Wikipedia talk:In the news

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ITNR archives

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Box for Nobel Prizes

Too late for this time. But, for the next year, can we consider a temporary box for Nobel prizes? I am thinking a box like we had for the pandemic, but, this would be around for perhaps one week or two after the announcements.

!---------------------------------------------------------------------------!
!Chemistry - John Doe, Jane Doe, and Someone else (Protein folding)         !
!Physics - John Doe, Jane Doe, and Someone else (Neural networks)           !
!Physiology - John Doe, Jane Doe, and Someone else (Micro RNA)              !
!---------------------------------------------------------------------------!

Bonus if someone can do it this year itself, but, I do not think it is realistic.

Ktin (talk) 03:21, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with this. Seems to be a bit intrusive if ITN is flooded with a list of Nobel prize winners, so a separate section is a good idea to me. Natg 19 (talk) 16:29, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I actually really like this idea. Getting a Noble Prize is a really big achievement, but, since these awards are announced over the course of five successive days, at most, a winner gets about only 24 hours on the main page. ਪ੍ਰਿੰਸ ਆਫ਼ ਪੰਜਾਬ^{(PrinceofPunjab | ਗੱਲਬਾਤ)} 17:19, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I actually have the opposite issue with the Nobles. It it is a bit odd to me that 3/4 current blurbs are Nobles, thus having a box listing them is a good idea to me, to make room for other blurbs. I don't see any issue with "missing Nobles". Ones that meet quality standards can be added to the box. Natg 19 (talk) 18:10, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some type of box for the awards has been suggested before, but a problem is that we often fail to post one or two of those due to quality and staleness issues. And to not have those in a box or other means to hold the nobels would look odd. Hence why they are still better as blurbs. Masem (t) 17:23, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Alternative we could use an Ongoing to point to the current List of Nobel laureate (demarked by year to easily seen), which last for at most two weeks starting from the Monday the medicine prize is awarded, added when the first Nobel falls off as a blurb. — Masem (t) 17:45, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I say we can do that right away without having to wait. This is Nobel season anyway. Ktin (talk) 17:47, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As a guy who generally ignores the academic fields but knows a thing he's supposed to know when he sees it, my secret to satisfactory rudimentary awareness is just clicking whichever article is emboldened on the Main Page in seasons like these and then the Wikilink it features to "learn more". InedibleHulk (talk) 18:24, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Masem -- checking in on this comment. Did you mean for this current cycle? or did you mean for the next cycle? Ktin (talk) 15:58, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Bit of a tangent @Masemcan you look at the physiology Nobel nomination and post it to the main page? Ktin (talk) 17:45, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done. — Masem (t) 17:55, 10 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I love this idea. Not only do the Prizes push all other news off ITN, they even push 'each other' off ITN. A box is a great solve. -- Kicking222 (talk) 18:41, 11 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A straggling comment, just to support the idea. Could be neat. Yakikaki (talk) 15:56, 2 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Re: current RD backlog of eight entries - potential fixes?

Just flagging that we currently have six RD nominations tagged as (Ready) and two more tagged as (Needs Review) - ergo, admin attention needed on eight RD entries. Some of the RD have been tagged as ready for close to two days.

I notice many editors tend to ping @Admins willing to post ITN: , which seems helpful but not always. Is there anything else we can do as a community to try to assure a steadier flow of entries to RD? Unfortunately, by the time many of these entries are posted the deaths of these individuals will be "outdated news", and could be pushed off RD unfairly quickly if on the next round of nominations, admins are quicker to post. Thoughts? Flip^and Flopped ツ 19:06, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A structural issue that I have is that takes a while to scroll the page as it’s so long. It would become easier if we collapsed items that we have either posted or rejected. Schwede 66 19:22, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've been calling for our archival system to be reformed for a while now. I think it would be better to have posted noms be archived in some manner, though I am not sure of the exact form that such an thing would take. — Knightoftheswords 19:30, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I will attribute a lot of this to the change in the en.wiki format that makes it very difficult to scan the TOC to find out what entries need attention. When it was right up front in the TOC, it was very easy to see. We might want to consider a bot that runs every 12 hr to update a table of the pending nominations and their state that can be presented at the top Masem (t) 19:23, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are a two different issues coming together here.

We need more admins who can post, and post more frequently. Like I have mentioned before we need to post frequently, post from the bottom, and not batch-up our postings. Unfortunately, we continue to remain strapped for admin capacity.
On top of this, I agree with both @Schwede66 and @Masem that the recent skin change / update (Vector something, is it?) did not help either.

Re #1, one solution that has briefly been discussed before is the notion of Admins without tools or equivalent. The idea is that these editors would promote ready articles into a holding zone from where an admin can promote to the main page. Alternately a bot could promote from this holding zone after 6/12 hours if no admin has acted by then.

Alternately, a bot could parse all threads that have been marked ready but not posted and then move them into a holding zone for an admin to come by and act.

The problem is I do not know of anyone here in this project who can help create that holding page or a bot that can do this parsing and promote to a holding page. Ktin (talk) 02:02, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Usernamekiran: did bot scripting for the posting archives. Also, it seems like there is a bot request queue Wikipedia:Bot requests. Natg 19 (talk) 02:24, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yup @Usernamekiran did a great job with the posting archives. I was also thinking of some of the folks at the WP:DYK project. I have seen some scripts, bots and some page-level transformations there. I am a big fan of their PSHAW tool. cc @Theleekycauldron. Ktin (talk) 02:39, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If we get a bot to do some maintenance work, how about adding collapsing posted and rejected items to the task list? Schwede 66 03:12, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Four have now either been unmarked "Ready" or issues identified.[1] —Bagumba (talk) 04:45, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what are you guys looking for exactly, but I'm interested/ready to help. The queue at BOTREQ, is not linear, and posting is not mandatory. —usernamekiran (talk) 09:22, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

... tagged as (Needs Review) - ergo, admin attention needed on eight RD entries: My observation is that "Needs review" (no mention of this at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates § Headers) is asking for general community input, not admins specifically. For example, Donald J. Hall had this marked within 24 hours of its nomination,[2], and it seem to remain right up until its posting, even when input was already received.[3]—Bagumba (talk) 11:00, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ready means the article needs admin attention. Needs review or something equivalent means the article needs reviewer attention. Ktin (talk) 19:50, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

TOC Those wanting the old TOC format can go to Preferences->Appearance->Skin and select "Vector legacy (2010)".—Bagumba (talk) 10:41, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have found a workable solution that doesn't require this, based on mw:User:Quiddity/Vector-2022-condensed.css. You can use that css in your global css file m:Special:MyPage/global.css as instructed on that code's talk page, or if you go to the code, copy the section about the TOC ("3. ToC tweaks") which currently runs from line 209 to 464 into the same global.css file.

Doing this gives you a floating left TOC but with all sections autoexpanded. And you don't have to change the skin style for it. Masem (t) 13:47, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Section sizes

To provide an automatic navigation aid for the large nomination page, as discussed above, I've added {{section sizes}} in a section at the head of the list of nominations. The template may be expanded to show the structure, size and title of all the sections, which includes the nomination titles. Another benefit is that the large and noisy hot-spots are highlighted in red. See if that helps... Andrew🐉(talk) 10:54, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reminder: RfC on In the news criteria

The section created by Voorts has rolled off, but I'd like to make it known again that there is an ongoing RFC regarding potential ITN criteria amendments, now under a new link at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/In the news criteria amendments. DarkSide830 (talk) 00:41, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly encourage anyone interested in ITN to take a look at this one, as one of the proposals includes shutting down ITN for good ✈ mike_gigs ^talk_contribs 13:15, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Am I the only one who no longer follows what's going on at that thread / RFC? There is a whole host of "Oppose" votes, which I understand are for those proposals. Is this RFC now discussing shutting down ITN? Ktin (talk) 01:25, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, that was a proposal added early on, proposal 3 to shut down ITN. The RFC has not changed scope. Natg 19 (talk) 02:53, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Myanmar civil war removal?

Why was the Myanmar civil war removed from ITN? ꧁Zanahary꧂ 20:34, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Was removed in May 2024 due to lack of regular updates to the article, generally required to be kept at ongoing. — Masem (t) 21:08, 28 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Elections

Currently three out of four ITN blurbs are election results and there are six nominations altogether for Bulgaria, Georgia, Japan, Lithuania, Mozambique and Uzbekistan. And that's not including the US elections.

It's my impression that elections are often held at this time because it's after the harvest. When there's a big flurry of them, perhaps we should list them in a compact form like RD? Andrew🐉(talk) 09:45, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I had a similar idea for the Nobel Prizes a couple of years ago, and I agree that something should be done in similar cases.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 14:39, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support, this is a good idea (for elections and for the Nobels) to "batch list" them. Natg 19 (talk) 16:28, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Also agree for both elections and Nobel Prizes. It could be something like this, with the four (or five, or six) more recent election blurbs:

Recent elections:

I thought about adding the winners, but for cases like Bulgaria or Japan where there is no clear winner, it wouldn't necessarily be desirable. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 16:44, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose grouping the nobels makes sense as they are highly correlated events by one organization. National elections are individually distinct events and makes no sense to simply them down. We just have to recognize that we get groupings of these about once or twice every few years. Masem (t) 18:09, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Recent deaths and ongoing events are individually distinct but we still list them together on one line. What's the difference? Andrew🐉(talk) 18:23, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose It's completely unclear as to what constitutes "a big flurry", who decides what "a big flurry" is, and how that decision is made. Furthermore, it would be incredibly likely that Americans would seek to make their elections a special case deserving a blurb outside the batching process, even though they will take place shortly "at this time after the harvest". Chrisclear (talk) 17:34, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Stats List of elections in 2024 says "The year 2024 is notable for the large number of elections being held worldwide ... [and] has been called the year of elections." Looking at the number of times each month appears in that list, the distribution is:

January = 9
February = 16
March = 11
April = 17
May = 24
June = 28
July = 7
August = 5
September = 15
October = 32
November = 23
December = 5

So, there's clearly some seasonality with peaks in May/June and October/November.

Andrew🐉(talk) 18:21, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for providing the above data, it is interesting background information. However my specific questions about batching (who and how the decision is made) remain unanswered. Furthermore, suppose this proposal were to proceed (which I oppose), would the US elections next week be considered part of the batching process? If no, why not? Chrisclear (talk) 22:20, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The "after the harvest theory" needs to be tempered by the fact that autumn in the northern hemisphere is spring in the southern hemisphere. Also, in a lot of countries with British traditions, elections are held at a time chosen by the government. HiLo48 (talk) 22:25, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I would recommend another criteria for meeting ITNR, such as the nation's GDP being in the top 25. Kcmastrpc (talk) 22:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Man would that leave out Ireland because a lot of people would oppose that... Howard the Duck (talk) 23:00, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One concern for "batch listing" is that there may not be enough room to "feature" the winner of an election (or a major political shift), as we do now. But I like the idea to vary the featured stories, and not fill the box with the same kind of story. Natg 19 (talk) 22:49, 31 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I understand the concern, but I think the current situation is anomalous and will resolve itself fairly soon. GenevieveDEon (talk) 09:47, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Chrisclear: it would be incredibly likely that Americans would seek to make their elections a special case deserving a blurb outside the batching process What makes you think that? Genuinely curious, it seems that you have tangible data/examples for this, so I would like to see them. At your earliest convenience, please. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 18:59, 1 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your last sentence "At your earliest convenience, please" is redundant, because, as you would be aware, I am a volunteer, and all contributions to Wikipedia, including those on talk page discussions are made at my earliest convenience and according to no fixed timetable. I'd encourage you to be a bit more civil and avoid comments with a poor underlying tone.

With that out of the way, the answer to your question "What makes you think that?" is simply common sense, based on the long-standing underlying bias of some editors in favour of Americentric topics. Most recently, before 11am UTC on 5 November, before voting even commenced in most (nearly all) locations in the US, the US election article had been nominated once for ITN, and nominated a second time when another editor had the common sense to close the first nomination. What makes it even more puzzling, is that according to the page history, it appears that the editor who proposed the article the second time, was the very same editor who proposed the batching process in the first place!

Has there ever been any other election nomination where the relevant article has been nominated twice before voting commences? Chrisclear (talk) 19:53, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

US election

This, "Donald Trump (pictured) wins the United States presidential election" was posted at 10.59 today. Seriously? The linked article only says he is "projected to win", according to the news sources there. This hardly reflects a neutral point of view, n’est ce pas? Moonraker12 (talk) 13:10, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One could also argue that the article is providing a WP:FALSEBALANCE by calling it "projected". What would you propose?—Bagumba (talk) 14:46, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Bagumba: I would propose that the statement reads "Donald Trump is projected to win...", as the article, and the sources the article used, actually says. Moonraker12 (talk) 15:36, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

PS: I would also suggest, as this hasn’t been decided either, that the second clause reads ".. and the Republicans to take control of the Senate"". Moonraker12 (talk) 15:37, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just sampled 4 sources, and all 4 say that he "won", not merely "projected". Given that Biden was posted in 2020 with "wins" as well,[4] it'd probably be difficult to get consensus to change the Main Page. Still, you can try at WP:ERRORS or WP:ITNC#2024 United States presidential election. Or perhaps just update the article to match the MP. Call it a quirk of how US election results are reported by the media. Regards. —Bagumba (talk) 16:33, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]