Wikipedia:Requests for comment/In the news criteria amendments

RfC: In the news criteria amendments

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Should either of the following proposals to amend the criteria for In the news be adopted?

Proposal 1: Amend the ITN significance criteria (WP:ITNSIGNIF) to state: The significance criteria are met if an event is reported on the print front pages of major national newspapers in multiple countries (examples of websites hosting front pages: [1] and [2]).

Proposal 2: Abolish ITNSIGNIF and amend the ITN update requirement (WP:ITNUPDATE) to state that a sufficient update is one that adds substantial due coverage of an event (at least two paragraphs or five sentences) to an article about a notable subject.

Proposal 3: Mark WP:ITN as historical and remove the "In The News" template from the Main Page, effectively closing the process in lieu of an alternate means of featuring encyclopedic content on Wikipedia.

You may also propose your own amendments. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:53, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To clarify: Proposal 1 would replace the current ITNSIGNIF. Please see the background and previous discussions for the rationale. voorts (talk/contributions) 13:44, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Adding for the record Proposal 3: Mark WP:ITN as historical and remove the "In The News" template from the Main Page, effectively closing the process in lieu of an alternate means of featuring encyclopedic content on Wikipedia. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:48, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Updated to add Proposal 3 above the first signature as part of the RFC question that gets copied to RFC pages. Levivich (talk) 18:27, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Notifications

Notified: Template:Centralized discussion, Wikipedia talk:In the news, Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals), Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:03, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Background (In the news criteria amendments)

During a closure review of a proposed ITN entry, several editors expressed a concern that discussions at ITN are closed for subjective reasons because WP:ITNSIGNIF does not provide sufficient guidance for determining consensus. There was then a discussion at WT:ITN where several editors proposed changes to ITN, including amending or abolishing the significance criteria, and amending the update criteria. Some editors proposed replacing ITN with something else on the Main Page. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:53, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Survey (In the news criteria amendments)

Yes on 1. As of right now, any non-ITNR blurb proposal, especially RDs, is a dogfight where people insist "it is/is not important enough to blurb". No-one's convinced by an opponent because our process is essentially to decide it on a sui generis basis. Clear rules save editor time in such discussions. If something's not on the front page of multiple newspapers, it really shouldn't be blurbed (there's an obvious IAR exception for when the event is so significant we can post faster than newspapers have time to print, like with Elizabeth II's death, but I trust editor judgement in such instances). On the other hand, if something is, it probably should. This should prevent some of the staleness that we see. Sincerely, Dilettante 23:28, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 2 as its drafter, but I also support 1 as a second choice. ITN should in theory be about featuring subjects that are in the news, instead of a simple list of news stories. If there is enough news about a person/place/thing that its article can be immediately updated with significant due content, then it should qualify. ITN's purpose is ultimately to display content that we've recently improved, just like DYK. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:37, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also willing to support 3 and replace ITN with something else if reform isn't viable. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:42, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
2 as first choice, but if that fails to get consensus, 1. ITN’s slow update schedule fails to incentivize content improvement like the other mainspace sections, and is vastly inferior to P:CE in either informing readers of new events or connecting them to articles they wish to go to (though external search engines make that specific goal mostly irrelevant). Prop. 1 is a decent reform to ITN as it exists since it would reduce repetitive arguments, but Prop. 2 brings ITN in line with the rest of the main page Mach61 23:39, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I will say, I think a standard closer to four paragraphs or 300 words might be better, but that can be amended later Mach61 00:58, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I initially suggested the two paragraph minimum, but I'd also support a higher barrier. On top of holding ourselves to a higher standard, it would make it easier to catch frivolous expansions and other undue content that people would try to push through. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:08, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support 3 as well. Yes, all these options are mutually exclusive, but they are all better ways of dealing with ITN than the status quo. Mach61 16:36, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes on 1 or 2, with a preference for 1. ITN has been broken for quite some time, as editors use their own personal criteria to judge what stories are important enough to be listed. (Just look at the discussion surrounding US President Joe Biden's departure from the 2024 presidential race.) Setting aside the tremendous amounts of personal acrimony this generates, any story that does manage to get posted is often significantly out of date by the time it is replaced. For example, as I write this, the oldest story on ITN is a sport final that happened nearly ten days ago. That's no longer "news" by any definition of the word. It certainly doesn't track with reliable sources, as all the news articles about it are at least a week old. The Wikipedia article's views have unsurprisingly cratered. And despite all that, we are still advertising it on our main page to millions of readers. This situation makes us look out of date and out of touch, and it reduces ITN's usefulness to readers (readers being the primary reason we're all editing Wikipedia). It's time to change. The status quo is untenable. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 23:48, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Updating after option 3 was added: I'm really close to being open to that option as well purely due to the acrimonious atmosphere at ITN. However, I'd need to see a proposal to replace it with P:CE or similar to actually support. It would be a real loss to Wikipedia if we completely dropped the part of the main page that reminds readers that we are a living and updateable resource. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 19:48, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 2 per my comments on WT:ITN, oppose 1, as being in front-page news isn't necessarily a good criterion of encyclopedic significance, and things like commercial announcements might end up getting too much weight. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 23:58, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
After further thought, support 3 as a better alternative than doing nothing. If we want the Main Page to highlight presentable content, then by extension we should also want the processes to highlight this content to be presentable themselves, or at least functional. Better to close ITN now, and maybe reopen it later once a better process is found, than to kick the can down the road and leave a broken process on the main page. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 21:59, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Abolish ITN. The main page is Wikipedia's front cover and should invite readers into the encyclopedia. All content featured on the main page should deserve the spot only because it is a legitimate achievement of Wikipedia editors such that enhances the image and public reception of Wikipedia. A reader arriving on the main page is met with a list of promises: "Click here for something good". A promise needs to be made and needs to be delivered on. Featured articles are worthy of being featured because doing so highlights editors' ability to create very good content. DYK items are usually not very good content but are worthy of being featured because the hooks promote the perception that Wikipedia contains many interesting facts, that its articles also have some entertainment value, and they are backed up by at least adequate, presentable content that was recently created, drastically expanded, or improved. "On this day" is a traditional element that counterbalances the lightheartedness of DYK and highlights the vast work of editors who have developed comprehensive coverage of historic events. Each part of the main page communicates a promise along the lines of "there's something good here—click here for more", and has something to back that promise up with. Except for ITN. The weird old news panel. Old news and non-presentable articles on "significant events" are non-featurable. Instead of highlighting good work, Wikipedia is highlighting a curated list of world events selected through a non-encyclopedic process that manifests a systemic passive-aggressive contrarianism (not blaming anyone, it's a group dynamic and a systemic tendency arising from the incompatibility of the encyclopedia format with the news format) relative to the mainstream media discourse. Instead of promising good content and delivering on it, the message is, "we know what is really important in the world". That has turned out to be the whole point of ITN. It does not support the central purpose of Wikipedia—making a great encyclopedia. It does not help readers find and quickly access content they are likely to be searching for because an item is in the news—because the content is usually ridiculously stale for something put in proximity of the word "news". Readers can find and quickly access such content without it being added to the main page, and there is no reason why they should be directed to recent events content in an encyclopedia before being led to any other section of the encyclopedia. Yes, Wikipedia is different from traditional encyclopedias because it is a "dynamic resource", but that is obvious enough without it being advertised on the main page, and there is no particular reason to advertise this fact above the fact that it is an encyclopedia that everyone can edit (that is what makes it a truly dynamic resource). It does not showcase quality Wikipedia content on current events. Content on current events that is actually good exists, but it is relatively rare; ultimately, it is not even that content that gets featured because ITN items only have to pass a very low bar in terms of quality and are actually selected on the grounds of significance. ITN does not deliver good things to a reader and isn't backed up by good content. Pointing readers to subjects they might not have been looking for but nonetheless may interest them is served by DYK. ITN should be abolished entirely. If it isn't abolished, I support Proposal 2.—Alalch E. 23:59, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hear, hear. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:50, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is difficult to read without paragraph breaks. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:43, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@WaltCip: I've user-essayified it: User:Alalch E./Everything on the Main Page is featured —Alalch E. 17:07, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Wikipedia is different from traditional encyclopedias because it is a "dynamic resource", but that is obvious enough without it being advertised on the main page. The fact that Wikipedia has interesting information is also obvious, yet we have DYK. The fact that Wikipedia has high-quality articles is obvious, yet we have TFA. The fact that Wikipedia has information on historic events is obvious, yet we have OTD. That's a non-argument, except in the context of wholly reforming the main page.Sincerely, Dilettante 17:17, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The non-argument comes from WP:ITNPURPOSE, and I'm identifying it as a non-argument for having ITN. A thing such as ITN is not needed on the main page to emphasize Wikipedia as a dynamic resource. —Alalch E. 23:11, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with this sentiment as well. ITN was born due to 9/11 and it is dividing Wikipedia apart. 130.245.192.6 (talk) 13:48, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 2 per @Thebiguglyalien. Oppose 1. I think it would significantly restrict the types of articles that get featured at ITN. As for abolishing ITN, while I appreciate @Alalch E.'s concerns, I think we ought to give ITN a chance before invoking the nuclear option. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:08, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I also largely agree with @Masem regarding option 1. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:11, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also, even if this RfC ultimately results in no consensus as to any particular option, it would be helpful for the closer to identify broader areas of consensus that might help to focus future discussion. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:16, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

At this point, weak support for option 3. Given the number of ITN regulars claiming that there's no problem with ITN in this discussion, I'm not sure that we can do anything to fix it. voorts (talk/contributions) 19:02, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose ITN abolition, but hear hear to the comments about those who pretend ITN isn't dysfunctional. — Knightoftheswords 19:39, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As an involved editor at ITN, I will not explicitly vote here. I still believe the level to which ITN is broken or "broken" is heavily overstated. That said, I would be in favor of some variety of change to INTSIGNIF, if something must be changed, and would like to propose a impacts-based assessment of news items for ITN inclusion, whereby editors discuss the impacts (particularly long-term and lasting ones) of the events comprising the blurb in question. My rationale being that readers likely wish to engage with impactful news rather than events that may be of lesser effect or are ephemeral. This would fit with ITN's purpose of guiding readers to articles they may be interested in reading, while still filtering out some of the garbage news (ie celebrity drama) that may generate interest, but is of fleeting concern. Granted, there is no objective criteria here, but my belief is that I do not believe any criteria that are both objective and reasonable for ITN are possible. I may be proven wrong here and am willing to see if I am, but I have doubts that this shall happen. And I really do believe proposal 2 is just not tenable at all for the project's purposes and could make ITN way too subject to media bias (particularly western media). DarkSide830 (talk) 00:22, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@DarkSide830 If you're concerned about western media bias, your proposal would make things much worse in that regard. The metapedians who comment on pages like ITN are more likely to be western and much more likely to be men than our readership. Of course their prospective on what the most "impactful" events are will skew towards what affects them Mach61 00:47, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see that at all. If our concern is coverage, then the nominations that would be most successful are Anglosphere based events, because Anglosphere publications cover them the most and most extensively, and these are the publications that the English-speaking editors of this wiki would most frequently consult. Either way, I don't know how my proposal would negatively change anything from this perspective. DarkSide830 (talk) 01:37, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, well, if the regulars are partaking, put me down as leaning support on proposal 1 and fairly solidly opposed to 2. DarkSide830 (talk) 02:30, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I think I misunderstood proposal 1. Oppose all. DarkSide830 (talk) 18:03, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
~~Support 1~~ [EDIT: changed to oppose both in comment below] [EDIT 2: added oppose 3 in comment below] seems well enough if ITN regulars think it facilitates their process. The guideline should be worded well that a "sufficient" criterion does not mean "necessary". [A sufficient criterion of notability says nothing about being necessary for notability, and it definitely says nothing about being sufficient for inclusion.] It seems that #1 excludes #2. I don't think #2 is bad, and it'd streamline the guideline in some ways, but I doubt it fixes anything, and if the problem some in ITN raised is a lack of objective standards, then I don't see how #2 addresses that. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:33, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 eliminates any consideration of significance, leaving only the quality and amended update requirements. Under that option, any article that is of sufficient quality and has two new paragraphs or five sentences added about a recent event would qualify for ITN. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:56, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Doesn't that just punt the question of "is this notably internationally groundbreaky newsy enough for ITN" completely to the ITN editors, by omitting it entirely? They'll still have to discuss it. I know there's no fixed notability thresholds now, so it's not technically any worse, but it wouldn't be any better either. And as the problem still exists, wouldn't someone just say in three months, "why don't we have a minimum standard for notability?" I guess at least if you have no notability section, it's a blank slate so that next time ITN can hammer out a more robust solution? SamuelRiv (talk) 01:24, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@SamuelRiv It would work exactly the same as the recent deaths section does now; there would be no discussion of extra notability beyond what is necessary to avoid an WP:AfD nomination, and any arguments about significance would be discarded for consensus purposes. Mach61 01:29, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Old-era-style significance arguments that don't attach to the remaining and amended criteria wouldn't contribute to consensus and such activity wouldn't be able to prevent posting. Notability standard is over at WP:N. A five-sentence addition to a preexisting article about a notable topic would be judged using the actual encyclopedia criteria for content, primarily WP:RECENTISM. If the recent expansion has overburdened [the article] with documenting breaking news reports and controversy as it happens, it fails both update and quality criteria, because that newly added content should be editorially addressed through removal, so there's no ITN candidate to be had. There's no "well, recentism is bad, but it's really subjective" in RECENTISM, or "it's important to summarize, but it's highly subjective whether something has been summarized or not" in WP:SUMMARY, and there's no "the question of who is responsible for achieving consensus for inclusion is a highly subjective matter" in WP:ONUS, etc. Good judgement is required when editing and it's easy to see when it's absent. It's only in ITN discussions which operate on a parallel plane divorced from recognizable best practices that things can be subjective. It's time to put Wikipedia back into ITN. Failing that, ITN is a foreign body. —Alalch E. 01:54, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Changing vote to Oppose both in response to voort's comment that This proposal would completely replace the current [subjective] criteria (in response to question of how this amends the existing text). This proposal seems to want to address existing complaints by disregarding the reality of discussions around it, from my impression of the ITN talk samples given in this RfC. As I noted before, there may be some argument for tearing it all up and hoping that what is later written will work better for ITN, but if that's the plan then just say it. SamuelRiv (talk) 16:33, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fine saying that that's the plan. For option 2, the goal is to eliminate the subjective significance criteria entirely. Content should not appear on the Main Page based on subjective impressions and local consensus. Option 2 would require ITN discussions to evaluate whether a new contribution about a current event meets NPOV. In my view, if an editor makes a due, well-written and sourced contribution about a current event to an article that meets ITNQUALITY, that should suffice for ITN. The added benefit of forcing ITN to focus on due weight is that it would become a built-in system to clean up event-cruft. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:12, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is a big difference in what is DUE in the context of an individual article and what is DUE in the context of the main page of a general purpose encyclopaedia. Thryduulf (talk) 00:22, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would think most contributions about recent events that meet this criterion, as well as WP:ITNQUALITY, would be as due for inclusion on the main page as most DYK hooks. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:37, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Add Oppose 3: ITN is not the cause or the propagator of wp:recentism and wp:notnews. I am confident that the creators of Mike Pence's fly were not motivated by the existence of ITN. To address recentism/notnews would require a concerted wp-wide awareness of how to pre-evaluate the historical context of current events articles (i.e. 10-year-test, and more), how news is a primary historical source, and how often news events may be better presented in context of existing articles rather than entirely new ones. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:05, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose both ITN's purpose has been to feature high quality WP articles that happen to be in the news, with 9/11 the catalyst for its formation. To that end, ITN has always been curated similar to the other main page sections (like DYK and TFA) to avoid systematic bias that would otherwise favor English-language or Western (US and UK primarily) news coverage. It has been operating fine until the last few years, which I believe is tied to the fact we have problems with trying to keep WP:NOTNEWS in check across WP, with far too much detailed coverage of news events happening on WP (indeed, this is what Wikinews is supposed to do, not Wikipedia). The impact on ITN is that some editors want to see more news coverage, rather than see quality articles that are in the news, which leads to editors creating articles on events that lack enduring coverage. Dealing with NOTNEWS is a separate issue beyond this, but it should be addressed before fundamentally changing the purpose of ITN. To the specific proposals, Option 1 would end up affirming the systematic bias that would imbalance coverage of US and UK news (particularly politics), as well as discriminate against less "popular" news items like medical and scientific discoveries. And Option 2 would effectively be the same, with now systematic bias affirmed by editor bias that would give far too much focus on US and UK topics. Both also discourage the quality aspect, which has always been the primary requirement for ITN and for having the section on the main page in the first place. It would be far better to make sure what the purpose of ITN, determine if there are issues with getting nominations in the first place (which hasn't been done), and then determine if changes to the significance criteria are needed. --Masem (t) 00:57, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Masem
- Option 1 would end up affirming the systematic bias that would imbalance coverage of US and UK news How? Prop. 1 doesn't even specify that the front pages be printed in English, much less in the anglosphere.
- Both also discourage the quality aspect Prop. 2 literally makes quality the only relevant factor in posting.
Mach61 01:25, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While that is true, the bulk of ITN candidates overall have been based on English-based sources, with maybe one or two stories every few months based on foreign langage ones. Until we also get over the editorial bias that comes with systematic bias (that most of the editors here are English-speaking and primarily read English sources, and thus have more interest in those topics) that would still be prefferentially favor the US and UK stories. And Prop 2 basically just eliminates the media bias for the systematic editorial bias of what interests editors the most rather than what best reflects an encyclopedia. ETA: We already have demonstrated problems with editor systematic bias via the issue with recent death blurbs, where famous and popular deaths get a huge wave of supports without concern for quality, while trying to get actually good quality BLPs of major figures is very difficult. I know this discussion is not covering recent deaths, but it is part of the same ongoing problems that ITN has had in the last several years. — Masem (t) 01:38, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On geography bias: How is the bias that would exist under Prop. 1 (not disputing its existence) be any worse than what currently exists? Certainly, in absolute terms more articles about the nonwestern subjects will be posted; that seems more important than the ratio of western/non-western posts. Seems like you're making the perfect than the enemy of the good.

On Prop 2 basically just eliminates the media bias for the systematic editorial bias of what interests editors the most rather than what best reflects an encyclopedia. Again, the "perfect v. good" dynamic comes into play. All the subjects ITN already posts will be posted, its just that more events will be posted alongside them if Prop. 2 passes. Why is this so bad? I can give one very good reason why increasing the total number of articles posted would be good, namely incentivizing editors to improve them up to the quality standards without worrying if their efforts will prove fruitless. I really don't think any possible PR damage from fluff being posted will outweigh that. Mach61 17:03, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
With the current approach, we can easily combat geography bias, making sure that we have reasonable means to include stories outside Western regions that fall below the fold, typically disasters that happen in third-world countries. Prop 1 would create too much weight on what stories get repeated the most in national headlines, and a fundamental issue is that, not every headline story in newspapers makes for a good WP topic or even appropriate for inclusion on WP. We are looking at topics with long-term, enduring coverage, and the bulk of what newspapers feature on front pages are day-to-day events that may deserve a line or two update in an existing article, but not the endless dissection of news topics that we are currently generating in many places.
Discussions below explain why Prop 2 is a terrible idea, because that would allow anything that has an update from being in the news to be included, and that would mean tons of celebrity stories, pop culture elements, product unveilings, and so on.
We would like to increase the number of posts but I am pretty confident this is more due to the problem of low number of nominations to start (which points to more a volunteer process to get more topics nominated), many nominations present poor quality articles (which includes article that rely too heavily on reaction sections to carry the weight) and the fact that many nominations are news events that fail NOTNEWS in the first place (such as the initiating blocking of X in Brazil story). Most of this comes from righting the entire ship when it comes to NOTNEWS and getting editors back to writing encyclopedic articles that happen to include current events. Once that is re-established, then it should be easier to tackle what we can do to encourage more nominations to ITN. — Masem (t) 12:27, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Echoing what Masem says here, I do believe the NOTNEWS issue is massively understated when it comes to ITN. Quite frankly, there is way too little consideration for NOTNEWS across the entire site. This basically puts any new article into play, no matter how trivial. I'll just provide an example from my area of expertise. Last year, 8 tropical systems in the Atlantic had individual articles written on them, four of them fairly insubstantial and with limited impacts. That said, these articles are each well-sourced, with at least 30 citations each, and are well-written. If your priority is well-written articles, hey, I can see how you'd like that. But these are relatively mundane weather events all things considered, and generally lack long-term impacts. Are these articles that the readers are generally looking for? Do we need to feature these articles beyond those which are generally features at ITN? I'd say no. DarkSide830 (talk) 01:44, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

IMO, this is one of the problems with ITN - this "gatekeeping" of excluding systemic bias. It actually makes ITN its own walled garden, and elevates things that may be of less interest or importance to many readers, but adds them to the main page, because ITN thinks it is important. Natg 19 (talk) 01:55, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- So you should be then asking TFA and DYK to be more focused on what we thing readers "want" rather than to demonstrate what the best work that WP can produce, to align with this. This is, of course, a very bad proposition for obvious reasons. — Masem (t) 02:18, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know about other main page projects. But where does it say that "Wikipedia must fight systemic bias"? To me this is a WP:RGW situation. ITN should show what is "in the news", whether that is a lot of US/UK news or not. If there is more of a certain type of news, so be it. Natg 19 (talk) 05:29, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The essay WP:BIAS states that the systematic bias created by the media and editors is one that falls under NPOV, in that we should not have any preference or deference towards topics due to what area of the world they occur in. So the approach to the selection of topics featured at TFA and DYK are geared around avoiding excessive preference towards one specific region, and thus have coordinating admins that work by consensus to judge what topics should and when they appear. ITN is meant to feature quality work on WP on topics that happen to be in the news, not merely to be a news ticker, and thus requires more thoughtful selection and consideration for what topics should appear rather than "its in all the headlines" Masem (t) 12:11, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And Oppose 3, because I think the issues at ITN are not around it's format nor are something that can't be fixed, but that to fix ITN starts with fixing the problem around NOTNEWS across all of WP. (this both deals with when it actually appropriate to create articles on new events, how much to write about new events to fit into WP's summary style, and the net quality of new event articles) I am not blind that there is discourse at ITN, but it is not ITN that is the source of it. With NOTNEWS as the problem, there is a fair amount of "crap in, crap out" aspects at ITN, fundamentally not a problem with ITN itself. So eliminating ITN makes little sense. Masem (t) 21:29, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose 1, support 2 per voorts. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:18, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I support it with an amendment that items are required to have an addition of two paragraphs to an existing article, as anything of encyclopedic value is placed in context. This also encourages integration of summary style. Strong oppose 3 per the other opposes. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:06, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When we updated WP:LEADLENGTH recently, we moved completely away from paragraphs as a measurement. "Two paragraphs" can be as little as two sentences with a line break between them. I suggest a sentence or word count instead, if you want to have some substantial addition. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:42, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure editors can subjectively judge whether a paragraph split "games" the paragraph requirement. 2 paragraphs is a minimum. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:07, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think that editors will subjectively determine whether they want the article to be included, and use double standards: My two sentences, arranged with a line break between them, are two important paragraphs displaying the admirable encyclopedic virtue of concision, but your two sentences don't count. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:09, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Then I shall be the one to tell you that no two sentences count. Now that we have a metric requirement and principle, ITN can operate sanitarily and satisfy its lifelong purposes. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:07, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 1 or 2 with a preference for 2. Not opposed to getting rid of ITN altogether. C F A 💬 01:30, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Clarifying that I do also support 3 if it helps determine a consensus. C F A 💬 20:05, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As a very infrequent participant at ITN, ~~Support 1~~, Oppose 2. 1 seems useful as a shortcut like ITN/R to get things through. I find 2 a compelling simplification, but it seems to open consideration far too broadly for a box with only 5-6 entries. CMD (talk) 01:38, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose 1, per clarification below. I don't see how it helps staleness to remove other paths to inclusion. CMD (talk) 13:02, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support either 1 or 2, with a preference for 2. I am a current participant at ITN, and do agree with a lot of Alalch E.'s concerns. Natg 19 (talk) 01:55, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support #3, oppose the other two. The first would make many currently-ITNR items unpostable, and the second would be even sillier, viz Meta Platforms would be postable since there's a small update about its recently-demoed augmented reality glasses (such a nomination has no chance of passing ITN right now). Banedon (talk) 02:02, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The quality requirement can be increased, and even then, that update currently doesn't pass the bar. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:32, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can easily add a couple more sentences, thereby hitting the threshold. Banedon (talk) 15:12, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
At which point it falls back to regular editorial processes, and it would be weighed against WP:NPOV and WP:RECENCY. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:38, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Does that not indicate the proposed amendment is not working? Banedon (talk) 23:36, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's the whole point! There are established practices for applying policy and following sources when working with content, but it seems that most ITN editors don't even know these practices exist, let alone have experience applying them. Just look at some of the horrified responses from editors who are more experienced with higher-end content writing and reviewing in the recent close review. The rest of the community is trying to tell ITN that its "this feels like it's an important subject" is not welcome on Wikipedia. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:07, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see your point. Implement this change, and I can add a couple of sentences to Meta Platforms and get it featured, which you seem to think is a bad idea. But it's this change that allows for the nomination. You can't oppose the nomination either on policy grounds (since it explicitly passes). Assuming you still think it's a bad idea to feature this, then you must argue that "this policy doesn't work", ergo, one should oppose the policy now. I don't see how what you wrote is relevant to this train of logic. Banedon (talk) 02:26, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We decide whether the update conforms with WP:NPOV, the same way we do with any other article. If you're adding content to an article when sources about the article's subject don't indicate that it's significant to that subject, then you're doing it wrong and another editor would be justified in removing it. This is the same thing I tried to explain to you at Talk:Benevolent dictatorship not too long ago. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:43, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Are you suggesting that adding information about Meta's upcoming AR glasses would violate NPOV? Banedon (talk) 02:49, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:PROPORTION, specifically. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:52, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd say it's a tall order arguing it's undue, but even assuming it isn't, how does this policy stop one from nominating iPhone 16? Banedon (talk) 03:03, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
iPhone 16 is a really weak article, and I'd want to see a lot of work done on it before approving it for the main page. But if that's done, and you can find multiple reliable independent sources that provide significant coverage for the release? Then the subject is notable, and it's in the news. I see no grounds to oppose it at that point except gut feeling. And gut feeling is not a reliable source. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:15, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you genuinely believe that featuring iPhone 16 on the main page is conceivably a good idea, then we disagree on a fundamental level and there's nothing more to discuss. Banedon (talk) 03:39, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The condition is that there's enough information for a great article. We merged a ton of articles about Samsung phones a while ago. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:34, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nothing in either of these proposals requires there to be enough information for a "great article", it just requires there to be a few sentences of information that is DUE for inclusion on an article about a notable topic. Nobody can argue in good faith that the release of a new iPhone model is UNDUE for inclusion on the iPhone and List of iPhone models articles. Thryduulf (talk) 12:44, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I get it now. I don't think the iPhone 16 has enough stuff for two paragraphs, though I agree that the quality barrier should be increased, as it is currently satisfied with mere sentences. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:55, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
iPhone 16 currently has 150% the median number of words as the median Wikipedia article, and 325% as many refs as the median article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:00, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a good measure for absolute quality, plus Alien also clarified that only parts added into an existing page count, which I believe is good since anything of encyclopedic value is placed in context. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:29, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, you could define 90% of Wikipedia articles as being substandard, if you wanted to, and sometimes people write five thousand words with 50 citations of pure garbage (just ask any English teacher).

But it's also possible that "mere sentences" is exactly what most Wikipedia articles are, and that expecting ITN, or the Main Page generally, to only link to articles that are statistical outliers in terms of how many "mere sentences" they contain would be unreasonable.

BTW, the numbers for the middle 50% of Wikipedia articles are:
123–782 words

5–29 sentences

2–9 refs

12–46 links

Think about that the next time you see a new article rejected because it "only" has the normal number of refs. Wikipedia is not Lake Wobegon, and we should not expect all the articles to be above average. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:53, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't expect that. I expect that we feature quality articles on the main page. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:39, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose both, 2 strongly. ITN does need to change, but I'm unconvinced that either of these proposals will fix the issues without introducing more, bigger ones. With a limited number of slots available there has to be some sort of gate to stop it being overwhelmed by niche subjects - the current problem is that the gate isn't letting through enough things not that it exists at all. Proposal 2 would do away with the gate entirely which does resolve the problem but only at the cost of worsening the systematic bias and losing the truly notable updates in a flood of minor ones Proposal 1 just throws away all the context of it being on the main page in favour of the context of individual articles - a five sentence update about a newly manufactured "feud" between Kpop stars is entirely encyclopaedic and DUE in those star's articles but not encyclopaedic in the context of the main page of a global, general purpose encyclopaedia. It's not just entertainment topics that will suffer from this - minor political scandals in especially the US and UK will have all the same issues, as will literally dozens of sports results every week (if not more and more frequently) - certainly the result of every single soccer league in every country that has an article (and in the UK at least that goes down into the double digit tiers), things like the opening of (or major milestones in the construction of) a new railway station, the entry into service of a new type of train, plane or cruise ship, weekly (or more frequent) rocket launches, the launch of a new model of car or smartphone, each stage of a criminal investigation and trial, mayor elections in medium and larger sized settlements, etc, etc. Given that most of the content added to the English Wikipedia is written by English-speaking western white men that will automatically bias the content to the topics updated by those editors. Thryduulf (talk) 02:20, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt that your K-Pop example would be considered a due addition or that many of the sources reporting on such feuds are reliable. In any event, I think editors debating over that rather than some subjective notion of what mostly white men consider to be "significant" would be infinitely better and actually allow for a true evaluation of consensus. voorts (talk/contributions) 13:48, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Again, part of the issue with proposal #2 is assuming these concerns are addressed at the article level before a nomination occurs, and as we've seen with some nominations in the past (there seems to be at least one NEVENT concern a week, for example), we can't assume this. DarkSide830 (talk) 17:07, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

While the K-pop example may or may not be considered DUE (it's not a topic area I edit in), every other example I gave would definitely be DUE and I didn't think of things like battles, deaths, music and book releases, weather events, sports player transfers, candidates entering or leaving contests like 2024 Conservative Party leadership election or Big Brother, and many, many other examples.

Separately, I also Oppose option 3 unless and until there is a consensus about to replace it with. Personally I think ITN is fixable and the current problems are not a reason to throw it away. Thryduulf (talk) 20:30, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why are things like battles, weather events, and sports trades that could receive two due paragrpahs in an article any less appropriate for the front page than the current ITN entries, such as a bus crash (which in my view probably fails NEVENT and likely won't have any sustained coverage beyond this news cycle) and a gang assault of a town in Haiti? To answer my own question, because ITN operates on an extremely subjective significance standard that reflects whether ITN regulars think something is important. Even if options 1 or 2 aren't perfect fixes, nobody has proposed anything better and we should try something. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:16, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not that battles, etc. are inherently unsuitable for the main page as a class, but there are so many of them that if all of them were to be posted (as these proposals envisage) then the spell each event would have on ITN would be a matter of hours when, in an ideal world, it should average probably 2-4 days.

Changes need to be made to ITN, almost everybody agrees with that, but that doesn't mean we should try something that will make things significantly worse (in multiple regards) just because it would be bad in a different way to present. It's much, much better to spend the time to get the right solution that will return ITN to the working state it used to be in rather than to implement something, anything, right now, regardless of whether it will result in a functioning ITN or not. Thryduulf (talk) 22:45, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why should events last 2-4 days? Ideally, I feel that events should roll off of ITN in 1-2 days (earlier to me is not a problem), which matches with how the other items on the main page work. This rarely happens now at ITN. Natg 19 (talk) 00:30, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
2-4 days on average is about the length of time that events of the significance we should be posting remain newsworthy on average. Some die quicker, others slower, partly depending on what unscheduled events happen. Something of the significance of e.g. Hurricane Helene or the UK general election should remain for a couple of days rather than be pushed off in hours because a third tier football team won a title, the leader of the opposition party in South Australia resigned, two musicians independently released an album, a long-running character in a soap opera had their last episode, the King of the Netherlands made a state visit to South Korea, a horse won race, a Formula 1 driver won a race, a NASCAR driver won a race, a rally driver won a race, a motorcyclist won a race, an actress won an Italian reality TV show, a dancer won New Zealand's got Talent, an inquiry into a minor political scandal in Bavaria was announced, a new tram extension was opened, a new model of smart phone was released in Brazil, the date of the next general election in Ireland was announced, a cruise ship broke down in the Caribbean forcing the cancellation of two sailings, a small cargo plane crashed at an airport in Kenya, and the first of three rounds of voting for a provincial governor in Indonesia took place. All of those could plausibly have five or more sentences of well-written prose updated with the same 1-2 days. Thryduulf (talk) 01:38, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I touched on this below. If something is important enough to stay on for several days, then there are going to be new updates that warrant a new blurb or an ongoing slot. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:58, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Really? That isn't going to be the case for the majority of national election victories, major sports championships, Nobel Prize awards, Oscar awards, etc. Thryduulf (talk) 02:05, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We follow the sources. If they don't give it extended time, then neither do we. You decided that those are the important things that should stay up, but you are not a reliable source. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:09, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Newspapers, etc continue to cover those events for several days with additional reaction, etc. that doesn't generate a new blurb or make it suitable for ongoing. I am not a reliable source, but I took that list of examples from WP:ITNR which consensus has determined are things important enough to always post under the status quo, which we both agree is too conservative. My point is that there needs to be some filter because otherwise lifetime will be measured in hours or minutes, and that at least equally undesirable to the status quo. We can disagree about how many days the ideal length of time is, but it is unquestionably somewhere in the 1-7 range. Thryduulf (talk) 02:19, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What about implementing some form of WP:ROUTINE at the ITN selection level? We already acknowledge many newsworthy topics aren't eligible as standalones or contribute to notability of a larger topic due to being too...NOTNEWSy. Surely a similar concept could be hammered out for which types of otherwise-DUE article updates are "too routine" for the main page? JoelleJay (talk) 02:29, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That is what happens currently. It's just that there is a disconnect between opinions about what is and isn't "NOTNEWSy" Thryduulf (talk) 02:42, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It implicitly happens currently, as part of gauging "significance", but a structured definition of "routine" would preempt some of the problems you and others anticipate occurring under both proposals. JoelleJay (talk) 21:51, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose both per Masem. APK hi :-) (talk) 04:24, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 2: per my comment in discussion. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 05:38, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Additionally Support 3 per voorts. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:20, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 3 which is shut down ITN unless the regulars can self-police and stop their endless bickering. ITN is evanescent and the digital equivalent of bird cage liner. Its only value is to promote article improvement, but that happens best through normal editing to improve articles of interest rather than desperate efforts to get an article on the main page, which is all rapidly forgotten by everyone, especially our readers. I happen to favor creation of articles about new topics, but improving articles should always be prioritized over endless and contentious debates about what should be on the main page for a "little while". All that energy should be deployed to more long lasting goals. Cullen328 (talk) 05:59, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Cullen328 I gotta say that "equivalent of bird cage liner" gave me a good chuckle and a disconcerting mental image EvergreenFir (talk) 04:50, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Close down ITN per Cullen. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:44, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 1/2 as per Masem. Sharrdx (talk) 16:55, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 1 since, besides getting rid of (some of) the worst parts of ITNC, it also gets rid of one of the few parts it gets genuinely right - things like the Turing and Hugo awards are big news in their fields and usually well-updated, but they're hardly front-page-of-traditional-print-newspapers material even in one country. And what does multiple mean, anyway? Two? Five? Two if it's the United States and China, five if it's Nauru, Mauritius, Andorra, Transnistria, and Belize, or Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland?
I'm somewhere between #2 and #3. I starting reading Wikipedia when the main page looked similar to this. I can easily see replacing the ITN box with a list of links to articles recently updated from the news, either to the article itself if it's new, or to a section like HMNZS Manawanui (2019) § Sinking if it's an update. (We can add anchors if that's unclear, so that we could link, say, John Hopfield § Nobel Prize instead of John Hopfield § Awards and honours.) I don't think full-length blurbs are viable if we eliminate WP:ITNSIGNIF entirely, and this also lets us get rid of the inevitable bickering about death blurbs. —Cryptic 17:20, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
3, 1, 2 in that order of preference, but find a consensus, oppose no change. Any of these proposals are worth trying, and certainly better than doing nothing; my preferences between them are slight.
Proposal 3, abolish ITN -- meaning, remove it from the main page (TFA can expand to fill the empty space) -- is the right first step IMO, because Wikipedia should get its ITN act together before rolling out a new ITN on the main page. That means experimenting with the format/selection criteria, having a "dry run" of a couple weeks or a month of nominations, then examining whether the format/selection criteria works well, before launching it on the main page. That would be ideal.
Proposal 1 (as proposer) replaces the subjective judgments of editors for the objective data of current event WP:RSes -- e.g. top-tier mainstream media aka "papers of record." A news item is globally "significant" if it appears on the front pages of multiple countries' papers of record. There are free websites that compile the world's front pages, e.g. [3], [4], [5]. Website front pages are often personalized, but print front pages are not; those are intended for general audiences. We know that RSes agree something is "significant," of broad interest to many readers, if they put it on their print front pages. By looking at multiple countries, we can ensure a global perspective and protect against systemic or parochial bias.
Proposal 1's criteria can be further tweaked: require only 2 front pages for broad inclusion, require more (3, 4, 5, etc.) for narrower inclusion. It can also be tweaked to further protect against systemic or parochial biases: e.g., require multiple continents, or one from each populated continent/area (e.g. N. Am., S. Am., Europe, Asia, Africa, Pacific); or, require it to be on the front pages in both the Global North and the Global South, or in both the Western world and the Eastern world; or, require multiple languages. We can ensure that news pertaining only to one country is globally significant by requiring that it be on the front pages in countries (or continents, or regions) other than the country where the event took place. There are lots of ways to experiment with this -- and as I mentioned earlier, I prefer to pull ITN, do the experimentation, then re-launch it, hence my preference for Proposal 3 over Proposal 1. But with an objective, data-driven test for inclusion like Proposal 1, we would eliminate subjective arguments over what is "important" and what isn't.
Proposal 2 is also a good idea and would certainly be an improvement over the status quo. However, my concern about 2 is that it would be over-inclusive; I think the revised update criteria would be met by very many articles, including most if not all of the WP:TOP25 articles (maybe out to the top 100 or more), and this would, in practice, turn ITN into a TOP25 clone (meaning: all popular articles about current events would be listed, rather than just the most "significant," as determined by RS). So I prefer 1 to 2. Still, if we did 3, we could experiment with Proposal 2 (and Proposal 1), and see how it panned out. If Proposals 3 and 1 don't have consensus, Proposal 2 -- essentially live experimentation -- would still be better than the status quo, which only results in endless arguments over editors' subjective opinions of importance, and an ITN that is in equal parts bizarre and stale. Levivich (talk) 18:24, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose both. I don't see how either of these would improve ITN or provide a better service to readers. Option 1 is hugely lowering the bar for what would be posted, and is unworkable anyway. What would count as a 'major national newspaper'? Front pages aren't really a thing any more as newspapers are increasingly online-first or online-only, and they customise their front pages based on geolocation. Option 2 is even more permissive, making everything that has a Wikipedia article somehow important enough to post in ITN given the most minimal update ITN allows. There's no way ITN/C could keep up with the torrent of de minimis items either of these proposals would allow. Nor would it be helpful to readers, who surely want a minimum level of importance for ITN, not a news ticker that posts the most trivial of items. ITN certainly has problems and could do with posting more items, but the problem is primarily getting quality updates, not the significance criterion. I also agree with Masem that there's a compliance issue with WP:NOTNEWS which has had knock-on effects on ITN. Modest Genius ^talk 18:25, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How is it that Front pages aren't really a thing any more when there are hundreds of them, and I'm linking to three different websites that show you them? They are most certainly still a thing, and print front pages are not customized. A "major national newspaper" is one that is (1) national rather than subnational in distribution, and (2) has the highest circulation in the country (or one of the highest circulations). Finally, something would not be "de minimis," by definition, if it was featured on the front pages of multiple nations' major newspapers. The whole point of looking at print front pages in multiple countries' major newspapers is to determine objectively if it is considered de minimis or de maximus by multiple top current events RS globally. Levivich (talk) 18:35, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Of course print front pages exist, but what newspapers put on them no longer reflects the most important events of each 24 hours. Instead it depends on what images are available, how the time of day the event occurs at lines up with the print schedule etc. On your other points, nations have very different sizes, and 'highest circulation' is a very different criterion than 'major'. It would exclude most quality newspapers, favouring tabloids full of scandals and celebrity gossip, which is a very bad idea. In some cases, the relevant data isn't publicly available (e.g. in the UK many newspapers ceased making their ciculation numbers public in 2020 or 2021). Modest Genius ^talk 16:07, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What newspapers put on their front pages no longer reflects the most important events of each 24 hours? I don't understand that: you're saying that newspapers put the most important news not on the front page, but somewhere inside the newspaper?

And what do you mean by "lines up with the print schedule"? Are you saying newspapers don't all print in the morning? It's true that some newspapers have afternoon or evening print editions, but surely you'd agree that even those newspapers also have a morning edition? Are there any RS that say that newspapers no longer put the most important news on their front pages, and they don't print morning editions? When did this change?

As for circulation and quality, sure they don't always match (e.g. Daily Mail is among the highest circulation in the UK), but I trust editors can figure that out and come to consensus about whether a particular source is an RS or not, as we always do. Levivich (talk) 17:17, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the main issue here is that most of the ITN regulars don't have any meaningful content writing experience, so they don't have a solid understanding of how we consider sources on Wikipedia. The "sources first" philosophy—critical to how Wikipedia works—is almost non-existent. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:53, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The traditional morning daily newspaper was printed overnight, so it could be delivered early in the morning. The press deadline might be around midnight, and then the printers spend several hours printing the papers. The papers might go to distribution at four or five in the morning, so it could be delivered to homes before most people woke up and to newsstands before commuters were underway. I suppose this is "printed in the morning" in the sense that 2:00 a.m. is "the wee hours of the morning".

The evening dailies followed the same process back in the day, but offset, with papers being ready for the paperboys to deliver to homes as soon as school let out in the afternoon and to newsstands before the evening rush hour. Those were the ones that really got printed in the (daylight-hours) morning. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Right, and both the morning and evening dailies print every 24hrs, and put the most important news from the prior 24hrs--since the last printing--on the front page. I'm surprised somebody would assert that it no longer works this way. Levivich (talk) 20:31, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Rather that "highest circulation", a better limit may be Newspaper of record. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 20:26, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose both per Masem, Thrydulf, Modest Genius. Option 1 will not reduce discussion in practice - what's a major newspaper? What counts as frontpage (and no, no-one will check the printed frontpages, nor those newspaper aggregators)?) Option 2 would open the floodgates for the proverbial K-Pop break-ups, Taylor Swift concert tour updates, etc - it would not be an "In the News" section, but a "Recently updated articles" section. Option 2 would also re-open the gates for each RD being posted as blurb - so when it's not a Pop ticker, it would be an obituary. What I'm missing from the various discussions so far is: what is the "new" ITN section supposed to look like? Without a vision of what we want to achieve, the proposals don't really lead anywhere (and the fact that "abolish ITN" is even a third option - again without a vision of what should replace it, is telling in this respect). Khuft (talk) 19:54, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Khuft @Khuft what's a major newspaper One that is heavily circulated and nationwide rather than local. An incomplete list can be found at Newspaper of record § Examples of existing newspapers. And no, no-one will check the printed frontpages Yes, they will, this heuristic already has some use at WP:ITNC, which makes sense because print front pages have limited real estate and aren't dynamic like online home pages. Mach61 00:52, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose proposals for now, status quo, no change. I haven't been following this discussion but I don't see that this is the way to improve ITN. Personally, I think ITN is important and should be expanded. I'm not sure what that would look like, but I think we're resisting the idea that everything in the 21st century is a feed, with social media, and a constant stream of new information. I think a reform to ITN would make it react faster and respond to change quicker. I appreciate the attempt by Proposal 1 to create a more specific set of criteria for inclusion and I think that's a good impulse, but I don't think the front page metric is what I would use. I think a metric based on something more rooted in verifiability and reliable sources would be useful. Andre🚐 20:44, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 3 Shut down ITN as it has been dysfunctional for some time. Every other main page section functions comparatively smoothly, changing its content every day and presenting a reasonably encyclopedic variety of topics. ITN is chronically unable to do this and what it does manage to post is quite peculiar, seeming to be utterly obsessed by death, for example. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:39, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 3, option 1 as second choice. Oppose 2 as this may too easily be gamed (or at least used) by projects, and could lead to very minor stuff like some county election or similar being posted, or some of the myriad of WP:NOTNEWS articles about minor incidents, knife attacks, ... which get created immediately and then deleted later as they turn out to be of no lasting significance at all. Having these articles is bad enough, having them on the front page would make things only worse. And then there is the endless opportunities this will give for companies or fans spamming the new release of song X, movie Y, game Z and smartphone QQQ. It's "in the news" and has some prose, but do we really want it on the front page? Please, no, never. Fram (talk) 07:14, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 1 and 2. I don't think 1 will really work very well, and 2 is extremely problematic and will cause the main page of the whole site to be flooded with minor news updates which very few people will care about. Weak Support 3 since ITN has been dysfunctional for a long time now and I'm not sure if it can really be fixed at this point. I also find it unusual that this is the only section of the main page that isn't dedicated to quality content, instead focusing primarily on recent content. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:00, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
~~Maybe 3~~, maybe 1 with some provisions. Developing some guidelines covering broad news topics we generally consider "too routine for the main page" would really cut down on the concerns about celebrity and tech news being nominated.
Something that could address the "bias problem" would be to have some slots that follow our normal qualification process, and then additional slots dedicated to the topics receiving major news coverage in specific regions of the world. These regions could rotate if it's too difficult finding acceptable articles for all of them each cycle.
I do want to note that for all of the non-Wikipedians I know who regularly look at the main page, ITN and sometimes TFA/P are the only items they care about. I don't think anyone outside of Wikipedians even knows what ITN is "supposed" to be -- my friends certainly think it's just a digest of major world news topics. So if our main focus is to satisfy our readers, the emphasis should definitely be "significant encyclopedic topics in the news" rather than "quality articles covering topics that happen to be in the news".
EDIT:If there's nothing to replace ITN with, then I don't really support #3. JoelleJay (talk) 22:03, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Off the top of my head I don't think specific regions would work. What comes to mind is something like floods in India that don't get posted because they happen during an Africa week, while equivalent floods in western Europe do get posted because we don't have a slot for that part of the world. We can't control when or where events happen and there will be times when by coincidence there is a disproportionately large or small amount of news from a given part of the world (e.g. if there is a major earthquake in California and a plane crash in Florida on the day of the US presidential inauguration then ITN is going to be heavily US-biased but not through systematic bias, ditto if the events all happen in Indonesia) Thryduulf (talk) 22:18, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh I meant we would have like a dozen semi-overlapping world regions but only 4 or 5 slots running at a time, plus a floating slot that could be filled when needed. Like "Middle East" and "Central Asia" might normally be combined but if there are candidates for both in a cycle we could split them using the floating slot. JoelleJay (talk) 23:05, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure that would work either. What happens if there are three newsworthy events in the same part of the world at the same time? Thryduulf (talk) 23:48, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing stopping one of them from being in the main slots...and anyway we already have to make these judgment calls on which items are MP-worthy, I don't see how having dedicated spots for certain regions would change this. JoelleJay (talk) 03:06, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose both per Masem. Seems like we are trying to fix a problem that does not really exist. Spy-cicle💥 ^Talk? 23:09, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Proposal 3 Have there been any complaints from IPs or casual readers/visitors about what's included or excluded from the ITN template? If not, it seems a bit strange to see so many experienced editors in a tizzy over 4-5 ITN blurbs, along with a small list of ongoing events and recent deaths, appearing on the Main Page, while most casual readers and visitors don’t appear to have any major concerns with it at all. Is there a disconnect between the editing community and casual, everyday Wikipedia readers? It might be a good idea for WMF or whoever to put together a survey or questionnaire to gather feedback and hear from casual readers and visitors (especially those who aren't in the loop with the behind-the-scenes processes) about their thoughts on the main page of Wikipedia (including ITN, DYK, etc.) before we start "abolishing" anything. Some1 (talk) 23:48, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
General readers seem to pay little attention to ITN. Posting of an entry at ITN makes little difference to the traffic for topics in the news as most of their readership comes from search engines such as Google. If such a reader did have some feedback, they would find it quite difficult to comment as Wikipedia is impenetrable for most of our readership and so we get little feedback on anything. Andrew🐉(talk) 06:26, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
... makes little difference to the traffic for topics in the news ...: Depends how you define little. For one recent death post of Eric Sievers (a non-household name), he died on April 10, was posted to RD on April 14, and received ~7,000 more views that day after trending down the previous days.[6] Not sure about the effect of a blurb, or a pictured blurb. —Bagumba (talk) 07:31, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
7,000 is a tiny number for a global web site. A topic in the news such as Hurricane Milton will get much more traffic regardless of what ITN does. The top read article yesterday was Ratan Tata with over a million views. That was another recent death and it's a vital topic but its ITN nomination is mired in toxic discussion with the usual disparagement of "OLDMANDIES". Our readers just ignore this gatekeeping and flood past to read the article regardless. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:54, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
7,000 is a tiny number for a global web site: That's 7,000 more views than the day before, and it had been in the news for days already. ITN can't make a topic more "intereesting" than it inherently already is, but it does bring it to a reader's attention who might not have been looking for it or even known about the news item. —Bagumba (talk) 10:41, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
7,000 in one day is huge. See Wikipedia:Statistics#Page views: The median article gets one page view per week. 93% of our articles don't get 7,000 page views in an entire year. Even if you could attribute only a small fraction of that to the ITN listing, that would be a significant number of readers.

There's another isolated bump on May 8th.[7] I wonder what caused that. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:55, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It is all relative. One page for which I've been following page views is Big Bend (Florida), which normally gets about 100 views a day. On September 26 it received over 75,000 views, and the next day over 80,000. There is nothing about that article that would qualify it for ITN, but rather the coast/region was mentioned in news reports as where Hurricane Helene would reach shore. Predicting when or if an article will experience a huge surge in views is not very fruitful, but I doubt placement in ITN is a major factor. Donald Albury 16:16, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Andrew Davidson, what's your data source for the claim that General readers seem to pay little attention to ITN. Posting of an entry at ITN makes little difference to the traffic? Have you done chronological comparisons via https://wikinav.toolforge.org/ (which identifies the sources of traffic)? Or is this just a personal impression?

Wikinav is currently displaying August's data. You could pull the August data for September's ITN articles today, and see how their pre-event traffic compares to their post-ITN traffic. September's data will probably be posted very soon. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:46, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've started looking at WikiNav which seems an excellent tool but it's a month in arrears, as you say. But the issue seems to be what is meant by "little attention". You seem to think that 7,000 views is huge. For an obscure DYK topic, it's good exposure. For a global news story with a potential audience of billions, it's functionally zero.

I'm quite concerned that the traffic on Wikipedia articles about prominent topics is generally much lower than it might be. I started the article about the Google Knowledge Graph. That has now evolved to present AI summaries for searches and these tend to push Wikipedia under the surface. When there's such competition, you have to run hard to keep up. ITN is literally an amateurish effort to present the news and, with some professional polish, it could be so much better.

Andrew🐉(talk) 09:57, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sure that people having many ways to access Wikipedia's contents offline is one of the reasons that seeing an article get thousands of hits in a single day is so unusual. The article on Elizabeth II had 8.3 million page views on the day she died. We see that kind of traffic about twice a year (usually due to the subject dying). It's more typical for the most-visited page on any given day to have a few tens of thousands of page views. It is always "functionally zero" compared to the potential audience. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:11, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The most visited page on a given day seems to average about a million readers. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:36, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If you are looking at the Traffic Report in The Signpost, those are weekly totals instead of single-day traffic. Last week, two totaled more than a million page views for the week, but none reached a million (or even close) on a single day. But mine was an underestimate: the most-visited page might get something around a quarter million page views. It drops off steeply from there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:01, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Proposal 3. Deleting ITN from the main page would significantly lower the utility of the main page for me. I see no upside to myself our our readers by removing it. The main page is, arguably, the only important portal, and removing ITN from it would make the main page significantly less useful and more boring. Whatever problems ITN has on the back end should be fixed in other ways, without deleting the entire ITN section of the main page and without deprecating the entire ITN page/WikiProject/whatever it is. –Novem Linguae (talk) 00:04, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The only news sources my partner actively visits are Slashdot and ITN...removing ITN without replacement would be a devastating blow to his informedness. JoelleJay (talk) 03:15, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I actually think a reset of ITN would be a good idea. Most of the time what's featured on ITN doesn't really match what is actually in the news. I like recent deaths, but it's needlessly adversarial (there's no need for people to "oppose" every request, just have a running list of things that still need fixing or something). I do think Wikipedia should have news on the front page, but ITN in its current iteration is both toxic and not doing a good job. Legoktm (talk) 04:19, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- ITN is not meant to reflect what is in the news (ITN is not a news ticker), its meant to feature high quality articles about topics that are in the news, as to match with all other main page content as a reflection of WP's best work. When it is flipped to be trying to feature news on the front page, we get problems with poor quality articles that may likely fail NOTNEWS in the long term. And NOTNEWS itself means we should not have this unhealthy focus on current news, itself a major problem across WP. — Masem (t) 12:34, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  To me, hearing someone say "ITN is not meant to reflect what is in the news" confirms my belief that ITN is not doing what it's literally called, and that's a problem. I feel like ITN has invented its own unique sense of what is newsworthy and what isn't, and it seems very out of touch with what basically everyone else considers newsworthy. And then that just leads to toxicity (some actual quotes from ITN/C right now: "OLDMANDIES", "unimportant country") because people aren't on the same page. Idk, a news system that only tells people about hurricanes after they make landfall seems pretty broken.
  
  The semi-joke that I've been telling people is that people who want to comment on ITN/C (and breaking news things) should first have to take 6 months of journalism school. Someone recently took me more seriously and said we should have a MOOC for it. I don't know what the solution is, but I am supportive of a reset. Legoktm (talk) 15:56, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  The purpose of ITN has always been to showcase quality articles related to topics that are in the news, not to be a news ticker. Many people have complained about this over the years but the very few of them who have proposed to change it have always failed to get a consensus to do so. Thryduulf (talk) 15:59, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  Yes, Masem said exactly that. I understand what you both think the purpose/goal of ITN is, I am saying that I don't think that's a good goal, because it is disconnected from everyone else considers to be "in the news". (And all the other things I said.) Legoktm (talk) 16:16, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Whatever is done with ITN, for God's sake we should not remove a section from the main page unless we actually have an idea for something to replace it with. jp×g 🗯️ 06:30, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Other sections such as the Featured List and Featured Picture appear intermittently and so the main page structure is not rigid. And we have multiple ideas for replacement in draft below. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:11, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pish. We can come to a consensus here to remove it, and not actually remove it until a followup RFC figures out what to put there instead. (Plus, we actually have plenty of ideas, stated right in this RFC, for what to replace it with.) —Cryptic 16:24, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support option 3 per Alech E. and cullen, who both make cogent arguments; those who argue that we should keep it due to 9/11, or because some not broke-don't fix it thing, miss the point that it is unencyclopedic material. If anything, it should be added to WP:NOTNEWS, rather than lauded on the main page as the example of Wikipedia's finest work at, err, trying to out-NBC/BBC. Per Alech E., also support 2 secondarily. Bring on the bludgeoning!SerialNumber54129 18:48, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 3 per what... everyone else said above. The Main Page should be reserved for the English Wikipedia's best work, whether that be Featured articles, lists, pictures, and DYK which is about new and improved articles. ITN is none of that. As much as I understand why it should be kept, this an encyclopedia, not the BBC. The Main Page is for Wikipedia's best content (For On this day, most articles featured there are pretty good. On this date, October 10th, 4 out of 5 are either good or featured). ITN also clashes with the fact that good articles are stable, and topics in the news are the exact opposite. win8x (talking | spying) 19:55, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh and also, by being on Wikipedia, it requires consensus. As a result of this, some news only appear after a full week on the Main Page, when it is no longer "In the news". win8x (talking | spying) 22:08, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that some form of option 2 could work to only feature quality. GoodArticles are stable, yes, but quality articles can also be unstable due to expansion. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:36, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 3 because I think ITN is clearly valuable on the page as is. No opinion on the other two; my sense from reading the front page is that the result of ITN is not broken even if the process feels broken from the inside, which is IMO an important distinction to make. Loki (talk) 21:14, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that it looks fine from the outside is part of the problem in my opinion. The selective nature of subjects and the participants pushing their own POV about the topics that should go up are creating a warped news feed. And this weird obsession with counting how many people are dying to decide whether something is relevant adds a sensationalistic undertone to the final result. It's not just unhelpful, but it's a disservice to readers to give them a reflection of our own POVs about what subjects are "important" instead of an accurate overview of where there's new information. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:27, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 3 Per Masem and Alach E. ITN causes more headaches than it is worth and has accelerated the growth of primary sourced news content that doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Traumnovelle (talk) 03:40, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Traumnovelle: Masem !voted "Oppose 3". —Bagumba (talk) 06:01, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I know. He believes it can be reformed; I believe it is better off being removed in the current form. Traumnovelle (talk) 06:12, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose removal of ITN as someone who created 2020 Belarusian protests and 2022 Oder environmental disaster among mamy others, there would be no way those articles would be even half as good if there was no ITN. They were breaking news when I created them, I nominated them to ITN which caused the article's to be expanded significantly with the help of many other editors. As events unfolded, these were also updated accordingly. If we get rid of ITN, we will miss the chance to improve and highlight many many articles, especially biographies which really should be cited. Aside from this, ITN does highlight often news events that otherwise go unreported in vast parts of the world. Abcmaxx (talk) 00:02, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is the wrong section for the survey, think you wanted to put it in Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Survey (In the news criteria amendments) btw. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 02:03, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, moved now. Abcmaxx (talk) 09:41, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose all About the 1st proposal, blurbing only events "reported on the print front pages of major national newspapers in multiple countries" would be restrictive WP:CREEP in practice that would likely narrow our collaborative coverage and be difficult to consistently enforce. For example, some scientific or archaeological achievements of the magnitude of the discovery of malacidins or new poems by Sappho wouldn't likely appear on the print front pages of major national newspapers, being instead tucked somewhere inside at best. Proposals 2 and 3, with their abolition of ITNSIGNIF and removing ITN, are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Brandmeister^talk 14:44, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Another example of "ITN should list what I think is important, not what RSes think is important." Levivich (talk) 17:58, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We don't blindly follow RS' choices per WP:NOTNEWS, but apply editorial judgement. Double filtration purifies news reporting as well after the first stage of making into RSes... Brandmeister^talk 20:20, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The reliable sources are writing newspapers for the purpose of making a profit by selling newspapers that portray the news in a manner favourable to the political views of their owner(s) and their target demographic in a specific geographical region. We are writing a neutral, general purpose encyclopaedia for a global audience. What makes you think that what is important for one would (or even could) match what is important for the other? Thryduulf (talk) 20:57, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And this is why I support Proposal 3: what you both are describing -- Wikipedia editors decide what's important and put it on the front page of Wikipedia -- is not something that Wikipedia should be doing. In articles, when we decide what to include, we base it on the prominence given to that aspect or viewpoint by reliable sources, not based on what aspects or viewpoints editors feel are most significant. That's core NPOV policy, a cornerstone of this encyclopedia. That we would reverse it on the main page? Unthinkable. I have far, far more trust in the journalists and editors of the world's profit-seeking major news media than I do in random people on the internet. That's why we have V, NPOV, and NOR: specifically so the encyclopedia doesn't contain what its volunteers think about something, but rather what reliable sources publish. We should not abandon these core policies on our main page. Levivich (talk) 21:36, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
News reports are primary sources anyhow and we should not be relying on them to begin with. Traumnovelle (talk) 21:51, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Seconding this, and adding that as far as I'm concerned, it's a type of WP:CPUSH. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:06, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose both 1 and 2. Strongly oppose 3. We need a few changes, but, none of these proposals hit the mark. Ktin (talk) 06:48, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 3. We should endeavor to make the main page representative of our best content in all areas, and ITN does not contribute to that goal. Fritzmann (message me) 01:33, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support option 3 per Win8x. ITN is outdated and an outlier. Cremastra (talk) 18:11, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose all All of these are half-baked ideas that shouldn't be implemented in their current form. Option 1 is promising, but the concerns above (about various forms of possible bias, and the fact that newspapers and encyclopedias have different objectives) are substantial. Option 2 is a non-starter unless we want ITN overrun with sports and film trivia. Option 3 is a non-starter unless there is something new to replace it that will place links to high-profile news stories on the homepage. (A whole scale removal would also get rid of Recent Deaths, which I don't think anyone is complaining about?) Walsh90210 (talk) 20:18, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What's wrong with sports and film updates if they're quality content? Aaron Liu (talk) 23:29, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Individually there is no problem with them, but there are so many of them that there would be no space for anything else. Thryduulf (talk) 23:54, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In that case, I would start working on the other stuff so it's not just sports. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:57, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That would just make the problem worse. There is a finite number of slots (currently 3, a theoretical maximum of 8 if all the blurbs are very short, circa 5 is more common). If every sports update gets posted then each update will be on for only a few minutes at most, then consider all the film updates, book updates, music updates, war updates, politics updates, and criminal justice updates that will also get posted. Then realise that there are also extreme weather updates, theatre updates, product updates, construction updates, and biography updates to post too. After that you can start thinking about the updates to topics I haven't mentioned (science, visual arts, technology, ...). Thryduulf (talk) 02:31, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
With the amendments I propose, you're considering the case of a Wikipedia with ~84x our current amount of activity, which we should consider only at that point. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:42, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Eh? All those topics get updates that meet your proposed ITN criteria. Not that many get nominated at ITNC today, but that's in part because almost none of them meet the criteria for ITN. Thryduulf (talk) 02:57, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Could you give an example? Aaron Liu (talk) 12:45, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 3 per Cullen328. Oppose 1 and 2.—S Marshall T/C 15:58, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 3. ITN has been broken for some time now and it needs WP:TNT-ing and rebooting in some other form. The other two proposals don't address this either so Oppose 1 and 2. Caveat: RD seems to work quite well though, and should be part of any replacement ... or could it possibly be absorbed into OTD in some way? Black Kite (talk) 16:05, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 3 As a reader of Wikipedia, I find it ITN interesting. Senior Captain Thrawn (talk) 21:59, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I find all sorts of things interesting. That isn't always the best reason, though. Cremastra (talk) 22:04, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
ILIKEIT is usually a poor reason to oppose the deletion of an article, but this discussion is not about the deletion of an article. Thryduulf (talk) 23:52, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

With all due respect, your argument in favor of abolishing references another argument that ITN doesn't properly feature Wikipedia's best content ([citation needed]), nor does it actually explain why you believe it is "outdated and an outlier" as you claim. DarkSide830 (talk) 02:24, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 1 and 2. Option 1 isn't feasible as the sole criterion as hundrers of different topics are mentioned on front pages. Also I fear that in practice it would strengthen the systemic bias, as the topics like the Sudanese civil war (currently the worst humanitanian crisis in the world) are unlikely to appear on the front pages. Option 2 is unclear, how would it work in practice with lots of articles being updated every minute? Alaexis_¿question? 11:46, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Only those that get nominated and get consensus that they're quality writing will get posted. I don't see any edits that meet the criteria in the last two minutes of recent changes. Aaron Liu (talk) 12:48, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, maybe I've exaggerated a bit, but for sure editors "add[] substantial due coverage" to many more article in a day than it's feasible to feature on the main page.

Now that I'm thinking about it, this would make things worse from the systemic bias point of view. Wikipedia suffers from it to the extent that reliable sources are affected by it. Historically ITN has worked differently offering a different perspective. I think that implementing proposal #2 would make ITN more similar to generic Western news outlets. Alaexis_¿question? 20:11, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Historically ITN has worked differently offering a different perspective. – This is just another way to say it engages in POV pushing by diverging from the sources. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:17, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
See my comment here. Mentioning Nobel winners rather than a particularly weird Trump rally may reflect a certain point of view but I think that many readers would prefer this POV. Alaexis_¿question? 18:39, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That did not have any substantial-enough update that passes the requirements. With the amendment, it will never have such an update either. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:59, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's also humanly unfeasible to nominate so many updates. If the concern is that hooks move too rapidly, raise the quality requirement. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:20, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

hundreds of different topics are mentioned on front pages Not on multiple front pages, which is the Proposal 1 criteria. Look at today's world front pages and you'll be hard pressed to find five different stories that are on multiple front pages in multiple countries. And we can make that criteria tighter or looser by adjusting how many front pages are required, and from where.

I fear that in practice it would strengthen the systemic bias, as the topics like the Sudanese civil war (currently the worst humanitanian crisis in the world) are unlikely to appear on the front pages. Have you looked at the front pages of African newspapers? Proposal 1 can significantly reduce systemic bias by bringing in front pages from developing nations. We could also do things to fight systemic bias like requiring multiple continents or regions to be represented (so not just multiple Western front pages). I think the risk of systemic bias would be much lower if we based selection criteria on the front pages of newspapers in developing countries, than if we based selection criteria on what a group of overwhelmingly Western, English-speaking, white male volunteers think is important (which is the status quo). Levivich (talk) 22:35, 15 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This sounds good in theory in theory but to support it I'd like to see concrete criteria that would also be easy to apply (otherwise the system won't work). In fact I did look at the front pages of African newspapers on the sites linked in the proposal and was disappointed. Front Pages have only 3 newspapers on the whole continent, with two of them is South Africa. Pressreader has a bit more but still only a few African countries are represented and the ones that I did find looked a bit dubious (the only newspaper in Ethiopia, the only newspaper in Tanzania). China has 20 newspapers, while New Zealand has 84!

In any case, applying the sort of criteria you're suggesting is non-trivial from the operations point of view. This is not to say it can be done - we have lots of volunteers from all across the world, but I'd like to see a thought-out proposal. Alaexis_¿question? 18:17, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tbh idk how many print newspapers there are in Africa, compared with other parts of the world. But FWIW, here is a list of African news outlets from a university's website. I'm not sure how many of them customize their online front pages the way Western MSM do, there are ways to browse anonymously to correct for that, so I think viable African RS representation is possible. I'm not sure what a concrete proposal would look like exactly (ie, what specific criteria we should have), but I like the idea in theory of requiring significance to be demonstrated with RS (and not just editor opinions). Levivich (talk) 19:10, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I also like the idea "of requiring significance to be demonstrated with RS," my beef is with the lack of concrete details and lack of impact assessment. Alaexis_¿question? 20:46, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 2, then 1, then 3 per above. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 20:25, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 3 per Cullen. It's about time ITN kicks the can, the endless amount of useless bickering and article puffery has virtually driven the poor thing to death. People oppose articles on quality and yet don't decide to work on the articles, just leaving them wasting away for longer, and longer, and longer. Either some people need to step up and start improving the articles or figure out whether "oOoOoOOoo spaceship caught in mid-air!!!" is notable without having to use enough mindpower to electrify a whole neighborhood. Kline • talk • contribs 21:39, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's not really a workable reason, given that all of WP is a voluntary practice and we can't force anyone to work on anything. There is a issue where we get tons of strong support votes based on significance but none of those lift a hand to address the quality issues that get raised, and if anything, that's where the onus lies for improvement. But we have never required anyone to take steps for quality improvement, just that someone needs to do that before posting. Masem (t) 18:24, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 3 As excessively nuclear. ITN has its share of issues, but I disagree with the presentation that it is fully dysfunctional. As an example, this year Nobel week has been progressing fairly well so far, especially considering that last year the Peace Prize winner was not blurbed due to quality issues if I recall correctly. Curbon7 (talk) 18:12, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Proposal 3. I agree that the current ITN is flawed, but before removing it, I am in favor of making an attempt to fix it. I believe the correct time to revisit proposal 3 is if and when the implementation of proposal 1 or 2 does not end up improving ITN. 169.236.78.21 (talk) 01:14, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

hit the wrong reply and I don't know how to fix it, really sorry 169.236.78.21 (talk) 01:15, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to survey. C F A 💬 01:22, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Proposal 3 I still believe that ITN serves a purpose on the main page. While Wikipedia is not news, it is within its remit to cover current and currently unfolding events of presumably enduring significance. This is not obvious for an encyclopedia, and conceptually the ITN section of the main page is a very good way of demonstrating this to a general readership. I am insufficiently familiar with the behind-the-scenes process to comment on the other two proposals. Felix QW (talk) 15:00, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
support 2, without prejudice against 3, which i know will not pass - everything i'd have said has already been said better above. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 18:16, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 1 per what Levivich has written about it. Oppose 2 per the concerns that it’d flood ITN w/trivial news & not gives blurbs enough time to get attention on the main page. Blaylockjam10 (talk) 04:28, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose all 3 proposals - If #1 were a bit less stringent, I might go for that. But as it stands, the only things that will qualify are political news, scandals, war, crime, etc. It will also add bias in that certain countries' politics are front page need in many countries (the British royals, US elections). Major news events in science, for example, would rarely qualify because it's not appealing to the 5th-grade-reading-level consumers of print papers. Option 2 won't do anything. Option 3 is equivalent to taking away toys because toddlers get fussy. EvergreenFir (talk) 05:00, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 1 and 2 - per Masem mostly. There is a huge problem with NOTNEWS violations all over Wikipedia - solving those will likely lead to a return to our purpose - being an encyclopedia. Weak support 3 because as others have stated, perhaps removing the ITN section from the main page will reduce some editors' drive to violate NOTNEWS and reduce recentism. This would obviously require further discussion on how to revamp the main page to account for its removal. But ultimately this problem is beyond ITN - Wikipedia is not a newspaper and should not try to be presenting recent events to readers. ITN only encourages people to quickly create articles so they can be featured on the main page (or serve as news articles) and that's a problem in and of itself that ITN doesn't help at all (and likely hurts). -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 05:42, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For clarity, my !vote can be seen as a "delayed option 3". In other words, not an immediate removal - but another discussion should be held to identify either a new section to replace it on the main page (for which I am short on ideas), or another section that can be expanded (perhaps TFA can be expanded to have a longer blurb) - and the second that there is any idea with remotely a consensus to implement it, ITN is removed from the main page and replaced with that new idea. That new idea can then be iterated on through normal change processes. But I don't think "we don't know what to replace it with" is a valid enough reason to oppose removing ITN in concept - any !votes that are simply based on "what will replace it?" should be treated as either neutral or supporting delayed removal after further discussion. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 05:47, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 3 I don't have much experience with the behind-the-scenes work at ITN (just not my cup of tea), but the end result generally looks OK — neither remarkably good nor remarkably bad. I don't think the idea is fundamentally at odds with building an encyclopedia, or with what an encyclopedia website should put on its front page. I don't think the implementation is completely broken. Regarding option 1, I think it's fair to say that an event is worth putting on the front page if it is reported on the print front pages of major national newspapers in multiple countries. I disagree with the idea that that is the only way an event could be ITN-worthy. In other words, I could endorse the original statement of option 1, but not the "clarification" that turned it from an if to an only if. I also oppose 2 because "two paragraphs or five sentences" on any notable event is far too low a threshold. XOR'easter (talk) 03:09, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Would you support 2 if the requirement were instead two paragraphs to an existing article? Aaron Liu (talk) 15:08, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
People will just insert more trivial details like they already do to articles to get them over the threshold. Traumnovelle (talk) 18:23, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
People can read that it's just fluff and oppose it for bad quality. It's not like I can add two paragraphs of pov-pushing and hoaxery and get posted either. Meanwhile, editors who use their own feelings gilded with a thin layer of quality to !vote can be warned and sanctioned individually. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:38, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is a false dichtomoy. Doing both 1 and 2 would not produce a conflict, simply two distinct criteria for adding something to ITN, both of which are likely to be sensible for various cases (i.e., some updates would be reasonble under point 1, others under point 2, some under both). I don't support option 3; don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. If someone is unhappy with a long-standing element of community practice, the solution is to seek consensus to adjust the practice, not nuke it from orbit out of spite. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 14:34, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would support option 1 (though still less preferred than option 2) if it were an if and not an iff, which is how Levivich clarified his proposal. Aaron Liu (talk) 15:10, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW I would still support Option 1 if it were an if and not an iff. Levivich (talk) 19:34, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If someone is unhappy with a long-standing element of community practice, the solution is to seek consensus to adjust the practice, not nuke it from orbit out of spite. Actually, from my experience, being unhappy with ITN is in and of itself a long-standing element of community practice. So no, I don't think it's spiteful nor arbitrarily nuking something. This page has been problematic for years. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 12:24, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Many people have complained about ITN for years, but relatively few of them have agreed on specifics and even fewer have even attempted to get a consensus to change it (most preferring to leave unhelpful or even disruptive commentary, e.g. repeatedly complaining it doesn't do something that was explicitly rejected). There has never been a consensus that ITN is problematic (as distinct from being entirely problem free), and certainly there has never been anything approaching a consensus that removing it entirely is the only, let alone best, way forwards, and that looks to be the case again here with all these proposals almost certainly resulting in either no consensus or consensus against. Thryduulf (talk) 13:08, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There appear to be many who would not oppose option 1 if it were not the only method. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:04, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support option 1. As long as 1 is not the only route of how blurbs can be posted, it's worthwhile to establish an objective test for ITN candidates. Too much time is wasted on ITN by people using highly subjective tests of what is and isn't suitable for the section. It may be better if a method that was less dependent on websites with a seemingly limited selection of non-Western newspapers and sensitive to research being done the day of, was developed as well. Perhaps something like "a story can be blurbed pending an update if it has been covered by six different reputable newspapers published in six different continents." Weak oppose option 2 as probably too far at this point in time, though the similar update to RD was ultimately fine. Oppose option 3 as overkill. ITN has issues, especially with timely posting, but it does represent some of Wikipedia's best work as frequently acknowledged by sources (i.e. accurate articles on current events). -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 16:52, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose all and maintain status quo. Oppose 1, as frontline news coverage is different in every country and could also cause bias towards Western media which primarily deals with English, whether it is intended or not. Oppose 2, no need to remove significance criteria. --Takipoint123 (talk) 21:45, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the Polaris Dawn discussion is a pretty good example of why not significance. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:58, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Every policy/guideline is prone to fail at least a few times, especially if its been there for more than a decade. We go and fix it if it becomes recurrent; I don't necessarily prefer abolishing things because its been proved not to work a few times. Takipoint123 (talk) 07:11, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I also stand with all the users who oppose Option 2 as well, if anything "two paragraphs" sounds too vague. Just my personal opinion though. Takipoint123 (talk) 07:12, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's been proven to work with RD. If concerns are that the quality bar is too low, we can raise it (as I suggested, to two paragraphs added to an existing article), not abolish the thought of the idea. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:22, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The difference with RD is that everybody agrees that deaths of notable people should be covered on ITN, and whether someone has or has not recently died is almost always objectively knowable (with an objective criteria for the most common case where it isn't - those who disappear are included on RD when they are declared dead in absentia). i.e. there is agreement that everything that could be covered by RD should be covered. There is no such agreement (and indeed active opposition) in relation to pretty much everything not listed at WP:RSP (and sometimes even that list can be controversial). Thryduulf (talk) 13:14, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And I'm saying I don't really see why we shouldn't pursue just having the main page showcase quality.
whether someone has or has not recently died is almost always objectively knowable
Quality isn't for either. The 7-day criteria is also objective. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:37, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I won't comment too much on it as others pointed out, but two paragraphs are too easy to game. If we go with something along the lines of two paragraphs we'll end up having another discussion on significance on what should be added; there's more than a few events everyday you can write up two paragraphs on, and most people probably won't care about them. Takipoint123 (talk) 19:59, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why should we decide whether people "care" about them? Aaron Liu (talk) 20:01, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There has to be some sort of filter on what is posted for volume reasons (as repeatedly explained by multiple people). Quality alone is not sufficient. Thryduulf (talk) 21:29, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I have asked of you above, could you give an example of it overflowing within a timespan of your choosing? Aaron Liu (talk) 21:59, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Precisely what I'm thinking of. Something in the news needs to be notable if we're putting it on one of the busiest websites in the world. If we're going to ignore significance and start judging quality of events its just a new DYK section that happened to be recent. Takipoint123 (talk) 00:03, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And what's wrong with that if we're encouraging Wikipedia:Summary style? Aaron Liu (talk) 01:59, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how that's relevant? The concern here appears to be quality vs significance, not whether there is a {{Main}} article somewhere.

So imagine that the choice is between a beautifully written article about an event that is of no particular significance to the world ("City builds new playground") vs a raw article about an event of obvious significance to the world ("World War III declared five minutes ago"). The first would "showcase quality", but IMO it's the second that we should be putting in ITN. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:14, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not too sure what you mean by WP:Summary style. Sure, it's an important editorial guideline, but I do find it confusing on why it really matters here. If you think quality is more important than significance of an event, that's a respectable opinion. What I and several other users are trying to saying is that we need something on significance for it to interest most readers (i.e. non-users) on the main page. What we have is not perfect, but it's better than nothing at all. Takipoint123 (talk) 03:42, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Got it. I think we can agree to disagree on whether sig is important to interest readers.
(On the confusion, I believe summary style is one of the best parts of Wikipedia. If we implement proposal 2 with part of the requirement being addition to an existing article, that effectively guarantees that new stuff will also be summarized and placed into historical context, thus improving existing articles as well. I don't know if that helps at all lol) Aaron Liu (talk) 04:00, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I'm seeing where you're getting to. Thanks for letting me know :) Takipoint123 (talk) 05:36, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 3. I understand that there are problems with the process, and I don't really have an opinion on how to fix them. That being said, I find ITN to be the most useful section of the main page, and I'd imagine many readers find it useful as well. Removing it because of procedural difficulties doesn't seem like a good solution. Tamwin (talk) 15:37, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 3. Basically per Tamwin. The shitshow of a process is insufficient cause to remove the block from the main page that I personally also find useful. I have little enough comment about options 1 and 2, but it doesn't look like there was significant focused discussion on discussing alternatives and presenting the ones that have any amount of significant support from internal to the process (and if there was, it wasn't presented in the first half a dozen responses). I do think proposal 1 is about as likely as any to completely end its utility, but maybe someone has actually done the work to analyze what would have been different in the past with a requirement like 'multiple national newspapers'. I'm sympathetic to option 2, but its framing of tossing what looks like a reasonable baby with the bathwater sure seems like overkill. So yeah, these options suck, but my only hard oppose is option 3. Izno (talk) 22:38, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 3. The content-oriented argument (that the main page should be reserved to highlight especiallyy high quality content and there's no particular reason to expect that articles on subjects that are currently in the news represent such content) is compelling in itself. But bluntly speaking, even if ITN articles could be depeneded on to be stellar examples of content, the cost-benefit would still be dubious: the amount of disruption that washes out of the ITN discussion space is as voluminous as it is inexplicable, and no efforts to arrest it have ever so much as slown it down. The ITN regulars have been given years to develop and present reasonable rules consistent with core policies, abide by them, and limit the perplexing level of vitriol than seems to be exchanged by the various camps arguing between differing idiosyncratic models of what justifies a subject worthy of being cannonized in the ITN listings. And yet, for whatever reason caused by either the nature of the subject matter or the historical dynamics of the space, such a state of orderly process has never emerged and seems as far away now as ever. It's not a trivial matter to depcreate a long-standing feature of the main page, but if anything, we're years past the point where this should have been done. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 02:58, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why is this preferable to actually changing the rules of ITN? RD has already been changed, to great benefit and rationality. Aaron Liu (talk) 04:03, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In principle, it's not. Or at the very least, I'd personally be at least as amenable to a reformed ITN as I would be to closing the space entirely. In theory, anyway. The problem is that many chances have been afforded to create this reform over many years, with little to no progress. And even when the guidelines governing selection criteria are slightly refined, it never stops them from being habitually ignored by participants wishing to instead replace these criteria with their own idiosyncratic views on what makes a subject "important" enough for listing, with much bickering and disruption (much of it spilling out into ANI and other spaces) resulting.
Again, I don't know how much these issues are the result of something inherent to process by mere virtue of discussing current events, and how much of it is just an accident of happenstance in regard to how the culture at ITN evolved from the influences and personalities involved, but after years of the community communicating its desire and expectation that the space be brought into some degree of increased order, stability, civility, and fidelity with broader content policies, it just hasn't happened, and the cost-benefit value of the space continues to be poor. At a certain point, even if we recognize the potential benefit of the feature, or indulge arguments based in the sunk cost fallacy, we simply have to recognize that this potential is not being met, and the continued consumption of project resources (here, mostly volunteer hours) is not worth electing for further patience. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 03:38, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is the first time we have something on the table to replace the criteria entirely. If you think they'll ignore it... make them heed. This is Wikipedia. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:21, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand why the quality of ITN articles is being questioned when another section of the main page (DYK) is literally dedicated to freshly created or heavily expanded pages. What is the actual proof that ITN does not effectively showcase quality articles? DarkSide830 (talk) 18:05, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I can't speak for everyone who has questioned the proposition that ITN articles represent especially high quality articles on average, but I would make two observations in response to your inquiry:
1) I think the onus/burden of proof ought to be on those who claim that there is a special value in a given feature to demonstrate that said value is not illusory. Whether that proof comes in the form of empirical analytics of some form, pertinent examples, or rational observations for why one would expect this class of article to be high quality, I'm personally not particular, but I'm seeing a dearth of such proof in all categories anyway.
And 2) insofar as most ITN articles are, by their very nature, very new articles, I expect they have good reason to be unrefined and underdeveloped, all other factors being equal. You compare this against DYK, but a) articles linked at DYK are not as likely to be as completely new, and b) even if they were, that would still not be a principled, evidence-based reason on what we can expect or not expect from ITN. DYK may very well have similar issues, or be subject to similar presumptions, but that doesn't really inform upon what we can or cannot expect from ITN at this juncture, and a person feeling that the burden of proof has not been met for demonstrating the supposed average high quality of articles that make it into ITN in no way hinges upon reference to DYK. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 04:00, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
These numbers might help. Here are the bold-faced ITN articles at the moment:
2024 Moldovan European Union membership referendum – 1832 words, 51 refs

Killing of Yahya Sinwar – 2261 words, 96 refs

Daron Acemoglu – 4726 words, 162 refs

Simon Johnson (economist) – 732 words, 16 refs

James A. Robinson – 846 words, 23 refs

Europa Clipper – 4146 words, 120 refs

For comparison:

The median Wikipedia articles has 746 words. 90% of them have 1667 or fewer words. Two of these six are about average in length, two of them are in the 90–95th percentile, and two of the six current ITN articles are in the top 5% for length.

The median Wikipedia article has 4 refs. 90% of them have 19 or fewer refs. The ITN article with the fewest refs has more refs than 87% of Wikipedia articles. Half of the ITN articles are in the top 1% for number of refs.

While one should not expect an article about a developing event to be written with ideal sources and brilliantly polished prose, it is indisputable that these articles are longer than typical and much, much more abundantly cited. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:19, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If we collect a thousand articles that are 2/10 and one article that's 4/10, that doesn't make 4/10 a good rating even if it's in the top 0.1% of our sample. Using median and percentiles doesn't work when the sample is flooded with trash. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:26, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I said, volume isn't the same as good, but these definitely have volume. Everyone has their own personal ideas of "good" anyway; size is objective, but quality is subjective. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:41, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose all and keep things as they are. Not broken. Stifle (talk) 16:01, 22 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's interesting how much contrast this provides against the last !voter. Aaron Liu (talk) 11:22, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yes, it's one of the recurring points that I bring up whenever we discuss making reform to ITN, particularly whenever someone comes to Talk:ITN and bewails "In The News is horribly broken and it's so easy to fix if you'd only make this one change". The problem is that "this one change" never gets made because there will always be a sizable number of people who think the eccentricity of ITN is a feature, not a bug. On a website where WP:AINTBROKE is a persistent thought-terminating death knell for change, that's an immediate consensus-stopper. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:05, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose all per Masem, who said it perfectly well. The real problem lies with the enforcement of WP:NOTNEWS (or increasing lack thereof), and it is a systemic issue that will in no way be resolved by proposals 1 or 2, and even less by nuking ITN entirely. Choucas Bleu (T·C) 16:09, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Choucas Bleu, I wonder which part of NOTNEWS you think is unenforced? That's one of those WP:UPPERCASE links that I suspect editors use mostly based on what they've heard through the telephone game and not what the page actually says. That might not be the case for you, but to give examples, I've previously seen editors say that NOTNEWS discourages citing news articles (it doesn't), updating articles promptly (its first sentence says the opposite), and creating articles about recent events (its second sentence says the opposite). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:20, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Many commenters have made the same point in detail above me in the discussion, so I decided not to expand on it since everything I could have said has been said in order to keep my own answer to the survey concise. The three examples you give are obvious mistakes that I agree completely miss the point of NOTNEWS, however I do not really see your point here. I am not sure why you answered my comment instead of the ones of Masem, that I clearly cited as the position I was in full agreement with. Choucas Bleu (T·C) 20:28, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I asked you, because yours was the most recent comment. And I'm still curious: Which sentence(s) in NOTNEWS do you think is not being enforced? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Generally when people refer to WP:NOTNEWS in this way, they're referring to point two: Wikipedia considers the enduring notability of persons and events. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:49, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose 3 and pretty indifferent to 1 or 2 - It's wild to me that two options here are relatively uncontroversial policy amendments and the third is to remove an entire section from the homepage (and the title of this RfC doesn't reflect that either). Slipping in Proposal 3 like that seems like a cheap move and effectively derails the entire purpose of the original RfC, since it has distracted from the initial proposal. ✈ mike_gigs ^talk_contribs 13:13, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Mike gigs Option 3 was added after the RFC was started (iirc by someone other than the initial proposer) so anything misleading about the title is not intentional. Thryduulf (talk) 14:53, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't called Option 3 yet, but the first call for abolition came just under 67 minutes after the OP said we freely could propose our ideas; as a guy raised to spot cheap moves and cruel tricks, such proportional promptness would make this conceivable consensus "fair" if finally found (in my mind). InedibleHulk (talk) 04:22, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 1 Disagree with the idea that "In the News" is not serving a useful purpose, as my Quiz Bowl team used to rely on its archives to review the top stories in the three months before each competition. Alalch E. argues that compared to other Main Page sections, our articles on news events are not necessarily our best work, despite WP:ITNUPDATE requiring "an emboldened link to an article providing a substantial quantity of directly relevant information, attributed to reliable sources." Furthermore, if the news stories we have consensus as most significant do involve lower-quality articles, then that serves as a motivator for Main Page viewers to fix our shortcomings. However, I agree that gridlock in interpreting WP:ITNSIGNIF results in In the News updating after stories are already losing their public attention, and this newspaper-based standard seems to overcome bias in favoring US/UK-based stories. ViridianPenguin 🐧 ( 💬 ) 21:17, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 1 It is useful, gives an up to date process to the front page. I look at our Dame Maggie Smith being our benchmark for any RDs becoming blurbs. But I feel that it needs to be clarified what the standards are for blurbs. The C of E God Save the King! (talk) 21:10, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose all The biggest problem ITN has is lack of editor participation. If every editor involved in this discussion was involved in discussion at ITN, even occasionally, we'd have a far more productive ITN. This discussion began due to anger at the failure of editors at ITN to post a specific story (Elon Musk's legal issues in Brazil). That specific issue would literally have been addressed by wider editor participation. I'm open to reform of ITN and I've read through many arguments here. I'm simply not convinced that what has been proposed is actually an improvement, and removing ITN altogether actively harms the project and our readers. Completely removing all significance requirements is a deeply flawed proposal. It will result in stories such as the Hawk tuah girl throwing the first pitch at a baseball game appearing on ITN. The newspaper proposal is also very flawed, half-baked and rather bizarre. The idea that an online encyclopaedia will decide that what appears on a selected few print newspaper front pages is our selection criteria for news is just genuinely weird. How many countries will a story be required to feature on the front pages to be considered significant? What is a national newspaper, particularly in the US context? Taking a look at Press reader we see stories of no encyclopedic significance featuring on multiple front pages such as "Pumpkins Reign in Illinois Town" or "Starmer's insult to Middle Britain" regarding comments made by the British prime minister about what constitutes "working people". We know also that in many countries - Germany, France, the US, Australia, the UK - newspapers are deeply politically partisan. Overall, what is proposed as "reform" is disastrous and would actively harm the encyclopaedia. AusLondonder (talk) 13:49, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support 3, the only option that actually makes sense. Perhaps the only modification I might make is to keep the RD portion of the ITN, but even that could go. The main part of the ITN itself is unsalvageable and does not deserve to be salvaged. The problem isn't just, and not even mainly, that too few editors are participating (which has been the case for over 15 years and is not going to change, despite all the handwringing and wishful thinking). The main problem is that there are not and cannot be any reasonable set of criteria about the significance of current events. To a large extent ITN exists contrary to the letter and the spirit of WP:NOTNEWS and WP:CRYSTAL. A few editors are making armchair quarterbacking judgements, based on their personal biases and interests, about which events are and are not "important" enough for ITN. The few rules that exist quickly devolve into overbureacratized nonsense. Given the fluidity and unpredictability of current events, it is not really possible to have a significantly better than that. We would be much better off just retiring the ITN and respecting the judgement of our readers about which topics and pages they consider "important". Right now ITN serves essentially no useful purpose and it frequently makes Wikipedia look foolish. Nsk92 (talk) 12:09, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- A few extra thoughts. The only way to take the current arbitrariness out of ITN is to require that editors making support/oppose comments back up their opinions by a detailed analysis of what various WP:RS say regarding the significance of a particular event. Currently this essentially never happens, and editors just express their own opinions, without even attempting to cite WP:RS. However, such a change would require a dramatic change in culture at ITN, and I doubt very much that the regulars would accept it. Another problem is that, unlike with ordinary article talk page discussions, ITN discussions face severe time constraints. It is already the case at ITN that oftentimes, if a substantive discussion starts happening, it can significantly delay posting of an ITN item, so much so, that when it does get posted, it is effectively stale and obsolete. Nsk92 (talk) 12:29, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- Wouldn't removing or bypassing significance fix that? Aaron Liu (talk) 17:06, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
- I think you've hit the nail squarely on the head. In discussions on this project, the general perception is often that the main advantage of our WP:V/WP:RS, WP:OR, and WP:WEIGHT policies as being the curatory effect it has upon our content, and though that is in fact a valuable and arguable essential benefit, it largely derives from the actual main product of these policies: the stability it engenders in our processes. If not for our verification and reliable sourcing standards, ever single talk page on this project (and I really mean every single one that is blue linked) would be in a constant state of seizure from the unmitigated editorial clashes of contributors arguing various value judgments on "importance", "prominence", and various other lofty-sounding but impossible to objectivize principles. It's the connection of our process to a less subjective RS/Weight standard that call upon all editors to dismiss their personal analysis which greases the machinery of our processes and allow this entire endeavour to exist.
  And the problem with ITN is that, for whatever reason, it has developed a culture where those most basic of editorial principles are flaunted far too regularly, by far too many participants and largely unchecked for years and years on end. In many respects, ITN has become like a funhouse mirror showing us a disrtorted reflection of what all of en.wikipedia would look like if the project did not have the affore-mentioned policies and principles. Unmoored from those rules, it has become a series of shouting matches (often spilling over into other project spaces through the sheer volume of disruption and the bad blood engendered) between parties engaging from arguments of "importance" based in their own subjective and idiosynratic views (everything the Wikipedia process is meant not to be), with those editors who do contribute there from positions predicated in WP:WEIGHT being entirely underequipped and incapable of stimming this problematic behaviour.
  And we have every reason to believe that proposals 1 and 2 above will not settle this problem, because the existing guidelines on the ITN main page presently do (and have for years) proscribed many of those habits and arguments that clash with overall project policy and lead to so much dysfunction in the space. And yet these guidelines are habitually ignored, same as our site-wide broader policies, by a substantial number of regular contributors to the space. The only way you could rescue the ITN process with more rules is if we aggresively started topic banning everyone who violated the rules, and I think we all know the clusterf*** (forgive my choice of language, but it chosen for for accuracy to describe the situation) that would ensue if that effort was even attempted.
  Bluntly, the taint is too deep at this point. The numbers of those above !voting with comments somewhere along the lines of "status quo/no problem" tells you all you need to know about just how normalized the problem behaviours--unacceptable in any other corner of the project--have become at ITN. There also seems to be a pattern in this discussion of bemusedly implying that those !voting to close down the space are doing so in a calvaliere fashion. Speaking for myself, I did not support this option lightly. There's a reason I encouraged and supported more piecemeal solutions in the past even as calls to deprecate the feature became louder over the years. At this point I just don't think the space can be salvaged, because the principle issues are not about the rules (again, policies and ITN existing guidelines already circumscribe most of the recurrent issues in ITN discussions) but rather the attitudes of a substantial portion of its participants. Time has been given to get the ITN house in order: it hasn't happened and there's no compelling reason to believe it will if we just keep feeding community time and energy into building a larger and more detailed list of rules to be ignored. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 18:08, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  What makes you think that bypassing/scrapping the vague goal of significance instead of just dissuading certain arguments about significance? As I've replied to you above, editors can be sanctioned if they choose to make arguments based on what's now−not-even-tangential to the guidelines. Can't we just at least try this, something far grander (and not necessarily more effortful) than before, before blowing it up? Aaron Liu (talk) 21:40, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  Well, if the current trend in responses hold, ITN will indeed get that chance. I just can't say as I am super optimistic, personally. Don't misunderstand me: I would regard being surprised and proven wrong by marked improvement in the situation as the much more positive outcome. It's just that what I perceive to be the odds of that result are too long of a shot to support proposals 1 or 2 at this juncture. But I do seem, for now, to still be in a minority (if a growing one). SnowRise ^{let's rap} 07:49, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose all - I applaud the spirit of proposal 1, but feel that (a) such a criterion should be necessary but not sufficient, since some things make the front page but are self-evidently trivia, such as celebrity gossip; and (b) I don't think we should tie ourselves to print media. Option 2 is deeply misguided, and would lead to a deeply weird and skewed news feed. Option 3 is, bluntly, a wrecking amendment, and if an admin removed it from the running before the RfC ran its course, I wouldn't mind at all. GenevieveDEon (talk) 17:28, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that last bit is a very unfair assessment: a wrecking amendment is a provision added to legislation to impede the possibility of the passing of other provisions which would be adopted in tandem with the proposed rule in the poison pill, as they are passed together or not at all. Here we are talking about an alternative proposal that would by its own terms exclude the other two possibilites, and there is absolutely no reason to believe that the person who proposed it did not intend to forward it for its own value (as they saw it). In fact, suggesting as much sort of skirts the line of an WP:aspersion that said party was operating in bad faith by making a suggestion that they didn't really support, just to game the system and derail the process. Do you really have any reason to believe that? If not, I'd suggest reconsidering your terminology there.

Regardless, this is not a proposal that is novel to this discussion. Closing down ITN is a possibility that has been floated in the community for a long time (at least going back seven or eight years that I can recall), and is raised as a possible necesisty pretty much everytime an ITN battle of wills expands outside of the confines of the ITN spaces and lands at ANI. It's also been brought up in an option in every widely-advertised discussion on ITN reform, and has had slowly mounting support (a number of us in this discussion who support it are recent converts) for years. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 18:22, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

To be completely fair, we had a discussion in the ITN talk page before this RFC was created, and I believe there was general agreement that any discussion of removing ITN would be reserved for after this RFC, and I do believe adding such an amendment after some survey responses had been provided was not the correct decision. I doubt it will matter in the end, but still. DarkSide830 (talk) 00:04, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I see: I appreciate the extra context. That said, I think we can probably assume the OP for that proposal would say that having a large RfC with two options is likely to result in one of them being adopted, and that would have obviated any possibility of making the deprecation argument, which they clearly think may be the only viable solution at this juncture (and are not alone in that). Besides which, the ITN regulars excising deprecation from the options before the discussion was listed for broader community input would not have been a great look, considering the broader community has contemplated this option for a while, and non-ITN regulars tend to have a more jaundiced outlook on the disruption. On the whole, I think the fact that the third option was listed will actually be a shot in the arm for those hoping to give the ITN community another opportunity to clean up the process; Option 3 doesn't look likely to pass at this time, unless there is a sudden big uptick in support, and I doubt it will be any sooner than a year from now before anybody propose anything like it again. That gives Option 1 or Option 2, whichever is adopted, time to do what their proponents hope it will do. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 07:59, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it is likely that any of the options will gain consensus for adoption. Which in my view is the right way forward - ITN has issues but none of the three options presented here will be an improvement. Thryduulf (talk) 11:00, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That would be unfortunate. Because while, in my opinion, proposals 1 and 2 have extremely long odds of resolving the issues at ITN, long odds are better than the effectively non-existent chance that the situation will self-correct if nothing is done. I get that you are saying that those two proposals will be at best ineffective and could possibly even make things worse, but I genuinely believe that if not for the fact that they split the !voting as they did here, and if this had been a straight up and down !vote on making ITN historical, it probably would have happened. I think after years of relative inaction, patience is evaporating. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 21:12, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that we should be trying things, but we should only be trying things that have a realistic chance of solving the problems we are trying to solve without introducing new, worse problems. I don't believe option 1 will solve anything but will make systematic bias worse. Option 2 would almost certainly solve the slow update issue, but at the expense of introducing very significantly worse problems (it might solve the bias problem, but only by introducing a different bias problem). Overall when the likelihood of making things much worse than they are now is so much greater than the likelihood of seeing any improvement the status quo is the best option. Thryduulf (talk) 21:30, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Content should reflect what appears in reliable sources. Subverting the sources to counter their "bias" is just a roundabout way of saying POV pushing. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:53, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's only true if your reflecting what appears in every reliable source, not just the subset that are easily accessible and/or high profile. Thryduulf (talk) 22:47, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I follow your reasoning, but must disagree in one key respect with your ultimate conclusion. I'm sure I'm not the only one supporting deprecation who wishes there was a reasonable alternative being discussed here. But like you, I don't think proposal 1 or 2 have any realistic chance of significantly amleriorating ITN's many issues. However, unlike you (and I mean no offense in this, since I consider it very much a "reasonable minds may differ" sort of thing), I also don't think it is any longer in the project's best to let the status quo, such as it is, continue. Any chance ITN might have had to survive in the longterm would have required the significant majority of the ITN regulars coming to grips with the reality of the situation. The inability to generate consensus for reasonable solutions that align with broader site-wide policy, combined with the volume of ITN regulars telling us expressly here that there is nothing broken or problematic with the space, tell the story: the degree of head-in-the-sand mentality when it comes to both the issues and the broader community's long-declining patience completely subvert any real chance of matters being addressed.

Put otherwise, there may not be a consensus for depcrecation in the close for this thread, but I do believe it likely that this discussion will nevertheless seal ITN's fate. It may take another year or more before the final community resolution occurs, but the gulf between those who won't acknowledge the issues and the broader group of community members with an increasing perception of ITN as a net negative will only grow. Any hope in avoiding that outcome, if there realistically is any at this point, lays with the ITN regulars who see the issues rousing those in denial to understand and address what needs to change. And when I consider what I have seen here, and combine it with what I have seen whenever I have looked in at ITN in recent years, I just have no confidence for that happening. It's one of those cases where I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but I just don't think that's the direction things are headed. SnowRise ^{let's rap} 03:37, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@DarkSide830: How many people who might read the Main Page monitor the ITN talk page, really? That's a bad way to get a local consensus to do an end-run around an RfC. RfCs are, and should always be, the place to reach a consensus on whether or not to deprecate a section of the Main Page, not a project talk page only monitored by people who edit ITN. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:42, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's fair. Personally, I think in hindsight a period reserved for soliciting proposals followed then by a vote would have been best. And I still believe adding 3 during the discussion was not the best decision. We should be explicitly focusing on remedying the issues at ITN before even entertaining the idea of removal. DarkSide830 (talk) 05:12, 30 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@GenevieveDEon: I think "wrecking amendment" ascribes bad faith. The intention was not to wreck the RfC but to reach a consensus. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:40, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Strictly speaking, it's not a wrecking amendment because I don't think anyone doubts that the proposer and subsequent supporters are sincere in thinking that ITN abolition is the best way forward. In practice though, it makes it significantly harder for any reform to happen at all by sort of splitting the vote of those who think ITN has problems, which in the long run makes abolition more popular in the future. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 14:30, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there has been any vote-splitting because for one thing, RfC operates on consensus rather than vote tallying. Also, most people who have voted to support option 3 in some fashion would not have voted on supporting option 1 or 2. Those who oppose proposal 3 have already weighed in on some fashion in options 1 or 2. Once you determine there is no consensus for option 3 (and there isn't), it's easy to assess the votes and determine if there is any consensus remaining for any of the proposed options of reform. Splitting the vote implies that one of the two options of reform are absolutely the only options available for reform which is not the case, and I think this is evident based on the fact the current consensus reads "ITN has problems but the options presented are not how we should solve it". _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:48, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Once you determine there is no consensus for option 3 (and there isn't)

Since we're pre-closing the RfC now (and we aren't), I'm just going to say that the consensus- Aaron Liu (talk) 14:52, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I do agree with your other points. There's nothing preventing us from "vote"ing for more than one option. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:54, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion (In the news criteria amendments)

This is missing the "status quo/no chance" option, and makes the assumption a change must be done. Masem (t) 23:10, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The question as posed is Should either of the following proposals ... Editors are free to answer yes or no as to either or both proposals. Answering no to both proposals is equivalent to maintaining the status quo. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:18, 7 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How is "notable subject" defined? Just by GNG? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 01:17, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The article that contains the added content has to meet the applicable notability guideline (whether that's GNG, NCORP, etc.). This is to disincentivize creating a new article about a non-notable event and encouraging editors to update appropriate articles. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:45, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So it functions as a baseline, and then editors can bring in other considerations to exclude entries such as a controversy at a high school worthy of two paragraphs? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 01:49, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No. There would be no other considerations. The point is to get rid of the significance requirement entirely. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:58, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Would that example of a controversy at a high school then be posted on the front page? For example a shooting or it closing down due to economic issues? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:01, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's highly unlikely there would be enough sources to produce multiple paragraphs about a school controversy that would comply with WP:NPOV (WP:DUE/WP:PROPORTION). If someone nominates to ITN with WP:RECENCY issues, the end result will be most of that fluff getting cut from the article. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:46, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose I disagree. I think two paragraphs about a school shutting down due to a controversy or a shooting would not be UNDUE. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:55, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps a different example, as you are politically minded, every person announcing they were running for president would be eligible for the front page, i.e. Amy Klobuchar 2020 presidential campaign. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 03:00, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's a more interesting case study. For reference, this is the article one week after it was created: Special:PermaLink/883544133. It's 767 words of prose, and the sources are about her campaign specifically (or her potential campaign for older sources), so there's no immediate challenge to whether it's due content. When I proposed what eventually became option 2, I also suggested that it could exclude newly created event articles (so Amy Klobuchar would need to be the article where multiple paragraphs would be due), but that didn't gain any traction. So yeah, if the oversectioning were fixed, this one possibly could have gone through. But keep in mind that it wouldn't have been hundreds die, solar eclipse, World Cup, Amy Klobuchar is running for president. This change would bring ITN closer to DYK, where lots of things run for a short period instead of a few "big" things for an excessively long period. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:19, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The churn response is interesting, as the flipside of eliminating significance to get in ITN is significance to get off the front page. The example cited above a lot is 9/11, and I suppose an Amy Klobuchar running for president type event could knock that off the front page in a matter of hours. Which I would find equally disagreeable. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 03:31, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is a very good point, but ITN already has a way of addressing "big" things that need to stay on long-term: ongoing events. The current criteria to be placed there are that it meets the requirements for a blurb and that it also has regular updates. If something is so big that it's still getting major updates after it rolls off of ITN, then it can be listed in ongoing until those updates stop. Or another option would be that new major updates could start being new blurbs for the same article as the previous one falls off (instead of just rewording the blurb mid-run like we do now), but that would probably be a separate discussion. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:44, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Could you give an example of how the invasion of Lebanon by Israel would be presented when Israel-Hezbollah conflict is already an ongoing event? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 03:53, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it would hurt anything to either blurb the invasion article while the conflict article is listed as ongoing or to lift the conflict article out of ongoing for the duration of the blurb, depending on what the community determines is better practice. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:02, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I apologise, this speaks to my ignorance. Could you describe what you mean by blurb here? Do you just mean list it as an item or feature it with a picture? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 05:11, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the "blurb" is just the listed item. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:15, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically, it's a bulleted sentence (as opposed to "Ongoing" which is a mere page link). —Bagumba (talk) 05:19, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also as opposed to RDs (recent deaths), which don't need to be "in the news" and aren't allowed photos (yet). InedibleHulk (talk) 05:29, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thankyou for discussing this with me. I will be voting against 2, as the elevation of niche topics to the expense of large events seems bad. I read Thebiguglyalien's solutions as possible, but also as attempts to launder a significance criterion through existing processes. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 05:36, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This is to disincentivize creating a new article ...: WP:ITNUPDATE currently allows new articles:

In the case of a new, event-specific article, the traditional cut-off for what is enough has been around three complete, referenced and well-formed paragraphs.

It's a general notability question, not ITN specific, on whether a new article is suitable. Per the WP:N policy: This is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article. —Bagumba (talk) 04:18, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Is proposal 1 meant to amend WP:ITNSIGNIF to say that and nothing else? That is, will it say in effect "items in x number of different countries' newspapers' of record front pages are posted if the update's sufficient, and those in x-1 or fewer never are", or "items in x number of etc etc, and anything else needs consensus at WP:ITNC"? If the former, then there's numerous completely uncontentious items at WP:ITNR that I doubt would ever be posted again (I blithely assert, not having looked at a physical newspaper for the better part of twenty years). Not to mention the sort of items that relate only to one country, but do so strongly, that WP:ITNCDONT point #2 warns about. —Cryptic 03:44, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I read it as an addition, but it does seem consensus will be tricky to tease out here because many are reading it in other ways. CMD (talk) 04:32, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal would completely replace the current criteria. The purpose is to do away with the subjective aspects of the significance criteria. voorts (talk/contributions) 13:38, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Abolish ITN discussion A prior discussion in 2020 is at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 166 § h-Request for comment on the future of Wikipedia:In the news-2020-02-25T17:54:00.000Z—Bagumba (talk) 03:49, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Pre-pandemic, though (Old Normal); people generally seemed surer (to me) about the future of a lot of things back then. InedibleHulk (talk) 04:37, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can someone confirm if I'm understanding #2 correctly? Without the significance criterion, the two remaining criteria for posting an ITN blurb are "Updated content" and "Article quality". The latter is unaffected by this proposal, but the update criterion gets an upgrade. In this scenario, any article that meets those two criteria gets blurbed? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 05:05, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I anticipate that "significance" would then just be enforced by !voters via WP:ITNUPDATE. At the earlier Wikipedia talk:In the news § Litmus test, there was a comment that 2024 United States presidential debates might not be suitable for a blurb because it didn't even merit a five-sentence update to an existing article so they would fail the remaining WP:ITNUPDATE criterion —Bagumba (talk) 05:56, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The debate would qualify under the new ITNUPDATE, so long as the debate is notable and at least five sentences are added to the new article. voorts (talk/contributions) 13:41, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
... at least five sentences are added to the new article: That's my point. People can argue that an update is WP:UNDUE, or people can game the system and bloat an article with a WP:NOTDIARY event. Subjectivity is not gone. —Bagumba (talk) 16:04, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Which itself points to the fundamental issue being the NOTNEWS factor, of what is actually an appropriate encyclopedic article about a current event. There was reasonable agreement to that over a decade ago, but tgats definitely no longer that case because we aren't holding event articles to the NOTNEWS / NEVENT standard. Masem (t) 16:31, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To a certain extent, time can be needed to objectively determine if WP:LASTING and WP:INDEPTH is met. Due to recentism, an AfD the week of an event is more likely to be kept or have no consensus. Deciding whether a topic should be a standalone page is not unique to ITN. There's already the WP:PAGEDECIDE guideline:
Often, understanding is best achieved by presenting the topic on a dedicated standalone page, but it is not required that we do so; at times it is better to cover a notable topic as part of a larger page about a broader topic, with more context (and doing so in no way disparages the importance of the topic).
—Bagumba (talk) 06:08, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not just recentism that leads to those AfD results - the bar to deletion is correctly higher than the bar to creation. Articles should not be created when significance is borderline, but equally once they have been created they shouldn't be AfDed until significance is no longer borderline, which can take some time. These articles shouldn't be on ITN, because the bar to posting should be high enough that only events where significance is clear can get posted. Thryduulf (talk) 10:26, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
... the bar to posting should be high ...: There's merits to that, but it shoud be tempered with the criticism that stale items remain posted, or that "regulars" have walled off ITN. —Bagumba (talk) 11:40, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That isn't what I said, I said the the bar to posting should be high enough that only events where significance is clear can get posted (emphasis added). That the bar is currently set too high does not negate that, nor does it justify removing the bar (or placing it on the floor). Thryduulf (talk) 11:47, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think we're roughly in agreement. —Bagumba (talk) 12:21, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Those aren't subjective arguments in the way signifcance is. They are arguments rooted in PAGs for which consensus can be assessed. voorts (talk/contributions) 18:43, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PAGs are also subjective, it's just an improvement over WP:ITNSIGNIF, which is seemingly written for everyone to have a backdoor (or wide open front door) to argue "their" nom. —Bagumba (talk) 05:56, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It will be impossible to get consensus on this since the conflicts at ITN lie not with an issue of process but rather with an issue of participation. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:42, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would also be supportive of proposals to bring engagement. DarkSide830 (talk) 17:04, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I really do think a step that needs to be done is around engagement. We haven't done a proper analysis of the number of suggested blurbs are made each month (ignoring RD and RD blurbs), how many of those are posted, and how many are those rejected for significance issues (not quality or stale). My gut says that we have fewer noms while the percentage of those that are rejected on significance remain the same, which means it is not the case that significance criteria aren't broken, but a failure to get nominations beyond the usual ITNR or large disaster ones. Masem (t) 16:13, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is gonna be a hard close, eh? With a driveby scroll, the !votes seem all over the place. Aaron Liu (talk) 13:27, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

How to replace

For those supporting complete removal of ITN, I think it would be worth offering some insights into what exactly should replace it. Granted, technically this discussion isn't about that, but I think the wider editor and readerbase may be more convinced that such a change is worthwhile if a clearly better alternative is proposed. DarkSide830 (talk) 17:10, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The Featured Picture should take the top right slot in the Desktop view as this would balance the Featured Article nicely and they are both supposed to be our best work. This would be an immediate replacement providing time for a new section to be implemented.

A good replacement for ITN would be a section of helpful navigation links. This might be called Topical Topics, to give it a meaningful title. These links would include:

These would provide most of what ITN does without all the discussion and drama. You might have a featured headline topic too – a single blurb for big breaking news like the 9/11 incident which started ITN. But I fear that this would require discussion which would start the drama all over again. Andrew🐉(talk) 18:14, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As with my previous comments about POTD taking the top right slot, it removes the way to describe the image and create a blurb like for TFA and TFL but even with a blurb, it could leave out necessary space to show the image off in a good resolution and size. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 22:35, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In addition to Andrew's suggestions, there are other more important aspects of Wikipedia that don't have their own spot on the main page. One option would be a place to feature several good articles of the day, like TFA but several small blurbs instead of one big one. DYK kind of does this, but the emphasis would be on quality over newness. Another option would be a section that explains anyone can edit Wikipedia, explains how to get started, and maybe provides links to basic instructions pages. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:37, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As stated, I would oppose the GA showcase idea, as it both encroaches on the differentiated function of TFA on the Main Page—and in doing so, it frankly seems likely to emphasize work that isn't our best in a way I'm not comfortable with. Naturally, there would be an extra stage of review for GAs that appear on the Main Page, but I'm not presently convinced the community has the ability to consistently ensure a higher standard of quality than the theoretical minimum—i.e. that one other editor signed off on the article passing WP:GA?. In my opinion, that minimum standard is insufficient to merit a more prominent placement on the Main Page than is currently facilitated by DYK. Remsense ‥ 论 00:19, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Such a process could be established, but it would have to be established first, and that would require consensus on what standards to apply and how to apply them and setting up the processes to support that. It would also need a group of editors interested and competent in reviewing content against those criteria and I suspect most people who fit that description are already fully engaged at existing processes like FAC, the existing GA and DYK. Thryduulf (talk) 00:27, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like a "Today's good article" would be better than a list of good articles recently promoted. I took a look at another wikipedia, itwiki's Main Page, and it has a section for "Quality Articles" which I am assuming is their Good articles. While I do see some other people in this thread have problems with it being not that well of a process, DYK reviews is less of a process than GA reviews and is allowed to be on the main page. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 22:43, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Right now there are three paths to DYK: (a) new article; (b) GA; (c) 5X (IIRC) expansion. (b) and (c) are maybe 5% of DYKs, which is why DYK has the (deserved) reputation as something of an embarrassment for the daily errors it puts on the front page, not to mention the half-baked articles readers find when they click through. As I advocate below, a number of problems are fixed in one fell swoop by changing DYK rules to eliminate path (a) (and mAYBE (c) -- not sure). Then DYK effectively becomes a GA showcase. The current DYK review process would still be there on top of the GA review, just like now -- a process simultaneously duplicative and full of holes, but no worse than it is now, and with the "new content" route eliminated, errors at DYK would go way down. E Eng 23:41, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Deciding that would probably just be a clone of TFA. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:06, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of TFL? Basically a clone of TFA but for lists. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 02:04, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure what you mean. TFL still has value as it's list-exclusive, while "TGA" would just be a much worse clone. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:51, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

These are all good ideas. I made very basic mock-ups of all four at User:Levivich/sandbox: Topical Topics, POTD, GA, and Learn to edit. Anyone should feel free to edit the sandbox pages directly to change the mock-ups or add new ones of your own. Levivich (talk) 19:38, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I like "topical topics" or POTD (today's featured picture). POTD makes a lot of sense next to TFA. Just a note, Wikipedia:Top 25 Report is marked with the {{Humor}} tag, with the text This page contains material that is kept because it is considered humorous. Such material is not meant to be taken seriously., so this should probably not be on the front page, unless it is vetted more by the community. Natg 19 (talk) 20:24, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be less overt humour in WP:TOP25 than you get at DYK which explicitly tries to be quirky and often goes for a cheap laugh. So, as there's no obvious reason for the {{humor}} tag, I've removed it. Andrew🐉(talk) 20:46, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

With or without the humor tag, those blurbs are not written for general readers and that page should not be on the front page. Schazjmd (talk) 20:55, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are lots of internal Wikipedia pages with bold links on the main page and so our general readers are clearly expected to use them. These include Wikipedia:Teahouse, Wikipedia:Reference desk and Wikipedia:Village pump. These may all have an informal tone and so there's clearly no prohibition of exposing such to our readers. We want our readers to understand that Wikipedia is not written by an exclusive elite but that they are welcome to edit too. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:07, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, whatever we settle on, my main concern will always be user engagement. ITN may have it's flaws, but I believe in it's purpose as it is to guide readers to articles they may wish to read. My concern with ITN removal is I don't believe most of the proposals I've seen would entice me to engage as a reader rather than an editor. Learn to Edit is an interesting one, but I feel like putting it at or near Other areas of Wikipedia is better (ie, not a box amongst the 4 on the main page). To me, TFP is better as a long box as it is now. I don't think the image without a blurb is really useful for readers, and each box has a dedicated picture as it is. Topical Topics to me seems too mundane and sterile, and just exacerbates the issue ITN has with supposed irregular updates (0 is less than infrequent). And I feel like Recently-listed good articles is just DYK without the interesting hook that may encourage readers to click on the articles (I believe my concern with a TFL section would be the same). DarkSide830 (talk) 18:32, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Dark if we find consensus to abolish. I like the idea of Topical Topics, but it desperately needs actual content instead of just links to not be sterile and provide a glean. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:33, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As a regular at POTD, the second one is challenging to look at. The blurb is meant to be like a DYK hook, it's supposed to quickly explain and describe the subject without going into too much detail. Completely removing and it and just having a link to the article and then the image just ruins the teaching ability of POTD. Even with a blurb, there isn't much room to write one. However, the GA and Learn to edit sections are the best imo. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 22:33, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I really like the GA box. I think it fits nicely with FA, exposing readers to more of editors' good work. I agree with @Cowboygilbert regarding not placing POTD in that slot. I'm

leaning oppose on Topical Topics. There's very little discussion at Portal talk:Current events so I'm not quite sure how consensus to post works there. I'd like to hear what the @FLC director and delegates: and other TFL/FL regulars have to say about doing TFL every day. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:15, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm in favor of running FLs more often, independent of where on the page they are. --Pres N 15:47, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I immediately thought this as well. It seems that, unless a concrete proposal or slate of proposals is promptly established as to what should replace ITN, the !votes for its removal are essentially being thrown away. Remsense ‥ 论 23:55, 8 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In my flames of foresight, I see four rows, for TFA, DYK, OTD and TFP. InedibleHulk (talk) 10:32, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia works on consensus, not one editor's crystal ball. If you want to see that design for the main page you need to actually propose it get consensus for it. Thryduulf (talk) 10:43, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Consider it proposed (again). InedibleHulk (talk) 10:50, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We could potentially make TFL a daily occurrence instead of something that only appears on Mondays and Fridays, or we could move POTD to ITN's current location. I don't really think highlighting GAs like that is a good idea, since they haven't been vetted as thoroughly as FAs. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:07, 9 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I support having Today's featured list as a daily occurance but not to the moving POTD to the ITN section because I feel like it could limit the amount of the blurb that you can write and to show the image in a great resolution and size. It works for TFA and TFL because the image is not the sole purpose of the main page activity. Though the comment of, "since they haven't been vetted as thoroughly as FAs" also doesn't make sense because DYK is allowed on the main page and DYK is easier to pass than a Good Article review. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 22:30, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've long said that DYK should feature ONLY GAs and drop the riduculous "new content" fetish, which might have made sense 20 years ago but now operates to force into the spotlight largely half-baked articles. Imagine if all the effort that currently goes into DYK reviews went into GA reviews instead (1/3 as may of them of course -- another requisite for improving DYK quality is decreasing throughput). The GA backlog would be cleared in no time. And if there are people who don't want to go to the effort of writing GAs, tough. E Eng 23:35, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

the "new content fetish" quote cracked me tf up lmao

Unfortunately, a lot of articles aren't up to GA standards and have DYK-able quality prose. It's whatever though. Cowboygilbert - (talk) ♥ 02:02, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

EEng, I completely agree. Any interest in the two of us teaming up so we can make this happen together? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:12, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

+1 Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:20, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thebiguglyalien, you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous pervert, I'll have you know that ... Oh wait. You're agreeing with me. OK then. The answer is yes and no. I have zero time for the next week, and very restricted time for the indefinite future after that. But if you'll take the lead I'll be right behind you.

What we're up against is this: if you search the DYK archives you'll find a couple of times where I've suggested that, and was always shot down. It's taken as axiomatic that DYK's function is to "showcase new content". There are a lot of people who like getting links to their new little articles on the main page, without doing too, too much work. It will be very hard to overcome that, as that group dominates the participants at Talk:DYK. It seems to me a two-phase approach might help:

Open a discussion (scrupulously avoiding a supports and opposes situation) during which the implications of such a change could be discussed -- the reduction in DYK throughput, increase in quality.
Based on what's learned during that discussion, think about where and when to actually propose the change. Talk:DYK is not the place -- such a proposal would absolutely die there. An RfC at VP might be right.

I'm going to ping my goto guys Levivich, Tryptofish, David Eppstein to see if we can get them on board as well. E Eng 01:46, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the function of DYK on the front page is to encourage editors to create new content much more than to encourage readers to read new content. I think that's still a worthwhile thing to encourage. But then, I never intentionally go to the front page so my opinion on what we see there may not be worth much. Also, did you know ...that the did you know section is not shown to mobile app readers? ...that in 2021, roughly twice as many people per day used mobile than desktop? Keeping those things in mind, what we put into DYK may not be very relevant. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:30, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

...that most mobile readers use the website, which shows DYK, instead of the app? Aaron Liu (talk) 14:22, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

the function of DYK on the front page is to encourage editors to create new content – Absolutely, but creating new content doesn't have to mean creating a new article. Twenty years ago the quick-and-dirty way to use DYK as a motivator was "Hey, create a new article and you can have the satisfaction of seeing it on the front page!", and that made sense when so many missing articles awaited creating, but six million articles later, a need at least as big as creating new articles is expanding existing articles to bring them to a higher level -- like bringing them to GA. But the axiom that DYK exists to showcase "new content", and that "new content" means "newly created articles", continues to have everyone hypnotized. E Eng 22:02, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Aaron Liu is right. Page views for the main page show (for daily averages this month): 1.82 M on desktop, just 51 (that's 51, not 51 M) on the mobile app, and a weighty 2.48 M on mobile web. So 1) unless this month has been wildly divergent (and it doesn't seem to be; I checked the year's averages too), almost nobody uses the mobile app, and more people still use desktop than everyone seems to think.

Here's a piechart of readership for this year, based on the device type for average pageviews:

Percentage of pageviews for the Main Page by platform, yearly average 2024

Desktop (43.2%)

Mobile web (56.8%)

Mobile app (0.00000770884%)

Pie charts aside, I have to disagree with EEng. (Disclaimer: I am, in fact, a person who like[s] getting links to their new little articles on the main page, without doing too, too much work). I think it is fine for DYK to showcase things that are GAs. GAs take time; showcasing some new content on interesting things of decent quality is good. (Disclaimer: I have so far epically failed to elevate an article to GA). It's an encouragement for lazy editors like me. Sometimes it can be a good "first step" where the next ones are peer review, GA, FA, TFA, and RAGFAWKO. Cremastra (talk) 22:51, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The mobile app does not use the main page as its landing page, hence statistics of mobile app views of the main page are irrelevant. That said, I'm pretty sure the usage of the mobile web main page is leaps and bounds beyond usage of the mobile app, but I can't find the statistics that I once read. Aaron Liu (talk) 23:36, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Nonetheless, it's the main page we're discussing, so it should be main page pageviews we should be looking at. Cremastra (talk) 00:13, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

David's premise was that most Wikipedia readers don't use Main page (and instead use a landing page with Top 10, FA, and OTD), and thus he argued that DYK is irrelevant to the modern audience. To evaluate this argument, we would need to look at the usage of the mobile app's landing page, not the views of Main page from the mobile app. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:37, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think they made the assumption that mobile viewers all use the mobile app. So what we need are statistics on mobile usage of browser vs app. —Bagumba (talk) 16:56, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Finally found it. Mobile web clearly and significantly dwarfs mobile app usage. Aaron Liu (talk) 20:04, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

(Responding to ping.) If this is a discussion about how to replace EEng, I'm in favor of doing so. If EEng wants me to support the idea of making DYK into a GA showcase, I'm strongly opposed to doing so. I like thinking up hook-y hooks for new pages, and I think all the hyperventilating over DYKs pointing to embarrassing content is a case of protesting too much. Much of Wikipedia as a whole is deeply flawed, because it's a work in progress, and there are even editors who are deeply into FAs who regard GAs as an embarrassment. Personally, I'm not wild about Featured Lists, so there. As for ITN, which seems to be where this discussion started, I'm no fan of recentism, but it's not something I care about that much. I often check the obituaries, perhaps to see if I'm listed there. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:33, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

DYK nominators want to see their articles on the Main Page. They don't want to do any more work to get them there. Anything that takes more work from the nominator to get them there is a non-starter. I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that the only way DYK will ever get meaningful, productive change is if it actually grinds to a halt from lack of volunteers. This is coming from someone who appreciates DYK. I've got an article appearing right now. But I'm completely demoralized by the tyranny of the consensus there. Valereee (talk) 01:25, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe there could be 2 featured articles? A completely random proposition but I don't see why that wouldn't work. win8x (talking | spying) 22:11, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think two boxes that only have two total target links isn't helpful. The Main Page is, by definition, largely focused on featuring quality content which is great, but does an article being featured quality entice readers to read an article enough to justify changing from a multi-target box to a single-target one? DarkSide830 (talk) 23:18, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The last I heard, less than one new FA is produced per day and so TFA is already doing reruns and scraping the barrel. It's DYK that is overloaded with fresh content and could use more space. Andrew🐉(talk) 18:48, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured articles that haven't been on the Main Page seems exuberantly healthy to me. Aaron Liu (talk) 18:55, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

15 years ago, that page listed 1200 articles. 10 years age, it listed 1300. Five years ago, it was 900. Today it is 700. The trend is not in a healthy direction. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:07, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how going from down 400 to down 200 is an unhealthy trend, and the FA criteria has also traveled in a healthy direction. Aaron Liu (talk) 00:46, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the trend continues, and especially if it accelerates, then we will eventually run out of FAs to put on the Main Page. The Main Page needs 365 articles a year. The last time we saw 365 new FAs being promoted in a year was 2013. This is just simple math: If you start with 700 in the pool, add 300 new FAs, take out 365 being shown on the Main Page, then the next year you have 635 in the pool. And in 10 years, you have nothing for the Main Page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Would it honestly be a bad thing if featured articles were allowed to reappear on the main page? I get the preference for new stuff, but I don't see why we can't reshow older featured articles. --Super Goku V (talk) 07:08, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree there isn't an issue if we re-run articles (I'm pretty sure I've seen a featured article appear on the main page twice before). But I don't think there is a need for two featured articles. Traumnovelle (talk) 07:12, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The rules were changed in 2017 to permit FA reruns as issues were already apparent then. See discussion, "FAs are not being produced as fast as the TFA slot uses them. The number of available featured articles is also reduced by the fact that many older FAs have degraded to the point where they are no longer suitable for TFA. ..." Andrew🐉(talk) 07:32, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

FAs can already be rerun since yes, they aren't being produced fast enough. But readers won't remember a featured article from 2014, so I don't think there's an issue with that. win8x (talking | spying) 13:34, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The ones from 10 years ago are not usually suitable for running. They're not up to the current standards. In some cases (e.g., medical topics, recent political topics), it requires truly major effort to re-write them. For example, Autism was a TFA years ago. At a glance, about a third of the ~400 sources currently violate WP:MEDDATE. That's just one of the problems in that FFA. I really think that re-running that would basically require starting over from scratch. In the category of less dire situations, Menstrual cycle has appeared twice as TFA, but it required two months' work from multiple editors to make that happen. Some of those editors were giving up time on writing new FAs to rescue this old one. These are both subjects of broad interest that I could imagine editors deciding to run them every five or ten years, but the amount of work necessary to make that happen, and the opportunity costs involved, should not be underestimated. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:14, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fair. I am in no way involved in TFA or featured articles in general, so I wouldn't know. Thanks for the insight. win8x (talking | spying) 13:47, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I think this discussion should be moved to its own section at WP:VPR. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:18, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't make any sense to split this off until the RFC is closed and that that close shows support for Option #3. Otherwise, you'd do a bunch of extra work that doesn't get implemented if option #3 does not have consensus. Masem (t) 00:24, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

My thinking was the discussion is already happening in parallel. I disagree that this discussion would lack value even if there's no consensus for option 3. Given that there appears to be a strong consensus that ITN has problems (notwithstanding the potential consensuses for options 1 or 2), some editors might want to continue discussing and workshopping ideas for the future. Closing this discussion with the rest of the RfC would effectively create a break in this discussion. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:34, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can't support any replacement for ITN being in any way connected to "current events". The problem with ITN is that it gives editors an excuse to violate NOTNEWS and stray from our purpose as a historical reference. Replacing it with a link to current events (with its own processes to have things listed) is just moving the problem elsewhere. I would much rather a new section idea emerge from this discussion - I don't have any ideas currently but if I think of one I'll come back. In lieu of a new section for the main page, I'd much rather expand today's featured articles to be longer (and move DYK and OTD to the same side, or keep them where they are and just expand TFA to take up the whole top half). -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 05:50, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Impact missing

The proposer's rationale for the reform centers on the process. I've very little knowledge of the current process and cannot really weigh in but I think when evaluating a reform we should primarily consider what impact this reform would have. Which of the news that are currently featured on the main page would not be there and which news would appear instead? ITN exists for the readers and the readers care about the news and not about the process.

To give an example, today we have the following news:

The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences is awarded to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James A. Robinson (pictured) for their studies of global inequality.
The comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) is visible in the western sky after sunset.
The Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to South Korean poet and novelist Han Kang.

I checked the front pages on Pressreader and I saw many more mentions of Trump's weird campaign event than of Nobel winners and comets. Does it mean that this is what we would feature on ITN? Alaexis_¿question? 18:34, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your Trump example only applies for the current form of proposal 1. I've commented on its nonapplicability to proposal 2 here, and if the proposal's current volatile-ish state is retained, then the Trump example would roll off the front page fairly quickly. Aaron Liu (talk) 21:04, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What would en.wiki properly write about in regards to Trump's town hall, in considering NOTNEWS? It absolutely should not be a separate article, and at best we would (properly) include maybe one or two sentences about it on the Trump campaign article. Which would fail to be a proper update for ITN in terms of quality. Now, I haven't looked, but I can envision that in this current environment of how poorly NOTNEWS is followed, editors would have added tons of opinions and commentary and reactions that came from this to make it seem more important than it really is, give the news' emphasis on this. That type of content is fine at Wikinews but not en.wiki where we are meant to summarize for the long term. That's a very strong example of why proposal 1 is unworkable because of the disconnect about what news prioritizes, and what an encyclopedia prioritizes. Masem (t) 21:36, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I had a look at the front pages of UK newspapers (they were a mix of the 15th and 16th). The story with the greatest coverage was objections to changes to National Insurance contributions that might (or might not) happen in the forthcoming budget. At most there would be a single sentence somewhere about this, but people objecting to political decisions that haven't been taken yet is not encyclopaedic information (because a different set of people would be complaining if a different decision was on the cards). Also highly covered was the new manager of the England football team, that is encyclopaedic information and plenty can be written about it but is it really relevant to a global, general purpose encyclopaedia? There are apparently 211 men's teams affiliated with FIFA, is a change in the manager of all of them relevant? What about women's teams? What about other sports? Thryduulf (talk) 21:47, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As to Proposal 1, when this question was asked during the RFCBEFORE, I raised the example of Polaris Dawn (ITNC discussion). It wasn't posted; oppose votes included:

"It's not a major milestone in human spaceflight"
"it wasn't actually even a full space walk"
"I don't see what makes a commercial spacewalk so special"
"this would only have been notable if the spacewalk had gone wrong"
"Disagree that there is anything particularly notable or groundbreaking about the first "commercialized" spaceflight"

Posterchild for the kind of thing that I think ITN needs to never do: base its decisions on whether editors think something is important or not. Meanwhile, it would pass the "world front pages test," e.g. front page in major national papers in Spain, France, and Austria. Now I know, those three are all European countries, but forgive me, I'm the one who collected those examples, I know what the major papers are in those countries, so at the time, I just went for three easy examples to show that it was front page news outside the US.

It's hard to do this for Proposal 1 because I don't know of any easy way to search historical archives; just today's papers, and sometimes I happen to save the links to the images (as above). But anyway, I looked at today's papers, and what would be posted under Proposal 1 is Canada expelling Indian diplomats over the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. As you might expect, this is front page news in both Canada and India, and the US. But it's also on the front page in Japan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and South Korea.

Tomorrow, maybe I'll take a look and see if anything is front page news across the world. Proposal 1 wouldn't necessarily generate a posting every day. And that's OK. Levivich (talk) 23:04, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A core issue is that Wikipedia is not a newspaper. What makes headlines does not equate to appropriate encyclopedic content. Newspapers (generally) are keeping its readers informed of what's happening 24/7, whereas we are supposed to summarize events in a manner for the long-term, and not every 24/7 event merits inclusion. To use the example of Canada expelling Indian diplomats, that's a short term aspect of a larger story which may or may not go anywhere. Diplomatic relations between nations are strained all the time. Obviously, in connection to Nijjar, this particular incident should be documented, but it's nowhere close to apparent that that is a news event that will have enduring coverage - in most cases, these relations are mended within months and it becomes a distance memory. That's why any criteria that rests solely on what is making headlines without any type of editorial oversight on WP runs against WP:NOTNEWS. We can certainly use what is being widely covered as part of the reason to post, and the significance criteria already includes the consideration of how a story is covered in major papers/headlines. But we also need all editors to keep aware about NOTNEWS as a fundamental principle of WP. If one wants to write about news events without the concern about the encyclopedic purpose getting in the way, then we have Wikinews for that. Masem (t) 00:34, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"Dealing with NOTNEWS is a separate issue beyond this, but it should be addressed before fundamentally changing the purpose of ITN"

"the fundamental issue being the NOTNEWS factor"

"Most of this comes from righting the entire ship when it comes to NOTNEWS"

"NOTNEWS itself means we should not have this unhealthy focus on current news, itself a major problem across WP"

"With NOTNEWS as the problem"

"in this current environment of how poorly NOTNEWS is followed"

Why reply to my comment to say it a ~~seventh time~~ eighth time in the same discussion? There's a survey section where you can express your view, there's a discussion section ... this section is asking for impact, not about what we think about NOTNEWS.

Meanwhile, what WP:NOTNEWS actually says:

In principle, all Wikipedia articles should contain up-to-date information. Editors are also encouraged to develop stand-alone articles on significant current events.

Levivich (talk) 00:50, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If you are so adamant that "Wikipedia is not a newspaper", then why even have a "In the News" section? Having an "In the News" section goes against this entire principle, as many (incorrectly) believe that ITN is a "news portal". That is definitely what I thought when I first came across it. Natg 19 (talk) 00:52, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just adding this idea if it wasn't said already.

TL;DR: We could use conventional traffic and clickthrough rate data to figure out which criterion gets the most engagement

L;R: I was always under the impression that the purpose of most sections on the main page was to increase engagement with Wikipedia's contents using something akin to clickbait. For example, featured pictures are visually appealing, featured articles are highly informative and enjoyable to read, and DYKs give one-line hooks that play on the reader's curiousity. Along these lines, I thought that ITN's purpose is to be yet another form of clickbait that hooks readers who're curious to learn more about a recent event. If editors can't agree on the best selection criteria for recent events to increase engagement (assuming that this is the goal), why not use more data-informed methods to figure this out? This same line of reasoning goes for determining whether to remove ITN or not. How would that change affect engagement?

This data can be gathered by taking e.g. the last 2 years of ITN history and figuring out if there's a relationship between (i) the event topic category or (ii) the amount of news coverage of the event and the increase in the # of views of the event articles after they are published in a new ITN entry. spintheer (talk) 18:56, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say the goal is, or should be, to help readers find what they're looking for. That will increase engagement as a secondary effect, but increasing engagement (getting the reader to click on a link) shouldn't be our goal. However, your idea is a good one anyway, as it will help us measure if we are helping readers find what they're looking for. Levivich (talk) 19:33, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Toward Next Steps

~~Firstly, I can see merit in editors who are asking for this thread to be closed.~~ None of the three options being presented are the solution to the issues that we have. I am going to be deliberately provocative here -- but, I will caveat it by saying that it is not directed at one single editor or group. Here goes -- this thread is meaningless and is an example of the WP:BIKESHED fallacy in my opinion. The truth is that we are using 20th century tools to address 21st century problems. Furthermore, we are hoping for a process to solve a problem that is inherently a technology problem. What do I mean by that? While we have gone far far far away from the notion of a static web in all other fields and yet, we continue to operate the ITN box as a static entity made much worse by the fact that we have processes that have degenerated and admin capacity to administer processes practically non existent.

The true future of the ITN panel is in a dynamically (algorithmically) controlled output with some amount of manual interventions to avoid runaway situations. This is a technology solution and the unfortunate truth is that none of the folks in this group can solve this technology problem and hence we will always go round and round on the process front.

I had outlined this earlier at WT:ITN. The future of the panel is in three levels of personalization of the ITN panel and definitely not in some group of editors fighting it out. The three levels are as follows.

Trending topics (no personalization, but still dynamic)
Trending topics near you (personalized by geography) and
Recommended topics for you (personalized for you)

The truth is no one in this group can implement this without working hand-in-hand with the software folks from the foundation. Case in point the grounds-up iOS Wikipedia app has somewhat solved this problem with the trending topics panel. The homepage needs to go toward that solution, not tomorrow, not today, but almost a few years ago. And I repeat, I am being provocative, but, I am being honest -- none of the participants in this discussion forum can solve this one. PS: In the meantime, what we have going is as good as we can get to. We are in a maintenance mode. But, we should not throw away we have going without getting a strong replacement in place. I wish everyone the absolute best. Ktin (talk) 00:18, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Any of those are still effectively option 3 (removing ITN), and that's not gaining traction.

As I've commented, I believe the bulk of the problems at ITN stem from the fact that we have not been holding WP to the NOTNEWS standard, which leads to editors creating too many new event articles that really aren't encyclopedic topics in the long term - and the impact on ITN being the nomination of news items stemming from these articles. Until we course-correct on NOTNEWS, so that people are not rushing to create event articles just because a newspaper covered it, and thus cut back on the poor nominations at ITN, then we can see if there's further issues with the significance criteria (which honestly, I don't think that will be the case once we get everyone focused on what are encyclopedic news events and not what should be at Wikinews.) Masem (t) 00:27, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We are again falling back to hoping to solve a technology problem through people-processes. Hard no. PS: If you read my message above, you will see that I strongly oppose #3 before putting in place a technology solution. We, unfortunately, are no where near that and this group is not the right group to get us there.Ktin (talk) 00:30, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

“Should be on Wikinews” I agree with the principle of your statement on NOTNEWS, but there is nothing reviving that corpse of a project and its numerous, numerous, numerous issues. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:09, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see how "top 25 report but blurbless and short-range" would showcase our quality content. Aaron Liu (talk) 01:44, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the minimum standard of quality ITN bar could be left to DYK. Both of the Wikipedia apps already showcase trending content on their homepages without problems that I'm aware of. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 02:26, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it is good for the official iOS and Android Wikipedia apps, I refuse to buy the argument that it is not good for Wikipedia Web. Ktin (talk) 04:13, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"has no problems" does not equate "good". I really agree with Alach's featurability principle that the main page should showcase achievement. Aaron Liu (talk) 14:27, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I also don't see how an "AI generated" (dynamic) solution is better than the above three proposals. There is no community support for a "trending news" box. If it is desired, I don't believe there is a "technology issue" - it could be done. Natg 19 (talk) 02:19, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dynamic is not necessarily the same as AI generated. Ktin (talk) 04:05, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, I don't know what this means Firstly, I can see merit in editors who are asking for this thread to be closed. I don't see any editors saying this. This is an open discussion that has not yet run its course. Natg 19 (talk) 02:31, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Don't know how I read that one wrong. Fixing my comment. Ktin (talk) 04:04, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

AI will prevail. TNT Wikpedia. Damn Skynet. —Bagumba (talk) 03:48, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The apps have a nice option to "customize the feed". Each section of the main page is presented as a card and the display of each card can be turned on and off to taste. The web-based formats are comparatively inflexible and do not allow the reader such choice. The WMF should do more to empower the readers. The idea that a handful of community insiders should decide what the readers get is not sensible. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:24, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

...which ties back to my idea of having WMF or whoever conduct a survey to gauge what casual readers themselves want on the front page, but I understand there’s a fat chance of that happening. I also seriously doubt that casual readers would be happy with the "insiders"' decision here to remove ITN from the front page and replace it with a boring list of links (to GAs, editing tutorials, portals, etc.) or yet another FA box, which have been proposed in the section above. Some1 (talk) 14:44, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

People don't come to Wikipedia to read the news. Most people get their news from news apps and websites, and television. I find people often share articles about odd historical events or idiosyncratic people on social media, so I think a list of recent GAs (perhaps with one sentence blurbs each, like DYK), would be of interest to readers. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:29, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Which is why ITN has been to showcase quality articles that happen to be in the news. Our goal has never been to keep readers informed on what has happened in the last week, but instead to showcase how well we are as a dynamic resource, featuring articles that have been in the news. They may not be of GA quality, but they should have significant updates from the news coverage and in decent shape to show editors visiting the front page how we can work as a wiki to update something quickly. Masem (t) 00:37, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with your contention that it is valuable to show editors visiting the front page how we can work as a wiki to update something quickly.

The front page should be for readers, not editors.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not an outlet for news analysis.

voorts (talk/contributions) 00:43, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Everything on the front page has the goal of enticing readers to read articles and encourage them to become editors if they can add more information to these articles. And NOTNEWS has nothing to do with news analysis, it is about keeping coverage of news topics to an encyclopedic summary style. (We don't want news analysis, we want want the long-term impact would be of an event) Masem (t) 00:49, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The argument of only featuring "encyclopedic topics" kind of falls on its face if there is a sufficient Wikipedia article to target as a result of a news event. At that point, the only standards that should need to be met is whether the article was recently updated and whether a minimum standard of quality has been met, not whether or not Randy in Boise thinks the Deputy President of Kenya being impeached is a big deal. Instead, what we are doing is indeed analyzing the news to determine whether or not the participants at ITN/C agree that something is significant, using such rationales as: "The full story is that he is a somewhat well-known and rich white person from an English-speaking country."

This is the problem. We still have failed to identify what our actual goal is. I remember a survey being done for this purpose, and I'm not sure it ever came to any meaningful consensus. If the goal is to showcase articles that have been in the news, why are we using ITN/C as a consensus-based process to determine which articles are newsworthy enough? _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 19:08, 21 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If readers want to find something, they can search for it. We don't need social media-style "personalized feeds". Keep people's minds open. How about a big "random article" button? Cremastra (talk) 18:09, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia already provides exposure for Commons in "Today's featured picture" - at this point, we should feature Wikinews instead of trying to recreate it. Joofjoof (talk) 01:35, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Um... have you like, looked at Wikinews? It's a joke. Just Step Sideways ^{from this world ..... today} 23:32, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe it would be better if the people creating news articles on en.wp created things there. Traumnovelle (talk) 23:34, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Like all small communities, I'm sure that they would benefit from having a few more good contributors. But it's a different thing altogether. Wikinews is meant to be a place for original research – for finding a likely source on social media, say, and asking them to give you new, unpublished information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:11, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can call myself a brain surgeon on the Internet, but that doesn't make me one. Wikipedia can have its own page for amateur journalism, but that doesn't make it encyclopedic content. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:37, 29 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]