Wikipedia talk:In the news: Difference between revisions

 

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*:::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 broken [[User:Orbitalbuzzsaw|This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang]] ([[User talk:Orbitalbuzzsaw|talk]]) 02:07, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

*:::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 broken [[User:Orbitalbuzzsaw|This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang]] ([[User talk:Orbitalbuzzsaw|talk]]) 02:07, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

*::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? [[User:Orbitalbuzzsaw|This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang]] ([[User talk:Orbitalbuzzsaw|talk]]) 01:07, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

*::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? [[User:Orbitalbuzzsaw|This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang]] ([[User talk:Orbitalbuzzsaw|talk]]) 01:07, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

*:::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. ”<small>[[User_talk:GreatCaesarsGhost|<span style=”color:#938f8d”>GreatCaesarsGhost</span>]]</small>” 12:07, 24 October 2025 (UTC)

====Question 3 – Balance?====

====Question 3 – Balance?====

From the discussion above, it looks like we have a couple of RfC questions lined up:

From the discussion above, it looks like we have a couple of RfC questions lined up:

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]

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]

80% of the Herero people were wiped out by the Namibian genocide. QueensHistorian mentioned it not because of the absolute number of people killed, but because of the proportion. Scharb (talk) 23:26, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is a clear double-standard when compared to Allegations of genocide in the October 7 attacks. There is definitely not a consensus and it is WP:TOOSOON to make this determination as beyond question, especially because of the question of intent. (If the ceasefire holds, Israel has satisfied its war goals–– and has not satisfied any intent to destroy the people of Gaza in whole or in part. (NPR – A Question of Intent: is what’s happening inside Gaza genocide?) Furthermore if we look at Gaza genocide recognition we see that there is a sharp split and no consensus at the international level, as there were for the genocides you mentioned.

All of that is NPOV for the Gaza Genocide article itself, though, but it should bring to bear: why is such a shaky accusation of “genocide” needed on the front page, if the war has concluded? —Scharb (talk) Scharb (talk) 23:26, 22 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]

The only reasonable removal would be of the war and genocide/its timeline, not a selective one of the former alone. That would happen if the ceasefire holds and the war’s past but current events sadly don’t point to that eventuality. Gotitbro (talk) 17:12, 18 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]

• Given the LDS nomination is still undecided, let’s first see how that one pans out. As mentioned in that discussion, I think an ITNR list would at least prevent discussions around “this religion is too small to be featured” – it’s the reason we have codified changes in Heads of Gov under ITNR to avoid exactly the discussions that are now happening in the LDS discussion (and before that in the Anglican discussion). To those listed by Basetornado, I would add

All these might suffice for the beginning, and – as for other ITNR entries – we could add to them if other religious leaders make it through the ITN process, or remove if they are not nominated even when they change. Khuft (talk) 18:20, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would support all of the above, and all of the original list too. Two things to note:

• The Dalai Lama is not the leader of all Buddhists, but only of the Gelug school within Tibetan Buddhism.
• Some of the leaders listed – the Pope and the LDS President, for example – are absolute authorities in their respective denominations, while others – such as the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Archbishop of Canterbury – are primus inter pares leaders. That shouldn’t disqualify the latter, but it’s worth knowing. And on that basis, I would oppose the posting of the heads of individual particular churches within the respective communions – eg the Maronite patriarch, the Archbishop of Wales, or the Serbian Orthodox patriarch. GenevieveDEon (talk) 21:00, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would also oppose heads of individual churches that come under a wider umbrella so to speak. My main thought is to have the head of faiths. So yes Archbishop of Wales for example comes under the Anglican Communion. While the Pope of the Coptic Orthdox Church and Ethiopian Orthodox is separate from each other and the Orthodox Church in general and so on.

If it turns out there’s dozens upon dozens of different choices, then fair enough. But so far it looks like it might be 10-15 choices, that are only likely to pop up every 5-10 years or so. Basetornado (talk) 01:55, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose – I’m really surprised to see LDS on that list. I see international news stories about the others frequently enough. I’ve never even heard of the position of President of the LDS, let alone a single news story mentioning any of those elected to the position. And the Archbishop of Canterbury is pushing it as well – though at least they serve as the leader of an entire communion, rather than just one sect. As noted above, the Pope is unnecessary, as they already are ITNR (as is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England). The Dalai Lama also seems unnecessary – it’s the prominence of the current leader that is notable, not that particular, relatively small, sect. If there were to be an automatic list, I’d think that it would be limited to sects where there are hundreds of millions or billions of regular adherents, not just millions. And the only ones on that list that qualify are the sees of Rome and Byzantium. I seem to recall we’ve already posted both already – so no need for an unnecessary list. Yes, we did just post the appointment of the first female Archbishop of Canterbury – which I disclose I supported – but I’d have voted against if it was another male. And I’d vote against when it’s another female. But to me, that’s more about the decline of misogyny and bigotry rather than anything else. This might be true if smaller sects also made such advances. Nfitz (talk) 23:35, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the blurbs of leaders of denominations with at least millions of followers globally should be posted here. It makes no sense that certain blurbs are posted, and other denominations with such global impact are not… heylenny (^talk/_edits) 00:03, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support These stories should be made into ITNR. I’m not sure what exactly the threshold should be (changes in microreligions /cults shouldn’t be blurbed of course), but it would be helpful to have clear reasoning given why such news about some religions receive blurbs and others do not. NICHOLAS NEEDLEHAM (talk) 17:52, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose A clear no-no, what I wanted to say has been by Masem and Nfitz above. Let me elaborate though, this is only a Christian-centric list somewhat extensive despite already partial and any such ITNR allowance would open the floodgates for more bloat (ITN is already inundated as is). What happens when you take into account other influential Christian sects or those of other religions, Aga Khanis, Chabad etc. and a whole host of others in Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism and so on. We can take the merits of each case on its at ITN, which AFAIK will lead to non-blurbs in most of the cases. The only reasonable postings according to me are those of the Pope and Dalai Lama (at least the current one), others need to be decided for their own significance e.g. take the case of Canterbury where the posting was due to a radical leadership change than mere numbers/influence of the sect itself. Gotitbro (talk) 17:04, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I think it’s fair to view it in that way, even if I support having a list. Not having an ITNR will just mean that more changes in religious leaders will be nominated and discussed at length. I disagree however that an ITNR list would “open the floodgates for more bloat” as the list is based on changes of Religious Leaders that have been posted in the past following the standard ITN process (with the exception of the Serbian patriarch), and with just a few additions that would likely make it through the process, given the size of their communities. As mentioned in the LDS nomination discussion, this proposed list focuses on centralised religions – which is why you don’t have Sunni, Buddhist or Hinduist leaders included. Khuft (talk) 20:36, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  About the centralized bit, there is a whole host of sects in those religions with formal leaders or people who hold great authoritative power. Ahmadiyya Caliphate, Jathedar of the Akal Takht, leader of the Arya Samaj, leader of the Deobandis, Shankaracharyas, the major rabbis of Judaism (some of whom have had the most attended funerals in history), the imam of Masjid al-Haram and many others whom I may not recall at the moment.

  Though this also misses the fundamental issue of significance for ITN, as I don’t see (say beyond the Pope) what effect any of the LDS, Orthodox, Anglican, Ismaili etc. leadership changes have beyond their own religious communities. If they do we can judge that there and then (once in how many ever years it happens). Taking the recent Nelson/Oaks/LDS example, I fail to see any merit in posting the mere procedural succession of a position previously tenured for a little more than give years without any major transformations. Gotitbro (talk) 07:04, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Two things to your enumeration above: I think a distinction needs to be made between religious leaders with formal (!) power in religious matters (Pope, LDS president) and religious personalities with a high degree of personal authority or commanding personal respect (e.g. the “major rabbis” you mention, or the Chief Imam of the Two Mosques) but who don’t have a formal power to change religious precepts for the religious community overall (they can influence, of course) – the latter are for me potential candidates for Blurbs, but that’s it, and would need to be discussed at ITN. The second element is size of the community. In the LDS discussion, 10-15 mn is a figure being thrown around, with some preferring a higher threshold.

  All this being said, I think it’s fair to assume at this point that this discussion will probably not result in an ITNR addition – nevertheless, I think the discussion is interesting to define / canvass possible criteria based on which religious leader transition could be blurbable in future. Khuft (talk) 07:47, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support adding some to ITN/R to formalise the process slightly, but not preclude the nomination of others. I would only support the Pope, Eastern Orthodox primus inter pares, and the Dalai Lama being added however, the other groups are far too small for changes in their leadership to be significant(see my opinion on the LDS presidency being posted). While this may seem Christian-centric, I think that’s merely because Christian religions tend to have formal leaders while the other major religions don’t. –DMartin 00:57, 22 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]

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]

You guys are always on this “we favor non-Western people” argument but when RDs like Gloria Romero was posted as a blurb it was shouted back to RD. Howard the Duck (talk) 13:53, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Note that Gloria Romero is level 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 not Manny 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]

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 I do 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, and female is an adjective. There’s a perfectly serviceable word ‘woman’. GenevieveDEon (talk) 08:12, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, forumy/dubious ethno territories being broached above. Gotitbro (talk) 07:18, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Just trying to reply in the same vein, shouldn’t have done so. Fram (talk) 12:30, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Absolutely. Clicks doesn’t cut it, for me. We need to cover the world, not just celebrities. Secretlondon (talk) 20:04, 16 October 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), but only one in the United States.

Andrew🐉(talk) 14:32, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at the lists of people on the VITAL lists, they absolutely are weighted towards Western figures. Masem (t) 15:10, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See the Gloria Romero example above, which links to a vital list of specifically Asian entertainers. Now look at ITN’s picks for 2025. ITN has blurbed no-one from Asia at all − no Chinese, no Indians, nada. The closest ITN has gotten to Asia was Aga Khan IV but he was born in Geneva and educated at Harvard. So, while WP:VITAL may not be perfect, it’s better than ITN. Andrew🐉(talk) 15:44, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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]

We can’t tell what we’re missing because there are unknown unknowns. For example, the last full month of Deaths in September 2025 lists hundreds of Americans but just four Chinese. So there’s another big deficit there. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:35, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Vital, especially at level 5, is a totally random choice of names. Not even going into the Western vs. non-Western or male vs. non-male issues, we have e.g. Lorde, Bonnie Tyler and Cyndi Lauper as Vital, but not Suzanne Vega, Tori Amos, Neneh Cherry or Kim Wilde. Ringo Starr but not Mark Knopfler. Fall Out Boy but not Iggy Pop. Tangerine Dream but no Mike Oldfield. No Salvatore Adamo! The choices seem often utterly random. Fram (talk) 14:37, 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 ‡ ^edits 20:32, 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 have Isabell Werth or Anky van Grunsven though. Fram (talk) 08:25, 17 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]

  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. Flip^andFlopped 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 another WP: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. GreatCaesarsGhost 14:08, 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 figure must 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 content actually 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 like Aga Khan IV or Jim 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. GreatCaesarsGhost 14:33, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The $64,000 question is getting the community to come together on the objective criteria. —Bagumba (talk) 19:02, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There’s a deeper issue with systemic bias. I wanted to nominate bestselling Korean author Baek Se-Hee (author of I 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 the BBC 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 created 5 days ago. Until then it was a redirect to one single line in The_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]

Some would game the system by fluffing the details. —Bagumba (talk) 19:05, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Y’know, sort of like it says at Wikipedia: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 is well over the threshold; and Diane 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 the one sentence of relevant non-redundant content that WP:ITNUPDATE calls “highly questionable”. —Cryptic 22:06, 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]

Like Natg 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 of outside Wikipedia assessment (in other words WP: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. —Sluzzelin talk 17:29, 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]

  Cosigned. DarkSide830 (talk) 15:53, 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]

  They did explicitly say “(where death is not the story)”. —Cryptic 16:49, 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:

  • Samantha Eggar (86), britische Schauspielerin († 15. Oktober)
  • 15 de octubre: Samantha Eggar, actriz británica (86)

  Andrew🐉(talk) 20:37, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  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 for something. 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. —Cryptic 21:36, 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.

  (And yes, I was mistaken, I was thinking the longer de.wiki format that Andrew’s mentioned before). Masem (t) 00:03, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  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]

  Regarding the balance question, there have been promising talks of adding back an updated version of WP:AFI, so it could balance out against a slightly expanded RD. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 07:37, 23 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 like Queen Elizabeth II or Pope 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)? Flip^andFlopped 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 by WP: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 including Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, Operation London Bridge, Reactions to the death of Elizabeth II, The Queue and more. 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 then nominated 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]

  And I should tag Orbitalbuzzsaw whose dogged opposition to death blurbs inspired this idea. Gotitbro (talk) 13:17, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks for the ping. Glad to see we’re finally having this discussion. I think RFC 3 below is a good policy. This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk) 13:39, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In terms of RFC voting options, I am thinking something along the lines of the following:

1. The current WP:ITNRDBLURB language is sufficient. There should be no changes made to the existing guidelines and ITN practices.

2. Modify the WP: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. Modify WP: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). Flip^andFlopped ㋡ 18:08, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What do people think? The above options are rough and the exact language used is not final. Flip^andFlopped ㋡ 18:08, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Two items:

• 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 we do not share.
• Following on from Maplestrip’s comment late in the discussion above, I’d like explicit clarification to whether death blurbs have to meet the requirements of WP:ITNUPDATE like all other blurbs (with a mention added to WP:ITNRDBLURB), or whether they’re exempt (with a mention added to WP: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. —Cryptic 21:12, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I’m a bit bewildered at the concept of death blurbs being exempt 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]

I’ve always been bewildered at that, but it’s clearly the way a lot of people have been treating it. —Cryptic 15:16, 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]

This seems like an acceptable standard to me. It gets deathblurbs off of the main ITN section which is the main issue to me, and Jane Goodall (primatologist) doesn’t seem like an inordinate use of space This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk) 13:41, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My extremely strong preference is for 3, as might be expected This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk) 13:38, 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]

  I second this idea. Seems like an acceptable way to get death blurbs off the front page while still giving RD a bit more vitality This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk) 19:06, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I support this idea as well. Khuft (talk) 19:53, 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]

  I think packaging it as one is likely to mollify the RD supporters This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk) 23:50, 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]

  Whatever will finally put RDBs in the bin. This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk) 02:01, 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 a prominent 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. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:56, 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 test Masem (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 (see Death 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 the RD section on the German Wikipedia as an excellent example).–Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:57, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Agreed. Two would just make it harder for people who are not Western celebrities. Secretlondon (talk) 10:17, 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 for option 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]

Per WP: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 about WP: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 of WP:ITNRDBLURB be removed?

Note that what would remain would then mainly be the Death 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 the Death 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.

Andrew🐉(talk) 13:38, 21 October 2025 (UTC) (edit conflict)[reply]

Id still prefer a trial period of this before doing it just to make sure there are other obvious problems. Masem (t) 14:03, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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 of WP: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.

Andrew🐉(talk) 17:00, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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 RFC Masem (t) 21:11, 21 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, understood! Thanks for clarifying! Khuft (talk) 21:16, 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. —Cryptic 00:14, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is fine with me, but all else equal I would rather have it be permanent from the get-go so that we can finally kill this stupid debate This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk) 20:59, 21 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]

  I think it’s good if we launch it as permanent from the get-go This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk) 00:49, 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. GreatCaesarsGhost 11:57, 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 per WP: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. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:41, 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 broken This 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)[reply]

From the discussion above, it looks like we have a couple of RfC questions lined up:

1. Should the “Major figures” paragraph of WP:ITNRDBLURB be removed?
2. 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 about main page balance and, instead, take as much space as it needs for its postings?

Andrew🐉(talk) 07:48, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

3 is not something ITN can go “f the rest of the main page, we’re doing this”. That’s not a question we can even address and should be flatly ignored.

Masem (t) 12:08, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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]

An alternative to 3, which could be asked in sync with the forthcoming RfC about adding a revamped AFI to the Main Page, would be to have AFI as a relatively short section on the left column (instead of having it on the lower rows), and use the equivalent space on the right column to expand ITN/RD, thus maintaining balance. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 08:51, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the suggestion but I’m not keen on Today’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]

As the most recent edition was just added to ITN with unanimous support. BangJan1999 01:10, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly Oppose We need less sports slop on ITN, not more, and adding more events doesn’t help This post was made by orbitalbuzzsaw gang (talk) 03:02, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure why you think a piano competition is sports news. Natg 19 (talk) 05:31, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Support per above. Occurs once every 5 years. Definitely the most prestigious piano competition that comes to mind, and our article on it includes a NYT quote that calls it “the Olympics of the piano world”. Davey2116 (talk) 05:36, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose due to only one event having been posted thus far. If the XX and XXI events pass then I would support adding to ITN/R. The event passed ITN on its own merits and we have no reason to rush. Omnifalcon (talk) 05:46, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The event is held every five years. Are you suggesting we hold off until 2035? 1brianm7 (talk) 14:14, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. And in 2030 and 2035 if the event continues to be as highly acclaimed and the article is as complete as it was this year, it should pass ITN/C as unanimously as this year. Events that recur do not have to be on ITN/R to get posted to ITN, and some people seem to be losing sight of that. Omnifalcon (talk) 14:34, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose My impression is that the main reason this has been posted this time is because an American has won. Other issues are that we don’t seem to have separate articles for the events. And the main article about the competition is poor as it doesn’t explain what the rules are and how the judging is done. Is it the person who plays the fastest or what? If it’s judged on artistic merit then that’s going to be quite subjective and political and so may be controversial and disputed. We should get the views of music experts like Gerda Arendt. Andrew🐉(talk) 07:32, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I am not an expert in this but I believe the judging is based on artistic merit. Whether the results are controversial is not for us to judge, as we are just reporting the news. Not sure what you mean by “events” – it seems like each candidate/contestant was asked to play a certain number of piano pieces. Natg 19 (talk) 07:50, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I like music but am not much into competitions. It is the Olympics of the piano world, receiving international attention, so regardless of the rules, it deserves to be mentioned. Only every 5 years: that could probably be handled individually each time. Perhaps post this discussion, supplying a link to WP:ITNR, on Classical music, and also request improvement of the article. I liked to see it today, as a welcome break from disasters and wars. I think the entry could be trimmed by a pipe to Chopin Competition. —Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:51, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thanks for the input. I’ve found the article for this year’s event now: XIX International Chopin Piano Competition. This looks quite good with lots of detail of how it was done and so I’m more open to this now. But an ITN/R entry is still premature as explained above. It seems that there was more ballyhoo this time because it was part of the Chopin centenary celebrations and so it might not be so big in future. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:48, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Procedural close as WP:ITNR items should be blurbed at least more than once, and this hasn’t. Try again in 5 years. Howard the Duck (talk) 10:37, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose at this time. Looking at previous competition pages, only the 2021 event had similar quality as the 2025 one, so I’d be concerned that the next event would necessarily have a similarly good article. I’d like to see one more normal ITNC for the next event to have a good feeling this will be regularly brought to quality while in the news. Masem (t) 13:18, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Support a) Because the recent nom met unanimous support, the suggested need for multiple posts seems unnecessary. There is little reason to suggest future events will not. b) Adding the item to ITNR allows for preplanning, and helps the item get nominated next time. c) The prior event article is of sufficient quality to post, and the last four were created contemporaneously. This suggests sustained interest. Concerns about quality would be addressed in the event nom at ITNC. d) posting more artistic events would help balance ITN. GreatCaesarsGhost 11:41, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It’s supposedly 1) Chopin’s centenary this year, 2) an American won (LOL), that’s why there’s heightened interest this year. We don’t know if this will be the case on the next competition. Howard the Duck (talk) 11:57, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose It has only been posted once, just this week. One of our basic requirements for an ITN/R listing is that we can expect that listing to be useful for preventing newsworthy-based discussion when we know the realistic outcome. This can only be judged by repeated, hopefully consecutive, postings from regular ITN/C. One, even two, discussions aren’t enough to constitute a trend we can be confident in. We should also feel confident that the article quality regularly reaches a standard to be posted: that any users are prepared to put in that work each time. While this is more achievable than getting successful discussion outcomes at ITN/C, it’s also not evident at the moment. I recommend seeing if the event article retains popularity in a year without an American winner, and nominating for addition to ITN/R again in two years’ time, because it would be nice to broaden the scope of our regular postings (even if we should perhaps reduce the overall number). Kingsif (talk) 12:03, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You’re the second person to suggest heightened interest due to an American winning. Is there some specific evidence of that, or a claim in reliable sources? The prior article was well-written contemporaneously to the event [3], which should show as evidence of sustained interest. You also mention nominating in two years time; the event only occurs every five years. GreatCaesarsGhost 12:43, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, in five years. Kingsif (talk) 18:56, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

For example, the following could be added to Wikipedia:In the news/Recurring items#Arts:

====Video Gaming====

Expected stories per year: 1

The D.I.C.E. Awards are an annual awards for merit in video games awarded by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. The ceremony is often described as the equivalent to the Academy Awards. Other media awards celebrating Architecture, Film, Literature, Music, Television, Theatre are included in ITN/R and the D.I.C.E. Awards would fit alongside them well. –DMartin 01:11, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 –DMartin 01:19, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to nominate it “normally” first. The above piano competition just made it through a regular ITN nomination so that has a higher potential to get added to ITN/R. Natg 19 (talk) 05:33, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose I don’t care for The Game Awards but this is premature. Let’s nominate other gaming awards shows as they come up and see which ones pass muster. Then after a few events get posted a few years in a row we can see if any belong on ITN/R. Also, it’s worth mentioning that recurring events can be nominated and posted without being on ITN/R. Omnifalcon (talk) 05:42, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose – There’s no way we should be putting an event which has never been to ITN up for ITN/R. (Obviously we do put classes of event into ITN/R – we had never posted a papal abdication before Pope Benedict resigned, but that fell into a class of events we had already been posting. But this is not that.) GenevieveDEon (talk) 07:20, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Unlike The Game Awards, DICE does not get significant coverage outside of gaming press. (I had previous nominated TGA for ITNR after last year’s was posted, like the fourth time in a row, and had support but it scrolled off without action). Masem (t) 12:44, 22 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose it’s never been posted at ITN. Before being added to ITNR they should have had support to post multiple editions of the event. Joseph2302 (talk) 12:40, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. We’re probably moving in the direction of The Game Awards being ITN/R; we don’t need more, less popular game awards shows at ITN/R as well. DarkSide830 (talk) 16:38, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]