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The reality is that our current de facto system for choosing which recent deaths get blurbed boil down completely to subjective editor opinions and a popularity contest. This is unlike any other area I have seen on this encyclopedia, where notability is conditioned on what theWP:RS say and not based on editor opinions about how important someone is or was.
Andrew Davidson raised a related concern on the RD/blurb nomination forDiane Keaton about how this inevitably reinforces systemic bias; only two out of nineteen RD blurbs this year were women. I agree with that concern. The reality is that when we condition blurbs on subjective assessments of whether or not a person's accomplishments are "great" or "significant" enough within their field, the net result will inevitably be a systemic tendency towards posting public figures who reflect the biases of the Wikipedia !voting pool: that is, overwhelmingly white, English-speaking, educated males. To be clear, I am not saying this is why Diane Keaton was not posted. I am making an observation about human nature.
A far better metric which is less prone to bias, in my view, is whether or not the recent death is garnering significant, in-depth coverage across a breadth ofglobal reliable news sources (emphasis intentional). If global news sources from across continents are covering a recently deceased person and their accomplishments in depth, that should be sufficient to put a blurb across the line. But on our current criteria, Wikipedia Guy 1, Wikipedia Guy 2, and Wikipedia Guy 3 can come together and say, "I don't care what theWP:RS are saying, I read [woman's] page and even though all of the reliable sources have her on the front page and call her an impactful figure, my view is that she wasn't transformative enough in her field".
As such, let this be myWP:RFCBEFORE for the following proposal: we should change the language ofWP:ITNRDBLURB to explicitly state that the main factors to consider when blurbing recent deaths are the breadth, depth, and quality of coverage of that person's accomplishments, across the global reliable sources. Subjective assessments of whether a figure was transformative in their field should become explicitly invalid !vote rationales. I invite others to discuss.FlipandFlopped㋡02:01, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a strong proponent of "objective" analysis on blurbs, whether RD blurbs or "main" blurbs. But there has been opposition against this and ITN has not been changed. One of the problems is deciding which sources and "how many".Natg 19 (talk)02:37, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Basing RBBLURBs on any source counting is also a systematic bias that favors only well known Western celebrities, which is already a problem. We want to feature a broad area of people that have been major figures, and using sourcing counting is a problem. The Diane Keaton nomination embodies this, because of those trying to point out how many sources were out there making tributes about her death, but very few were making any assertions towards being considered a major figure. We have to be far more aware that in particular, Hollywood celebrities that are famous are going to get this rush of coverage, and that's what we have to fight against when they aren't justifying the person's impact or legacy. Even now, the section on Keaton's article on her acting style and legacy really still doesn't touch on the type of impact or legacy expected for a major figure that we've seen for other clear obvious blurb candidates, and without having any sourced information specifically to this concept in the article to judge further, its all just handwaving by editors trying to justify the blurb.
Is it a bias against females at this point? Well, we're just at the edge of people in their 70s-80s (eg born in the decade after WWII) and likely near to death, from an era that women were still struggling to be major figures in the world. So those that are dying are still remnants of said "old boys clubs" in various fields, and by that nature, we're likely going to see more men recognized as a great figure than women. We should try to make sure we're not overlooking clear obvious major female figures (eg Jane Goodall), but we're likely going to find more likely candidates for RDBLURBs from non-Western areas, which is why again, trying to judge importance by number and breadth of sources will overlook these people.Masem (t)03:01, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also, in terms of counting what has been posted, I would also question what the ratio of nominated RDBLURBS in terms of male to female was. My sense is that that the ratio of what we have posted matches the ratio of what has been nominated (posted or not). We're certainly not seeing equal representation of male to female in nominations, and I do know of at least one non-Western female that absolutely deserved a blurb that many argued, effectively, "don't recognize the name" that caused it failed to be posted.Masem (t)03:04, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
All fair points. I think the source counting problem you describe is sufficiently addressed by my proposal though, which emphasizes "depth, breadth, and quality" of the sources, not quantity. On those criteria, a person with two dozen fluffy obituaries will not merit a blurb, whereas three independently written, in-depth analyses of someone's career accomplishments from theNew York Times,El País, andSouth China Morning Post would clear the bar.
Adding a breadth requirement and actually enforcing it is very helpful in reducing regional bias. Within non-American publications, 'B tier' Hollywood actors of the world typically only get brief obituaries covering the cause of death and career highlights, as opposed to in-depth think pieces remarking on the significance of their accomplishments. Only theQueen Elizabeth,Meryl Streep,Whitney Houston type figures are going to get that magnitude of coverage in the European, Asian, Latin American, Australian reliable sources, and etc.
Of course, any selection model will still suffer from bias, because there is systemic bias even in which deaths the global RS choose to cover. But, at least that bias will be less abject on its face than our current system which ultimately boils down to "who Wikipedians are impressed by most".FlipandFlopped㋡03:21, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Breadth makes it far harder for major figures in non-Western areas to be recognized, as well as from areas which are typically not always in the news. Maybe works like the NYTimes and BBC pick something like this up but a lot of the time the coverage is limited to regional coverage; in contrast, popular Western figures will nearly always have broad coverage simply because of the weight of Western entertainment on the rest of the world.
Mind you, when a lot of sources are covering a person's death, our goal should be to try to figure out what elements of those obits can be used to support why they are a major figure, and the more and varied the sources, the more likely that can be done due to the number of different perspectives that are put into them. That's not always going to happen: eg judging from the Keaton articles I saw, they all fawned over how well she was as an actress, but did little to establish her legacy beyond her film career, whereas compared to the Goodall coverage, they all focused on what achievements and impact she had on the world.Masem (t)04:03, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Analysing the sources is easier said than done. In the case of Diane Keaton, I waited a while before posting in order to gather evidence. The editors who rushed to judgement then got to start the bandwagon rolling their way andgroupthink then takes over.
One editor claimed that Keaton was "Not front page on any major news site." This seemed quite inaccurate but there are effects likefilter bubble andconfirmation bias to consider. And the window for such status may vary. For example, Keaton died on Oct 11 but I noticed her appearing on the front pages of physical UK newspapers on Oct 13. And the coverage might last for days – I listed three days worth of articles from the NYT.
Major newspapers used to prepare obituaries for major figures in advance so that they had them ready but my impression is that they have been making economies as their revenue declines. But the principle is sensible because it takes time to work up a good obituary. Wikipedia has a pre-prepared system of identifying major figures atWP:VITAL and this seems to work quite well. For example, when checking thetop read article recently, I noticed thatD'Angelo had taken over from Keaton. I'd not heard of him but checked and found that he was graded aslevel-5 vital. That rating was recorded in2018 and so was well-established. And the readership seems to agree – over a million of them so far.
But why isWP:VITAL not liked by ITN? This mainly seems to be the organisational dysfunction ofnot invented here. Tsk.
VITAL doesn't line up with any aspect of being a "major figure", it is more about how an article fits into the linking network among WP articles. If something is going to be linked to over a thousand times, then per VITAL that should be a good article. But for BLPs it doesn't necessarily equate to being a major figure.Masem (t)12:26, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Notability: Individuals within the People section represent the pinnacles of their field with a material impact on the course of humanity, such asAlbert Einstein3 in "Inventors and scientists",William Shakespeare3 in "Authors", andGenghis Khan3 on "Leaders".
This sort of notability seems to be exactly what most editors expect for ITN RD blurbs and they often use the word "notability" in their posts. So, that looks like perfect alignment with the general concept of a "major figure".Andrew🐉(talk)13:23, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It may be a similar concept but I don't take the VITAL criteria as wholly equivalent to "major figure", particularly as Vital is impacted by breadth of coverage and thus favors western people.Masem (t)13:47, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Note that Gloria Romero islevel 5 vital. That link is the list of all such level 5 entertainers in Asia and the vital project seems to do a reasonable job of providing balanced coverage like this.Andrew🐉(talk)14:48, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, these assessments/ratings were almost always done by one person and there's always never community consensus behind it. That's why I don't participate on these. I'd love to do edit wars on whether or notManny Pacquiao is a vital article in sports LOL.
When would we be featuring a non-Indian, non-Western woman actress as a death blurb. Probably never again? Maybe if one of those South Korean actresses die suddenly, I suppose, but I'd imagine the trainwreck the discussion would be.Howard the Duck (talk)15:36, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Howard the Duck: The BRD era of vital articles ended several years ago. Currently, adding or removing any article from the list requires a vote. Personally, I think Level 4 people are basically always blurbable, Level 5 people could go either way, and unlisted people are very rarely blurbable.QuicoleJR (talk)18:09, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That Romero case is why we need better advice that fame or lack of fame are not valid reasons to support or oppose a blurb. We are judging by being a major figure in their field, and while we don't want the field to be so finely dissected and be so narrow that any person could be called such, we should not be treating people known as major figures in their field at their national level as inappropriate for a blurb.Masem (t)17:03, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I know you are looking for "better" advice and length of discussion does not necessarily mean "better" advice, but that discussion is longer than most RD articles. How much advice do we need?
Again, how many non-Western, non-Indian, non-politician females would be posted as blurbs? Is there an Egyptian Carrie Fisher?Fram asked for vital level 5 names, and all were prima facie Caucasian LOL.Howard the Duck (talk)17:29, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I know, that's why I also included similar Caucasians in my "why X but not Y" statements. I only gave some random names from my sphere of knowledge, there are countless examples I wouldn't immediately think off but which are equally notable in their sphere. I couldn't tell you which Sumo wrestlers or Muay Thai players are top of their field, but considering the omissions in fields Ido know, I would't bet on VA having it right.Fram (talk)07:57, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Females"? "Caucasians"? Can we have a conversation in the current century, please. None of these people is from the Caucasus, andfemale is an adjective. There's a perfectly serviceable word 'woman'.GenevieveDEon (talk)08:12, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm all in favour of using modern language @GenevieveDEon- but the dictionary (OED) says that "female" is also a noun, with examples from 1350 through 2021 (a greater range than it's listing as an adjective). And Caucasian is listed as "a person with a light skin tone, of European descent; a white person". With no warnings on usage, other than it being chiefly North American. Perhaps you are not from that continent?Nfitz (talk)01:14, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:VITALCRITERIA specifically addresses this in its following criterion:
No (Western) bias: While the vitals list is for English Wikipedia, the focus is on the world. For example, the current consensus for Level 3 is to list two cities in China (Hong Kong,Beijing) and India (Delhi,Mumbai), butonly one in the United States.
As I commented earlier. Just posting stats of those that were blurbed doesn't show our bias. You would need to include the nominations that were suggested for urbs but that failed to be posted as a blurb as well. While there may have been an apparent bias against women from what was posted, I would intuitively feel that ratio reflects closely with the gender split fir nominations as blurbs. As ITN rarely misses minor figure nominations, the imbalance of blurb nominations is a sign of normal existing and systematic biases we can't readily overcome.Masem (t)16:25, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
ITN actually misses 90% of the minor figures.Deaths in 2025 records about 1,000 RDs per month but the average number that is nominated at ITN seems to be about 3 per day. So, that's only about 10% of the total and so the bias starts with this nomination deficit.Andrew🐉(talk)17:46, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
But if we are talking about deaths that might stand a chance for a blurb (death that have some decent coverage in multiple sources) those I am pretty sure we really haven't "missed" any. The bulk of the deaths on the yearly death page are cases were the death gets miniminal news coverage though the person at one point was notable.Masem (t)18:52, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That seems to be the inevitable consequence of making such choices and ITN's current choices don't seem any less arbitrary and subjective. That's why my preference is to treat all RDs alike rather than selecting some for special treatment.Andrew🐉(talk)14:57, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, you are just replacing one arbitrary system with another one, which may be outdated (I don't know when e.g. Lorde was added, I can't find her in the VA talk page archives[1], perhaps when she was most famous? It certainly gives no confidence that any consensus was reached. The above was for music, looking at sports I see the exact same issues. For crying out loud,Mikaela Shiffrin isn't a vital article. Leaving this in the hands of ITNC lets more people decide and gives the opportunity to avoid the many, many errors with the choices of VA.Marianne Vos?Max Verstappen?Stefan Everts?Nino Schurter?Lisa Carrington? The list of "vital" people missing from those lists is impressive.Fram (talk)15:21, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Fram here. Using the VA list sounds great in theory, but in practice you're putting yourself at the mercy of a poorly compiled, poorly curated list for something that has an impact on the main page. The ITN process might be messy, but it's better to assess significance than the single vote that bumped some of these people to Vital 5 status.Khuft (talk)19:27, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
At VA there tends to be reticence to adding recent figures like those. Which is fine for RD's purposes, since they don't tend to die at the same rate.J947 ‡edits20:32, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Stefan Everts isn't recent, and already nearly died (severe case of malaria, resulting in amputations and so on). And VA may tend to avoid the most recent people (though that's debatable), but also tends to have a lack of historical knowledge. For track cycling, we have three people, all British, all born between 1976 and 1992. Right... For equestrianism, we have two women (and 10 men), a UK and a US rider. We don't haveIsabell Werth orAnky van Grunsven though.Fram (talk)08:25, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see the purpose of VAat all, so I don't intend to waste more time on it than I already have. The continued resurrection of and support for the already strongly rejected idea of having some VA "icons" (similar to FA/GA ones) at the top of articles, as if readers should be informed that we consider "Earth" or "Mathematics" an important topic, is utterly weird and shows the disconnect between the VA regulars and the encyclopedia. I oppose the use of VA as some guide on ITN in principle, and even more so because it is so random and dubious.Fram (talk)11:16, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Guidelines are for reflecting consensus practice, not subverting it. The reason why blurbs are tricky is because editors have different ideas about who should be posted, and you can't just write a policy when no one's looking to ignore half the votes. I would admonish anyone trying to tackle a white whale likeWP:ITNRDBLURB to consider what they think everyone would agree to rather than what they personally want. Speaking for myself, I oppose every clause of the proposal as written. I think subjective judgement (based on the facts) is necessary, and the depth/breadth of coverage is a bad indicator of importance.GreatCaesarsGhost12:12, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What "consensus" exists in practice? It seems to me there is repetitive mass confusion and fighting with every ITNRDBLURB proposal, so I am proposing to come to a clarifying consensus. "Don't bother trying to form a consensus, because that might subvert existing practice" strikes me as an unusual rationale to oppose the existence of an RFC.FlipandFlopped㋡01:06, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Consensus in practice is that we decide what qualifies in the nom. I know this doesn't sit well with some people (myself included), so you look to create some objective standard. The problem is that has been tried many, many times without success because there is not agreement on what the standard should be. You can see this in the reaction to your specifics. It's not mass confusion; it's a difference of opinion. I'm not opposed to the notion of an RFC, I'm opposed to yet anotherWP:SNOWBALL RFC for RD blurbs. It's better to look for baby steps that can improve the process, such as Masem's "legacy section" crusade.GreatCaesarsGhost14:08, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not favorable to coverage-based CREEP like this. In the modern era, online publications can churn out hundreds of articles a day, meaning simply saying "x event is covered by a lot of sources" only means so much when this probably is something that dozens of events a day could qualify for.DarkSide830 (talk)14:41, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One thing this proposal as well as the idea of VITAL that Andrew brings up that is something that I would think really needs to be added is that any coverage that is related to how the person was a major figuremust be clearly documented in the article and in a manner that is clearly evident to a reader unfamiliar with the topic. Many blurbs are proposed where there is no such contentactually present in the article to justify the rationale for a blurb. You can point to all those sources, but without their presence in the article, you're not making it easy for readers to understand why the person was featured as a blurb. How its in the article, while I prefer to see it as a clearly-labeled section, there are other manners this can be done, like in the lede (though the lede should be a summary of the body so this is a bad location). It shouldn't be buried in the description of the person's career. And it shouldn't be something like "Look at all those awards they got, that makes them a major figure". We need sources to explain that because they got all those awards that RSes consider them a major figure, otherwise that's engaging in original research. Once we get past this sourcing barrier, that still will leave some subjectivity, but it would eliminate a lot of blurbs that would quick fail without that included.Masem (t)01:26, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This requirement seems quite unclear. Take cases likeAga Khan IV orJim Lovell, for example. These have sections listing honours and awards but otherwise there's not much beyond their status as religious royalty or an astronaut who did astronaut stuff. There doesn't seem to be a clear bright-line test for this as their impact and the way it is presented will tend to vary depending on their occupation and achievements.Andrew🐉(talk)07:18, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It does seem arbitrary at times when waving at awards and accomplishments is sufficient versus when extensive critical commentary clearly demonstrating their transformative status is required. —Bagumba (talk)09:03, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we need to make it a brighter line that requires more sourced discussion of why they are a major figure or transformative or impactful, such that if we took either of those articles (Khan or Lovell) and said that in their current state they fail this test, so be it. Starting with sourced discussion of being a major figure is a step towards objectivity, though still ends up with subjective reasoning if that sourced discussion is sufficient. Starting with anything less gives no objective starting point for discussions.Masem (t)12:30, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I support this idea, because the primary purpose of ITN is to promote quality improvements to the mainspace. If someone is truly impactful, we would expect an encyclopedia article to talk about that. It doesn't necessarily need to be "extensive critical commentary" but the article should absolutely reflect the kind of rationale that is being made in the nomination. If it doesn't, that article has quality issues.GreatCaesarsGhost14:33, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's a deeper issue with systemic bias. I wanted to nominate bestselling Korean author Baek Se-Hee (author ofI Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki) for RD this morning - her death is on the front page of the BBC. But she doesn't even have a separate article. We have a long, long way to go before we've got anything like balanced coverage. And yet we still have people trotting out arguments at ITN about 'this is English Wikipedia, and N is/is not big news in the English-speaking world...'.GenevieveDEon (talk)10:48, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Part of that is still the volunteer nature of WP, that we can't force editors to work on topic areas they have no interest in, and because the bulk of editors are from Western countries, we do lack coverage for many regions. For ITN, the best we can do is to make sure that we make sure that the Western-focus of WP's volunteerism does not overwhelm ITN, save for the automatic RD line stuff.
What's interesting in this case is that following the intra-language links from the book to the two other wikis that list it, neither have pages for the author either. It begs the question if she was notable under any GNG or SNG. When I look at theBBC obit, that's more about the book than her. Which to me, if the book is notable but the author is not, then you should include details about the author on the book's page, create the redirect, and then at least you can then nominate that as an RD, though it would not necessarily be a guarentee (I'd accept it but I can't assure the consensus would).Masem (t)12:24, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not only a case of lacking coverage of non-English subjects, but also a lack of coverage of popular literature.The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman appeared in 2022 and topped the UK bestseller lists, and by 2024 more than 1 million copies had been sold in the UK alone.[2] But the article on it was only created5 days ago. Until then it was a redirect to one single line inThe_Man_Who_Died_Twice_(novel)#Sequels, and even that redirect was created more than a year after the book was published. "Impossible Creatures was awarded the British Book Award Children's Fiction Book of the Year and best book in England" but is a redirect only. Our music coverage is much better than our literature coverage.Fram (talk)12:55, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The longer these subjects go on, the more I think we should pretty much purely base blurbs on the quality of the update the article has received. If we are able to write three paragraphs on someone's death, funeral, and retrospective legacy, then that's a great blurb for our project. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)12:47, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Y'know, sort of like it says atWikipedia:In the news#Criteria. Which doesn't even ask for three paragraphs, but "a five-sentence update (with at minimum three references, not counting duplicates)", not counting "updates that convey little or no relevant information beyond what is stated in the ITN blurb". Of the current nominees,Yang Chen-Ning is under a sentence;Tomiichi Murayama has three;Raila Odinga#Death and funeral iswell over the threshold; andDiane Keaton is about three and half sentences, plus another paragraph of celebrity reactions and hyperbole that conveys no information, ie fluffed details. That's better than what I expected: I haven't been watching the death blurbs that have been nominated, or even posted, recently - I've been unusually busy for half a year now - but my memory from before is that at least half didn't have even theone sentence of relevant non-redundant content thatWP:ITNUPDATE calls "highly questionable". —Cryptic22:06, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If someone who was clearly a major figure had an article that was fully developed, passed GA or FA recently, and spelled out why they were a major figure before they died, such that only a one sentence update indicating they died was all that was necessary to bring it up to date, that would be fine. Though in such as case, I would expect we can draw in more details from obits and tributes, as was the case for Jane Goodall. Just that most of the time, our BLPs generally all need work to improve them before posting.
We definitely need to watch for inclusion of "empty" reactions; statements from family, close co-workers, or national leaders make sense, but including, like in the case of Keaton, all those reactions is fluff, instead one can list out the other actors and related that commented on her career upon her death.Masem (t)22:46, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
LikeNatg 19 (I think), I support some sort of 'objective newsreportedness' criterion/criteria for blurbworthiness here. I'm pretty open to which way the detailedness reporting of obituaries and/or how "transformative" said deceased person had been, or to which media sources should act as canonic here, but I'm definitely for some sort ofoutside Wikipedia assessment (in other wordsWP:VITAL doesn't cut it for me either, but nor do "I don't see person X as transformative as person Y, just cuz I say so"-arguments). Let's try something based on what professionals outside Wikpedia say; the systemic bias will hardly be greater than ours. ---Sluzzelintalk17:29, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am going to save everyone a lot of trouble. Do Away With Death Blurbs (where death is not the story)! Systemic bias isn't combatted by tacking on criteria that would only favor status quo. A radical idea would be to do away with these blurbs and make RD a bit more stringent (so people aren't felt to have been sidelined) than anything goes, that should satisfy a whole lot of ITN reformists.Gotitbro (talk)07:37, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Would we still cover "death as the story", such as major assassination attempts? What we start getting into is a very fuzzy line where "death as the story" overlaps with "major figure" like in the case of Kobe Bryant in the helicopter crash.
A good long term goal is something that Andrew Davidson has proposed being like fr.wiki where we have a simple dedicated line for each RD (name, age, nationality, occupation), but that requires also getting space to be able to do that on the main page. But that still leaves the question if "death as the story" would still be blurbed.Masem (t)16:15, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The French language wikipedia doesn't have one line per RD -- it has a big sea of blue which I would not recommend. The German and Spanish language Wikipedias are better models with one line per RD and some additional detail. Here's their current format:
frwiki is essentially the same as us, except they list many more rd's than we do and they show the dates. We'd look the same if we averaged around two dozen rd's instead of around six.Main page balance seems less and less relevant to me, what with so many views coming through mobile and thus being single-column, but it still counts forsomething. I doubt an extra six lines, even in small text, would pass muster. Perhaps something like: Recent deaths:
would be a small enough difference that we could continue to manage balance as we have before. Or maybe DYK would be happy to have some extra space. —Cryptic21:36, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
6 ppl in that format would easily push the RD to 3 lines if not 4, and that's going to throw a lot of balance off. *if* we had a better way to do RD queues in the same way DYK did, so that we would post not more than 4 RDs a day (queuing up the 5th and beyond for the next day), we might be able to pull that off. I would also suggest do not need the age on those blurbs; the first sentence on nearly every bio will have that. The problem with us having extra space is that we're trying to balance TFA against ITN, otherwise we'd have lining imbalance that I don't think those maintaining the main page overall like to see.
Have we asked DYK if they would use any extra space? Also, do we have any mockups of the main page with the DE-Wiki style occupation RDs?Omnifalcon (talk)14:57, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is honestly a viable alternative to the inconsistent system we have now, if this is what the community prefers. I would support an RFC where this is one of the options.
I just question how we will handle blurbs likeQueen Elizabeth II orPope Francis where "the death is not the story" per se, but they are such an enormous figure that their death clearly merits a blurb. Maybe we preserve "death as the story" deaths, like assassination attempts, and then also natural deaths where there is some sort of succession process (like monarchies, religious figures, or political leaders who die in office)?FlipandFlopped㋡18:00, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Deaths of the holder of the office which administer the executive of their respective state/government are covered byWP:ITNR. Elizabeth and Francis would be posted as blurbs regardless of the RD/blurb debate.
Now for cases such as nonholder of the office which administer the executive of their respective state/government, that's where ITN/C creates its magic.Howard the Duck (talk)18:10, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Queen Elizabeth was head of state, not the executive head of government, which is the PM. Her death attracted lots of coverage and so was front page news all over. It also generated lots of specific articles on Wikipedia includingDeath and state funeral of Elizabeth II,Operation London Bridge,Reactions to the death of Elizabeth II,The Queue andmore. So, the size of such substantial updates might be used as a test. The death article for the Queen was created on the day she died. It was thennominated for deletion, of course, but then it was speedily kept on the day of her death (of course2). So, the existence of such an article might be used as a bright-line test for such exceptional and extraordinary cases.Andrew🐉(talk)07:30, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The reason I say "just kill of death blurbs" is it SHOULDN'T do away with things like that. Death of incumbent heads of state would obviously count because that's ITN/R already as change in the officeholder. I think these should technically fall under "death is the main story" anyway if not just for this reason.DarkSide830 (talk)22:52, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In terms of RFC voting options, I am thinking something along the lines of the following:
1. The currentWP:ITNRDBLURB language is sufficient. There should be no changes made to the existing guidelines and ITN practices.
2. Modify theWP:ITNRDBLURB criteria to an "objective newsworthiness" standard which assesses the significance of the person's life based on (a) the geographic breadth of coverage, (b) the depth of the obituaries and news pieces, and (c) any pre-death third party sources which characterize them as transformative within their field.
3. ModifyWP:ITNRDBLURB to do away with recent death blurbs altogether, except in cases where the manner of death itself is the story (e.g. assassinations, high-profile accidents, deaths of religious or political leaders while in office, or etc).FlipandFlopped㋡18:08, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd want to split up 2, since while I can get behind 2c, it's very hard to find objectivity in obituaries. Everyone's transformative and saintly immediately after they die; part of the popular media's purpose is to memorialize, a purpose wedo not share.
Following on fromMaplestrip's comment late in the discussion above, I'd like explicit clarification to whether death blurbs have to meet the requirements ofWP:ITNUPDATE like all other blurbs (with a mention added toWP:ITNRDBLURB), or whether they're exempt (with a mention added toWP:ITNUPDATE). Having people vote to blurb a recent death and getting full weight by the closing administrator, when the article update is entirely redundant to the blurb except for a single word geographically locating their death, isn't tenable. —Cryptic21:12, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm a bit bewildered at the concept of death blurbs beingexempt of ITNUPDATE, as I was arguing for the extreme opposite stance. It sadly does often feel like !voters are ignoring the content of the article, but that's the case for all blurbs, not just death blurbs. It makes no sense to me to codify that behavior. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)06:48, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We clearly have an issue that the current approach on ITNRDBLURB allows for a level of subjectivity for "major figure" that works against this being what should be "exceptional", and also works against people that are major figures outside of the Western pop culture. Guardrails on both sides have been proposed in the past but these have been rejected. I'd rather not see death blurbs for "major figures" eliminated (eg something in option 2), but we should only be doing this for cases where the article is at minimum already a GA, approved within the last 5 years, and where it is clear before considering sources post-death that the person was clearly a major figure through existing sourced content (this is something the GA/FA quality should guarantee due to comprehensiveness, and should avoid the post-death gushing and memorializing that sources frequently do). But at the same time, I fear that's still also going to give more bias towards Western figures due to WP's volunteerism approach.
If we can figure out how to do "Name (profession)" on the RD lines, and test run with no "major figures" blurbs for that, we can see what happens. I feel we'll still hit something where we get someone that is not a world leader that I think nearly all agree deserve a blurb (cases like Stephan Hawkin or Jane Goodall are good examples), then maybe we can IAR those, but we'd need to hit that metric first.Masem (t)00:19, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who initiated this idea, option 3. RD reforms will only follow once we do away with this entire concept in the first place and can be beaten out later. I doubt anyone (or ITN regulars at least) would be for option one. So let us go!Gotitbro (talk)14:59, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd propose an RFC to allow a three month test period of no death blurbs (except where the death is the story like sitting leaders or assassinations), and try the de.wiki approach to expand the RD line to be "Name (nationality profession)". I'd expect the only two issues with that would be main page formatting concerns (we can handle that) and potential that we may get a death of a person that no one would doubt should have gotten a blurb (eg someone at the level of Hawking or Goodall), in which case we might have to wing it.Masem (t)17:22, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To add, it might be better to do one thing at a time from an RFC perspective, that being a 3-month moratorium on any death blurbs (outside "death as the story" ones). The expanded RD approach would be something to chase later if this RD blurb moratorium is agreed on and is successful.Masem (t)23:04, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Expirence with RFCS is that the more you weigh them down, the more confused the results are. Asking one clear question on one facet is easy. We can mention that if we ultimately eliminate RD blurbs, the next goal is to replace the RD line with something more detailed like de.wiki's.Masem (t)00:14, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Let's go! I support initiating an RfC for the elimination of RD blurbs, don't see the point for a mere 3 months. But if the latter is what editors prefer, 6 months should be the beginning point.Gotitbro (talk)07:31, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As there seems to be some support for this, I would phrase the RFC question as "Should WP:ITN institute a six month trial period during which there would be a moratorium on blurbs related to recent deaths, outside of cases where "death is the story" (assassinations, death of a sitting world leader, etc.)", and then explain the reasonings and intent in the leadoff (assure that RD line is still the approach, etc.).Masem (t)12:32, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would prefer we strike the entirety of BLURBS including the "death as the story" business as well, as it is no longer contextually relevant with the "major figures" section removed. From a CREEP perspective, it is not necessary as A)WP:ITNELECTIONS already provides for blurbing the death of aprominent world leader in connection with change of office, and B) an assassination is clearly a news story, not an RD. In a world where Pele cannot be blurbed, I don't want to debate a minor head of state whose ordinary succession would not be blurbed.GreatCaesarsGhost12:56, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would anticipate that in a six month period we may encounter a case like a Pele or a Stephen Hawking, a non political leader whose impact on the world is pretty much obvious, and figure out what to do then with the moratorium in place. We have IAR for a reason but obviously it should only be applied to the most exceptional cases, and we can hopefully figure that out better during this testMasem (t)13:37, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Option 2 doesn't make a lot of sense and would practically exacerbate the systemic bias. There are many notable people from non-English-speaking countries whose obituaries in English-language reliable sources will probably have limited depth. Option 3 looks fine if properly implemented, but that's not going to happen. We'll likely end up arguing whether a stand-alone article documenting the death qualifies, which may not focus on the manner of death (seeDeath and state funeral of Elizabeth II as such example). Moreover, we'll have to re-introduce significance as a criterion for posting to RD and append basic information on the birth year, nationality and occupation (see theRD section on the German Wikipedia as an excellent example).--Kiril Simeonovski (talk)09:57, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we do the de.wiki approach, we would still 100% keep the current RD approach in that any person/living being that was considered notable should quality, to avoid the bickering. It would more become a management problem with admins posting the RDs, as I don't think we'd have room for 6 RD entries with additional details, so we'd need to be extra careful on timing issues with posting.Masem (t)12:40, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This. The current state of RD and RD blurbs further leaves no one satsfied, RD was supposed to fix the latter but look where we are. This minor reform can indeed stem those blurbs but for that you need to abolish blurbs in the first place. I agree with GreatCaesarsGhost, in so far as doing away death as a criteria, if we can cover that within extant ITN guidelines.Gotitbro (talk)13:31, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am all foroption 3 per my comments prior in this thread, and in prior discussions. To elaborate a tad - the most reasonable way to do a death blurb is by impact, ie change in officeholder or death as the main story. That is not to say that the death of a famous individual can't be impactful otherwise, but we should be focusing on what will happen BECAUSE of the death. Change in head of state or government would count, as would certain assassinations. I just think we're at a point now where we've kinda lost a handle on how or why we do most death blurbs, and it's just become a lifetime achievement award. This goes a lot for, for example, former heads of state that haven't been in office for a while, actors or musicians, etc. Just doing away with this whole setup entirely prevents entirely nonobjective arguments such as if Robert Redford or Diane Keaton are/were more impactful on Holywood, or if Raila Odinga or Tomiichi Murayama was more impactful in the political sphere.DarkSide830 (talk)23:03, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
PerWP:RFCBRIEF, good RfCs ask a single question. Multiple choice questions are explicitly bad and that's because they tend to generate confusion and a lack of clear consensus.
This RfC is aboutWP:ITNRDBLURB. This has quite a lot of text and three parts. But the only part that seems to be at issue is its third bullet,Major figures. This is what causes the trouble and the simple option is to remove it. So, the simple RfC question would then be:
Should the "Major figures" paragraph ofWP:ITNRDBLURB be removed?
Note that what would remain would then mainly be theDeath as main story paragraph. This reads in full:
Death as the main story: For deaths where the cause of death itself is a major story (such as the unexpected death of a prominent figure by homicide, suicide, or accident) or where the events surrounding the death merit additional explanation (such as ongoing investigations, major stories about memorial services or international reactions, etc.) a blurb may be merited to explain the death's relevance. In general, if a person's death is only notable for what they did while alive, it belongs as an RD link. If the person's death itself is newsworthy for either the manner of death or the newsworthy reaction to it, it may merit a blurb.
This still seems to allow for exceptional cases such as theDeath of Queen Elizabeth II because there was obviously a "newsworthy reaction" to that death and the "memorial services". And that's all we're wanting, right? Once we've eliminated "major figures" as blurbs, we can then move on to expanding the RD details, as discussed above.
A trial period of what? That seems to be putting the cart before the horse. We should have an RfC before making major changes unless there's already a clear consensus for something.Andrew🐉(talk)15:59, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
See above, a six month moratorium on death blurbs save where the manner of death is the story. As to make sure we aren't missing anything obvious in making this shift. The RFC would ask if we should try this out, with the expectation that it goes well, we eliminate death blurbs from the guidance.Masem (t)16:11, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, so the RfC question would be
* Should the "Major figures" paragraph ofWP:ITNRDBLURB be removed for a trial period of six months?
That works as a question but the process of reverting after six months might be messy. How would the trial be evaluated? We'd have to have another RfC to decide what to do then.
If we here (regulars) feel their were no serious issues with the test period, the final action could be a simple, well advertised, straw poll to permanently implement it. If there were some issues, an RFC may be better. Either way, we should be clear that we'll use the results of that period to decide the step forward to change the guidance.Masem (t)20:24, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So do I understand it correctly that we would not implement the German-style RDs for now? Only propose to stop "death blurbs"?Khuft (talk)20:50, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
German-style RDs is a separate issue. My main point in this section is that it's best to keep RfCs simple. The more that you bundle into then the more difficult it becomes to get a clear conclusion. So, German-style RDs should be a separate RfC. It might be run in parallel as the implementation seems a separate matter requiring some reformatting of ITN.Andrew🐉(talk)21:00, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I do think in the RFC intro mentioning we are looking to implement expanded RD like DE. Wiki as an alternative to blurbs is a future goal. But agree it's also a sepatable issue from a simple RFCMasem (t)21:11, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think we're much more likely to achieve something (anything!) if we reverse the order - dewikiish expanded rds first, then see if that's sufficient to obviate life-as-story blurbs. —Cryptic00:14, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't like the trial period idea. I can't help but imagine the editor who has worked hard to get Famous President to GA status and building it up for months, and then Famous President dies and they jump in and write extensive updates with all the new sources... and then when it gets nominated to be featured on the front page it just gets a categorical "no" because we're in a trial period. It's sad to me. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)09:46, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose – I've not seen any reason to stop developing blurbs for the recent deaths of significant figures. Moving the line further to Queen Elizabeth levels doesn't solve any problems, at best it makes the recurring discussion a little bit rarer. Recent deaths are an excellent opportunity to celebrate editors' work on articles of impactful people and I would not want to lose that. We're already often struggling with filling the ITN blurbs because of ever-increasing "significance" requirements.I would rather see the entire "Blurbs for recent deaths" section deleted than just the "Major figures" paragraph.~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)14:33, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be confusing this with the actual RfC. What we're supposed to be doing here is workshopping the RfC text. My point is that it's recommended to have a simple yes/no question. Anything more complex with an expandable list of options will tend to collapse into chaos.Andrew🐉(talk)15:57, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I interpreted this as the rephrasing/distillation of the RFC itself; the section didn't come across as asking for input on how to formulate the question, but rather as just presenting the question. Apologies for the confusion here. These RFCs indeed collapse into chaos... ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)09:40, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer just the simple question that Andrew used, instead of complicating things with a trial period. This should be a clear binary question of whether we want death blurbs or not. Also, not sure how we would assess whether the trial run was successful or not, would we go back to a 2nd RfC?Natg 19 (talk)23:08, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe the option is to present the removal as the question, and if there is a unclear consensus, pose the trial period option. As mentioned above, if the trial went great and no one clearly had issues with it, then we could proceed with a simple, well-advertised straw poll to eliminate death blurbs, or if there were concerns, a second RFC at that time.Masem (t)00:12, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're literally just suggesting we adopt Orbitalbuzzsaw's OLDMANDIES as policy, despite it being roundly rejected by the community at ITNC. We are left with posting Kobe Bryant and not posting Stephen Hawking. If we're not going to fix Major Figures, the RFC should be to remove WP:ITNRDBLURB altogether.GreatCaesarsGhost11:57, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would love to hand onto the RDBLURB policy, but over the last month its increasibly clear its not sustainable because too many !voters bring in fame/popularity, or the lack thereof, into the process. And I've suggested before to specifically add language to this effect but that's been rejected, in addition to likely editors continuing to !vote to ignore it. So at this point, it seems to reduce the chaotic nature of ITN to just eliminate it. I still feel we need the room for cases like Pele, Hawking, or Goodall, where the significance of the person's life and their impact is crystal clear, but that may be better served by IAR approachs than guidance.Masem (t)12:12, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can we all agree that a major goal of this discussion is to discourage CANVASS mobs? I think if we kill off RDBLURB, this will limit awareness of blurbs among casuals (we will still get blurbs for sitting heads of state perWP:ITNELECTIONS, and the occasional IAR nom from old heads). Keeping "death as the story" would sabotage this while adding very little benefit. If the death is a story, we can post through the normal process - no need for a separate policy.GreatCaesarsGhost12:41, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not an unreasonable concern, but I think let's see if this works first. If we can successfully kill deathblurbs this way, I don't see a need for further changes. If there's an issue afterwards we can put forth another RfC with the argument that the intent of the previous (now being proposed) RfC has been brokenThis post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)02:07, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I’m open to IAR for that in cases like Jane Goodall or Desmond Tutu because their deaths are truly “in the news” - that is, a major headline across many networks. But, at least for me, reducing the total number of deathblurbs and keeping the deaths of random American actors out of ITN is the main thing - that’s what the RD line is for. Moreover what’s wrong with OLDMANDIES?This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)01:07, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The root of the problem with RDBLURBS is that you (and many others) are not opposed to posting when an OLDMANDIES, you just object to who the community feels is worthy, and you can't find a way to overrule consensus. How do you plan to invoke IAR for the old men you want, while preventing others from using it for those you do not? If you want to ability to blurb Goodall, that gives the next guy the ability to blurb Hulk Hogan. Removing Major Figures doesn't change that. This is a problem that requires a scalpel, and you want to use a (ahem) buzzsaw. I would like to suggest that editors look at my proposal above ("Blurbs for recent deaths" guidance change) as a more subtle way to massage the narrative in the direction that you and Masem (and I) actually want.GreatCaesarsGhost 12:07, 24 October 2025 (UTC) ~rereading this post, and my tone is coming off rude and confrontational towards OBS. I meant to direct this argument to the larger community of users looking for a fix, not one editor.GreatCaesarsGhost13:31, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I would neverpropose to invoke IAR for an RDB, but moveover, we can argue that cases like Goodall and Tutu, despite being OLDMANDIES, can still be considered to meet "Death itself is the story" insofar as they are international front page newsThis post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)22:53, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, maybe, though both of them were former heads of government and so presumptively more important. The general point is that “impact in field” is not a valid cause for RDB - after all, the world’s most influentialMagic: the Gathering player dying would not be a major news story - instead, the criteria should be whether the story is in fact In the NewsThis post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)00:40, 25 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we are going to have an RFC on this, it needs to be a simple, binary question of whether we will keep or abolish death blurbs. Any refining of the criteria can be done in a follow-up RFC. I think the pro-abolishing side will quickly find that they are a small minority of active editors, but if you want an RFC, go for it.QuicoleJR (talk)18:27, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, the recentWP:POINTY attempt to RDBLURBPrunella Scales has pushed me off for going ahead with this. I will be starting an RfC shortly about removing RDBLURBS (beyond death as a story) and will be pinging all the participants here so far.Gotitbro (talk)13:27, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please see below, I don't think we've decided if the right question is to remove "major figures" or ITN Blurbs altogether. Don't let point-y actions rush into a bad RFC. We are getting close to one just not there yet. (but on the other hand, there is disruption that should be dealt with at the editor level.)Masem (t)13:34, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
From the discussion above, it looks like we have a couple of RfC questions lined up:
Should the "Major figures" paragraph ofWP:ITNRDBLURB be removed?
Should ITN/RD add more details such as nationality and occupation, like the German and Spanish Wikipedias?
I was musing about whether there might be a third question asked at the same time. This might overcomplicate the process but there is a question which I'd like to ask and which might help with implementation:
3.Should ITN cease to worry aboutmain page balance and, instead, take as much space as it needs for its postings?
I think it would be wrong to even ask that third question. Having said that, you all know where I stand on the main question, just ping me when the RfC happens 😅Kingsif (talk)12:50, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the suggestion but I'm not keen onToday's Article for Improvement myself and so wouldn't support direct linkage. What's seems needed is a forum for active management of the main page as a whole where all such proposals can be considered together.Andrew🐉(talk)10:32, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't need to posed as a question, per se, but I think it would be helpful to mention as a concern in in a background section, along with any counter arguments. RfCs often go nowhere because they're not upfront in the proposal, and participants end up rehashing or getting hung up on known issues that were not summarized, or simply left to a TLDR link. —Bagumba (talk)17:07, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would agree, both proposals go together - you reduce the amount of death blurbs, but compensate by making the RD section more detailed.Khuft (talk)10:05, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My read is that there is generally consensus for the question on striking major figures, and there is my counterargument that this would not effective and striking the entirety of RDBLURBS is better. There is also general consensus to pursue the German approach, but the plurality thinks this should not be included in the RfC for process reasons. I would propose that we table the German approach and all other discussions and hold a vote on whether the RFC should be for striking major figures vs. RDBLURBS entirely.GreatCaesarsGhost12:13, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I do agree that the consensus seems to be to hold off trying to muddy the waters on the de.wiki RD approach, but there's still a good question whether the RFC should be just eliminating RDBLURBS's major figures, or wholly eliminating RDBLURBS (allowing events that involve the death of a person be justified by the nature of the event like an assassination or death of sitting leader).Masem (t)12:44, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think we are good there. The RFC would be to simply remove part of the guideline, not add anything new. There would be no prohibition on blurbs, ITNELECTIONS covers successions, and long-standing practice is that we always mention if a succession is due to death.GreatCaesarsGhost14:03, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the update. Your original proposals have drifted but your suggestion that we consider an "objective newsworthiness" standard has merit because ITN is currently far too subjective and opionated. The difficulty is defining the standard in a simple way but perhaps you have some suggestions.Andrew🐉(talk)22:39, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Vote: Should the RFC be for removing "Major Figures" or "ITNRDBLURBS"
2 As removing major figures while retaining death as the main story will lead to endless wikilawyering and canvassing for edge cases. Removing the whole section will discourage casuals from even breaching the subject.GreatCaesarsGhost11:41, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
2 As long as we're clear that deaths will still be covered if the death is what triggers an ITNR or where the event around the death is what's in the news and likely covered by its own article. Far simpler solution.Masem (t)12:40, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
2. It's time we rip the band-aid off. I think, simply put, we should judge deaths the way we judge any other blurb candidate. No need for loopholes and workarounds, and no need for debating how notable the recently-deceased were or are.DarkSide830 (talk)16:47, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't matter. Enough people are going to want to keep the "I've actually heard ofthis person before" criterion for blurbing a recent death that neither option stands a chance. Expand rds first and run with it for a while, and maybe -maybe - it'll make sense to ask this. —Cryptic15:36, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Lets assume the RFC supports removal of ITNBLURB completely. Then if someone nominates a RD blurb that is not associated with a major event, then that can be quickly snow closed.Masem (t)16:02, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's not a realistic, or even plausible, assumption. I mean, just look at the !vote above my comment - people are answering #2 here so that there's evenless chance of the halfway measure of #1 passing. —Cryptic16:22, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Merely removing it without explicitly saying it's not allowed doesn't preclude similar blurbs from being nominated, esp. cases like the current wording re:the events surrounding the death merit additional explanation (such as ongoing investigations, major stories about memorial services or international reactions. e.g.Kobe Bryant,Prince Philip.—Bagumba (talk)20:29, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Reasonable concern, though the fact of an approved RfC ought to dissuade at least the informed contributors. The deWiki proposal would also help with this, insofar as if called for we could do something like we do for wars - that is, something like "John PrimeMinister (politician - state funeral)" to link to a notable memorial service, reaction, etcThis post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)23:17, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
One challenge we've had in reforming RDBLURBS is designing a proposal that is both effective AND can gain approval. The strategy I'm going for here is to discourage awareness of the blurb option among casuals who do not take the project seriously. Mentioning blurbs in the policy we point to in every RD header increases awareness. Separately, We seem to have consensus that "I want to be able to blurb guys, but I don't want other people to blurb guys." The RFC itself may be hampered if editors see it as restricting THEIR ability to nom a blurb.GreatCaesarsGhost13:09, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
1 I'm not convinced that removing the blurb section entirely will clear up any confusion or discussions about possible blurbs. The root of the problem is the "major figures" question, IMO, leading to the hashing out of a person's life and legacy. Removing the entire section seems like overkill. The first two bullet points would function much better on their own, I think, because then it can be clearer when a death is exceptional as Bagumba notes above. There should be at least some sort of guidance for how to handle possible death-related blurbs if we're going to have a separate RD section. -Presidentmantalk ·contribs (Talkback)22:02, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
2 This is not what I originally proposed, but if there is enough support for it to obtain a community consensus, then I prefer it to our messy status quo. My main concern was that we were inconsistently RDBLURBing some major figures and not others in a rather arbitrary, popularity contest-esque sort of way. Removing RDBlurbs altogether is an alternative path to fixing the core problem. I do think we will still need to put some thought into the problem described by Bagumba above though.FlipandFlopped㋡22:05, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The change in the RD format I think is something we don't need to seek a wider RFC for, compared with blurb elimination. so it does make sense we handle that separately.Masem (t)13:20, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment blurbing deaths of major figures allows visitors to Wikipedia to quickly navigate to the page that they were looking for. Therefore, I prefer the status quo. Furthermore: the democratic process of an election campaign, a debate, and a vote, might be the most expensive and time-consuming manner of choosing a country's leader; but that's not a reason to dump democracy and switch to a dictatorship. Wikipedia is intended to be run democratically, the democratic process being difficult is not a reason to dump it.NorthernFalcon (talk)16:46, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is not the debate on whether to remove it, but keep in mind that ND the normal RD line still remains so as long as it's a quality article it will be listed and readers can follow from there.Masem (t)16:50, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The only problem, the only inconvenience for readers, with havingDick Cheney – or Kissinger, or Fujimori, or (heck even) Elizabeth II – on the RD line instead of a blurb is that the RD section rotates so very fast, with most entries getting a couple of days' exposure, if that. As I write, Cheney's only two deaths from getting pushed off. That's why I'm very much in two minds about the expanded RD entries being discussed below: it implies even less space, right?Moscow Mule (talk)20:40, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are no assurances that any itn blurb stays for a given length of time, plus we have the More Recent Death link right there for an expanded list. If ppl are coming to the ITN box to learn what's in the news, that is very much a misuse of that purpose.Masem (t)21:10, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Again, we are not killing off blurbs. We are just removing the Blurb section from the RD guidelines. No one involved in this discussion has expressed intent to prohibit blurbs.GreatCaesarsGhost21:10, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So, that's the problem with this option 2. By removing everything inWP:ITNRDBLURB then you have no criteria for this at all. The blurb decision then reverts to the general rule ofWP:ITNSIGNIF and that is literally, "highly subjective ... and ultimately each event should be discussed on its own merits". So, then there's no effective change. People can make exactly the same arguments for blurbing someone likeDick Cheney as they did just now. And they will because, why not?Andrew🐉(talk)21:37, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
With number 2, that means zero RD blurbs. If a key person does by a major event like an assassination of a political figure or the sudden death of a sitting leader, well post the event as the blurb but no focus on the person that died. But this would mean that probably like something like Kobe Bryant's death would not have been posted as blurb. But this is why we hold the RFC to see if this is what community accepts.Masem (t)21:51, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, it doesn't mean that because you will have removed all the relevant guidance such as "death is the story". People will just have to wing it and will tend to assume that we should continue as before, pointing to prior examples. In practise, when major figures such as Obama or Clint Eastwood die, you will still be brushed aside in the rush to blurb them.Andrew🐉(talk)23:11, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If RFC for #2 works, and after implementation, someone tries to start a RD blurb where death was not the story (eg the old person dies type) , that should be immediately be closed as not appropriate. Now, I agree that if we get someone like a Pele, Stephen Hawking or Jane Goodall, there's going to be a lot of push for a blurb, but we're going to need to stick to our approach of avoiding any death blurb that's not an event in of itself.Masem (t)23:24, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's going to get ugly. You'll have hardliners chanting OLDMANDIES and other editors pointing to existing practice and noting that OLDMANDIES is not a proper policy. And then you'll have arguments about the "death is the story" cases likeCarlos Manzo whose death was briefly blurbed yesterday. Saying that one has to stop but the other doesn't when nothing is written down is going to cause chaos.
We post "death as a story" blurbs constantly - 3 of 4 current blurbs are death blurbs. If the death truly is a story, you post it like any other story; we don't need a separate guideline for it. The problem with "death as a story" in the RDBLURBS guideline is it is only ever really used as a cudgel to elevate a "major but not quite major enough" figure like Kobe Bryant. The surprising death of a youngish person is often a big story, but we don't consider similar deaths from health reasons, and we certainly wouldn't have posted the crash if Kobe wasn't in it.GreatCaesarsGhost11:36, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't familiar with the case ofKobe Bryant and so looked it up:nomination,blurb posted. That seemed to be almost unanimous and there wasn't much Wikilawyering; mostly a general sense that this was big news. Masem said,"This is ITNC RD processing working as intended." So, that doesn't seem to have been a problem. You seem to be suggesting that this change should or might stop such postings but I can't see that happening.Andrew🐉(talk)15:13, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Assuming we do end up eliminating RDBLURBS completely, I still expect we will see people post blurbs of significant events that involve the death of highly notable figures that are beyond the scope of ITNR change of leadership, but depending on the event, that will still be up to some debate if that event was significant enough as a regular ITNC nomination, and that's one of those situations that it is impossible to judge which way we should go now until we're actually able to assess that. But any blurb trying to post a death where the event around the death is non-notable (eg from natural causes, etc.) should be immediately be shut down so that we don't have the disruptive debates around these which are currently too frequently happening. Yes, even in the case of someone like Jane Goodall, where there was no practical opposition it her blurb and clearly met the major figure aspect, we'd would have had to have that as an RD instead, because once you start even considering a hint of those, you create a slippery slope for less-significant major figures.
I realize this approach we are taking is aJudgement of Solomon-type decision, I'd personally love to keep RD blurbs, but its clear that there's a wide discrepancy of what the community expects to make them impractical to keep going. The steps we took before to introduce the RD line was dealign with the same problem, and now the next step, removing all blurbs that are not related to events, and then exploring the expanded RD lines for more details, seems like the right step.Masem (t)15:39, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For sure, and I'm glad to see that people are seeing sense here. My personal stance has always been OLDMANDIES but I can appreciate that there is nuance in both positions and that we can reach a consensus for preventing "1990s American Actor #47 Dies Aged 79" from getting blurbedThis post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)00:59, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm personally still opposed to the idea of fully abolishing death blurbs, and my preferred solution would be to instead make the criteria more strict if it is believed necessary, but I understand where you guys are coming from.QuicoleJR (talk)01:19, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
2 As much as I like blurbing "important" figures, removing death blurbs altogether (or at least I think that what option 2 implies) would clear up so much confusion and arguing on the ITN discussion page.However, if we are going to stop blurbing "significant figures" on ITN, the RD section should have higher standards. NorthernFalcon and Moscow Mule make a good argument about RD moving too fast, I do not think that every person who dies and also conveniently has a decent quality wikipedia article needs to be posted on RD. If we remove RD blurbs, we must compensate appropriately and I believe this is the best way to do it.hungry (talk)03:18, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
1/comment Death blurbs are still a necessary thing to have. Removing them entirely helps no one, and will just create situations, where notable deaths don't get posted, regardless of the notability. I do agree that generally actors and the like shouldn't be posted. But no death blurbs at all feels like a lazy pretty shitty "not our problem" solution. Personally I agree with the last two death blurbs. DNA discovery and VP who effectively created the war on terror and changed the make up of the world since are both notable enough things. Feel that removing those doesn't make the site better, and that's what any changes should be for. They should make the site better for readers, rather than trying to avoid discussions, because it's annoying for some editors.Basetornado (talk)03:34, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is not a proposal to remove death blurbs. It is a proposal to remove a block of text from a supplementary guideline that directs/polices what is appropriate for a death blurb. If this change is adopted, any future nomination for a death blurb would simply be subject to the standardWP:ITNCRIT.GreatCaesarsGhost13:51, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we go with the 2nd option for the RFC and the community agrees, all of ITNRDBLURBS will be removed. It doesn't mean their won't be blurbs related to death of an individual, but that that's where the event around the death is the driver for posting.Masem (t)14:51, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Editors should know that isn't actually the RfC for RD blurbs, it is a proposal how to frame one. The actual RfC would likely be one of these for a yes/no question?Gotitbro (talk)04:23, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping. Will be going through this discussion and the RfC below before making a comment. Though down with a cold right now.Gotitbro (talk)03:31, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The case ofJames Watson knocks a big hole in the proposition of abolishing RD blurbs. That's because it demonstrates that it is clearly our current practice to post such blurbs and most everyone seems fine with it in such cases. And perWP: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."
The OP's original proposition was to clarify the method for determining such major figures. There are still some sensible ideas for doing this – the OP wanted to base it on the level of external coverage. But these don't seemed to have gelled into clear criteria that we can write down yet. Watson won a Nobel prize and his achievement seemed easy to understand and accept but many other Nobel prizes are not so clear cut.
Simply eliminating the current rules text won't change this situation in my view as current practice will just continue by inertia and precedent. So, what to do?
While we ponder the options, I suggest that we prioritise the expansion of the RD section -- adding more details as discussed above. There doesn't seem to be much opposition to this idea and it seems clearly beneficial in providing a better display of the information about the RDs which form such a major part of ITN's daily activity.
Getting this implemented will no doubt require some tweaks to attend to teething trouble. And a period of operational running will help clarify how this works in practice and how well the community takes to it. Once people start seeing this on the main page, maybe it will spark further input and suggestions.
Having got the RD section settled, the issue of RD blurbs can then be revisited. Those who want to abolish them will have a stronger case because RD will already have been expanded to provide basic information for everyone.
And per WP:NOTLAW, 'the written rules themselves do not set accepted practice ...: Similarly, the policyWP:PROPOSAL reads:
Most commonly, new policies or guidelines document established practices, rather than proposing a change to what experienced editors already choose to do.
People should write more essays with the goal that its shortcut (e.g. WP:MYGREATIDEA) organically becomes so embraced that everyone just assumes it already was a guideline. Promoting it to one, at that point, becomes a mere formality. —Bagumba (talk)08:45, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is no "proposition of abolishing RD blurbs" on the table. There is a proposition to modify the text atWP:ITNRD. As the resulting text would reflect consensus practice at ITNC, it would not violateWP:BURO. Further, the discussion of expanding the RD section is already happening below ("de.wiki RD workshop"). We already have consensus to move forward with the RFC on removal of RDBLURBS. The expansion of RDs will not be contingent on it.GreatCaesarsGhost23:03, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth, my preference would be to present an "omnibus bill" - that is, combining the expanded RD lines and killing off deathblurbs, to show that we're not so much removing important deaths from the page as moving them to a more compact formatThis post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)19:05, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That is a workable solution to get editors onboard for the reform. I had my apprehensions for tacking too much on a single RfC but the RD reforms being overlooked in the preliminary votes above does raise the importance of tackling these in one go.Gotitbro (talk)05:46, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that one RD is indisputably blurb material under current guidelines is not proof that the larger framework of RD blurbs is dubious at best. Ignoring the irony of invoking NOTLAW (perhaps the most paradoxical guideline to ever exist), the sentiment many share here is we follow current RD blurbing rules BECAUSE they are the best concrete guideline for what should and shouldn't be posted to ITN. Some, in fact, have gone as far as to directly and intentionally oppose non death-as-the-main-story RD blurbs. What I don't get though is why you'd invoke NOTLAW in a discussion about removing a rule. If you believe the matter is up to the interpretation of editors, than why have the rule at all?DarkSide830 (talk)19:06, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's a notion that subnational elections do not rise to the levels of importance of ITN. Just like we post the Knicks winning the NBA Finals but not St. John's winning the Big East.
The fact that ITN thinks the yearly Superbowl result is globally important and elections like this aren't is so bizarre. And it's not just the Superbowl—look at the top blurb right now...Einsof (talk)03:34, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That said, there's a lot of eyes on this election and if he does win and reliable sources show that this is a much more important result beyond just the local race, thatmight be a reason to post, but its got to be a very very strong reason that extends just beyond the election. I know personally what's going on with it and how many have projected this as a key turning point among other current events, but I don't know how sources will actually write about it come election day.Masem (t)19:57, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We're talking about a mayoral election here, not even a gubernatorial one. Realistically: would we ever post the election of the mayors of London, Paris or Tokyo? Yes, there's a lot of buzz in the US about his likely election. In the rest of the world? It will be reported, and quickly shelved.Khuft (talk)20:19, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've argued before that maybe weshould post some of those. Being a national election is a sufficient, but not necessary, criterion for consideration. But what we definitely shouldn't do is nominate anyone or anything based only on projected results, before the election has even happened. And we certainly shouldn't be rushing to nominatethe election of a specific candidate before the voting has concluded.GenevieveDEon (talk)20:22, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A Western country elects a left-wing Muslim candidate of a city larger than New York City. That happened for London, but it was never nominated, and we moved on...Howard the Duck (talk)20:33, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sadiq Khan got 8 million views from 2015 to present. Mamdani got got11 million views in just 1 year.
Its all about interest of readers. NYC is more popular than London. Gets 65.2 million tourists in 2018, a higher figure than London's 30 million in the same period.Cinaroot (talk)20:58, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No one knew Mamdani before he became popular when running for mayor. Sadiq is 55 years old and has a big political background before running for mayor. Mamdani is only 34 years old.Cinaroot (talk)21:04, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also another reason why he is so popular is because he is critical of Israel, billionares etc... and able to run for mayor. when did that ever happen in US?Cinaroot (talk)21:09, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It was nominated. The discussion there was quite interesting, especially in consideration of this one. I do think Mamdani is something special, especially as it has come to represent an interesting proxy battle in the whole "Gaza/antisemitic/Islamophobic" kerfuffle the US has landed itself in.GreatCaesarsGhost11:57, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be willing to consider posting if several reliable sources make the argument that this might have a nationwide impact, but even then it'd have to be abig impact. I can't imagine it getting consensus unless something extreme happens.QuicoleJR (talk)20:30, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly, I should stress that this has to be shown as a massive shift at the national level. For example, completely hypothetical, but if the insurrection act was evoked to secure NYC if he won, that might be something for ITN. Language by certain parties has implied thismight happen but I believe its a very long chance.Masem (t)21:05, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Our editors have put a lot of work into2025 New York City mayoral election,Andrew Cuomo,Zohran Mamdani, andCurtis Sliwa. They look to be at an appropriate quality for featuring. I recommend nominating a blurb after the election results have been completely announced and confirmed, allowing our editors to update the articles appropriately. I don't understand the tendency to want to jump the gun on featuring articles; we're an encyclopedia, these articles aren't going anywhere. ITN updates at a snail's pace and that's fine. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)08:56, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think by nature of this being an obviously in-the-news subject, these articles would not meet the stability requirements of FA until after the election's conclusion. I think it would be an atypical nomination, at least. Honestly, I think it would be really ballsy. "Look at how confident we are!" ITN is our way of featuring articles that are expected to fluctuate, as is the nature of our project. I don't really understand the frequent "not here" arguments that usually suggest nominating articles for DYK; it's funny to see it be TFA this time. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)08:04, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
While featuring articles is one purpose of ITN that does not trump significance requirements. City/local council elections in no way, shape or form can do that.
The only reason example where I thought article quality aligned with significance (even if weakly for the latter) wasUnabomber but that wasn't ultimated posted either.Gotitbro (talk)23:03, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've argued before that maybe weshould post some of those. Being a national election is a sufficient, but not necessary, criterion for consideration. But what we definitely shouldn't do is nominate anyone or anything based only on projected results, before the election has even happened. And we certainly shouldn't be rushing to nominatethe election of a specific candidate before the voting has concluded.GenevieveDEon (talk)20:22, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We would definitely want to wait until the elections results are confirmed. I would support it being posted(especially considering some things we've posted recently, like the president of the mormon church), but I'm not sure how liekly we'd be able to get consensus to post it.–DMartin22:28, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How long does it take for discussion to close and make it to the ITN section? I really want the article to feature the very next day if it is voted in favor.Cinaroot (talk)00:33, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The maximum that a discussion can stay open is 7 days (before it rolls off the page and becomes "stale") but there is no minimum time.Natg 19 (talk)00:51, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We're an encyclopedia, not a news website. It will take a few days to get the updates on the article ready; I think it's good to come in with that assumption. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)08:06, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
NYC is obviously an important megacity with an economy bigger than most countries. This election seems more significant than the election of the President of North Cyprus which we are currently blurbing. So, when the result is clear, nominate it and I'm likely to support posting.Andrew🐉(talk)15:19, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'll openly admit I'm biased on this (I like Mamdani, even as someone who has never visited, much less lived in, New York City or even the state for that matter). But I think this is a good example of when something could be worthy of posting even if it's not ITN/R. ITN/R is a list of things which are always presumed notable, but not being ITN/R does not automatically make something ineligible for posting. We have an "ITN/Recurring," but we do not have an "ITN/Never." This election has undoubtedly attracted an unusual amount of attention and interest for a mayoral race, and it's very likely that the final results of the election will get more global news coverage than a lot of national elections this year, so I think there's a good argument that posting the results of this election would be in line withWP:ITNPURPOSE. It's not really about how NYC has such a large population (many cities around the world are much larger) or how NYC has such a large economy, as those would be arguments for the NYC election being inherently ITN-worthy, which it is not. The thing that makes this one in particular ITN-worthy is howin the news it is, how readers will likely be looking for the article, and how the article is worthy of showcasing. Vanilla Wizard💙19:25, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Would oppose any election at any local level in any country, regardless of whatever crystal projections analysts may have for any of them. If anything comes off from these (protests, national/federal conflict) the siginificance would hinge on that not the local election. Have opposed elections of states with limited recognition, sub-sub-national election are simply a no go.Gotitbro (talk)23:00, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No way. Thereal' impact of the office of mayor of New York is strictly local. Whether someone of Muslim or Catholic origin wins the election is trivial and irrelevant beyond the city itself. Let's not confuse interest and popularity with impact and notoriety, the latter being what matters for an encyclopaedia, which we sometimes think of as a news portal._-_Alsor (talk)22:57, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And what significance do elections at the local level hold for ITN? We already greenlight all sovereign elections, to further this bloat in favour of cities such as those in the US (third tier admin. div. in US) helps us in no way or form and would (as it would clearly appear to be the case) reinforce systemic enwiki bias for no one would even suggest a proposition for mayoral/local elections anywhere else.Gotitbro (talk)13:07, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How do you measure impact and notoriety? Trump got35 million views in last 1 year ( including when he won election) Mamadani got11 million views in last 1 year. He hasn't won election yet. Taylor swift -10 million views, Charlie Kirk43 million views,
How do u explain that?
Its all about popularity. If its interesting and popular - people read. if not - no one care's a damn. No matter how many days u put it as featured or ITNCinaroot (talk)00:07, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
REHow do you measure impact and notoriety? Trump got 35 million views in last 1 year andSiege of Tunis (Mercenary War) was featured yesterday. It got 166 views lol -
Today's Featured Article andIn The News serve different purposes and cannot really be compared. TFA showcasesthe highest-quality Wikipedia articles and does not factor in popularity when deciding what to showcase. But ITN has historically not really cared about page views, either. That's not to say there's no editors who mention page views in their arguments here, but the relevance of page views is contentious. Perour purpose, we want to showcase both articles that people are likely to want to read (i.e. popular pages or things that are very in the news) and articles about important events that readers might not have known about (i.e. less popular things or events that happened in countries that get less attention). And in general, notability on Wikipedia is determined by reliable sources, not page views. ITN editors also engage in more arbitrary discussions about significance. Some editors want to see some demonstration of "national-level significance" to this election, I can't speak for them and say I know what exactly they're wanting to see. It's certainly getting enough national (and international) press coverage.
I think there is a case for posting this particular mayoral election, given the heightened global coverage and historical uniqueness of a democratic socialist winning the mayorship of the west's largest metropolis. Subnational elections are not ITNR, but there is no formal rule against posting them if they are uniquely significant and garnering global coverage. However, the time to nominate that is if he wins, not any sooner.FlipandFlopped㋡22:10, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
and it's closed. Sure am glad I belong to a site, where the "In the News" section doesn't actually mean what's in the news. But what is acceptable to a small group of people who think policies and protocols are the be all. The closure of this is a genuine stain on wikipedia and the policies that have been put in place. I know that people will lazily cite protocols and the like, because they did already. Perhaps they should look outside instead and read what's actually in the news.Basetornado (talk)11:11, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What's ironic is that a blurb for another mayor has just been posted instead –Carlos Manzo. How's that playing with our readers? Let's see. Therecent readership for the two was:
Mamdani – 6,773,781 views
Manzo – 67,898 views
So, the ratio is a hundredfold – two orders of magnitude. That seems a good measure of how feeble ITN is at serving our readers with what they are looking for. The good news is that many readers find a way through regardless.
But Carlos Manzo didn't last long; he was only up for just less than five hours; blink and you missed it. It seems that the top news now is a fire in an old folks home. That happened in Bosnia, not America, you see and that's what makes it really important.Andrew🐉(talk)17:29, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I do think that Manzo was a special case. We tend to post assassinations, though Manzo was definitely a lower profile figure than Mamdani.Natg 19 (talk)17:36, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We do not use page views, at all, to determine what ITN posts. That feeds "popularity" and the systematic bias of topics from the US and UK.Masem (t)19:03, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think page views are a great metric either, and I would have agreed with you if you said this differently, butWe do not use page views,at all is untrue. This isn't written down anywhere and it's not something everyone agrees on. As long as it's not listed atWP:ITNCDONT orWP:ITNATA, it's fair game (and even if it is listed atWP:ITNATA, it's probably still fair game, because ITNATA incorrectly suggests, for example, that precedent is an invalid rationale, when in practice it is a very commonly accepted one). Editors can and do !vote more or less however they want to. You or I might not like page views as a metric, but they're as permissible of a reason as any other, and Andrew isn't doing anything wrong when he votes based on views. After all, one of our purposes is explicitly to feature "content [our readers] are likely to be searching for because an item is in the news", and page views are probably the most straightforward metric you could ask for to judge that. You can say why you think page views are a bad metric that should be avoided, but please do not say "we don't do x at all at ITN" when what you're really saying is you don't do x, you do this a lot (in almost every comment, whether it's about page views or otherwise) and it's been bugging me lately. Editors voting differently from you for their own different sets of reasons aren't misunderstanding how ITN works when there's next to no guidelines here. I would argue this is all the more reason why we should try to work together to form a coherent set of guidelines, but I digress. Vanilla Wizard💙18:48, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I for one am glad to be part of this site, where anyone and everyone is free to contribute and improve the greatest well of knowledge in human history. The policies you casually malign were established through years of careful discussion and collaboration among thousands of editors from around the world. The "small group of people" who defend them do so even if they don't agree with them, because they respect the project and its cornerstone of consensus-building. If you object to any of our protocols, feel free to propose changes and gain consensus. The place to do so is this very page. But thinking that you should be able to blow all that up to get your own way and throwing a tantrum when it fails is the far more lazy path.GreatCaesarsGhost12:52, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can throw all the "careful discussion" you like. This was a clear mistake not to post. Guidelines are just that, guidelines. The most reported story in the world wasn't posted, because a small group of editors decided that guidelines were more important than reality. They had no actual reasons. Just guidelines and policies about how we don't post mayoral elections. If you want to defend that, great. If you don't agree with a guideline, and that guideline isn't going to harm anyone or cause any other legal issues etc. Then "that's how it is" is a lazy and shitty defence. Not posting it actively made wikipedia a worse place.Basetornado (talk)13:54, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"a small group of editors decided that guidelines were more important than reality. They had no actual reasons." a) it wasn't a small group, it was the majority. b) Not one oppose vote cited a guideline. Of the 44 oppose votes, just 2 alluded to policy, but only as part of a larger argument containing their "actual reasons" c) If you reject our "careful discussion" and you reject letting the majority rule, how would you have us to decide what "reality" is?GreatCaesarsGhost15:49, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The reality is that this was the biggest story in the world.
The opposes were basically "it's just a mayor", while ignoring every single bit of context about it.
Personally I don't feel that opposes that boil down to "we don't put mayors up" should be taken with the same weight, when they're also ignoring the notability of the story in question.Basetornado (talk)23:53, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well said. Some editors posted reasonable arguments supporting their pro-posting position, but given the tone and tactics, it's hard to believe the tip of the spear is acting in good faith.Dr Fell (talk)19:49, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I arrive late here, and I have nothing against nor in favour or this Mamadani person, but nope... some national leaders do not pass a threshold, much less should a mayor... just a mayor. Cheers.CoryGlee20:27, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Moving this to a new section since the other one was getting a bit unwieldy and this is a semi-separate discussion.
Since it seems like we're starting to line up behind draft RfC 2, I think it's opportune to start discussing the structure of the proposed German-style RD system discussed above, which I am strongly supporting, and how we might bring that forward. I like the German system as is, but I think we could also add something similar to how we handle Ongoing, allowing for <name> (<occupation>) as the standard, but also <name> (<occupation> · <state funeral>) or <name> (<occupation> · <murder>) and the like.
Are there any other aspects that contributors would like to see in this proposal, and how might we formulate a more detailed proposal? Interested to hear your answers.
For reference, German Wikipedia has <name> (<age>), <occupation> († <death date>), which is a bit long and might not fit with our own RD practices (with them not necessarily being posted in exact chronological order). I do like <name> (<occupation>) as the standard, although I wouldn't be opposed to adding the age if there's a clean way to do it (a comma looks good, but would clash with the middle dot if there is an extra article about the death).ChaoticEnby (talk ·contribs)23:42, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Mockup. I included nationality, occupation, and age (as I suggested somewhere above), since that's typically all we post for full death blurbs. —Cryptic23:46, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would try to make these as short as "<name> (<nationality> <one-two word occupation>), age and death date are too much. In that fashion if we use bullets between names rather than separate lines, we should still be able to get 4-5, maybe 6 in 2-3 RD lines. eg likeJohn Smith (American athlete) · Tim Jones (German politician) · Jane Doe (English actress). No deviations should be made for this to avoid any of the RDBLURB problems we've been having.Masem (t)23:47, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's not in an already-reduced-size container, soMOS:SIZE says it's acceptable. I'd expect us to use css instead of literal<small>...</small> tags in a final version, and it's not in article text anyway. —Cryptic00:00, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We can create a simple template that does all the CSS wrapping once we have a format, as to make it simple for admins to post (eg I'd expect to be able to do something as simple as {{rdentry|name|description|age}} (if we included age, and using "description" to cover things like non-human organisms as commented below).Masem (t)00:08, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I like the simplicity of the proposal! One little wrinkle I'd add: sometimes, we have RDs for animals. In that case, I would avoid the <nationality> bit, a) because animals don't have a nationality, really, and b) because it might be confusing e.g. in the case of dogs.... think of abominations like "Snuffles (French French bulldog)" or "Wauwau (German dog)" - in this latter case, it's unclear whether it's a dog from Germany, or a dog of a German breed...Khuft (talk)00:01, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah.Rin Tin Tin (German shepherd) ·Bo-Peep (English shepherd). I'd expect the parenthetical part to be hashed out during the RD nom; also good for settling on American vs. Puerto-Rican, or Chinese vs. Hong-Kong, or which occupation was primary. —Cryptic00:08, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe <nationality> and <occupation> could be added to the RD template, so there's already a proposal on the table when the RD is nominated?Khuft (talk)00:13, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I like that, allows us to finagle it a bit if necessary. I'd like to have descriptor1, descriptor2, descriptor3, so that we can have something like <name> (<job> - <death> - <reaction to death>) if there's a notable memorial service or reaction (e.g. David Bowie)This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)00:23, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
for ppl known for multiple occupations we probably need to be selective to the one most recognized. Like for John Glenn, who was both an astronaut and politican, I'd consider him more an astronaut as his defining trait.Masem (t)00:16, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's going to be occasional wars over nationality, too. So yes, put it in the RD template and have people argue about it on ITNC beforehand like they do with alt blurbs, so the poor posting admin doesn't get the blame. —Cryptic00:22, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Length's a major, major consideration here - we're already going to have to sacrifice a blurband go down to 5 RD's most of the time to fit. While there are people equally notable in very different fields (Noam Chomsky is my go-to example), these should be very rare. Glenn was a groundbreaking astronaut, but not an especially historic senator; I'd have !voted for just "American astronaut" for his RD under this system, and not considered it even to be a close case. —Cryptic00:34, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough, though if we want to economize on space, why not get rid of age? The point of desc1,2,3 is that is allows us to have John Actorman (American actor - funeral) and the like, for when there's a separate article about the death that we might want to target analogously to war timelinesThis post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)04:14, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I just want to stress a goal here is that we should be trying to keep any extension of the ITN box to one, two lines at most. Placing all RDs on a single line separated by bullet points is going to help, but we also need to make sure any further description of the person should be concise and avoid extra words. IF we can generally be assured of six names with their descriptors will fit, then we shouldn't have to worry about other aspects of this RD approach. Otherwise, if we're limited ourselves to something like four names, we absolutely need to consdier an approach to batch up RD entries so that each RD has at least 24 hours at the ITN box.Masem (t)00:31, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we're using a template like your rdentry above, then {{rdentry|name|parentheticalpart|~~~~~}} is a very low-effort way to show posting time. If another's approved before it's time for the earliest to roll off, put the new one in html comments and re-timestamp it when it's made visible. —Cryptic00:47, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think if we use the second full line we can probably get enough RD items that a third one should be unnecessary. My preference is to have a maximum possible entry of name (descriptor | descriptor1 | descriptor2 | descriptor3), with the normal form being name (nationality | job | age) and politicians being name (highest held title with country name | age), so Maria Riva (American actress, 100) and Fatos Nano (Prime Minister of Albania, 73). That being said I'm open to removing age except where that's a notable feature (e.g. supercentenarians) - if we need to economize on space that seems the obvious place to do itThis post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)04:08, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My vote would be not to expand RD to include extra info, but to keep it largely the same. However, I would like to see us introduce "sticky" RDs which get listed at the front and stay in place for a fixed amount of time (maybe 3-4 days?), while others are rotated as usual. This would enable those figures for whom blurbs have been posted or considered in the past, such as Raila Odinga, Kirk Douglas, Robert Redford and others, to get a bit longer in ITN, without having the undue prominence that a blurb brings. I know there are some for whom this just introduces a new source of contention, but I think personally I would be far more relaxed about a simple yes-or-no decision to sticky an RD, as compared to the major decision of whether to blurb. Cheers — Amakuru (talk)13:50, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm partial, personally, to Masem's thoughts on the subject. Why I've personally bristled at this idea in the past is I worry about such a thing taking up too much space, but I like the idea of trying to keep it simple for now. Personally, I favor [Name] ([profession], [age]) over nationality because it avoids some of the debates that occur on bio pages regarding the nationality of certain figures, and I feel like factoring age when we're talking about a death makes some sense, but I can be swayed on that matter. I'm not crazy about including manner of death, because sometimes this is undetermined until an investigation takes place, and may be a tad morbid to list as a mere bullet point in a RD entry. I also like Amakuru's sticky RD idea - perhaps that would be a situation in which we could try and factor in an additional qualifier when need be, such as a link to a page on an assassination or state funeral.DarkSide830 (talk)09:34, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, something clunky about the age. I think it looks a tad better with the nationality, but I still worry about that being a contentious topic. Some good progress so far, but mostly I like that neither takes up too much space. I think we are close.DarkSide830 (talk)07:31, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wasn't pinged correctly (Orbitalbuzzsaw). The proposal looks solid nonetheless, personally prefer without the age to keep it concise and nationality and profession is pretty much basic context requirement which we seek to resolve and offload blurbs from.Gotitbro (talk)13:57, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Haven't given any of my thoughts on the discussion so far, but1) I like moving towards the de.wiki approach. I think nationality, occupation, and age works best. I prefer including age as it's one of the things most consistently reported amongst news sites when someone passes, and looking at Cryptic's mockup the inclusion doesn't seem to remove a whole lot of space. But if space conservation is a pressing issue, then I understand sentiments stating to remove it.2) I do oppose the sticky RD idea since we've already seen RDs get bogged down by blurb discussions, stickiness would be the same issue unless it was decided by some other neutral metric. ----TheRobot Parade15:36, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
May not be immediately obvious that the mockup version with full (nationality profession, age) only has five rds, so it fits into two lines. —Cryptic15:42, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That was not immediately obvious, woops! I do think after mulling it over that I'd be okay with that arrangement. It may mean some names are knocked off somewhat quickly, but that can be mitigated with proper adminship and care. ----TheRobot Parade20:41, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think nationality just reads poorly. Seeing them all lined up in a row, in a context where space is clearly at a super premium, it gives too much WEIGHT to a trivial factor.GreatCaesarsGhost12:37, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - the purpose of the sticky idea is simply that it's low touch. Ultimately it wouldn't matter that much whether a person was stickied, because they'd still just be another RD, only that their article would hang around longer at RD. This is very different from a blurb, which takes up a prominent place up top with a photo and is really a big deal. Whereas when we Don't blurb someone, people complain that it rolls off RD really quickly. Speaking personally, I'd pretty much vote to sticky any of the individuals who are usually proposed as blurbs, and I can't see it causing too much controversy either way. Cheers — Amakuru (talk)18:33, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The sticky idea seems too complex; making it a three tier system with more intricate RD scheduling. And having entries that persist for several days is contrary to the general philosophy of the main page which is to rotate entries on a daily schedule.
One potential problem of an enhanced RD section is that it might encourage more nominations. For example, we have 13 nominations for Nov 14. There's scope for even more asDeaths in 2025 indicates that there are 20+ every day. The scrolling system might break down at this rate and we might then need to consider daily batches with some selection or balance criteria to decide which get run – a system of sets like DYK has. DYK has regular capacity crises and usually runs 12 hour sets to cope.
The German Wikipedia doesn't seem to do pictures for its Obituary section but the FrenchNécrologie does include a picture -- currently they are showingDick Cheney. We ought have such pictures sometimes when there's a good free one. The picture might go in the bottom right of the ITN section, as a second picture below the blurb picture or it might compete with the blurbs if there's just one picture. Considerations would include the quality of the picture and the freshness of the news. This would be especially appropriate when a blurb picture would otherwise be run for more than one day. This helps avoid theWP:LUGO problem(pictured). Lugo happened in 2008 but note that his record was broken recently and so it's now theWP:URIBE problem.Andrew🐉(talk)20:25, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is no room for a picture, we're already trying to add extra linesand I can tell that itself will end with more "which RD should have an image" nonsenseMasem (t)20:38, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think the addition of a photo for RD when we're already considering minimizing the amount of information provided and space taken up in these RD reforms is ill-advised. I don'tdespise the idea, but this may only serve to complicate discussion even further. ----TheRobot Parade20:39, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I can't imagine doing a second picture either. Imight be able to be convinced to use one from the RDs instead if the main ITN picture has been static for a long time, and there isn't another among the blurbs we could switch to. —Cryptic01:04, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"General election" is ill-defined. The Argentine election was stalled because of this. Some editors had passionately argued "midterm elections are not ITNR". The current criteria, as written, works well for parliamentary systems, but not presidential ones. I've tried formulating something but is unsuccessful. Anyone has ideas?Howard the Duck (talk)15:33, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe something like: "Theresults of legislative elections as well as, in presidential systems, the election of the leader of the executive"? The bullet point a bit further down give more details on which legislature is meant in cases a country has bicameralism.Khuft (talk)15:43, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How about "The results of general elections, which includes legislative elections, as well as presidential elections, where the president is the holder of the office which administer the executive of their respective state/government, as listed atList of current heads of state and government, and excludingby-elections of specific seats in the legislature".
This should includestaggered elections such as the US Senate, as per "Where more than one body wields equivalent power, elections for both (or more) bodies will be considered relevant."
Changes in Heads of gov. are anyway ITNR, so that instance is already covered. And agree that other by-elections shouldn't be featured.Khuft (talk)16:57, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To me, any national-level election by the population for the nation's executive or legislative branch (at large scale, not individual run-offs) should be covered (eg in the US this is every 2 years). Elections made by a parlimentary system, where the elected legislation selects their prime minister or similar would fall under the ITNR "change of leadership", even if the incumbant remains in that position.
And while we're here, we should be blind to any accusations of "false elections" like those in Russia or China. As long as it is an election, no matter how rigged, we should neutrally cover its winner, letting the election article which has the necessary context, to explain why reliable sources consider it rigged or the like. ITN simply doesn't have the room for these types of asides in any blurb, much less for elections.Masem (t)15:44, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
ITN does not have the space to provide "commentary" on news items, even if it is something like calling out a rigged election. Just like calling out an election that results in a far-right party grabbing control or similar aspects like that. Yes, to not identify that at all if RSes talk about it in depth is a POV problem if that was absent on the article space, but in the limited space we have for a blurb, there's just simply no room to provide the necessary context for such commentary and thus should not be the place to try to push that.Masem (t)19:19, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Particularly if we are reporting the results based on the media's report as we usually do for US elections, then the language "declared the winner" is very safe, regardless of the validity of the election itself.Masem (t)01:08, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I prefer "is elected" for cases where there's no (credible, Mr. Trump) accusations of fraud and "is declared the winner" for elections of dubious administration, since it makes it clear that the actual result of the election is not known. Granted, by the time we have another US election, we may be using "declared the winner" in the latter sense anyway.This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)21:19, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Deprecate Reasons include:
The confusion about partial elections which generated this discussion
Elections by definition are political and adversarial and so tend to be controversial and contentious. We should therefore allow free discussion rather than forbidding it
Election are often corrupt and so their results are not reliable. Again this requires free discussion rather than repression.
Elections inmicrostates are absurdly insignificant while some other elections are more significant but suffer from unfair prejudice because they are not ITN/R, even if they are very much in the news, such as the election of the mayor of NYC.
Theresults of elections are neutral, its the impacts are not, so those two points are not actionable. And how is ITNR against policy? You can suggest that maybe consensus is no longer there for ITNR, but you have to get the consensus first to say CCC, no use it as a reason.Masem (t)20:59, 2 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's pretty good. I'd endorse a definition based on this approach. However, I'd suggest "...of the body, at regularly scheduled intervals or within a required maximum timeframe", in order to cover situations like the UK.GenevieveDEon (talk)12:58, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be fine with that, though I think the UK is covered by the first clause "It may involve all seats." I think there are two types of general elections: the full elections like UK that are subject to a maximum time frame but can be called early, and the staggered type that are set to exact intervals.GreatCaesarsGhost13:12, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Okay. I'd rather change the term "general election" to "legislative election" to be absolutely clear we are talking about legislatures/parliaments/congresses/national assemblies. Presidential elections can be dealt with #4.Howard the Duck (talk)00:26, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This appears to be an attempt to impose elections such as the Argentine one, which failed to find consensus, by the back door. Rather than enshrining elections that are of limited importance into ITN/R, we should be removing such things. The goal should be to only include elections which result in a change of national leadership, so the UK general election but not one in a presidential country. Of course, individual noms can still find consensus where appropriate, so perhaps US midterms would continue to be listed, but this should not be forced on us. — Amakuru (talk)13:35, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
PS - I see now that the Argentina election was posted. But the point still holds, we shouldn't be tying our hands behind our backs in this fashion. We should be explicit that only changes to the executive are ITN/R, with others discussed on their merits. — Amakuru (talk)13:42, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To this point, ITN Elections is very much like our RD approach, in that any national general election should qualify or otherwise we'd be arguing why the elections of a tiny nation matters compared to a g7 nation. We are still looking for quality but beyond that is just should be establishing the elections are for a mass of the legislative body and not one offs.Masem (t)17:06, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, I meant the RD line not RD blurbs. The RD line method eliminates any bias short of quality issues. Same should apply to elections.Masem (t)18:05, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So we would have posted nothing for Germany during Angela Merkel's long 16-year chancellorship? That sounds like a very ivory-tower-type approach... ITN is there to aid users in accessing articles they might be interested in - and I would wager they are interested in election results even when there is no change in leadership (and in parliamentary systems, that change in leadership might anyway take months to be effected - see Belgium).Khuft (talk)18:38, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
FWIW, this smells like a way to make sure absolutely none of the United Statesian elections are posted, plus presidential states Europeans do not really understand, to boot.Howard the Duck (talk)17:10, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The US midterms are unequivocally ITN/R now, so this comment makes very little sense. Also "We should be explicit that only changes to the executive are ITN/R" is a dramatic change to the status quo. The proposal here is to clean up the ambiguity about what we mean by the term "general election." We're not back-dooring anything.GreatCaesarsGhost21:25, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just feel that ITN/R should stay as it is, although happy to remove anything that isn't a national election with the potential to change leadership etc. So even if the same party wins, we still post the results. But allowing exceptions for other elections regardless of what they are on their own merit. Currently we have a pretty absurd example where the New York Mayoral election which is being reported extensively potentially may not be posted, solely because of the level it's at, rather than the actual coverage of it or the merit of the actual story. I understand that people like to go on precedents etc. But I feel that allowing things to be discussed on their merit is more important than sticking to strict protocols that ignore the reality of what is happening. Forgive me for going down the population route, but there is something wrong, when the Nauruan elections, which received almost no coverage in Australia, their biggest ally and partner is considered more important to post than a story that is front page around the world.Basetornado (talk)07:30, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We literally just had an election that is being heavily reported closed at ITN due it not being a national election. The notability of it didn't matter, just that it wasn't a national election.Basetornado (talk)12:05, 5 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What I just realised is that the US has anelection day every year on "the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November" and so we have2025 United States elections which details the various federal, state and local elections which happened on that day. So, the NYC Mayor election was just one of these. The cycles for the various levels seem quite complex and so a simple rule is not sensible.Andrew🐉(talk)11:01, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Elections on odd-numbered years like the one this week areoff-year elections. Regarding US elections,WP:ITNELECTIONS only cares about presidential and congressional general elections, and these are on even-numbered years. Off-year elections can be suggested to ITN/C as a regular item.Howard the Duck (talk)11:30, 6 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The 2025 elections were what I would call off/off year. And they were not national elections. The elections were for state and local offices and only a handful of those. -Ad Orientem (talk)02:40, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Placing a break here because we lost some steam there with a lot of tangents. I believe the issue we need to solve for is not addressed above: by "general election" we mean an election for many (often all) seats, but this term has a different meaning in some places. I don't think there is an easy substitution to drop in, so I'm going to offer the following draft as an option to rework the language:
Where a country has multiple legislative bodies, the elections to the body with superior power will be considered relevant for this paragraph. Where more than one body wields equivalent power, elections for both (or more) bodies will be considered relevant.
I do start to wonder if we should just change the ITN guidelines to match the predominant philosophy of the people in ITN/C. Clearly ITN isn't actually about featuring our articles on subjects that are broadly in the news. It's about building a canon of what types of news events are the most important. (To be clear, this is me being a bit irate and sarcastic) ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)11:25, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what either of you are referring to. The guideline doesn't say we feature "articles on subjects that are broadly in the news." It says they must be "appearing currently in news sources" at an absolute minimum, and we enforce that rule well.GreatCaesarsGhost17:05, 7 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It is true that we've never featured an article that isn't actively appearing in news sources. We do indeed enforce the minimum. However, the majority of commenters on ITN:C do not seem to care about the sources beyond that minimum. Nor does this majority seem to care about the quality of our article. This group of editors just share their own opinion on which subjects should be featured that is not based on reliable sources or our article's quality. The "Significance" section makes it very clear that, beyond the minimum, the depth and breadth of the reliable sources' coverage should be our Significance qualifier! ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)11:16, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree it's a problem that most of ITN/C is just editors sharing their opinion on which subjects happen to feel important to them, rather than !voting based on how well a nomination aligns withITN's purpose of featuring editors' work on Wikipedia articles about topics that are in the news, either ones readers are likely to be looking for or ones they might not have known about. A couple months ago I started floatingsome ideas for a possible alternative to the criteria since ITNSIGNIF is really just a blank slate that says "it's significant if we say it's significant" and nothing more, which I think is to blame for how we've strayed from the purpose.
You described the problem very well when you said what we're doing right now is basicallybuilding a canon of what types of news events are the most important. ITN/C is a place where we pretend to be news analysts and give our (often ill-informed) takes on what matters and what doesn't, citing rules that were never written anywhere and frequently declaring that ITN is/isn't "for" this or that, per precedents that often time never even existed. We should take this power to decide what's "significant" away from ourselves. Deciding what's important enough to write news articles about is the job of the news media, deciding which news stories are encyclopedic enough to write Wikipedia pages about is the job of those pages' authors, deciding which news Wikipedia articles do or don't belong on the website is the job of AfD, our job should just be to check boxes and confirm that the news story meets some bar for being sufficiently "in the news", is sufficiently high quality, and aligns with ITNPURPOSE.
As for listing ITNCRIT or ITNSIGNIF in the big yellow box at the top of ITN/C, I'd rather us put ITNPURPOSE up there, but I don't think that would actually change how anyone !votes without us also making meaningful changes to ITNCRIT and doing away with ITNSIGNIF.
A required process at ITN involves fighting the systematic bias of both mainstream media and the bulk of en.wiki editors that factor US and UK topics. For example, I am absolutely sure if we blinding just followed what had a large number of current news sources, and knowing how editors generally strive for quality on the related topics, we'd have several Trump related items in the box, which is nowhere close to being ideal. We also try to post the point in a news story that makes a significant impact, rather than nominal updates, which is far more common in the news. That's why we say "ITN is not a news ticker".Masem (t)22:14, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If the strongest argument for the status quo is that it's a shield against systemic bias, then that's all the more reason to explore alternatives, because we have never been that good at combating it. It probably doesn't help that systemic bias is never mentioned inWikipedia:In the news despite you stating it is a "required process at ITN."
In that past discussion I argued the case for why the suggested alternative criteria would help us cut through biases, especially biases against smaller countries, so there's no need for us two to re-litigate what we already said before. But I would like to add that a benefit of having an actual criteria is that we'd be able to craft those criteria specifically for the purpose of countering systemic biases. Part of assessing how "in the news" something is could be to expect to see coverage from multiple countries. We could even regard the US and UK as the same country for these purposes, or perhaps we could expect to see coverage from countries that don't speak the same language? Just throwing ideas around, not saying that's necessarily the best way to do it. But I certainly don't think the best approach for dealing with bias is to have no approach at all.
Outside of RD blurbs, we are pretty good in preventing systematic bias from influencing the selection of ITN blurbs.Masem (t)00:59, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agree to disagree. I'm not saying bias is at the very top of my list of complaints with our process (or lack thereof) for determining what should be posted, but we're hit or miss. Vanilla Wizard💙01:32, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, I disagree. Its not perfect by any means, but that's not the area on ITN where there is the most amount of discourse and disruption. Assuming we do eliminate RD Blurbs, then maybe we can see what issues there are on normal ITN blurbs and what could be done, but right now it makes little sense to try to tackle ITN blurbs outside RDs in general.Masem (t)02:09, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To minimize bias and ensure fairer selection, ITN criteria should be simplified and measurable rather than subjective. Possible measurable factors include:
Page activity: Number of active editors or edits in the past few days, showing community engagement and maintenance.
Readership metrics: Page views over a recent period (e.g., past 24 hours or 7 days) to indicate public interest.
Coverage level: Extent of national and international media coverage based on reliable sources, showing the story’s significance.
Update completeness: Whether the article is up to date with verifiable, cited information about the event.
Stability: Minimal ongoing edit wars or unresolved disputes, ensuring the content is stable enough for main-page visibility.
Contextual notability: Whether the event represents a major milestone, first occurrence, or significant development in an ongoing story.Cinaroot (talk)23:37, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Page activity, readership, and coverage are not factors because that affirms the systematic bias of Western topics.Masem (t)00:57, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that most of the things Cinnaroot mentioned there are not good factors (and, no disrespect to them, that list kind of sounds like something ChatGPT would produce), butcoverage does matter. If an encyclopedic topic with a high-quality article is also the top news story around the world, and not just in English-speaking countries, then it's probably important, no matter what the details of the story are. Vanilla Wizard💙01:25, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Being a top story does not necessarily mean the event is even encyclopedic, or merits significant coverage in WP. Day-to-day news is not equal to long-term encyclopedic topics. Its a leading indicator, for certain, but focusing too much on how broad there is coverage of a story still will weigh in favor of English-based sources, which implicitly means US/UK favorable coverage.Masem (t)01:30, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can we take a look at the POV of an encyclopedia on how should an ITN section for one look like? Back in the day, if the encyclopedia has an updated head of state/government (or even "form of government"), award recipients, even champions, that was a quality encyclopedia. That's also what we should be aiming for.Howard the Duck (talk)01:34, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What I was trying to say was that, given a topicis encyclopedic (and I've never seen an ITN nomination for an article that shouldn't exist on WP), and it is a quality page worth showcasing, and it is major news not just in the US or UK but also in non-English sources, then no matter what the story is, who are we to say it isn't sufficiently important? This goes both ways when it comes to how we approach systemic bias: if a good number of outlets cover a story in a smaller country that ITN would likely be more biased against, we should post it, and conversely if something in the US or UK dominates headlines from Germany to Singapore, we shouldn't try to overcorrect our biases by speaking for other countries and telling them they don't care about the story when they clearly do. Coverage and quality combined are a better indicator of blurb worthiness than our personal opinions. Vanilla Wizard💙02:11, 9 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I approve of combatting systemic bias on Wikipedia, and I too think the readership argument is terrible. If anything, I support featuring pages with low view-counts, as part of ITN's goals. I have two arguments against using editors' subjective takes on "significance" for ITN that are related to this. One is the spirit ofWP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS; it is not Wikipedia's job to decide that the reliable sources are wrong. I think we can cast a wider net to feature subjects that are not as-inthenews, or we can strive to include non-western sources in our analyses, but I don't think it's our place to exclude subjects because they fit a particular over-represented archetype. The second is that it stifles editing in a way. DYK is an extremely successful project, because everyone knows that anyone could bring nearly any article to DYK if they work for it. ITN currently servesno purpose for Wikipedia itself. It doesn't inspire anyone to put the work in, because the quality of the article is considered such a miniscule part of ITN criteria.
I have come to imagine my ideal ITN section very differently. I like to imagine someone's local town's church getting a makeover, an enthusiastic editor updating the article with all the new details, and that article getting featured as part of ITN. Only then would we truly be emphasizing Wikipedia as a dynamic resource and point readers to subjects they might not have been looking for but nonetheless may interest them. Big sweeping changes aside, I'm sure we could find a balance that aligns better to ITN's purpose. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)08:09, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
DYK doesn't have quite the same issues at ITN because it is a one-person review job, with the odd-ones out being caught before or after posting, and there is zero significance criteria (article age and/or update, and an interesting hook is all that is required). A major problem at ITN is with significance, which is the consensus problem, which frequently draws in "popularity vote"-type issues. I am absolutely not proposing this, but if there was a set of 12-20 editors that were the only ones to decide what went through ITN, it would be far less of a problem because these regulars know the ins and outs of what is appropriate.
ITN absolutely does work because it generally assures that articles about events that are significant are developed to a good-enough quality for posting to the main page.Masem (t)13:25, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
if there was a set of 12-20 editors that were the only ones to decide what went through ITN, it would be far less of a problem because these regulars know the ins and outs of what is appropriate.
I don't think this is true, I think it is already the case that the majority of blurbs are voted on by a set of 20ish mostly longtime regulars. It should be reiterated that one reason why ITN is mostly just the regulars is because our unreadable tome of unwritten rules causes newcomers to decide they don't want to come back here when they have to deal with the unpleasant experience of being rejected even when, at least from their perspective, they did everything right.
But we regulars don't know "the ins and outs of what is appropriate" either because our idea of what is and isn't appropriate is always changing and is never consistent. This idea that a select few really know how it works is illustrative of one of the worst aspects of ITN, which is the very bad tendency of some editors to confidently state their own personal subjective feelings about a particular blurb as being deeply rooted in "what ITN is for" (not "for" as in having anything to do withITN's purpose, but "what it's for" in a "we don't do this here" sense) or "how ITN works" even when it's entirely baseless, not something you can read anywhere, not even something that's an unwritten precedent here. Not to assume bad faith on anyone's part, but I kind of think some editors might on some level enjoy the current state of affairs where ITN's inner workings are confusing and unknowable for beginners, because it gives more established ITN editors the opportunity to be one of thewise elders who "gets it" when ordinary editors couldn't possibly. But it's us regulars that madeWP:URIBE happen, the dysfunction we complain about is on us.
Regulars know the history of discussions that have established consensus on some very nuanced subjects. That we don't want to spill gallons of ink in every !vote restating them does not mean we are acting as some sort of cabal of elders. If you have an objection with a regular editor's tone of over-confidence for facts not in evidence, feel free to call them out (I do it frequently with he-who-shall-not-be-named). But I disagree that anyone is regularly violating ITNPURPOSE, because ITNPURPOSE offers virtually no clarification on what we should and shouldn't post (we should post things people are looking for and also things they are not looking for?!) and can thus be made to support or oppose almost any nomination.GreatCaesarsGhost19:34, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My point is that the blurbs (RD ones withstanding) that generate the most potentially-disruptive discussions are those where we get a lot of non regular editors interested in one topic. Certainly on itncs with only the usual suspects commenting we still get into debates but rarely of the type that needs intervention. My ND you if we did have a specific selection committee I think would be more agreeable and less combative, but this also not a process that WP uses when consensus is the aim.Masem (t)19:45, 10 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm really torn here. Vanilla Wizard's comment above, dated 22:01, 8 November, does seem to sum up why we have an issue at ITN, but I do fear what would happen if we went the other way. To be honest I'm one of the "regulars" myself and I tend to form my opinions in the way described, meaning I'll vote to list a building collapse that kills 100 people in Africa, while opposing Trump's decision to start a lawsuit against the BBC or whatever, even though the latter is what generates the most headlines across the western world. The effect of this is that we have no objective criteria at all for how we pick stories, it's all down to editor votes in individual discussions and our own feelings about what's important. The first bullet point ofWP:ITNPURPOSE is ignored completely, because we certainly don't do anything to help readers find and quickly access content they're likely to be searching for – we actively reject most of the most sought-after stories in favour of our own things we deem encyclopedic. I don't know what the answer to all this is... scrappong ITN and just replacing it with a large search box would probably be my first choice. Or perhaps broadening it out to a much larger list of topics that are of current newsworthy interest, without the accompanying blurbs, but then that still needs curating so might run into the same perennial problems. — Amakuru (talk)11:35, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
All four bullets of ITNPURPOSE have the be weighed against each other and not picked for the situation. EG if we really wanted to adhere to the first point of helping readers find stories they are looking for without caring for the other three, we might as well just only post the top news stories and nothing else, since we know those are always being searched for by pageviews. When all the points are taken together it becomes clear that we're trying to serve as a combinations of multiple things which pull in different directions - we want to feature stories in the news, but serve as a type of discovery of articles across a wide range of topics, and yet demonstrate quality that can happen due to the wiki process. And with that, its very difficult to draw down more precise or objective significance requirements.Masem (t)13:03, 11 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The bullet points feel like they were built over time and never properly synthesized, leaving us with a word salad that doesn't really say anything. The third only makes sense as a response to the first, but you could just delete the first and say the same thing. We could synthesize the whole thing for clarity without losing anything by saying something like "To emphasize Wikipedia as a dynamic resource by pointing readers to quality content providing the context behind current events."GreatCaesarsGhost01:08, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
An effort to consider after we have the RFC on RD blurbs would be how to word the four criteria (if not combining and simplifying) to keep the intent of the four criteria but in a manner that they aren't fighting against each other as much.Masem (t)01:16, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's interesting to look back at theoriginal version to see what the intention was and whether there has been any creep:
TheIn the news section on theMain Page has several purposes, all of which (we hope) support the central purpose ofWikipedia--making a greatencyclopedia. The section mentions and links toentries of timely interest that are (and this is crucial) nonethelessencyclopedia articles that have beenupdated to reflect an important current event - notnews items.
Criteria for listing on the Main Page: # be listed on thecurrent events page # the current event needs to be important enough to warrant updating the corresponding article # the article must be updated to reflect the new information and a have a recent date linked (but remember:Wikipedia is not a news report so relatively small news items should not be put into articles; thus those type of news items should not be displayed on the Main Page) # a shortheadline should be written for the current event and the article that was updated based on the current event should bebolded. # one and only one image should be included onTemplate:ITN at any one time. It should be no more that 100 pixels wide, be right justified, and have alt text.
(A historical note: the section began with theSeptember 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack entries put up within minutes of the attacks. The entries led to a massive infusion of interest in the project.)
The "significance" guideline being "# the current event needs to be important enough to warrant updating the corresponding article" is really telling to me. It looks like a very different philosophy of what the section is for. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)17:45, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This parenthetical also relates to significance, but what constitutes "small news items" is not clearly defined:(but remember: Wikipedia is not a news report so relatively small news items should not be put into articles; thus those type of news items should not be displayed on the Main Page).Natg 19 (talk)19:26, 12 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To expand on my read of the original guidelines: it suggests that any news story that is big enough to warrant an update to the corresponding article can trigger an ITN feature. My guess is that "significance" was a common assumption about how ITNshould work that slowly creeped into the guidelines over time due to how editors naturally approached this section. It serves the purpose to limit how many ITN features we do, but I think it is arbitrary and does not help Wikipedia grow. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)10:50, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is also my concern with RDBLURBS: The attempt to document the consensus is just off enough that it starts to drive the consensus. Then people feel that and try to correct it, and we spend 1,000 hours trying to litigate something that took a few minutes to write. The entirety of ITNCRIT is a suggestion, filled with words like "typically" "often" and "historically". It reads like a policy, but it doesn't actually say much of anything. Maybe we downgrade the whole thing to an essay in the interest of WP:CREEP and return to something like that original version.GreatCaesarsGhost12:07, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For literature prizes, they are (mostly) just listed inITN/R without any link to a consensus to include them. The (Man)Booker Prize (English-language novels) was added in 2008 apparently unilaterally[4]. It is regularly posted to ITN including just yesterday. TheInternational Booker Prize (works translated into English) has been posted more often than not in the last decade. Then, theInternational Dublin Literary Award is also on the list but has only been posted once in the last ten years[5] .
There is an agreement cited for the Hugo Award (for best novel) though by my searching it seems to have only been posted in 2017 and 2018. The Nobel is always posted.
I am not aware of any other literature prizes of the stature that belongs on ITN/R but would be interested in discussing them.
My question:What literature prizes should be included in ITN/R?
Comment - While the Booker claims to be for all novels, it's obviously just for what is known as literary fiction. The Hugo is a good comparison; but the question then arises, if we have an award for each of those genres, should we have one for any other specific genre? The CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel, for example?GenevieveDEon (talk)22:47, 13 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Keep the Nobel and Booker, which get substantial media coverage every year and are routinely posted on ITN.Neutral on the International Booker, which is good for diversity but doesn't get as much attention.Remove Dublin and Hugo on the grounds that they never get posted. I'm not sufficiently familiar with other literary prizes that could be added, but a few general principles: this is the English Wikipedia so it makes sense to stick to English-language literary works; I don't think we should be venturing into single-genre awards (Hugo is problematic for that reason); and what matters more for ITN is the mainstream media coverage & Wikipedia article quality, rather than the prize fund per se.Modest Geniustalk20:17, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I know in the past few days we've had some division between too domestic and international, but I came to ask whether or not the possible release of the Epstein Files would be an acceptable nomination. Yes, this is still possibly not going to happen, and it seems like it may be aPage Six thing. Hope someone can answer.CREditzWiki (yap) | (things i apparently did)16:54, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It would not, because in the larger picture its a BLP mess (not saying any articles we have are a BLP problem, just that at this stage, we'd be careful about any BLP issues), and trying to cover the middle of a controversy or scandal is generally not a good use for ITN; we're looking for typically a point of no return, which would be in this case the arrest or indictment of a government official in a high position, or more likely if there's a trial and they are found guilty, or (extremely unlikely) Trump resigns over it.Masem (t)19:25, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Masem that an arrest, indictment, or trial of some sort would be the appropriate time to nominate, for the same reason. "Evidence of crimes released" is not an appropriate feature. Despite that, there's no such thing as an unacceptable nomination as long as an article is updated and the subject is in the news. I am 99% certain someone will nominate this too early, and that's alright. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)20:00, 14 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Prince Andrew's will be posted as someone who was removed from the line of succession of a like half a dozen countries. Trump and Clinton won't because Americans are sleazy.Howard the Duck (talk)00:41, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think it could be a fine nomination, because of the level of new information that would (likely) be available, the interest and wide coverage, and the ability of WP editors to contextualize the information in an appropriate way that may be better than any one secondary source (which is what ITN is best at). I do agree with Masem that it very likely will be a BLP mess that makes it unpostable from a quality perspective, but we should weigh the nomination on that basis and not reject out of hand for some fake "we don't post accusations" policy. The documents themselves, their concealment, and their release are big news.GreatCaesarsGhost13:52, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I see nothing wrong with the nomination per se. Though seems a bit pointless, with bits and pieces dribbling out for over a decade. I see nothing particularly new or notable in the most recent document dump. Nor do I see the relevance of his client list - he was an investor and financier - I'd expect his client list would be pretty mundane and irrelevant to his perversions. But that's all an argument for a speedy close.Nfitz (talk)22:24, 15 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
??? That doesn't even make sense, @QuicoleJR. Has anyone ever indicated that he was providing such services for money? How would they even be clients? What would you even write down in a list? Our own article says many times that no one thinks there's a list, other than a typical address book (rolodex/black book, etc.) that any business person would have kept back then. Anything more than that seems like some bizarre conspiracy theory. The article name seems very poor - which raises issues for an ITN nomination.Nfitz (talk)19:39, 17 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The wikibio onGisela Bock seems to have become ready for RD before the nom expired andgot archived ~12 minutes ago. However, the nom has so far zero support votes. Does anyone want to take a look and give it some support? Thanks. --PFHLai (talk)00:12, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for posting this. I nominated. Nothing happened. Then came an oppose, without a ping. I found it and improved. What do others think? We talk about a women's historian whose books were translated into several languages, and I am sorry that - because of five other biographies, three on the Main page as I write this - I didn't give her the attention she deserved. --Gerda Arendt (talk)08:37, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It does seem poor to archive it after only 3 days. This is part of the problem with the process, especially the posting on the event day, rather than the nomination day. I'm afraid I'm not even going to look that far down the ITN/C list if it was added that late - and I suspect I'm not the only one.Nfitz (talk)00:49, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Request for comment on removing the ""Blurbs for recent deaths" section from the "recent deaths" information page
This change will not prohibit nor otherwise actively discourage blurbing the death of select persons. Rather, it will leave the guidance for such nominations to the general criteria atWP:ITN. "In the news/Recent deaths" would only address the standard RD process.GreatCaesarsGhost16:12, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also, a note for editors who (reasonably) don't want to read the development discussion: We (the developing contributors on this RfC) are planning to bring forward a proposal to improve the RD line, likely by adding "nationality" and "occupation" fields displayed next to the name, so there will in fact be net more information about recent deaths displayed in the ITN sectionThis post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)22:40, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't like that idea @This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang. There's already a shortage of real estate in the ITN box with blurbs and RDs rolling off too fast. Such a change perhaps should be RFC'd here (unless I missed it earlier). Perhaps if the information appeared when the mouse rolled over the name, that wouldn't cause other problems. Though from looking at your moniker, perhaps real estate isn't a concern! :)Nfitz (talk)00:57, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Thecurrent text is a reasonably accurate description of current practice. The proposal would not replace the existing text with anything else and so just blanking it seems likely to cause confusion.Andrew🐉(talk)17:07, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how Dick Cheney being proposed for a blurb was unconstructive... the community decided that he should get a blurb, and so he did.1brianm7 (talk)02:59, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, here's links to Cheney'snomination discussion, themain page outcome and thepeak readership. Lots of editors and readers were interested in the topic but it didn't seem to be a problem. And it didn't seem to be "unconstructive" as the initial issue was a need for improvement of the article by cleanup and adding citations. My impression is that the ITN process helped in getting this done. For example,TDKR Chicago 101 repeatedly edited the article and posted in the discussion that "CN issues have been addressed".Andrew🐉(talk)09:44, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support it's clear that blurbs of recent deaths where the impact isn't the story cause far too much disruption to ITN. Editors rush to vote for fame and popularly despite this being a caution in guidelines, and eshew non Western figures for lack of awareness. Just far too much trouble at point to try to keep supporting. Instead moving to expand what's said on the RD about each individual seems to be a decent replacement.Masem (t)19:10, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support as a compromise measure. I actually think the underlying logic of the "major figures" bullet (part of ITNRDBLURB) is good and fair, and I agree with Andrew that it is "a reasonably accurate description of current practice." I don't have a problem with what we post today; I have a problem with the tone of discourse in these nominations. This section is intended to help guide discussion of blurb noms, but it is doing the exact opposite. People are voting based on vibes then cherry-picking clauses that fit their opinion and ignoring the rest. Then opposing voices counter with other clauses, and we get nowhere. I have no delusion this will end vibe-based voting, but I am hopeful it can incrementally improve the discourse. I also don't thing anything will be lost.GreatCaesarsGhost19:32, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment - I don't really understand the point of this RFC. I thought from the discussions that the idea was that we would abolish ITN blurbs, except for very rare cases where the death itself is a major news story, maybe Kobe Bryant or the queen, whatever. But this just proposal seems to be removing useful guidance while not replacing it with anything, leaving the matter even more up to the vagaries of fans turning up and voting than it already is. Can we please abort this and workshop a proper proposal before starting the RFC phase. CHeers — Amakuru (talk)19:48, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This comment is flabbergasting. We did workshop it, for about a month, in a very lengthy section up above. The discussion on the specifics of this RFC alone was open for over two weeks, with dozens of editors contributing. I don't really know what more we can do for you.GreatCaesarsGhost20:22, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there was a workshop, and it was making good progress, but it seemed like it was only half completed and not ready for RFC yet. The question on removing the current instructions was agreed upon, but nothing to replace it with was agreed. So what is the point in this proposal as you see it? What practical difference will it make? — Amakuru (talk)21:18, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Because the poll above was to outright remove blurbs to highlight deaths of persons not otherwise tied to a more significant event. There's nothing to replace that.Masem (t)21:21, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps that's how you see it, and that's certainly what I'd like to happen, but I think many are interpreting it quite differently, like it will be a free-for-all where we can blurb or not blurb depending on who shows up (which is kind of already the status quo in all honesty). Ultimately, I don't think not having an instruction will imply an ITN/R style veto on such hooks, it will simply mean there's no rule on it. Don't get me wrong GreatCaesarsGhost, I'm not trying to be deliberately difficult about this, and I'll respect the community decision whatever it is, I just think we need to be honest with ourselves and it's with some sadness because I thought there might be a genuine chance of ending the death-blurb misery once and for all. — Amakuru (talk)21:30, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I read the poll above combined with all previous discussion that we were not going to allow for any death blurbs, outside of ITNR cases or where it's something like assassination of a major political person that would be a normal ITNC nomination. Maaaaayne there IAR room for someone where is no question of a blurb like with the Queen but even in that case, we could argue the funeral and period of mourning was the news item and not the death.Masem (t)22:37, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Which poll are you referring to? The one I started was to remove the section from the information page, and that is what we are voting on now. I remain convinced that we cannot legally ban death blurbs per IAR.GreatCaesarsGhost12:34, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Much as I would like to ban deathblurbs, let's consider this a first step. I have hope that without a policy encouraging nominations for deathblurbs, we can tamp down frivolous blurb nominations (nearly all of them) by noting that the community has agreed to dispose of language approving of them - that is, the consensus is that we should not have them. If there remains a problem, we can come back with another RfC to make OLDMANDIES formal policyThis post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)22:49, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The workshop has seen no comments in over a week. As I interpret it, there is broad support to move forward with this change and the ".de" process, but also consensus that RFCs should be as simple as possible so people understand what they are voting on. Somehow this one is still confusing people who have been here for the whole conversation.GreatCaesarsGhost12:34, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Would like to see a summarized background of pros and cons and alternatives. Otherwise, these types of RfCs just turn into (uninformed) LIKE/DONTLIKE votes.—Bagumba (talk)21:24, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Loosely:
Pros: Reduces clutter by stopping undeserving death blurbs. Reduces unhelpful and distracting fights over death nominations. Pacifies a long-standing dispute among ITN contributors with a consensus position. When paired with the forthcoming deWiki-style RD system, actually increases the amount of information about people who have recently died on the main page.
Cons: May be less clear to editors not experienced with ITN practice.
This "summarized background" is heavily biased towards the "yes" (removal) position. The summary that Bagumba is asking for should be neutral to help clarify the proposal for uninvolved editors and let them make their own decision on the proposal.Natg 19 (talk)23:17, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It should be kept because it describes current practice and, per policyWP: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." Currently, ITN posts blurbs for major figures likeJames Watson and death-is-the-story cases likeCharlie Kirk and the proposal wouldn't change this.Andrew🐉(talk)11:34, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, we would not have posted Watson if this was in place. Kirk yes because it was the assassination that was focus.
This is a process page, not a content guideline page. The latter needs to be descriptive as you say, but for a process page, those should be written to make WP work as efficiently as possible. And RD blurbs are anything but efficient when it comes to ITN discussion.Masem (t)13:09, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Current guidance is doing more harm than good; in particular, the separate section on a separate page is implying to many people - including posting admins - that thenormal criteria don't apply. —Cryptic21:26, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: That page is essentially an essay, and I doubt it has community consensus as it is. I don't see the point in fine-tuning unhelpful advice when the blurb process needs to be completely redone and brought before the community.Thebiguglyalien (talk)🛸21:38, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Unconvinced this will change anything. If the majority of people on ITN Talk want to reduce the number of actors nominated and the flood of unconstructive votes, I don't know if this offers any route to do so. This change does not adjust the RD format to the de.wiki format either, which seems to have support for a pilot phase.Omnifalcon (talk)22:17, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly support as one of the contributors to the development of this proposal. My stance on this is well-known among ITN contributors. The current guidance has been very confusing and created many controversies (c.f. recent discussion on Dick Cheney), and also led to many undeserving death blurbs being posted (mostly random American actors) where the death is not a news story, merely that a person who used to be important has died. It will also not prevent the rare truly deserving deathblurb where a death truly is "in the news" (death of a head of state, or where there's absolute wall-to-wall coverage like Jane Goodall). I would also note for the opposition that we are currently developing a proposal to create a revised more detailed RD line, so if you're worried that your special little guy won't get front-page attention when he dies, we will soon have a proposal for that. I strongly support this proposal and urge all other editors to do soThis post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)22:37, 18 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support. To not go and revisit every comment I've made on this topic, I simply think this policy fails to provide any added value to ITN policy, and only serves to cause conflict and division. The particular issue this clause provides is it allows deaths of certain notable persons to bypass normal blurb criteria by being noteworthy enough, or the infamous "transformative". There are certainly persons who clearly pass these bars, but for many, the argument of an individual's notability comes down to a "x vs y" argument that we've been told (rightfully so) to avoid, or trying to find (generally dubious) methods to justifying someone as notable enough. Suffice to say, if someone's death is worthy of ITN inclusion, it should be pretty clear and obvious (as some tend to say, deaths of sitting office-holders, or perhaps some other situations where the death itself is major news), and it shouldn't have to be pushed along by a rule that, if it currently didn't exist and was proposed today, probably would be shot down forCREEP reasons.DarkSide830 (talk)01:10, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:ITNRD hasn't used the word "transformative" for about five years but, as you see, ITN regulars still use that language as if it still exists. It seems apparent that the "major figure" and "death is the story" concepts will still live on and be used in the same way, just as regulars still talk about an unwritten and ill-defined "Thatcher/Mandela" test. Removing the text will mainly be confusing to newcomers who won't know the history.Andrew🐉(talk)08:35, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's an argument in favor of the proposal. Transformative was removed explicitly for CREEP and clarity reasons.[6] "Thatcher/Mandela" (along with OLDMANDIES) has never been a standard, which makes it a weak and easily discarded argument. So too will it be with major figures: if there is no "policy" to cite saying we blurb major figures, it's easier to shut down the celebrity noms.GreatCaesarsGhost12:52, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There was only one reference toWP:ITNRDBLURB and that was in an inconclusive discussion of whether there was or wasn't a Thatcher/Mandela standard.
So, my point is, that the ITNRDBLURB text in question doesn't appear much in these discussions. Instead, veteran editors stick to their traditional principles whether or not these appear in that text.Andrew🐉(talk)20:23, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support I see this idea as a starting point because in my view ITNRDBLURB is unhelpful as it stands and actively makes things more confusing, given nobody can agree on how to interpret the balance between "life as the main story" and "major figures" consistently. However, I am not convinced it will fix the underlying problem. Things at ITN will remain generally the same after this change. More specifically, there will remain a total disconnect between ITN contributors about what the significance threshold should be for blurbs about the deaths of people. By way of example:
User #1 will strong oppose because "OLDMANDIES",
User #2 will be strong support because "This old person was transformative in their career", and then,
User #3 will support on the basis that neither manner of death nor transformativeness are really relevant, but there are a lot of page views, or news coverage, or editorials, or obituaries in global sources, etc, for this person which is the actual proper metric of significance for deaths, and so on.
When there are so many completely contradictory rationales hashing out the same fight on every nom, consensus decisions become very difficult and a re-litigation of the same disputes ("is old people dying of natural causes ever significant"; "do they need to be transformative"; "does it matter that this person was a household name"; "does breadth or depth of coverage matter"; etc). So, I am a little puzzled as to what this will solve, because I thought the entire point of the RFC was to provide further clarity about what the proper significance threshold is, and this to an extent does the opposite. But as I said, I am not a fan of the current wording and am open to the idea of experimenting with changes to see what works, so if this is what we want to get behind, sure, I'm on board.FlipandFlopped㋡04:16, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I should also caveat that I am not totally caught up on the workshop and for this I apologize. If I am somehow misunderstanding the scope of this proposal, please let me know - the !vote above is premised on the understanding that we are not simultaneously banning RD Blurbs altogether or have not otherwise reached some other enforceable consensus on when/if/what kind of RD blurbs can be posted.FlipandFlopped㋡04:24, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Seems to be a solution in search of a problem. That we have sometimes vigorous debates about "major figures" is not an issue in and of itself. Even if it were a, like Amakuru above, I don't see how removing the guidance would improve things.Jessintime (talk)04:35, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Because as soon as a famous western celebrity drops, editors rush to support that on the basis of fame and are not debating the blrub based on the major figure criteria, or for people that actually are major figures in non-Western areas, editors oppose posting because they haven't heard of the person. We've tried multiple times to get editors to stop doing this but its impossible to do so.Masem (t)05:09, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No offense, but if the larger community wants something, the larger community should get it. The self-appointed gate keepers of ITNC are not the ones making the call.Jessintime (talk)19:04, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This is removing guidance seemingly to not encourage people not familiar with ITN to submit recent deaths for blurb consideration. We are losing guidance on the theory that a problem with ITN is people not familiar with its practices nominating stuff. We would no longer be noting that an article being debated for RD/blurb can be posted to RD before consensus to blurb it develops, and that posting it to RD is not a qualifier for blurbing.1brianm7 (talk)05:03, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Per what's been discussed above, if we had to leave language behind it would be "there is no allowance for RD Blurbs, outside of deaths associated with ITNR entries or where the manner of death was the event (like an assassination)". We have the RD line as the catchall for all deaths otherwise reported in the news.Masem (t)05:06, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That is not how I understood this RFC. From my understanding, it was changing us from "The death of major figures may merit a blurb" to the criteria of "The event can be described as "current" [a recent death, for instance]. That is, appearing currently in news sources and/or within the time frame of ITN. There is consensus to post the event" and then us debating whether the coverage of their life after their deathwas significant enough.
Multiple votes above seem to be based on the idea that this will not prohibit major figure death blurbs, including the person who proposed this RFC.1brianm7 (talk)05:19, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thinking on it more, I am more favorable to this RFC than I initially thought, since the criteria inWP:ITN is much more detailed, but I still don't think removing the guidance entirely is the way to go. Editors who know that RD's can be blurbed will nominate them, editors who don't will see no guidance and assume they can't.1brianm7 (talk)05:19, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The point with removing RDBLURB is that no one ever should nominate an RD as a blurb (and to a point of shutting down such attempts to blurb) There are going to be cases from ITNR and other ITNCs where the event results in a death so that will be mentioned, but as to highlight the event, not the person at the center of it.Masem (t)13:04, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Major figure death blurbs have been repeatedly nominated and consensus has consistently developed to post them. If this RFC passes, they will still be nominated and consensus will still develop to post them.1brianm7 (talk)14:11, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Fatally flawed RfC. It will not be possible to assess consensus for this proposal as it stands. I'm grateful to those who workshopped the RfC question, but they do not appear to have reckoned with this major issue. We have people saying "Support" with the intention of stopping all RD blurbs. We also have people saying "Support" with the intention of judging RD blurb nominations based solely on the regular ITN criteria. We should not be in a position where people supporting one RfC option have practically opposite interpretations of it.Firefangledfeathers (talk /contribs)14:18, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To defend myself here, I completely reckoned with this: the question is as simple and straight-forward as possible to make it absolutely clear what was being proposed. Even still I preemptively added the first comment clarifying it was not for banning blurbs. And still you get this result. ~ Scroll through the archives of this page and you will every third section is someone musing on why we need to "fix" ITN and how easy it would be if everyone was as smart as them. I have to shake my head. Just try it. Try to write a suggestion that isn't immediately misinterpreted or spun off into a thousand parallel thoughts. If you want to ban blurbs, fine: propose that next. You want to blurb everybody but Americans? Fine, write it up and seek consensus. But for now,weigh in on this proposal. Assume for the moment that whatever vision you have for ITN will not gain consensus, and answer the question "is this proposal better than the status quo?"GreatCaesarsGhost18:02, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think you need to defend yourself, and you're among the people that I'm grateful to for workshopping. Right now, though, your preemptive first comment is not effective at ensuring participants are on the same page. I'm not weighing in, and I don't have a vision for ITN. My concern is only as a posting admin that will have no clue about how to interpret a result. If consensus develops to support this proposal, should I close down RD blurb nominations on sight? Should I leave them open and discount !votes that say "Oppose. No RD blurbs" because "one opposes all stories of that type" is an argument to avoid?Firefangledfeathers (talk /contribs)18:09, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As a posting admin, unless there is explicit guidance that there are to be no RD blurbs, I would not give an "Oppose" !vote any more weight than a "Support", all other things being equal. We would fall back on the open-endedWP:ITNSIGNIF:
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.
(edit conflict)Well, ok. When you post an RD (as an RD, not one proposed as a possible blurb), you do a sanity check on it first, right? You look at the first section ofWP:In the news/Recent deaths, and check that it's not nominated for deletion, that it has a RS for the death, and that it's high enough quality - the subjective part as determined by the ITNC discussion, and the objective part as linked to atWP:In the news#Article quality? I see admins decline to post RDs all the time, even when the discussion has been unanimously in favor, because it fails one of these, almost always the last bit. Similarly, for a non-death-related blurb, your quick sanity check is againstWP:In the news#Procedure for posting, as elaborated in the precedingWP:In the news#Criteria section.When you're looking to post a death-related blurb, what do you check against? WP:ITN/RD has aBlurbs for recent deaths section - the one this RFC is proposing to remove. Is that, plus the normal RD requirements, all you're using to assess consensus? Or are you also evaluating it in the context of WP:ITN#Criteria?The argument here is that the latter is correct, and that whatever benefit WP:ITNRDBLURB has in guiding discussion, it's outweighed by its preemption of WP:ITNCRIT. If the section didn't exist, you'd assess consensus for an RD blurb exactly the same way you would for a non-RD blurb. A blurb is a blurb is a blurb. We're not proposing to replace the text with "==Blurbs for recent deaths== A November 2025 RFC found consensus not to post these, do not pass Go, do not collect $200", however much some of the people commenting above (and I guess below now, too) would like us to be; and post-RFC, if it passes, you shouldn't treat it that way either. —Cryptic19:36, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think you're misrepresenting my point. The discussion earlier (as I recall it) was for an RfC to abolish RD Blurbs. My point below is that this current RfC will not achieve that intent.Khuft (talk)20:09, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's the one I've been asked to comment on based on earlier discussions. Not sure where your antagonism is coming from since we're basically on the same page on this RfC, even if our end goals might be opposite.Khuft (talk)20:22, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I'm in favour of abolishing Death blurbs (and introduce a de.wiki style upgrade for RD) but, as others noted, I don't think this proposal actually achieves it. If we want to abolish it, we need to replace the section "Blurbs for recent deaths" by something that says "Blurbs for recent deaths should not be nominated, except in these very select few cases... it's the Queen, etc. etc." (this is not meant as the actual wording, of course). Simply deleting the section will just create a limbo where there's no guidance at all, meaning we might even get more nominations for death blurbs.Khuft (talk)19:17, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This RfC is a simple question but comes with no indication of why this change is being proposed. I don't understand why anyone thinks we shouldn't have any guidelines on death blurbs. The text in that section seems pretty close to how ITN currently operates, and I see no reason to remove it. Death blurbs can produce contentious discussion on ITN/C; this section helps to set expectations and provide some kind of consistency. Deleting it would make the system less predictable and more dependent on the whims of who is commenting on each nomination. Personally, I think the threshold for a death blurb should be very high and have been applying the Thatcher/Mandela standard, in concordance with the third bullet point of the guidance. Perhaps the wording could be clarified, but removing it entirely would not improve ITN.Modest Geniustalk20:00, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with death blurbs (outside where the event of the death is the story) is that they cause far too much disruption and energy at ITNC. We'd love to have death blurbs, but as long as editors rush in to support famous people that don't meet the major figures aspect, or the editors dismiss major figures from other regions because they havent heard of them, we have wildly inconsistent rules for posting these. And attempts to refine what rules to use that still meet the goals of ITN but don't introduce systematic bias have all failed. Since we have the RD line that only looks to quality and news coverage of the death, and does not bring up any significance issues, then we have a place to put all deaths without the constant struggle over blurb concerns.Masem (t)20:11, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Banning all death blurbs would be a different proposal. This RfC asks whether to delete the guidance, not whether to replace it with e.g. 'blurbs are never posted for deaths'. FWIW, I would oppose that idea too, and I don't think that RD works well.Modest Geniustalk20:28, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The intent of the polls before this were how to eliminate posting death blurbs, not just eliminating the guidance and making it an even worse free for all in RD blurb nominations. This RFC want written well to reflect that but it should be taken as granted for itMasem (t)21:49, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No, GreatCaesarsGhost explained thatThe strategy I'm going for here is to discourage awareness of the blurb option among casuals who do not take the project seriously. Mentioning blurbs in the policy we point to in every RD header increases awareness. Separately, We seem to have consensus that "I want to be able to blurb guys, but I don't want other people to blurb guys." The RFC itself may be hampered if editors see it as restricting THEIR ability to nom a blurb. So, the idea was clearly to enable blurbs to continue but only for ITN's self-appointedowners.Andrew🐉(talk)22:18, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Gcg may be able to explain better but I take that comment there in context that a problem has s that we have some editors wanting to make sure what they feel is blurbed and deny that to others, which absolutely runs rampent now. Thus the need to eliminate all death blurbs and only bring up death of an individual ITF that story would otherwise fall in other ITNC allowances like an ITNR. Otherwise we no selectively assign all death to be in the RD lines assuming quality will s their. That eliminates the me-only-ism that have plague itnc discussions on death blurbs.Masem (t)22:40, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose At least, I think I'm opposing? I honestly don't understand what the result of this RFC, if it passes, would even be. Masem's comments above lead me to believe that this RFC is intended to forbid all death blurbs, and I would oppose that because I think it can be worth highlighting the deaths of very important and influential people and I see no reason to change the status quo. If that isn't what this RFC is about, then honestly the whole thing should be redone because it is incredibly unclear what this RFC will accomplish in practice.Mlb96 (talk)03:58, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The idea is yes, to eliminate death blurbs. While it would be great if we could all be polite and follow the consistent aspects of what a "major figure" is (which, as we've found through several tries, is pretty much a subjective measure), nearly every blurb ITNC in the last half year if not longer has descended into lots of popularism to favor some blurbs over others (our posting of Carrie Fisher or Betty White for example explefies how the ITNCs descend into a popularity vote over actual demonstration of being a major figure), and it is absolutely not healthy for this type of bickering to keep going on ITNC. The best solution is to acknowledge that all deaths, as long as the article is of quality, go into the RD line which does not try to judge anything about significance, save for WP:N-demonstration of notability, a far lower bar. Deaths that occur due to a ITNR (death of the sitting leader), or where the news story is the impact of the death, such as the recent Charlie Kirk shooting, those are fine, but as I've noted, we would not have posted like Jane Goodall or James Watson as a blurb if this was in place. That might suck, but its also a solution that alleviates a ton of headaches at ITNC.Masem (t)05:12, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am having a hard time understanding what Masem said that people find so perplexing. The point is the RD blurb clause more or less provides extra clearance for blurbs that might otherwise not pass notability by virtue of a "this person was very notable" argument which, quite frankly makes no sense and never has to me. Here's the issue - why is this clause needed at all? Removing it doesn't prohibit RB blurbs - instead, it takes away ones that are basically a lifetime achievement award and avoids clearly unobjective arguments about just how notable or impactful someone has to be to be considered a "major figure". If we were to, say, deign to post Dick Cheney's death to ITN, there wouldn't be any rule PROHIBITING it, merely not a rule propping up the nomination that is riddled with vague and unspecific criteria that fails to actually facilitate effective discussions at ITN.DarkSide830 (talk)18:29, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The trouble is that the default criteria areWP:ITNSIGNIF which are "highly subjective" and so open to any topic in the news. For example, Dick Cheney's death is back in the news in a big way as his funeral is getting lots of coverage -- seeBBC,CNN,USA Today &c. This satisfies the main default criterion,Generally, proof that an event is being covered, in an in-depth manner, by news sources is required.Andrew🐉(talk)19:27, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Lots of coverage @Andrew Davidson? An article in media of a country from which a politician comes from is hardly unusual. Yeah, there's a BBC link too, but even though I get their North American version, I've not seen that article anytime I've glanced at the site today (which I tend to do 3 or 4 times over the day), so it must have been buried pretty deep into the scores of stories that are on their "front page". There's not even a mention of it now - the only mention I've seen of it anywhere today is in the monologue of a USA comedian on TV, noting that Donald Trump was banned from the funeral, and that Cheney had supported the Democrats in the last election. This just isn't the kind of local (loco?) crap we need to be seeing ITN.Nfitz (talk)06:21, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The amount of coverage or the amount of readership cannot be used for ITN purposes because that feeds the systematic bias of Western media. We purposely avoid considering these, as well as popularity of a topic, so that we can provide readers with a reasonably good cross section of topics that are in the news from across the globe and in multiple fields.Masem (t)13:38, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Masem's position seems to be that we can't trust the media because it's biased. And we can't trust our millions of readers, for the same reason. And non-ITN editors are not acceptable either. And even ITN regulars like myself can't be relied on because they often don't agree. So, there's only one source ofThe Truth, right? We should let Masem decide everything!
Now it has actually crossed my mind that we might have a panel of ITN coordinators to act as an editorial board. That's the way thatTFA does things, I gather, as they haveFAC coordinators and the like. But that would require elections and that's another can of worms...
No, that's not what systematic bias means. If we went by what gets massively covered in sources, or by what readership shows, ITN would be only topics from Western countries (due to the heavy use of English-based sources), and moreso with a heavy emphasis on sporting and celebrity and popular culture news (due to the large readership proportion from the US and UK). And as ITN is meant to feature quality articles, we should not confirm to the coverage bias that is created by media sources or what readers look at.Masem (t)15:19, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:Systemic bias explains thatWikipedia aims for a neutral point of view, but it falls short due to systemic bias caused by the narrow demographics of its editing community. So, it's not the media that causes the primary bias; it's us – the ITN community. We should therefore cast our net wide, to counter the bias of our narrow demographic. Looking at the international media and the choices of our international readership are good ways to do this.Andrew🐉(talk)15:37, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly, buts that why putting any weight on amount of coverage or readership is a problem because it sustained that systematic bias problem. We have had noms for major figure RD blurbs from non-Western countries where there is clear establishment that the person was a major figure by sourced in their article, but not brought forward as blurbs because "never heard of them"-type calls, which is the other type of problem we have with RD blurbs currently.Masem (t)16:04, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we don't consider the coverage and the readership then all we have to go by is our article and the subjective opinions of the biased ITN demographic. But these are not reliable sources. To counter bias, you need more inputs, not fewer.Andrew🐉(talk)16:28, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The article should clearly explain with the use of reliable sources why the person was a great figure, as to avoid the subjective handwavingbtyat happens at most RD blurbs. I have been pushing that this is best done by a section like Legacy or Impact or equivalent term that, as a reader with no awareness of this person, I can immediately see this section and see well sourced documentation why they merited being a RD blurb. But that's not in the guidelines and though I've suggested that in the past it was not readily accepted. Also with also being far more clear that claims of greatness only based on popularity it fame were not suffucienyMasem (t)20:03, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And yet I never saw anything. Nor is there anything on the front of today's papers. Digging deeper - gosh, I can't find any mention - though there are articles about Trump's idiocy and capitulation to Putin. I'm surprised any non-USA media outlets were paying for a feed. I've seen more coverage of things in other foreign countries - such as the UK ban on online ticket scalping. Personally, I don't agree with the Grey Cup being there; it's barely notable in much of Canada these days; very different than years ago, when you'd see ads for TV, hyping being able to see the Grey Cup on a better TV. But unlike secondary executive leaders, it's ITNR. How does your position, @Andrew Davidson, further the need for diversity and inclusion here?Nfitz (talk)20:52, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Try frontpages.com. I just checked the NYT which has a picture ofLiz Cheney at the funeral on its front page today (Friday). That photo headline then points to a detailed report on the funeral inside. As this was quite a grand occasion with lots of famous people attending, it would be surprising if such media didn't cover it closely.Andrew🐉(talk)22:35, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would certainly expect coverage in USA newspapers. Yes, NYT does have a reference on the front page to the page 20 story. And I see it on the Boston Globe too. Actually there's less coverage that I'd have expected in the US papers. I feel we would have seen more after Jimmy Carter's funeral. But where's the other countries coverage? This is local coverage of a figure that never had a high profile. Maybe he was a puppet master, but it was the likes of Rumsfield, Bush II, Blair, and Powell who were the face of the WMD hoax. The puppet master stays very much not ITN!Nfitz (talk)23:42, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly support switching to a system that only allows posting deathsif the death itself is notable (currently described as "Death as the main story") and would meet the regular ITN criteria. We shouldn't be posting blurbs for (e.g.) famous people who have been retired for decades and died naturally, because clearly the community cannot avoid turning these cases into arbitrary popularity contests. If that is what this proposal would accomplish, then I support it, but I tend to think this proposal does not go far enough.Toadspike[Talk]10:26, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose – Masem's interpretation of the impact this change would have is not something I can stand by. Posting of articles on ITN should be based on whether a subject is in the news and whether the article is updated to an appropriate degree to warrant posting. I would approve changing the "Major figures" paragraph to better represent that perspective, but removing the paragraph does not serve any purpose for my philosophy of ITN. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)10:54, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Those are already both min requirements for all blurbs as well as RD. And we obviously can't post every death in the news as a blurb, that would flood out ITN with death blurbs, so we had the major figures as what should have been a clear means to narrow who gets named in a blurb, but its clear editors are !voting without following that.Masem (t)13:25, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Most RDs are updated with two or three sentences at most, indicating where, when, and how the subject died. That's never a good fit for ITN anyway. If an article is updated with two or three paragraphs describing events leading up to the death, a major funeral/other memorials, and retrospective legacy, then you have an article that is a great fit for ITN. You can only write such prose for subjects that have a certain level of "significance", giving us an indirect indication for the significance requirement being met while keeping our focus on the encyclopedia and the work we want to celebrate and show off. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)09:23, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
ITNs purpose is to help direct readers to quality articles that have been in the news, including any appropriate updates. The amount of update expected will be very different between a completely breaking new event, and something like a death, so the size of the update just needs to be appropriate to the reason the event is covered in the news. So a one sentence update for a RD death is completely fine, as long as the article is of quality. We can't expect more, or if more was required, then we'd have to eliminate the automatic posting for RDs in the first place.Masem (t)13:36, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
RDs are how we feature our articles that don't have particularly new content, and I think it's fine. It still has basic quality requirements. There's no automatic posting for any blurb, so we can indeed adjust our standards appropriately for each nomination. As long as we keep our eye on what matters for the project: how the articles have been improved. I just like showing off high-quality writing and we already have a dearth of features on ITN sometimes. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)11:36, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I see no issue with death blurbs as they currently stand. Yes, sometimes the ITN/C discussions are contentious. That is not a good enough reason to legislate this issue in asmoke-filled backroom. There will always be tension between those who want more death blurbs and those who want fewer. The status quo works and gives us a good middle ground between these camps. Moreover, as others have pointed out above, there seems to be a major disagreement among the proponents of this proposal as to what a "support" !vote actually means. Some think this will abolish death blurbs, and some think this will simply let the base ITN guidelines govern death blurbs. It seems to me that it will be up to people's interpretation. If this proposal passes, I will choose to interpret the base ITN guidelines as allowing me to continue to nominate and support death blurbs, on the grounds that they are "in the news" (covered by several RS) and have an associated article of sufficient quality. (just like how those who want fewer death blurbs have invented a Thatcher/Mandela standard, their interpretation of the ITNRD guidelines.) Bottom line, I disagree with any proposal to abolish death blurbs, and disagree with any proposal that can be considered to be a first step in a roundabout maneuver to abolish death blurbs; the empirical consensus at ITN/C is that figures likeJane Goodall,Dick Cheney,James Watson should get blurbs, and I agree with that consensus.Davey2116 (talk)08:16, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My opinion on the de.wiki-style RD proposal: I like it in theory, but have concerns about how quickly entries will rotate on and off. It is good for RDs to stay up for at least a few days, giving time for RD nominations which need some citation work to get up to scratch before going stale. Also, I think it is by no means a guarantee that it would pass. Even small changes, such as the proposal to explicitly allow RD images, have been met with opposition in the past. Without such a guarantee, I cannot consider de.wiki-style RD in conjunction with the current proposal.Davey2116 (talk)08:16, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Watson should not have gotten a blurb because he only was known for one thing, that being the co-discover of the DNA structure, but there was no other indication in sourcing of being a major figure. There were significant issues around the Cheney debate too. Of recent RD Blurbs, the only two that of late that were posted without type of serious contention in the ITNC were Goodall and QEII. It is absolutely a problem, as these are not healthy debates and also still plagued by non-regular editors that come in, ignore the guidelines, and !support posting because the person was famous. Its been getting worse, not better, and basically something not healthy to keep going at ITNC.
Also we're already at a point where there 3-4 RDs being nominated a day, and while not all of them are posted, that already means that the RD line is going to start to see higher rotation. So even if we stay with the current approach, we're going to have the RD visibility problem.Masem (t)13:29, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There have been more cases than the Queen and Jane Goodall.Pope Francis was a shoo-in, for example, being posted in less than an hour. I was about the only editor to demur, pointing to a cleanup tag.
And all the blurbs we've posted seem to have gone reasonably smoothly once they were on the main page. I thought James Watson might have caused trouble because of his controversial positions but I didn't see any sign of it.
I believe (at least for myself) that once its posted, that unless there is a serious sourcing or quality problem, that its pointless to try to pull those that may have been questionably postable, and I get the feeling this is true for most other editors. But I know we have had one such blurb pulled because editors complained the person was a nobody (because she wasn't Western-world famous but was clearly a major figure from her nation).Masem (t)03:27, 22 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have not been following closely to the conversations here as I have been busy elsewhere. I am surprised that the options here are to keep or remove the current section without an affirmative action to stop death blurbs if the section is removed or how to deal with future death blurbs when they pop up. This vagueness leaves much uneasiness within me as such vagueness can be weaponised in the future as it had in the past in other venues, i.e. "ITNRDBLURB has been removed, therefore we don't accept anymore RDBLURB regardless of who the person is or how they die".– robertsky (talk)15:33, 21 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I weakly prefer the status quo to GCG's proposed change, and I very strongly oppose Masem's interpretation of this abolishing death blurbs. I have yet to see a convincing argument for removing death blurbs outside of "people argue too much", which could be used to abolish 90% of the site. I also agree with Firefangledfeathers that the warring interpretations make it nearly impossible for this RFC to come to a consensus.QuicoleJR (talk)17:09, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This proposal would not stop blurbs for deaths as a plain reading of the remaining ITN guidance does not prohibit them and would merely apply the general rules for blurbs to death blurbs. The criteria atWP:ITNRDBLURB are too restrictive, confusing, and out of line with actual community practice (e.g. for even for "Major figures" deaths that get posted, the update to the article is often only about the death and to the degree described in the "Life as the main story" guidance that recommends RD). In practice, the criteria atWP:ITNSIGNIF to look at the quality and quanitty at sourcing mostly tracks the outcomes of both the "Major figures" and "Death as the main story" type of death blurbs, so removing this guidance wouldn't really change things. The last two paragraphs of guidance that death blurb noms can be posted to RD in the meantime and RD only posts names should be preserved though, by moving it to the section above.----Patar knight -chat/contributions04:40, 27 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is a list of the RD blurbs posted so far this year. There are 22 by my count which is less than one every two weeks. The only problem I'm seeing with this list is that it isn't long enough. For example, there are only two women on it.Andrew🐉(talk)17:24, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Major figures and death-is-the-story blurbs at ITN in 2025
Aga Khan IV – 49th Imam of Nizari Isma'ilism from 1957 to 2025
Ozzy Osbourne – English musician and television personality (1948–2025)
Pope Francis – Head of the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025
Robert Redford – American actor and director (1936–2025)
Sam Nujoma – President of Namibia from 1990 to 2005
So this is part of the conflict we have here at ITN. Your position isThe only problem I'm seeing with this list is that it isn't long enough. But the OLDMANDIES crowd would argue the opposite, that this list is 10-15 people too many. Additionally, several of these people could still be posted if this RfC passes as there were very special circumstances behind their death. As for the issue of only 2 women, is this just an overall Wikipedia problem? What is the ratio of biographies about men vs women? I don't believe there is specific bias against women at ITN.Natg 19 (talk)17:49, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yup, the female/male issue is a double systematic bias from this being a voluteer project (imbalance of ratio in the parties themselves, and require editors to nominate which also favors male BLPs) nothing sonething g we can address at ITN.Masem (t)18:00, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Considering the double impact between those that would create articles and those that nominate then, getting a percentage > (.2*.2)=4% is at least not a worse case scenario. Besides we would need to consider all nominated blurbs, not just posted ones.Masem (t)22:24, 20 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Of these, as far as I’m concerned, only three (Pope andarguably Aga Khan and Jane Goodall) should have been posted, unless I’m forgetting a head-of-state death among that list. If we didn’t have the RD line, maybe. But we do, which makes the “impact” thing a ridiculous popularity contest.This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk)23:19, 23 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm surprised you object to Charlie Kirk, when that one was a clear "death as the story" (his assassination had a massive impact that is still felt over two months later). I generally disagree with your approach to death blurbs, but Kirk seems like he would pass even your criteria.QuicoleJR (talk)18:27, 24 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Andrew Davidson:'s conduct at ITN (nominations) has often been disruptive. With the frequent mentions of pageviews, comments and noms just to make aWP:POINT (often gripes which have nothing to do with ITN). This ([7]) comment (emphasis mine) is the latest in line:
Elon's X is making waves as it turns out that users in India, Indonesia and otherexotic locations surprisingly claim to want to Make America Great Again.This new location transparency feature would be useful at ITN too where it often seems that users have a geopolitical agenda. Perhaps we should use flag icons to show where we're coming from...
This broaches into uncivility and PA (and is liable for ANI action). Having his conduct frequently raised at ITN and been warned by quite a multitude of editors to desist, including me, I bring this to notice here. It is time these disruptive derailings are brought to an end.Gotitbro (talk)04:34, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have found myself agreeing with Andrew in the ITN discussions a lot, though I recognize I too am an atypical contributor here. I think the Twitter nomination was a bad call, but I also think it's fine. I agree that the "useful at ITN" suggestion was irrelevant to us featuring it on the main page (and I can't even take the proposed suggestion seriously), but it's definitely not uncivil? Quickly going through Andrew's other latest actions in WP:ITN/C, I am seeing nothing but solid contributions, such as in his own nominations for the volcano and Chinese space mission (which even seem to trigger improvement of the articles). Lastly, I think the pageviews claim is better than people just opposing based purely ontheir own feeling of "what is significant," which I have found a much more bothersome behavior. I will refrain from going into detail on that here because I know it's a can of worms. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat)08:56, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment discussions about user conduct do not belong on a project page or talk page, perWP:CONDUCTDISPUTE. If you wish to raise an issue about an individual editor, the proper thing to do is to discuss it at their user talk page or to follow the proper procedure atWP:ANI. — Amakuru (talk)09:36, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was wondering whether to say something but will hold back per Amakuru's advice. Suffice it to say that my observation was related to the issue ofsystemic bias which appears in discussions above. That's all.Andrew🐉(talk)09:59, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The comment wanting anWP:OUTING of other editors is still live at ITN, so I figured a discussion can continue here without a strict travel to ANI. I doubt any retraction is going to come forth for that or the rest of that condescending comment (and assumption of bad faith) considering the reply above. Though if I see anything similar again, it indeed would be straight to ANI.Gotitbro (talk)13:49, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You might be overreacting here. I often disagree with Andrew, and would agree that he often has a rambunctious personality here on ITN, but ITN (and Wikipedia more generally) should welcome diverse views, and not put too much stock into quips any editor makes here and there. The comment you highlighted is really quite benign as such things go, and points to an issue that many (though not all) participants on ITN would subscribe to. As others have suggested, take it to ANI if you feel so aggrieved, but note that I (and I guess many other editors) will side with allowing Andrew's to share his contrarian opinions on ITN, given his overall productive contributions to the project.Khuft (talk)14:03, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If idiosyncracies or mere disagreements were a bother, this would have been brought up much sooner. Disruptive comments like wanting an outing of editors assuming they have a "geopolitical agenda" (an outright PA) is where the line needs to be drawn. I would have taken this straight to ANI if I did not consider Andrew to behere but will let this one serve as a warning lest this be repeated again.Gotitbro (talk)15:29, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I really think he meant it as a joke - he added a little UK flag that he didn't use in subsequent posts. But yeah, let's leave it as is.Khuft (talk)15:33, 26 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, the policy reads:
If the issue is a conduct dispute (i.e., editor behavior) the first step is to talk with the other editor at their user talk page in a polite, simple, and direct way. Try to avoid discussing conduct issues on article talk pages.
I won't make any comments on Andrew himself per Amakuru correctly bringing upWP:CONDUCTDISPUTE, but I just wanted to say I take a lot of issue with this thread's first sentence."[...] often been disruptive. With the frequent mentions of pageviews, [...]" That is no reason to suggest kicking someone out of the project. Seemy reply to Masem about the same subject. Whether or not any of us agree or disagree with using pageviews as a metric is irrelevant to whether or not a person mentioning pageviews is actually doing anything wrong. It's not even an invalid rationale deserving of giving less weight to a !vote on a nomination, much less the very 1st thing that should come to one's mind when trying to list reasons to suggest TBANning somebody.
Again, no comment on the rest of the things mentioned or the broader question of if Andrew's conduct is or is not disruptive more generally as this is not an appropriate place to discuss that topic, I just can't get behindthat being included in the list of reasons. We already have a problem of driving people away from this project, reprimanding people for failing to comply with rules that are not and were never written anywhere, making them choose to never come back. Let's not make that problem even worse byforcibly removing people for the crime of !voting in ways that are, by all means, perfectly valid and acceptable, even if unpopular.
In the news toolbox3 in "Inventors and scientists",William Shakespeare
