User:Masem/drafts/20-year view

Wikipedia articles should be written on the expectation they are taking a 10- or 20-year view (or longer) on a topic. For most pre-21st century topics, this will be rather easy to do, but Wikipedia tends to have many struggles when it comes to writing about newer topics, including breaking news and ongoing topic.

While Wikipedia is not a newspaper and we should not rush to create articles on events that have yet to show enduring coverage, we can keep existing Wikipedia content up to date with breaking news and current information. But this still requires a balance as to what information actually is relevant over time. There will be a lot of information provided by 24/7 news cable stations and online newspapers that we could use, but most of that, from an encyclopedic point-of-view, is simply noise. It takes skill in the art in many of these topic areas to see what is significant for inclusion in the short term, and what is just random information.

If you aren't clear if a piece of information is relevant for inclusion now, ask yourself if this piece of information will be likely relevant to summarizing the topic in 10 or 20-years time. If it likely won't be then, it likely isn't appropriate for inclusion now. For example, if we were writing about the construction of a new notable building, its groundbreaking ceremony and point of completion would certainly be of long-term interest, but a short-term delay in building materials that may have stalled construction for a week would not be, even if that could be documented. since 10 years down the road, all that really matters was when the construction started and finished.

There are several facets of this principle tied to other concepts:


 * WP:PROSELINE or writing content "On (such-and-such a date), (this event happened)." This tends to be used for ongoing events and is easiest to write to when the event is nebulous and being participated by many editors (our articles on the by-nation impact of COVID-19 are a good example of this). This isn't necessarily a bad way to write when the event is happening and it is unclear what might be important in 10 or 20-years time, but this should be seen as a temporary measure. Once there is better clarity of what the big picture of the event, then steps should be done to remove the proseline and write towards a summary style. This may and likely will cause some information to be lost, but that should be expected since we're trying to capture the most critical events and not the individual day-by-day ones.
 * WP:RECENTISM when looking towards including opinion and analysis of breaking events.