User:Maplestrip/ITN represents our encyclopedia

"In The News" (ITN) is a section on the Wikipedia frontpage where we display recently written or updated articles, that relate directly to news stories. In featuring these articles here, we find ourselves competing with Wikinews. In theory, per WP:NOTNEWS, we should only only have articles on events that will experience enduring notability, and in practice we write articles on any accident, massacre, or disaster that has a double-digit deathtoll. There's an identity-crisis in this: personally I use Wikipedia to keep track of news stories. This might not be what we want ITN to be for.

When an article is nominated to be featured on ITN, discussions are generally focused primarily on "significance", which is determined by editor consensus. If a beauty pageant is nominated, a dozen editors instantly jump in to say it isn't significant. If a high-level sports championship is nominated, there will always be at least a few non-sports-fan editors opposing on significance. If there's a shooting in Europe, editors find themselves trying to compare the significance of it to similar shootings in North America or in Africa. By nature, ITN is defined by WP:IDONTLIKEIT and attempts to balance bias.

The distinction between ITN and "Did You Know" (DYK) is a common subject. ITN has to be serious and of significant importance; anything that might be considered trivial to a person on the other side of the world should be posted to DYK instead (eventhough it rarely qualifies). The opening of the largest nuclear reactor in Europe? Europe is not that big a continent and this is just one building, so it should be posted on DYK instead. That is the level of importance ITN has to many editors.

The argument I want to make is that ITN shouldn't have this role. The ~30 editors active in ITN shouldn't be trying to decide what the biggest and most important news stories are.