Wikipedia talk:In the news

Revisiting ongoing

It has always been my understanding the Ongoing exists to 1) prevent the same event from being nominated again as 2) significant events continue to occur. In today's practice, it seems we are missing the mark in both regards: we are seeing constant nominations for things that are already in ongoing, and we see target articles that just list the daily death counts for wars. In addition, we have created a loophole with the "timeline" trick where we are avoiding the requirements for updated quality by showing one target that is not being updated and another that is not quality. And it isn't working: traffic to the main article dwarfs that of the timeline.[1]

If ongoing didn't exist, we would never consider posting "20 more people died last week in a 3 year old war" but we accept this permanently entrenched on the main page to avoid having to reconsider nominations when 40 people are killed in a day. But we are not getting any juice for our squeeze. I think we should rethink the basic idea of ongoing, and what we are hoping to achieve. My suggestion is that we adopt a rule that kills the timeline loophole by requiring all targets to meet the standards. I know a lot of people won't like this because, for example, "The Russo-Ukrainian war is a big deal so we should pin it." But we are not serving the purpose of ITN by constantly ignoring all rules to post what we like. On the other hand, if consensus does not support enforcing the rules, we should remove them, not ignore them. We are creating acrimony and wasting time invoking rules that the community does not care about. GreatCaesarsGhost 11:43, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

I would love to see Ongoing return to a situation of what the intent was for, situations like the Olympics or World Cup that we knew were of very finite duration and generally meant avid editors would assure they would be up to date over that period. Conflicts particularly after the first few weeks are very much hit or miss. Given that Portal:Current events includes a separate ongoing list that has far more space to include other conflicts than us, it makes sense to avoid using ITN's ongoing for those and make sure P:CE is better advertized in the box. That said, we also do need editors to be aware that when nominating ITN entries for specific elements from those events, to pick "point of no return" type junctures. For example, if we didn't have the ongoings, the current ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon would make for an appropriate candidate, but not the earlier post of when Israel attacked Lebanon after the US-Iran ceasefire had been announced. Masem (t) 12:41, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Timelines themselves contradict WP:ITNQUALITY's prose should be in narrative style, not proseline-type writing.. So for the guideline to have consistency and teeth, we either need to a) deprecate the posting of timelines or b) add a timeline exception note to that ITNQUALITY point. Option b seems more descriptive of common established practice, which is how instructions and guidelines are generally written, but of course consensus can change. FWIW, WP:ONGOING is silent about timelines. Left guide (talk) 17:24, 17 April 2026 (UTC)

Concur with this, but I think the other challenge is adhering to existing guidelines. Ongoing articles that do not meet the current "continuing update" standard frequently remain because those commenting at ITN/C note that the event is "still in the news", without considering the depth and regularity of updates to the target article. Spencer^T•C 16:32, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

A thought has been rolling around in my head for a little while now: is it even hypothetically possible to fix ITN? We spend a lot of time hemming about small word changes in the guidelines, then a mob comes along and says "WP:CON! WP:IAR! You have to post this because we say so!" And the people who push back on this are accused of being a cabal that wants a walled garden. "LOCAL CONSENSUS CANNOT OVERRIDE SITE CONSENSUS!" I've been reading a lot of old Village Pump threads and RfC about fixing ITN or killing it, and I've come to the conclusion that ITN is stuck in a logic hole. We cannot use the guidance to determine what gets posted, because editors are allowed to just ignore it. I think the solution is apply more mechanical constraints: if we cannot control ongoing, we should consider if getting rid of it would be better. ~ Another thought on the same vector: get rid of voting. It encourages low engagement editors to put their thumb on the scales. Every comment should address the quality and significance with specifics. We are supposed to be weighing the strength of arguments anyway. People who aren't even reviewing the article should not have an equal say in what we post. GreatCaesarsGhost 18:15, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

The significance shouting matches are relatively anarchic, and from what I understand generally get posted (or not) based on number count, since there isn't really much of a meaningful way to anchor and weigh arguments against P&Gs. Article quality is more of a true consensus process that's rooted in P&G-based judgment, where irrelevant or fallacious stances are rightfully discarded. It's fundamentally similar to other article review processes around the encyclopedia like DYK, GA, etc. Unless and until a consistent enforceable objective set of criteria for significance is developed, this dichotomy is always going to exist. Left guide (talk) 19:10, 18 April 2026 (UTC) last sentence added as an addendum 19:49, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

I am still thinking about what I suggested about 2 months ago, that if we try to remove the weight of "significance" to an ITN item (keeping some safeguards for non-final or intermediate events), but in turn put more weight on article quality and expansion (as to avoid the stubby articles we typically get with newly created minor disaster/crime articles), we would likely be able to push through far more blurbs through and be more like DYK to a degree, featuring any topic that has been recently expanded due to news coverage (for example, the recent one on the emperor penguin would have easily met this). It is a very significant departure for ITN so we'd need to go all in, and I don't yet have a good system to present for that yet. Masem (t) 19:17, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

Until ITN admins, or hell, even users learn to stand up to the coalition of editors who treat this part of the project like their personal WP:SOAPBOX, who brute force "consensus" by (frankly) whining the most, who rarely make any actual contributions to the ITN process besides simple WP:IDONTLIKEIT votes, and who clearly are more interested in demonstrating how personally astute, intellectual, and morally superior on ITN than actually helping our readers, ITN won't be fixed. Everyone, especially outside ITN knows of the chronic issues of ITN, but given how The ed17 (talk · contribs) and Fuzheado (talk · contribs) have been treated for even applying light pressure to these folks, it's clear that most people have deduced that it's not worth it standing up to the borderline WP:OWNERSHIP behavior that they frequently exhibit.

I have for years now supported privately a contribution requirement, ala DYK, and a greater emphasis on article quality/expansion than the reigning regime of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Some of the more disruptive regulars here need to have their head pulled out of the sand and realize that WP:ITNC is an actual project, not a social media site. — Knightoftheswords 00:51, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Appreciate the shout-out. I stand by what I said here and here, as well as my unspoken decision to mostly step back from a timesink that provides marginal usefulness to readers. For a section called "in the news," we really do post very little that's in the news. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 01:32, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Because WP is not a newspaper, and ITN is not a news ticker, but to feature quality articles that happen to be in the news. Coming to ITN to expect to be caught up on world events is not its purpose. And part of the problem is that the guidelines put too much emphasis on the news significance, which is why I am trying to think of how to propose to fully rework ITN to be more about quality articles with significant updates because of being in the news. Masem (t) 01:38, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

With respect, Masem, that's probably the hundredth time I've seen you post the same first sentence while ignoring three of the four bullet points at WP:ITNPURPOSE. It's also not the first time I've pointed out that your personal standards differ from ITNPURPOSE. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 02:47, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

I went back to see how the four bullet points were added, and it was back in 2011, on this edit, which references Wikipedia talk:In the news 3.0#What is ITN for attempt n from a few weeks before, which had minimal input (5 editors total) so was added considering there was no dissent on those. I know that language has stayed line that so ONUS and all that, but I think it's important to recognize what the editors were thinking and how it got added, then versus what we interpret them now as.

Those four points can be stretched to mean many different things depending on what preference one has; they should be judged equally but in practice they are not. We (as a group) often put more weight on the first, as to appear we should be focused on breaking news with broad significance. But if you look at the linked discussion, that wasn't the point of that first bullet. Now, likely back in 2011, we didn't have the "news coverage" epidemic we have now (where editors are rushing to created excessively detailed articles on breaking events without judging long-term significance, which creates a whole host of related problems), so maybe there wasn't a major concern about flooding ITN with breaking news; as that discussion points out, covering topics that happen to be in the news was the goal. But nowadays, that specific bullet is what drives too many arguments about news significance, pushing minor topics away in favor of breaking news that overall focused heavily on natural and manmade disasters or similar events with death tolls. And arguments about significance is what has been making ITN a problem (ignoring RD Blurbs as the worse situation).

That's why I'm suggesting that we need to completely revamp the four bullets and effectively ITN's purpose to match more like the discussion from 2011 - that we only consider that a topic having some type of recent news coverage but otherwise a high quality article with a good update due to the news coverage, as hopefully to increase throughput at ITN. We still have Portal:Current Events that otherwise serves to cover actual news without concern about quality, and closer to what a newsticker would be like, but that doesn't need curation for the main page, which has the goal of featuring high quality articles. Putting far less weight on the news significance for ITN to focus more on identify any quality article with a good update from recent news would help alleviate a lot of the arguments we have currently on significance. It would help with better diversity of topics as well, as it would encourage incorporation of medicine, science, arts, and other categories usually overlooked in recent discussions at ITN. Masem (t) 04:44, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

We're getting off the OP topic, so I'll be disengaging after this. ITNPURPOSE's words are clear and obvious, so much so that they have not been substantively changed since 2011. The scant nine(!) comments that originated them aren't useful for our purposes fifteen years after the fact. As I have asked for years now, if you disagree with any part of WP:ITN—in this case, ITNPURPOSE—please start a RfC on this page. Repeatedly pushing your preferred interpretation is not helpful and part of the broader problem ITN suffers from.

I am not going to significantly engage on your second paragraph. I am well aware that you have strong views on what NOTNEWS should say ("the 'news coverage' epidemic") that do not and I suspect would not attain broad consensus. I'm also thinking we should put a {{citation needed}} on the claim in that sentence. Good luck with your proposed ITN changes, and I look forward to seeing a fleshed-out proposal and RfC soon. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 20:30, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Masem, I think you are shooting yourself in the foot with the "ITN is not a news ticker" argument. Most people do want a greater volume of posts, but few are advocating we abandon standards to get there. Ed, don't you think Masem's suggestion of deprioritizing significance in order to drive more focus to quality aligns with the four bullets and would get us the more frequent posts that you seek? GreatCaesarsGhost 12:16, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

I've been open to the idea for at least a decade. I haven't thought through the specifics of what Masem has said, nor have I seen a full proposal, so I'm reserving judgement for now. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 17:58, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

The key is to understand what the intent was back then and that absent an RFC, we should be staying with that intent and not reinterpreting the four bulletpoints in a different way. Yes, attitudes towards them will change as the old guard moves off and newer editors come in play, byt because those four points haven't changed, we should not be redefining how ITN works. At the point I know I started to be active here, which was shortly after those were added, those points were taken as to support the argument of "ITN is not a news ticker".

Now yes CCC and all that but that we still have those bullet points should mean that we shouldnt become a news ticker, because that's not what those support. Those would need to be changed to meet that goal, and likely would require diminishing the emphasis of quality to provide more news coverage, which is not appropriate for the main page. And give that news significance is always a point of contention it is probably better to try to remove that as much as possible. Masem (t) 12:46, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

I would disagree strongly that we have an issue with SOAPBOX at ITN. That happens sometimes, but it's from casual users who are usually properly rejected by the majority. I keep seeing accusations of WP:OWNERSHIP but I wish they were addressed to actual editors or edits, so they can be responded to. The fact is that our guidelines are very vague, and most everyone pushes their own interpretation. If you disagree with an interpretation from a frequent contributor (a la Ed's objection to Masem's "news ticker" argument) that can read as WP:OWNERSHIP, but it's not. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:16, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

I would personally like "oppose; covered by ongoing" to be considered a ITNATA material at the very least. It's become a roadblock to the posting of many viable stories simply because a mention of that event may otherwise be buried in an already attached Ongoing item. Personally, this is not an Ongoing issue as much as how we treat Ongoing compared to other ITN items. DarkSide830 (talk) 22:27, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

Already covered under this clause of WP:ITNCDONT:

# Add simple "support!" or "oppose!" votes without including your reasons. Similarly, curt replies such as "who?", "meh", or "duh!" are not helpful. A vote without reasoning means little for us, please elaborate yourself.

Not enforced however for the reasons stated above. — Knightoftheswords 00:53, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

a !vote with "covered by ongoing" is not the case of "not including a reason". It is a reason, just a shortcut to the common that ongoing is meant to avoid including blurbs of every little event that the ongoing is broadly covering. Masem (t) 01:14, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Well obviously, some items are still blurbed even if they relate to ongoing, so editors should provide a reason why an item would be better relegated to ongoing than a blurb.

Bear in mind that this is directly a response to the flurry of nominations relating to recent major developments in the Irano-Lebanese conflicts facing stiff opposition due to blanket, covered by ongoing posts. Recall that when the RUW started, ongoing didn't prevent several related stories from being posted consecutively, and when a user even proposed removing it from ongoing in response, he was (somewhat rightfully) laughed out the room. — Knightoftheswords 01:18, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Most of the time when I see a "covered by ongoing" its very clear that the item clearly falls under the ongoing, and there's no need to explain further. There have been cases I know I've !voted where the connection is not as obvious and I've explained my reasoning further, but that's not expected. If the connection to the ongoing is extremely vague, and the !voter doesn't expand upon that, the posting admin should have the freedom to consider how helpful that vote is to the overall discussion and can be free to ignore it, but that doesn't a blanket "just outright ignore 'covered by ongoing'" approaches.

And yes, being in ongoing doesn't mean we can't post key events in that ongoing. I do think we posted a few too many of those related to the Ukraine war, and should only really post those events that are key turning points (like ceasefire agreements) and not just a devasting attack. Masem (t) 01:33, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

But is this practical? Admins are stretched thin as it is. I think we've seen plenty of instances where good arguments were overruled by quantity of votes with no argument at all. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:16, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

There's no reason to apply different standards to consensus discussion here as at other places like AFD, where the same problems also exist (both where discussions can be plagued by poor !votes and by overworked admins) Masem (t) 12:38, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

I'm only bothered if someone opposes an article like this without actually checking if the proposed information is even in the Ongoing article. "Oppose, covered by ongoing" is offensive when not even the timeline links to the newly proposed article yet. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 13:34, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

AfD is a well-oiled machine because there are notability guidelines; they are consistent, objective, enforceable rules that the community at large has endorsed. We would need to adopt standards with those characteristics in order to make judging consensus at ITN as methodical as AfD. Left guide (talk) 16:28, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

This is what I think we should do here (consistent, objective, enforceable rules). But there is a lot of inertia against any change. Natg 19 (talk) 17:37, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:In the news/Archive 120#Some ramblings & some suggestions for how ITN could work Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 18:08, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

AFD is nowhere close to the well oiled machine analogy. Decisions there still often come down to who shows up and shouts the loudest, the same problem we have here. Masem (t) 19:48, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Also, calling "notability" consistent is very much far from the truth. It's why it's a guideline, not a policy, because of how subjective it is. Masem (t) 19:51, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Compared to ITN, AfD is absolutely a well oiled machine. They get things done (whether the article is deleted or kept or relisted), they apply consensus "properly" (it is typically NOT a vote count), and that area is well staffed/well maintained. If problems arise, there is a process for "complaints" at deletion review. Several years ago (5-6 I believe), there was always a backlog of open discussions that needed to be dispositioned and so I would try to do NAC closures/relistings but now issues are properly dispositioned after 1 week as keep/delete/relist. Natg 19 (talk) 20:05, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Though this is sometimes true Decisions there still often come down to who shows up and shouts the loudest, this is an unavoidable issue with Wikipedia as a whole, as we are community based and most decisions do depend on who shows up. Natg 19 (talk) 20:07, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Well then it should be, because it's just a throwaway line to say "oppose: we have a rule for this" when the exact level to which an ongoing item can prevent a related blurb from going through is dubious. I think we should at least be encouraging editors to explain a bit better what their reasoning is. DarkSide830 (talk) 19:14, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

As the person who was partially responsible for introducing timeline articles (in response to people clamoring to keep the RUW on ongoing even though the principal article is no longer receiving daily updates), I think they do kind of serve as decent midpoints for topics that are routinely in the news. These days on Wikipedia, articles are large enough that the primary reason many ongoing articles aren't getting frequently updated is due to WP:FORKs, so the argument that they aren't receiving regular updates are somewhat misleading. However, the timeline articles have issues. Firstly, as Left guide (talk · contribs) stated, they aren't in narrative style, which contradicts WP:ITNQUALITY. Secondarily, they can be pretty biased towards editor's interests (either in the form of many editors keeping a certain story on or too few to keep one). Thirdly, I'm not sure that we are fully fulfilling WP:ITNQUALITY by at the very least soley listing them. I've been a proponent of linking related topics to ongoing, so something like this:

Afghanistan–Pakistan war • Iran war (Lebanon war • strait crisis • blockade) • Russo-Ukrainian war (timeline • counteroffensive) • Sudanese civil war (timeline)

However, that can create issues with Main Page balance.

In this discussion that may result in Ongoing being reformed, I want to remind/inform folks that Pokémon Go was featured on ongoing back in 2016. — Knightoftheswords 01:14, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

If we want to increase quality requirements for Ongoing items, and we come to a consensus about such a thing on the talkpage, we can push that through. Right now the quality requirements for Ongoing are either very low, or undefined, and as such it is hard to argue that Ongoing items should be removed. In order to get the ITN frontpage section to become more dynamic like the other ones, I would support codifying reasons for removing Ongoing items. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 13:29, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Continued brainstorm on eliminating the significance criteria

A few months ago I postulate a major change for ITN that we eliminate the bulk of the significance criteria (leaving enough guard rails in place to avoid very localized stories or repeated coverage like in an ongoin trial), putting more weight on quality and the update due to being in the news. The goal to increase the number of blurbs we post as to have hopefully a full 24 hr rotation of the ITN box and would make the process a bit closer to DYK (though still using consensus than a one person review)

Two recent stories have cone up that I feel are prime examples of where news significance is getting in the way, the Spirit Airlines closure and the Timmy whale rescue. Both are examples where there is enough news coverage to support significant updates to their articles, and without putting weight on significance feel like appropriate itn items.

That said both articles are far from the quality I'd want to see of stories posted. Both suffer from excessive proseline, rather than working a broader narrative. This is where if we weaken significance we need to improve expectations for quality and update so that we are not just simply posting blurbs of topics covered in the news but instead showcasing quality articles and dynamic nature.

I bring this up now because if those examples but all to test the temperature for this idea. The next step i see is to draft up changes to the irn guidelines and get input on those before launchkng a larger wiki wide RFC. And thus i want to make aure there seems to be support for this before putting too much effort into this. Masem (t) 15:11, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I believe that simplicity is the best course of action, so I'm going to suggest as a starting point for discussion that we simply remove WP:ITNSIGNIF and WP:ITNATA and make an appropriate tweak to the lede sentence of WP:ITNCRIT. I know that some think we need some protection against gossip stories, but SIGNIF is not serving that purpose today. It is not that anyone believes significance doesn't matter. Rather, the guidance on significance is making every nom about significance and encouraging IAR mob votes that don't even mention quality. I believe that what remains at top of WP:ITN, along with WP:ITNPURPOSE gets across the point that we need things to truly be "in the news." GreatCaesarsGhost 18:20, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

based on one of the last suggested changes done by RFC (getting rid of death blurbs), we likely cannot just strike without some replacement. I still this there is a far lower significance requirement that we need, we are going to post "little Johnny wins school science fair" type stories. But if we have ruled focus on quality and update, I believe most will quickly understand how to use this weaken significance, compared to the mess we have now. For example we'd be able to get rid of "domicile not oppose because it pertains to one country" whoch is always a mess. Masem (t) 20:06, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Anything that makes the overall body of inclusion criteria less of a subjective free-for-all is probably a step in the right direction. Left guide (talk) 19:06, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Without a significance threshold, you might find that the floodgates are opened. Some examples where you might get a lot of nominations:

1. More sporting events. For example, I might nominate every Formula 1 Grand Prix and there are probably other sports for which there is pent-up demand such as WWE and UFC events.

2. More elections. For example, local elections such as the legislative assembly elections in India which currently dominate the top read list.

3. More politics in general such as the numerous actions of the Trump administration which have been opposed as WP:NTRUMP.

4. More pop culture such as movie releases and new TV shows.

These topic types typically get articles and their quality is comparable with current ITN articles. They may well have merit as ITN topics but their volume might be difficult to cope with.

Andrew🐉(talk) 22:25, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

I think WP:NTRUMP is a good example of why your concerns aren't (necessarily) valid: there is nothing in ITNSIGNIF that tells us not to post regular Trump stories, and as the guideline is currently written such Trump stories would be very blurbworthy. I am have no doubt such blurbs will continue to be opposed no matter how the guideline looks. The same may go for the other topics you list. You also make it sound like featuring more articles is a bad thing, though; this is actually the goal. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:59, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

we still need bounds on significance, obviously, but the idea is basically instead of using significance to carefully cobstrain what's posted as now it's to use significance to corral off types of topics that shouldn't be covered and leaving most anything else for possinle inclusion if the quality and update are their. And all othe content policies apply. So for example, the opening of a film itself would fail PROMO and not appropriate, but a film breaking box office records would be reasonable. With things like sports or politics where there are a lot of events, we want to still make sure the most critical ones are the ones we post, so like with F1, we've already identified the major races at ITNR, and should avoid posting others unless something unusual happens. Masem (t) 16:57, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Isn't Timmy the Whale fallen down the well an example of the local type story that we want to avoid? (I didn't comment on that ... my biggest concern was it was all too soon, as surely the "rescued" whale will again beach itself somewhere relatively quickly). At the same time isn't Spirit (which I was considering supporting - as it seems a big story) also more on the local scale? Did we even nominate the collapse of better known but similar-sized international airlines like Jet Airways - presumably because of unintended systemtic bias?

Pushing quality may also create unintended effects. We already have problems creating barely passable articles for many significant events outside the Anglosphere - part of the reason we do have (unintended) systemic bias here. If we were to become more hardline about quality (and I'd love to see better quality), don't we risk more systemic bias ... being more likely to post a nail-biting election result for the always contentious race for the governor of North Virginia rather than president of hundreds of millions of people in the democratic, but luddite, nation of Vulgaria ... given there are few sources of Vulgarian news and few speakers of the Vulgarian language? Nfitz (talk) 08:15, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

WP:BIAS does not advocate for lowering standards. Rather, it means to cast a light on the problem and ask editors to get out of their comfort zone and put in the hard work. Promoting quality content is the primary aim of every section of the main page, including ITN. GreatCaesarsGhost 11:23, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

No, since one of the biggest impediments to posting on ITN are folks who think that the ITN posting process stops at adding a simple oppose or support !vote. Having people make/improve articles as their rationale rather than vague notions of "it's important!" "it's not important!" would do wonders to not only get more stuff on {{ITN}}, but also do ITN's purpose (which certain users around here have used to the point of abuse IMO to limit entries) of being encyclopedic and hilighting new content. — Knightoftheswords 16:28, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

I second Knightoftheswords' statement here full-heartedly. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 16:49, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

a key thing that making this change is that we get away from the usea that we should be posting, and only posting, widely covered news stories. Instead it puts the focus back on covering quality article that havd been recently created or significantly updated because of recent news coverage. This means practically we should not be focused on what makes major headlines and is covered on front pages, but stuff that gets shuffled to the back pages or later sections. Timmy the whale recsue a perfect example, at least in terms of coverage. This hopefully brings more nominations with science, arts, and other severely underrepresented topics and also encourage more quality and dynamic updates on such articles. Masem (t) 18:15, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

This seems very idealistic, but I doubt that removing significance criteria will "cause" any of this. Removing significance criteria will allow more of what Andrew mentions, which will make ITN more dynamic, but perhaps less "interesting" if we have similar stories posted all the time. Natg 19 (talk) 18:41, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

It might not work, but there is some reason to believe it may. We should also we weigh any proposal against the status quo, which stinks. GreatCaesarsGhost 17:41, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

I definitely agree that the status quo stinks, but I dislike Masem's focus on science, arts, and other severely underrepresented topics. If these things are "in the news" they would get more noms or postings. I don't see the need to intentionally force more of these types of nominations. Natg 19 (talk) 17:55, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

I didn't eat to spell out to focus specifically on these, just that eliminating the current significance criteria should allow more topics of these fields to be posted. Masem (t) 17:59, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

• My suggestion is to only remove the following line from ITNSIGNIF: "It is highly subjective whether an event is considered significant enough, and ultimately each event should be discussed on its own merits." I believe that this communicates the wrong idea to editors. While some subjectivity is always at play, SIGNIF is probably a less subjective benchmark than quality is, as it can be easily confirmed by going through the ITNSIGNIF guideline. I think removing this suggestion of special 'subjectivity' would be a big improvement. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:54, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

  There would still be subjectivity remaining at WP:ITNSIGNIF:

  These sorts of principles are useful in convincing others to support or oppose posting a story. None are solely sufficient to override consensus.

  —Bagumba (talk) 17:05, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

  Good catch, I recommend the deletion of that line as well. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:14, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

• The idea to eliminate some significance criteria on account of re-directing attention to quality entails assumptions that require more thorough research (ideally a blind poll) to be validated. If we set the main hypothesis as "Participants in ITN decide to invest more of their volunteer time on discussing significance of ITNCs rather than improving quality of the nominated articles.", we need to be aware that there may be multiple reasons for it, such as: 1) participants don't want to improve the quality of articles whose posting is uncertain because of disputed significance, 2) participants view ITN as a significance contest in which discussing significance is what matters the most, 3) participants derive higher utility from discussing rather than from editing articles, 4) participants think that there are always other editors working to bring quality up to scratch. In case 1) and 2) prevail, we're on a good track to re-direct attention from significance to quality; however, in case of 3) and 4), it'd be very difficult to convince someone to work on the articles if they don't want to, which would probably reduce participation in discussions on ITNCs without necessarily expanding the poll of editors curating quality (of course, it can be argued that even the reduced participation would be an improvement as those driven by 1) and 2) would have more time to work on quality). One of the main indicators pointing out that the majority of participants are driven by 3) and 4) is that a large number of nominated articles are being updated by editors who aren't ITN regulars. As for the goal of making ITN similar to DYK, the comparison is frankly inapt due to the fact that ITN deals with random articles documenting current events that are edited on purpose, whereas DYK enables editors to prepare and nominate articles of their choice. --Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 07:47, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

  DYK and ITN are quite similar. Thematically, they are focussed on new articles/articles in the news and so there's an overlap. DYK's process has typically started with a creation/big update with very clear criteria to shoot for. The review process has then been mainly a checklist of the criteria plus a general quality review looking at multiple aspects such as copyright and image eligibility.

  But lately DYK has moved towards ITN by increasing the emphasis on an assessment of hook interest. This is very subjective and tends to attract editors who are motivated by the opportunity to express their personal opinion. This is a very unhealthy development, IMO, as it tends to lead to conflict, protracted debate, ill-will and other unproductive consequences.

  So, DYK provides a good alternative view on such processes. ITN editors who have not tried it should give it a go as it's quite straightforward once you have created a start-class article.

  Andrew🐉(talk) 09:23, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

DYK and ITN would be similar if all newly created articles documented current events, which is obviously incorrect. Furthermore, DYK accepts recently promoted good articles. --Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 10:15, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

I understand DYK as I have work to do on yet another nomination currently. That's the Boat Race 2026 – an annual event which has been posted many times at ITN and TFA too. The basic process of putting such articles on the main page is obviously similar but some sections are better at doing this than others. ITN is easily the least productive and so has the most scope for improvement. Being open to change and development is a vital pre-requisite.

"To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often."

— Winston Churchill after Cardinal Newman

Andrew🐉(talk) 12:24, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Another use case for ITN compared to DYK, is that ITN is nicely set up to feature articles specifically at the end of a long-running news story. If an event has been ongoing for a few weeks, ITN can scoop in at the end and feature the collective work of the past period. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:44, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not understanding this. Please provide an example to clarify the point. Andrew🐉(talk) 22:01, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

Take any major court case. The point which is notable and ripe for starting an article will be near the start, but the decision and closure won't come for months or years. At the point it's outside the recently created window and likely won't qualify for significant expansion, but at ITN the point of closure is the ideal time to post. Masem (t) 22:10, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

I see. Like the bellwether case of K.G.M. v. Meta et al. which had weeks of coverage and whose result was widely hailed as a landmark. I nominated that at ITN and Masem opposed it. ITN certainly has lots of potential but the ITN/C process wastes it. It's not so much the detailed rules but the general process of inviting all and sundry to express their opinion. DYK works better because there's usually just one reviewer who works off a checklist and so it doesn't turn into a debate. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:39, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

I would stress that I opposed it at the time even though I would agree that under this framework I'm proposing it would be included. This new framework is not a small shift from the current approach but a sea change, and as such there are going to be nominations that I will continue to oppose under current significance criteria even though I feel they should be appropriate this way.

The one-person review at DYK works because they lack any significance factor, the closest being the "is the blurb interesting". Even if we remove the current significance factor, we are still going to need some bounding limits as I suggested above (the intent to be more permissive and excluding some things, than being more exclusive as we are now), and that will still need multiple eyes to review, in addition to expectations on quality and update size. Masem (t) 13:15, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Other examples include the conclusion of long-going peace talks, conclusions of long-anticipated events or conventions, and deaths of major figures. For some articles, these can be an "end point" of their development that makes them a reasonable point to be featured at. In those cases, we're celebrating long-term editing work, rather than the short bursts celebrated by DYK or the top-quality of TFA. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 09:51, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

• I think points 1, 2, 3, and 4 are all examples of why the "significance" situation has been destructive. Participants do not feel motivated to improve articles, eventhough this is a primary goal. Editors spend a lot of time discussing subjective importance of subjects eventhough that should never be a primary drive. It's the kind of comments we nip in the bud as irrelevant for deletion discussions, for example. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:41, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

  the idea of this also would hopefully help get ppl away from rushing yo create articles on disasters and similar events where the long term notability is not clear. For example, that fireworks factory disaster is maybe a news worthy event but how is that going to be remembered in the long term for purposes of an encyclopedia? In contrast to something like the 2020 Beirut explosion or Sampoong Department Store collapse where it was immediately obvious the day or with days of long term notability. That's part of where seeking better quality would help because right now we are posting these with weak notability with just barely passing min length articles. Masem (t) 13:10, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

  The problem is that WP:LASTING says It may take weeks or months to determine whether or not an event has a lasting effect, while ITNC is often deciding whether to post on the day of the event. Say what you will about U.S. mass shootings, but there's guaranteed to be coverage through and often after a conviction. —Bagumba (talk) 19:11, 7 May 2026 (UTC)

  One thing I've always thought WP is good at is consolidating and contextualizing facts in a way that no single secondary source tends to. One of our purposes is "To help readers find and quickly access content they are likely to be searching for because an item is in the news." I think it follows that a standard we should consider for "significance" is that the article actually has something to say beyond the blurb, and beyond the initial reports. "A mass shooting in Sheboygan leaves 12 dead" is usually all there is to say about the story. Perhaps a focus on quality can shut down early noms before there are enough facts to support an article. GreatCaesarsGhost 14:18, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

  That's why I think looking at reducing the significance but with the tradeoff of looking for better quality particularly for newly created articles is critical here. The typical domestic crime article that editors often create (and that we are currently getting many ITNC nominations) will be short with very little to show why this might have a long-term impact, whereas an event that seems clear will have lasting impact will have a great deal more coverage (more than just wire stories on repeat) that a broader article can be created and far more in depth within 24hr from the event (for example, the recent White House Correspondences Dinner bruhaha). But also keep in mind that some stories that get such broad coverage may also be just typical ongoing stuff within the broader story and not a point we'd normally post at ITN. (see the previous block of comments from Maplestrip on long-term stories) - again using the WHCD as an example, there's clearly a trial for the suspect, but covering each major step of the trial, which will get broad coverage, is not what we should be doing. Masem (t) 15:40, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

  One thing I've always thought WP is good at is consolidating and contextualizing facts in a way that no single secondary source tends to. This is by design, because Wikipedia is a tertiary source. Left guide (talk) 06:45, 9 May 2026 (UTC)

  Absolutely - I was responding directly to Bagumba's comment about how LASTING may be a poor standard because of ITN's specific focus on very recent events. As an alternative, we may want to point out that an element of "quality" is fulfilling the purpose of a tertiary source in improving upon secondary sources by consolidating them. I have heard editors argue that an article is good because it contains all known facts. But if the article does not offer some value beyond a single news article, there is no reason to highlight it. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:00, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

  ... LASTING may be a poor standard ... LASTING itself is fine. It's more that ITN doesnt have any formal subjective criteria to distinguish between a 9/11 and a disaster in a country that will not generate coverage beyond a few immediate headlines. —Bagumba (talk) 17:11, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

  Which is one thing that if we pull back on significance, we need to have quality as a better assessment of how important a new news event article is. We are getting a lot of weak nominations over the last few years of "small" disasters that get just enough minimal expansion in word count to be posted. This is not trying to trivialize these disasters, but from the purposes of Wikipedia, most of these are going to end up failing NEVENT if evaluated a year or so after the event, and were not likely appropriate to start with (But that whole problem with NEVENT and NOTNEWS is bigger in scope than ITN). What we can do at ITN is look to see if we can go beyond the basic "who what where", and see if we are getting some significant coverage of the "how and why" factors from reliable media. This doesn't mean slapping a big background section or a large reactions section to try to flush out, but clearly enough details on the event itself and immediate effects from a good cut of sources.

  That said, I don't have any good ideas yet how to write ITN guidance for this larger proposed changed to capture that approach of assessing quality for freshly created articles. Of course, for events we have forewarning about (like hurricanes making landfall, elections and sporting championships) the quality is expected to be much better than compared to a new article, and with a significant update appropriate for why it would be an ITNC. Masem (t) 04:02, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

  How about we reduce SIGNIF to a simple mention in the lede of CRIT: "Candidates for ITN are evaluated on the overall quality of the article in the emboldened link, as well as the quality of new content added in response to current events. They should also demonstrate significant coverage from numerous major, national news organizations with a reputation for high-quality journalism. Nominations must include links to at least two such sources." Then we get rid of WP:ITNSIGNIF and WP:ITNATA. At that point, we should consolidate UPDATE and QUALITY, but that can be a job for another day. On that front, I would say that 1) for an existing article that is of high quality, our current standard of a five-sentence update is fine, and b) for a new article, "minimally comprehensive overview of the subject" should be combined with something about my above point on the purpose of a tertiary source in offering some value beyond a single news article. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:34, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

  the change here should not be a half measure, instead making sure all aspects that we can foresee now are addressed in proposed changes and put to an RFC. Which I think means the next step is to draft what the new proposed itn guidance page would look like, and get input on that here and adjust as needed, as to prepare for that RFC. Masem (t) 13:02, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

  The trouble is that editors are not paying much attention to the guidance. Consider the discussion for the recent UK elections. Many editors have rushed to comment on these and this, in itself, demonstrates significance. The topic is clearly in the news and consequential as there's now an ongoing leadership crisis in the UK as a result. And the quality of the article doesn't seem to be an issue as just about no-one is commenting on or complaining about it.

  What seems to dominate the discussion is a structural issue -- whether "local" elections should be covered by ITN. The nay-sayers don't seem to dispute that these elections are significant; they just don't like the idea that such UK politics should be given any attention. They are fine with the idea that comparatively insignificant elections in Antigua or Barbados should be reported. The important thing is that the UK (or US) should not be given any attention.

  Such hostility to news about a particular country is explicitly forbidden by WP:ITNCDONT but the nay-sayers don't care. That seems to be because such anti-British and anti-US sentiment is routinely accepted and indulged at ITN. There seem to be lots of editors who turn up specifically to push such a POV and they don't care what the guidance is; they are there for their own reasons.

  So, my point is that the guidance is not the issue. The problem is that ITN is dominated by nationalism, personal opinions and POV-pushing. The ostensible rules are just weaponised and wiki-lawyered and will be ignored when convenient. So, as there is no rule-of-law, tinkering with the laws won't help.

  Andrew🐉(talk) 13:48, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

  the "dont oppose due to being about one country" rule has always been a stickler in the guidelines, with no clear way how it should be applied, and doing something to get rid of the dependence on significance will likely eliminate the need for that rule.

  But separately with some ITNR that broadly cover a type of event like elevtions, that i think is a different matter that because there are so nany elections per year, that ITN only focuses on national level elections, though make exceptions for submational if there is more to say beyond the results. Same with the various other assc. football games theres so many results that oir ITNR list only recommemds the nominal posting of those selected and not others unless there is something beyond the normal results if interest. But thats sonething for the ITNR page, not the general ITN guidance. Masem (t) 14:39, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

  The slippery slope argument is invalid because it's not based on either significance or quality. It's a structural argument about a hypothetical problem – that ITN might have too many nominations. It's nonsense because ITN has the opposite problem – that there are too few nominations. Consider the number of nominations this week. Apart from RDs, the count is May 14=0, 13=1, 12=2, 11=0, 10=0, 9=0, 8=4, 7=1. That's an average of 1 per day and most of them have not been posted.

  So, the outcome is that ITN is still blurbing the explosion in the fireworks factory that happened 10 days ago and so is quite stale. It wasn't big news to start with, is not getting much continuing coverage and its readership is correspondingly tiny. The idea that it is more significant than what's going down in the UK currently is quite absurd. It makes ITN look bad -- the sort of feeble failure that got WikiNews canned.

  Andrew🐉(talk) 16:29, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

  the problem is that if you open the door to routine postings of subnational elections, that's an exponential increase in possible election blurbs given how many subnational elections their are (200 countries, 5 to 50 subnational elements...). So even if can increase other type of articles that get featured in the news, elections will become far too frequent. It's fine to consider a subnational when something of larger interest happens, like Labour losing Wales after 100+ years, but it's just a routine elections with no little immediate impact, we should avoid covering those. Now of course the community by consensus (not pageviews) think that specific subnational elections should always be covered that can be made at ITNR. Masem (t) 18:22, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

  The actual problem currently is that we're blurbing tiny local elections like Antigua, Barbados and Niue. The latter is especially silly as it only has about 1,200 registered voters. My local council ward has about 10,000 voters and there are over 8,000 such council wards in the UK. So, ITN is blurbing absurdly local elections without regard to significance. Objective factors like the coverage, population and impact of an election should used, not some theory about sovereignty based on a Wikipedia list. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:00, 14 May 2026 (UTC)

  I disagree with the notion of national elections being "absurdly local". If we are using population, should elections in the third-order subdivision North 24 Parganas district, with a larger population than Hungary, be blurbed? I don't think so, and I think national elections should be prioritized because they are clearly more impactful on policy, for whatever the size of the country, than third-order subdivision elections. I am not entirely opposed to elections in Scotland and Wales being blurbed, and I wouldn't be opposed to New Caledonian elections being blurbed after the Bougival Accord. I simply do not think that national elections should not be blurbed simply because they are in small countries which will already be underrepresented in ITN (not to mention that due to external bias in sources, coverage in them will be limited compared to Global North countries). In my view, this proposal will only increase WP:BIAS in ITN. Unknown-Tree🌲 (talk) 07:35, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

  If we're going to reduce significance, the "don't oppose due to being about one country" issue is going to be even more of an issue, because of course there is inbuilt western Anglocentric bias here because of the demographics of our editors. Even now we end up posting things that actually aren't important per se but are important to many of ITNC's denizens; the current Canvas story which has turned out to be a nothingburger is a prime example (or for those with longer memories we can go back to Carrie Fisher), and that's just going to get worse if we reduce significance. Black Kite (talk) 07:49, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

  The Canvas story has plenty of continuing coverage such as What the Canvas cyber breach means for Australia’s schools which is fresh today. That affected multiple countries and still seems quite significant.

  The test should not be what ITN/C regulars such as BK think of such stories but objective evidence such as coverage in respectable and reliable sources. The prime nothingburger currently is the election in Niue and there's little such coverage for that.

  Andrew🐉(talk) 09:26, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

  It's hardly what I think of it, the actual facts are that (a) Canvas is used by a small minority of educational establishments (b) Canvas had a very short outage and has been fully operational for days now, and (c) the hacker's deadline has come and gone without anything happening, probably because the stolen data turned out to be mostly worthless to them anyway. On this basis, every ransomware attack that actually does harvest private data should be on ITN. Black Kite (talk) 09:43, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

  BK's claim that nothing happened seems quite mistaken. Apart from the outage and disruption, subsequent impacts seem to include:

  1. A settlement with the hackers which is widely presumed to include payment of a ransom
  2. Numerous class-action lawsuits
  3. Investigation by Congress
  4. Follow up of the specific technical issues and vulnerabilities
  5. More general pressure to improve cybersecurity in the educational sector. For example, see this review and discussion which explains that Canvas was used by about half the North American market including the University of California and the entire Ivy League.

  Andrew🐉(talk) 10:00, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

  We really need to stop worrying about whether or not an event has long-term impacts and for who and how. None of that matters for what we do here, which is just showing off well-written encyclopedic articles. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 10:10, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

  That depends if we want "reducing significance" to mean "putting any old trivia on the Main Page, as long as it's a well-written article", which I'm pretty sure we don't. Black Kite (talk) 12:19, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

  "Canvas, a popular, cloud-based digital hub for classrooms, has more than 30 million active users globally, with more than 8,000 institutions as customers, according to Instructure". There are 150,000 educational institutions in the USA. Black Kite (talk) 12:32, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

  30 million seems like quite a big number. None of Antigua, Barbados, Niue or the Solomons have even one million people. And ITN runs items like the fireworks explosion that killed or injured less than a hundred people. For a global encyclopedia, anything less than a million is de minimis. Andrew🐉(talk) 13:11, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

  "Even now we end up posting things that actually aren't important...that's just going to get worse if we reduce significance." I think you're missing the thrust of this proposal. We are not looking to reduce significance, we are looking to reduce the prominence of SIGNIF in the guidance, because it doesn't actually serve any purpose in making judgements on candidates. There is simply no way to apply significance as an objective standard. GreatCaesarsGhost 11:57, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

  A way I view this is that right now, with how we apply significance, we have constructed a very tiny zone in the field of all possible topics that we likely will get agreement on consensus. The intent here to flip that around, and only consider some cases for include (too local, not a final decision or point of no return-type event in an ongoing situation, product announcements, etc.) Masem (t) 02:10, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

  I agree with your thinking here, but I still believe the best was to deemphasize significance in practice is to minimize the word count covering significance in the guidance. It's a bit of a BIKESHED situation where quality is somewhat obvious but significance is subjective, so there always will be more to say about it. But that glut of guidance feeds into the conflict rather than avoid it by trying to play both sides. GreatCaesarsGhost 14:49, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

  my thpught is basically to have any type of significance as the last and least important of the criteria to be met, with quality of article, demonstrated coverage, and quality of the update as higher value priorities. And even then does it still need to be "significance"? We dont want to post a minor update to a news event expected to have a more impactful conclusion (eg in the case of court trials, we post at conviction or sentencing, not because something unusual happened during testimony). Or something too small on the larger scale, Jimmy winning the local science fair. Or overly promotional blurbs such as the latest iPhone announcement. Thisevall feel less about significance and more towards appropriateness for an ITN that is focused on "featuring quality examples of dynamic content for topics due to recently being in the news" I am absolutely opened for better wording , anything to shift off significance. Masem (t) 17:51, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

• The conversation above is very detailed, but could we propose some specific changes to make to the guidelines? I would be happy to put my very small suggestions from above to a vote, but if someone wants to set up a draft for the changes, that might be even better. A lot of breath is used on arguing about the philosophy, but nothing gets done that way. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 10:10, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

  My intent was to judge if there's still interest in trying this. My read is there is, though some questions remain, and some of these are still good discussions. But regardless my next through was to present a draft version of the updated guideline page reflecting this as to get more input, tighten language, address other concerns, etc. Once there was agreement that that was a good proposal to present to the community, the next step woudl be a site-wide RFC to formally propose that change. Masem (t) 13:25, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

Do you consider the views and impact on readers? As a reader, I use ITN to find Wikipedia articles about important recent news events. Wikipedia articles often cover events with useful background or context and summarise analysis of the events. A big flaw with ITN is it mainly covers a few types of events: sports, politics and mass deaths. There are other types of recent events which may not make global headlines but are still important, relevant and impactful.

For example, I would expect an encyclopedia (even though online) to feature more scientific (including mathematics and technology) news. I understand major new discoveries are not that common and it is difficult to estimate their long term impact in advance, but there are also news like an important (or significant in an ecosystem) species becoming endangered or extinct.

Every year, over two million participate in the Hajj, making it at least as significant as most annual sporting events. Economic news events also have a huge impact on societies, so perhaps ITN could set some guidelines or criteria (for example, bankruptcy of a Fortune Global 500 company is significant enough to post, because thousands will lose their jobs, millions of customers are affected, plus such companies are systemically important to their country and industry). — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2026-18298-57 (talk) 16:26, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

Scientific news is often posted, most recently on April 14 when the Ngogo chimpanzee war was posted; I think it simply is rarer than other types of events, so it is not posted often.

I feel like the Hajj is not "in the news" enough to be ITN unless there is some unique factor about it (for example the 2015 Mina crowd crush, which was posted); sporting events have a winner and people want to know about that, but the same cannot be said for the Hajj, which does not even have yearly articles (which would be what we'd point to). Unknown-Tree🌲 (talk) 06:05, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

Checking, I find that there's a big Hajj event happening right now -- the sighting of the crescent moon which signals the start of Dhu'l-Hijja, which is when the Hajj happens. It's interesting that this is determined by eye rather than being set by calendar as happens with other lunar festivals such as Easter. See Saudi Gazette for some coverage.

This is the sort of story which an encyclopedia should cover as it involves astronomy and religion which are ancient and respectable topics.

Andrew🐉(talk) 06:34, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

Currently the guidelines are quite short in my opinion and essentially boil down to

-Is the article receiving significant ongoing coverage

-Is the article of sufficient quality

-Is it in ITNR

Everything else we see is just convention at this point, for example, not posting sub-national elections based on national elections being in ITNR. This is an invalid argument because ITNR isn't an exclusive list. Is something of historical significance, again, not in the guidelines. Salmon Of Ignorance (talk) 07:55, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Minor change proposal

In the spirit of shortening the "Significance" section somewhat and removing text that does not have a clear guiding purpose, I propose to delete the following lines:

• It is highly subjective whether an event is considered significant enough, and ultimately each event should be discussed on its own merits. The consensus among those discussing the event is all that is necessary to decide if an event is significant enough for posting.
• None are solely sufficient to override consensus.

I would propose more changes, but I think this is a simple start to streamline the section. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 07:07, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Additional reasoning: I am not convinced that the SIGNIF requirement is any more subjective than the quality requirements. For one person, a C-class article is fine; for another it needs to be practically GA-class. Currently, the phrasing of ITNSIGNIF suggests that it's normal for us to use our own subjective opinions on the news stories themselves in deciding whether to post, but the rest of the criterium (often ignored) suggests that's not actually the intention at all, giving clearer/more specific guidelines even than those for quality. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 11:41, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

But this does have a clear purpose: it emphasises the importance of subjective opinion and consensus in determining significance. This seems quite accurate in describing ITN's current process.

The rest of the section talks about the consideration of the sources – the range and depth of coverage in the news media. This is less accurate because we don't see so much of that. Look at the discussion for the nomination of the papal encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, for example. When I nominated that, I took care to list a good selection of respectable sources from multiple countries but no attention has been paid to that. Instead editors just give their personal opinions and theories and make no effort to cite or analyse the sources. Some of the opinions seem quite contrary to WP:ITNATA but it's not clear yet whether they will be discounted.

Andrew🐉(talk) 07:51, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

The guideline does not need to be descriptivist. The goal of guidelines is to steer discussion, not to describe the discussion. Editors ignoring the sources is a big problem. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 07:56, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

That's not Wikipedia policy. Per WP:NOTLAW, the written rules themselves do not set accepted practice. Rather, they document already-existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected. If you change the guideline in a prescriptive way which does not correspond to general consensus then it will just be ignored per WP:CREEP. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:39, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

The consensus I am basing this proposal on is the above discussion, and I am formally proposing it to establish consensus further before committing. Existing patterns of behavior do not necessarily equal consensus; we don't want to enshrine common but unhelpful behaviors into guidelines just because they are common. I'm only removing lines so WP:CREEP doesn't apply. Feel free to either invite people who might shift consensus away from that of the discussion above, or propose a change to better match the existing culture instead. Or both. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 10:21, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

The discussion here does not represent the consensus of ITN or the general community as few editors have commented and there's no clear outcome. The proposed minor change is a fresh proposal, has only been commented on by myself and I'm opposed to it as not reflecting reality.

The consensus that really matters in a practical sense is that of the admins who do the regular posting at ITN as they are the ones making the key determinations and actions. They don't tend to comment in these discussions and it's not clear that they even read them. Let's consult a few. @Stephen, PFHLai, Spencer, Schwede66, and Amakuru:. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:49, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Feel free to let me know if there was a more proper venue than the ITN talkpage to discuss and propose changes to the ITN guidelines. Thank you for tagging in some possibly interested parties. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 11:04, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Your proposal was good as a concrete and specific suggestion but my point is that changing the text as you suggest won't have much effect if it doesn't reach the wider ITN participants and change their behaviour; they seem likely to carry on exactly as before.

Another appropriate place to suggest changes to ITN is the Village Pump but that's mainly a talking shop too and proposals don't usually result in change there either.

Andrew🐉(talk) 11:21, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

This talk page is absolutely the correct place to discuss changes to ITN. You can't simultaneously claim this page does not represent the community and suggest we take changes to the pump. The discussions above are an attempt to seek consensus on improvement, for which basic consensus has been shown. We can't keep having these proposals that get torpedoed by wikilawyering. Everyone agrees the current setup is broken. I agree with your point that Masem seems to be leaving out the most important part of making a specific proposal that everyone can agree on. We need to center the discussion on what we have agreement on, and pursue changes that have (basically) universal agreement. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:25, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

We can't do this in piecepart. If we are going to wane how much we put on significance, we need to beef up expectations on quality, and have a replacement part of the guideline that still addresses this weaker significance concern (that being, stories not being at a final point, far too-local stories, promotional ones, etc.) What I'm proposing is a sea change, and that's going to require a whole guideline section rewrite. Masem (t) 11:27, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

I hope someone might set up a draft. I'm afraid that's beyond me. Convincing people of small adjustments seems hard enough. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 11:36, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Masem's vision is quite unclear because they seem to still want lots of significance constraints. Instead of each case being judged on its merits in a flexible way, per the current text, he seems to want a list of specific constraints such as "too-local" and "promotional". The trouble is that interpreting those would still be quite subjective. If cheese-rolling is "too-local", despite the international participation and coverage, then why aren't the train bombing and coal mine explosion "too-local" too? Why aren't the Booker prize and the Premier League promotional too?

So, Masem really needs to try writing this down as the devil is in such details. Maplestrip/Mable has done this and that's what's on the table now.

Andrew🐉(talk) 11:45, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

the cheese rolling is a good example of what might be allowed underwhelming new system because its international coverage, compared to little Jimmy winning the local science fair. (However then that article will fail quality issue, but thats not the point here). We still can't post every little story that gets wide coverage, asked there are generally accepted bounds that easily translate. But it would be less about trying to a high bar for inclusion, and instead assuring the item doesnt fall under a lower bar for what we normally disclude. Masem (t) 13:11, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

• The current ITNC discussions are essentially a complete POV fest, but Masem's proposal, with eliminating most of the codified significance criteria, would make it even more so. The ITN section should be either retired completely (except for the RD portion) or should implement changes that make it absolutely mandatory for all nominations and discussions to rely primarily on how RS are viewing the significance of any event rather that on what the subjective individual opinions of the editors are. Right now the RS are almost never mentioned in ITNC discussions in terms of what RS are saying about the event significance. That's the thing that needs to change. Nsk92 (talk) 11:57, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

  @Nsk92: For clarity, does this mean that you approve of the proposed change? This does not preclude future changes. I was hoping for some !votes at least. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:05, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

  No, I believe that in its current form the proposal would make things worse and more subjective and POV prone. I would only support a version of this proposal that explicitly requires justifying significance/non-significance of an event to be justified by what RS specifically say about its significance/non-significance. (With possible exceptions of essentially routine local events.) Nsk92 (talk) 12:13, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

  that approach would push it towards being about news, but thats counter to what ITN is meant for and that WO us not an encyclopedia. We want to feature quality articles that demonstrate WP as a dynamic source (have a quality update) due to a topic recently being in the news, and significance is getting too much in the way of doing that, that the only things we are really posting are ITNRs and disaster articles. Also what news media think is important is not the sane as what an encyclopedia considers important. Masem (t) 13:17, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

You keep saying this, Masem, but this is not how ITN works. ITN is a news portal. If you think being a news portal violates WP principles, then we should eliminate ITN, or rename it. Or we could have a curated system like DYK where admins create "sets" of articles daily/weekly so that we can "feature quality articles". Though quality and dynamicism are part of our ITN purpose, the first one is news: To help readers find and quickly access content they are likely to be searching for because an item is in the news. News is more important than the "dynamic resource" part, otherwise we should just rename or rebrand this main page section. Natg 19 (talk) 16:34, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

@Natg 19: Interesting, I never considered WP:ITNPURPOSE as a ordered list by priority. I always assumed the four points were considered equal, and thus that for example hitting only the last three points really well could be sufficient for posting. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 08:07, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

It was never set up as a news portal (I recently pointed to where the discussion was where the guidelines were established). It was set up to demonstrate WP as a dynamic resource, which mean it was going to feature items in the news, but was not specifically set up to be a news ticker (even that first point quoted does not say it is to feature news, and of course, what exactly is "news" is different based on what the reader expects). Its why its "in the news" and not "the news", because we ideally want to pull from any type of current reporting, whether from newspapers or from magazines or websites that cover fields that aren't frequently covered in newspapers. It's been pulled towards trying to be a news ticker in the last few years, likely due to the shifting population, but that's why it's made discussions far more toxic and has made ITN stale because of focusing far too much on being like "global headline news", which never was a consideration before. Hence the need to reassess what we are really doing here. The way we are going without any change is completely unhealthy, and that's why I'm proposing pulling it back towards its roots and getting rid of the primary problem that makes discussions toxic, the matter of significance. Masem (t) 11:33, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Another minor change proposal

I hope I can find a change that at least finds some approval. Based on Nsk92's suggestion above, I propose adding the following line to the "principles" list of the Significance section:

• The significance attributed to the subject (do news organization describe the event in big terms, e.g. "Important" or "Historic")

I am in favor of this addition myself. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 12:37, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

It's worth considering but we might have to choose the words and sources carefully as other guidelines warn:

• WP:ITNRDBLURB: "One should also be wary of puffery in obituaries for a recently deceased person – using terms such as "legendary", "greatest of all time", "household name", etc."
• WP:PUFFERY:

The point is that such words may be over-used by journalists, as well as Wikipedians. For example, I just googled for news about the word "important" and the top hit was this story:

• Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Thunder top Spurs for important Game 5 victory.

That seems to be a result in the Western Conference finals, which doesn't mean much to me but I suppose that it's not really all that important.

Andrew🐉(talk) 18:16, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

Well that's a real catch-22 then, because "importance" is the obsession of ITN/C. If we have no way of measuring "importance", we're gonna be talking in circles together. I'm tired because change seems impossible. Can someone think of any kind of workable change to ITN that might see even just a little bit of approval? ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 08:12, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

The main obstacle to change is that the admins who control the process mostly don't engage – notice that there has been no response to the pings above. Presumably the process of selection over many years has resulted in a hard core of admins who like things just as they are. They seem likely to be ok with the subjective judgement of significance because the process gives them the last word and there's so much subjectivity that their decisions are difficult to challenge. So, they are a vested interest which tends to block change.

The most feasible way for this to change is for a strong-willed admin to take charge and make it happen. For example, The leaky cauldron drove extensive change at DYK in recent years in this way.

Now Masem is an admin and a veteran at ITN but they don't seem to get involved in the posting process. If they want to shift the Overton window, they need to get more hands-on, I reckon. Discussion here isn't enough.

Andrew🐉(talk) 10:24, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Admins don't necessarily have a stronger voice in these kinds of proposals. If someone suggests a change and consensus is generally in favor for it, then that works. ~14 people were involved in the discussion above, so I was hoping to get maybe at least 6 !votes on a small change proposal. That would've been a start. I figured very simple suggestions would be an effective start, but I guess I was wrong... ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 10:33, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

This isn't good either. Primary sources like newspapers are not the place to be determining how significant or historic something is in the few days after an event happens. The goal of a newspaper is to draw eyes for revenue purposes, so they will use far more aggressive language to do this. Its another reason why we need to move as far away from relying on significance as a primary driver for posting Masem (t) 11:25, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Strongly opposed to this change and it seems to be moving in the opposite direction of the intent of this section. GreatCaesarsGhost 11:42, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Portraits of politicians on the front page

Hello friends. I feel a bit uncomfortable when we put portraits of politicians on the front page. I think that many (most?) politicians are at least a little bit corrupt, and portraits (no other people in the picture) of politicians give me authoritarian vibes. Would it makes sense to try to avoid putting these on the front page? If this is a can of worms, I'll go away, but just wanted to mention this and take the temperature. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:11, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

Do they need to be saints? J. Craig Venter was an atheist and divorced. —Bagumba (talk) 04:40, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

Indeed. This is mainly driven by ITN/R and its bizarre bias for obscure elections. See also WP:LUGO which is a related issue. Andrew🐉(talk) 06:41, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't mind the obscure elections thing. That could be seen as a type of equity, giving screen time to tiny countries that would otherwise never get coverage.

My particular concern is the placement of politician's headshots on the front page. In my view any politician that takes money from rich oligarchs and rich organizations and rich PACs instead of from grassroots small dollar donations from voters is corrupt, and that is most of them, so I don't really like us boosting their personal brand by placing headshots of them on our front page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 06:49, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

ITN, like the rest of WP, needs to stay neutral even when there's broad consensus of something afoul. To take a more obvious case, when Putin wins the next Russian election, which everyone and their brother know is rigged that way, we're still going to write the blurb to say that Putin was named the winner (not that the election was rigged, that's the job that requires context afforded by the article itself), and by ITN's default practice, as long as that's the leading blurb, his picture would be featured. We know that this was not a fair election, but for ITN, we're not going to judge it that way outside of carefully wording the blurb to avoid the implication it was a fair election.

A long-term goal is to increase the blurbs we post (see the brainstorming section above), which ideally means that in the future, while we'll put the election winner's up, it would ideally rotate out fast. In lieu of this new system (it will take a while), we also are not bound to keep the leading blurb as the one with the picture, and would be nice if blurbs don't move after 24hr hours to shift the image around, but that takes a bit of admin work to manage. Masem (t) 13:21, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not a massive fan of having an image of a person when the article isn't actually about them. The news articles are that "X won this election (or anything else"), but in most cases, the ITN bit isn't that the person won, it is that the election/event is over. Are we giving more weight to the winner, simply because we have an image of them? In my eyes, the image at ITN should be about the article that is being highlighted as much as possible.

It's not so much about the person being shady, but simply because they won the thing, does that mean they should have their face on the front page? Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:14, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

Senator Bato dela Rosa

• We have a fresh example, (pictured). This seems improper to me because the issue is the alleged arrest of this person for an unproven charge. I cited WP:PERP which is a BLP issue and yet ITN is splashing this disputed and unresolved case as a lead image. Tsk. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:44, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

If the person is a public figure (which he is) and the coverage of the alleged charges is discussed in reliable sources, thats the case where we do cover it, as long as we still make it clear they are alleged charges and not convictions per BLPCRIME. PERP wouldn't apply because he was notable as a politician without considering the possible crimes involved. Masem (t) 18:16, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

Very little is clear about this matter. It's not clear what happened at the Senate or what the legal status of dela Rosa is. See the discussion about the article's title which shows how uncertain the topic is. And notice that, because it has been blurbed by ITN, an admin has locked the topic to prevent it from being changed. This is quite wrong for such a developing story about a BLP. ITN shouldn't be touching this until it is more settled and stable.

Andrew🐉(talk) 19:24, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

You seem to be arguing for different changes to ITN than I am. I am okay with covering stuff like this in ITN, I just don't want politicians to have headshots on the front page when we do it. This one is a good example of what concerns me because he is a possible alleged criminal and we are helping to boost his personal brand by putting his headshot on our front page. –Novem Linguae (talk) 20:16, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

I don't think there is any "promotion" going on by putting anyone on the front page. As to your original point, how do we know who is "corrupt" or not? That seems to be a big accusation. The photo on the main page are just to illustrate who (or what) the top blurb is about and is a helpful visual guide to our users who may not be familiar with the topic. Natg 19 (talk) 20:54, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

That's speaking of WP:RGW, eg you feel something is wrong with it, but WP does not include this bias. We report in an inpassionate manner, so if its okay to post the picture of politics when something positive happens, like winning an election, we'll post the picture of politicians when there is negative, blurb-appropriate news about them. Masem (t) 20:58, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

As to your original point, how do we know who is "corrupt" or not? Could just avoid all politician's headshots.

That's speaking of WP:RGW. The front page isn't an article, so we have more control over who and what we want to elevate there. The same way we choose to boost extremely minor elections (righting the great wrong of not covering third world countries), we could also choose not to boost politician's headshots. We could instead put a photo of the tally, of election workers, a national flag, a group photo of multiple politicians (avoids the authoritarian portrait thing I mentioned in a previous comment), no photo, a photo of one of their government buildings, etc. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:16, 16 May 2026 (UTC)

This really is RGW. If someone like José Mujica somehow got elected for president, would you also oppose posting the photo of the corrupt politician? If so, why? If not, why? byteflush _Talk 01:09, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

José Mujica was posted repeatedly in various ways and his picture was posted in May 2025. That was fine by me as he was unusually honest and virtuous. Such paragons are exceptional though. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:31, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm not sure what changes to ITN are being proposed then. Is the suggestion to get rid of all portraits of living persons? Or only specific occupations? Which ones? byteflush _Talk 22:40, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

If someone like José Mujica somehow got elected for president, would you also oppose posting the photo of the corrupt politician? Yes. Would suggest avoiding headshots of all politicians. Then we don't have to judge which ones are good or bad. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:51, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

Well, same question that I asked above. What are the proposed changes to ITN rules? Persons from specific occupations should be barred from having their photos featured at ITN? Which occupations? Politicians, activists, drug kingpins, scientists, influencers...? What are the criteria? byteflush _Talk 03:59, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

portraits of politicians –Novem Linguae (talk) 04:25, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Oppose That's a really narrow approach that doesn't make sense to me. Excluding a single profession without providing a reason looks like both WP:RGW and WP:IDONTLIKEIT. byteflush _Talk 23:14, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

ITN should have a formal requirement to balance its diversity and variety of topics like DYK does: WP:DYKVAR. Not just disasters, politics and sport but also more culture, science, economics, technology, religion, fashion and more. An encyclopedia is supposed to cover everything not just a few types of topic.

By increasing the posting rate and the variety of topics, the political portraits would be diluted and this would resolve WP:LUGO at last.

Andrew🐉(talk) 06:41, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

I partially agree. The current ITN needs to be fixed; I've been reading the discussions for far too long without participating. It doesn't benefit the encyclopedia when so much energy is wasted in meta-discussions instead of improving actual articles. However, I don't see how excluding a single profession from having photos featured fixes it. I'd say ITN/R needs a revamp, and other criteria should be relaxed. byteflush _Talk 23:18, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

The premise here is wrong; putting a photo of something or someone on the front page is not 'promoting' them in the sense of a political endorsement. It's just documentation. I am absolutely baffled by the argument that, essentially, whether or not we post a picture of someone should depend on whether we like them, or think they're good. GenevieveDEon (talk) 00:25, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

It's promotional because it gives the subject exposure and status. For this reason, DYK has a rule, WP:DYKELECT, Articles and hooks featuring election candidates cannot appear on the main page in the 30 days prior to the election... See Frederick McAlpine needs to be pulled from homepage, for example.

This policy of WP:PROMO is often invoked to oppose other types of topic such as the releases of new movies or tech products. ITN just ignores that the same issues apply to politics and sport and that seems to be because the regulars are fans of politics and sport.

Andrew🐉(talk) 06:24, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

DYKELECT is a fascinating guideline. There is an obvious difference, as it's normal and fine to DYK-feature a politician after they have become elected. Same would be the case for a TFA, for example. The product promotion angle is perhaps more interesting still. I'm very curious if DYK or TFA has any guidelines or precedent against featuring a newly-released commercial product. I do see the larger issue of politicians here, though. We might be entrenching and adding some legitimacy to incumbent rulers, which is a conservative effect we might genuinely have and I am not fond of. It's very subtle and structural. As a project, we are inherently at least a little bit conservative, in that we feature whatever the mainstream media is featuring. I don't think we can really make a radical editorial move of fully ignoring the biggest faces in the world. At the very least, I cannot think of a sensible guideline one could construct to keep the face of Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin off the front-page, that doesn't affect other things in very silly ways. My best suggestion would be to just not nominate a picture for certain subjects, and just not go through the motions for them. Which I recognize is a useless suggestion. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 07:12, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

ITN regulars seem to try hard to keep Trump out of ITN. He has been constantly in the news all year but numerous nominations have been defeated by the non-policy of WP:NTRUMP. For example, the recent visit of Trump to China got a lot of attention in the news but this was ignored at ITN. President Xi and China are routinely ignored too. Instead of these giants of world politics, we're getting people like Dalton Tagelagi who are at the other end of the scale. It's a farce. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:20, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Most of the focus on Trump by Wikipedia is attempting to RGW; I would not disagree that Trump has done a lot of possibly illegal, definitely shady, unethical, and immoral things as president, and it feels right to make sure all this nonsense is documented, but it's not our place under NPOV and purpose as an encyclopedia to be calling those out to such a great extreme that we are currently doing on WP. Honestly most of our coverage should be waiting for after his term is over, and there's more high-level pieces to come out to say what was wrong with this term, rather than banking heavily right now on news media pieces that report 24/7. But this itself is part of the broader problem with excessive news-like coverage against the purpose of NOTNEWS. Not every tiny event with wide media coverage needs documented. Masem (t) 11:22, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Honestly most of our coverage should be waiting for after his term is over

With the extent to which the current administration is attempting to discredit and silence any and all criticism of Trump's unprecedently corrupt presidency, I find it fascinating that you feel Wikipedia increase its self-censorship of Trump. Isn't our goal to accurately document the world? Why on Earth would we wait for years down the line to do so? Loytra^✨ 02:40, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

It is hard to compile summaries of knowledge and be an effective reference work if the ground keeps moving away from under us. We might not want to put the responsibility upon ourselves to be the ones documenting corruption as it happens. That's a very heavy load to carry, and it's never really been what encyclopediea are for. It's certainly not about self-censorship, however; it is a different philosophy on how to weigh information. But regardless, it is both hard to put such a philosophy into practice through consistent guidelines, and more importantly, most people in the project actively want us to cover ongoing corruption in detail, so the whole point is rather moot (irrelevant). Merge discussions with WP:NOTNEWS and WP:OVERLAP arguments are probably the best way to push detailed reporting away to make our project more like an encyclopedia and less like a news website. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 07:05, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

Loytra, according to the guideline at WP:N, Wikipedia is a lagging indicator of notability and Brief bursts of news coverage may not sufficiently demonstrate notability. If you're using political outlook as a means to determine coverage, then you're abusing Wikipedia and its editors to engage in external political disputes. Which only reinforces my belief that those who are most adamant about "speaking out" are the least qualified to write on a topic. There are plenty of places to document political maleficence as it happens. Wikipedia is not one of them. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:28, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien I don't see how any of this means that we'd have to wait until after his term is over (according to Masem) — or in other words for years — to cover the US presidency. I don't really appreciate being accused of abusing Wikipedia by using political outlook as a means to determine coverage because I want an encyclopaedia that regularly covers current events and breaking news to... cover events and breaking news. Like it or not, Wikipedia is one of the world's most popular sources of information for current events, and I think it should do all it can to adequately cover said events, no matter the topic. You say that There are plenty of places to document political maleficence as it happens. Wikipedia is not one of them — but like... it is? Objectively, it just is. We're on the talk page for the Main Page's 'In the news' section, for crying out loud (which, for the record, has featured cases of political malfeasance on numerous occasions). In what universe doesn't Wikipedia cover political malfeasance? Why wouldn't it? I feel like in the Twilight Zone. Loytra^✨ 10:39, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Oppose change. I think including photographs of politicians (or anyone else) when there's a significant story about them in the news is both encyclopedic and relevant for readers' understanding. Trying to define categories of people we don't post because we think they might be controversial opens up way more cans of worms than it solves, and is ultimately unnecessary. If an individual is receiving coverage in the news then it's WP:DUEWEIGHT to have their story here with a photograph if available. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 11:43, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Many/most of these leader pictures are not posted because there's significant coverage in the news; they are posted because of ITN/R. For example, there's little news coverage of Dalton Tagelagi -- the PM of a flyspeck island with just a few villages and less than 2,000 population. Andrew🐉(talk) 17:58, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

You're confusing a breaking news site with an encyclopaedia. If you want to change ITN/R, make a proposal. But please spare us the constant nagging about small states. Khuft (talk) 18:46, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

Agree, and oppose change. "Don't put pictures of politicians on the front page because all politicians are corrupt" is not a compelling argument. Stephen 02:22, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

We could perhaps suggest a preference for freely available election-related pictures where they exist (though that's challenging) rather than studio portraits. Jahaza (talk) 17:05, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

We use the best, most recent photo of living people. There's never been an explicit preference for "studio portraits". —Bagumba (talk) 17:12, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

Ok, but that doesn't really address my point, which is that I think we should have a preference for ITN election posts of election-related photos (not even necessarily of the winning candidate) rather than studio portraits regardless of whether a studio portrait is the best most recent photo of the winning candidate. Jahaza (talk) 17:34, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

Your best bet is to identify and propose such images in actual ITNC nominations, and see if it gains traction. —Bagumba (talk) 17:44, 19 May 2026 (UTC)

I like this idea of using pictures of the election itself, where possible. That represents the subject of the article better as well, and reduces the singularity of the end result. The article we're featuring is called "election," not "campaign of ..." ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 06:46, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

The impact of an election is that a person was elected and is going to lead the country. I can imagine scenarios where an election occurring is the news (e.g., if the next Syrian presidential election is free and fair), but usually the impact of an election is who won it. 1brianm7 (talk) 07:29, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Many elections have broader results than purely the individual who becomes prime minister or president or such. In a parliamentary system in particular, it feels a bit odd to only depict the leader of the party that got the most votes. But in general, ideologically, one might say the democratic process itself is the aspect of an election that is most important. On a completely separate note, featuring a well-taken photograph by one of our volunteers at Commons might be preferrable over using a government-provided studio headshot. There's quite a few reasons why I like the suggestion of using ground-coverage photographs for elections. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 10:30, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

• I don't see much here to support changing status quo. We post people's pictures because they are pertinent to a blurb (and often the top one), that's about it. On the off-topic of election photos, I assure you that readers would much rather prefer seeing the photo of the winner of the US Presidential Election and not 3 members of the Electoral College huddled at a hot dog cart. --qedk (t 愛 c) 09:27, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

  I'm a bit surprised and saddened at how few pictures I'm finding of Commons that might adequately represent the election; Here's 2024 US election as an example. I recognize that photographing people in the process of voting has a lot of issues, so maybe this thing I'm envisioning is never really going to work out. As for the Electoral Collage, though, there are some beautiful pictures of them doing their work, like File:Electoral College Meeting (54210700676).jpg. But the timing for that doesn't work. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 10:39, 20 May 2026 (UTC)

Pip

• I wrote an article for an election night editathon and was pleased to find that we had an appropriate picture (shown). See unusual articles for other novel aspects of elections. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:16, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Great article! Jahaza (talk) 19:27, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Picture of Dara

TheTokl's picture, cropped at ITN size

Bold Hi friends, I would like to suggest changing the picture of Dara to this one with the trophy I took. TheTokl (talk) 07:45, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

It won't look good as a thumbnail, too much background. Stephen 23:59, 18 May 2026 (UTC)

The background is a promotional backdrop which is designed to advertise sponsors such as Austrian tourism. A tight crop should be used to remove most of it and this might also help it work better as a thumbnail. This version (pictured) is shown at ITN size. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:06, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Moot point, as Dara is no longer the top blurb, and may roll off soon. Natg 19 (talk) 19:16, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Seeking agreement on what is wrong with ITN

I want to try something new in the eternal effort to fix ITN: seeking understanding on what the consensus in the community thinks is wrong. Please vote agree or disagree for each item if you think it is a problem with ITN that we should try to address. Feel free to add your own:

1. We do not post new blurbs often enough.

2. The proportion of blurbs posted for certain topics (elections, sports and mass casualty events) is excessive and undesirable.

3. There is too much acrimony in candidate discussions.

4. Our criteria are so subjective that editors can just "vote" for candidates they personally like, rather than considering if they meet the purpose of ITN.

5. Our criteria are so subjective that it can be difficult to objectively evaluate a candidate.

6. Regular contributors can be seen to engage in WP:OWN and WP:BITE behavior, often by citing undocumented consensus (i.e. "we don't usually post...").

Please consider each item in isolation: saying you think we should post more doesn't mean you think we should lower standards to get there. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:11, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

I agree that ITN has problems, but my list is mostly different to yours:

1. The low number of blurbs and frequent delay of several days before each event is posted. This is a symptom caused by the other issues below.
2. Lack of user participation. Many nominations get only a small number of !votes, and can take days before getting enough input to form a consensus.
3. Poor article quality or lack of updates. Many nominations are made without even attempting to update the article or bring it up to the quality standards. This prompts a flurry of oppose !votes on quality grounds. I feel like a broken record pointing out every time that an ITNR sport item has no prose description of the event. This is a waste of users time, asking them to assess an article that clearly isn't ready. Even when an item gains consensus, the blurb is often held up waiting for quality issues to be fixed e.g. an orange-level tag.
4. Lack of admin participation. Nominations that do gain consensus are often marked 'ready', then sit around for 24-48 hours before an admin posts them. The {{Admins willing to post ITN}} template was an attempt to fix this, but has been only partially successful.
5. Distraction by RDs. These are the clear majority of nominations and take up most of ITN/C, yet get little engagement from users. The exception is every time someone suggests converting one to a blurb, which always prompts an extensive argument. This is a huge opportunity cost; if the attention spent on RDs was spent on blurbs instead we would post a lot more of them.

I don't think there are systemic problems with our current blurb criteria or the nature of the discussions on ITN/C (your items 3-6). Your item 2 is an issue, but I see it largely as a knock-on effect of item 1. I don't know how we can recruit more participants; I don't see it as an issue of friendliness or complicated criteria, more a lack of willingness to engage in making article improvements. Encouraging more nominations is not the answer, unless they're accompanied by quality article updates (ideally before nomination). Modest Genius ^talk 12:42, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

I dont think it's necessarily expected that the article is at or near quality when the ITNC is made, as ITNC should be leading to cooperative effort to improve the article to post. (Of course, nominating non existant or stubs is a different matter) What usually is the problem is that you get tons of support votes based on significance but none of those editors attempt to improve the article to meet the quality concerns. It is also as described that you'll get a lot of oppose on quality issues at the initial nomination, but they actually do get fixed, but those initial votes aren't changed. That's where the posting admin needs to review the votes, see why there were quality concerns and make sure they were reasonable addressed, if the votes aren't going back to change from that. Masem (t) 12:59, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

I agree that an article doesn't have to be perfect before nomination, but I do think the nominator should be expected to put at least some effort into updating the article before nominating, then addressing any problems that are raised in the !votes. Too often nominations are made without any editing to the article, opposed on quality grounds, then simply abandoned with no attempt to fix them. Regarding changing !votes if the article quality issue has been addressed: we can't expect users to keep checking the article every few hours to see if that has been done. Asking an admin to assess which comments are still valid is a major imposition, which might be contributing to the lack of admin closures. A better approach is pinging the user to tell them the issue has been fixed, though that still requires waiting until the next time they're on wiki. Modest Genius ^talk 16:24, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

The current process clearly allows for incomplete articles because the nomination template has the option to say "updated=N".

When something is in the news, I usually feel some time pressure to get the nomination posted before someone else does it too. Major news items are likely to result in duplicate nominations if editors take their time over them and so some haste seems unavoidable.

Andrew🐉(talk) 16:47, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Is there value in getting rid of "voting" altogether? Significance is still a consideration, but we trust an admin to decide rather than leaving it to a majority vote of "literally anyone" including IPs. Since we're not voting on significance anymore, we get rid of the low effort comments and focus on quality. GreatCaesarsGhost 11:37, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

In what I'm brainstorming above in backing off significance, I think you still need some non-admin-function review for the quality factor (as I am suggesting that we raise that bar along with the quality of the update a bit higher to refocus on the "dynamic resource" factor) as well as to make sure its not a topic in the areas we shouldn't be posting in. Unlike with an RD (see below) where there's only a few things that an admin would need to vouch for prior to posting in the absence of any other !votes, I think we still need to seek active input on the multiple factors for blurbs. But by taking out significance, the arguments should be far less difficult, and ideally would lead to shorter discussions to make it easier on the admin. Masem (t) 11:54, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

I actually agree with pretty much most of the numbered points raised by both GreatCaesarsGhost and Modest Genius, and am surprised there are so many easily identifiable problems. It's not uncommon to see the entire ITN template consist of some flavor of sport, political appointment, and/or death. Left guide (talk) 14:20, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

What woould you imagine a news section of an encyclopedia look like? Not what a mirror of BBC News or CNN or the South China Morning Post. If people can agree on what should be in there, we're on the right track. Howard the Duck (talk) 14:32, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

We don't have to imagine; just look at Britannica:

• Their top line lists TRENDING topics which currently are the Abraham Accords; Ken Paxton; Heat Wave; Eid al-Adha; Ebola; Trump's Cabinet; National Spelling Bee; UFC. These are equivalent to Wikipedia's Top read and note that we have Ken Paxton and Eid al-Adha trending too.
• Below they list a variety of features which include Major Events of 2026 – "Discover the biggest headline stories of the year so far". This list starts with Zohran Mamdani – a topic which was nominated repeatedly at ITN but not posted. Mamdani got a huge readership of about 25 million in the last year and so was very trending and top read. He's obviously a lot more significant than the leaders of the microstates which ITN posted instead.
• The most recent entry in Britannica's list of the major events of 2026 is "Pope Leo XIV releases his first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas (Latin: "Magnificent Humanity"). ITN is still dithering about this with some editors seeming to display open anti-Catholic prejudice while others seem to think they are holier than the Pope. ITN's vox pop does not seem so magnificent.

So, Britannica shows how a professional encyclopedia gets it right.

Andrew🐉(talk) 15:40, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

I disagree with the use of "Trending"/"most read", as those can be anything and everything that has historically been considered "not significant", e.g. movie releases, celebrity/entertainment news, etc. But Britannica's "Major events" page does seem more in line with what we want at ITN. Natg 19 (talk) 17:05, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

without doing a 1 for 1 comparison, I recognize most of what's on their list as topics we posted as well or at least were nominated. It's not like we are missing that mark, but we want also far more entires than they list. Masem (t) 17:11, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

While Britannica has an entire page for "their ITN", it has fewer entries than "our ITN". I am not sure how often they update that, but we'd always have more entries that their list.

Re: Papal encyclical - apparently an election in Cyprus, jazz obituary, Indy 500, suicide bombing, and women's soccer are more important than that. Are we seriously serious on this? Howard the Duck (talk) 18:09, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

which is an issue with so much weight given to significance and importance. We ideally want stories from a broad range of fields that do not always represent a massive change, and dumping significance as a primary criteria helps.

Also RDBlurbs (outside death as the news) are its whole own beast, and as we are never likely to have a separate box for deaths, are integrated to ITN but i think a very different problem with a dufferent solution. Masem (t) 19:10, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

TBH I don't understand why RDs not having participation while at ITN/C is a problem.... I mean, if you put these to a separate page, then it'll get even less discussion.

DYK has a QPQ. Why not, if you nominate a blurb, you should comment on an RD nomination. That shouldn't be hard to do, right? All you have to check is if the article meets WP:ITNRD and WP:ITNQUALITY. Howard the Duck (talk) 21:40, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

because the bar is just quality, non blurb RDs should be able to be posted by an administrator without any other comment, as long as the admin has verified that quality is there. At which point you only have the behavioral issue of an admin blindly posting poor quality RDs repeatedly. Not to say that non admin comments help to flag if quality is a problem so that nominator and others know what to fix, and perhaps a QPQ approach might help. Masem (t) 22:06, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

keep in mind our hands our tied that any featured article in the main pages boxes are meant to illustrate some of the best quality that WP articles can be (though not expecting FA at all places). This immediately eliminates any type of trending topic or top25 since there's no quality control there. WP is also not fishing for page views that it needs to promote content aimed to draw readers we are a reference work and WP's SEO is nothing we worry about. Masem (t) 17:08, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

• As for the original "poll", I agree with each of these items, but I feel like 4-6 are the most significant and are partly a cause for the others. Subjectivity makes it difficult to assess consensus and makes ITN just a "vote"-based process, which is counter to how things are supposed to work here at Wikipedia. Natg 19 (talk) 17:12, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

• The worst offense of ITN is that its style is dry and dull, stale and static, fusty and formulaic. It's quite the opposite of DYK which tries hard to attract readers by being hooky and will now explicitly reject entries if they are not interesting.

This partly arises from the slow pace of posting and the limited variety of topics but there's more to it than that. The blurbs are composed in a stereotyped way so they tend to use exactly the same phrases in a repetitive and predictable way. The Ongoing and RD entries are just given crude links without any context or clue as to what makes them interesting. And the pictures tend to be similar -- mugshots of politicians and footballers.

One factor which causes this is a lack of space – it's usually the smallest section on the main page. The official excuse is the absurd issue of "balance" but it really seems to be a form of reluctance due to the recognition that ITN doesn't use the space well and is too ashamed of the section to be more expansive and impactful.

Andrew🐉(talk) 18:47, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

Add UEFA Women's Champions League final to ITN/R

The UEFA Women's Champions League finals have now been posted this year and last, with consensus in the comments that this event is notable, has a sizable following and should be added ITN/R. Abcmaxx (talk) 20:05, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

• Support - this is a top-level competition, it's regularly in the news, and we cover it. GenevieveDEon (talk) 20:17, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

• Support This is the women's equivalent to a men's final, which is already listed on ITN/R, and it's also the top-level competition. Furthermore, the fact it's been now posted for two years in a row makes a strong case for adding. --Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 13:17, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose There's already too much football in ITN/R. Looking at some overall stats for football tournaments, this one doesn't seem in the same league as major events like the World Cup. (Use the logarithmic scale to show the difference more clearly). Andrew🐉(talk) 08:29, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

• Football is the biggest sport in the world and currently only gets around 6 ITN/R stories per year (if they're posted, which they sometimes aren't for quality issues). Consider that we post, on average, 6 motorsport stories and 4 from golf, tennis and rugby, and this does not seem undue. Plus, we need to move more women's events to ITN/R in all sports, there are currently some glaring gaps. And, as we've mentioned a billion times, pageviews are irrelevant here. Black Kite (talk) 11:11, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

  BK claims that "football is the biggest sport" but then decries my use of statistics to measure the relative size of this event compared with other similar tournaments. What measure of bigness is BK using and why do they think it is more valid? Andrew🐉(talk) 11:42, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

  WP:NPA Masem (t) 11:47, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

  IF you'd read my comment I was talking about the number of ITN/R stories for each sport, not their relative size. But of course football is the biggest sport in the world by any metric you'd like to choose (match attendance, TV viewers, actual participation, and geographical reach). Black Kite (talk) 12:11, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

• Support this is the women's equivalent to an ITN/R entry, and it is highly supported and reported on, which is not the case (yet) for all women's tournaments.
• Support Shown to be covered and updated, and is absolutely appropriate to highlight the womens' event if we already have the mens' event there. Masem (t) 11:46, 30 May 2026 (UTC)