITNC decided Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates#(Closed)_Zodiac_340_Cipher. You'll have to convince existing ITNC participants or recruit ones with different ideas.—Bagumba (talk) 05:10, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

An inconsistency is that Wikipedia:In the news#Criteria mentions "signficance" but Wikipedia:In the news#Purpose does not.—Bagumba (talk) 05:15, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

WP:ITN's lede mentions wide interest, but the point is that we should take into account the whole of policies and guidelines and not parse individual clauses. Quality is paramount, as that is the purpose of the whole project. "Significance" or "wide interest" should be read as excluding only the truly niche. WP:ITNCRIT speaks to balance, which means we should demand more quality of the MLS Cup then we do of the EPL, but it shouldn't be excluded on significance. We have a furious annual debate on the College Football Playoff, which is clearly of wide interest and significant, when we should instead be focusing on quality. We should say "this is important enough to post, but it is of lesser significance so it has to be top notch." GreatCaesarsGhost 13:30, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

So since the Chinese mission was posted upon its return, should we clarify that the arrival of a probe at its destination means that a sample return mission's destination is Earth? I disagree with that, but if that's what we are doing, we should clarify that. 331dot (talk) 12:00, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I know I'm a broken record on this, but Space Exploration is not suited to ITNR and should be removed. ITNR's purpose is to simplify noms by removing debate on significance. Most space noms instead have a debate on if the item meets ITNR, defeating this purpose. ITNC has shown itself perfectly capable of posting non-ITNR space items and rejecting items that seem to be ITNR where common sense says otherwise. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:57, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Please demonstrate "most space noms". The only controversial one I recall at this time(admittedly off the top of my head) was this recent one where there was disagreement about what the "destination" was in terms of when it should be posted, not that the posting itself should not happen. 331dot (talk) 13:00, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Chang'e 5 in November, Space X in August, Emirates Mars Mission in July, Space X in May. Pretty much every single space nom contains at least some debate regarding if the item is ITNR or not. GreatCaesarsGhost 00:49, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

I think that is the case. Of course, a sample return mission that goes all the way out to Mars or beyond is a more sticky example. Because the travel time for those types of missions is so wide and fraught with inherent difficulty, completion of one leg of the journey is considered noteworthy in and of itself. But relatively speaking, the Moon is a lot closer, and there have been numerous probes and manned missions sent there since the early days of space exploration. Thus any mission of that type that purports a soft landing with a planned return to Earth should bear that in mind.--WaltCip-(talk) 14:12, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Past practice has been to post both when arriving at the target body and when returning to Earth, though there are only a handful of possible examples (Hayabusa1, Hayabusa2, Stardust, Genesis) and I haven't checked all the archives. In the Chang'e 5 case we skipped the first step as the two events happened within a couple of weeks of each other. Every previous sample return mission (since Wikipedia began anyway) has taken at least a year between those stages. Tbh sample return missions happen so rarely that I don't think we need to codify anything - ITN/C can decide what counts as a sufficient gap to merit posting twice. If we ever get to the stage when sample return is frequent we can reconsider. Modest Genius ^talk 14:51, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

This here. ITNR is not an assurance of posting an item that meets it even if article quality is met, simply that the importance of the general class of items has been taken as fully appropriate for ITN posting and shouldn't be for debate. This doesn't mean individual or a single occurrence of an ITNR cannot be debated and deemed not appropriate to post for that one time, which in the case of Chang'e 5 was the known nearness of the three possible ITNR events (launch, arrival at moon, arrival back at Earth, all within 2 months) and it didn't make sense to post those in rapid fashion. Any other sample-return type mission is something where the distance between those events would be months to years and that wouldn't be an issue. So we already have the IAR/unwritten logic built into ITNR and there's no need to add or clarify further. --Masem (t) 14:59, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I think we should have posted Chang'e's successful Moon landing in addition, despite the short interval. Espresso Addict (talk) 04:59, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

The page views for Hayabusa2 spike at mission milestones (because news coverage). Chang'e 5's page views spike more modestly, but still it's clearly spiking around launch, moon landing, return. Readers are interested when these milestones happen (because it's in the news); the articles are of sufficient quality; other stuff on ITN is often older/stale; all in all, I don't see the merit in posting these only once instead of multiple times. Levivich ^harass/_hound 05:11, 18 December 2020 (UTC)