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As we have had a string of cases of people nominating for blurbs that really don't meet the criteria that we have (which is established as "Major figures" presently), I think we need to be clear that if we are going to have a blurb on somebody, that person's impact or legacy or similar concept absolutely needs to be well documented in the person's article (pulling from secondary sources), and should not simply be based on factual superlatives, a person's popularity or being a household name, or the like. Readers should have something in the target article to read about why we posted something as a blurb for a death that's more than typical of a standard biographical article to understand why we've made the exception of just listing the death in the RD line. Otherwise, we're going to continue to have blurbs pushed for deaths because the person was popular.

Mind you, this means that such a section can be added while the article is up for ITNC consideration, this doesn't have to be a previous section. But nearly all the cases we have had blurbs of late can be shown where those blurbs posted have a clear section related to legacy or impact already in the article, while those not posted as blurbs (but otherwise posted as RD) have failed to have anything of that sort. --Masem (t) 13:49, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Again, delete that whole idea, just blurb deaths that have a blurb's worth of story to them. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:01, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Without anything in the article, making a claim that a person is a "major figure" would be original research, that's the problem. It provides a better bar for blurbs to be used, given that the RD bar is very low (article just has to be in shape). --Masem (t) 14:02, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

You think your bar's better, I think mine is. We're stuck on that. Raising the RD bar back might help give actual celebrities their time up front, stop the flood of dead riffraff without photos. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:14, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

That you call other non-celebrities as "dead riffraff" is probably not a good way to be speaking about the situation if you want to continue to participate at ITN. RD is there for any notable individual (once article is up to snuff) which is about as low a bar as you can have. Elevations beyond that should be exceptional and the article should show why that's the case, not editors arguing their only logic for why. --Masem (t) 14:21, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Sorry for that characterization. But they do seem like relatively minor figures, chosen largely arbitrarily, and we've usually never seen them. There's a whole daily list for that level of notability. I was here when we had higher standards for RD, and when we lowered them. It wasn't a terrible system, could be reworked, somehow. But this current three-tiered greatness scheme has had a ton of problems, too. Good luck ironing them out! I mean that in a good way. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:44, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Having a sourced section about legacy of a person in an article is somewhat objective measure of why a blurb is reasonable, as that gives us secondary sourced-basis to make that call, rather than relying on opinions of editors, which tends to favor outright popularity over actual importance. --Masem (t) 14:50, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I made one of those today, for Ruth Warrick. Is she anything like Bowie or Ali for it? I doubt that. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:55, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I said this idea was a requirement for a blurb, but not that it was an assurance a blurb should be posted. And to be honest, what you have for Warrick may be some type of legacy but I can reasonably expect that most ITN commentors would not consider that a significant one to show us why the person was a "great figure". --Masem (t) 14:58, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree hers is poorly sourced, I just changed the header to something standard for dead people. Hard to know what someone will leave behind when they're only gone a day. Do many great and major BLPs even have those sections yet? InedibleHulk (talk) 15:07, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Most people that really should be blurbed will already have these sections, their accomplished already laid out and documented (as was the case with Desmond Tutu). Some may only come together with long-form obits, but that's why I've said that these sections can be added during the ITNC process. But in general, the problem is the same problem why many RDs nominated don't get posted - editors are doing crap jobs of making sure BLP articles are up to sourcing standards while the person is alive, requiring a rush to fix that at the point of death to get the ITNC RD or blurb. --Masem (t) 15:31, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I think a lot of us also do a crap job of separating today's news (plain simple death) from stuff that already made the dead newsworthy many years earlier. We might remember that stuff. But that's never what we publish, just their age. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:47, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I see Kevin Nash does and Scott Hall doesn't, that's messed up. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:26, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree with this. We also, I think, should be explicit somewhere (maybe add to the line about article quality in the RD template?) that popularity and how well known someone is or isn't are completely irrelevant for determining whether someone gets a blurb. Thryduulf (talk) 14:07, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

I was going to mention about adding something like this, but given that the blurb RD criteria had removed language, I don't think adding it back in this way is really correct. But I do not see a problem with the minimum requirement that the article clearly demonstrate the legacy of a person as a first step towards a blurb. Most "popular" people that aren't great figures don't have such sections. --Masem (t) 14:26, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Oppose the specific instruction creep here that a target needs a legacy section. But speaking more broadly, this effort to fix blurbs is a quixotic endeavor. We've made many adjustments to the qualifications, but the standard continues to be personal opinion. Blurb discussions frequently cause discord, then someone runs over here to "fix" the standards if the result didn't go the way they like. I see three options for fixing blurbs (none of which will gain sufficient support, but anyway): 1. Codify the existing standard of "I know it when I see it" and stop pretending we're applying anything more formal. 2. Allow blurbs based on a high quality standard (such as GA). OR 3. Get rid of blurbs altogether. GreatCaesarsGhost 15:05, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Not altogether, just when the subject is old enough that there's no apparent cause of death, and nobody wonders. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:15, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

While that is an objective standard, it is one that the consensus has consciously rejected. IMO, Betty White is more deserving of a blurb then if a younger, less notable person dies unexpectedly. GreatCaesarsGhost 16:47, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

The point is to add something more objective, similar to article quality, to give reason to have a blurb, and the one common factor I see for most cases of when we use a blurb is when the article has a clear section related to impact or legacy of a person. How well that lends to a blurb is still subjective, but its a starting point to avoid cases where the ITNC becomes a popularity contest (which ITN is not meant to be). --Masem (t) 15:27, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

You could add or omit a legacy section for pretty much anyone that would get a nom. That does not address the underlying issue: RD blurbs are a popularity contest. We AGF in that editors are reading and abiding by the guidelines, even though we know they often are not. People should consider the facts and the guidelines, then decide, but instead they decide and cherry-pick whatever supports their argument (see your own vote on John Madden, which diminished his coaching career by comparing him to someone with a lesser record who died 50 years ago, while completely ignoring his broadcasting career). If the consensus is !voting to post, one of the admins will post. GreatCaesarsGhost 16:47, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

But it is far too trending towards making the posting of blurbs a popularity contest, which is not what we want. Fighting off !votes based on popularity helps to expand what gets covered in RD blurbs away from US and UK topics, for one thing. RD blurbs are meant to be exceptional, and what we have going on right now is not that. And what I mean is that its not necessary to have an explicit legacy section, it should be very clear from a read that the article demonstrates why other secondary sources stress the person is a great figure. If the bio is just a career and filmography with nothing about their impact or legacy, its very hard to take claims of being a great figure seriously. Same would be true for an athlete, a politician/world leader, or a scientist. Blurbed articles should show how WP is properly summarizing their importance, and not just because its in the news. --Masem (t) 17:33, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Of course the RD blurb process at ITN/C is a sham. It comes down to how many people say "notable enough for a blurb" vs "not notable enough for a blurb" and that's it. I like the idea of coming up with an objective standard, but ultimately that objective standard is still subject to subjectivity because humans are still giving their opinion and assessment as to the degree of accomplishments someone has. Also, obituaries for someone recently passed will inevitably puff up their influence within their field.--WaltCip-(talk) 16:25, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

• Hey look, someone disagrees a blurb got posted rather than a simple mention at recent deaths, so let's have another conversation that goes nowhere. (Just to be clear, I oppose any proposed changes at this time.) Calidum 16:49, 1 January 2022 (UTC)Calidum 16:49, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

  Like it or not, people are likely going to compare the Betty White blurb posting to that of Carrie Fisher, mostly because of White's fame in show business and not for being a Thatcher/Mandela in her field. WaltCip-(talk) 16:59, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

  I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, but I hate that every celebrity death somehow gets compared to those two. It would be preferable if we compare actors to other actors, singers to other singers, etc., rather than two elected officials who just happened to die the soon after the RD section was created. Calidum 01:28, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  It was the same problem, too many supports were "she's popular/well-known" which is not what makes someone a great figure. Consider several suggested RD blurbs as recent too like John Madden. We have too many editors that use this metric when "great figure" is not based on popularity. Something is very wrong and needs to be remedied here. --Masem (t) 17:26, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

  • I could at least understand the Fisher one, purely because of the global popularity of Star Wars. The Betty White one is a joke, most people outside the USA would have absolutely no idea who she was, and she was not transformative in her field in any way. Voted on by (mostly) Americans while the rest of the world was asleep or celebrating new year. A new low point for ITN. Still, we now know that the only metric for posting a blurb is "beloved". Black Kite (talk) 18:29, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
    • No, there's "old" as well. HiLo48 (talk) 22:55, 1 January 2022 (UTC)
    • "Voted on by (mostly) Americans while the rest of the world was asleep or celebrating new year." Bullshit. The thread was open for 13 hours before White got posted. Meanwhile Sean Connery's blurb was posted within five hours, but no one ran here to whinge about it after the fact. (And, by the way, nothing in Wikipedia:In the news/Recent deaths says someone must be "transformative" to be posted.) Calidum 01:22, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
      • That was removed relatively recently, but it still requires "major figures" with an emphasis on being exceptional. Betty White was not that. This was posted by a push based on "popularity", the same problem that Fisher's blurb caused, and which we have been careful to avoid (eg just this week with Madden). Posting blurbs based on popularity creates a Western-news bias (US or UK) which we need to avoid. I am absolutely sure that there are similar actors like White that have a prolonged career within their country's media, but whose name is relatively unknown to the rest of the world, and this blurb posting creates an example for those to be argued. It is far better if we have actual demonstration by sources of why a person is a great actor to base blurb posting on rather than outright "she's popular!" --Masem (t) 01:54, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
        • Bert Newton died back in October, at the age of 83, here in Australia. I nominated him here for RD. It finally made it. Bert was immensely well known and popular in Australia, after an obviously very long career. I never even dreamt of nominating him for a blurb. He would not have stood a chance. Why Betty and not Bert? HiLo48 (talk) 02:01, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
          • Exactly my point. And dare we have an actor in a non-English actor in a similar position (Yes we posted Dilip Kumar as a blurb but it wasn't because he was just popular, but he was shown as a key figure in the Bollywood industry as demonstrated by sources, see Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/July 2021) A person is not a major figure simply due to being popular or a household name. --Masem (t) 02:10, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
          • If you felt Newton was blurb-worthy, you should have nominated him and made a case for it. It's unfair to now say that's an example of bias. Calidum 02:30, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
            • I repeat - I never even dreamt of nominating him for a blurb. He would not have stood a chance. HiLo48 (talk) 03:23, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
      • Bullshit? Really? OK, let's take Europe. It was posted around the time that many people would be starting preparations for NYE celebrations, and it was closed early in their morning. That's certainly why I didn't see it, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Are you equating White with Connery, by the way? Someone compared her to Tutu earlier. Still, if we're dropping the bar this low at least there'll be no complaints about ITN stories going stale, as we'll be posting elderly actors who have shuffled off this mortal coil on a regular basis. Black Kite (talk) 02:12, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
        • Connery was the most recent actor that was posted that came to mind as somewhat equivalent to White (I'd put Kumar, mentioned above, at a higher level). Was Connery well-known? Yes. A major figure? Probably. Transformative? No. But he was a male and non-American, so he had those going for him. Calidum 02:30, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
        • OK, let's take Europe.: Here's the actual White timeline:[1] Nominated at 19:17, 31 December 2021 (UTC). Posted 13 hours later at 08:25, 1 January. Closed 7 hours later with two new formal opposes by 15:46. That's a lot of waking hours in Europe there, both before the actual post and after.—Bagumba (talk) 03:25, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
          • It was New Year's Eve! Absolutely no reason why it couldn't have waited. Black Kite (talk) 11:44, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
            • Sure, but in hindsight, there was negligible backlash after the post. Minimum discussion time proposals were rejected before, and I doubt a New Year rule would pass either.—Bagumba (talk) 12:00, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose Similar reasoning to GCG above I think, a more technical approach. ITN should not be in the business of dictating articles tailor extra content: what if one day the biography project decides to ban legacy sections? And I think it would be especially problematic with RDs, when there's already hyperactivity: if no legacy section existed, how easy would it be to add one with the edit conflicts, and how many edit wars on what it should contain would happen amidst the mess already, when inexperienced fans and efficient current events editors clash?
  I am each month becoming more opposed to more guidelines on death blurbs in general, after having tried to make a stricter set myself, not because of disillusionment but because it is truly hard to checklist or quantify what makes a death that isn't itself exceptional a news item. And that's really what ITN should be looking at: is the death itself a notable news story (here, one could argue with White's upcoming ironic 100th birthday film, it is, but I won't) or is it major news anyway (here, the BBC interrupted their evening news broadcast to go back to studio and announce White's death, breaking-style and with a full-screen photo, but let's not focus on White).
  Actually, yeah, that's a decent counter-suggestion. That we shouldn't be debating the person themselves as we long have; if their death is treated like major news (something we can empirically prove, if we set a high bar), then it is assumed that, in the zeitgeist, they are important enough. That their death is news, and, relevant. That if we were writing Wikipedia in 100 or 1000 years we would see the way the death was reported and think "so they were important". Kingsif (talk) 03:07, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
  • That is treating ITN as a news ticker, which we absolutely are not. We are aiming to point readers to articles that represent the best WP work, and which topics happen to be in the news, not because that they are in the news. --Masem (t) 03:22, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
    • I think that's a misrepresentation of my suggestion. I suggested we use how the news treats a famous death as a determiner of their significance, if there is no other objective way to do so. Your suggestion actually, functionally, relies on the same premise; the sources for the legacy section would be written by the same media as the RS news handling the death, often at the same time as legacy is rarely discussed when people are alive. I basically said "yes but don't make people put it in the article". If we were a news ticker, every death with a source would be a blurb instead of RD and you know that isn't what I was suggesting. Kingsif (talk) 03:29, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
      • That's the bias I've talked about already. The news will undoubtably be English-based sources, and primarily US and UK. We already have too many editors on any ITNC (not just death blurbs) going "its in the headlines all over so we should post". And moreso when we talk entertainment or celebrity news. It completely biases that against important non-English people who's death may not get that much coverage in English sources but are major figures. We avoid looking at how much a topic is covered by the news (as long as it is covered to a minimum degree) nor do we look at how the topic is covered by the news, because newspapers and media are in a completely different motivation than our goals for ITNC. --Masem (t) 04:04, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose this Betty White rule (Disclosure: I did not !vote at the ITNC nom). WP:ITNRD refers to "major figures" decided on a "sui generis basis". The few opposers at the White nom argued that she was not "transformative" nor "top of the field", but the supporters generally did not use that as their basis. Adding a "legacy" section which wouldn't anyways describe her as transformative or top of her field would not have convinced the opposers there.—Bagumba (talk) 09:51, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
  • The problem for White is that the supporters were argument that longevity or popularity of White equated to "great figure" , which is absolutely a terrible means to judge that and would open the door to far too much bias. "Great figure" is related to someone's merit, legacy, and impact, and this wasn't demonstrated for White beyond "she had lots of roles". ITN cannot be popularity contests, is why is we need this to be fixed. --Masem (t) 17:43, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. I don't think that there is a problem here that needs fixing. We determined through discussion and consensus that White merited posting; we determined through the same that John Madden did not(I disagree, but that's what happened). I agree with Bagumba's comments above. 331dot (talk) 10:07, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose mostly per GCG, and ultimately as a solution looking for a problem. Candidates should be discussed on a needs-of-business basis; further codification is unnecessary. SN54129 — Review here please :) 16:16, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose The people suggesting that Betty White was not a great figure don't seem to have read her article. Its lead is full of stuff like her being one of the "the first women to exert control" and the "First Lady of Television". She was clearly a great in her field, up there with Lucille Ball, say. The trouble seems to be that her field was middle-of-the-road light entertainment and this doesn't get respect here. But the readership figures provide objective evidence that posting was the correct call. Betty White's death spike is over 7M and counting. Hardly anyone gets those kind of numbers. Desmond Tutu, for example, has yet to reach 1M while Sally Ann Howes only got 220K. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:32, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

  Also, the majority of editors just declared their desire to have Betty White posted. It's seems highly cynical to think you could garner majority support here to create a new rule for that stated intent of excluding her. GreatCaesarsGhost 14:30, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

  How many of those editors supporting the blurb were ITN regulars? The situation created now makes blurb posting a popularity contest, which is the opposite of what ITN RD blurbs are for as well as consensus.--Masem (t) 15:05, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

  The opinions of ITN regulars carry no further weight than any other user. And let's be honest, all blurbs, with the exception of ITNR items, are popularity contests. Calidum 15:10, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

  If we start dividing participants in ITN/C between "regulars" and "non-regulars", we start admitting to ourselves that we essentially have an unwritten bureaucracy in place. The thing to do in that instance isn't to deepen the divide by adding more policy restrictions in place, but rather to encourage more participation. WaltCip-(talk) 16:20, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

  Yeah, that was precisely what I meant by cynical; didn't really expect you to say the quiet part out loud. GreatCaesarsGhost 18:05, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

  My point is not so much trying to divide regulars versus newcomers, but that the newcomers generally enter with !votes of "this person was popular/famous/a household name" and not with statements that justify the "major figures" approach we have been used historically, nor consistent with why we created the RD line with almost zero barrier to entry (as to keep death blurbs to the most exceptional cases) The net effect is that when it comes to blurbs for major figures but who aren't as famous as celebrities, we get mostly regulars fairly debating on whether the "major figure" aspect is met (for example, looking at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates/December 2021 at E.O. Wilson, Karolos Papoulias, and even Bipin Rawat shows a small number of !votes, but you get to White or Madden, and there's tons more). While one can argue every ITNC is a popularity contest, it is the blurbs for these Western celebrities that are drastically influenced by the weight of them being popular. It's why having some type of pseudo-objective standard - in this case some clear indication in the article of a person's impact or legacy - to move beyond just being famous or a household name, feels necessary to have editors that participate focus more on stronger reasoning to include a death blurb. Otherwise we're going to just get more of these which as I've explained creates a huge bias in favor of English/Western/US and UK celebrities over any other type of person. --Masem (t) 01:17, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Alternate proposal

I recognize a large-scale change to the ITN and ITN/RD rules is likely going to garner pushback. So here's a suggestion that is less invasive, and at worst means we don't throw a blurb up on the main page as soon as it's ready -- which frankly shouldn't really be an issue, since ITN is not a news ticker.

• All recent deaths nominated to be posted as a blurb will be subject to a 25-hour waiting period from the nomination time prior to posting, in order to:
  • ... ensure there is sufficient participation,
  • ... ensure that all reliable source coverage regarding the death is valid, accurate, and up-to-date, and...
  • ... ensure that the article being posted is in a stable state in light of WP:BLP and the death being a current event.

I see this being more-or-less a win-win situation, and shouldn't be an issue of WP:CREEP since most discussions tend to run long anyway. Yes, this also means we would need to wait 25 hours for even WP:SNOW situations. I think we can stand it.--WaltCip-(talk) 15:42, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose arbitrary minimum discussion times as I have consistently. Doing it here opens the door to do it more generally. We should have flexibility to be responsive to current events. Are we really going to wait 25 hours to post Queen Elizabeth's death as a blurb? And if we aren't, then any minimum time will be so full of holes as to be useless. 331dot (talk) 15:59, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  Yes, we would wait 25 hours. Why wouldn't we? What if the news regarding Queen Elizabeth's death in the first two hours turns out to be false? We have been fooled before. WaltCip-(talk) 16:01, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  Please link to the last time we posted a death blurb that turned out to be in error. 331dot (talk) 16:10, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  I'm not going to do that, partly because I don't catalog recent deaths on Wikipedia, but mostly because I know even if I put forth the effort to locate and post an example, it won't change your mind since - by your own admission - you have consistently opposed minimum discussion times over the years. WaltCip-(talk) 16:13, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  I cannot compel you to do so, but I was genuinely curious because I can't recall when that happened. 331dot (talk) 16:15, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  And while 2 hours might be too short, it would look foolish for us to be artificially waiting 25 hours. 331dot (talk) 16:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  Instead of a specific hard or soft minimum time I would have much less of a problem with adding a suggestion to Wikipedia:In the news/Administrator instructions#ITNC. It already states "If the consensus is not entirely clear, consider letting the nomination run for more time, especially if the nomination is less than 24 hours old." Perhaps we could add something to that to encourage allowing additional input from other time zones but not be a hard or soft specific time. We need flexibility to respond to current events. 331dot (talk) 16:47, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose If there is clear SNOW, and the admin can make a sound judgement that that SNOW is not likely to change due to different regions waking up to respond, then the period is silly to wait - eg I know I posted Stephen Hawking's death in 4 hrs due to the SNOW, and the above example of the Queen will be similar. But if it is not snowing, or there is clearly going to be a national focus involved, then admins should wait that 24hr cycle to make sure there's reasonable agreement from editors across the globe. (This was the case with White's nomination). --Masem (t) 17:35, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  I agree that admins should wait the 24 hours for anything contentious, and I have no problem updating the administrator instructions to state this. But even if we do so, I would fathom that our current spate of ITN posting admins, based on experience, are likely to value their own personal judgment over whatever the administrator instructions say. WaltCip-(talk) 17:37, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  If we set this by consensus, and we have an admin repeating ignoring that, that becomes a problem to bring to AN/ANI. --Masem (t) 17:39, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  To add, RDs are clearly not subject to this, we only need article quality to have been reviewed to make sure its ready to go. --Masem (t) 17:39, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Oppose. There are people who we can all agree should get a blurb (if their article is in good shape), Desmond Tutu being the most recent example, so any proposal needs to account for those people as well as those for whom it is not clear. This proposal does not do that. We could try and list those people who we think should be exempt from a rule, but everything I can think of would have exceptions both ways. For example, if the incumbent head of state or government of the US, UK, Canada, Australia or Russia were to die they would be blurbed (subject to article quality). A few other countries would likely be on at least most people's lists too (e.g. New Zealand, South Africa, China) but not every country would be on the list (Tuvalu? Liechtenstein?) so a line would need to be drawn somewhere and that's only going to lead to arguments. Similarly, I don't think Archbishops emeritus would be on anyone's list. The only thing that makes objective sense to me is to require the article to make it clear to someone not familiar with the subject why they are more deserving of a blurb than others in their field (considering "field" broadly and internationally). Thryduulf (talk) 17:49, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  That has nothing to do with my alternate proposal. WaltCip-(talk) 18:11, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  There are two parts to my comment. The first is a full explanation of why I oppose your proposal. The second is why I would also oppose a related proposal. Both parts are relevant to this discussion. Thryduulf (talk) 18:44, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  And I opposed Tutu's blurb, just didn't say so in time. The Queen is the only example I don't mind blurbing on natural causes alone. Nobody else, not even Hogan. InedibleHulk (talk) 18:42, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  I don't think even the queen would be unopposed if she dropped dead tomorrow and her article was an FA. We have to go with consensus and there is no doubt that consensus is to blurb some people (with that some being a larger set than just one monarch). Thryduulf (talk) 18:47, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  I know, just speaking for myself, exclusively in response to your first point. InedibleHulk (talk) 18:53, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  As a bystander in most of these discussions, I feel consensus is one of those words that is just thrown in without folks knowing what it truly means (along with other words like transformative). E.g. In the recent thread, we had 20:10 ayes vs nayes. So, is that consensus? Ideally, you would have folks making good arguments and try to build consensus (whatever that is). But, in the threads here, all I see is ayes saying he/she/they were the most notable name, nayes saying not transformational, not known in this part of the world. None of the conversation goes towards truly establishing consensus and then an admin would post saying consensus established. All-in-all, I still maintain that this constant bickering paints this project in an extremely bad light. Ktin (talk) 18:58, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  All-in-all, I still maintain that this constant bickering paints this project in an extremely bad light. I completely agree with this, which is why I'm supporting a proposal that I believe will reduce it as a first step towards getting rid of it. I would not have posted the blurb for Betty White, as I regard the "not transformational" comments as more significant than either the "not known here" or "she's popular" comments, as the latter two do not speak to her being (or not being) a major figure. There wasn't consensus against a blurb, but neither was there consensus for one at the time it was posted (imo). Thryduulf (talk) 22:26, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

  I feel consensus is one of those words that is just thrown in without folks knowing what it truly means ...: WP:ITN/A and WP:ROUGHCONSENSUS leave a lot of room for interpretations w.r.t. ITN. Death blurbs, assuming no outright policy issues like V, NPOV, or BLP, basically come down to subjective arguments for "major figure".—Bagumba (talk) 03:39, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

  But there should be reasonable bounds on what a definition of a "major figure" is, because right now, we have a system that is prone to being a popularity contest for "beloved" or "household names" which in no way could be the definition of a "major figure" as outlined at the ITN criteria page. When consensus is based on vote counting and not strength of arguments relative to the guidelines for ITN, we open the door for bias on Western people being given blurbs. We should be looking to be trying to look at "major figures" on the grand scale of things, including that this is a global encyclopedia. People that should be blurbed (like Desmond Tutu) will have clear demonstration of being a major figure on their article, and will help introduce more readers to figures they may not have been aware of (eg think of the approach Google Doodle takes when they celebrate seemingly obscure individuals who had contributed significantly to society). The idea of ITN being swayed as a popularity contest started with Carrie Fisher, and White's blurbing is just more of the same, it weakens the purpose of why we have blurbs and separate RDs at ITN. --Masem (t) 13:29, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

  This comment seems to suggest Desmond Tutu's status as a popular and beloved household name (or "monumental figure") doesn't make him seem bigger than other humanitarian African archbishops, especially to his Western audience. I think it had a lot to do with it. Some viewers and readers just think religion, science or politics weigh more than music, comedy or pugilism on "the grand scale of things", and some don't. InedibleHulk (talk) 15:41, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

  I actually like Masem's comment of us thinking like Google Doodle. The experience that we should / could leave the reader with is Ah! I didn't know of this person/news. I learned something new. As opposed to, Ah! Yeah - another piece of information that is splashed all over the internet! Ktin (talk) 16:27, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

  I like it, too, just not the way it was juxtaposed with a guy five regular Westerners instantly recognized as the obvious choice. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:36, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

  This S. H. Sarma seems like the kind of Indian non-Indians and Indians alike might like to know a little more about first. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:07, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

  Kind Editor, I took the liberty of nominating S. H. Sarma for WP:ITNRD on your behalf. Pleasantly surprised that the article looks pretty good. Minor touches and the article should be good for homepage. Ktin (talk) 17:57, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Counteroffer

We require recent deaths (not the dead) to have significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources, just like GNG. InedibleHulk (talk) 16:39, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Don't we do that already? 331dot (talk) 16:48, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

No, any death notice suffices lately, even from Moneycontrol. Not knocking that example. Just sounds a bit obscure for something in the "In The News" box. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:38, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

The death has to be added to the article, and that does require an RS (per BLP). So yes, we do still require that for even RD. This doesn't address the blurb problem, and as I said above, focusing on deaths that get wide coverage would create too much bias to English/Western/US+UK deaths over others. --Masem (t) 17:41, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I'm trying to raise it to multiple independent RS. They don't need to be English. And it doesn't have to be super wide coverage, I'm thinking three unique obits. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:49, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Three obits would be met very easily for the kind of topics that y'all have been arguing about. e.g. White, Fischer, Madden Ktin (talk) 17:55, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Exactly: even a B-list actor gets sufficient obits that would pass this line. --Masem (t) 17:57, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Three independent obits is a much lower bar than is useful for this discussion. Nobody even suggested Janice Long get a blurb yet I can find 10 different obituaries on the first page of google alone. Thryduulf (talk) 18:50, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Agree. Ktin (talk) 18:53, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm talking RD, not blurbs. InedibleHulk (talk) 18:56, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm opposed to changing the bar for RD. The current system we have for that works well and avoids needless arguments, and none of the fears raised in the WP:2016 ITNRD RFC seem to have come to pass. Thryduulf (talk) 22:28, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Btw, Moneycontrol is the Indian affiliate / operator of CNBC. The group is just as WP:RS as any other. Ktin (talk) 17:59, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Good to know. If it's easy to pass, it shouldn't be a problem. Just keeps the real fringe cases out. InedibleHulk (talk) 18:02, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I have not given this much thought other than a germ of an idea. But, I had mentioned once in a different thread. Truth is that there is a division of opinions based on region / geography and then concerns are perennially raised because a) a region believes that the nomination has not stayed sufficiently long to hear their opinion and b) a region believes that a news item does not hold as much relevance to their center of gravity.

This can be solved by dividing the project participants to three groups. Call them caucuses or call them desks. a) Americas b) Europe + Africa c) Asia. Tag participants to these desks and institute a guidance that an article gets posted after folks from a, b, and c, weigh in on the relevance. Once the three desks have participated, post onto the main page. Something along these lines can either help us (end the bickering) or divide this group further. I am hoping it would be the former. Ktin (talk) 17:45, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

There's something weird about Group B, but aside from that, maybe. InedibleHulk (talk) 17:58, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I see filibusters after.—Bagumba (talk) 18:41, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Me too. It's almost inevitable that when you section off the nomination process into different blocs that you'll have Group B and Group C opposing anything Group A nominates just because it's U.S.-centric. Creating a bureaucracy won't solve the aforementioned issues. WaltCip-(talk) 18:43, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Yup. That is a risk for sure. But, frankly I do not see any way to end this group's bickering on this topic. Ktin (talk) 18:50, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

People just need to drop the WP:STICK. wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates/April_2021#(Posted_as_blurb)_RD:_Prince_Philip,_Duke_of_Edinburgh happened while North America was sleeping. Where was the procedural outcry then?—Bagumba (talk) 18:58, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

I think we should just add WP:MOVEON to our guiding principles. Ktin (talk) 19:01, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

There were complaints at that ITNC thread, so yes, there was an issue then too. --Masem (t) 19:02, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Artifact

This issue is an artifact of ITN's current format which divides the recently dead into the RD and blurb sections. And the problem is that the RD section is a ticker which provides no information about the subject; just listing the name of their articles in a fast-scrolling stream. This means that there's a big difference in the coverage as only the blurbs provide a brief thumbnail of context.

This is unsatisfactory because recent deaths are the bulk of the nominations at ITN and so most of the nominators don't get to see much impact from their effort. The solution is to restructure ITN so that the recent deaths get more space and prominence. If all recent deaths got a short description and the occasional picture then you can put everyone into the same obituary section and the selection artifact then mostly disappears.

The blurb section would then just be used for more general news – the usual stream of bus plunges, football matches, rigged elections and so forth. Perhaps these could be categorised better to help readers find the type of news that they are interested in. News media commonly have explicit sections for Obituaries, Politics, Sport, Entertainment, Science and so forth. Perhaps we should try dividing ITN like this too.

Andrew🐉(talk) 10:50, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps shrink the current WP:OTD, removing a blurb or two there, allowing 6 RD entires with short dab-like descriptions. As it is, WP:ERRORS seems to have frequent reports about the quality of OTD's pages.—Bagumba (talk) 12:38, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

All recent deaths already get a relatively fuller blurb at Deaths in 2022. It's pipelinked for that very reason, beside names which should belong to only those whose deaths are news events. Is Ivan Mozgovenko really in the news? Of course not. He was just arbitrarily chosen for the spot anyone can get instead of Singh, Chilcott or Obi. RD should require at least a semblance of memory and eulogy from fans or colleagues. That's an objective way to separate the beloved/influential/newsworthy from those who were merely mortal and left sourced stubs. InedibleHulk (talk) 12:50, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Oddly enough, I've since been appointed nominator of and accepted support for S.H. Sarma, whose obits are almost entirely rooted in a brief government statement. All good, though. The way things should be and the way things are are both fine ways to see things. InedibleHulk (talk) 08:19, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Before the whole change to include the RD line, we were still fighting over who even would be mentioned at ITN. And at that point, no, RDs did not outnumber the typical news story as it was hard to get an RD through. The RD solution is one that every notable person's death can be presented without having to fight over if the person was notable enough to be in the ITN box. But that also meant a sacrifice (such as no way to state the importance of the person) as to have that much content. The only reason RDs outnumber other stories is because it is a very easy bar to pass (short of the article quality issue) and thus encouraged for editors to nominate anyone that qualifies. But as IH points out, we have pages where space is not a premium that go into the details. So this is not really an answer here. --Masem (t) 13:23, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Howdy! Do we have any scripting ninjas on this project who might be willing to join me in spending some time on some analysis of our work? I have some thoughts and would greatly benefit from partnering with someone who can write a few scripts and parse through some of our data. I am thinking of some very basic analytics. So, if someone has the skills and some time to exercise them (nights and weekends kinda thing) -- please do let me know. Cheers. Ktin (talk) 02:20, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Script ninjas tend to hang out at WP:BOTREQ, but will likely prefer you to give some more detail the sorts of tasks you are interested in running so they can assess what sort of scripts will work and how much coding effort will be required. Thryduulf (talk) 03:16, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

We don't have an article for this yet, but it probably will be possible to write one. Very unusual. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/10/us/train-hits-plane-la.html Jehochman ^Talk 18:19, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Seems more like a DYK than an ITN item to me, but you can nom it on ITN/C and see what people think. Spencer^T•C 06:40, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I figured news junkies here might enjoy reading that. It’s a triviality and I’m not sure whether it even merits an article. Maybe it would be a few sentences in an article about the relevant transit system. Jehochman ^Talk 10:20, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes. That "and in other news" snippet is barely worth levering into an existing article to get a mention at DYK, let alone "an article" of its own. Fortunately no one died. Yes, very unusual things happen every day. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:27, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I had some time earlier this afternoon and pulled this table together. It was a 'quick-and-dirty' analysis, so might have some numbers off, but, hopefully not terribly off.

Summary: I think this project should really feel proud of the work that each one of the members have done. Together, the group has worked on ~1,300 articles (or ~110 articles per month) and brought them up to homepage levels of hygiene. That is a win no matter how you see it.

Level 2 Analysis:

1. Abandon rate (i.e nominated but not posted) is ~25% for RDs and ~60% for news articles.
2. Fatigue is showing up in the second half of the year. Can be seen in the declining number of articles being posted. Could be attributed to multiple reasons including perhaps the world opening up (which is undoubtedly a good thing).

* December numbers thru December 18, 2022.

If someone wants any other slicing and dicing of the numbers, let me know and I will try getting to it. Alternately, will give you all the raw data to run your own analysis. Good luck. Ktin (talk) 00:45, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• In my experience the end of the year is typically a slow period; somewhere between November- to roughly the Super Bowl, which is roughly when awards shows and other sporting events happen. Incidentally the Super Bowl is now scheduled a week later than previously so that might bump out the slow period another week. There's no major US election to post until next November. We can now only wait for stuff to happen. 331dot (talk) 07:50, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
• This is useful analysis and thanks to Ktin for putting it together. My take-away is that ITN consistently posts less than 1 blurb per day (less than 30/month). I believe ITN would be better if it cycled through more often; we could be posting more. We shouldn't compromise on quality, but we can lower our standards for "significance", and thereby approve more noms, and have an ITN that cycles with at least a new story once a day on average (there is not a day that goes by on Earth when something significant doesn't happen somewhere in the world). (Another way to do it is to be more willing to post RD blurbs.) Levivich 17:49, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  Significance is relative, which is why it is discussed and a consensus reached as with most if not all things on Wikipedia. We don't get 1) a blurb nomination every day and 2) the nominated articles are not always improved. I await your more frequent nominations to consider, as nothing is stopping you from doing so. 331dot (talk) 08:59, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  The whole point of RD was to reduce death blurbs. 331dot (talk) 09:00, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• I wonder to what extent the RD decline over the year is due to WikiCup. Relatively easy way to get points, and there are always plenty of RD noms on the table with okay-ish prose but need some cleanup and referencing work. Spencer^T•C 03:10, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

  Agree. This is very true. I have found myself submitting my entries there and am pleasantly surprised how far that goes. Ktin (talk) 18:56, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Not to be morbid, but I was just thinking, does ITN have a plan for blurb posting upon event of the death of Elizabeth II? Can I propose one? This plan assumes that 1. the Queen will get a blurb, and 2. the Queen's article will be suitable for MP at the time of her death. Taking those as red, here are questions for the community to gauge if we want a plan or not:

1. Should the Queen's death blurb get any special treatment, like the COVID box, and what would it be? (e.g. keep it at the top of the box for duration of official mourning or something)
2. Should we prepare a blurb now that can be posted, to prevent lengthy discussion on what to mention, and what should it be?
3. and, if so, should the first admin to see the news IAR and just post the blurb without opening discussion?

That last question is coming from the understanding that if only one person were to have their death blurbed, it would be the Queen, and the knowledge that millions of readers will immediately come to Wikipedia at the news. I remember there being public scrutiny of how long it has taken to post highly notable deaths before, and think this would only be exacerbated with possibly the most prominent person in the world. Whatever you think of the Queen, she has been iconic in public life (and technically head of state of multiple countries) longer than most people have been alive, she qualifies for the special treatment.

To get discussion going, my personal suggestion for a blurb would be "Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth realms, longest-serving [female] head of state in history, dies in [Windsor] at the age of [N]. She is succeeded as British monarch by her [eldest son, Charles], who becomes [Charles III], the first King of the United Kingdom in [over] seven decades." – the bracketed parts are the factors that can change but will be known in a death announcement. Kingsif (talk) 23:38, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, there is a plan. Overzealous admins will post it into the box probably before a formal nomination is even made. There will next be an acromonious tit-for-tat discussion over timing, "X-centrism", the blurb wording at WP:ITNC, where the nom will be closed and the bickering will boil over to WP:ERRORS and eventually to WT:ITN where one or more RFCs will be proposed, walls of text erected, but no action actually taken. Honestly the most helpful thing anyone could do is to keep Elizabeth II at it's already excellent level of quality so that when the above happens, at least we won't be expressing a poor quality article to the main page. Happy new year! --LaserLegs (talk) 03:25, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

As long as we know ;) Kingsif (talk) 00:59, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

The Queen will probably outlive this entire site, so I can't say I've ever thought about it. Nohomersryan (talk) 04:42, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Presuming things go according to the existing plan, it is going to dominate headlines for weeks at least, so I'd probably be inclined to support an ongoing. Keeping it at the top of ITN seems unnecessary to me, the reaction and reflection to the death itself is what will dominate headlines after the initial day or so of announcing - an ongoing tag would be more acceptable for me, instead of losing an ITN slot for an indefinite amount of time. Canadianerk (talk) 07:14, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

• I would hope that the plan is to treat her death like we would treat any other clearly blurb-worthy death: Post a blurb when the article is in good enough shape. Leave it in the ITN box until it naturally rolls off, at which point it can be moved to ongoing if it is still ongoing. Why would any special treatment be needed or justified? Thryduulf (talk) 12:30, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
  • @Thryduulf: I would feel safe in saying that when she dies, ITN/C will get thousands of extra opinions very quickly. Few will be useful. Rather than sifting through endless "duh it's the Queen" and "she was just a figurehead" comments to see if there is a blurb with consensus, we can streamline the inevitable. If you think that's unnecessary, that's fine. Kingsif (talk) 01:09, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

As an immortal lizard person, the question is moot. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:54, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

• I realize she is 95, but is her death known to be imminent? Her mother was 100. 331dot (talk) 13:11, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  Her death is not (publicly) known to be imminent. There are plans for what will happen when she dies, but these have existed and been continually revised for literally decades, so that's no indication. Thryduulf (talk) 13:20, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  ^^^ what he said. However you do get a lot of chatter this time of year about her health due to the Queen's Speech putting her in front of the entire world, and she has been quite ill recently. That and the stress of the past two years... So no, not imminent, but also if it happened, it wouldn't be surprising at all. Only in death does duty end (talk) 13:52, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  @331dot: Hopefully this entertains you: I had a dream that the Queen died and we couldn't agree on what image to use so it didn't make it to the box until the next day and then all the tabloids starting accusing Wikipedia of being anti-monarchy and then Catherine Maher or whoever is in charge now had to make some official statement on TV about the ITN process and then ITN got shut down. While I know it is unlikely anything like that will happen, I thought why not come up with preparations anyway, you know every other website has their plans. Kingsif (talk) 01:03, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to the idea of having an IAR posting, so long as it's clear that the death is from a verified reliable source and not from someplace like TMZ or Gawker. I'm also not immediately opposed to having a COVID-style box to cover the death, since it's obvious that there will be numerous plaudits and state funerals in response to such an occurrence, regardless of how it may come about. This thing will get coverage for weeks and weeks. Certainly I believe it's probable that when it does occur, ITN/C will receive a surge of attention from editors and readers who do not normally frequent that particular section of Wikipedia, and there's going to be a barrage of "Strong support, post ASAP - She's the Queen"-type !votes, which won't bring much benefit to our process.--WaltCip-(talk) 16:17, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

The Covid box was becuase we felt that was critical news that readers should know about and wanted to highlight, at least at the start of the pandemic; now its just ongoing as the criticalness is no longer as severe. The Queen's death is nowhere near that level of "critical, need to know" to highlight it specifically. But an ongoing item during the funeral and transition of power would be reasonable. --Masem (t) 16:29, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, on a serious note, Covid box was an example of the kind of idea someone might suggest; if ongoing is suitable, I don't think it's wrong to have a plan rather than let it be nominated at the time, because of the mess any discussion would likely turn into. Kingsif (talk) 00:59, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

• ^[FBDB] I assumed that Jimbo Wales and Charles Wales agreed on an entirely new main page to use in the event of that tragic event ever occurring. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 18:05, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  How will they get Charles' ears to fit on the stamps?? Martinevans123 (talk) 18:39, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

  Don't, I'm having flashbacks to the outrage at Jimmy moving Meghan's article from "Markle" to "Duchess" while discussion was ongoing. Kingsif (talk) 01:05, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

• If you want to save your best royal jokes for my talkpage, I'm taking stand-up suggestions for when the day comes. Kingsif (talk) 00:59, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Note: Death and state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II already redirects to Operation London Bridge, which is the contingency plan already in place for this death. BD2412 T 01:22, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

@BD2412: Relevance? Are you suggesting we mention it in a blurb or? Kingsif (talk) 01:36, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

My point is that we, as a project, are already preparing for this eventuality, as we should be. News organizations routinely have headlines and coverage teed up for deaths at this level. BD2412 T 01:46, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

And for us, at least those that want to see us react ASAP when it happens, they should make sure the article(s) are as up to quality at this point, knowing that the events of her death will then need to be added and sourced. But that's the same with other recurring events that we usually have editors have the page ready to go and just waiting for the event to conclude to finish it up for ITN posting. --Masem (t) 01:50, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Variant

As she will become the second longest ruling monarch on June 13 this year 'at about the time of the 70th Jubilee celebrations' perhaps something on the Main Page that day as a variant on 'all the other celebrations.' Jackiespeel (talk) 20:26, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

At Template:In the news for Recent Deaths, there's a note to use ((nowrap)) for names with initials. For instance, we currently have ((nowrap|[[Paul B. Kidd]])). However, I notice on my display that the Naren Chandra Das entry currently shows broken up, with "Naren Chandra" on one line and "Das" on the next. Should entires with middle names be treated the same as those with initials? Should we be using:

1. Nowrap for the whole entry
2. Just a non-breaking space (e.g. ((nbsp))) for spaces between initials or first and middle names?
3. Continue with no additional treatment for people w/ middle names in their title.

—Bagumba (talk) 13:08, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Not sure about the technical handling, but, Dan Reeves is split with Dan on one line and Reeves on another, on my laptop display. Ktin (talk) 16:50, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

That's as expected, since there's generally no non-breaking space or nowrap applied for "normal" names. I guess my general question is why are names with initials given nowrap treatment, and should similar apply to other names—like ones with middle names, or your example of even plain "Dan Reeves".—Bagumba (talk) 17:01, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Ah! Got it. Thanks Bagumba. Have a nice day! Ktin (talk) 17:55, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Maybe ((nowrap)) for all the names? Probably makes sense to keep first name and surname together. Spencer^T•C 03:29, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

Makes sense and keeps it clean. Ktin (talk) 04:27, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

The note, which I think I added, only says to consider nowrap. Initials hanging at the end of a line looks a little messy, and names with two initials (such as E. O. Wilson need to be kept together, but a regular two-part name probably doesn’t need controlling? The breaks in a name are transient anyway as we have a high throughput of RDs. Stephen 05:06, 5 January 2022 (UTC)

@Stephen: ... but a regular two-part name probably doesn’t need controlling What about a three-part name e.g. Naren Chandra Das (above)? Is the suggestion for nowrap for initials more for aesthetics than readability concerns?—Bagumba (talk) 11:14, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

Given the MOS:NBSP is open-ended, I guess we'll leave it the same with RD. Aside for initials, there has been no consensus to have any special handling for 3+-part names e.g. middle names. However, I did add an nbsp recently for Gerson da Cunha, as his multi-part surname got separated.[2]—Bagumba (talk) 03:45, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Just noting that Brady is getting paid $15 million on Feb. 4th[3] so even if he intends to retire he cannot announce it until after he is paid(if he wants the money). So probably it got leaked and he had to deny it so that he gets paid. 331dot (talk) 10:13, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Even before the news ended up being debunked, it was pretty clear that there was a consensus that Tom Brady's retirement would not be posted. Bizarrely, some of the rationales by !voters ended up directly contradicting their own rationales about nine years earlier when we posted Sachin Tendulkar's retirement. So what's the difference in this case? At what point do we determine that an athlete's retirement (or really, the retirement of anyone in a major field of work) is considered notable and encyclopedic for ITN? WaltCip-(talk) 13:51, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

We posted Tendulkar and Alex Ferguson because they were(are) generally considered to be the greatest in their sport in general, not just currently. That applies to Brady, who is commonly called the "GOAT"(greatest of all time). These retirements made headline news, and not just in the areas of the sport. I expect Bill Belichick will at least be nominated. Retirements should be rare postings, but should not be foreclosed as a topic.(which I realize is not the suggestion here). 331dot (talk) 14:01, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

For the record, Yao Ming's retirement was also posted in 2011.—Bagumba (talk) 09:16, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

And yes, if the greatest Australian football player or the greatest Gaelic football player retired, making news, I would gladly support it. 331dot (talk) 14:10, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

If Brady retiring were actually confirmed, then I think a lot of people might support it. But it was announced then the announcing tweet was taken down, which is why there was confusion. If he announced next week/month that he's retiring, and it's actually official this time, then it could be re-nominated, and I imagine would get more support. Joseph2302 (talk) 14:13, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

He is getting $15 million due him on the 4th, he won't retire before then. 331dot (talk) 14:17, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Apparently $15 million is peanuts for him and Gisele. Howard the Duck (talk) 15:09, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Good Grief! WaltCip-(talk) 15:27, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

I know the Lakers are shit, but I suppose Lebron James retiring will be news in more places than Tom Brady, right? How about Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi? Howard the Duck (talk) 14:22, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Oh yeah, for sure, both of those will be posted. Without a shadow of a doubt. Their international reach is such that it would make headline news in virtually every country that follows sports, except possibly North Korea. WaltCip-(talk) 14:26, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Neither Ronaldo or Messi are demonstrably the GOAT though, not least because the other one exists. Joseph2302 (talk) 14:28, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

Are we restricting sports retirements to GOATs? I remember we posted the retirement of a marathoner when he won his last marathon. Is that prerequisite, winning his final event? Howard the Duck (talk) 14:29, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

We ready to do this dance again? This time NYT is calling it official that Brady has retired.--WaltCip-(talk) 14:57, 1 February 2022 (UTC)

I oppose the posting of ANY sports retirements. They can obviously be reversed. (And don't hit me with "That's not likely". (Lauren Jackson has begun playing basketball again.)) The mere fact that they can un-retire means that it's not a certain state of affairs. What do we do if we post one and they DO come back? Post their de-retirement? And then when they again retire? Post them again? It might be In The News, but so are celebrity weddings. We don't post everything that's in the news. Sports retirements shouldn't be posted, no matter how much people worship the nominee. HiLo48 (talk) 07:09, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

I don't even care about un-retiring, if Andy Murray had been a little better to match up with the rest of the Big Four, we would have probably posted his retirement and he’s back now. No, I think that the wider the net is cast, the more it will seem like sports retirements could be ITN/R. As I, I think, just better explained at the ITN/C, the nature of gridiron is that the "best in the world" is still just the best in America at an American sport. Add to that, Brady in particular is only the current best - someone will replace him as the best, as he did Peyton Manning, who did Dan Marino (feel free to correct me here). We may post Ronaldo or Messi, we may post Nadal or Djokovic, but we won't post Cameron Norrie or Harry Kane - currently the best in Britain at British sports, but not the nation's overall best nor the world's best. We do not want to set that precedent, or sports retirements will become common postings, and compare the people to heads of state. As much as I like pop culture and will advocate for more of those blurbs, a sports retirement does not meet the significance of an election. Kingsif (talk) 08:31, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Peyton Manning and Dan Marino were not as good as Brady, and were not generally considered to be the GOAT. They also had less hardware(Super Bowl titles); Marino never won one. My disappointment and frustration here is mounting, not because what I nominated was not posted, but we are not fulfilling our mission here by not posting this worldwide story and that this particular subject area is apparently foreclosed against posting when I think that very little should be as long as it is in the news. Most(not all) of the opposition seems to be WP:IDONTLIKEIT. 331dot (talk) 08:38, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

It's not a world wide story. But that's irrelevant. My opposition is NOT WP:IDONTLIKEIT. HiLo48 (talk) 09:31, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

It is a worldwide story, as I demonstrated. You wrote as your explanation "What's official about a Tweet?". The method of announcement is immaterial. He does not have to send an engraved calligraphy written notice to Roger Goodell. 331dot (talk) 11:32, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

It's more worldwide and covered in sources than most of what we post on ITN (like elections of small countries, Gaelic football championship). Joseph2302 (talk) 16:36, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

My two cents. We are all in agreement that we should post more (but not at the cost of quality thresholds or of significance thresholds). I think posting this one would be in keeping with that general objective. i.e. I do not think it would be lowering our significance thresholds. So, I would say, lets post and move on. Someone needs to fix the article though (if not already). Ktin (talk) 17:32, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree, and not because I nominated it. I can deal with that. I don't fault the reviewing admin for their decision, but it is a great negative to the project that this was not posted. This is either ITN or it isn't. I think I'm on board the 'ITN is broken' train but I'm not really sure what can be done to fix it that would garner broad support. I think until I do I might drop by here less, at least for a time. This is only because of me and no one else. 331dot (talk) 18:21, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

I still don't know how we can deal with the fact that a sports retirement is so uncertain, and so easily reversible. There's a multitude of examples of reversed retirements. I repeat my seemingly ignored questions from above - What do we do if we post one and they DO come back? Post their de-retirement? And then when they again retire? Post them again? (Please note that, as with the title of this section, my comments are not about Brady.) HiLo48 (talk) 23:51, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

It is not our job to predict the future, but to deal with the here and now. We did not post when Bill Cosby's conviction(which was posted) was tossed out, a far more serious matter. 331dot (talk) 01:28, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

I hear you. While I have no bone in this game, I am alright if he comes back from retirement. We are posting based on an assessment (however subjective) of a player's career achievements until this point. Now, to the hypothetical -- if they come back from retirement and then retire again -- my read of their retirement at that point would be based on their achievements in the time that they come back. I would not overthink this one. I will give a counter-hypothetical. Choose an award of your liking that we post today. Assume that a winner, hypothetically, returns the award in protest over whatever reason and later for whatever reason, makes peace with the awarding committee and wins another award from the same group or a different award (covered in our WP:ITNR). As absurd as this scenario is, would you post them? In summary, my two cents is -- do not overthink this one. Ktin (talk) 01:34, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps getting into paralysis by analysis. Later circumstances, if any, will dictate what we do.—Bagumba (talk) 05:10, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

It's a WP:CRYSTAL trap to get into the thought of wondering if and how an announcement can be reversed, and your citing examples of reversed retirements is an example of confirmation bias, as the vast majority of sports retirements usually are set in stone. Consider if a country, say Ukraine formally declared war on Russia on such-and-such a day. I think that announcement would be posted without a shred of doubt. Then suddenly a day later, they initiate peace talks and the war is ended. Were we wrong to post the formal declaration then? In my opinion, no. We have to accept the vast unpredictability of the news cycle and avoid the pitfall of ascribing anecdotal patterns to certain events. WaltCip-(talk) 14:35, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Sports retirements are like RD blurbs - they are popularity contests which at times can run against the purpose of the encyclopedic goal of ITN (which is not to necessarily feature popular or most read items, but those that represent significant news stories for an encyclopedia that have articles that represent our best work). This was my point back at the Betty White issue. We need to state something in our guiding principles of !voting that we aren't looking for how popular or household-name a person is, and just claiming a person is the best (or in Brady's case, the GOAT) and thus demand posting isn't helpful to the argument. Just like RD blurs, retirements should be super exceptional since everyone eventually retires and all retirements can be undone in a snap. I think we should even avoid any retirement stories unless there is a clear universal agreement in sources that the game would change without that person in the future (which is not the case with Brady, for example), demonstrating their importance to the sport. --Masem (t) 14:03, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

WP:ITN says (emphasis added): It is highly subjective whether an event is considered significant enough, and ultimately each event should be discussed on its own merits. The consensus among those discussing the event is all that is necessary to decide if an event is significant enough for posting. If one believes that there should be a more detailed "purpose of the encyclopedic goal of ITN", they will need to get consensus to update WP:ITN for a poster to factor that into their decision.—Bagumba (talk) 10:25, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I know its not in there now, but I really think we do need caution to watch for stories that get news bumps due to popularity/household names rather than enduring significance. I know it doesn't exist now, but many recent examples are cases that show that I think we really need more explicit advice on that. --Masem (t) 13:13, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm keen to have that discussion if you are. In fact, WP:BEBOLD and update the guidance yourself to reflect this. No better way to establish a consensus, in my opinion, than to put ITN's feet to the fire. WaltCip-(talk) 16:54, 4 February 2022 (UTC)

"An apartment fire in the Bronx, New York City, kills 17 people." has been in the ITN for over one week. This event didn't even make news in some non-US countries, and certainly not after day one. It should not have lasted on Wikipedia's main page for more than one, two days. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:53, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Well nominate and get consensus to post something else to replace it. It only rolls off once 4 other things have been added to ITN. The length of time it stays on depends on how many other things get posted, not how long it's at the top of the news. Also, it's been kicked off now, as Zara Rutherford was posted. Joseph2302 (talk) 12:05, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

There is no time limit on how long items remain on the ITN ticker (except ongoing). ITN doesn't work that way. WaltCip-(talk) 12:20, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

• Piotrus If you want to see more frequent postings, or more postings related to particular areas, I invite you to participate here and make nominations. 331dot (talk) 13:57, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

• Here are the proposed blurbs that were not posted, leading to that story being stuck there:
  • Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis (USA), death and suffering
  • New Indonesian capital, probably the 31st or so occurrence in the last 100 years I dunno
  • Barbadian general election (needs updates), ITNR item
• Any of these three could've pushed off that from the main page, but people here are tough to please unless it's cricket. Howard the Duck (talk) 14:04, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

• people here are tough to please unless it's cricket Not true. The Indonesian capital was agreed on last year and isn't taking place until at least 2024, so this isn't the correct time to post it. The Barbadian election article still needs more article quality. And I didn't even see a nomination for Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis. Currently, ITN has 4 blurbs about 4 different countries, and 6 RDs from 5 countries (2 from US). I would say that's pretty diverse. Joseph2302 (talk) 14:11, 21 January 2022 (UTC)
  • I literally copied "Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis" from the TOC of WP:ITN/C. If we're not posting Nusantara now, we're not posting it, unless Wikipedia is around 20 years from now. And yes, the Barbadian election is crappy, but could've pushed off the Bronx fire off the Main Page if it was worked upon in time. Howard the Duck (talk) 14:16, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

• Piotrus, welcome. Editors can do two helpful things. First, nominate any stories widely in the press, especially in countries that we don't usually cover. Interesting news from around the world should get strong support at WP:ITN/C. Second, if you want to propel old news off the main page, please help fix maintenance tags in candidate articles. This is an important reason why news items are delayed or even fail. We don't post articles to the main page unless they are free (or almost free) of maintenance tags. Jehochman ^Talk 14:21, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you, I need to learn more how things do work around here. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:00, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Hello all.

Does someone know who maintains the iOS Wikipedia app and its home screen? It will be good to connect with them to ensure that there is some synergies between the team that manages this homepage and the iOS app homescreen.

Sample example: I know we have not been promoting Zara Rutherford's image to the homepage given concerns with the image's licensing. However, the iOS app has had Ms Rutherford's photograph on the homescreen for ~3 days.

Will be great to pass some feedback on how we can get some of of our other articles e.g. names from our WP:ITNRD onto the iOS app homescreen. I will post this at WT:DYK as well to check if someone there knows of the answer. Ktin (talk) 22:01, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Found some leads form WT:DYK and posted here MW:Topic:Woovak9ewnnydabz. Let's see if I hear back. Cheers. Ktin (talk) 05:49, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

• I look at the iOS app on most days. It displays ITN on an incremental basis; only showing new blurbs. Presumably it does that because it has a scrolling format going back many days and ITN is very repetitive; showing the same items day after day. So, I suppose that it captures details of each new ITN blurb as it appears. And if a blurb doesn't have a picture – such as the Activision acquisition or the Afghan earthquake – then that blurb won't be used. The app clearly places a high value on items having pictures. For example, its recurring random article feature will only show an article if it has a picture. And it doesn't matter if that picture is fair use.

This is good graphic design because items without pictures look bad and risk delivering a boring wall-of-text. If images are acceptable for use within Wikipedia, they are clearly acceptable for display by the app. It's the desktop version which needs changing to remove its unnecessary additional restrictions.

Andrew🐉(talk) 14:45, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

When posting content to In the news, there always seems to be a barrier that the article needs to be in good shape before it can be posted. I think editors are making more of a big deal on article quality than they need to. I think that article quality should not be one of the criteria to look at before a posting at In the news. If editors still believe in the article quality principle, I would suggest skipping it for news that is really big (ex. 9/11). I would like to hear some thoughts on whether the quality of an article needs to be good before an article can be posted. Interstellarity (talk) 22:55, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

I might suggest that this discussion be at WT:ITN or at least that it be linked to here from there. Articles should be of good (not necessarily great) quality to be on the main page of one of the most visited websites in the world. We can and do emphasize quality less for really big events. 331dot (talk) 23:01, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

@331dot: Can you please move the discussion there? I would appreciate that very much. Interstellarity (talk) 23:22, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

Moved from Main Page.--WaltCip-(talk) 21:15, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

ITN has generally always been to represent (at the target articles) quality work that WP can produce, since it is being linked from the main page. WP has clearly shown the capability of getting a good quality article within one or two hours of major events (Jan 6 attacks was a good example, but this has been very common in the past). This is also important so that we can have a blurb that is reasonably representative of details that are known in the immediate wake of the event. This does tend to favor Western events (more sources, far easier to develop the article) but if we're talking a major significant event even from the Far or Middle East (say, an assassination of a world leader), certainly Western media will get coverage of it quickly for our purposes. We just need editors to dig in a bit to get enough of an article written (1500 char now?) to get posted if it is that major. Also, this approach aligns with "ITN is not a news ticker" - we do want to be timely but not as fast as mainstream news when it comes to these. --Masem (t) 21:31, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

WP's goal is to create a quality encyclopedia. Each section of the main page serves the same purpose: providing a carrot that encourages editors to contribute to that purpose. While we can negotiate standards of timing or significance, quality is the primary intent of the whole endeavor. GreatCaesarsGhost 00:59, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

The system incentives editors to upgrade article to a minimum quality, and they are rewarded with a posting. Happy editor, improved Wiki. Working fine.—Bagumba (talk) 12:02, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not Wikinews, so the news must have good quality for inclusion in Wikipedia, and it is an encyclopedic article, not a newspaper, see WP:NOTNEWS. Thingofme (talk) 15:59, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

This post is obviously prompted by Microsoft's announcement that it intends to buy Activision Blizzard. However it is not about that item specifically. It is inevitable that there will be future merger and acquisition activity in the future, and it is highly likely that in the future there will be additional nominations for such news items.

As with the Microsoft story, there appears to be some disagreement regarding when such an item should be posted. Some people believe that such stories (if there is consensus to post) should be posted at the time of the announcement. Other people believe that such stories (if there is consensus to post) should be posted when the transaction closes. I am of the view that such stories should be posted (if there is consensus to post) at the time of the announcement. I believe it would be worthwhile to confirm/codify that this is the consensus view, in order to avoid (likely) future situations (as seen with the Microsoft transaction) where items are opposed by some editors because the transaction has not closed.

Proposal: Merger and acquisition activity should be considered for posting at the time of the transaction announcement, because that is when the story is in the news.

Support as nominator. Chrisclear (talk) 17:13, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. Just to frame the thinking around this -- at a high level, an M&A transaction has a few stages a) declaration of intent / announcement from one or both the parties b) both the boards approving c) any regulatory challenges being mounted d) acquisition being completed (day 0/1). I think going with the transaction announcement is alright, but, one should wait for both boards to approve imo. In this case fwiw, both boards did approve. Ktin (talk) 19:49, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Comment It has to be after board approval / shareholder formally accepted bids etc. I'm okay with it being before any potential regulatory challenges. But that raises the question whether we would post "X acquisition of Y blocked by Z regulator on competition grounds" if we posted the announced agreement earlier. -- KTC (talk) 20:19, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support The apex news is when the merger is first publicly announced. The board and regulatory approvals are just echoes that typically receive less coverage. Jehochman ^Talk 20:26, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support and in general we post at a point of no return and where actions are irreversible for these types of things, even if there is potential for the action to never go forward or change. Eg, we should until laws are actually passed if they are ITN, and we already post at the point of conviction for court cases. This aligns all that. --Masem (t) 20:34, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support. Aside from the time of announcement being more noteworthy, we already do this for elections(post when RS call a winner, not with formal certification or the inauguration). 331dot (talk) 20:59, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

  The only thing to think about is hostile takeovers / unsolicited acquisition bids -- hence, makes sense to go with when both boards approve, which in most cases is almost at the same time as the public announcement of intent. Ktin (talk) 21:40, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

• Support. A government moving to block an acquisition is just as newsworthy as the announcement of said acquisition, as it would indicate a non-standard action exercised to block an operation within a free market economy.--WaltCip-(talk) 13:27, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose on a technicality, support in principal. If are "formalising" we need to indicate what that means. I assume we intend to add something to the criteria page, but if so we need specific text to !vote upon. I'm with Ktin on approval of the boards, but the text in the nom does not indicate this. GreatCaesarsGhost 17:02, 20 January 2022 (UTC)
• Support "should be considered" is non-binding anyways. The initial announcement of the pending deal is often what's "in the news", while the actual closing is generally a more muted formality. Yes, the announcement should be considered.—Bagumba (talk) 08:38, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

CNN, BBC, SCMP, Reuter, The Independent --Regards, Jeromi Mikhael 11:24, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Jeromi Mikhael If you are attempting to make a nomination, that is done at WP:ITNC. There needs to be an article about this event in order to consider it. 331dot (talk) 11:57, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

@331dot: That is why I am asking here. I am asking for someone to make an article. I am currently busy and have no time to make the article. I will probably be free at the end of the week so if someone hasn't made the article yet I will. But the faster the better since interest would wane at that point. --Regards, Jeromi Mikhael 12:07, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Seems unlikely as we don't even have an article for bar brawl etc? But you never know, I guess. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:12, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

We don't even have an article for brawl as that's a disambiguation page without the primary topic. It ostensibly links to fist fight but is actually piped to punch (combat). The best offering in the area seems to be brawling (legal definition) which is "rowdy argument" and "quarrelling" – just like Wikipedia, eh? But what happened here seems to have been mainly a gang fight and that's another red link. Again, see the list of ongoing armed conflicts to understand how common this is. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:24, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Gang war which redirects to Gangs#Gang violence? WP:ENGVAR varies. Howard the Duck (talk) 12:27, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

There's Bar fight on Street fighting. JennyOz (talk) 12:57, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes. That might be a good place to add it to start with. I'm not sure any separate article would be much more than a perpetual stub. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:31, 26 January 2022 (UTC)

Only one person was killed in the brawl. Then a fire (probably set intentionally) killed 18. I don't think that belongs in a tiny bar fight section. It might get a line at List of building or structure fires#2020s but it's hardly ITN material. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:07, 27 January 2022 (UTC)

I've decided to research the issue of global bias of ITN (and maybe WP's Main Page). For now, I'll share early data - based a sample of ITN's 2021 entries (1st entry of first day of each month). US-focused entries: ~25%. Other developed English speaking countries-focused entries: ~25%. Rest of the world: ~50%. And also: developed-countries focused entries: ~70%. Developing-countries focused entries: ~30%. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:25, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• Not to say that there isn't room for improvement, but that doesn't sound too bad for an English website. 331dot (talk) 11:28, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

  Right, and it can be said to reflect our readership (US readers/editors constitute 40% or our readers, and UK/CA/US/NZ, ~20%., I am basing this on https://stats.wikimedia.org/#/en.wikipedia.org/contributing/active-editors-by-country/normal%7Cmap%7Clast-month%7C(activity-level)~100..-edits%7Cmonthly plus the older pageviews stats by country [5]. So while we do not represent a balanced world viewpoint, we do represent the viewpoint of our readers and editors, which kind of makes sense... I'll probably run comparisons to some non-English wikis later. Also want to check longitudinal changes - were we similar (un)balanced 5, 10, 15 years ago? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:07, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

  The stats you linked to are for editors, not readers. There used to be a page about this that I used a decade (LOL) ago. Howard the Duck (talk) 13:56, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

How is "developed country" and "developing country" defined? 331dot (talk) 11:30, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

@331dot That classification was based on World Bank’s (World Bank Data Team, 2019) 4-trier division, with high and upper-middle income countries classified as developed and low and lower-middle income countries, as developing. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:01, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer. 331dot (talk) 13:49, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• This is a topic that is quite dear to me and I have been digging some data as well. So, firstly, thanks for doing this. I would caution against jumping-in and doing much by way of analysis before we see the entire data. So, my recommendation would be WAIT. That being said, I still think the problem is not as much with WP:ITN as it is with other regions of the encyclopedia. The way I think of WP:ITN is we come in to play at the tail-end of the article life cycle. We are literally the funeral directors on the RD side and something similar when we write about other news items. The real problem is with other regions of the encyclopedia that lie upstream to us. E.g. I can not think of a more egregiously biased region of our encyclopedia than the WP:AFD processes. The example that I always use in my talks is that of the Queen Mother of the Mysore Kingdom. The article was deleted with such militant fervor that I have not seen elsewhere, while at the same time, there was reams of text being churned out for Princess Diana's cocktail dress. We should really ask ourselves the question -- what processes encourages this behavior? Not an easy problem to solve when we are a foot-soldier led community initiative. The one thing that we should perhaps look at on the WP:ITN side is -- are we bringing new contributors into the project at the pace that we need to? More later. Cheers. Ktin (talk) 15:51, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• Jumping off what Ktin said, I think whatever bias is at ITN is actually an effort to counter the Western/Anglo biases of the rest of Wikipedia. Debates on whether obscure entries are favoured to create false balance happen a lot. As ITN regulars will say, the purpose of ITN is actually to steal from the popularity of the news and try to redirect it to Wikipedia by saying to readers "you've probably heard of this news story, let's make it easy for you to fall down a wikiwalk rabbit hole by putting a related article right on the front page" (hence, it doesn't really matter how many views an article already got)... so both the existence and quality of articles is what controls ITN. There are more likely going to be articles about things that most editors know about - if most of our editors engage with US culture, there will be more articles about US culture. And since this is English-language WP, the quality of articles privileges those which are popular among native English speakers. Even with edit-a-thons encouraging editors to cover more diverse topics, we then have to consider that Wikipedia prefers secondary and tertiary sources, and there is a major historical bias with what sources wrote about in history - and nowadays, it is still hard for news outlets in developing countries to thrive, let alone be convincingly RS to Wikipedia. It's a long chain of unfortunate preference to Western/Anglo data, and the fact that ITN is relatively balanced is, frankly, a miracle. Kingsif (talk) 19:28, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• So this is based on a sample size of 12 entries? And how would something like the Ryder Cup, the top entry on October 1 [6], be categorized? The US won but they beat a team consisting of players from all over Europe. Or the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport, the top entry on September 1 [7]? Unless I'm missing something, I believe that was lumped into the American category. Calidum 16:02, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

  Wow. I did not realize that it is this small a sample size. I really think we should wait for the entire data before spinning this thread-up. In good faith I might also suggest close pending more data. Ktin (talk) 16:06, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Basing on a random sample size of 12 seems like not enough data. At the moment, we have 4 entries, of which 1 is for a US company, one is a British dual citizen, and 2 are from non-English speaking countries. I certainly think ITN (particularly RD) has more diversity than most of the rest of the main page: TFA is almost always on a topic focused on an English-language country, and DYK has a rule that up to 50% of the hooks can be from the US (as there's so many US hooks there). The possible issue is that for incidents in non-English speaking countries, there are fewer people working on articles, and so they often stay too short to meet the "article quality" standard. e.g. Tropical Storm Ana (2022) and Saada prison airstrike which have both been nominations in the last week. If that tropical storm had been in the US, it's likely more people would have edited the article, and thus it would have had a better quality article and been posted- but that's purely because people often right about things they know/impact them. Joseph2302 (talk) 16:11, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

OTD is doing pretty well today. Seven nations from three continents in eight thrilling features (nine if you count Mexicali and Quebec separately). Could easily be a fluke, though, I'm no scientist. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:06, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

There are flukes, I've looked now at 60 entries and there were a few outliers (like, one entry 100% from developing world, one entry 95% US news). But overall, the pattern I reported above holds. 2017-2021 is 26%, 21%, 53%, 66% and 34%. I will see if there are any longitudinal changes when I get to 2004 in few days... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 12:30, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Just a note that 12 is small since it's just one year (although each entry has ~12 articles, so it's about ~144 datapoints, actually). If I wanted to analyze 2021 only, I'd certainly be sampling more than once a month :) Btw, with a nod toward a small sample (I am not in the mid-2020), I am getting the impression Japanese news is quite over-represented (I think I run into 6+, on the other hand, I didn't see single news related to South Korea or Taiwan, and at best only one related to China; India, on the other hand, is doing quite well, possibly third largest news topic after US and UK; also didn't run into a single news piece related to Spain, Portugal or Brazil, with maybe two at best for Latin America...). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:27, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I took "1st entry of first day of each month" to mean you looked at just the top entry on the first of each month, not all entries plus the recent deaths on that day. But my second point about how it can be difficult to characterize blurbs as belonging to just one country still stands. Calidum 17:23, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

I'd be interested to see the percentage by country of doom-and-gloom blurbs i.e. WP:MINIMUMDEATHS.—Bagumba (talk) 12:41, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Even better, which percentage of blurbs in developing countries are not 1) elections, 2) disasters, then compare that to developed countries. Howard the Duck (talk) 18:50, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

(please save discussion of "should Tom Brady's retirement be posted when it happens" for when it happens)

How did ESPN run the Tom Brady story? Do we need to consider them similar to TMZ - normally reliable, but a source that doesn't fact-check hot stories before running them? I think the guidelines for article space are pretty good in terms of "don't include rumors", so this is mostly an ITN-focused question. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 18:24, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Why ESPN alone? I even received an push-alert on my NPR iOS app with the news. Seems like most WP:RS got this one wrong (or at least premature). More reasons for us to not rush with a posting. Seems like we did the right thing here. Ktin (talk) 18:45, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

We need editors to read these stories when they say "sources say" should be taken as flags "NOT CONFIRMED". Not a sourcing issue, but an editor issue. --Masem (t) 18:51, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Depends. ESPN staff like Adrian Wojnarowski and Adam Schefter, yes, usually reliable. But like all reliable sources, occasionally their editorial staff will make mistakes or reporters will jump on leads that are too tenuous. --WaltCip-(talk) 18:54, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Many RS newspapers and websites posted his retirement, and then quickly updated themselves to say he's expected to retire (it was based on a retirement tweet that was quickly deleted) , so not sure why ESPN would the only one picked out for doing so? Joseph2302 (talk) 19:09, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports/Handling sports transactions. Masem is 100% right. Of course ESPN is a reliable source, but editors need to take care to read the articles and be sure of what they are saying. The initial article about Brady's alleged retirement had language of sources say and sources told ESPN. That language should be a dead giveaway that the report is unconfirmed and we should not run with it, because we're WP:NOTNEWS. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:21, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports/Handling sports transactions is excellent -- but I'm not sure how we can expect everyone at ITN to have read it. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 19:28, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

I don't expect everyone at ITN to have read it, but sure hope more do. Bagumba deserves the credit for it. We sports editors have to deal with this issue all the time when rumors break of a transaction. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:31, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Very nicely written essay Bagumba and Muboshgu. I think this is a cautionary note worth carrying into any news posting. There was an actress' death sometime ago which went back and forth. I forget her name. As long as we do not rush to post, I think we have this good. But, definitely a word of caution. Ktin (talk) 19:52, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Betty White's death was first posted by TMZ which carries a red flag due to their past (even though they have been more careful of their posts today). They ended up correct but we did wait for separate confirmation before posting. Similar situation here. --Masem (t) 19:56, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Not Ms White. There was one other I forget. But, we did get that right. So, no complaints. Ktin (talk) 20:01, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Sounds like Tanya Roberts perhaps. --Bongwarrior (talk) 21:13, 30 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes! That was her! Thanks for adding. Ktin (talk) 00:30, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

• I don't consider ESPN reliable, myself. Some individual reporters are reliable, sure, but I avoid sourcing to them as much as possible. NorthernFalcon (talk) 22:01, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
• ESPN is reliable, but the average reader doesn't distinguish when they preface with "sources say" versus when they report something that someone has said on the record. For us editors, the relevant guideline is WP:RSBREAKING.—Bagumba (talk) 00:56, 31 January 2022 (UTC)
• Even reliable sources will use a certain formula when they have been told something is going to happen but it has not been announced officially. With the BBC it's often "BBC Sport understands." That doesn't make them unreliable, but it means that each story need to be looked at individually. For ITN purposes, we should in most cases wait for an official announcement.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 20:36, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

I see that Ozzie is back on the front page again; this time at DYK: "...that Ozzie was the first gorilla to take his own blood pressure voluntarily?" When this appeared at RD, all we got was just 6 letters: a very plain Ozzie with no context, description or disambiguation to explain what or which Ozzie was meant.

Just why is it so hard for ITN to find space for short descriptions for the RD entries, when they so clearly dominate its workflow? While the blurbs are routinely stale and so persist for far too long. Zara Rutherford has appeared for 10 straight days now and so has had space out of all proportion to all the other entries on the main page which usually just get one day at most.

ITN needs rebalancing so that the RDs get more space and the stale blurbs get less.

Andrew🐉(talk) 19:57, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

If you don't want to see stale blurbs, please make nominations and persuade others to support them. You know this. The first of the year is typically a slow period in my experience. Soon we will post the opening of the Olympics, war could start in Ukraine, etc. Everything else we need to wait for something to happen and for someone to improve the article involved. Is this your proposal to turn ITN into a most read article ticker or news ticker? 331dot (talk) 20:26, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Andrew_Davidson - I am amongst the biggest advocates for the WP:ITNRD posts. I even unsuccessfully led a request to add a seventh RD into the two line RD space that we have, even when space is available -- I failed. I even unsuccessfully led the conversation to allow for RDs to spill over into a new row and in the process, was unwittingly a part of the effort that got rid of the COVID box.

With all that said, I think what you are asking here might not be reasonable. I think the RDs as they stand here are fine. Yes, we can always add one or two more (particularly when there is whitespace available). Yes, on a case by case basis we can add disambiguation. But, the only way we can keep blurbs fresh is by encouraging new blurb nominations. And, these nominations should come in while holding our quality thresholds and significance thresholds in place. The other thing we can do to keep the ITN box fresh is rotating the images. I tried but there was no appetite for that. That is alright. Ktin (talk) 21:02, 31 January 2022 (UTC)