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This is the discussion page for the In the news section of the Main Page, referred to as ITN. If you are new to ITN, please read the criteria and procedures that guide ITN and its updates. The most important thing to remember is that ITN does not act as a newspaper or an obituary; it provides links to encyclopedia articles that have been updated to reflect important current events, and that have a reasonable amount of information on the topic.

[edit] Quick guide

John Atta-Mills

Wikinews – Recent deaths – More current events...

view - page history - related changes - Edit (admins only) - Suggestions

If you have already read the criteria page, here is the quick guide:

  • For an item to appear on ITN, a relevant article must be updated and a blurb added to Portal:Current events or one of its subpages.
  • The event has to be important enough to merit updating the article and should be of international import, or at least interest.
  • If you are not an admin, have updated an article with an item that you feel is of international significance and put a blurb on Current events, suggest the item at the candidates page.
  • If you are an admin, familiarize yourself with both the Criteria and Admin guidelines. In particular, please pay close attention to the procedure for images.
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[edit] Picture placement again

Unless you examine it carefully, the current ITN makes it look like there was some kind of riot or protest at the ASEAN meeting. I'm just saying...--Kubigula (talk) 15:49, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

That's the standard placement. The rioting item has a (pictured) note beside it so that people don't get confused, though you're right, at first glance they may be deceived. Master of Puppets Call me MoP! :D 01:31, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
I know it's the normal practice, but I think it looks bad when the item relating to the picture slips too far below the picture itself - particularly if the result is a bit comical as it is today. I previously advocated for either (1) keeping the picture with the pictured item, or (2) keeping the pictured item at the top of the template. However, there does not seem to be much support for this. So, I just usually bite my tongue.--Kubigula (talk) 04:57, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Kubigula, you are far from alone in this struggle. I for one appreciate every time someone points out a situation like this, where the main page really looks like we don't know what we're doing. There seems to be some technical template related kill-all argument that manages to keep consensus accepting us looking like fools every now and then, though. /Coffeeshivers (talk) 20:14, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Image location is always stable across all sections of main page – FA, ITN, DYK, OTD and FP. Discussing here would not yield amendments to major policies concerning main page. I suggest you open a thread on WP:VP to garner larger community consensus. --GPPande 20:26, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
Maybe it is worth bringing up at VP. Right now a casual observer is wondering why those ancient Wari ruins look so much like a tollbooth.--Kubigula (talk) 23:38, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
ITN blurbs are really written in simple plain English language. Users need not read the entire article of Wari ruins or Schengen Agreement to understand which image relates to which story. Even the word pictured is added to simplify. What else is needed? --GPPande 07:56, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
If you have a list of items and a single illustration, the normal convention, in most contexts, is to have the illustration next to the item that it corresponds to. As readers, we are trained to expect this. If you are accustomed to the ITN format, it's not so bad, but I think it is incongruous to the new reader. I recall the first time that I saw the ITN column with a picture that was clearly at odds with the lead item, I assumed it had been vandalized. Granted, the confusion does not last long, but it does strike me, and apparently other editors too, as amateurish - especially for the main page.--Kubigula (talk) 18:22, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Also, items are listed by order of date, so it wouldn't be possible to keep the pictured item at the top. SpencerMerry Christmas! 16:15, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

It can be very confusing if the text is not near the picture; today's ITN has items relating to Slovakia and Bangkok, but the picture is of China which is the 3rd news item. Why isn't the caption parameter used which would put the text right under the picture as captions are used in newspapers and magazines? Petersam (talk) 21:46, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal re: international interest

I am tired of arguments about whether a news item is international enough and have a proposal that would end all such arguments.

My understanding is that we require ITN items to be international to ensure the section doesn't get too slanted toward any one country. So why not just say that the section as a whole should reflect geographic diversity?

Once we establish that the list of ITN items should include things from around the world, it shouldn't matter whether individual items are "international" enough. That they are of great importance and interest to a good deal of people, no matter where those people are, should be enough.

And why not? If an item is of interest to 20% of Wikipedia users, who cares whether they are all in the same country? A space item is only of interest to people who care about space. A sports item is only of interest to sports fans. Yet we still have items on space and sports because we have a lot of people interested in space and sports.

I know ITN is not a news service, but bear with me for one comparison. Let's say you have a newspaper that covers a city and its suburban municipalities. If a suburb decides to raise taxes, that will be in the newspaper, even though few people outside of the suburb are interested. The paper carries a story because many people will be interested, even if they all happen to live in the same place.

The only questions that should be asked for an ITN item are: What does the appropriate Wikipedia article look like; and Are a lot of people interested in this item? Provided there are not too many items from the same part of the world on ITN, it shouldn't matter whether the people interested in a given item live in the same country or different countries. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:25, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Without commenting on the rest of your ideas, ITN needs to be more than a question of "are a lot of people interested in this item". Several million people will be very interested in the result of Strictly Come Dancing this weekend, and I doubt you'd find much support for this appearing on ITN. Hammer Raccoon (talk) 13:50, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
For one, Strictly Come Dancing (or Dancing with the Stars) is not that widely distributed as compared to, say, American Idol. –Howard the Duck 02:10, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
(EC) While not respond to the rest of your comments for now, I should point out that for the major sports stories, their results will often be of interest to people who won't usually be regarded as sport fan. For example, the results of the World Cup is often of interest even to people who rarely or never watch sports. And just to be clear I'm not suggesting everyone is interested in the world cup, obviously there are people who are not. Nil Einne (talk) 13:58, 19 December 2008 (UTC)
I started writing this a while ago but decided against it. But since you asked for a response here goes. I think your proposal is a bad idea and you're wrong that the primary reason for the requirement for international interest is to ensure ITN is balanced. It may be a factor, but it's not the primary one. To use an example, let's say New York suffers a nuclear strike, the messiah appears in Los Angeles, an asteroid hits Washington D.C., Obama is shot by Bush and Cheney while being inaugurated and a deadly disease wipes out 10 million in a day in Utah and then stops completely. Meanwhile everything else in the world is peachy. Okay maybe not too peachy (I considered talking about Hamas leaders embracing Israeli leaders as they all realised the fighting was futile but then realised that would definitely be ITN material) but nothing significant. While this is an impossible situation I think we call agree in such a situation under the current system there would be 5 stories from the US on ITN with at worst, a few idiots not worth considering complaining. Yet under your proposal we would have to ignore all rules in such a case or else put up stories that no one cares about. You may think IAR is okay in such an extreme case, but IMHO we should minimise as much as possible the need to IAR and if something is going to require us IAR we have to ask why? Also while my case was extreme, I can imagine a lot more less extreme cases that have happened or that could happen where we end up with an ITN that seems 'geographically' biased yet that would be a good thing because it's reflective of what's going on in the world rather then a geographical balance system where we would try to emphasise geographical balance even though it could mean we put up stuff of lesser importance and yet leave out important stuff. Furthermore how would it even work? We already have the problem of systemic bias due to lack of updated articles stuff in Asia tends to often be ignored or only come on quite late. This is unfortunate but is necessary. Are we going to start putting up shitty articles or stuff that no one cares about just to get geographical depth? The fundamental problem IMHO of you proposal as I stated at the beginning is it's based on an incorrect understanding for why we have an international interest criterion. It's mostly because ITN is not a news service, and items on it are intended to be those that are most encylopaedic in nature not simply news. IMHO when we restrict ITN to items of international importance, what we end up with is items being ones that we expect to be considered of greatest historical importance and signifance. In other words, 20 years from now if you were to ask who was the leader of country X from 2009-2012 (X being a relatively small country) they're more likely to know or consider it important then who was the guy who lead some state and did some dodgy stuff and got caught. You may argue that e.g. the governor stuff is more important then some of the stuff on ITN but I don't think it's necessarily true. To some extent it's reflective of how people tend to view the world and history where we tend to view it in different 'fields' or areas. In politics and international relations, who leads a country (both person and party), major conflict and agreements etc are the top of the crop, and this is what you're most likely to remember and consider important. A scandal involving one part of a country isn't of such great interest. In pop culture, the major award shows are the most important thing. Et al. Our biggest problem is probably sport and while I think we have too much of it, the problem is it's hard to get an agreement about what matters most. This may seem elitist but IMHO even many of those who e.g. are more interested in whether Britney is having another meltdown would agree that it isn't the most important news in the world. I'm not saying ITN is perfect as is, actually I still like monotonehell's proposal I mentioned above but since I don't seem to have support and I can't be bothered pushing it myself it's probably not going anywhere. And we probably do have the situation we're were more likely to put a borderline case involving several countries then a borderline case involving one country (since it's rare we have borderline stuff from the developing world, this primarily means the US) but that's more reflective of the way the world works then a great problem. Nil Einne (talk) 14:36, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Regardless of my opinion, I would suggest you post to WP:VPP and Talk:Main Page mentioning this proposal since it is a fundamental change (IMHO) and if you feel it is important you should seek wider feedback then the ITN community which can be a bit small Nil Einne (talk) 14:36, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Thanks for your input. I'm going to post an RFC. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:08, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Emil Boc has just become Prime Minister of Romania

I want to propose that we include this ITN. We need more ITN from outside the English Speaking World [1] Ijanderson (talk) 13:38, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Pls see WP:ITN/C#ITN candidates for December 15. Romanian legislative election, 2008#Coalition building needs updating, though. --74.14.22.246 (talk) 18:29, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
Current entries on ITN:
  • Guinea: doesn't speak English
  • Auto bailout: Anglosphere
  • Greece: doesn't speak English
  • Submarine cables: Middle East and Asia, only tiny parts speak English
  • Rwanda: doesn't speak English
  • Peru: doesn't speak English
  • Papua New Guinea: speaks English but is not part of the Anglosphere
So that's at best two out of seven stories. Clearly, we need more ITN from within the English speaking world. --Golbez (talk) 20:02, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
We're countering systemic bias, but we're also willing to look at any sufficiently, updated articles. If there's something you have in mind, post a nomination, and if the article's not updated, I'm sure someone will be able to help. SpencerMerry Christmas! 14:22, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
We need to keep in mind that 'countering systemic bias' doesn't mean "no anglophone-relevant articles". It just seemed off for someone to say 'we need more ITN from outside the English Speaking World' when 5/7 of ITN *was* outside the English-speaking world. How about we just post news stories as they happen, without trying to fill some impossible quota? --Golbez (talk) 10:24, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ungrammatical sentence

Hi, this sentence (just added to the ITN on the main page) doesn't make grammatical sense; can it be rewritten, please?

“ The largest-ever coal slurry spill (aftermath pictured) in the United States occurs when a coal-fired power plant in Kingston, Tennessee, releasing 500 million gallons (1.8 billion litres) of fly ash slurry into the surrounding area. ”

Badagnani (talk) 07:10, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

It should be something like:

“ The largest-ever coal slurry spill (aftermath pictured) in the United States occurs when a retaining pond at a coal-fired power plant in Kingston, Tennessee bursts, releasing 500 million gallons (1.8 billion litres) of fly ash slurry into the surrounding area. ”

Badagnani (talk) 07:12, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

My bad, I changed "releases" to "releasing" because I forgot how I had constructed the blurb. Proper now. Master of Puppets Call me MoP! :D 07:26, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks; it's still not right. The power plant is a building. It didn't release anything. The containment/retaining pond did. Badagnani (talk) 07:50, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

I think this is one example where it depends on your POV. For some, the retaining pond could be viewed as part of the power plant (I'm presuming the pond is in the grounds of the plant and owned/controlled as part of plant). To use another example, when someone refers to their house, they don't necessarily mean just the building but may include any garden etc. However I'm not opposed to greater accuracy in the wording Nil Einne (talk) 11:12, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
  • This item still has serious flaws. "Coal slurry" is a mixture of coal (generally pulverized coal) and water (the article linked from "coal slurry" has it wrong, as the article is about coal processing waste, which is a different material). This event released fly ash, which is the residue from burning coal -- and is far less environmentally toxic than coal slurry or coal processing waste. I reported this concern on the main page errors page nearly 6 hours ago, but it seems that no one is paying attention. --Orlady (talk) 21:40, 25 December 2008 (UTC)
    • It's not "fly ash," it's "fly ash sludge" or "fly ash slurry" (the latter wording if one prefers euphemisms). Fly ash is a powdery solid while fly ash sludge/fly ash slurry is an aqueous mixture of the aforementioned powdery solid with water. Please see [2] and [3]. Badagnani (talk) 07:52, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your attention, and for this fix. Badagnani (talk) 22:13, 26 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ITN in 2008

I was wondering if anyone wanted to help me out in working on User:Spencer/ITN in 2008, a listing of ITN's items in 2008. If your interested, pick a month, and use the last wording of the item (After minor changes/tweaks of the wording have been made) and removed the "pictured". Thanks, SpencerT♦C 15:51, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Please? SpencerT♦C 02:51, 31 December 2008 (UTC)
Done. Check out ITN's 2008 archive at Wikipedia:ITN in 2008. SpencerT♦C 21:50, 1 January 2009 (UTC)
Great ! --GPPande 07:14, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Operation cast lead

I wonder how long the blurb of Operation cast lead would continue to remain at the bottom of ITN? As you can see from here, other news have been removed as new ones come at top, but this one continues to occupy the bottom. Will it remain till Israeli strikes continue? The news is on ITN since December 27, 2008. --GPPande 15:11, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I suppose we can update it some time soon with new development and move to the top. And after that, we leave it to stay as long as it is not replaced by newer events. --Tone 15:35, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Guideline draft

Our rules for inclusion for on recent year pages (e.g. 2009) are almost impossible to know unless you already know them. For that reason, I have begun a draft for a guideline on recent year pages. Wikipedia:WikiProject Years/Recent Year guidlines draft. Let's get this hammered out and posted. Recent year pages are consistently among the mot edited on Wikipedia and we badly need to hammer out notability guidelines. Wrad (talk) 20:48, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Hm, ITN and Recent year are not really the same thing since some ITN items do not qualify for year article and vice versa. But sure, it is good to have written guidelines and what you have started seems reasonable. --Tone 09:32, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Let's try this again

I'm kind of disappointed I got so little of a response, positive or negative, to my proposal above in which I suggest that we should concentrate on making ITN as a whole, rather than individual entries, "international." I think adopting such a proposal would make ITN more rational and rid the suggestions page of some of the rancor we see on it. May I ask that people, if they have time, go back to the sixth item above this one, read what I suggested and express their thoughts on it, either way?

There is also the question of what, if anything, should replace the international-ness criteria for individual entries to ensure we don't get "junk news" on ITN. Personally, I abhor junk news items like stories on John Travolta's son dying, but I also believe that we'd be imposing our own values if we were to ban lowbrow news while continuing the kind of geeky stuff that we tend to put on ITN. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:08, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll be doing something to push for the inclusion of the American Idol finale to be added at ITN... –Howard the Duck 01:36, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
Really? Why? Its ITN not ET. --GPPande 15:13, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
I don't see this argument being leveled against the Eurovision thingy; and to think the only song I've heard from that is "Congratulations," assuming that is the same "Congratulations" song that I know. –Howard the Duck 04:11, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
WP:OTHERSTUFF seems relevant to Howard's reasoning, even though we're not discussing articles. IMO, the problem isn't that American Idol isn't included, it is that Eurovision song contest apparently can be. If it fits within the policy, maybe that is the end of the scope that needs altering. /Coffeeshivers (talk) 18:14, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Non Neutral Presentation of Israeli Gaza Strikes Change This Quote Immediately

"Israeli ground forces enter Gaza after a week of airstrikes against Hamas in the area."

"Israeli ground forces enter Gaza after a week of airstrikes on Gaza, claims targetting Hamas, in the area, resulted high civillian and children casualties."

6 Israeli soldier and 631 Palestinians are dead, over 300 civillians of at least 130 are children, 2700 wounded currently.

Can anyone suggest a better wording for casualties report, I am not a native English speaker.

Source : GAZA MAP INDEPENDENT Source : Israel ground war drives up civilian casualties By KARIN LAUB JERUSALEM (AP) 1 hour ago

Over 300 civillians are dead by now and over 130 of them are children. IDF uses Phosphorus Bombs over such a crowded and small city like Gaza, Bombing even Schools and Hospitals. Kasaalan (talk) 10:55, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

I completly agree. The ITN quote is completly detached from reality and looks like an IDF press statement. --Soman (talk) 11:01, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
The breaking news isn't even up to date, or contains any crucial info. How this is even top news, Israel bombed an UN school leading 40 casualties yesterday. "The deaths raised to 75 the number of Palestinian civilians killed on Tuesday alone, according to medical officials. They said four militants also were killed in fighting during the day and put the total Palestinian death toll since Israel began the offensive on 19 December at 629. Most of the deaths reported by Gaza hospitals in recent days have been civilians. The Israeli military said it killed 130 militants since Saturday, a figure that suggested the total Palestinian death toll since 27 December might be close to 700 and that bodies could still be on the battlefield. Many of the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million people lack food, water or power. In southern Israel, schools remained closed and hundreds of thousands of people have been rushing to shelter at the sound of alarms heralding incoming rockets." '40 killed at UN school' in Gaza Independent
Can anyone suggest a better wording for casualties report, I am not a native English speaker.Kasaalan (talk) 11:08, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
There is a page Wiki In The News Candidate Talk you can help the discussion on this title. Kasaalan (talk) 11:30, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome RFC readers

A user has requested comment on Wikipedia policy or guidelines for this section.
Within one hour this page will be placed on the {{RFCpolicy list}}.

When discussion has ended, remove this tag and it will be removed from the list.

I am soliciting input on a proposed change to the criteria for entries in "In the News."

Current criteria require each item to be "of international importance or interest." The proposal is to replace the phrase with "of importance or interest to many Wikipedia readers" and also to require that In the News (ITN) as a whole display geographic diversity.

The spark for this proposal was several debates on the ITN candidates page over events in the United States. Some big news items in the U.S., such as the arrest of the governor of Illinois, were controversially denied a place in ITN because they were not "international."

As the person proposing the change, I'll summarize my argument below:

1) The current criteria often disallow inclusion of items of interest to many Wikipedia readers. While ITN is not a news service, there has been concern that ITN is not updated often enough with new events. We need more events on ITN, and it seems silly to me to disallow items of interest to many Wikipedia users because most of those users happen to be in one country.

2) The current criteria leads to systemic bias in favour of small countries. Current policy may lead to an overabundance of events in Europe, because that continent is divided up into little countries. A small event in Europe may be considered more "international" than a major event in China or the United States. A cod dispute between Iceland and Ireland, with less than 5 million people affected, would qualify under current guidelines, but not the passage of a major piece of legislation in the U.S. Congress, with 300 million people affected.

The unreasonableness of the current guidelines can be seen with the annual debate over the inclusion of the Super Bowl result. Supporters of including it have to focus not on the fact that 100 million Americans care about the game but rather the fact that it's also of interest to a few million Canadians, thus making it "international."

In the last three months of 2008, only seven or eight U.S. events made it to ITN, compared to 15 in Europe (18 with Russia), and 17 in Africa. This happened at a time when the presidential election was going on, and the U.S. was all over the world media. (There were 98 ITN entries in the three-month period.)

3) The goals of the current policy can be achieved with a less-restrictive policy. The argument in favor of the international-ness criterion has been that without it, ITN would be dominated by news from a few countries. This can be avoided simply by requiring that ITN editors strive for geographic diversity in ITN as a whole. If there are too many ITN items from one country, editors can argue against inclusion of a further item from there or remove one of the items already on ITN.

There has been little response to my proposal as of yet, so there has not been a real debate on it. I encourage those against the proposed change to summarize their views here so we can have a discussion on the topic. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

This may be outside the scope of this RFC but I feel that the biggest problem with ITN is that its prominent place on the front page encourages recentism, rather than encouraging the improvement of articles on important topics that are currently lacking. It says to editors: "To have your work featured at the top of the front page, either help bring an article to FA-status, or edit a article about a current topic." I also feel it falsely gives Wikipedia the appearance of a news source, when such information is more appropriate at Wikinews. - Chardish (talk) 01:03, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] What happened?

Where is the consensus for the Gaza news position shuffling ? Sean.hoyland - talk 03:16, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

It has gotten too old? –Howard the Duck 04:12, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
In The News Candidates might be the link you refer. Kasaalan (talk) 08:54, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] ITN is backlogged

We should have added a new news item two days ago. What happened to all the admins? May I suggest 2009 Papua earthquake (see under January 4)? ~AH1(TCU) 01:22, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

We're here. If not, leave a message on my talk page. See my comments about the article in question. SpencerT♦C 02:59, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
Retrieved from "http://www.wiedza.2db.com.pl//w/en/Template_talk:In_the_news"
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