Wikipedia talk:In the news: Difference between revisions

 

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:[[user:Andrew Davidson|Andrew]]🐉([[user talk:Andrew Davidson|talk]]) 07:58, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

:[[user:Andrew Davidson|Andrew]]🐉([[user talk:Andrew Davidson|talk]]) 07:58, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

::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. [[User:Masem|M<span style=”font-variant: small-caps”>asem</span>]] ([[User Talk:Masem|t]]) 12:26, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

::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. [[User:Masem|M<span style=”font-variant: small-caps”>asem</span>]] ([[User Talk:Masem|t]]) 12:26, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

:::The [[WP:VITALCRITERIA]] include {{tqb|”’Notability”’: Individuals within the People section represent the pinnacles of their field with a material impact on the course of humanity, such as {{VA link|Albert Einstein}} in “Inventors and scientists”, {{VA link|William Shakespeare}} in “Authors”, and {{VA link|Genghis Khan}} 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”. [[user:Andrew Davidson|Andrew]]🐉([[user talk:Andrew Davidson|talk]]) 13:23, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

*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 like [[WP: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. ”<small>[[User_talk:GreatCaesarsGhost|<span style=”color:#938f8d”>GreatCaesarsGhost</span>]]</small>” 12:12, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

*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 like [[WP: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. ”<small>[[User_talk:GreatCaesarsGhost|<span style=”color:#938f8d”>GreatCaesarsGhost</span>]]</small>” 12:12, 16 October 2025 (UTC)

Please note: Please do not post error reports for Template:In the news here. Instead, post them to WP:ERRORS. Thank you. Please do not suggest items for, or complain about items on Template:In the news here. Instead, post them to WP:ITN/C. Thank you. Please do not write disagreements about article content here. Instead, post them to the article’s talk page. Thank you.

I believe the arrangement of the “Blurbs for recent deaths” section at WP:ITNRD no longer reflects the consensus practice for death blurbs. While the section is ostensibly about the qualifications for a blurb, we spend most of the section discouraging blurbs. “Life as the main story” is already implied by the preceding sections. “Death as the main story” is at times duplicative of major figures (as a person whose death merits major coverage is likely to be considered a major figure) but also contradicts it (“if a person’s death is only notable for what they did while alive, it belongs as an RD link.”) “Major figures” is listed last, despite it being the prime driver of every blurb discussion.

I would like to propose a wholesale reorganization where we acknowledge the reality of sui generis first, then provide a bulleted list of considerations. Something like this:

The death of an important or influential figure that qualifies for “recent deaths” may instead merit a blurb. These cases are rare, and are usually posted on a sui generis basis through a discussion at WP:ITNC that determines there is consensus that the death merits a blurb. Common factors that weigh in these discussions are

• 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.
• The death of the current holder of the office which administer the executive of a sovereign state will typically merit a blurb (see WP:ITNELECTIONS).
• The figure’s influence or legacy should be well-documented within their article.
• One should also be wary of puffery in obituaries for a recently deceased person – using terms such as “legendary”, “greatest of all time”, “household name”, etc

Comparisons to deaths of prior persons (we posted John Doe, so we should also post Jane Smith, or conversely we didn’t post Bill Jones, so we cannot post Susie Johnson) are not generally considered relevant.

In cases where a blurb has been suggested for a recent death, but there is debate about whether to use a blurb or not, but the article is otherwise updated and of quality by editorial consensus, the name may be posted as a Recent Death while the blurb discussion continues.

The section does not detail people and deaths (e.g. occupation, age, and cause of death) due to the size and length of the Main Page. Regardless of a blurb or a “recent death” listing, the article on the person in question must still comply with the article requirements listed above, particularly WP:BLP which still applies to those who have recently died.

GreatCaesarsGhost 13:44, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The last bullet or as a separate one ifld add to be cautious of deaths that attracted a lot of media attention due to someone being famous, popular, beloved, or well known, particularly for athletes and actors/celebrities. Where such fame may have been derived from their impact or legacy, that’s fine, but fame absent any other factors is not a good basis for a death urb

Id also add that any reason to post a blurb must be backed by multiple sources (which doesn’t have to be from their death). Editors arguibh for reasons to blurb when no sourcing supports that reason should be ignored. The language you have in the bullets generally infers this but it should be more ecplicit Masem (t) 16:15, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I worry that we do promote celebrities, particularly US ones, because they have more media coverage and attention. I strongly feel we need to be more diverse than this, as befits an international educational project. Secretlondon (talk) 17:01, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The figure’s influence or legacy should be well-documented within their article: It seems opposers often cite the need for a dedicated “Legacy” section (or similar), but this argument was absent in the quick posting of Jane Goodall, and in comments subsequent to her posting. I have no objection to her post, just questioning the extent to which this is in practice a requirement. —Bagumba (talk) 16:46, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Goodall, when I looked, had an Awards and Recognition section, which served that purpose. A section for that doesn’t need to be called “legacy”, just something that is clear in a TOC where such information can be easily found. Masem (t) 17:22, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Replying to all three editors: we want the guidance to reflect actual practice. I’m suggesting the framing of “Common factors that weigh in these discussions” to suggest they are well-reasoned and well-supported, but not necessarily consensus. How would we feel about combining the last two bullets into “Obituaries of famous and beloved figures are often adulatory and may overstate their relevance to their field. Editors should consider whether their importance is established in sourcing that predates their death and is documented in the article.” GreatCaesarsGhost 12:21, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Reproducing the suggested edit for clarity:

The death of an important or influential figure that qualifies for “recent deaths” may instead merit a blurb. These cases are rare, and are usually posted on a sui generis basis through a discussion at WP:ITNC that determines there is consensus that the death merits a blurb. Common factors that weigh in these discussions are

• 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.
• The death of the current holder of the office which administer the executive of a sovereign state will typically merit a blurb (see WP:ITNELECTIONS).
• Obituaries of famous and beloved figures are often adulatory and may overstate their relevance to their field. Editors should consider whether their importance is established in sourcing that predates their death and is documented in the article.

Comparisons to deaths of prior persons (we posted John Doe, so we should also post Jane Smith, or conversely we didn’t post Bill Jones, so we cannot post Susie Johnson) are not generally considered relevant.

In cases where a blurb has been suggested for a recent death, but there is debate about whether to use a blurb or not, but the article is otherwise updated and of quality by editorial consensus, the name may be posted as a Recent Death while the blurb discussion continues.

The section does not detail people and deaths (e.g. occupation, age, and cause of death) due to the size and length of the Main Page. Regardless of a blurb or a “recent death” listing, the article on the person in question must still comply with the article requirements listed above, particularly WP:BLP which still applies to those who have recently died. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:29, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See the current text of WP:ITNRD#Procedure:

Procedure

• Proposals for posting can be made at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates.
• Recent deaths are placed at the bottom of Template:In the news.
• Use the * wiki list format, starting each entry on a new line and ending with a linebreak. Do not leave a blank line between items.
• The most recently posted item appears first, and the remaining items remain ordered by the most recent post time.
• There should be a maximum of six recent deaths. Old items are removed as new ones are posted.

Example

An entry is listed in the following format:

*[[Yeshi Dhonden]]
*[[Bobby Brown (third baseman)|Bobby Brown]]

But, instead of following this approved procedure, RDs are being scrunched up onto a single line, contrary to WP:SEAOFBLUE.

A big advantage of following the correct procedure is that it will be easy to annotate the entries with their short description. This can be easily done using the {{annotated link}} template. So, for the current set, we’d have:

So, let’s follow the documented procedure of putting the RDs on separate lines, please.

Andrew🐉(talk) 19:15, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The “documented procedure” is being followed. It is for the syntax, not the output. The dot (not sure it’s proper name) between the RD individuals prevents SEAOFBLUE and putting them on separate lines with their short description takes up too much space. – Muboshgu (talk) 19:22, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, Andrew is WP:WIKILAWYERING over documentation. Not sure when RD started, but this 2013 version shows it being a horizontal list. —Bagumba (talk) 20:01, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I just read the instructions as background for the discussion above. When it says to use the wiki list format and put entries on separate lines, this is the normal syntax format for a bulleted list. Now I examine the code, it seems that the current one-line formatting must happen as a result of some extra hard-coded function of {{In the news/footer}} which the documentation doesn’t mention. Andrew🐉(talk) 20:34, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Two issues come to my mind over this. First, we might just not have enough space on the Main Page, as doing this would push OTD much lower than it currently is (by four or five lines depending on the specific number of RDs). Second, since the Main Page is cascade-protected, I assume that using {{annotated link}} would make all the RDs full protected, which is not ideal. And, conversely, if they are not, it opens them up for Main Page vandalism through editing their short descriptions (again, not ideal). Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 19:22, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Andrew has requested “short descriptions” for a while, but as others have noted, this is a main page space issue; and if desired, should probably be a wider discussion outside of just ITN. Natg 19 (talk) 19:24, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We don’t have enough space to do that. It would push OTD well below DYK (indeed, it’s about 3 lines below today, because the OTD items are quite long). Worse, using {{annotated link}} is a vandalism nightmare. Black Kite (talk) 19:26, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To address the vandalism issue just substitute per WP:SUBST. The alignment of OTD and DYK is unimportant and not our problem. That all depends on your browser, device and screen size. On my current desktop screen, I’m not seeing a three line difference. Trying to optimise the cosmetic appearance is absurd when users have different screens and most of them use the single column mobile view. Andrew🐉(talk) 19:48, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It affects desktop users, which are not a trivially small number of readers. Mobile users aren’t affected either way. Masem (t) 20:07, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’d say it’s not unimportant at all; since such change doesn’t have much real gain and would make the Main Page look terrible for desktop users – who are still a significant number – and some others, it doesn’t sound optimal at all to me. Black Kite (talk) 20:09, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While consensus can change, at what point would this perennial topic become a case of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT?—Bagumba (talk) 06:36, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Andrew’s behaviour around ITN, and RDs in particular, has been IDHT for a while. This particular proposal is straight-up a violation of WP:POINT. GenevieveDEon (talk) 07:33, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Eehhh, I would try to AGF and Andrew acknowledged the misinterpretation that the template instructions appeared to say one thing about the end presentation but were meant about a different thing, the formatting for the template arguments, which I can see where that comes from. It is a bit of being POINTy, and Andrew should know that we’ve well established that unless we get the rest of Main Page to accommodate more space for lengthier RD listings there’s nothing ITN can do with that idea. Masem (t) 12:45, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There was indeed something of a misunderstanding. But that’s not WP:POINT, which seems to need clarification. The point of WP:POINT is that one should not make insincere actions to prove a point. Its nutshell is “When you have a point to make, use direct discussion only.” So, in this case, I thought I had spotted an issue and so started a discussion. This is what WP:POINT says you should do, so that’s no foul, ok?

As another example, when discussing the Grand old Duke of Luxembourg, I noticed the similar case of the Captains Regent of San Marino who were elected as heads of state recently. Pointy behaviour would have been to make a nomination for them too, even though I do not support posting. So I didn’t do that; I just mentioned them in the discussion. Clear?

Andrew🐉(talk) 15:08, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I’m sure we discussed a line per person with some accompanying text a year or so ago, and there was consensus against it as people thought it would take up too much space? Although personally, seems like a better solution than cramping random list of names in as small an area as possible. Joseph2302 (talk) 15:19, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The idea is not bad, but we are absolutely limited by the space needs and how that would disrupt the main page balance, and it is not obvious what changes for main page would be needed or actually could be done to support this. The most obvious is that DYK expands by, say, 2 to 3 extra entries a day, to give ~4-6 more lines on either side, but that would create a visual imbalance in relation to the box heading positions which could be an issue, as well as delying with the variability in DYK submissions. (And this is either considering if they would stay in the ITN box or live in a separate box as done at some other wikis). Masem (t) 17:04, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I remain disinterested in expanding the space that RD takes up when Deaths in 2025 is linked in the box. DarkSide830 (talk) 17:26, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Ongoing section names three wars:
Gaza war (timeline · genocide)
Russo-Ukrainian war (timeline)
Sudanese civil war (timeline)

Two of these wars only have a timeline provided while one of these wars includes the link to accusations of Israel committing genocide. This appears as an effort to discredit Israel, because there’s no link provided to Israeli accusations of Palestinians doing this.

Certainly there have been accusations of genocides in the Ukraine and Sudan wars, so why is only the Gaza war given a link relating to genocide? Queens Historian (talk) 11:31, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There’s no article about the supposed ongoing genocide in the Sudan, and Allegations of genocide of Ukrainians in the Russo-Ukrainian War are allegations. Gaza genocide‘s title makes it equivocally one, I suppose? Howard the Duck (talk) 11:39, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m still opposed to it, but the Gaza war one was added following a UN report that asserted it was a genocide (in addition to multiple organizations), and the subsequent renaming of the article to reflect that apparent “fact” (I have many problems with us jumping to that point, but that’s well beyond what the consensus wanted). No such status has been made for the other conflicts, which is why those articles are still calling them alleged genocides. Masem (t) 12:12, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While the article isn’t receiving enough updates to justify an addition to “Ongoing”, we do have Masalit massacres (2023–present), which isn’t titled as such but gives the alternate label of “genocide” in the very first sentence. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 12:27, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Separate issue here, but I wonder under what measure we will remove the genocide from ongoing, assuming the peace holds. The Israeli Blockade of the Gaza Strip has been in force since the 90s and (per our article) intensified in 2007 and further intensified in 2023, contributing to the genocide. Presumably they will loosen up a bit under the peace plan, but when and how much is an open question. My pragmatic guess is that they will allow significantly more aid in but still enforce bottlenecks that will lessen but not end the famine. GreatCaesarsGhost 11:33, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My feeling is that we should wait for at least the hostage return (which I think is this Sunday, Oct 12), and then wait a week. If the ceasefire holds through Oct 19, then I would suggest we remove the “genocide” listing as it is no longer current (barring any major changes in deposition on that), though keep the conflict and timeline as I fully expect that until the full completion of the plan, events there will still be considered a major ongoing news aspect. Masem (t) 12:23, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly there have been accusations of genocides in the Ukraine and Sudan wars, so why is only the Gaza war given a link relating to genocide? – Because the overwhelming majority of genocide studies experts and relevant organizations term it as such. Or rather, ITN is following the consensus at the Gaza genocide article, which is itself following the consensus of expert sources. ITN itself doesn’t decide how to describe it. ITN labeling Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine a genocide while the relevant article still has “Allegations of” in the title would be out of line with the consensus at that article. Israel, on the other hand, is unequivocally committing a genocide right now and we’re far past the point where Wikipedia is comfortable saying that in its own voice. I wouldn’t support removing the Gaza war / timeline / genocide from ongoing until either a) the target articles are not being sufficiently updated to meet the Ongoing requirements or b) enough time has passed & enough reliable sources are describing these events in the past tense. I would not support just removing the Gaza genocide article while keeping the Gaza war article as Masem suggested, that wouldn’t make any sense.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 19:44, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

“unequivocally committing a genocide right now” is simply the consensus of individuals, organizations, and governments, who were hostile towards Israel prior to this war, during this war, and likely after this war ends.

The population of Gaza has not declined as to such a high number during this war to call it a genocide, in comparison to the populations nearly brought to extinction as in the holocaust, Native Americans, Rwandans, or Namibians. Queens Historian (talk) 21:38, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You should probably give the United Nations a call then. Stephen 22:00, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A UN subcommittee isn’t the arbiter of genocide under international law. Neither is Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, or any of the other bodies that have weighed in. I’m not discussing the argument on its merits, just saying that these organizations opinions don’t bind international obligations in any way. TimeEngineer (talk) 08:07, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Queens Historian and TimeEngineer, you may want to see Template:Expert opinions in the Gaza genocide debate, or the bar graph version of it, File:Gaza-genocide-scholars-chart.svg, or the RfC on the language. RE Queens Historian in particular, the mindset of “everyone who condemns Israel is the enemy so their opinions don’t matter” is not a helpful approach, nor is it a substitute for reliable sources.

I’d like to reiterate the point that ITN does not decide this and this is not a venue that will result in the language being changed; we are following the consensus at the article, and the article is following the consensus of sources.

As for TimeEngineer, that’s not really relevant to how Wikipedia should describe it. The litigation of genocide in international courts can take decades; the Bosnian genocide was waged from 1992 to 1995, but the case was decided in 2007, and sentences are still being handed out for it as recently as 2023. Wikipedia would be unable to describe any current, ongoing genocides as such if we waited until organizations which bind international obligations start convicting and sentencing the perpetrators before we started using the term.

On that note, the Gaza genocide has been multiple times deadlier than the Bosnian genocide, which Queens Historian left out of their list of other genocides to compare this one to. Interestingly, they brought up the Namibian genocide, which killed an estimated 34,000 to 110,000 innocent people; the estimates for the Gaza genocide are 66,100 to 335,500. But it also must be emphasized that there is no magic number that determines when the line has been crossed and an event becomes a genocide. The Rohingya genocide and Yazidi genocide were both genocides, despite their death tolls being comparatively low. Genocide is not a competition, and arguments along the lines of “this wasn’t a genocide because it’s not as bad as the others and the people who call it a genocide are just bad faith actors who hate Israel” are pushing up against the line of what could be reasonably described as genocide denial, something which has no place on this website.

 Vanilla  Wizard 💙 19:36, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I also found this to be an odd decision, but there was an ITN nomination and it went through. It’s a matter of procedure. Painting17 (talk) 22:10, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We are again seeing the issue with Diane Keaton where a deluge of editors are just saying “She’s great!” or posting a damn movie quote. It is difficult to ascertain if they have even reviewed the article, or if they are weighing in on quality. We need some way to separate out the quality discussion. Perhaps when a blurb is proposed, we maintain a separate RD section for that purpose. GreatCaesarsGhost 11:22, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Usually though, comments about quality and similar concerns are tied to both an RD and a blurb, so that would be excess work for commentors that are actually commenting on quality. Again, I have suggested before we should have a template that reminds editors that this is not a vote, and we review rd blurbs based both on quality and meeting the criteria, so !votes with no rationale or ones that don’t address these points should be ignored.

(I also have thought about what an ITNBLURB restriction on specifically Amercian actors, the only group that seems to draw such type of poor !voting, would look like. Not that we’d not allow them, but they would have to be initiated by an ITN admin who endorses the need for the blurb in that specific case. But there’s several issues with that so I don’t have a proposal at this time) Masem (t) 12:07, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree they should be separated and have been saying so for years. Mixing the two together on ITN/C is confusing, distracting, leads to nominations being overlooked, and often mixes !votes regarding a blurb vs RD entry. RDs should be on a separate nominations page, which only considers their suitability for the RD section. If a death us to be considered for a blurb, it should first be passed as sufficient quality to post in RD, then (and only then) a nomination can be made on ITN/C. That is, blurbing a death should be an upgrade to an existing RD entry, not the original nomination. That would avoid the duplication Masem is worried about. Modest Genius ^talk 13:10, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t think it has to be confusing as long as people can format their posts along the lines of “sufficient quality for RD, but insufficient quality/update/significance for blurb.” I honestly don’t mind the idea of literally hiding posts that don’t give useful input for either, tho. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 13:17, 14 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

With the recent change in leadership in the LDS Church, there is a lot of debate over what religious leaders should receive a blurb and which shouldn’t etc. The recent change in the Archbishop of Canterbury was blurbed, so I thought that having a formal list may be appropriate for a ITNR.

My initial choices would be:

More than happy for other choices to be nominated, these were just the ones that came to mind. Thought it was better to have a set list, rather than having arguments each time. As you can see the expected time between postings is usually fairly long, and we post National leaders with less influence and greater frequency commonly. So I don’t really feel this will create that many extra blurbs. Basetornado (talk) 21:57, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Realistically, the only two religious leaders that make sense to post is the Pope and Dali Lama, as both are also very political positions (or at least while Tibet’s status is questionable). Other leaders can be considered on a case by case basis but I feel if we start doing this type of recognition at ITNR we’d have to start including the leader of every major religion which would be a mess. Masem (t) 22:29, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I feel that the expected frequency was a way of showing, that generally there religious figureheads are less commonly changed than national figures. Plus we post the heads of nations with 10,000 people. I don’t feel it’s too out of the ordinary to post religious leaders every 5/10 years etc. Basetornado (talk) 01:30, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pope is a head of state, and is therefore already ITNR. With that being said, it’s already very, very hard to add blurbs that are not ITNR or disasters. We have 4 blurbs right now, where 2 are ITNR, and 2 are disasters. Howard the Duck (talk) 22:46, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Doubting Thomas The OP doesn’t explain where they got their list from. Is it evidence-based? For example, why does it not include the Aga Khan when we blurbed that succession in February?

Another issue is that there are a lot of religions and they don’t all work the same way. In particular, only some of them have a formal hierarchy with a single leader like the Pope. For example, Islam and Judaism don’t have this and we don’t want to start arguing about the relative status of caliphs, imams and rabbis.

Andrew🐉(talk) 07:00, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It doesn’t include that because I didn’t think of it. Like I said this was just what came to mind. I understand that religions don’t happens the same way. This is just changes in spiritual leaders of a religion as a whole. Islam and Judaism don’t really have that.

I would say, free free to nominate or remove anyone, it was just “lets actually have some guidelines instead of arguing about it everytime” Basetornado (talk) 08:53, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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 the WP: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 for Diane 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 of global 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 the WP: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 my WP:RFCBEFORE for the following proposal: we should change the language of WP: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. Flip^andFlopped 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 the New York Times, El País, and South 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 the Queen 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”. Flip^andFlopped 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 and groupthink 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 like filter bubble and confirmation 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 at WP:VITAL and this seems to work quite well. For example, when checking the top read article recently, I noticed that D’Angelo had taken over from Keaton. I’d not heard of him but checked and found that he was graded as level-5 vital. That rating was recorded in 2018 and so was well-established. And the readership seems to agree – over a million of them so far.

But why is WP:VITAL not liked by ITN? This mainly seems to be the organisational dysfunction of not invented here. Tsk.

The long-term solution is to treat all deaths the same by giving them all a short description. But until this is done, using WP:VITAL seems to be the obvious off-the-shelf way of identifying who “represent[s] the pinnacles of their field with a material impact on the course of humanity“. Make it so.

Andrew🐉(talk) 07:58, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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]

The WP:VITALCRITERIA include

Notability: Individuals within the People section represent the pinnacles of their field with a material impact on the course of humanity, such as Albert Einstein  3 in “Inventors and scientists”, William Shakespeare  3 in “Authors”, and Genghis Khan  3 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]

• 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 like WP: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. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:12, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]