Wikipedia talk:In the news/Archive 34

new ITN-only admins
the apst month weve ahd several 24-48 hour no updates on ITN. Would it be possible to nominate some ITN-only admins? that way the whole admin process is not needed and specialist ITN ediotrs can nominate someone who regularly features these edits.(Lihaas (talk) 01:23, 3 January 2011 (UTC)).
 * This idea has been brought up several times in the past couple of years, and I think it would be a great idea if it would help ITN flow more smoothly. --Plasma Twa 2 01:29, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * There's no way we could sell it to the wider community, though, unfortunately. However, some form of protection that locks out almost everyone but allows a handful of non-admins to edit it might be possible, but it'll require a lot of discussion and developer intervention. The best option is to encourage good candidates to stand at WP:RFA. In the meantime, if there's an item with consensus and an update that I've missed, feel free to come and pester me on my talk page. I also have several admin talk page stalkers who might help out. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   01:37, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that there has been a serious lack of admins over the past two weeks, and at other times throughout the year. It's not just ITN, but WP:ERRORS has had very slow response times, with items often rotating off before an admin passed through. I thought RFA had been very hostile to people coming in and saying they only wanted to work on one area (eg ITN)? That's certainly been a large reason why I haven't run. Back on topic, there's no way a whole new set of user permissions or protection levels are going to be implemented just for ITN's convenience. Modest Genius talk 02:40, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * also the WP:Whitelist (its somethign ive looked and trying to answer here adn there that is notoriously slow with just 1 admin regularly monitoring). Isnt it possible (theoritcally at least) to allow a [seudo-admin to handle? if thats affirmative i think we can discuss a candidcate here because this gets the itn regulars. (who are most versed int he specifics)(Lihaas (talk) 03:32, 3 January 2011 (UTC)).
 * Aside from the fact that splitting permissions is probably impossible in the Wikipedia political climate, I'm not sure it is even needed. A lot of items suggested simply do not gather the consensus necessary to post it, or are unsuitable to post due to content issues. Neither one of those can be addressed by a separate permissions package. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 03:56, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * i think affirming a specific criteria is easy. to keep admin pov off we can also agree that anythign with a majority support after say 24 hours (and majority beign reasoning other that "support"/"support per nom") should be listed regardless of what the admin thinks. that is ultra-neutral to me.
 * (sure we get pissed our isses are not on, but it seems the most neutral even itn/r issues woudl then eed that)(Lihaas (talk) 04:24, 3 January 2011 (UTC)).
 * Well, one of the problems with new items in the recent days was that there were no items with enough support or they were not ready. Otherwise, if no itn admin is around and something needs to be posted, one can always ask for assistance at WP:AN that is monitored more frequently. --Tone 08:04, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * One way is to allow trustworthy non-admins (like rollbackers) to edit protected pages. –HTD  (ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 14:37, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Which, again, would require software modifications (the addition of a new protection level), and which would require broad consensus for developers to consider implementing it. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 21:50, 4 January 2011 (UTC)
 * we're back, 28 hours...
 * Wouldnt it be possible to have specific-admins. much like this reviewer/rollbacker, or one of those things i think that i am.(Lihaas (talk) 19:29, 5 January 2011 (UTC)).
 * So, if you could post, which article would you post right now? The current candidates all have received objections of some sort. It's not because admins aren't watching the page, but more because admins don't want to post something that has no consensus. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 19:49, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Lihaas' proposal to post anything with "majority support" within 24 hours is exactly why editing the main page should be reserved for those who can demonstrate to the community the ability to judge consensus. And of course it's completely impossible from a technical standpoint so there's no point considering it. It's early January. It's a slow news time of the year. So ITN moving slowly shouldn't concern us. --Mkativerata (talk) 19:33, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ive also previously said on the nom page that "blind support" shouldnt eman a thing (unfortunately it does). its been said that supprots/opposes need a reason. and with that then a reasonable level should be accepted. the main pont being that more ITN-specific admins (or any other specialiraty) should be made.Lihaas (talk) 19:29, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

2010 Côte d'Ivoire crisis
2010 Côte d'Ivoire crisis is of sufficient global importance to be 'in the news'. Might I suggest
 * Laurent Gbagbo remains in charge of the army during the 2010 Côte d'Ivoire crisis.

Wizzy&hellip; &#9742; 08:01, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * To nominate an item, go to WP:ITN/C.  Spencer T♦ C 21:27, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

ITN review
like dyk, i think we should/could have at least "reviewers" if not admins (then any online admin could be called to post). This means all those who nominate musst review another nomination for its acceptability to ITN. we can then develop some base criteria for review. See the DYK nom page's yellow banner on the top(Lihaas (talk) 19:33, 6 January 2011 (UTC)).
 * Uh, I get your idea but I guess the DYK team decided to work like this because of the heavy backlog and because there are tens of nominations per day. Here, rarely have more than 5 nominations per day and they are easily checked by anyone who is monitoring the page. Also, DYK has other requirements, if the article is long enough and referenced and with no other issues, then it can go on the Main page. On ITN, we still need some agreement about what to post. Or are you concerned about the occasional lack of admins to post items with sufficient support? --Tone 19:45, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * i think it might be interesting to have trustworthy people here who can sorta pick and create a final blurb and have it ready for admin to post. then create a section above on ITN/C for pending blurbs that any admin can come in and post (even those who never come to ITN/C). credits or whatever can be taken care off when a regular admin comes along. the point anyways is to get more items through and not to worry about clock and credits. -- Ashish-g55 19:59, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I strongly support suggesting a blurb early in the nomination, this makes it much easier for the posting admin (at least, in my case, it is sometimes time consuming to read all the discussion, consider all important aspects and form a good blurb that is accurate, grammatically spotless and short.) --Tone 20:09, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Im not saying we bypass voting. Just saying one of the reviewers see if the section/article is adequate to ITN and then a blurb, etc. Which should be the prerequisite to postine.(Lihaas (talk) 05:19, 7 January 2011 (UTC)).

The ITN is the least dynamic part of the Main Page currently
And I think this is a problem. A significant part of editors, I believe, visits the main page at least once a day, and what do they see there?


 * WP:TFA is updated once a day, with links to few previously featured articles, usually no more than 3
 * WP:DYK is updated four times a day
 * WP:OTD is updated once a day
 * WP:POTD is updated once a day

WP:ITN is expected to be updated at least once a day, as its timer suggests, but this timer seems to have been red too often recently, with no updates for very long periods, up to several days. This results in the template often featuring some topics, which are no longer in the world news actually. Recently the news about the Tongan general election, 2010 and Pike River Mine disaster were held over a week. In the course of this week the contents of all other templates have fully changed several times, but ITN still has been lagging with some non-fresh news, which obviously were not so much important as to have them on the MP for such a long time. With most events, if they are recent and not ongoing, the interest of editors is held high just for one, or two, or three days, and certainly not for a week, and having the outdated news on the ITN certainly does not serve the central purpose of Wikipedia—making a great encyclopedia. The space on the MP could be used more effectively by changing the news items at a less turtlish speed.

As far as I can see, in Russian Wikipedia the slow pace of ITN updating resulted in complete removal of the template from their MP. I think nobody here wants the English ITN to meet the same fate. To prevent this and to improve the quality and dynamics of the ITN, I believe, we should either attempt to encourage editors to bring more worthy nominations to the WP:ITN/C, or try to treat these nominations without strong personal attitude to their importance, and/or without excessively formalistic approach towards updating related articles. Grey Hood   Talk  22:15, 2 December 2010 (UTC)


 * We've just had a couple of slow news weeks (but we've just had three new items over the course of 4 hours). A month ago, things were fine; I imagine that it will pick up again soon. Admittedly the number of candidates on ITN/C has been fairly low for a while now, especially when compared to a year ago, but I don't see what we can do about that. We've managed to maintain a roughly 24 hour posting time ever since the ITN update template came in, talking about removing ITN from the MP seems massively premature. Modest Genius talk 22:37, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
 * (ec) although i agree with you that it should be changed a little faster. but your definition of dynamic is wrong. ITN changes dynamically according to the current events that happen. not by forcing events that shouldnt go up just because timer is red. 3 items were added today and i think one more should make it. so we have good days and bad days. but yeah i do agree that we may have to tone down the opposes a tiny bit let more articles through. -- Ashish-g55 22:39, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I was thinking about posting something similar. If you look at User:DC/Playbox I've compiled the stats from the first ten months of 2009 and 2010 (note that November hasn't been archived yet). In the period I analyzed, we posted 55 less stories this year than last.  I think part of the issue is that as we reject more stories, the ITN standards appear tougher, and even more stories get posted as a result.  DC  T •C   23:18, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Look at the statistics:
 * Leslie Nielsen November, December
 * Tom DeLay November, December
 * Tongan general election, 2010 November, December
 * Pike River Mine disaster November, December

There is a huge interest in an article just for a pair of days, then the viewership goes down significantly (the usual situation with most news off wiki as well). And if you look to to the edit histories, you'll see again that most editing is done at the first days after the news got to the ITN, not a week after. There were just 40 news items in November, that is 40/30 = 1.33 per day, which means that contents of 6-item sized ITN template are fully refreshed in an average time of 4.5 days! That's slower than TFA with its previously featured articles. Instead of bringing more newly created articles or the currently updated articles into prominence and encouraging editors to work on them further, the ITN displays stale news for 4.5 days average or even for a week. I haven't seen any respectable news agency to do so, and no other part of the MP does so. Grey Hood   Talk  23:40, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Well we'te not a news agency so we don't play by their rules. They post crap that's of no encyclopaedic relevance to keep their front pages looking fresh. For example, BBC News has "England miss out on [football] World Cup", snow, WikiLeaks, a murder, and a forest fire in Israel. The New York Times currently has ethics violations from a politician, unemployment, tax cuts, WikiLeaks again. Of all of those, WikiLeaks on currently on ITN and the rest are far too trivial. We can only post events when there are events to post and we can't control that. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   23:50, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Regarding the ethics violations you mentioned, censure in the House of Reps is actually a big deal given how rare it is. I'd nominate it at ITNC, but it doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of making ITN. DC  T •C   00:17, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm aware about WP:NOTNEWS and my main concern is the comparison of the ITN with other parts of the MP. Still we should not ignore the general news agency practice, that the news generally should remain in focus of interest just for one-two-three days, not for a week. This is a matter of psychology and efficiency. And while I agree that the trivial stuff should be avoided, I still think it is inappropriate and ineffective to have week-long stale news on the ITN, and at the same time discard nominations that are pretty encyclopaedic. The snow is encyclopaedic enough, btw, and the related article has been significantly updated recently; the only question is the importance of the events - many people on the ITN discussions don't think that this exceptionally cold winter is interesting or important enough. That looks very much like personal POV-based evaluating of topics which are obviously in the center of attention of the world news and are thus well sourced; inserting too much of editor's POVs instead of evaluating the existing off-wiki interest to the event may actually turning WP:ITN into a kind of news agency wich has its own news policy. But let me cite the first words on the WP:ITN:
 * The In the news (ITN) section on the main page serves to direct readers to articles that have been substantially updated to reflect recent or current events of wide interest. ITN supports the central purpose of Wikipedia&mdash;making a great encyclopedia.
 * So basically, current events + major recent updates or new article + wide interest + possibility of making Wikipedia better (by encouraging editors making further updates) = ITN-worthy article. However, there is often a situation on WP:ITN/C when such worthy articles are discarded because they are not important enough in eyes of some editors despite obvious wide interest in the world news; and despite people trying hard to update the articles and make Wikipedia better, such articles still are not posted. This is sad, and this is actually discouraging, not encouraging.  Grey  Hood   Talk  01:20, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, I just have to point out that BBC News, the New York Times and other Anglophone countries media are not the only sources to establish the news currently in focus of interest in the world. I believe that English language news outlets from Mexico, Brazil, China, Russia, EU, India and other large countries and macroregions should be taken into account as well. Grey  Hood   Talk  01:20, 3 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Lately someone questioned if Xinhua can be considered as a reliable source so... –HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 02:42, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * So what? As far as I know, lately there was an issiue with China Daily, not Xinhua, and the claim was made that the news agency under control of the Chinese Communist party is unreliable. But this actually means that all or almost all Chinese news agencies may be deemed unreliable on the same basis. However, what do we have as an alternative? American or British news agencies, called "independent", but in fact under control of big business and political parties. Not that I suggest to consider all big news agencies unreliable, of course. I just propose not to select reliable ones on the basis of their national or corporative allegiance. American or British sources naturally should have priority, but the others shouldn't be discarded, and if we want to reflect a truly global picture of the world news, we simply have to use the news agencies from non-Anglophone countries as sources for determining notability as well. Grey  Hood   Talk  13:49, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

For me, the purpose of ITN is the following:
 * 1) Highlight good Wikipedia articles relevant to current events in order to increase their viewership
 * 2) For people who want more information about a current event, provide an easy to locate the corresponding article (this can sometimes be really difficult without ITN; for example, to find the article about the first flight of Boeing's new space plane, you need to know it's identification USA-212, which most people don't).

Regarding Greyhood's concern of too slow updating, I agree in part. It should be updated more often, but that should not lead to more minor accidents and deaths to be posted. Sometimes the criteria for inclusion is ridiculous, like in science articles, where some people demand that the research has to be peer-reviewed first, although this section is In the News and not Headlines of Peer-Reviewed Science. This completely ridiculous criteria prevents good science items being posted while they are in the news, and when they get peer-reviewed, the media no longer cares. I think an item staying on ITN for a week is definitely too long. I would say 3-4 days would be best.

In my opinion the solution to the updating problem is to be more bold and post different or untraditional news more often. Let's say we have a good article about an author from Central African Republic, who is famous in his country but not known internationally. Then let's put it on ITN to highlight the good article. On the other hand, when a minor flight accident occurs (less than 5-10 people dead), and the article is just a stub, let's not post it - there's no reason to highlight a bad article if the news isn't major. Offliner (talk) 03:52, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * We probably also need to stop being quite so anal about what gets posted, maybe we should actually post more stuff (like the Science above) rather than opposing it for not being important enough - and we should probably take the article's quality more into account, if we have a really good article on something pretty minor then we should post that. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 08:34, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Peer-review is an absolute requirement that we should not compromise on. The vast majority of genuine scientific advances are reported in the media at the same time as the peer-reviewed paper is released. There are two main exceptions: presentations given at scientific conferences, which are usually descriptions of ongoing and uncompleted work; and 'scientific' stories of the 'item X prevents cancer' type, which often turn out to be non-scientific studies funded by whoever makes item X. The requirement for peer review ensures that the science stories we post are indeed genuine science, conducted by competent scientists. If some sections of the (mostly tabloid) media ignore the need for genuine science to be peer reviewed, that doesn't mean we should follow suit. After all, those media also have an obsession with 'celebrities', talent shows and crime, which we don't consider appropriate either. I'm willing to entertain the need to be less harsh on some stories, but we already have enough items on sport and disasters, so should probably look elsewhere. <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 14:08, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * If a reliable source like the BBC publishes science news story, then it's good enough for me, and it's good enough for ITN. Offliner (talk) 14:13, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Quite, the tabloids aren't treated as reliable sources by Wikipedia anyway. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 18:19, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I for one do not consider BBC News to be a good source for science news. It's clearly a top quality august institution, but their science output is mostly recycled press releases. I'd rather rely on something like New Scientist, Nature News, or even the Guardian. But peer-review is still the gold standard for science stories. <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 02:45, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I held off on commenting because everyone who's been on ITN for a while knows what I'm going to say, but I'm going to say it anyway. Two problems have been discussed on this page recently: ITN isn't getting updated enough, and some of what we do put up links to poor articles. The reason for both of these things comes down to editors putting too much emphasis on a very academic idea of "importance" rather than on the other ITN criteria. A national election has to go up because it's a national election, even if the article is crap, but a UK party-leadership election can't go up, even if it has a great article, because it's not a general election. Everyone recognizes that trivial items should not go up, but ITN should not be about deciding which events are the most important based on attempts to retrofit the news to logical standards. Instead, we should have a minimum level of importance, or non-triviality. Once an item meets that threshold, the key should be article quality, timeliness, reader interest and whatever else we consider to be ITN criteria. Any item that is important enough, for example, to go on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post at the same time should meet the ITN importance criterion. That doesn't mean it's necessarily appropriate for ITN, but it shouldn't be dismissed on that criterion alone. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:16, 8 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Prime example: the current South Sudan Independence Referendum. Extremely important event, fully fleshed out and well developed article, appearing in reliable sources and media all over the place, and it's being held off the page by rule-bound Wikipedians. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.219.241.110 (talk) 07:13, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Giffords photo
A has been released of Giffords, and I think it'd be best to use that one instead on the in the news section. Gage (talk) 16:17, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

"of wide interest" to whom?
In October, User:David Levy eliminated the words "to the encyclopedia's readers" at the end of the sentence, "The In the news (ITN) section on the main page serves to direct readers to articles that have been substantially updated to reflect recent or current events of wide interest." This deletion is puzzling, and I don't remember any consensus for it. The obvious question is "of wide interest to whom?" I suggest we add those four words back, or at least replace them with something. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:42, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You took part in the discussion, David did not (although there is no reason why that should preclude him from acting on it), and it petered out fairly rapidly with no clear conclusion. Kevin McE (talk) 19:06, 11 January 2011 (UTC)


 * There's still no agreement amongst ITN contributors about precisely who we're targeting. See some of the (now rather old) discussion at Wikipedia_talk:In_the_news/Archive_27. The phrase 'to the encyclopaedia's readers' sounds like an invitation to use page-view statistics to pick items, tabloid-style reporting of celebrities and entertainment stories, and implies embedding of current bias. It's also missing some of the key aspects of ITN, namely that there's a requirement that the article meets some undefined quality standard (no two paragraph stubs) and the ill-defined 'importance' criterion. I agree that the current statement is confusing and does rather ask the question of 'to whom?'. I personally prefer modifying the earlier statement (by removing the 'international' and changing 'up-to-date encyclopedic content' to 'articles which have been updated', which gives
 * The In the News (ITN) section on the Main Page features articles which have been updated to reflect important current events.
 * Thoughts? <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 21:44, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That's fine, covering the point and not going into a definition. --Tone 22:09, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think we have to say that the items should be important to someone, otherwise anyone could put up their crufty pet interest. Perhaps we could say items should be of interest to the encyclopedia's potential readers. Anyway, we really need to redo the entire ITN criteria page to clarify what ITN is all about. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:15, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I dont think we need to redo anything. i agree with Tone that line sounds fine. -- Ashish-g55 15:19, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree also: this is essentially what we had before undiscussed changes last year, and as an encyclopaedia, we are better equipped for dealing with the important than the popular interest; we can better argue against the trivial if what is simply "of interest" is not encouraged. Kevin McE (talk) 18:46, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Clearly, people act as if public interest is a criterion. "I oppose because no one (in my country) cares about XXXX" is a common enough argument. And I don't think there's a way around it. The section name is "In the news," and certainly being of interest to a lot of people (or being of great interest to some people) is essential to something being "news." No one is suggesting that wide interest automatically lead to inclusion. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:09, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

RSS/Twitter of In The News
Hi all,

I really like In The News and I feel that it's exactly the sort of news source that many people who don't currently follow the news (including me) would like to follow - timely, accurate, and non-trivial. Thus, I'd like to make an RSS and a Twitter feed of it. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to do this, and would anyone like to help out? Mariuskempe (talk) 15:22, 12 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Syndication have feeds for TFA, POTD, and DYK, but not TFA. Probably best to ask on the talk page there, or WP:VPT. <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 17:12, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Anniversary stuff
I've decided for the 10th anniversary that instead of running the normal featured article, I'm going to be running a featured list, topic, and sound (in a single blurb). The discussion is going on at Talk:Main_Page and has been extremely positive.

The FA blurb is going to be a bit (30-50%) longer than normal. In order to balance out the main page, what I want to do is put a message at the top of ITN in bigger-than-normal font saying "Wikipedia celebrates 10 years". The sentence should link to a signpost article, or maybe the Wikimediafoundation.org blog, covering the anniversary. Raul654 (talk) 00:58, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Here's what I am thinking of: Wikipedia turns 10 years old

Thoughts? Comments? Raul654 (talk) 01:07, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Is it going to be posted within the ITN block, or as a section of its own? Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 01:14, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * In the ITN block, at the top, along with the Wikipedia globe. Raul654 (talk) 01:16, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that in this situation, the 10th anniversary probably provides a good enough reason to IAR all the self-reference complaints people could make. I like it, given that we swap whatever picture we have at ITN in the time for the Wikipedia logo. We probably won't need two pictures in the section. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 01:19, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * We can put a picture of 10 instead? Nergaal (talk) 01:20, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Probably needs to go through the regular ITN/C nomination procedure. Just keeping a few extra items on ITN would also be an option, to avoid a self-reference. Courcelles 01:21, 13 January 2011 (UTC)


 * No objections here. Could we use the Wikipedia 10 jigsaw piece logo instead of the globe?  It'll look a bit weird having the globe at the top left and top right of the screen - Dumelow (talk) 16:47, 13 January 2011 (UTC)


 * How did IAR even come into this? What possible IAR necessary improvement to Wikipedia comes from giving readers the impression that we think our 10th birthday is as important as the items that they have, over the years, grown to expect to see in that section - namely major disasters, important scientific discoveries, and the election results in every single country that exists (alright, that one's not so great, but you get the idea). That ten website doesn't even have a donation banner on it FFS! I clicked on the one link that looked like it might remotely produce something good for Wikipedia - "Design". I stopped reading after two minutes, still without a clue what the page was for. If we were to do this inside ITN (I've no objections doing it outside), I would have expected a normal blurb, with a normal link to Wikipedia in it, and just like any other item, it would not go up until someone had properly updated the article, with something new worth reading about the actual cited event, properly referenced. After five days, as this link slides down the template, it's only going to look dafter and dafter, completely out of place. MickMacNee (talk) 00:50, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Brazilian floods
I know the Australian floods are significant but I think they may have just been eclipsed by floods in Brazil.--Senor Freebie (talk) 01:17, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * With the article in its current shape, it won't be posted here, though. Substantial improvements to that article are needed before it is considered for inclusion in ITN. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 01:22, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The last few days there were also floods in Sri Lanka and at the Thailand-Malaysia border. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 04:50, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

How about now? Missionary (talk) 06:33, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It's OK, but what's the deal with the people adding orphan tags on new articles? Yes we get it, they're new; this one was victimized just over an hour after creation, while the Philippine floods article was tagged just over 30 minutes after creation. WTF. It doesn't actually help. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 07:06, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Hey someone will bitch about that orphan tag on the article, making it harder to be added on ITN template. I'd remove it. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 07:07, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it doesn't make sense. Thanks for removing it. Missionary (talk) 07:35, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

This sort of suggestion for news items to be added should be on WP:ITN/C. It tells you this in the big notice at the top of this page, AND the one that appears when you edit it. Please read these sort of notices. This story was already under discussion on that page before you posted here. <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 18:03, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

If ITN was a grocery store
Salesman: Hello, my name is Ed, and I represent the Goldstein Kosher Food Company. I notice you don't carry our brand of gefilte fish. I believe your customers would like it. Perhaps you'd want to offer it for a week and see how it sells?
 * ITN editor: I'm sorry, we don't carry Jewish food. You see, only a small part of the world is Jewish, so if we were to carry food that mostly Jewish people were interested in, it would be systemic bias.

Salesman: But this is Boca Raton, Florida. Half of your customers must be Jewish.
 * ITN editor: Yes, but you see, at this grocery store, we don't care what our customers are interested in. We only care about what we think is important.

Salesman: Yeah, but I'm not asking for your entire store space. Look, I'll just give you a few jars to put on this shelf over here.
 * ITN editor: Oh, no -- that space is reserved for Tuvaluan tulolo.

Salesman: How can you carry some Tuvaluan food and not gefilte fish? There are hardly any Tuvaluan people! And certainly none shop here.
 * ITN editor: Yes, but tulolo is a meal, and gefilte fish is just a side dish. Therefore, tulolo is more important than gefilte fish and should have priority of placement, even if no one is interested in it.

Salesman: But that tulolo stuff is past its expiration date, it stinks, and there's maggots crawling all over it. This gefilte fish comes from a two-star Michelin restaurant and is flavored with white truffles and saffron.
 * ITN editor: We don't care about quality. We feel guilty if we don't put up items from obscure countries we feel important, even if the product is crap.

Salesman: May I ask how you stay in business?
 * ITN editor: It's quite simple: We're a small part of a larger entity funded through donations. So we don't have to care what our customers think. We have a small, self-selected cadre of individuals that decides what to stock based on what we ourselves want to eat. We can't be fired, and anyone who disagrees with out way of doing things usually gets exasperated quite quickly and gives up trying to change it. Except for this one guy. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 12:40, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Very nicely put. I completely agree. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 13:01, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * And if you want to include another country other than the US, India is also rather under-represented on ITN. Both China and even Pakistan get a lot more coverage. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 13:28, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ireland too. For their 4.4 million people they do have a special place at the ITN. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 14:27, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed. But at least ireland is English speaking and probably makes up 1% of the audience. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 15:11, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Less than 1% -- 0.7%. Even Malaysia had higher view stats. When was the last Malaysia item that we had that was not about elections or disasters? Just a while ago another Irish was supposed to go up. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 02:09, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Who what is gefilte fish? –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 14:24, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * If If ITN was a grocery store it would be part of a much larger department store that stocks a bit over 3.5 million items. So no your gefilte fish is not excluded.
 * I am unapologetic that ITN tends towards news based on actual significance rather than what people are interested in. After all if we consider what even the fairly highbrow (well compared to say the daily mail) BBC website readers were interested in over the last week (taken from From Most Popular World in the last week):
 * monday
 * Tuesday
 * wednesday
 * thusday
 * friday
 * So two events of broad significance (Baby Doc back in haiti and Australia floods), two human interest (Carlina White kidnapping and Piers Morgan as CNN host) and one wierd news (Hotel made of rubbish).
 * I think we are better off sticking to our current model of coverage rather than moving to a more populist one.©Geni 14:47, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Or we could compare to a news source that has a full worldwide focus such as the Economist? Even it covers more US and Indian stuff than ITN does. It's leaders and briefing are on inequality, China's currency, Tunisia, BP's Russian deal and drugs prohibition in South America. Of those all of them are encyclopaedic, though several aren't in the news specifically this week. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 15:07, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Err you miss the point. Leading isn't the issue. The BBC world section is currently leading on the Irish PM, the talks with iran and a protest in algeria. What is actualy popular right now is an article on Imber, The latest in the Amanda Knox case, the death of Sexy Cora and Harry Redknapp getting mugged. ©Geni 15:58, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

But that is only if ITN were a grocery store. It isn't. If you have a sensible proposal to make, please make it. Kevin McE (talk) 15:20, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Be fair – it's been 11 whole days since Mwalcoff last posted one of his "why can't we carry more stuff that's of interest purely to a subset of readers" screeds. And for "subset of readers", feel free to substitute, as ever, "Americans". 87.112.177.117 (talk) 22:37, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I concur completely with the two preceding posts. Nobody is interested in these rants, and anybody with anything sensible to suggest should feel free to speak up and by sensible I mean none of this "the US is more important" bollocks and nothing that has been rejected by consensus over and over and over and over again. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   23:01, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm hardly a great fan of the US. But outside of ITN there is no denying that they make up half the audience of en.wiki. Now I'd absolutely oppose dropping ITN's strong worldwide focus. But it doesn't mean we can't appease half our audience occasionally with high brow stories (such as new supreme court judges) that only affect them. We do that honour to Tuvalu, population 4, for Christ sake. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 23:53, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Elena Kagan's apointment was featured on ITN.©Geni 00:58, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Not all domestic politics is inherently un-ITN-worthy. I supported posting Kagan and would support similar things in future because they are of interest not just to the US, but to a large portion of the English-speaking world. However, just having a large population doesn't make a country inherently more important than all others. If it did, India and China would make up 33% of everything we post whereas the US would make up less than one twelfth. Let's not fall into the trap of arguing with strawmen, however. I think ITN (and the Main Page in general) does a surprisingly good job of maintaining geographical balance. For example, right now, we have South Korea, Iraq, Africa, the US and Venezuala. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   01:22, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Strictly that is correct, but Kagan's request was pulled early as a lot of people opposed it being posted. I also agree that ITN does have pretty good international coverage, but it isn't perfect. The US is one of the countries which does particularly badly, and a lot of people just make anti-American arguments as to why US stuff shouldn't be posted, and that isn't good. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 18:45, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced that the United States is quite so hard-done-by as all that. It generally accounts for at least one of the six items in ITN at any given time – at the moment it's Sargent Shriver, an American politician who set up an American volunteer organisation, an item which is given additional prominence by being the subject of the picture. 87.112.177.117 (talk) 20:02, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

If so that doesn't seem unreasonable I'll bring some numbers to the table sometime next week. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 20:04, 23 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm a bit late to this discussion, but what on earth was such a ridiculous caricature supposed to achieve? It doesn't even make sense on its own terms - the hypothetical owner would just tell the salesman to bugger off and let him stock whatever the hell he wants in his own store. Deciding on news items to feature on ITN has absolutely NOTHING in common with selling foodstuffs in a shop. Comparing the two just annoys people and makes your own argument look ridiculous. It has been pointed out many, many times that picking the stories with the highest level of public interest would be an editorial disaster. <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 23:30, 24 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have never said that it should be a straight popularity contest. My point is that to not consider the makeup of the readership at all is absurd. To have a web feature where 50% of the readership is American and have a rule that we're not going to feature any news primarily of interest to Americans (because America is only a small part of the world) is like having a grocery store in a Jewish neighborhood and not stocking Kosher food because only a tiny part of the world is Jewish. Personally, I think the biggest problem with Wikipedia is that it is not run more like a business -- that is, a place where the goal is to serve the customer (readers) rather than the service provider (the editors). The best evidence of this is the countless thousands of articles that are written in a way that you can't understand them unless you're already familiar with the topic. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:03, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * No such rule exists, so you're attacking a straw man. <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 00:14, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * People vote as if such a rule exists. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:46, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * if you think voting is what is going on at ITN/C then you got wrong idea of what consensus is. now if you object to people expressing their opinion towards worthiness of an item (i.e some american item got rejected) then thats really your own personal issues. -- Ashish-g55 00:59, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * People do reject stuff purely on the grounds that its American, if I rejected something on the grounds that it was Tuvaluan, I wouldn't gain any traction and I might be accused of racism. The only country where that argument makes a little sense is Pakistan - and that's only because it gets a lot of coverage relative to its global importance. Certainly the US isn't over-covered on ITN. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 08:23, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I can't remember this EVER happening. When has anyone opposed an item because 'it's American'? Items' global importances have been called into doubt, but that's happened to items dealing with all countries, not just the USA. <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 19:08, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Things like this and this are pretty anti-American. There is also a decent amount of whining and lack of understanding of the US political system going on with this. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 19:56, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * in your second link please read the comment right above it first. i would have replied the same way after reading that. the same old lets cater to readership comment tends to piss people off. i would call that frustration more than anti-american -- Ashish-g55 21:00, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Fair point. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 21:28, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Geographical balance of ITN
I promised I'd give some numbers. I went back from today to the 24th October and gave the principal country they involved, or if more than one country were involved I split the "count" between them. All in all there were 107 articles posted to ITN over the period and 58 countries were mentioned. Below are the figures:

From those figures I would say the geographical spread of stories is pretty good. I would say that you'd expect that the EU and US would have a similar number of stories (as they have similar international significance), so the above shows that it wouldn't really hurt to add a few more US stories - though on the other hand the US isn't being dealt too bad a hand. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 21:27, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Out of interest, were there any other individual countries that achieved anything comparable to the United States' showing? (Bearing in mind that the EU is not in any way a single country, but rather 27 separate ones.) I'd like to see it broken down by country, rather than comparing one country with various supra-national categories. 87.112.177.117 (talk) 22:16, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That the EU is made up of lots of countries is true, but that's just how its arranged, if history had been different the US could have been divided up into smaller countries rather than being one large country. The legitimate comparison between Europe and the US is to compare the whole of the EU to the US. While the EU leads on population and slightly on economic size the US leads militarily and it is also entirely English speaking, whereas only the UK and Ireland are English speaking in the EU.
 * For smaller countries I could post individual countries but its going to introduce a hell of a lot of noise. For an extreme example Burma was posted 4 times over the time period (their flag change, their general election, the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and the discovery of Myanmar Snub-nosed Monkey), but I highly doubt that's typical - and in fact if I sort by country that is enough to get it into the top 5 for the time period.
 * Additionally there is some degree of interpretation of what is the correct "country" for an individual story (and which region each country goes in - especially for the middle east) as it isn't always clear and undoubtably there is some personal bias in how I've arranged the stories. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 22:59, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * BRICs? Kevin McE (talk) 22:55, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Why not? They are the leading developing countries, seemed like a group that was interesting enough to include here. They also seem to attract a similar number of stories as the EU and US, which seems about right - and shows we are covering the upcoming world powers well. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 22:59, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * My question was not "why?", but "what?". Eraserhead had replied (Brazil, Russia, China and India, if I remember correctly), but then removed the information. Kevin McE (talk) 07:34, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * To clarify yes it is Brazil, Russia, India and China - I thought people would know that so I removed it :o. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 20:45, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thinking about it, I think I can roughly answer the IP's question. The #2 country posted was China, which attracted about half the number of stories that the US did. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 23:04, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * What you're saying, then, is that one country accounts for every seventh story on the ITN ticker, and that no other country comes anywhere close. That, to me (and, I suspect, the 95% of the world that is not American), is not evidence of under-representation. 87.112.177.117 (talk) 23:22, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not an American, and the 95% of non-Americans make up less than 50% of the English Wikipedia's readership. Population alone shouldn't be our only criteria. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 23:26, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * But the large English-speaking population of the US is the basis of Mwalcoff's argument that the US should be given more coverage. I'd say it receives a fair crack of the whip as it stands, and doesn't need any special pleading. If we were going by comparative population alone – which we don't – it would get one story in twenty. That it gets one in seven is pretty good coverage. 87.112.177.117 (talk) 23:30, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * @Eraserhead: Exactly. You've just proven that the US is far from under-represented. There is no anti- or pro-US bias and ITN does a pretty good job of balancing geographical variety and relative significance. What we're also neglecting to mention is that, if no significant current event happens in a certain place, then that place won't feature on ITN. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   23:36, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Nice and fascinating numbers, but We have to dig in deeper: which of those items solely affected one country? Sporting events excluded, since most leagues from the U.S. and EU are reasonably covered elsewhere. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 03:24, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd have to go over it again to give a proper answer. Obviously some stories did affect multiple countries (as you can see from the non-whole numbers), but the majority probably only affected a single country, with a decent number affecting a couple of countries. There were some which affected more countries with 6 that I didn't tie down to a single country/countries, but there weren't that many. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 08:39, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * BTW, why am I not surprised there are more European ITN items than any other continent? Even more than Asia? If we remove elections and disasters, non-European and U.S. blurbs would be close to zero. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 10:11, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Unless any of the individuals who were particularly influential in your personal upbringing, or a consultant psychologist, is among our contributors, the person here best able to account for your threshold of surprise is you. Kevin McE (talk) 10:21, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It was a rhetorical question. But I suspect you already know this, so... –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 10:28, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * @HTD, the non-EU European stories are largely about Russia, which I have assumed is entirely in Europe. Additionally if we posted as many stories about India as we post about China then Asia would have a decent lead over Europe. And even now given there is only one story between them over 3 months they are basically both posted about equally - its well within the margin of error. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 18:52, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * 1. Neither Wikipedia nor ITN is a supermarket - we do not provide customers with what they want - we're an encyclopedia. 2. you completely misrepresent the fact wikipedia does very much "carry" the American brand of news - we even put it on the front page one out of seven times - which is a lot more than news from other countries with high populations and high portions of English speakers such as India. ·Maunus· ƛ · 23:46, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * As only about 10% of Indians are online, and they also speak local languages as well as English they shouldn't have as much coverage as the US does (yet), however the Indians really don't seem to get that much coverage at all (and they get considerably less than China), and that seems like a genuine issue with ITN, I think more data would be needed to say more clearly though. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 08:39, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Where did this sudden priority to English speaking regions with high levels of internet access appear from? I thought Wikipedia had a principle of avoiding systemic bias.  It was not brought up until the last year, and I think has been introduced by just one or two editors, not established as a criterion by any consensus.  Kevin McE (talk) 08:59, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Given this is the English online encyclopaedia our readers are obviously going to be English speaking and online, and we should be catering to our readers.
 * Now this doesn't mean we shouldn't try and cover the rest of the world as best we can, but we are inevitably going to cover the English speaking world better - and we shouldn't oppose stuff from the English speaking world just because of that. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 18:48, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * This is an unencyclopaedic position that is not backed up by any form of consensus. "Give 'em what they want" is crass tabloid journalism, and not what Wikipedia is here for. 87.112.177.117 (talk) 00:34, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * What's the mission/vision of ITN anyway? Like the real mission/vision, not what the mission/vision should be accdg to one user. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 03:57, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Even the elite of the world media like the New York Times, Al Jazeera and the Economist cover the countries where their audience lives more than other countries. The Economist for example devotes five stories a week to the UK in it's international edition which is more than they give to the whole of South America or Africa. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 09:44, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * they are all newspapers we are an international enyclopedia... need i say more -- Ashish-g55 15:18, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I can't find the word "international" at About. Where is this there or is this what Wikipedia should be according to you? –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 16:46, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * im not sure if you made this comment to divert the discussion into talk about meaning of international or not. but to be honest i dont want to prove why wikipedia is an international encyclopedia. if you think otherwise then i'll just leave it at that. -- Ashish-g55 17:10, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think otherwise, I do actually agree with you, that Wikipedia should be an international (whatever that means) encyclopedia, it's just that, is it? Should it be? Who said so? Where? How did people come up with that? –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 17:24, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Egyptian protests
I'm not sure if this is the place to suggest this, but, if anyone has been watching the ongoing coverage of the protests underway today (Friday) in Egypt, this is definitely the top news item of world news at the moment. Quite extraordinary. Can I suggest that we bump the egyptian protests (which are currently mentioned in position 3 on the ITN template) to the top of the list? Witty Lama 14:02, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Box template for In the news?
The article 2011 Egyptian protests has been featured on In the news multiple times over the past few days. A user just removed the templates, saying that there will end up being too many to list on the article. That's why, i was wondering if there was a box template that would collapse down multiple ITNs behind it, so you have to click Show to see them, much like other templates? That way, it wouldn't be an issue having them all on the talk page, because they be behind a single template. Silver seren C 05:48, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Another made this solution. Cheers. Zzyzx11 (talk) 06:07, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

John Barry is ready for posting
John Barry is now ready for posting. With all the candidates I'm not sure how its best to make it clear which ones are ready for posting. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 22:33, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, you can poke me on my talk page in future, but John Barry (composer) hasn't been updated. The stuff on his death consists of "Barry died of a heart attack on 30 January 2011 at his Oyster Bay home". We need a paragraph of prose and several references. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   22:50, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Shit, I forgot about that :o. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 22:57, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I've added several more sentences and references, but there is really not so much to say about his death compared to his life. There should be no problem with posting now. Grey  Hood   Talk  23:43, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Imbalance of topics on ITN
In his analysis above, Eraserhead1 has shown that ITN does relatively good job of maintaining geographical balance (perhaps with an exception of such large country as India, which is seriously underrepresented). But how does ITN maintain balance between various types of news and general topics?

Following the steps of Eraserhead1, I've used nearly the same sample to study the question, starting from the very beginning of November to present day. The number of ITN news from this period has turned out to be 100, that's why percents correspond to numbers in the table below.

Analysis
The information in the table speaks for itself. But hoping to produce some well-structured discussion, I'll post here some points and conclusions made from the analysis of the recent ITN performance.


 * 1. Too few news are posted. It's just 100 news for a period of almost 3 months and just a bit more than 1 item per day. I've already raised a concern that ITN is the least dynamic part of the Main Page, almost constantly featuring stale news of 5 to 7 days old, well beyond the typical period of 2-3 days when people are still having some interest in a particular story (unless it is an exeptionally major or prolonged development). With just 1 news item per day, we might as well change ITN template for something like "Story of the Day" featuring just one article similar to "Today's featured article" - at least this will result in that part of the MP changing its contents as often as the other parts.
 * I think that the practice of being very selective, proposing and posting too few nominations is the main problem with ITN, which results in other problems, such as obvious topic imbalance, domination of violence and politics, and underrepresentation of many other topics and certain countries and regions.


 * 2. Half of the posted news are either ITNR or involving mass deaths. This means ITN editors are doing poor job with news which are not generally agreed to be significant recurring ones, or those which don't have as certain significance criteria as mass deaths.
 * 3. Violence and deaths dominate on ITN. At least 43% of news are in the categories related to violence, crime and mass/individual deaths. (46% if the Protests are included, 48% if we include two news in the History category). This makes ITN looking very frustrating, and certainly it is not a decent representation of our world, where many positive events happen as well (currently the world population is growing, the economy is recovering from the global crisis - surely there would be more positive events than negative!). Not that we should post less violence and deaths, though. As I've already said, we just should post more developments of other types, and not succumb to the fact that in case of mass deaths and violence we have relatively easy and clear quantitative criteria of significance.
 * 4. Over 1/3 of the news are political, that is related to either political events or current/former political leaders. This is also a sign of imbalance, though less severe than in the previous case with violence. Naturally, politics would always be in the news, but in the absense of decent representation of other topics, politics takes too prominent share on ITN.
 * 5. Sport has a decent share, but is dominated by ITNR. Non-ITNR sports nominations have very few chances to get posted.
 * 6. Science is underrepresented. Seems that among usual ITN editors there are many people involved or interested in science (the same case with sports, I think), so this category of news has a better share than other non-ITNR and non-violent news. Still I think that the share and the absolute number of scientific news should me much bigger. Afterall, scientific discoveries change the world far more significantly than most of those elections, violence and sporting events. Few scientific news results in few fields of science featured.
 * 7. Technology, infrastructure, economy, and culture are severely underrepresented. With a weak exception of space-related technology (space launches are recommended on ITNR), these topics are very far from having a decent share and numbers. People simply don't nominate enough news related to these topics, and those nominated are usually ignored or met with undeserved opposition. There are too few recurring items related to these topics on ITNR (mostly those about arts, and nothing about technology and economy).
 * But really, what about new giant bridges, longest railways and highways, or new nuclear and hydropower plants, or new mass-produced and long-expected models of cars and aircrafts, and other technological and engineering achievements which can change lives of millions of people? Are they of less significance than disasters and deaths which typically have a direct effect just on hundreds and thousands of people? Why relatively minor accidents are ITN-worthy and major economic events are "business as usual"? Why should we post elections in the minor countries or elections that don't change the political situation, but ignore big events in the economy?

Discussion
Later I'll post some proposals on how to amend ITN and its balance of topics, and now it would be interesting to know the attitude of other editors to the problem. Grey Hood   Talk  22:40, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well first, thank you for doing that analysis. It's quite interesting to see a topical breakdown presented like that. Allow me to respond to your comments on it:


 * 1. You may be right, but this can fluctuate significantly. Obviously, there needs to be an event and then we need an update and a consensus. I've been contributing to ITN for over a year and I think items that have a consensus and an update are posted a lot quicker than they were when I first started contributing.
 * 2. That's a good thing. ITN/R is there so that significant events can be posted without waiting for a long discussion. Events involving large numbers of casualties are similarly significant, so more of them tend to get posted.
 * 3. That's a very broad category and not much more helpful than saying "99% of items involve humans". There is a lot of death and violence on ITN, but there is a lot of that kind of thing in the mainstream news. ITN probably does a better job than the mainstream media of not featuring a disproportionate amount of bad news, but that's not to say we can't do better.
 * 4. What's wrong with that? A lot of the items significant enough for ITN are to do with politics because politics is of wide interest and affect everybody's day-to-day lives.
 * 5. Again, a good thing. It's because just about every sporting event deemed significant enough for ITN is already on that list. Personally, I think we have far too much sport on ITN, though these events have an inconvenient tendency to all come at once.
 * 6. Agreed, but it's a difficult area. Some ITN regulars (including myself) are hesitant to nominate science items because of their limited expertise in the area. We post a reasonable number of new species etc when they come up and we have a fair bit of astronomy.
 * 7. Agreed again, but these don't come up that often and I think we need to rethink the idea that anything bigger than tennis ball being launched into space is ITN-worthy. <font colour="Teal" face="Tahoma">HJ Mitchell &#124; <font colour="Navy" face= "Times New Roman">Penny for your thoughts?   00:49, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * 1. In its best times ITN had about 60 nominations posted per month. I think this is a minimum that should be set as a goal for every month.
 * 2, 5, 7. ITNR is good, but sometimes you got an impression that people take it as a standard and are not willing to post anything else. Also, while we indeed may have too much sports and space on ITNR, we obviously have not enough economy, technology and culture there. I'm going to propose some recurring items for these topics.
 * 3. I'm not the first person here to complain about the abundunce of violence on ITN, or rather about too few non-violent news, as I see it. Something should be done about that, and posting more news of positive kind is an obvious solution.
 * 6. I think we have more astronomy because we have scientists and astronomers among ourselves. And it looks like we have no economists and engineers, and that's why the related topics are in neglection. This just shows how much ITN is dependent on interests and POVs of its regulars. We either should become less selective, nominating and posting more news without any bias towards unusual topics, or we should try to bring more people from across Wikipedia to participate on ITN. Grey  Hood   Talk  01:27, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I just spotted that link, and just want to point out that I can hardly claim credit for those items! I haven't nominated a science item since Soyuz TMA-01M back in October, and that's not really science anyway (space exploration != space science). I like to think other regulars pay attention to my opinions on science nominations, but I mostly just support or oppose items that other people nominate. It's nice that you thought of me though! <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 22:26, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * 1, yes it's something we should aim for, but not at the risk of getting too fixated with the timer. We should reserve ITN for very significant events, even if that means we can't always post something new every day, rather than lower the threshold and allow less significant items on. A year ago, 40 hours between updates was nothing remarkable, today, according to your stats, we post something like 4 items every 3 days, which isn't bad to say that myself and BorgQueen are doing about 90% of the posting. We don't have the manpower (or an adminbot) that DYK does.
 * 3, we can only post what's actually in the news. We can't manufacture pleasant items to suit. This is the biggest problem with statistical analysis of ITN—DYK is never short of a wide variety of suggestions to even things out, but ITN is dependent on there actually being an event significant enough. It's important not to forget that we're not a sweet shop and can't just stock less liquorice and more sherbet dabs because people think we have too much liquorice.
 * 6, under participation has long been a struggle at ITN and we seem to have lost some regulars lately. We manage, but any suggestions for increasing participation are most welcome. <font colour="Teal" face="Tahoma">HJ Mitchell &#124; <font colour="Navy" face= "Times New Roman">Penny for your thoughts?   01:54, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * 1, 6. The manpower (including adminpower) seems to be a major problem that needs solution.
 * More people => more nominations => more discussions => more news posted.
 * We should discuss the ways of how to increase participation. Later I'll try to make certain proposals about it.
 * 3, and the question of what news are significant. There is no need to manufacture pleasant items that are not in the news, of course. We just should try to provide a decent cover for a broader range of topics. We do well enough with deaths, violence, politics and sports because we have certain criteria and ITNR recommendations for them. So we should try to set up some rules, recommendations and more recurring items for science, technology, economy, and culture. Then, discussions related to those topics could be based on certain criteria and ITNR prescriptions, just as it happens with currently dominant topics. Grey  Hood   Talk  02:27, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Generally, the big issue is participation. Some of the under-represented topics need expert attention or someone extremely interested in them to be able to write a competent article that is suitable for ITN posting. Most regular editors are able to make political or violence/disaster articles (generally easier to grasp), as opposed to technical science ones (more difficult). And the issue with science is that sometimes there's a lot of "might-bes", that sometimes end up being false, so we need an experienced editor to be able to help.  Spencer T♦ C 04:03, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * 5. Although ITNR isn't a be-all, end-all, with sports it generally is, and that isn't a bad thing. The only thing not really included under this is sporting records, and when those occur, they are nominated.

The "Other government change" blurbs are funky. Two out of three blurbs actually caused a change of government. –<font colour="#FFA500">HTD  (<font colour="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 04:20, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

A few brief comments. Personally thanks to Greyhood for doing this analysis. Personally I think there is a lot more voting on stories than there used to be, which is a good thing.
 * 1. I do agree we need to post more stuff - 1 post a day may be better, but it isn't particularly good. Maybe when a story is ready and none of the regular admins are around we should post it on WP:ANI, maybe that would attract more admins to help.
 * 7. I also agree with, maybe we should post things like the lineup for major music festivals like Glastonbury and things like that. I'll make an effort to suggest posting some more economic stuff. With regards to celebrity news and major technology news, it never gets posted. If I suggested some major technology news, such as the announcement of the iPad it gets rejected on the grounds of being promotional. A similar amount of rejection happens with all but the biggest celebrity news, people get worried about ITN becoming a tabloid, and there are many posts in the above section about that. When we rival news sources like the Economist on elitism, I don't think being too much of a tabloid is a significant risk.
 * With India I gathered more stats on readership going back to 6 months, and once this discussion has run its course I'll bring it up with the Wikipedia India project - unless anyone thinks I should do so sooner. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 11:20, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Rejecting economy and technology news as promotional makes no sense, given the fact that most news are inevitably promotional some way. Whenever we post some negative event in some country (a terrorist act or a disaster), we dis-promote tourism in that country and dis-promote its stock market. On the contrary, in case of extremely positive news stock market usually goes up and the related country is promoted. And why should we be biased against companies and their products, when we (dis-)promote countries?
 * Bringing messages to the Wikipedia projects related to underrepresented countries and topics is a very good idea. This way we could try to increase participation and improve the balance. Grey  Hood   Talk  15:14, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * There were a lot of opposes for the iPad on those grounds. To improve our tech coverage we could certainly (for example) post every major new product Apple makes. Over the past 5 years, there have been the Apple TV, iPhone, iPod touch, MacBook Air and the iPad, which is an average of one announcement a year. If we did the same for the other major manufacturers that'd be good coverage of the tech industry. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 23:42, 29 January 2011 (UTC)
 * @Eraserhead, you mention posting on AN or ANI if we have items ready to go and nobody to post them. In my experience (I may be biased because I'm the one doing a lot of the posting!), items tend to be posted fairly quickly once they have a consensus and are adequately updated. I think the problem is not with getting things up there, but with getting articles updated. For example, the Portuguese election never went up because there was never any update. <font colour="Teal" face="Tahoma">HJ Mitchell &#124; <font colour="Navy" face= "Times New Roman">Penny for your thoughts?   01:45, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * It doesn't happen wildly often, but sometimes stuff is ready to post when you and BorgQueen aren't around ;). -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 09:26, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * This is true - and it tends to happen in clumps (reasonably enough). It's rarely a problem, but we have had cases where people have been complaining that the timer was red, but 2 or 3 items were ready at the time and just awaiting an admin. <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 22:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion, there seems to be an attitude on ITN that we have to have to put up every disaster, no matter how crummy the article is or how newsworthy or un-newsworthy the disaster is. This is probably due to people's concern that if they fail to support the nomination of a disaster item, it's like they don't care about the people who died, or that it would be unseemly to include a storm that kills 10 people in Europe but not a mudslide that kills 50 people in Africa. I think people have to realize that there is a difference between tragedy and news. Yes, the deaths of 50 people in that 500th terrorist bombing Baghdad are tragic, as much as the deaths of 50 people in a bombing in London would be. But that doesn't make it an equal news item. If all deaths were of equal news value, we would have to fill our space with reports on how thousands of people have died today from AIDS in Africa, from hunger, from conflict in Somalia, from car accidents, etc. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:25, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

This is something I've been meaning to say about ITN and the outline above motivates me. I'd like to see some changes. The bottom line is that ITN exists to draw people into our articles. In order to so that the topics must be interesting. A steady stream of violence is not interesting. And since ITN is not a news service, we're not bound to be limited by including only high profile events...in that spirit:
 * We should lower the standard of what we allow in ITN (not article quality), we should be free to include lesser noteworthy events.
 * We should increase the turn over so that more varied events are included. That would also lessen the pie fights over whether something is "notable" enough to include. No reason we can't include enough to let items fall off the list after 3 days max.
 * We should make the process more streamlined, the process to include an item is way too complicated. Nothing wrong with it being light weight...easy in and easy out.

Bottom line: ITN is not a newservice and we should care less about how notable something is and more about how well it will draw people into the articles. RxS (talk) 02:10, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Your third point has my curious. What would you propose we do differently? <font colour="Teal" face="Tahoma">HJ Mitchell &#124; <font colour="Navy" face= "Times New Roman">Penny for your thoughts?   02:28, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually, now that I look at the process it seems more slimmed down than I remember it, I think at least the requirement to notify the editor who suggested the item is gone. The first time I did an update I missed the notification and the placement of the ITNTalk template on the articles talk page. Seemed convoluted at the time, but maybe it's fine now. I didn't see either in the directions when I looked again. It's probably not the biggest deal. RxS (talk) 04:32, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * @RxS I agree. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 09:25, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * One issue I have found even with the update requirements is when updating an article like Titian it is very difficult to include new information about the point that is in the news in great detail without making the article worse by including undue weight in the article on the new event. On a page like that a couple of sentence update should be all that is required. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 11:27, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Clearly in such circumstances, the article that should be updated is the one on A Sacra Conversazione, rather than Titian. Which is indeed what has happened. 87.112.177.117 (talk) 11:43, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Fair point. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 12:23, 30 January 2011 (UTC)


 * I agree that sport nominations are too reliant on ITNR and that non-ITNR nominations have almost zero chance of getting posted. I think it may be time that we re-looked at ITNR and judged each individual sporting event listed there against current consensus, as I'd argue more people would support a bandy championship (currently nominated at ITNC) over a pool one (at ITNR). Strange Passerby (talk • contribs) 03:22, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Pool (or non-snooker cue sports) is more popular than you think. It's popular than bandy or snooker in places such as the U.S., Taiwan and the Philippines. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 05:15, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Sport is particularly well-suited to ITNR, because notable sporting events are ALWAYS scheduled in advance. If the vast majority of our sporting stories are coming from ITNR, that shows the ITNR process is working. <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 22:44, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

Reduce yellow timer to 12 hours, red to 24
While this discussion has been interesting to read, so we can take something from it, in an effort to post more stuff can we reduce the yellow timeout from 24 to 12 hours and the red timeout from 26 hours to 24? -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 21:50, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Agree with this proposal, since I was planning to suggest something like that as well. Grey  Hood   Talk  22:04, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think that's a good idea. The timer is for guidance and we ought to avoid getting too hung up on posting something every 24 hours, much less every 12. That kind of thinking will just result in a desire to post less significant events just because the timer is red. ITN is not a news ticker, after all, and I think its advantage over mainstream news services is its exclusion of trivial and less important events and including only events of significant encyclopaedic interest—like the Sudanese referendum, which is getting little coverage elsewhere. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   22:12, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Everything else on the main page is refreshed every 24 hours if not more frequently, even if we post something every 12 hours we'll still have "in the news" content on the main page for significantly longer than every other segment. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 22:28, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Why is that a bad thing? We shouldn't post trivial events just because it's a slow news day and the timer's red. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   23:10, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I concur with HJ, that the timer is red is one of the weakest arguments for posting a news item on ITN. Stephen 23:17, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Often we don't post any events even if the timer is red for days. So that's not about an additional argument for posting, it's about reminding people to look onto the ITN/C page more often and do ITN work faster. Grey  Hood   Talk  23:23, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * As it is the yellow section is basically pointless and may as well be removed. Obviously we shouldn't be forced to post every 12 hours (and we aren't forced to post every 24 hours with the current timer) but it'd be good to move the average in that direction from around 21 hours which it is at the moment. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 23:32, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * As I suggested above, we need to ditch the timer and lower the notability level needed to post something. As it is now there's way too much argument over notability and almost none on how well it will showcase our articles. We should be taking In The News more literally and get away from the insistence that we need only top headline news items. Increasing the number of ITN postings will also help get us away from this idea that we can only post things that effect people internationally (which is only enforced piecemeal anyway). Let's make posting items a more than daily occurance where the main focus is on the quality of the articles. RxS (talk) 01:13, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I expect the timer does currently help focus minds that something hasn't been posted for a while and helps keep the average posting time to around 21 hours. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 08:45, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * RxS, Eraserhead basically makes my point, but your proposal "ditch the timer and lower the notability level" is precisely what we had before some other users and I in 2008 fought tooth and nail for the current format of ITN (candididates' page integrated with current events portal so nobody could complain that there wasn't any news to post on ITN and a timer to remind people that discussion couldn't go on forever and that marginal consensus is good enough for posting if there aren't better candidates). Pleas to reduce notability simply do not work if there's nothing forcing admins to post - they don't want to get yelled at anymore than any other editor for posting something with opposes, so waited for only the items with 100% support. And then because the rate of posts has dropped so much, editors get more strict about what you let on the template because they know the item is going to stay up for at least a week, which means that they feel the need to raise the standards again, and round and round down the spiral. Some editors may not remember that back in 2007-8 it was not unusual for ITN to go without an update for 3 days, and was able to maintain that rate  partly because some admins just ignored the dysfunctional candidates page and posted whatever they felt deserved to be up.
 * As the creator of the timer, it was absolutely clear to me at the time that "I have to post an item because the timer is red" is a ridiculous thing to say, but that admins would occasionally need to use the timer as a fig leaf in order to force the template to turnover and, in effect, lower the notability level the community expected to be able to get an item on ITN, which naturally creeps up as people try to get only the best items posted. I therefore think your proposal will have the exact opposite effect that you think it will. If you want to force the notability threshold down, you increase the rate of the timer.  You can see the early explanation of the timer, amongst other things, (and some of the most exhausting discussion I've ever been involved with on Wikipedia) at Wikipedia talk:In the news 2.0, where I state explicitly "If the timer turns red and there's no appropriate candidate, it stays red until someone suggests an appropriate candidate." I consider the reform carried out through WP:ITN2.0 to be a significant success story; there's probably more activity on the candidates page every day than there used to be in weeks back in 2007.
 * On a sidenote, it's interesting to see the "post every 12 hours" idea reappear. That was almost the plan of Pharos, who was the architect of the current ITN setup: "I suggest that we mandate that at least two new items be added to ITN every day." - BanyanTree 11:15, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell, ITN has turned into a headline news service and lost some of the point of it's existence. Use the timer, don't use the timer...but ITN needs to loosen up the notability standard it uses. Too many times I see articles created for news events (lots times, things like floods and train wrecks) and pushed just far enough to be adequate for inclusion. What should be happening is that we consider first article quality, then pick the most interesting items. For example, there's a suggestion that the Oil price rise be included. That blurb links to several good mature articles. Compare that with the typical Great Flood of Wherever blurb we get a lot. That article would be written solely so the event can be included in ITN, and it will never be worked on again. That's the tail wagging the dog. Bottom line for me is that I'd like to see arguments that an item isn't notable or international enough fade away. If it's in the news and has a good article or two to link...throw it up. Make the turn over fast enough so that we don't mind if an item makes it that we don't all agree on or isn't a huge deal as a news item. If we increase the churn, we lower the stakes when we argue about what gets included and what doesn't. More news items, more links to good quality articles and less arguing. Seems like a win all around to me.
 * And just as a comment about the timer allowing notabilty standards to decrease, I don't see it. When you look at the discussions themselves, all you see are arguments about notabilty and you rarely see arguments about article standards. That's backwards to me. (though I do see the utility of the timer as a way to force the issue). There's nothing hyper critical here, but I think we could be doing a better job of showcasing our better articles. RxS (talk) 04:49, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * There is some value in having an article on some of these one-off events as it expands our coverage, but I take your point that we should be spending most of the time showcasing good stuff. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 08:09, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * To a great extent I agree with you, RxS. However there is a danger of having too many articles which are trivial from the newsmaking perspective, and many people certainly won't like it... But, with exception of the last few days, for three months ITN has been on the other extreme - too careful selection of 'significant' news, one news item per day. Grey  Hood   Talk  14:05, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * At the moment, we're having like 4 new items per day anyway so reducing the timer is not really necessary. On the other hand, on a slow news day, there are sometimes simply no useful items available so an early red timer does not help either... --Tone 08:55, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Reduce yellow timer to 12 hours, orange to 24, red to 36
I have a counter-proposal: since 24 hours isn't a hard and fast limit, and since the yellow period is barely used (1 hour only), we'd do better to split the warnings into more levels, spread over a longer time period. I suggest making the timer change colour every 12 hours, from white to yellow (12hr), then orange (24hr) and finally red once we reach 36 hours without an update. This should make the timer more useful, but also allow things to slip a bit on occasion. Thoughts? <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 22:48, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * That's better than what we have now, anyway. However I'd prefer the same three-grade scheme but with the timer changing colour every 8 hours. Grey  Hood   Talk  23:07, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * why not split the difference 10 hours, 20 hours and 30 hours -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 23:34, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I should point out that any of these options would be better than the current system. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 08:40, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

ITN/R expansion
At Wikipedia talk:In the news/Recurring items we have started to collect new items to expand ITN/R, especially with the topics which are currently underrepresented. Please watch out for these new proposals and take part in the discussion. Grey Hood   Talk  22:04, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Of note there are a fair few suggestions. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 23:32, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, personally I've tried to choose only the most notable events per topic. We don't need ITNR to grow too big, but we need to cover more topics. Currently, there are just several branches of technology or categories of culture covered on the suggestions list, and few more would do. Grey  Hood   Talk  00:42, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

LOL. Items were added with less than 1 day of discussion! Amazing! –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 03:38, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Nothing new has been added so far, I added the EU/UN elections that were previously discussed and anyhow non-controversial. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 08:23, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Weather (United States Blizzard Of 2011?)
Per WP:Crystal I can not add anything for certin yet but I have been hearing on the news that a blizzard is going to effect as much as 100,000,000 people and cover many states in the United States and has been called a "historic storm in the making". People in the weather projects might want to follow this. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:31, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Only in the U.S.? Good luck with that. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 03:36, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * A weather system effecting nearly 1/3 of a countrie's population does not strike notability here? - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 03:38, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Some sources for reference: (Accuweather.com), (dailymail.co.uk), (reuters)
 * Like I said, I wish you all of the luck in the world when you suggest this at WP:ITN/C. Really. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 03:48, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It's winter, it snows in the winter. However, if it really turns out to be exceptional and if there is a decent article, there should be no problem with nominating it. --Tone 08:37, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Told ya it won't go up. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 02:15, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Too much emphasis on war and military events
The ITN segment seems to be developing a bias towards terrorist attacks and military incidents once again. I've got a strong interest in military affairs, but this is offputting even for me. Articles such as 24 January 2011 Iraq bombings, which cover a (horrifyingly) 'routine' series of attacks in a war zone and contain basic factual errors (the material sourced to the NY Times contains some fairly significant differences to what the NY Times story actually says) shouldn't be linked from the main page, and it's hard to see any unusual significance of Operation Dawn of Gulf of Aden - similar rescues happen every month or so. Nick-D (talk) 00:14, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * You are wrong saying "similar rescues happen every month or so". At least with the Somali pirates the situation is totally different. The last succesful rescue operation of similar scale and media coverage was the Russian Navy storming the MV Moscow University last May. And there were fewer casualties then. Grey  Hood   Talk  00:53, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree that there is an overpreoccupation with disasters, violence and mass-deaths.·Maunus· ƛ · 12:28, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd rather agree that there is lack of proper occupation with other topics. ITN would do better with more news posted per day, but now people just don't nominate enough items and are not willing to support many news proposals, except of ITNR and too obviously significant news. In case of disasters, violence and mass-deaths there are relatively clear and easy quantitative criteria to determine the significance, so such news are more likely to get posted. Also, there was a big number of really major disasters in the last month. For example, ITN was just flooded with floods in different parts of the world. By coincidence with the current ITN editors' attitudes this has produced a grim news picture we have now. But the solution is not to post less violence, but to post more non-violent news alongside. Grey  Hood   Talk  13:05, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Very well said, Greyhood. Something tells me the year 2012 might get a little worse. :D --BorgQueen (talk) 13:08, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think I agree with that statement as well I guess.·Maunus· ƛ · 17:14, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Too much emphasis on sports events
The same thing could be said about sports. I love, practise and write articles (in the thousands) here about sports, but 3 out of 7 ITN items at the moment is too much. The sporting events in question also seem quite insignificant in the longer run. Geschichte (talk) 23:22, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that the emphasis in the current moment is not that important. What's important is the ITN performance in the long run, and as it has been shown below, sport has taken only 10% share of the news in the last three months, which might be many, but not too much. Grey  Hood   Talk  23:30, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the issue is more with which sporting events are chosen rather than how many there are. Right now, we have the world team handball championship on there, which is not a big deal in any English-speaking country. Yet, as we all know, some of the biggest sporting events in the Anglosphere are left off of ITN. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 04:29, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * As I'm now finding out, it seems. Not to sound like sour grapes, but I've noticed WP:CSB seems to be - probably unknowingly - becoming slowly inverted, with significant events in the "western world" getting shrifted while less notable events elsewhere get promoted and hailed as examples of CSB. - The Bushranger One ping only 15:29, 31 January 2011 (UTC)
 * 10% is way too many. I think only Olympics are worth reporting as a genuine world news event: they cover all sports and all nations. Events like single-sport tournaments should be dropped, especially when they only appeal to a limited range of countries (like Super Bowl). 24.222.216.226 (talk) 16:13, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

We need to rethink how ITN/R items are handled at ITN/C
In case anybody doesn't know, the following rant relates to the Superbowl. Seriously? It takes the best part of ten hours to add a couple of paragraphs of prose to an article, meanwhile there's endless whining at T:MP and ITN/C about it, not to mention the bickering over this imaginary anti-US bias and the relative significance of American Football. So I have two questions. 1) how do we dispel the impression that ITN is a news ticker and should feature the Superbowl the second the game ends and, more importantly, 2) what can we do to make ITN/R nominations smoother and to get them updated and posted quickly without the needless arguing that produces more heat than light? HJ Mitchell &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   18:11, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Because evidence has been gathered to show that there isn't anti or pro US bias that further complaints should be considered trolling if they are made by people who should know better or they should be pointed at the data if they aren't a regular. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 18:18, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * So sorry you found my tongue-in-cheek support for the Super Bowl to be in bad taste. I had no idea the internet was such serious business. --<font color="#FF0000">Plasma <font color="#FF4500">Twa <font color="#FF0000">2 19:18, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately it was quite clearly leading to drama by the time I saw it. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 19:29, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Makes sense, but turning it dramatic definitely wasn't my intention. I was just trying to add a little humour to the discussion and make fun of the fact that someone was eventually going to seriously oppose the Super Bowl based upon the same things I mentioned. --<font color="#FF0000">Plasma <font color="#FF4500">Twa <font color="#FF0000">2 19:56, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps a rewrite of ITNR is needed to put emphasis on the idea that, if an item is on ITNR, it is more important to update the page to a postable-quality than to gather consensus that is already there. If someone has a problem with a ITNR item, then I think they should post their concerns, but we dont really need to waste time posting supports or opposes on an item that already has the support to go on the main page. --<font color="#FF0000">Plasma <font color="#FF4500">Twa <font color="#FF0000">2 19:18, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * That was my point. If each of the drive-by supporters we had for the superbowl had spent five minutes updating the article, it would have gone up about 8 hours earlier. I think we should have a dedicated section ITN/C for ITN/R items with some kind of big, obvious note about them already having consensus. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   19:27, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Would it be possible to (perhaps) add a section right above the earliest date on ITNC that lists items on ITNR that will be happening within, say, a week-timeframe and asks people to try and update them before or right after in order to allow it to be posted sooner? --<font color="#FF0000">Plasma <font color="#FF4500">Twa <font color="#FF0000">2 19:31, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that could work, though a week may be a bit much—2 days, maybe? HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   19:53, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The amount of time doesn't really matter to me, but I was just thinking that there are several events on ITNR that are never posted because they never get the amount of editting required. For example, the Grey Cup has not been posted for the last two years it has been on ITNR because the summaries of the playoff games are not adequately updated. That's a lot of editing to do in two days considering those sections are pretty much walls of text. --<font color="#FF0000">Plasma <font color="#FF4500">Twa <font color="#FF0000">2 20:29, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't understand why people start !voting on ITNR items. It's utterly pointless, since the whole point in the list is to avoid the need for a !vote. Whoever makes the nomination should just add a sentence along the lines of 'It's on ITNR, so no need to support, just needs an update'. That usually does the job. <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 19:40, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * But ITN/R is subject to consensus itself. We can feel free to ignore it as we have done in the past, particularly for change of governments in small countries and the more obscure domestic sporting events.--Mkativerata (talk) 19:56, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think what MG means, and what I mean, is that drive by "Support obviously notable" type votes on ITN/R items do nothing but pad one's edit count. If someone has a valid opposition, they should feel free to express it and it may turn out that ITN/R is not reflective of the current consensus, but most items are uncontroversial. We just need an update. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   20:00, 7 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It was obvious from the very first word of Superbowl nomination that it was made to provoke drama. "Wee" Really? I think nominations like this that are ITNRs should be simply removed unless discussion is actually required (i.e article needs update or some other issue) -- Ashish-g55 20:28, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Here's my take on it. I think there are two types of acceptable ITN items: those that have been appropriately updated, and those that are of so much interest to the Wikipedia-editing crowd that we can be sure they will be updated soon. If an event isn't big enough to fit in the latter category, it shouldn't be in ITN/R (if ITN/R should even exist). -- Mwalcoff (talk) 00:34, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Then judging by last night's farce, you're saying the Superbowl shouldn't be on ITN but we should put "celebrities" up when they get arrested. You won't hear me opposing putting photos of pretty actresses on ITN. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   00:43, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Either I didn't make myself clear, or you're interpreting my statement improperly. Firstly, the Super Bowl is clearly an event big enough that we can assume it will be updated by someone, although that doesn't mean we need to put it up the minute the game ends. Second, I certainly did not say, and do not believe, that just because an event is big enough that we can assume the article will soon be updated, it should go on ITN and/or ITN/R. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:54, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * As HTD points out in his sig, the world cup articles weren't updated. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 08:27, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you mean the contentious sticky link, or the actual ITN items? It's long enough ago that I can't remember, and the section (still!) linked in HTD's sig sheds little light on the matter. <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 17:09, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * HTD can explain it better I'm sure, but I believe it wasIt was stickied and there weren't updates for several matches which had taken place, I'd say that the World Cup was one of the most high-profile events ever posted on ITN and even that was surprisingly sluggish with the updating, so posting the Superbowl with the hope that it'll soon be updated seems to be equally overly optimistic. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 19:09, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It's certainly optimistic to expect that any such updates would be adequately referenced within minutes of the event. There is no shame in waiting a few hours to get the article up to shape - we're an encyclopaedia, not a news website. <b style="font-family:Times New Roman; color:maroon;">Modest Genius</b> talk 20:30, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Systemic bias
I'm under medical orders to avoid stress. Then someone has to make an RfC out of ITN/R :).

Anyway, it seems some ITN editors are of the belief that one of the goals of ITN should be to "fight systemic bias," and that we shouldn't consider the demographics and interests of our readers because that's systemic bias.

I disagree, because I think this is an improper application of WP:CSB. That policy is intended to counter systemic bias by improving articles on overlooked topics, not by limiting content on topics of wider interest. The point of ITN, as part of the Main Page, should be to feature quality Wikipedia content and to help readers find what they want.

But the whole argument over systemic bias on ITN seems to miss one important thing. By focusing on what we think is important rather than what readers may think is important, we are simply replacing the "systemic bias" of the readership with our own bias.

ITN items tend to feature a lot of stuff on science, sports, highbrow culture and a lot of what I call geopolitics cruft -- for example, national elections in what most people would call obscure countries that are put up because they are national elections, not because of their news value. (Not to mention flag changes.) Now it so happens that this is the kind of stuff I'm interested in, too, with the exception of the culture part. I'm geeky enough to be mildly interested in a Cypriot parliamentary election. But I don't think I'm typical.

Anyone who tracks ITN could get a sense of the typical ITN editor: male, white, age 20-40, well-educated, more likely than the readership or the world English-speaking population to be European. There's nothing wrong with being in those categories. However, I don't think it's right to on the one hand say we shouldn't care about what readers are interested in because that's systemic bias while pretending that going by what we think is important doesn't lead to systemic bias as well.

So I think systemic bias is probably the wrong paradigm with which to analyze ITN suggestions. I think we ought to aim for a diversity of items, no question. But if the article is good, and the item is of interest to a lot of readers or potential readers, and the event is non-trivial, we shouldn't reject it on anti-populist grounds.

I also think we ought to try to get more input from the Wikipedia community as to what they want to see on ITN. Right now, we have perhaps a dozen regular ITN editors deciding what millions of people see on the Wikipedia front page. I don't think the cadre of ITN regulars necessarily reflects the broader readership, because people who disagree with prevailing opinion on ITN (like me) tend to stop participating and fighting losing battles. The result is that existing opinions as to what is inappropriate for ITN get further entrenched. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 01:53, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * For a little too many years i've been responding to this same topic. This is hereby my last post in anything mwalcoff creates per WP:STICK. (atleast for this topic. i hope others follow) -- Ashish-g55 02:13, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Come on, we have European bias too. The only way for a non-European/Northern American item is via elections, disasters (man-made and natural) or political disturbances. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 03:55, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The current selection doesn't appear to back that up. Six entries, none of them European. One of the two sports entries (ie not an election, disaster or political unrest) is Japanese. Four of the entries concern neither American nor European, and one other is only American insofar as Nasa is a US agency. How does this show European bias? 87.112.177.117 (talk) 20:22, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You have a very good sample size. One day out of 365. There are only 5-6 items, and with the turmoil in Egypt, it's like it's psuedo-stickied there (the article for protests is continually updated so no issue there.), so that leaves 4-5 items. It's a slow news week too so turnover is really slow (Super Bowl happened almost a week ago). Now there are two Egyptian items, both of them political disturbances, and one Asian item, about a standoff between the Thais and the Cambodians. The only "offbeat" item is sumo. So what I essentially said is true: the only way for a non-Caucasian country to get in there is via elections, disasters (man-made and natural) or political disturbances. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 06:49, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Hopefully a wider audience for making decisions can be found as I've added the ITNR discussion to WP:CENT. And with regards to culture very little is currently included at any level, beyond record prices at auctions. I can't remember the last music story that went up, and there is virtually never anything on celebrities. That's why I included Glastonbury in the ITNR discussion as while who headlined Glastonbury may be an "events calendar" it would at least mean that music would be occasionally covered.
 * Business is another area thats rarely posted, look at the people opposing putting new versions of Windows into ITNR on the grounds that its "commercial", OK so posting the world economic forum is a good step forward, and posting a few record IPO's is fine, but really we should post more than that - stuff shouldn't have to be a record to get on ITN. EDIT: I also cannot remember the last time fashion was covered. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 07:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It's also worth pointing out that the items at WP:ITNR are heavily biased at events that are happening at Caucasian-majority countries. For example, on non-world championship sport items, the only non-Caucasian ITNR events are the Japan Series (package deal with the World Series), India versus Pakistan test series (hasn't happened in years), African Cup of Nations, AFC Asian Cup, and the Asian Games. Only the Asian Games had been posted twice, while the AFC Asian Cup was heavily opposed in 2006, and I can't recall the Africa Cup of Nations being added prior to what happened at Angola. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 08:58, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * BTW, regarding the Asian Cup, it may not be a coincidence that it got added after Australia joined the AFC. On the other hand, I would count ITNR-events Copa America  and the Copa Libertadores as competitions contested mostly by majority non-white nations.--Johnsemlak (talk) 10:04, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Copa America (when was this posted?) probably but the Southern Cone countries competing in the Copa Libertadores are mostly Caucasian. The Aussies first participated in the Asian Cup in 2006 -- they were eliminated in the QF by eventual champions Iraq. That even made it to Wolf Blitzer's show but was heavily opposed and I was even called names. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 11:28, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for correcting me on the Aussies and the Asian cup--my bad. Wow, that was some discussion in 2007.  The criteria for sports items was much stricter then, jeez.  Regarding the Copa America, I guess it hasn't been posted but it is on ITNR.  It was nominated in 2007 (same month--July) as the Asian cup) but not posted.  The main objection seems to have been no prose in the article.  Discussions were much shorter back then, though.  On South American demographics I know about the Southern Cone.  But still, 5 of the top six Copa participating nations by population (that includes Mexico) are majority non-white.  But whatever, it's a statistic of questionable significance. --Johnsemlak (talk) 12:03, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Doing an update is relatively easy, especially for events such as these, it's that no one bothers updating if it won't be featured. And apparently even on some events already at ITNR, updates are quite hard to come by: see the H-Cup last year when two French teams made it to the final, and compare it to the previous year when there was even a discussion to add the semifinals since an Irish team won. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 12:16, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * A classic example of systemic bias IMO was posting the 2010–11 Ashes series, an ITNR event. We posted this, a match between the number 3 and number 5 cricket teams according to ICC rankings, while ignoring the number one and number two teams playing each other at the same time.  If that isn't systemic bias, I don't know what is.--Johnsemlak (talk) 19:31, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I know you've looked at it already, but the discussion for new ITNR items are heavily biased towards sports involving Caucasian countries located at the frigid areas of the Earth. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 07:20, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * To some extent that's inevitable as that's where most Wikipedia editors, and readers, are located. Additionally things like the top football leagues are located in Europe so it is inevitable that Europe and the US will get more sport posted than their fair share. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 08:46, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Eh, even if I bring an article such as the UAAP Season 73 men's basketball tournament to FA-standard in a span of a week it won't be added on ITN. Well, there's always DYK anyway where these articles do make it, albeit for six hours and not six days, ha ha. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 12:18, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I do agree. I'm not opposing the Ashes, and I made the same point in this year's discussion without opposing.  It's just that I think we need to agree this got posted primarily because of en.wiki reader interest, not because of sporting criteria we normally apply.  I mean, you certainly couldn't argue the Ashes was the highest level of test cricket this year.--Johnsemlak (talk) 09:35, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * We could certainly have posted both. -- Eraserhead1 &lt;talk&gt; 09:42, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Possibly. I thought about nominating it at the time but the article didn't look great (which admittedly doesn't stop lots of things from getting nominated).  The current article has two sentences and one reference.  As an OT turn, I often wonder why India-related stuff doesn't get better coverage on en.Wikipedia   Perhaps it's a stereotype but would have thought there'd be some cricket-mad Indian Wikipedians who would update the article.--Johnsemlak (talk) 10:31, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The Indian Premier League is always nominated and it always got shot down. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 11:18, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * The opposition to the IPL mystifies me a bit as it's clearly a unique tournament. But the opposition is always quite strong, and frankly from people who know cricket better than me.--Johnsemlak (talk) 12:07, 12 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I think my comments may have been misinterpreted. I'm not saying we don't have enough non-Western stuff on ITN. I think we do an admirable job of including things from Asia and Africa. What I'm saying is that it's silly to say that putting up items of interest to readers is "systemic bias," while pretending that putting up items of interest to ourselves isn't. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 22:18, 13 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I know I've been the one pushing for using the page view stats as a metric but it seems that the items you do want to be covered do not need the "assistance" of the main page to get views. –<font color="#FFA500">HTD  (<font color="#FFA500">ITN: Where no updates but is stickied happens. ) 13:24, 14 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd like to add, per Ashishg55, that I don't quite see why Mwalcoff insists on reminding us of his views on this issue every couple of weeks. We have been over this more than enough. 87.112.177.117 (talk) 20:24, 11 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Seems like a classic case of WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT. Strange Passerby (talk • contribs) 02:06, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

2011 Hadar finding
The discovery of the bone is ready for posting, judging on the votes given. I've made the update with sufficient information about it. If anybody else wishes to expand it, we could create a separate article.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 14:05, 13 February 2011 (UTC)