My apologies as I do not understand this process, unless maybe it's better that I'm outside looking in. Today, Saturday November 26, the front page reads:

"NASA's Artemis 1 is successfully launched on an uncrewed test flight to the Moon."

This is old news. The spacecraft reached the moon on Monday, 5 days ago. [1] The way the blurb reads, one would presume it's still on its way there.

All I can find on Artemis In-The-News is the following blurb, proposed for Monday November 21:

"NASA's Orion spacecraft performs a flyby of the Moon, coming within 130 kilometres (81 mi) of the lunar surface before entering into a lunar orbit."

I don't care if this wasn't noteworthy enough to merit a new blurb. It could have replaced the existing one, if that one didn't come down sooner. At the very least, the existing one should have been updated, something like:

"NASA's Artemis 1 successfully launched the uncrewed Orion spacecraft on a flyby of the Moon."

I'm sure this will be dropping off soon, so there's not much point to proposing this change now. The question is more about process.

News items are events in progress. They're expected to be changing. Is there no visibility on when something becomes overshadowed by a more recent, if not more significant, development?

I would expect the scenario to play out exactly as it did here. Someone proposes a news story related to a current blurb. The news story might not be approved for a new blurb, so a replacement is prepared.

Otherwise, you wind up peddling yesterday's news as tho it were still current. DAVilla (talk) 01:23, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

I'd actually argue that it's a common misconception that WP:ITN posts news, as its stated purpose is not actually to be a news ticker as such but to direct readers to substantially updated content of wide interest. However, that's beside the point of what you seem to be asking.

So first and foremost, I do see what you are seeing - which is that the current events portal for November 21st does include a blurb indicating the Artemis fly-by. But that is separate from the nomination process of ITN/C. The integration of the current events portal is to serve as a reference point and as a convenience or courtesy to ITN/C participants, not as an automatic nomination for posting on the ITN template. They have their own process that they undergo for posting items there (if you can even call it a process, it looks to me as if editors just add whatever they want with little scrutiny). For Wikipedia:In the news, a user still needs to step forward with a nomination for that news item, and then a consensus is reached through participation of other editors to determine whether it merits posting per the established criteria on WP:ITNCRIT.

That being said, WP:ITNR does include as a recurring item: "Arrival of spacecraft (to lunar orbit and beyond) at their destinations" This means that as long as the target article is nominated and updated, the item should automatically be posted by an administrator. That this item failed to be nominated does seem to be a breakdown in the process, in that it was overlooked, or nobody was paying attention, or whatever the case may be. Why this happened, I don't know. So in that sense, there is merit to your complaint. 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 18:41, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

Feel free to suggest updates to the content of specific existing blurbs at WP:ITNC. It can't change if nobody suggests it first. —Bagumba (talk) 00:59, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Todays posting of the metric prefix article in this condition with the general support of commenters is out of line with our criteria on article quality which state:

"Articles should be well referenced; one or two "citation needed" tags may not hold up an article, but any contentious statements must have a source, and having entire sections without any sources is unacceptable."

The metric prefix article is orange tagged for poor sourcing, has numerous paragraphs (and whole sections) of assertions that are uncited. If we are no longer applying this then it should be deleted from the criteria - Dumelow (talk) 00:00, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Or you could request that the posting be pulled from ITN. One bad posting doesn't mean we nuke the criteria out of existence. 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 03:07, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

No need. I pulled it. – Muboshgu (talk) 03:20, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

@Tone:: Courtesy ping to you as the poster.—Bagumba (talk) 03:44, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

The last time I checked the full article it did not have the orange tag. Before I posted, I just checked for the update which was good. So, an unfortunate development in between. I agree with pulling, of course. Tone 08:15, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

It didn't have the orange tag when it was posted, but it did lack sources. – Muboshgu (talk) 13:58, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Such mistakes happen but can easily be fixed. We really shouldn't clamp down on posters, solicit explanations and re-consider our criteria.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 08:03, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for pulling Muboshgu. I had reported this issue at WP:Errors but it received no response in the 12 hours or so before I posted here. Had it received any support I would have pulled it myself. I, and three others, did also note the article quality was lacking in the nomination discussion. As this wasn't a bar to posting I presumed I was out of touch with our current practice on article quality, I am nowhere near as active here as I was in the past (aside from RD nominations). Based on the feedback above, this doesn't appear to be the case, please consider this proposal withdrawn - Dumelow (talk) 08:40, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't see any of this as trying to "clamp down on posters". Everyone just seems to be want to understand what happened and if there is some disconnect or not. —Bagumba (talk) 10:26, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Yeah I shouldn't've supported this. I was affected by the "Isn't this a ray of sunshine" section above and felt that this was a good subject for ITN, but if I really felt that way I should've just done the work and made the article more presentable... ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 09:01, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

• Per WP:V, citations are expected for "all quotations, all material whose verifiability has been challenged, all material that is likely to be challenged, and all contentious matter about living and recently deceased persons." What it doesn't say that a citation is expected for every paragraph, sentence, fact or other such fragment. See also WP:REFCLUTTER.

The article in question contains lots of basic material which is not controversial or difficult to verify. For example, "1 km² means one square kilometre, or the area of a square of 1000 m by 1000 m" or "5 cm = 5×10⁻² m = 5 × 0.01 m = 0.05 m".

So, some common sense should be used in such a case, not a bureaucratic rule.

Insofar as our readership has now been deprived of this news, ITN has failed. If you feel the article actually requires further improvement, then please improve it.

Andrew🐉(talk) 10:19, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Feel free to get consensus to loosen WP:ITNQUALITY:

Articles should be well referenced...having entire sections without any sources is unacceptable.

—Bagumba (talk) 10:35, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

That's the point of this discussion. I support Dumelow's proposal per WP:CONLEVEL, "participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope." Andrew🐉(talk) 12:36, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: with the greatest respect, I think you're unlikely to ever get consensus for the notion that an article in the shape the metric units article was in should be posted. POTD is the only section of the main page where that sort of thing washes, and that's mainly because it's deemed unfair to picture editors to insist they have to get an article into shape as well as working on images. (And by the way, you mentioned DYK being a lot more "relaxed" last week - I don't necessarily agree with that, I think the standards are much the same in both venues; it's just that if someone submitted an article to DYK with as many lacking citations as the above article, it would be rejected or tagged for improvement straightaway and would never get close to the main page; it's merely that the ITN process has less steps along the way, making mistakes easier to make). CHeers  — Amakuru (talk) 12:51, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

The article in question was posted and, as far as I can tell, our general readership was fine with it. The idea that some arbitrary level of citations is required purely for appearance's sake is not policy and never has been. Citations should be used when specifically required to verify controversial statements, not sprinkled across articles like decoration. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:06, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

We want stuff on the main page to present the example that newer editors should strive for in creating articles, and significant lack of sources is not what we want to give the impression is being okay. WP:V is one of the strongest policies to at least have WP seem somewhat reputable. Masem (t) 13:56, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm fine with WP:V as it's core policy and I quoted it above. What I'm not fine with is ITN is having its own local verification rules which are different. That's what WP:CONLEVEL is talking about – projects trying to do their own thing per not invented here. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:16, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

The rules aren't different at all, it's just that they're enforced here. WP:V may have meant a smattering of cites here and there in the early days of Wikipedia, but for the last decade at least, it's meant that all statements except obvious calculations and WP:SKYISBLUE-type assertions must be cited. There is no formal assessment process on the project from WP:GA to WP:FA to WP:DYK to WP:AFC to WP:PR that allows uncited chunks of text to get past, and that is the standard applied consistently everywhere. Now I'm sure you're about to point out that there are large numbers of articles that don't meet this standard. Well yes, and we don't delete them on the grounds that Wikipedia:Wikipedia is a work in progress and on balance such articles are a net positive even with uncited text, as long as said text isn't defamatory on a BLP etc. But that shouldn't be confused for thinking WP policy is to allow such uncited text. It isn't.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:12, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

The standard {{grading scheme}} does not expect many citations until grade B. The bulk of the articles listed in DYK/ITN/OTD are graded start or C class. Currently, the proportions are 25% B, 50% C, 25% Start. And quality isn't just a matter of counting citations. What matters more is accuracy, neutrality, clarity and so forth. A proper quality scale assesses all these factors, not just one. ITN's rules are idiosyncratic and weak. We should use the standard scale. The SI system is successful because it's a common standard. In the old days, every town had its own definitions of weight and length but such local rules are no longer sensible. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:31, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Most ITN articles are newly created so we don't expect a proper graded review on them by the relevant projects in the time they are created. But we are expecting they are representative of the best work that can be done on WP in the relatively short time of their creation. That means sourcing that reflects what we expect of high quality articles, in addition to the other factors like neutrality, etc. (which has been raised at various ITNCs). sourcing though is usually the easiest to observe if it is incomplete. Masem (t) 17:36, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

My most recent ITN nomination of the Java earthquake went very smoothly because the article was mostly written by an active and effective member of WikiProject Earthquakes. ITN should collaborate with other projects, using common standards, rather than being insular and idiosyncratic. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:57, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

We do; projects that cover quakes and hurricanes know what good sourcing is, and typically those articles come to us in good shape. Also aircrashes too, as well as athletic RDs.

What usually doesn't come to us in good shape are RDs particularly for celebrities/actors, and long-existing articles (like the metric one) that have problem been on WP since its inception but haven't been put through any project quality ringers. And thus the problems are typically exposed by ITN.

Further, I know of no project that would have allowed the sourcing of the type in that metric article be considered passing for even a B-class article. WP:V is that engrained throughout WP Masem (t) 18:14, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

In my opinion, this could be an excellent rule of thumb that a blurb may get pulled if the bolded article gets tagged after posting. I leave it open for further discussion whether this should be written somewhere or not.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 11:07, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

People do very frequently support or oppose ITN blurbs without even looking at (or at least mentioning) the quality of the article proposed. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 11:08, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

True, but it's up to the poster to vet the quality before posting and dismiss support votes overlooking article's quality. Here we discuss that admins should monitor article's quality while the blurb containing that article bolded is on the main page.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 12:24, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm not going to assign any blame here, but we can certainly learn from things for future reference. In this case, looking at the article as it stood at the time of posting, there is simply no way it was fit for posting then, orange tag or no orange tag. Vast swathes of it were uncited including whole sections. What we need is clear instructions for admins that a check-over of the article is required before posting. Even if it has five supports and no opposes or whatever, it might be that nobody has evaluated the quality yet; or perhaps the supporters are newcomers who aren't familiar with the quality requirements. Maybe a commented note in the template or something is required? Not sure how best to communicate this.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:45, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Tone basically said they made a mistake, not that they didn't know or agree with the quality requirement. I don't think any additional note is needed. It would be obvious wikilawyering to say that quality issues can only be flagged before a post, and not after. —Bagumba (talk) 16:07, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

We are bounded by the requirements of the Main Page that any bolded linked article should represent some of WP's best work. While a few unsourced obvious facts are okay, huge sections are not. Masem (t) 13:54, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

There's no such requirement. Spot checks indicate that most of the bold-linked articles are graded C class and so that's the median level of quality. Our best work is represented by the FA – that's its whole point. The other sections have a different focus and purpose. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:19, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

• Without placing any blame, in general it is incumbent upon the posting admin to give the article a cursory quality check before posting. Many (if not most) people voting for support make no statements about article quality, which really should be the first, last, and primary criteria for posting anything on the main page, without exception. Significance assessments are of secondary concern to article quality. It doesn't really matter if 1000 people have decided some event is The Most Important Thing To Ever Happen In History, if the article is not up-to-snuff quality wise, it should not be posted. That being said, I don't think that good-faith disagreements over what counts as "good enough" for the main page represent anything wrong here. All guidance on what level of sourcing is "enough" are always going to be rules-of-thumb and subject to reasonable exceptions based on the specific article. While the guidance does say something along the lines of entirely unreferenced sections being a deal-breaker, that usually is true, but like every rule at Wikipedia should not be blindly obeyed without first looking at what is in the section in question. Perhaps the information is all WP:CALC-type stuff, in which case zero citations are fine. --Jayron32 16:15, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Following on from the now-archived discussion about recent deaths entries I've compiled a lot of data about every nomination between 1 July and 31 October 2022. There are some basic statistics below (please feel free to improve the formatting and add more). The full data is at Wikipedia:In the news/2022 ITNRD analysis along with notes and a link to the spreadsheet.

• 540 nominations were analysed, 441 (81.67%) were posted, 99 were not posted.
• 124 editors made at least one nomination, 42 made more than one, 10 more than ten and 4 more than 25 (Thriley, Dumelow, Muboshgu and Bloom6132)
• 18 admins posted at least one nomination, 13 more than one, 6 more than 10, and three more than 25 (Spencer, Stephen and PFHLai). The latter two were responsible for posting 68% of nominations between them.
• Article subjects of 84 different nationalities were nominated, 73 different nationalities were posted. The top three were American (257 nominations), British (48) and Indian (19).
• 79% of nominations were male, 20% female and 1% animals.
• 138 (25.56%) of nominations were of people whose primary notability was related to sports, 74 (13.70%) related to politics, 67 (12.41%) entertainment, and 53 (9.81%) music.
• The main reason for nominations not being posted was inadequate sourcing (53 of 99).

Thryduulf (talk) 02:38, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

I forgot to link it here last night, but at Special:Permalink/1118334814#Proportion of biographies Cryptic and Andrew Gray crunched some numbers regarding the proportion of all biographies and came up with approximate figures that this would make our pool of biographies 20.4% Americans, 33.1% athletes (!), and 5.1% American athletes, give or take.. Thryduulf (talk) 11:56, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

That would not be surprising given that ITN is still volunteer driven, and athletics is a hugely populated editor space.

Also a bit disappointed in the gender ratio, as while we're still at a tail of where women's contributions may have been minimalized from mid-20th century, I would not expect the delta to be that much, and I don't know if projects like Women in Red are aware of ITN as a valid outlet to help improve underrepresented coverage. Masem (t) 13:12, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

@Masem I had a quick look at this when I generated the original stats, and for what it's worth:

• All living people on WP, ~23% female (as of 2019, may be a little higher now)
• RD (both proposed and posted), ~20%
• Born 1930-1960 (all enwiki, not just BLP), ~15-22%, average ~18%

The latter group are perhaps a bit more representative of the pool of articles likely to wind up on RD, as the overall pool of BLPs skews younger. Andrew Gray (talk) 13:47, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

Speaking as someone not involved with RDs at all, the thing that really jumps out at me about this is the sheer volume of articles involved - 3.5 posted per day, 4.4 nominated. At the moment, there are 8222 articles in Category:2022 deaths, and of those, I think 6030 were created before the end of 2021 - ie they were definitely not created after the fact. Today is day 312 of the year, so (conservatively) that suggests a little under 20 articles per day. It suggests people are listing about 18% of the total "recent deaths", and proposing almost a quarter of them. Andrew Gray (talk) 13:30, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

One thing is that even for RD, the death has to be covered. There are people with notability in their past that then fade into obscurity, and the only note about their death may be a short form obit in a local paper. Meaning that editors may not see that, and then even if they nominate it, the lack of coverage of that item may pose a problem.

Also, its impossible to know the number of people that decide not to post an RD because an article is not good enough quality vs those that don't know about the RD availability when the person dies despite having made updates to a sufficient quality article. It would be interesting to know if there's true unawareness vs true apathy for the process. Masem (t) 13:39, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

I frequently peruse WP:Database reports/Recent deaths to try to find noms, so I can say firsthand that most of the articles I see on there are, in general, very poor quality. Curbon7 (talk) 15:45, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

• This is brilliant, Thryduulf. Thanks a ton for this analysis. I am heads-down on a few offwiki priorities, but, over the weekend, I will try looking into the data. Two streams of analysis that I would love to be able to do is a) concentration and b) breadth of representation. Concentration to me represents points of failures, while breadth of representation asks if our trends are largely in sync with the overall encyclopedia. Both of which might open up some clear actionables. Thanks again. Ktin (talk) 16:12, 8 November 2022 (UTC)

  Concentration to me represents points of failures... As there have been no stated goals for representation, it seems unreasonale to classify the efforts to date of volunteers to be "failures".—Bagumba (talk) 17:21, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

  Kind editor -- Please to read Point of failure or Single Point of Failure. Thanks. Ktin (talk) 17:58, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

  It's not in any ITN-related guideline (yet).—Bagumba (talk) 18:02, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

• Thanks firstly to Thryduulf for the painstaking data collection. Lots of good information there that can be crunched to get some great insights. I have taken a stab at going through the data and here are my notes. Best regards. Ktin (talk) 18:06, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

1. During this period, I see a total of 540 articles being nominated, with a total of 126 unique nominators. This is truly reflective of a vibrant project. More power to all of you for doing the work that you all are doing.
2. There is a level of concentration that we need to be mindful of and should work actively to go past. The top nominator has 127 out of 540 articles (~25%) to their name and the second highest nominator has 68 nominations (~13%) to their credit. The third highest nominator has 6% and then it rapidly thins down. 105 nominators have less than or equal to 3 nominations to their credit and 83 nominators have exactly 1 nomination to their credit.
3. Of the 540 articles, 257 are of American (~48%), 48 are British (~9%), 27 Canadian (5%) and the next three are Indian – 19, German – 17, Australian – 14. Now, I do not know the overall spread of biography articles on WP. But, we should check our levels of concentration against the overall WP numbers. This might also tie into #2 from above. Our call to action here is that we should encourage more nominators from the lesser posted countries to also join in and help achieve a diverse portfolio of nominations.
4. Of the 540 articles, 138 are sportspersons (~26%), 120 are from entertainment / music (~23%), and 74 are politicians (~14%). Again, I do not know the mix of general biography articles across WP, but this mix might tie-back to concentration called out in #2 from above. This group should actively think about encouraging nominators from other fields to join-in. However, if this mix is largely consistent with the larger WP spread of articles, we might have limited options.

1. Of the 540 articles nominated, 441 articles were posted (a little over 80%) which seems a healthy enough fraction just thinking of the 80:20 thumb-rule.
2. The geographic mix of these articles is also roughly same as the nominations 223 American (~51%) , 38 British (~9%), 25 Canadian (~6%) and the next three being German, Australian, and Indian in that order. Marginal higher fraction could be attributed to a hypothesis that sourcing for these language articles are better than the others, but that needs to be examined. This might not be an ITN problem to solve.
3. Categories of posting shows a bias toward Sportspersons (~30% of all postings while ~26% of all nominations), while entertainment / music has a downward revision (~19% of all postings while at ~23% of nominations). This latter point might be due to the whole discography / filmography sourcing problems we have had for some time now.
4. Gender – we are still at an 80:20 for male to female articles. I am not aware of the overall mix across all of WP, but, this really needs to be worked. Perhaps pass this as a feedback to the kind folks at WP:WIR
5. Of the 441 articles posted, the top two posting admins posted ~70% of all articles (top being PFHLai ~40% and the next one being Stephen at ~30%). I do not know the personal situation of these two admins, but this is a very high level of concentration. If some alternate priorities were to emerge for any of these two admins, the project will grind to a slow-mo if not a full halt. The admins should consider a discussion among themselves to see if there is a systemic problem here.

1. Of the 441 articles, ~35% of the articles had one unique commenter, and ~25% had two unique commenters. This tells me that we might not have a wide pool of reviewers. We do not have data on who these reviewers are, but anecdotally I can speculate that it is the same set of reviewers. This needs to improve. We need more reviewers. There is a line of thinking that we do not necessarily need too many reviewers since all they are doing is scanning for hygiene issues, but no one will fault me for saying that more eyes on an article before it goes to the main page. This group needs to ask a hard question – what can we do to encourage more reviewers.
2. Posting dates – this to me seems alright. ~75% articles are posted within 2 days of the nomination.
3. ~60% of the articles are posted within 8 hours of being ready while ~75% of the articles are posted within 12 hours of being ready. However, ~10% of articles (46) are posted after 24 hours of being ready. There have been some articles that have spent more than 80 hours being in a ready state waiting to be posted (though not too many). This might be alleviated if we have more admin support. Something to think through.

1. These numbers have been great. Thanks a ton Thryduulf for performing this painstaking data capture. If there is a way to bake-in some of this information as a part of the meta data for articles being nominated / posted. E.g., category, geography, etc. that might just make this analysis or a better version of this analysis a continuous action.

In an unfortunate set of events, I see that Stephen, who has been a bedrock of our project from an administerial standpoint (e.g. promotions to mainpage), has been de-sysoped at least temporarily. That directly opens up the risk that I was referring to in Pt #5 (postings sub-section above). I think all the admins might already know this -- but, I am flagging this one just so y'all can be prepared for the temporary spike in workload. I am tagging some ITN regular admins just as an FYI. Please pardon the interruption. @PFHLai, Thryduulf, Spencer, Amakuru, and DatGuy: Ktin (talk) 23:51, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I've seen that (but didn't get your ping for some reason). Stephen was admin who gave me most concern about potentially premature posting - there were 28 nominations posted with 0 comments from someone other than the nominator and posting admin, Stephen posted 23 of them along with another 12 where they were the one posting and identifying it as ready for posting (00:00 between being ready and being posted). However they did also post many that were unquestionably ready this is a crude measure.

On the main point, yes we need more posting admins. I seem to be one of the first reviewers for many nominations at the moment, and I'm always reluctant to post those. Thryduulf (talk) 00:39, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I'll start conducting more RD reviews so that you can post, if needed. It may also be beneficial to see if we can find another admin or two who can help out with posting. Curbon7 (talk) 01:46, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Before I post, I generally like to see at least two supports, or a couple of days of no objections. Frankly, I think support !votes can sometimes be based off cursory reviews that some updaters take advantage to game the system—intentional or not.—Bagumba (talk) 06:31, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, my personal standard is generally least two supports in addition the the nominator and at least an hour after the most recent of those before posting. If there have been objections then I like to see those withdrawn and/or people other than the nominator supporting before posting. Thryduulf (talk) 18:39, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that in every case of Stephen posting an RD with one or no supports, the article quality was fine, and that is the only criteria for RD so I don't see it as an issue. It's fine to have two supports as your personal standard, but I don't think Stephen did anything wrong there and I'm glad he kept the queue moving along. Pawnkingthree (talk) 18:48, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

I think he vetted them out well; otherwise, it gives the appearance of a WP:SUPERVOTE.—Bagumba (talk) 18:56, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I completely disagree with the "two supports" standard. This arbitrary threshold means that a lot of good-quality RDs can easily be ignored and thus fall off of ITN/C, due to limited participation. "Participation" is not one of our ITN criteria, certainly not one of our ITN/RD criteria. 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 13:30, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I don't have the time, interest, or domain expertise to vet out most noms, so I generally rely on consensus from others to post.—Bagumba (talk) 16:05, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

We actually expect those that post stories have reviewed the article for all the standard quality aspects as a secondary check before posting, never taking the discussion itself as assurance. (Though clearly if an article was noted for being poor quality before and discussion shows the quality has significantly improved, that's helpful to speed up the check). Masem (t) 16:28, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, there are the minimal checks at WP:ITN/A, but I don't consider checks for being "well referenced" to be on par with !voters vetting for verifiability. —Bagumba (talk) 20:02, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

We need more posting admin, indeed. I was frustrated when nobody posted to the main page Robert Morse article which I improved. Stephen is a good admin, and he posted articles that were needed to be posted. Kirill C1 (talk) 13:08, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

That nom was while Stephen was still active. Anyhow, it looks like consensus was formed only hours before it was stale and rolled off the page. Some people leave a note at WT:ITN when action is needed at the 11th hour, and WP:IAR is sometimes applied in these cases. —Bagumba (talk) 16:24, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I was unaware that this happened. I'll try to be more active in posting noms that have consensus. – Muboshgu (talk) 16:08, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I too was unaware this happened until the recent Admin newsletter. FWIW my personal practice is one support + 24 hours on ITN/C; I find that many noms, especially those at the bottom of the page, frequently don't get more than one. If unreviewed and essentially ready, I typically support instead of post. Spencer^T•C 01:10, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I'd like to nominate one. I prepared it all, but am confused about where to post it. I read the instructions, but cannot see where there "suggestions" location is. Blurb:

CT55555(talk) 22:22, 30 November 2022 (UTC) CT55555(talk) 22:26, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

@CT55555 - You would add it here. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 22:28, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

I'd say this isn't significant enough for a blurb anyway. It's one conviction amongst many. Noah^Talk 22:30, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

OK thanks, have added and expanded the blurb CT55555(talk) 22:42, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

@Hurricane Noah: It's a moot point, but in the future, please save such judgments for the nomination itself instead of discouraging someone from making a good-faith nom. ITN/C needs more participants and especially more nominations, and the way about that isn't to tell people "oh, don't even bother". 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 17:08, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

The feedback I got in the official process was also very much "don't bother" so if the ambition is to encourage, then I have feedback...

1. If you want to encourage people, please make the instructions/process easier.
2. If front page BBC news worthy things aren't important enough, please make it clearer that only utterly world changing events will make it through the process.

From start to finish, this was a discouraging toe dipping into a new part of Wikipedia. CT55555(talk) 17:22, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

@CT55555: The best guidance is at WP:ITN: It is highly subjective whether an event is considered significant enough, and ultimately each event should be discussed on its own merits. Basically, it's pretty open-ended, and decided by whoever is participating.—Bagumba (talk) 17:30, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Do you have any suggestions for (1), to make the process easier and the instructions easier to understand? Re: (2), unfortunately the process is highly subjective and we would need to think of major reforms to change this. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:31, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

My feedback is:

1. I got stuck on the instructions at the point of going to the "suggestions" part. I could not find "suggestions" so make that clearer, or a link.
2. Much better would be some sort of less (forgive me if I'm using the wrong jargon here) code or source editing heavy and more visual, some sort of easier graphical user interface.
3. Maybe some guidance that helps people understand what is out of scope. For example I perceive the first time someone has been prosecuted for a Seditious conspiracy prosecution in USA seems like a really unusual chain of events, in the context of people trying to stop democracy seems very globally relevant right now. But I'm getting the clear understanding that this is insufficient. The comment below says "larger scale ramifications" and yet this to me has larger scale ramifications (it shows that Jan 6 protestors and anti-democratic action can be prosecuted like this (admitted a USA-centric issue), previous use of the charge was around things we more easily see as terrorism). So there appears to be a tension between the people wanting to encourage and the likelihood that things are going to get rejected, leaving people discouraged.

CT55555(talk) 18:10, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Simply being front page news is not sufficient for posting at ITN, as Wikipedia is not a newspaper and ITN is not a news ticker. We tend to focus on events that have larger scale ramifications or represent the finality of a long process. Masem (t) 17:50, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

I know that Wikipedia is not a newspaper. I did perceive this to have a larger scale ramifications, admittedly only relevant in one country. CT55555(talk) 18:13, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

A big part of the problem here is that many oppose nominations as relevant to only one country, despite WP:ITN/C#Please do not... clearly saying Oppose an item solely because the event is only relating to a single country, or failing to relate to one. This applies to a high percentage of the content we post and is generally unproductive. Although in this case, I can understand why some would oppose the seditions conspiracy convictyion of a militia leader, without agreeing or disagreeing with them. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:08, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

I do think that the anti-democracy theme of this is relevant to many Western/Northern countries that are influenced by US culture, but to labour the point is to beat a dead horse, so I'll stop. CT55555(talk) 20:08, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

CT55555, As it hasn't been said yet, thank you for making the effort regardless of the result. Curbon7 (talk) 18:53, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. We need all the voices we can get. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:10, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm always saddened when a new nominator gets a barrage of opposes. In one way it's natural, as the types of articles featured on here are just very limited and fairly rare. I think the social aspect of this forum can be improved and personally I try to respond to most nominations with an encouraging comment (only really getting annoyed when the nominated article hasn't been updated at all ^_^; ). I recognize that this social work is work, though, and will not be feasible for everyone. It's also less clearly structured; strongly binary supports and opposes are simpler, especially for closing admins. I'd be happy to hear others' thoughts on this. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 09:49, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

In the discussion "All South Koreans to become younger" about East Asian age reckoning, there is the frequent comment that this item would work well for Did You Know, but doesn't fit for In The News. I see this comment frequently for news story that is interesting and less routine. I believe that there's a misunderstanding going on about what DYK and ITN are about. They do indeed have different purposes, but both are at their core about presenting recently updated information. In particular, most of these news stories wouldn't qualify for DYK unless they were brought to GA status (though new articles or vast expansions can work sometimes, sure), so those comments must be deflating for nominators. More importantly, I believe such articles would function absolutely perfectly for displaying our work as an encyclopedia covering recent changes to encyclopedic material. ITN is not a news ticker, and I think it's important to try to remember this in our philosophy. I was wondering how other editors felt about this, and if some people had an argument against favoring stories like these even in cases where they won't impact individual lives particularly strongly (like with the change to leap seconds discussed last week). ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 10:34, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

It's a shiboleth of the cultural gatekeepers who like to police ITN for things that they don't personally find worthwhile enough to mention on the main page. These people pretty much universally ignore reliable sources, and instead focus solely on weighing the importance of something against their own narrow personal experience. Pay them no mind when they say such things. They are patting you on the head, condescendingly, when they say such things. (For the record, I don't think the "All South Koreans to become younger" should be posted, but I also would never insult the nominator and supporters by saying such a patronizing thing). --Jayron32 19:03, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Regardless of whether they're, uh, cultural gatekeepers; this seems to be a dominant philosophy that will actively keep stories from reaching ITN. The same editor suggested that Decimal Day (1971) wouldn't be posted for similar reasons, for example, while to me this would've been the absolute perfect ITN story for our front-page (if we had existed then). I would like to see more stories like these being published in our ITN section if possible. If I felt confident that updating and expanding the article further would make them more likely to make it on, I might've taken that route, but right now there seems to be strong bias against these types of stories that feels unwarranted. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 09:05, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

It's everyone's individual decision what they think is worthwhile versus hopeless; however, I think it's only possible to change peoples minds by nominating articles, providing persuading arguments, and gaining supporters over time. Of course, there is no guarantee that it will happen.—Bagumba (talk) 12:08, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

As I noted in my comment on the nom, I would not argue the event is not newsworthy, but there is a serious question of impact here. The change is an administrative one - we do not know if it will have any tangible impact on those who celebrate their birthdays under the Korean Age system in any way besides causing them to have to use the more typical age system on documents. In regards to the comment you made on Decimal Day, I can't say for sure if I would have posted this in part because this event was beyond 30 years before my time, but I think the impact of such an event would be greater. To me, ITN should be discerning in what we post. I think, for the most part, a ITN posting should either be highly impactful to a group of people or somewhat impactful on a great number of people. Obviously not every event follows this formula, but most are. That's why I don't really like the posting of awards shows or the undue favor that ITN tends to have sometimes for postings regarding space exploration - such events have very little impact and in many situations feel more like trivia pieces. DarkSide830 (talk) 19:34, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the response. I have found myself cooling off on award shows as well, also because of their promotional aspects. When it comes to long-term impact, you could say that something like the age change will have an impact on Korean lives "forever," but I imagine that article doesn't hold much water :p – I do wonder if you feel more comfortable posting an article on a less impactful subject if our article on it is a good representation of our identity as an encyclopedia. Is there a balance here? ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 08:07, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

It's certainly worth noting quality when it comes to a borderline topic. Personally, I just tend to stay out of noms where I don't have a real feeling on the nom either way, but I also think I'm less likely to feel neutral on a nom than most are. Overall though that comes back to the ITN/DYK situation, wherein we also want to be promoting well-written article for DYK as well. DarkSide830 (talk) 00:37, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

• ITN is for articles which are literally "in the news" while DYK is for new articles. There's been some creep in both places in that ITN has some vague requirement of "significance" while DYK has some vague requirement of "interesting". Both are mostly OR and POV, in practice.

The biggest issue between the two is that DYK is remarkably productive, getting up 8–16 new hooks every day, despite a fairly picky set of requirements. ITN just has to link to the news of the day but only manages to post one new blurb every other day. So, DYK is about 16–32 times more productive than ITN. ITN is like these fusion experiments – lots of energy goes in but there's little to show for it.

In the meantime, our readership mostly ignores the main page and just goes straight to articles from Google. Typically, articles at DYK and ITN attract about 10,000 additional readers on a good day. But topics which are in the news attract millions of readers regardless. For example, the top read article on Wikipedia currently is the Streisand effect. This seems to be because Elon Musk has been tweeting about it. Anyway, that got about 773,115 readers yesterday while the top ITN blurb 2022 Batang Kali landslide got just 3,988. 4K readers wouldn't impress at DYK and it's pathetic for a topic that's supposedly in the news.

The place that seems to get this right is the Current events portal. That seems to fill each day's entry with a good number of news items while its noticeboard is remarkably free of discussion and drama. ITN has way too much of the latter and that's why it gets little done. It's a talking shop not a workshop. Tsk.

Andrew🐉(talk) 15:19, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Since the nomination of the FIFA World Cup for ongoing has succeeded on ITN/C, and the final match of the tournament is already considered ITN/R, it's absolutely reasonable to conclude that this sport should now join the Olympic Games as one of the few sports where it automatically qualifies for being an ongoing item on the basis of significance.

• Support as nominator based mostly on the consensus of the ITN/C thread. 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 23:38, 20 November 2022 (UTC)
• Support I barely follow it, but this is as "in the news" as any ongoing item will ever be. WP:ITNSPORTS already reads: Nominations for various multi-day single sport events for the "ongoing" section of ITN have failed, with a handful of exceptions. The exceptions to this have been the Men's Football World Cup, which was added to "ongoing" in 2014 and 2018...—Bagumba (talk) 12:44, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

  Oh, really? I was reading based on the nomination that it was not ITN/R. Well, in that case, let this nomination serve to establish a consensus to re-affirm (or overturn, if so determined) its ongoing status on ITN/R. 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 13:21, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

  I was not implying that ITNR already supports this for ongoing (hence, my support), I was only pointing out that ITNR already listed men's World Cup among past exceptions. —Bagumba (talk) 10:46, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

• Support. In spite of Bagumba's comment, I think it would be worth solidly codifying the World Cup as an Ongoing item. There is really no reason that the Olympics should get this treatment but not the World Cup. DarkSide830 (talk) 19:51, 23 November 2022 (UTC)
• Comment: it kinda already is on ITNR. See the text at the top of WP:ITNSPORTS, which says the World Cup is an 'exception' that gets posted in ongoing. Are you suggesting to adjust that language? Modest Genius ^talk 11:51, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

  It says we have posted it to ongoing in the past, not that it automatically qualifies like the Olympics. GreatCaesarsGhost 20:30, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. Is there any additional action required here? Ktin (talk) 03:52, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Support writing it explicitly. Kirill C1 (talk) 15:44, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Support Three times in a row with little reason to think consensus will change. GreatCaesarsGhost 20:30, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

•  Done The language for ITN/R has now been updated so it is now explicitly clear that the FIFA World Cup as an ongoing item is ITN/R.--🌈WaltCip-(talk) 20:37, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I believe the fact that with Morrocco a first team of Africa made it the finals would have been a good ITN, though. How about if we consider remarkable exceptions.Paradise Chronicle (talk) 11:30, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Inclusion in ITN/R does not equal exclusion of individual outcomes. 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 22:46, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

European Film Awards are major awards, and are international. There are written that there are 7 expected items per year, but there are only six there. So, after adding this there would be 7 items. Kirill C1 (talk) 15:48, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Previous ceremonies [2] [3] [4] [5] are covered in the same sources that cover Oscars and BAFTAS. Kirill C1 (talk) 21:06, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose Most categories at ITN/R have 4 or fewer events per year. There is an implied consensus that we post only the most prestigious events in each category, ignoring many major awards/events. Those with more are due to events being largely equal (domestic football leagues) or premier events not being open to all (rugby union). EFA does not qualify for an exception under either of these standards; EFA films are eligible and likely good candidates for Berlin and Cannes (indeed, this year's EFA Best Film won the Palm d'Or). GreatCaesarsGhost 15:23, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

  There are two awards for films in India - Filmfare Awards and Dadasaheb Phalke Award in the list. It is national level. Are they most prestigious Awards? There is scarce coverage internationally on them, and they are largely equal. "Those with more are due to events being largely equal (domestic football leagues) or premier events not being open to all (rugby union)." - but number of sport events in general far exceeds film, or science events.

  Another thing is that European Awards are annual Awards, and not a film festival. These are two different things, so they are not equal, films are submitted for a festival and accepted by those who are in charge, all films released in a given period are eligible for annual awards, I would argue that this makes much difference. And also they are at different time of the year, I think this a plus. Kirill C1 (talk) 19:04, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

  So change the nomination to replace Cannes and Berlin with this. Maybe you'll get some traction. GreatCaesarsGhost 21:23, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

  I specifically write that these blurbs are not mutually exclusive. Kirill C1 (talk) 08:22, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Not tracking the main conversation here. But, speaking of current events — I think one thing we have wrong is that current events is hidden as an Easter egg link under the ongoing text. We tried fixing that once but unsuccessfully. Ktin (talk) 16:39, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

• Indeed – it's hiding the competition. It would be better as "Current events". Andrew🐉(talk) 10:29, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  There's no reason we need to say "Ongoing" when we could just say "Other current events". Masem (t) 14:59, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  Yup, I think that is a simple fix to the situation if someone can do it. I am surprised someone from that project has not called us out all these days. Ktin (talk) 21:12, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  "Other" doesn't make sense when we have a colon followed by entries. In comparison, we dont have "Other recent deaths" displayed.—Bagumba (talk) 21:38, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

  Change it to "Current events" then. Oftentimes, perfect is the enemy of good. Ktin (talk) 02:56, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

• Looking back, it was previously Ongoing events in 2016 and More current events in 2012.

That earlier system of having clear navigational links in the footer was best: Wikinews – Recent deaths – More current events....

Andrew🐉(talk) 22:59, 18 December 2022 (UTC)

A plain "Ongoing" link has existed since as early as 2014. While not perfect if we were only launching Wikipedia new today, its longevity could suggest that it's good enough at this point, especially without more glaring issues. —Bagumba (talk) 09:37, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

• At this time of year, the news media usually publish a summary of the year's events -- e.g. BBC; NYT. Wikipedia has such annual yearbook pages and, for this year, the main one is 2022. This is quite an active and well-curated page as, so far, it has had over 1500 editors and over 4.4 million page views. It includes the major events of the year, month by month, and it's interesting to look back on them now. For example, in January we have "China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States—all five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—issue a rare joint statement affirming that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."" And then in February, "Putin orders Russia's nuclear deterrent forces to be on "special alert"..."

So, that gives a good perspective on the news which we don't get from ITN's more limited, keyhole view. As we're an encyclopedia, ITN should provide links to the current and previous year's pages to help readers find this encyclopedic coverage of the news. The links would be quite short: 2022 ∙ 2023 would be appropriate at this time. Ok?

Andrew🐉(talk) 09:51, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Perhaps a better topic for Talk:Main Page, as those aren't quite in the news anymore —Bagumba (talk) 14:05, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

As explained, news media normally summarise the entire year's events at this time and so it is in the news. For example, see FT 2022 Year in Review; LA Times 2022: Year in Review; Reuters 2022 Year in Review. Andrew🐉(talk) 14:48, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

I was orginally thinking that you wanted a permanent feature that events can be reachable by year from the Main Page, not just for the last few weeks of a given year.—Bagumba (talk) 14:55, 19 December 2022 (UTC)::::

The feature would need to be dynamic as the years roll by. This is the natural time to make a start and see how it goes. Andrew🐉(talk) 15:03, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. I think there are two ideas that are getting clubbed here and separating the two might be a good idea.

1. 2022 in Review link: this is not a bad idea and can link to the 2022 summary page. But if this is needed the window to act is now. Any later and the idea would be stale.
2. fixing the Easter egg in the ongoing link: I think this is simple and should be done. But having attempted once and having failed, I do not know how to proceed. But this should ideally not be difficult.

something to consider. Cheers. Ktin (talk) 04:37, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

(NON-ADMIN CLOSURE)

In the interest of keeping the open topics list manageable, I am going ahead and closing this one. There is something going on with Index. It still is showing up as the top read article on the iOS app at least. But, there is nothing that WP:ITN can do. Thanks. Ktin (talk) 01:04, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I was browsing the top read articles this morning (right) and readers seem to be searching for the word "Index". They are finding a variety of results including Index (statistics); Index, Washington and Index (economics). ITN is supposed to be helping readers navigate to articles in the news but it's not clear what they are looking for. Is it inflation, index fund performance, the NFL quarterback index, or what? Andrew🐉(talk) 09:52, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

ITN is not supposed to be helping readers navigate to articles in the news - it's purpose is to highlight quality Wikipedia articles about topics that are in the news (which as repeatedly explained to you is not the same thing). Anyway, what is it you think ITN should be doing here? Thryduulf (talk) 13:35, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

WP:ITN#Purpose, bullet 1. (We should probably get rid of bullet 2, it's past time we outgrew the self-adulation.) Levivich (talk) 16:41, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, not to be that guy, but what then should we be blurbing in this situation? DarkSide830 (talk) 17:38, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, that's the question, isn't it. I rather doubt that they are looking for Index, Washington but that's where nearly a million of then ended up. We are explicitly here to "help readers find and quickly access content they are likely to be searching for because an item is in the news" and so we should be figuring this out. We are also here to "emphasize Wikipedia as a dynamic resource" and so should be updating our content daily in response to such developments rather than running the same headlines repeatedly until they become painfully stale. Andrew🐉(talk) 23:39, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

No, because you're assuming that because something's being searched heavily, it must come from being in the news, which is not a truism. For example, we see pop culture topics dominate searches buts its not because they are in the news but maybe because the show's at a season end or the like. That type of stuff is not Wiki-front-page news appropriate. Also remember that the search results favor a western bias.

You are also mistaken that our goal is to be an encyclopedia, not a newspaper. We should not be trying to update things daily, but to keep topics up to date when encyclopedic information can be updated or added. If you want to edit like a newspaper, Wikinews is thataway. Masem (t) 23:45, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Do we know why they are searching for index? It seems a weirdly specific search. Not the remit of WP:ITN, but, I am curious. Ktin (talk) 16:37, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

most search engines try to search on "index" at a top level, though I would expect that to then be a consistent hit. Masem (t) 16:39, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah -- has been that way for atleast two decades now. Might be something else, I think. Ktin (talk) 16:42, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Maybe the Consumer Price Index; December numbers released a couple days ago. Levivich (talk) 16:41, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Could be; my suspicion is that this is one of those Cleopatra kinda searches. Ktin (talk) 16:43, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

United States Consumer Price Index was indeed tough to find (and doesn't have any numbers anyway). Levivich (talk) 16:46, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

But even then wouldn't the top result be Consumer price index or Consumer price index by country? These are fairly easily found pages. DarkSide830 (talk) 17:45, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia is failing in this instance (the info is way down at United States Consumer Price Index#Uses), but the significance is that the US CPI is the most-common measure of inflation. (I'm American and have no idea how other countries use their CPI, this could be global or just US, I don't know.) But the US Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes CPI numbers monthly, and then everyone looks at that to figure out if inflation is happening, and then the US Federal Reserve sets their monetary policies based on that (e.g., raising/lowering interest rates), and so everyone (well, not everyone) watches these numbers to figure out if interest rates are going up or down (which affects buying houses, cars, credit cards, business investments, etc.) These numbers were last released on Thursday, so people on the internet searching "index" might be looking to find out if inflation went up or down in December, and by how much, and maybe what that means for interest rates. [6] is what they probably want to find, or possibly (I think, more likely) they just heard some news about the Consumer Price Index and wanted to find out what it was, how it works, and what it means for the index to go down 0.1% in a month.

To answer your other question, this is pretty routine news, so I'm not sure that we should have blurbed any of this... I mean, I'm sure we wouldn't have under current ITNC procedures... but indeed, United States Consumer Price Index or Consumer Price Index would probably be an example of an article that people would be looking for because it's been in the news (ITN purpose #1), and thus the sort of thing that ITN somehow ought to point editors to. It could be conceivably added to ITN/R and we could post that one day a month somewhere when it comes out, but that might be overkill. There are probably a million other articles like that--not exactly "historical, globally significant news" as is our current standard, but nevertheless an article that people are looking for because the topic or a related topic is in the news (like Edgar Allan Poe)--and we'd do a great service to make it easier for readers to find such articles by linking them on the main page. There's a question about how to populate that feed...editors nominating and voting, or some automatic method like top-edited or top-viewed pages, each of which has advantages and disadvantages. My preference is to turn ITN into an actual ticker of some kind, probably with an automated nomination system subject to editor oversight applying objective criteria (think quality, not significance, similar to ITN/R now)... but most efficient would be to have the main page have a literal list of articles in the news ... possibly with no blurbs at all (although, for some news items, a blurb might help... for example, readers may not have known that the name of the injured football player was Damar Hamlin so just listing "Damar Hamlin" might not help people find it, it might need a blurb like "Damar Hamlin suffers cardiac arrest at a football game", although that could probably also be accomplished just by listing it as "Damar Hamlin (NFL)", so a ticker would still work.) Anyway, I've digressed quite far here, sorry. Levivich (talk) 18:43, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

• Fwiw, I do not think this might be linked to interest in any variations of Consumer Price Index. See here for a comparative page view report link here. The spike in Index (statistics) does not corelate to any spike in any of the CPI topics. Also, if this was related, there should have been some spillover from past interest in this topic. I do not see that. All of this leads me to believe that there is something like a WP:CLEOPATRA going on here. The folks at WP:TOP25 will solve it when it comes there. PS: Also, nothing great at Google either. link hereKtin (talk) 03:41, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

• Those three particular index titles have high hits for a second day so it does look like an artifact. It will still be good to get to the bottom of it. The link which Ktin kindly provided indicates that Cleopatra's popularity is likely due to a tutorial for Google Assistant which suggests this as a search. This looks different so we must await more clues... Andrew🐉(talk) 10:54, 16 January 2023 (UTC)

  The French site is a lot the same. For some time now cookie has been getting massive hits. It's at 11 million(!) now - the next highest article is Gina Lollobrigida at just 150K. DarkSide830 (talk) 03:34, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

  Perhaps because TikTok was fined for cookie violations by French regulators a few days ago? Levivich (talk) 03:41, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

  Nah, it's been up there for as long as I can remember, and 11 million is an anomalously high number. DarkSide830 (talk) 22:33, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

• More index titles have joined the first three as top read: Index (publishing) and Index. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:34, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps people are searching for article index which is at Wikipedia:Contents/A–Z index, but land at various similarly titled pages instead. Brandmeister^talk 17:54, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Why now? Did something change? Ktin (talk) 00:32, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Most likely one of the two happened: either some recent event made "index" a buzzword or people wanted specifically the A-Z article index due to some similar event. Brandmeister^talk 10:34, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

Anything more on the indices? How are they doing? Ktin (talk) 01:37, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Following on from the discussion above, I've looked at every nomination where a blurb was suggested and come up with the following data. I've only done very trivial analysis on it so far but:

• There were 63 nominations where a blurb was suggested, 15 of those resulted in a blurb, 36 were posted as Recent Deaths and 11 were not posted at all (almost entirely due to sourcing issues).
• Of the 11 not posted, 6 had enough discussion of the blurb to say that it would be posted as RD only if quality improved and 5 had insufficient to judge between RD and blurb.
• Consensus to blurb or not blurb was reached in 36 (57%) of nominations, 27 (43%) did not reach a consensus.
• If the 63 proposals, 15 were for females (of which 2 were blurbed, 11 RD and 2 not posted) and 48 males (14 blurbs, 25 RD, 9 not posted). None were proposed for non-binary people.
• Blurbs were proposed for 35 different nationalities, including 17 Americans (0 blurbs), 5 Brits (1 blurb), 3 Japanese (2 blurbs) and two each of Brazilian (2 blurbs), Soviet and Russian (1 blurb), and Greek, Kenyan, Russian and Ukrainian (all 0 blurbs). Japanese and Brazilian were the only nationality to get more than one blurb.
  • The other nationalities with 1 blurb were Angolan, Australian, Bahamian-American, Chinese, Egyptian, Emirati, French-Swiss, German/Vatican City, Iraqi and Vietnamese.
  • Subjectively, it is far more likely for blurbs that don't stand even a remote chance to be posted to be suggested for Americans than any other nationality.
• In no case was a blurb posted without a proposed blurb being added to the template.

Thryduulf (talk) 23:11, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

• There's a lot of ways to interpret the data above. For example, are so many American blurbs rejected because Americans tend to propose too many blurbs? Rarely do countries get more than one blurb, after all. Anti-American bias has also been suggested frequently. I don't think this data is enough to say much about it. While we have a good variation of nationality, the gender disparity is interesting. I don't think we're doing too bad on this (I don't expect many high profile 80-year old non-binary dictators dying, after all), but the percentage of women is definitely low. Could we further track down the cause of this bias, and how deeply is this tied into the news media we base our own rulings on? ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 08:11, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

  In terms of gender, well there are fewer nominated for RD in the first place (see Wikipedia:In the news/2022 ITNRD analysis) and Wikipedia talk:In the news/Archive 95#Analysis of recent deaths June-October 2022; between June and October just under 20% of RD nominations were for women), and fewer of them have a blurb suggested. The most blurbed profession categories are politics, monarch, religion, Islamic terrorism, entertainment and sport. Most of these are very male dominated in terms of BLP subjects in the first place (only 5 of the 138 RDs for sportspeople nominated between June and October were female), and for a sportsperson to get a blurb they really need to have been consistently and widely regarded as one of the best ever in their sport and have name recognition outside that sport - very few women have that. For politics, being a world leader is all-but necessary but not sufficient - one also has to be truly transformative, an incumbent or assassinated. For example the only three living British politicians I could imagine getting a blurb if they died peacefully tomorrow are Rishi Sunak (only as incumbent), Tony Blair and Boris Johnson - and even the latter two would be far from unanimous and might not get posted. Thryduulf (talk) 11:25, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

  Sounds to me like the RD bias might actually be a thing we could do more work improving. Blurbs are largely facing systemic problems, while for RD we could simply have more impassioned editors for specific fields. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 14:46, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

  At least Tony Blair and Boris Johnson aren't subject to the same inescapable curse Tony Atlas and Rocky Johnson are. Pro wrestlers can transform the field all they want, but it's not going to make their articles any better or pro wrestling's fundamental importance to the entire world any clearer. On that note, I'm not complaining, but think Scott Hall deserves some nod in this section for racking up 2,257,799 points in 2022. InedibleHulk (talk) 14:30, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

  In terms of female sportspeople, you do have to consider that many of the world's most popular sports (notably association football and cricket, but you could add in golf and rugby football) have only reletively recently moved out of the realms of amateur sport for women. It is therefore unsurprising that we don't have female versions of Shane Warne or Pele at the moment. I can, however, think of a number of female sports figures (specifically in athletics and tennis) who would probably qualify for a blurb - hopefully we won't have to worry about that for a while yet. Black Kite (talk) 14:51, 7 January 2023 (UTC)

  I'd argue that the percentage of American RDs should be high, simply because approximately 60% of all English first language speakers on the planet live in the United States, and this is the English-language Wikipedia. (You could use the statistic 25% of all English-speakers if you'd rather, but I don't think that significantly changes the point.)

Regarding the lack of women at RD, I'd suggest that stems from the sexism present in the past that barred women from high-profile positions that would merit a standalone Wikipedia article. The average human lifespan is approximately 80 years. 80 years ago was 1943. A woman born in 1943 was unlikely to enter the workforce due to cultural pressure. Even today, in the United States, men have a workforce participation rate 12% higher than women. I still think it's a good idea for us to counteract sexism by looking for ways to improve the number of women at RD, but I think we should also understand that women did not do as many noteworthy things in the past as men did because of sexism. NorthernFalcon (talk) 02:45, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I tend to argue that institutionalized sexism still plays a role in the death blurbs as well as the RDs. For example, one person argued that Barbara Walters did not merit a blurb because "meeting a lot of famous people" is nothing special, or she was just a "mere newsreader". Put aside any sort of assessment of Walters's character and reputation and instead just assess the blurb criteria in a vacuum, i.e. whether someone is transformative in their field. The subtext of rationales like these is somewhat gross, even if the individual intentions were not sexist in nature. Of course, neither this nor Vivienne Westwood's nomination was helped by being sandwiched around Pele's death, but my point remains nevertheless. 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 13:55, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I watch the main evening news every day and for the last week, they've dedicated a few minutes every night to the upcoming release of Prince Harry's memoir Spare. Well, it's been released and in the UK The Guardian has just reported that it is the "UK's fastest-selling nonfiction book" (based on first day sales). The sales figures for the first day in the US are about to come out and a reporter for Forbes thinks that it's got a chance of outselling Obama's A Promised Land. Hence my question - do we feature books at ITN? I've had a look at the article and it's in decent order, but the sales record ought to be added because if anything, that's what demonstrates why this might be ITN-worthy. Schwede66 09:26, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

The article looks pretty good, so I would appreciate seeing this subject nominated! I don't expect it will make it through, as we rarely ever feature new releases of media/art here. There might be a concern of promoting it. There's also a gossippy aspect to the content of the book that editors here might not appreciate (as it details his personal experience of his weird upperclass life). But the significance is certainly there, so who knows! ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 09:52, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

About the only three topics I can think of that ITN never features are celebrity gossip, sports retirements and announcements that someone/some group intends to do something in the future. Everything else is worth nominating as long as it's both in the news and not routine. I don't know how Harry's book will fare, beyond being amazed if editors are unanimous about it, but its definitely worth nominating. Thryduulf (talk) 11:40, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Also any cycling of ministerial posts at the state or municipal level, meteorological curiosities, U.S. Supreme Court nominations, actors/newscasters being fired or suspended, and (although a bit dated now) anything that Trump tweets out. 🌈WaltCip-(talk) 13:48, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

We tend not to focus on sales or viewership records for contemporary pop culture (for example how many box office records Avatar 2 is breaking), so I don't think we'd do the same with books. Masem (t) 17:35, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, all. I hadn't considered the promotional aspect of running this. As such, I won't nominate the item. Schwede66 21:15, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Professional sports are, by definition, all about making money – merchandise, pay-per-view, ticket sales, sponsorship, &c. So, if we can't run books and movies because it would promote them, then it is also wrong to run so much sport at ITN, right? We should focus on purely amateur sporting events like the Boat Race, right? But note that that's not the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race any more. It's now "The Gemini Boat Race". Gemini? It turns out that Gemini is a crypto concern named after the Winklevoss twins. But they did actually row for Oxford and in the Olympics too so that's all good then. What could possibly go wrong...? Andrew🐉(talk) 13:26, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

We have ITNRs that are equivalent to championships for sports: that would be things like the Oscars for film, Booker prize for books, etc. Key with nearly all those events is that while at the end of the day it is about how well a specific commercial product did (whether that be a well-paid sports team or a internationally distributed film), the awards separate themselves from the commercial side, looking at performance (how well a team competes against another, how well a film ranks against others judged by a mostly independent body).

Also, I would not say that we don't run things like the OP suggests (Spare being a best seller in the UK) because of the promotional aspect. Simply that things like viewership or purchase records are very fleeting in today's age, and they are more like superlative fact that would better suited (if possible) at DYK. Mind you, I think we are missing something that sits between DYK (which is meant to focus on new or improved articles) and ITN (focusing on major news) related to new and currently interesting tidbits of existing topics but do not demand a ITN blurb, but I don't know where we'd put that. Masem (t) 13:35, 12 January 2023 (UTC)