User:Viriditas/Main Page issues

In the news
Due to rampant incivility on other talk pages where this discussion has cropped up, I would like to personally invite to discuss their views about ITN. Feel free to take up as much space as you like. Perhaps we can use this discussion as a springboard to put together a formal proposal or failing that, a minority report. Thanks. Viriditas (talk) 05:10, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Discussion
Specially featuring breaking news articles is fundamentally at odds with some of the principles people like to go by on Wikipedia, i.e. WP:NOTNEWS (and I mean in the properly narrow sense justified by its actual text, not how it's often abused). That said, it's a source of interest and enlightenment and I wouldn't want to give it up. But because of the difference in principle, I would like to see us approach news from a different perspective than the average set of Google headlines. Specifically, I want to largely ignore boldness of appearance in favor of boldness of essence. What I mean is that, well, there are always planes crashing and wars being fought; and though they might be compelling if we had a big photo spread on our front page, we don't. What we want are news items that change the way we think about the world.  They should change what we think is possible, what we think our place is in the cosmos, how we think society works. In ten years they should not just be trivial items that all blur together. Often these are prominent news items - sometimes (as with the plane shot down in Ukraine, which made us think about how airlines decide what is a war zone, and whether countries are responsible for the rebels they arm; or Israel's policy of a massive "buffer zone" where they can shoot civilians) they are even plane crashes or wars. We should look for things like the expedited clinical trials for Ebola vaccine in Liberia, which changes what we think the ethicists will allow us to do to save human life, or developments in the outbreak itself, which change what diseases we picture ourselves worrying about personally five years from now, or using fecal bacteria or blood samples to spot cancer. (I'm not saying those links qualify as current news; they may not be recent breaking events at this time, but they're stories to watch) Another example I've repeated elsewhere too often was the solar sibling story they rejected. I give a lot of science examples and it's no accident, because I think we should have a lot more science headlines, but I'll admit there are probably authentically bold new things in the arts that can be described the same way, even if to my jaundiced eye sometimes it seems like they go in circles. :)

A narrower issue is that much of ITN design has come to automatically feature stories on a list of repeating events. Repeating events are by their nature not what I would think of when I say "boldness of essence". And there is a feeling, when I go over that list, that some companies and mercenary 'non-profits' have lobbied to get their products pushed on Wikipedia on a yearly basis. I honestly don't care who won your crummy TV music competition, not this year, or last year, or next year - at least, not if their only claim to notability is they won the competition, not that they created some new artform or broke a longstanding discrimination or censorship barrier. I want something that matters. Wnt (talk) 05:46, 13 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Viriditas - It's funny you chose to use the word "minority" above. The ITN candidates page is dominated by a very small minority of editors who, as you also hint at above, are pretty rude to people who would like to see something a little different happening there. There's an awful lot of "Sorry, that's what happens here. We can't change it." That doesn't match my approach to life. HiLo48 (talk) 06:04, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Good point. Could you talk about why you've mostly given up on ITN? I asked you here because I want to learn about your experience and help us move forward. Viriditas (talk) 06:12, 13 August 2014 (UTC)


 * I have nominated several Australian items. A small number of the regulars have said they look deserving, but the items have ultimately fallen off the bottom of the list either through lack of interest, or because the associated article was deemed not good enough. I was told that if I wanted them posted, I should fix the articles. My view is that a posting should never depend on the availability of the services of a single editor, and that if those from other parts of the world actually cared about our systemic bias, they would fix the articles. I was told that was unreasonable. I regard systemic bias as far more unreasonable. HiLo48 (talk) 10:27, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
 * I know what you mean. I've often thought there should be an easier way to tag problems that need fixing and to link those problems with editors willing to fix them. I've previously mentioned that Echo could be used for this kind of thing.  For example, I'm willing to fix Hawaii-related items, or at least take a look at them.  I would like to be able to receive Echo notifications pointing me to such problems.  If we had such a system in place, it is conceivable that your Australia-related ITN could have been fixed by similar editors as the problems came up. Viriditas (talk) 21:27, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, my availability to edit here fluctuates wildly, between not time at all, to heaps of spare time. If I'm nominating people for Recent deaths, I can hardly schedule those events to my own liking. Life (and death) isn't like that. HiLo48 (talk) 22:20, 13 August 2014 (UTC)
 * If and when you have free time, would you be interested in putting together an Echo feature proposal that would address this particular concern? I'm thinking TParis might be kind enough to help us with the technical bits... Viriditas (talk) 01:41, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, echo ignores and so it may be possible to build lists with user links, comma delimited, and then have a template like hawaii whereby the script automatically grabs the list and substitutes it inside an HTML comment.  Outside of the HTML comment, it would simply say "Technical help has been requested" or some such.  The echo system should pick up on the usernames during submission and give out the needed notifications.  The usernames themselves would be invisible to the GUI.--v/r - TP 01:58, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * It sounds interesting. Could you give an example using this page as a test? Viriditas (talk) 02:20, 14 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Sounds too complicated. HiLo48 (talk) 06:52, 15 August 2014 (UTC)
 * On the backend, sure, but we're talking about using it on the frontend, in which case it would be very simple. Viriditas (talk)

Small survey

 * Please add questions here based on comments from the above discussion.

Yes

 * 1) I think it's inevitable that Wikipedia will continue as an educational media platform. With the complete failure of Wikinews to cover breaking stories in any capable way, and given the amount of information added daily by active editors to articles on current events, Wikipedia has a responsibility to report what is in the news in an educational manner.  The problem that I see is not whether we should report breaking news, but how to best present it. Viriditas (talk) 06:10, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

No

 * 1) ..No, because our articles on breaking news events tend to be some of our worst. They attract excited, new editors who don't have a strong familiarity with our rules, are inevitably unstable, and contain all sorts of undue content that inevitably gets weeded out later. A couple I've been involved in recently are Robin Williams and Malaysia Airlines Flight 17. Both still contain all sorts of nonsense that shouldn't be in a decent encyclopaedia article. HiLo48 (talk) 17:21, 13 August 2014 (UTC)