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Consensus? Local perhaps, but not community wide

I made a few changes to bring this page into sync with our other policies and guidelines... however I was reverted (with the statement that the current text reflects consensus). There may well have been a "local" consensus (ie agreement among a few editors here on this talk page) for what is said... however, I seriously question whether there is a community wide consensus. There are several items regarding inclusion and notability that run counter to our other guidelines and policies. For one thing, the "other wikis" rule runs counter to WP:IRS... inclusion of content (such as birth and death dates) is based on reliable sources, and other wikis are NOT considered reliable sources. Also the "Three-continent" rule runs counter to both logic and numerous notability guidelines. In other words... I think some of the of the things that are said on this page do not actually reflect community consensus. Blueboar (talk) 09:59, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

There were several requests for comment about WP:RY rules in the past, that failed to garner any significant response, so the community as a whole appears to be content with them. It is necessary to have more strict rules than the general WP:N because there are thousands of deaths of notable people every year and we cannot list them all. The current rules proved useful in filtering them out. You're welcome to propose a better filter if you can think of one. — Yerpo Eh? 10:27, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Blueboar -- I would be interested in you suggesting an improvement, to bring this guideline into line with the rationale underlying WP's other parallel guidelines and policies.
As you point out, the current guideline relies on the existence of wikis -- which is something we shun, across other guidelines and policies, as being of any value. Try, for example, to even use a wiki as a ref in an article .. its verboten.
As I've mentioned, the current guideline also relies on only the acts (editing) of 1-9 editors. Who may all be in one country. And may all rely exclusively on English refs (or no refs at all) for their articles ... as indicating "international" relevance.
That poorly constructed rule leads to the predictable results. Robust articles that attract 100x the views by readers of the English language WP at the time of the person's death are deleted from an article ... mentioning their death. While much smaller articles with 1/100th the views are included.
Obviously, this rule, based on a questionable assertion (that articles must be read by non-English readers to be reflected in the English language WP), fails to even come close to meeting that questionable criterion. Something more logical, comporting with standards across the project, would be helpful. With a discussion that is broader than the discussion has been in the past. Too many highly notable (by WP notability standards) articles are being deleted, while less notable articles are retained. Epeefleche (talk) 21:03, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Chalk me up as an editor who agrees with Epeefleche in every particular, with another fillip: since when did Wikipedia itself become a valid source for anything? If a fact cannot be supported by a citation to a Wikipedia article, no metric should be tied to Wikipedia either. Beyond that, the notion that the handful of regulars on this obscure page -- this being only the second discussion I see on the talk page in the better part of a year -- constitute not merely a project-wide consensus, but one that cannot be challenged, is bizarre. That the sentence was unchallenged for so many years I expect is far less a product of widespread community support than of the community having no idea. Ravenswing 08:01, 20 March 2015 (UTC)
@Epeefleche: your argument suffers from the same shortcoming as others that failed to incite a change in the past - it bashes a rule that has worked reasonably well for many years - because it blocked one specific person that you care about (POV), while failing to provide a better alternative. That's right, page views are much worse. According to that idea, we'd throw out Yves Chauvin who unraveled a mechanism of a natural phenomenon, helping us improve chemical processes, and won the most prestigious science award in the world for it. He would be replaced by Al Rosen, whose main achievement is, essentially, hitting a ball better than his contemporaries in one country for some time. No, even discussing the use of a criterion that passes Ryan Dunn while blocking most Nobel Prize winners is completely ridiculous. See also my reply in the section above.
Now, if we go into rules-lawyering, we can find several that support the current arrangement: WP:N is of course the core, no person without coverage in WP:RS can be included. But, as pointed out, several thousand people every year would meet this criterion, so a filter is in place to limit their number and prevent flooding. Seeing that any page with such a broad topic should avoid systemic bias and represent a global view, thus upholding WP:NPOV, we can't rely on any automatic metric within this wiki which is, by definition, biased. Using page views would also be using Wikipedia itself as a valid source, no? Additionally, WP:NOTNEWS, so massive short-term media coverage in one country cannot equate suitability for inclusion, nor can any automatic metric that is a direct consequence of this. So, the three-continent and the 10-interwiki rules are used as a proxy for international importance. As said, you're welcome to come up with something better. Same goes for Ravenswing. — Yerpo Eh? 08:26, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

If the 10 language rule represents a consensus, please link to the community discussion establishing that consensus. Frankly, this whole "guideline" seems bogus, as it was promoted to a guideline based on a discussion of 4 involved editors [1], hardly an appropriate basis for a community-wide editing guideline. Rlendog (talk) 14:21, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Several dozen editors then active at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Years were personally invited to comment on the draft guideline (see Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:WikiProject Years/Recent Year guidlines draft). Their silence can be interpreted as agreement. Also, there have been numerous discussions over the years, usually initiated by an editor or two not familiar with RY getting upset when their favorite movie/music/sports star didn't meet the criteria. Predictably, "arguments" against were usually along the line of "this criterion is broken and illegitimate", failing to provide a better alternative (present discussion included). Risking to sound aloof, I'd say that the consensus of constructive editors is as strong as it gets. — Yerpo Eh? 14:59, 1 April 2015 (UTC)
Editors other than those you refer to are also constructive editors. And this flies in the face of other long-held wikipedia principles. Such as those relating to notability. And not relying on wikis - for anything at Wikipedia. And how we determine which name is the primary name to direct readers to where we have people who share the same name (yes -- there we look inter alia to what readers look at -- not what one editor (or at most nine) wrote in a foreign language, that few people may look at, that may have zero refs or all-English refs ... the test here. The editors involved in those and other talk pages and guidelines are also constructive editors.
I see the effort to delete names as not sufficiently notable to reflect under this ten-languages-rule has also expanded recently, and is being discussed as well here.
I would urge creation of a broad RFC on this, before more deletions are made because no editor wrote a zero-ref, zero-times-viewed, article in Swahili. Epeefleche (talk) 05:03, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
If they are constructive, then I invite them to finally express this constructive attitude for a change. Including you. You completely ignored my last answer to you, again refused to provide an alternative, and basically just repeated the "this criterion is broken and illegitimate" argument. Not to mention the last paragraph's straw man. How is that constructive or even respectful to me? — Yerpo Eh? 08:23, 8 April 2015 (UTC)
@Epeefleche: As for "not relying on wikis" — what is the purpose of the {{expand language}} templates? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:02, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
@Arthur - One can certainly look to other wikis to see if there is helpful material, wp:v-compliant, there. But in no way, shape, or form do I think editors believe that that language suspends wp:v, etc. You can't just copy uncited text, translate it, and insert it. And avoid wp:v. That would violate our rule against using wikis, as well as copyright.
As the template says: "This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in the Wikipedia." Emphasis added. "May" suggests that it also "may not" be expanded with such text -- that is, if it doesn't meet English WP's criteria (of wp:v, etc). See, in parallel with my comments, User:Rd232's comments here.
You can't of course, for example, take an uncited section not acceptable in English WP, insert it into Swahili WP, and then copy it into English WP on the basis of the template language. Epeefleche (talk) 01:15, 12 April 2015 (UTC)
I strongly agree with the sentiment expressed here. It is time to revisit the WP:RY guidelines. These articles, about an entire year in the existence of humanity, are too big to be governed by the consensus of a small number of editors. It appears to me as though there are lots of births, deaths, and events that are notable enough for lengthy Wikipedia articles but somehow don't have enough notability to make it on this page. I'm all about countering systemic bias, but we've flipped too far in these articles, to the point that we're excluding people and events that really ought to be on there. As an example, there's an active discussion on whether US recognition of same-sex marriage is notable enough to be in the 2015 article. This shouldn't be a question. It was huge news worldwide. If this guideline is being applied to say that should not be in the 2015 article, then we're doing it wrong. agtx 19:02, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

G7 meeting

G6/G8/G7 has been having annual meetings since 1975, according to G7#Table of meetings. It seems to me that these fail WP:RY unless something specific was done. (I believe the 2014 meeting was the first to exclude Russia, which might be a reason. Similarly, the first G8 meeting to include Russia might be appropriate.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:15, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I asked this question twice this month; I might as well break it out for specific discussion. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 08:17, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Agree with removal unless something tangible comes out of it. — Yerpo Eh? 16:14, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Request for comment: Is the current Recent Years guideline appropriate?

There are several major issues here that have been discussed at this talk page but do not appear to have been the recent subject of an RFC. Several editors above called for an RFC, and thus I pose the following questions to the community:

  1. Does the current guideline reflect a consensus such that it should be considered a guideline as opposed to an essay?
  2. Does the current guideline for births and deaths—requirement of a certain number of non-English Wikipedia references (possibly 10, based on talk page comments)—correctly implement a standard of notability that reflects broad community consensus?
  3. Does the current guideline for events correctly capture the types of events that should be included here and the types that should not? 19:22, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

As far as number 1, I'm concerned that the guidelines here do not represent the type of broad community consensus that we look for in a guideline. A small number of editors put this together over five years ago, and it has remained relatively unchanged since. The talk page here, as well as on year articles, have had numerous instances of editors questioning the consensus, but the same few people continue to insist that a consensus exists. I'm simply not sure that it does, and I think this guideline is really an essay.

For numbers 2 and 3, I think we're being far too choosy as to what gets into these articles. I agree that making sure that these articles aren't US-biased is important, but the solution to that seems to have been to keep out US focused material, as opposed to adding in material from other parts of the world. So, for example. in 2015, the addition same-sex marriage decision in the United States was immediately reverted, but the Irish referendum on the same issue was left untouched. Sepp Blatter's resignation is notable enough even though Sepp Blatter didn't actually resign. The death of Beau Biden, the son of the Vice President of the US, was deemed not notable even though the President of the United States spoke at his funeral, but somehow Laura Antonelli is notable because she happens to have enough articles about her in different languages. So is Alexis Vastine. But Jerry Weintraub is a no go.

Quite frankly, this is arbitrary, and it isn't working. The guideline is meant to make sure that only notable people and events get mentioned here, but it's not doing that. Why is Laura Antonelli more notable than Jerry Weintraub? A bright line rule of Wikipedia articles in other languages doesn't answer that question. Why is the Irish same-sex marriage referendum notable but the US Supreme Court decision isn't? To counter US bias? That doesn't make sense either.

I think the first step here is to understand that this page isn't a guideline, but an essay. Beyond that, I propose that people or events that have a solidly referenced Wikipedia article longer than a stub—in any language—are probably notable enough for this page. Proposal substantially revised below agtx 21:27, 21 July 2015 (UTC) By arbitrarily cutting down the content here, we're not making the page more useful. agtx 19:46, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

(ec) I was going to make an opening statement, but I had an edit conflict with this comment, which I consider hopelessly damaging, if implemented. I'll comment later on the specific problems with Agtx's proposal.
The question isn't well-defined, given the history. There is near-unanimous agreement that something needs to be done done to avoid article bloat and WP:RECENTISM. There was no objection at the time the project guideline was first added, and little objection to each modification. It might not have been advertised sufficiently to constitute a Wikipedia guideline, but it certainly constitutes a WikiProject Years guideline.
The requirement of "international notability" allows placement of people and events not considered internationally notable in the appropriate country subarticles; for example, the death of Ernie Banks is properly listed in 2015 in the United States and in 2015 in baseball.
The requirement of entries in other-language Wikipedias seems a reasonable proxy for international notability, although it's not perfect, and has been "gamed" by "fans" of the person. (It should be noted that, before Wikidata, it was relatively easy to determine what other-language Wikipedias had entries, although that, also could be gamed and damaged in case of articles on groups containing the individual.)
For some specifics; the U S Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage is not the first such decision in the US, while the Irish referendum is, according to the entry in 2015, "the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote."
I'm not in favor of including the FIFA controversy in any form in 2015, but, because I'm not a football fan, I'm not certain as to what should be included in 2015.
I think that there would be a strong consensus for restricting the entries, so it is the responsibility of any who wish to weaken the restrictions, to propose specific restrictions, or attempt to put together the list of all entries which would be in (say) the January components of 2015 (or, perhaps, 2014, to avoid recentism), to estimate how long the resulting articles would be. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:26, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
I don't think Arthur Rubin is necessarily wrong that my proposal above would result in too many folks on this page (and maybe even too few events). However, what I was trying to was create a presumption of inclusion rather than exclusion for people who already have Wikipedia articles about them. Basically, if we've gotten over the notability hurdle already, then the question we ought to be asking is why shouldn't they be in this article, not why should they. One good reason might be because we don't have any more than a stub about them in any project. Expanding the article in a well-referenced way inherently demonstrates why they ought to be on the page.
I do take exception to the last paragraph of Arthur's post. First, this "strong consensus" has not been demonstrated. The talk page for this guideline shows significant disagreement in that regard. If guidelines don't have consensus, then nobody has any burden to show that they shouldn't be implemented. Guidelines that don't have consensus aren't guidelines anymore. Instead of summarily removing content from year pages with the justification "See WP:RY," editors will have to justify their reverts and additions on the talk page just like everywhere else.
In any case, my goal in proposing this RFC was to involve the community outside this narrow set of pages to figure out whether there's really consensus here and to see if we can come up with anything better, together. agtx 21:07, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
I don't feel that using "how many wikipedia articles someone has" as any sort of barrier is something that should be done as it is simply happenstance... and not a barrameter of worldwide importance.. stubs in a bunch of different european languages doesnt make someone important. Wikipedia itself should not be used to check notability of any sort. If someone has a significant article, they should be notable enough for inclusion here... also this is english wikipedia that we are editing on here... not french wikipedia... so shouldnt we lean more towards english wikipedia in inclusion? And the U.S. Supreme Court same sex decision should absolutely be included as it involved a significant change of policy for the U.S. Spanneraol (talk) 21:16, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
These guidelines as a result of attempting to reduce the bloat clearly apparent in 2008 in June 2008 (when it was 84kb). At the beginning of 2009 (when WP:RY was formulated) it was 87kb and is now at 103kb and has been as high as 109kb. The last time I went through the article there seemed to be a considerable number of entries which clearly fail the current guidelines. As for whether deaths/events are sufficiently notable for inclusion the current criteria has worked well since its inception and, as is clearly stated, any entry/exclusion can be overridden by consensus. Having such guidelines reduces the endless arguments about what/who is/was notable. As noted in a discussion above no-one has come up with any guideline which can be easily applied which does not introduce any other (usually worse) bias. As far as Deaths go, many more entries meet the minimum requirement now than in 2008, let alone earlier, because there are more wiki editors globally and more articles get created. As for consensus I put it to those who are unhappy with the current criteria who is going to monitor any changes and who will go back through all the other Recent Years applying the new criteria? It has been succinctly put by an admin not involved in these articles that consensus reflects the opinion of those editors with an ongoing interest in maintaining the quality of an article. On a final note 2015 is not 2015 in the United States. One country introducing a law change made by many countries before it is neither internationally nor historically significant (outside that particular country) and is exactly the sort of US-bias these guidelines attempt to prevent. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:32, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
I'm going to try to break down your arguments here and respond to them, DerbyCountyinNZ.
1) The page will get too big if we change the guidelines. We're not a paper encyclopedia. We can say everything we need to say about a topic, and not run out of space. Right now, we're not saying enough in these articles, because the guidelines are far too rigid about who's notable enough to be included.
2) The current guidelines reduce arguments about who's notable. This is actually a bad thing. What happens now is that people try to add someone to the article, justify why they should be added, and then get shouted down with cries of "it breaks the guidelines!" But the guidelines are totally arbitrary. We're stifling discussions that we maybe should be having, based on utterly meaningless criteria.
3) We can't monitor it any other way than this way. Honestly, I think that's provably false. Of course we can, and we do it all the time on Wikipedia. We monitor all kinds of complicated things here. Let's try to hammer out a guideline that's based on something more real than either your personal view of what events are notable (see edits like this one made with zero talk page discussion) or the number of foreign-language Wikipedia entries someone has.
4) We can't fix all the old pages. Nobody said that changing the guidelines means that we have to fix all the old pages right now this very minute. They'll get fixed over time. We're not on a time crunch here. agtx 04:51, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
You're actually beginning to stretch WP:GF here. #3 is no doubt "provably false" because you have clearly mis-stated what I wrote. I did not write that it can't be done, I wrote that non-one has come up with a better alternative. They are clearly obviously different things. I may respond to the other points later, when I have more time, although Yerpo has covered most of this below. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 06:34, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Can you please explain how I am stretching WP:GF? I don't think you're acting in bad faith here, and I don't want to imply such a thing. I know that you have good reasons for seeing things the way you do, but I disagree with them. I think that a small set of people created guidelines that they thought were good without much input from the rest of the community, and I'm trying to point out that maybe this way isn't working, and we need to find another way. agtx 06:59, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Agree with Derby. As noted before, there are thousands of deaths listed in each year's category (3600+ for this year right now). Seeing that we probably all agree listing them all would be ridiculous, we desperately need a quick, easy and objective rule to filter them out. Keep also in mind there's only a handful of editors who actually bother with filtering and therefore maintaining quality of RY pages. Having to discuss on a case-by-case basis would result in a disaster. A page can get too big - we're not limited by storage space, but we do want to ensure usefulness, and having 5000 entries on a page that was supposed to act as a summary of the most important events is anything but that. Agtx, there are tons of pages that cover everything you mentioned, from biographies themselves, to "Year in country" pages, to "Deaths in xxxx" sets (see Deaths in 2015). Following your argument, we should put all the Wikipedia content on one page and be done with it. How useful would that be, eh?
Secondly, I too note this is another in a long list of discussions that was spurred not by thinking about what RY pages should be as a whole, but by the sense of injustice that one particular entry was removed - along the lines of "I don't care about the consequences of the rule, as long as it passes the person XY through, so you must invent it ASAP". Sorry, but such narrow thinking cannot result in an improvement. I cannot take seriously an RfC (formal or not) that doesn't come with a tangible alternative to the rule in the broadest sense and possibly also an analysis what would the RY pages look like. Shouting "no consensus" and "the rule is broken" without that is almost insulting. Do you seriously expect that people who think the current rule works well will do it with no effort on your part?? — Yerpo Eh? 06:00, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
I'm going to set aside Yerpo's attacks on my credibility and try to focus on the issues. I will note, though, that several editors on this page have called for an RFC, and that the reason for doing so is to hopefully bring in some folks from other parts of the project who have different ideas.
I agree, 5000 entries on the page is bad. How about we use notability guidelines similar to how the rest of the project works -- based on published outside sources? Say, a death is notable if several major newspapers (in whatever country) run a story or an obituary. Or newspapers in more than one country? Perhaps a guideline based on international press coverage, as opposed to counting foreign wikipedia articles, could keep the page focused but arrive at it more honestly. Just like in any other page, the person adding the content would be responsible for finding the sources, so I don't think it would greatly increase the workload on the folks trying to keep the page in order.
As far as events go, the guideline includes the "3 continent rule," but if the US same-sex marriage decision or the Charlie Hebdo shooting aren't notable enough to meet that rule (both definitely have 3 continents worth of coverage), then clearly I don't understand what the rule is. Can you help me understand it? Is there an intelligible principle beyond WP:IDONTLIKEIT? If there's not, then the guideline isn't really a guideline at all, and that's a problem. agtx 06:59, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
You know, if you dislike people pointing out that you criticize without providing constructive alternatives, you should provide them sooner.
To answer your points, every biography is notable, otherwise it gets deleted, so this criterion is not useful. Same goes for events, it says that the 3 continent rule is the minimum. So the lowest threshold to even start discussing whether it's important enough for inclusion. But in a world of globalized mass media where every Kim Kardashian's sneeze gets reported far and wide, it's not useful alone, and will certainly lead to bias - because of the USA's global cultural dominance. So we try to assess its importance for international affairs, to reduce bias towards events that concern only one country.
Your proposal of the 3-continent rule for deaths is finally something tangible, but as mentioned many times before, WP:NOTNEWS, and including people that only merited a lot of attention because they died is, IMO, wrong (my favourite example here is Ryan Dunn). If you think of some good way to overcome the recentism problem, please share it. — Yerpo Eh? 07:37, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Again, the personal barbs aren't necessary or constructive. Let's focus on the issues at hand.
I understand the concern about introducing a US bias, and I think that countering unwarranted US bias on Wikipedia is important. At the same time, if we count up all of the events in the article at the end of the year and more are about the US than are about other places, I don't think that means we've failed. I think it means we've reflected a reality where events in the US are important to people around the world. The articles at hand are, after all, "2015" and "2016," not "2015 in international affairs." If there's not some stuff in those articles that's a little, let's say, fluffy, then we've failed to account for the reality that some of the things people care about aren't weighty international happenings. I'm not saying that stuff happens often on a global scale, but it happens sometimes. For example, let's imagine it was 1970 and the most famous band ever to exist announced that they were breaking up. Yeah, it's kind of fluffy, but the global importance seems undeniable.
In any case, if they're just running a Reuters story in New Zealand or an AFP story in Morocco, perhaps that shouldn't count, but if the papers are writing their own, independent coverage of the event? I don't think we're in a place to decide that's not "good enough" to be here, just because we've set an arbitrary and invisible limit on what's weighty enough to be "significant" or how many items about the US is too many items about the US.
As far as recentism, what's the distinction here between Ryan Dunn and Alexis Vastine? They're both sort of minor celebrities that died in somewhat spectacular ways that got significant coverage. My point is that if the concern is including people only notable because of the way they died, then the current system isn't capturing it. How about the guideline provides that people whose death mainly engendered media coverage because of how they died are excluded? That seems like a more direct way to solve this problem. agtx 14:11, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
For one, Vastine participated in the world's most prestigious sports event, which should count for something, at least editors in many countries thought so. I don't understand what makes you label him just a "minor celebrity" (although yes, sports figures are often overrepresented because reporting on sports statistics is easy). As for your first argument, I of course agree that reflecting American cultural dominance is a necessary evil, but if you look at RY lists, we already do that. See 2013 for example: there are 5 events listed that involve USA, the first runner-up (Egypt) meriting two and all others only one per country. Are you saying that it should be even more extreme? — Yerpo Eh? 16:02, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm saying that putting an invisible limit on the number of entries involving the US or any other country doesn't conform to the purpose of the year articles. It's got no rational reason behind it, other than annoyance at the cultural influence of the US (I understand this from the use of the phrase "necessary evil"). As far as Vastine goes, in a world where the Charlie Hebdo shooting isn't important enough to make this page, he's definitely a minor celebrity. He got one bronze metal at one Olympics and got no metal at another. 11,000 athletes participated in each of the '08 and '12 games. But Vastine got multi-language individually-focused foreign media coverage for stuff he did when he was alive, and Dunn didn't. That's a real, cognizable, and verifiable difference. So as far as a criterion: In-depth or individually-focused media coverage on at least X continents (or in at least X languages) before the subject's death. The same criterion could be easily extended for events. If the event was covered in depth, in multiple languages, in multiple countries/continents, then it seems to belong on the page. agtx 18:01, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

My use of the phrase necessary evil didn't imply annoyance with the US' cultural influence itself, but with some editors' assumption that it make sense to include every triviality just because it happened in the "world famous" country. I was saying that we already reflect this reality, for better or for worse, and that I think it's enough (roughly speaking).
What you proposed is an objective and verifiable criterion, I give you that, but it will be extremely impractical to implement, especially for deaths, and it creates a large grey area (what's "in depth"?). Additionally, it puts a huge burden on any editor who wants to add anything. How is anybody supposed to find old coverage in foreign languages and decide whether it's in depth? It would actually reduce the number of entries because most of them would require asking around for references, and the result might easily turn out to be more arbitrary instead of less. What we could do is add your proposal to the current guideline, so a person could get in even without meeting the interwiki criterion, but I doubt there would be a lot of difference, for the same reason as above. — Yerpo Eh? 19:28, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Perhaps "in depth" is a little too vague. How about "individually-focused or non-trivial"? The idea I'm trying to get at is that a passing mention or a one-paragraph blurb doesn't count. I also think that foreign language may not be strictly necessary -- international is probably enough. For example, consider Beau Biden. Before he died, he had references like this in UK papers (I can see how Biden could be a borderline case, as he appears to inherit his notability from his father, which throws into question "individually focused"). Perhaps Jerry Weintraub is a better example, since he had references such as [2] and [3]. Dunn, on the other hand, doesn't make it (at least as far as I can find).
As far as burden goes, I certainly don't want to reduce the number of entries on this page from where it is now. I would be OK with creating a presumption of sufficient notability based on the old guideline, so long the guideline makes it clear that there's no presumption that someone isn't notable because they don't have the right number of interwiki links. Basically, I don't want the discussion to look like Talk:2015#Jerry Weintraub anymore, where people get summarily shut down based on this arbitrary criterion. agtx 20:24, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

I think these guidelines are great and do an excellent job of limiting the page to only the most important entries. However, with the examples of Charlie Hebdo and the SCOTUS gay marriage decision, both events meet the guideline's requirements, and yet they have still been kept off the page. I think that's a problem.

Regarding deaths, the ten language rule is a blunt tool that functions imperfectly. However, I don't see a better option being proposed. I also think its application to royal births doesn't make much sense. -- Irn (talk) 20:09, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

@Irn: I think that the problem with the non-inclusion of those two events comes directly from the guidelines being arbitrary and vague. Basically, it gives editors license to apply WP:IDONTLIKEIT to keep things out. Do you have any thoughts on the proposal immediately above in my discussion with Yerpo? agtx 20:26, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Maybe I missed it, but I only see you discussing changes to the criteria for deaths and not for events. I actually would like to see fewer deaths in the year article, but that desire isn't strong enough to motivate me to participate in that part of the conversation.
And I disagree that the guidelines give editors license to say IDONTLIKEIT and keep things out; editors do that, yes, and there are enough of them who agree with each other that they can enforce a local consensus, but these guidelines do not give them license to. -- Irn (talk) 20:48, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
I think that the same criterion can be applied to events: Non-trivial coverage focused specifically on the event in question from at least X continents (or in at least X languages). Non-trivial means that a reprint of a wire story or a two-paragraph blurb won't cut it. If an event is happening that's getting worldwide press, I'd say it probably belongs here.
When I say that the guidelines give the editors license to do that, I mean that in a de facto kind of way. Consider how the event guidelines are written now: they say that you need at least 3 continents of coverage, but that might not be enough. Then it doesn't give anything else to judge on, other than the extraordinarily vague "international significance" rule. Because it's so vague, we end up keeping out Charile Hebdo because three people decided that it had "no global implications." agtx 21:18, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
Ok, I like the idea behind that; however, I think the language needs to be tightened up a bit because I'm afraid it will cause the opposite problem: allowing for too many events to be added. (So many events have non-trivial coverage. But I don't know how we distinguish between what is important and what isn't.) Also, reading that made me think of something else: applying the ten language test to events that have their own articles could be a solid way of establishing notability. -- Irn (talk) 21:47, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
As I've said before, I really don't like counting interwiki links. I just think that it's too arbitrary, but I'm willing to allow that it can be a reasonable proxy if there is some more robust rule behind it.
As far as distinguishing what's important, are there specific categories of events we're concerned about? For example, I don't think it would be appropriate to ban all entertainment celebrity-related events from this page, but it might make sense to have a higher standard for that kind of event. Like you'd want it to be on the scale of the Beatles breaking up, not John Cleese getting married again. Perhaps it's appropriate to say that in a specific subject area, if that area threatens to overrun the page, then it should have to be front page news? Or we could say that if the event involves only the private lives of individuals, then it doesn't belong on the page. That would keep in royal weddings and keep out celebrity break-ups. As I've said before, I don't care for the idea of keeping things off this page because we don't like them, but if one area of coverage threatens to overrun all others, then it makes sense to rein it in. agtx 15:25, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
A rule to exclude the private lives of individuals (allowing for certain exceptions) sounds fantastic to me as well as something to prevent one area from overrunning the page. I think that might go a long way for what's important, but there are other things. One that comes to mind is a minor Costan Rican artist has a controversial show in Nicaragua. It gets covered in depth by outlets in South America, Central America, the USA, and Spain, but after a week, it's pretty much forgotten. That doesn't seem important to me.
I'm sorry if this is frustrating for you; I feel like I'm not being very helpful. But I don't have a clear handle on how to define "important", but I do think our current practice is far too limiting. -- Irn (talk) 16:48, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Is that an actual show you are talking about, or ...? — Yerpo Eh? 05:52, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

No, this isn't frustrating because of you; it's frustrating because this is a hard thing to figure out. I've been thinking about how we can come up with a guideline that handles both celebrity gossip and the kind of situation you talked about. Maybe one answer is to effectively delay adding events for a reasonable amount of time -- two weeks or so. Then we say that over that two week period, we want to see evidence of continuing coverage to indicate that the event is actually notable and not just a flash in the pan. There are going to be times when events are so dramatically and obviously notable that they would show up right away (something on the scale of the Japan tsunami or 7/7), but the general rule can be to wait. I think that would have the effect of keeping out a great deal of the celebrity gossip (nobody's breakup gets international coverage from reliable sources for two weeks) and the minor stuff that doesn't have any staying power. agtx 21:34, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Repeating dates

In year articles, including recent years, there seems to be a de facto standard that dates should not repeat.

Rather than

Events

...

We use

Events new

— Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:09, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Changed project guideline, per apparent consensus. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:47, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

US inaugurations

GoodDay has been (re)adding United States Presidential inaugurations to all recent years, even though there is agreement that the election should rarely be included. Comments? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:06, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

I've been adding them, because they were already in the Year articles, leading up to 2005. As a result, I took the WP:IAR route & inserted them in the 2009 & 2013 articles. If they're not to be re-added, shall I delete the entries on all the other Year articles? GoodDay (talk) 03:08, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
WP:IAR should not be used to reinstate your own edits. And this is the wrong forum to discuss removing the inaugurations from year articles up to (and including) 2001. Please contact Wikipedia:WikiProject Years and Wikipedia:WikiProject United States. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:21, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
I've contacted those WikiProjects. GoodDay (talk) 03:26, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Presidents, Prime Ministers in deaths

I cannot find the discussion at the moment, but I believe there was a consensus that Presidents, Prime Ministers, First Citizens (my indended intended reference was to a work of fiction, rather than the Roman Emperor), and other country leaders should be listed even if they do not have sufficient articles. Recently, in 2008, the 1st President of Malta was added to deaths, even though there were only 7 foreign-language Wikipedia articles at death.

If my recollection is correct, could we we adjust WP:RYD accordingly? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:48, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

I support that. But with some sort of caveat so that it doesn't apply to interim presidents with very short terms. -- Irn (talk) 21:19, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
Yes, as Irn says, the consensus has been that and head of state be included regardless of any other criteria except where the term is so short as to have no international impact (e.g. caretaker Prime Ministers or interim Presidents). The project page should be amended accordingly. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 21:25, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

New Years Eve Continual Update

For a number of years we have had editors adding a running commentary on New Years Eve as different villages/towns/cities/countries are no longer in the current (or next) year. Can be have some sort of consensus on RY how this should be dealt with, I would support the current year and next year changing at the same point perhaps based on wiki time. Wikipedia is not a running news service, any thoughts, thanks. MilborneOne (talk) 22:57, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Agree. And a request for full protection of the years concerned for 24 hours. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 22:59, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
Agree. And I think the 2017 page should be semi-protected until January 1, 2018, just like how the 2013 article was semi-protected until January 1, 2014. How does that sound? 206.45.42.137 (talk) 23:19, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Terrorist incidents

As these are increasing in frequency and scale there needs to be more definite criteria for their inclusion. As a first step I've started Template talk:C21 year in topic#Terrorist acts to establish where best to include these in the Template. This should make it easier to direct users to a more appropriate place for those incidents which are excluded. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 10:27, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

2001

Should 2001 be part of the recent years (Even though Wikipedia was founded in 2001)? Because I had that in my mind for a little bit. 206.45.9.182 (talk) 04:10, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

I, too, had it in my mind for a little bit that 2001 was included. While I think it would make sense to apply the RY guidelines to all years, the one thing that clearly prevents that is the ten articles at death requirement, which would similarly be pretty limiting for 2001 when Wikipedia was still quite small. -- Irn (talk) 13:53, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
Yeah. I was thinking the same thing too, but the ten articles (nine Non-English and one English) at death is sometimes a bit of a challenge. Although, the recent years didn't became a thing until 2009. Or was it established earlier like 2008? 206.45.9.182 (talk) 19:32, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
It was established in 2008. One reason for this being that editors were adding extremely minor events/deaths as soon as they happened. I don't think this applies to 2001 as there were not many editors at that time and only the latter part of the year could have been updated rapidly anyway. 2001 is probably better covered by WP:YEARS, although the criteria is too vague and, in my experience, too difficult to enforce. The 9 non-English articles is now probably too low given how often relatively minor deaths exceed this. I was editing some earlier years based on a lower number of articles and also their quality but it was an uphill battle against SPAs without any definitive criteria to use as backup. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:07, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
Okay. That's all I needed to know. 206.45.9.182 (talk) 00:31, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
If you check the history of WP:RY, it was originally established as 10 years previous to the date (2008); it was then adjusted to start in 2002. Apparently, it wasn't discussed much here. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 10:45, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

"Ten languages" test

The "ten languages" test is nonsensical. A better test of what is sufficiently notable to reflect would be how many people read the English language article of the subject.

Because ... drumroll ... this is the English Wikipedia. I've read some god-awful zero-ref articles in other languages. So what?

If more readers are interested in reading the English Wikipedia article on person x, but he has fewer articles in foreign languages, he is of greater interest to our readers. I'm a bit amazed that that test was chosen (how many editors participated in that choice?). If a test had to be used, a test such as "at least 5 or 6 or 7 thousand readers accessed the article on the date of death would seem a far better test. Sure, we might lose Mike_Porcaro (who meets this crazy criterion on the basis of this zero-ref one-sentence article!) and Yoshihiro_Tatsumi (seriously, he slips in because of this - 3 sentences, 0 refs, 1 (RS?) EL in English, 1 EL to his own website!), but get Al Rosen.

Or the completely nothing special soccer player Wolfram_Wuttke; Rosen in contrast was an MVP at the highest level of his sport.

So a guy who plays in a league that has teams from countries that speak multiple languages ... say, the Euroleague in basketball ... will get included over one who plays in the NBA, whose article is three times as long, and who attracts twice as many viewers in English. Why would we go that route???

But our readers on the English Wikipedia -- where this test would apply -- are twice as interested in Al Rosen, as in any of the other three.

Alternatively, we could look at article size. Rosen's article is three times as long as each of the others.

Or article size combined with reader interest.

This test is lousy. And I think NZ's deletion of of Al Rosen just now, on the basis of this cuckoo test, is a disservice to the project. --Epeefleche (talk) 09:05, 18 March 2015 (UTC)

This is English-language Wikipedia, not English Wikipedia (and if it were English, Al Rosen might not even be mentioned because baseball is such local sport that it's practically unknown outside USA). Its scope and readership is international, as should be any such general article as RY. Furthermore, arguing that a test is lousy on the basis of one celebrity whom you personally happen to admire is not really convincing. For example, article on Mike Porcaro whom you find so unfitting for inclusion had 19.000 visits on the day he died and 30.000 the day after. Yes, that's more than four times more than Rosen. Still think that he is unworthy as compared to Rosen? Then, the "nothing special" football player was in a team that won a medal in the Olympics, which is generally regarded as the most prestigious sports event in the world. So, a bit of perspective might help to understand the inclusion criteria. — Yerpo Eh? 12:14, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
When was this changed? Was there some discussion somewhere where this was decided? How many mentions someone gets in wikipedia should absolutely not be the basis for any guideline as it is completely arbitrary. Spanneraol (talk) 12:39, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
  • The readership of this WP is those reading it in English. From wherever they may be located. They should be our focus. Our focus is not those reading it in 9 other languages (whether all located in country x, or wherever). That is irrelevant to notability for this WP.
A test based on reader views would be reasonable IMHO, though deprecated elsewhere on wp, as reflecting reader interest.
This test is non-sensical. Thousands more English WP readers view Rosen's page than, for example, that of Tatsumi -- but that is not important to this test. However ... 1 to 4 editors more than wrote Rosen articles, writing in languages other than English, create article pages on someone named Tatsumi -- and that is all-important to this test. The test asserts that the fact that those 1-4 editors wrote those articles stands for the proposition that Tatsumi is more famous internationally. How does that make any sense?
Errata. I should not have included Pocaro in the reader views comment, just the other two. They received thousands fewer views. Though his zero-reference, one-sentence, foreign-language article here is a great example of why the test does not make sense. Explain to me again why that article's existence should drive a notability decision.
These are just a few examples of why the test is lousy. Both in practice. And in the "logic" that we should base notability of a person on whether a few editors, perhaps as few as 1 editor, created an article (perhaps one sentence; perhaps without refs) in a language other than English. Epeefleche (talk) 12:55, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
Biographies have often been excluded on the base that other-language articles are very short, check the archives of RY pages. You're welcome to start a discussion on removing Tatsumi as well, but arbitrarily switching the criterion to what suits your purpose in individual cases - once it's editors, the other time is pageviews, etc... It comes across as "any rule that excludes Al Rosen is, by definition, bad". Which is nonsense, and cannot form a basis of a better criterion. You might want to read WP:NPOV. — Yerpo Eh? 13:03, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
I said that IMHO a page view criterion is sensible, as an alternative. It shows reader interest. On this wikipedia. One could also arguably add a criterion of size of article.
Rosen is just an example of why this test doesn't make sense. There are other even more dramatic examples.
Deleted this month based on the rule: Ernie Banks (58,000 views the day he died; another major league baseball MVP), Dean Smith (51,000 views; no doubt he would have been covered in more languages had he coached in Europe), R._K._Laxman (34,000), Florence Arthaud (32,000), Steve Montador (28,000), Jimmy Greenspoon (14,000), and Rosen (8,000).
While included were: Tatsumi (2,800), Wuttke (3,000), Wim Ruska (1,500), and Aleksei_Gubarev (468), and Walter_Burkert (429 views!). Epeefleche (talk) 13:33, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
I still believe that popularity should not be the main criterion (there is an overabundance of sports and pop stars as it is), but international importance, which is better reflected by the coverage in various languages of the world. We're here to educate, not entertain. Including other metrics and calculating an abstract index may be a better solution, but that would be incredibly complicated. Perhaps if someone was willing to program a tool to do it... — Yerpo Eh? 14:50, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
"Articles in 10 languages" was included from the first version of this page as a rough test of notability. In terms of compatibility with the rest of our notability criteria, it's not a very good one. For example, it's explicity ruled out in WP:OTHERLANGS. Page views is not very good either (WP:POPULARPAGE). I don't think it's going to be possible to come up with one or two numbers that indicate notability. Notability will have to be a kind of informal consensus on the basis of discussions like this one, and it should be based on both generally accepted criteria and substantial coverage in WP. For example, a baseball MVP seems notable. Can we generalize that for notable athletes? Say multiple grand slam winners in tennis or gold medalists at the Olympics. I would say that Yoshihiro Tatsumi is notable because he was significant in the history of manga, had a long and appreciative obituary in the NYT (that's a good criterion – obits in major newspapers), and has a substantial article on the Japanese WP. For authors, highly acclaimed. For politicians, well-known national politicians, heads of state, long-serving and influential Senators (Ted Kennedy, Barry Goldwater, etc.). It should be a higher standard than simply notable enough for an article in Wikipedia. It should be a substantial article. And add other criteria as needed when somebody complains that this person is obviously notable. It doesn't have to be an exhaustive list, just a list of examples and criteria to show that we have a high standard here. For births, it should be even higher. About the only people who are notable at birth are royal babies. – Margin1522 (talk) 16:10, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
If we were going to have a view-based criterion, it would have be views in the week before death (or fatal injury). Views on the day of death merely indicate the death is (for the lack of a better word) "popular". We need some sort of objective criteria which will limit the deaths to no more than a thousand or so per year. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:19, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
A view-based criteria would not be a realistic basis for international notability unless it was possible to determine where the view came from and the nationality of the user. If Al Rosen has 30,000 views with 29,000 of the being from users the US (IMO an underestimate rather than overestimate) then that would him notable in the US and worthy of inclusion in 2015 in the United States but not 2015. The language criterion is not perfect but has worked well since its inception (close to 7 years ago now) and as always can be overridden by consensus in individual cases, both for and against inclusion. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 19:35, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
@Derby-The king has no clothes. This test does not test "international" notability. It tests whether 1-9 editors created 9 non-English WP pages. At the very most, it turns on the acts of a mere 9 people. While ignoring the views of tens of thousands of readers.
Second, those 1-9 editors may all be in country x. They may not be in different countries at all. It could even be an English-speaking country!
Third, those articles needn't be based in turn on RS coverage in 10 different countries. In fact, that appears to generally not be the case. These articles can be devoid of refs whatsoever! Or be based entirely on English-language refs.
Fourth - why should "international" notability be the test in the first place? Even if you were able to gauge it? (Which this guide clearly does not do). That approach doesn't comport with core WP approaches. We don't say "Ernie Banks, Dean Smith, and R.K. Laxman are not notable for WP purposes, because though they have overwhelmingly robust RS coverage, 1-9 editors in other non-English wikipedias didn't get around to writing articles on them."
As examples, Ernie Banks and Dean Smith each had over 50,000 views the day they died. That is an objective test. We use views in other areas on WP as an objective test, such as in deciding which article to direct to when we have multiple people with the same name. And these 2 men had hundreds of views the day before they died (if you prefer Arthur's suggested test). Each article of their articles is robust; over 50kB in length. Yet this guideline treats Aleksei Gubarev as more worthy of being reflected in a wp article. And he had only 468 views the day he died (less than 1/100th of the others). And 6 the day before he died. And his article is under 4 kB in size. The above examples, including these, are just from this past month. This is not working well. Epeefleche (talk) 21:07, 18 March 2015 (UTC)
So basically, Americans are important and the rest of the world isn't? DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 06:36, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
Derby -- no. Obviously. You can't possibly have read what I wrote, and responded with that. I'm happy to lay it out for you yet again. But you should be able to read what I wrote, and know that of course your statement is wrong-headed. Let me know if you need me to reiterate it in order for me to be clear to you as to why your statement is completely at odds with what I have written.--Epeefleche (talk) 03:38, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
I'm always saying that the word "importance" is perhaps better for describing the criterion for inclusion here than "notability". Page views may reflect massive media coverage for a semi-famous person who died unexpectedly (as sometimes happens with celebrities if there is a slow news week in real life), but will be utterly forgotten a few months later - and this goes against the principle of WP:NOTNEWS. Ryan Dunn is an excellent example. As per my argument before, I believe that there is an overabundance of sports and pop stars as it is; there's more to life than that, and we should promote curiosity about less recognizable (but important for humankind's progress) people, not just feed the readers what they can read in every tabloid. — Yerpo Eh? 06:12, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
If the 10 language rule represents a consensus, please link to the community discussion establishing that consensus. Rlendog (talk) 14:48, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

To mitigate the problem of worthless non-English coverage, we could add a condition that links to spam Wikipedias (ceb:, war:, min:, vo:, io: etc.) don't count. Although the rule should be kept as simple as possible. — Yerpo Eh? 18:51, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 20:31, 11 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I agree with Epeefleche that the 10 languages rule is ridiculous. We have a stronger rule that Wikipedia is not a reliable source and this is especially true of the Wikipedia editions in minor languages as they are sparsely edited and, where they are edited, this often done by bots or mechanical translation. We should not be determining fame or importance in such a self-referential way. What we require are independent sources. I suggest that we should be considering the extent to which such individuals got obituaries in major media such as the New York Times, The Times and The Economist as they tend to be quite selective. Viewing statistics are also worth considering as they are now easier to obtain and are a sensible way of measuring what our readership wants. Merle Haggard, for example, got over a million views when he died, making this one of the top 5 articles on that day. Bowie's numbers were similar and this level of traffic should be enough to ensure inclusion. The figure of a million is a nice round number and so would make a good bright-line rule. Andrew D. (talk) 23:17, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
  • I also agree that the 10 language rule is ridiculous. It prohibits the inclusion of truly notable people -- icons and in some cases pioneers in their respective fields -- all because users on other wikis had not yet found the time or desire to create a page for them. Some people don't become notable until many years after their death for various reasons, but we wouldn't be able to add them to this page because, whoops, sorry, people didn't bother to create your page on sites outside of this one. And why are guidelines for the English wiki being dictated by what's on lesser-read, lesser-edited foreign-language wikis? --ThylekShran (talk) 19:36, 3 August 2016 (UTC)
So... who will decide who is "truly notable" and a "pioneer"? I'm sure you can find somebody stating that for every celebrity. Are you saying that we should list all these people for 2015? — Yerpo Eh? 04:06, 4 August 2016 (UTC)
  • According to WP:ARTN, article content does not determine notability and "notability is a property of a subject and not of a Wikipedia article". And yes, article quantity applies under this rule also. Determining notability of something in a Wikipedia article by consulting other Wikipedia articles is a form of self-referencing, and as a result, is an inaccurate metric. If something is notable enough to have an article on one language's Wikipedia, it is notable enough to have an article on any language's Wikipedia. (except if there are slight differences in the notability policy from one Wikipedia to the next, but that's unrelated to this issue) As a result, this metric of notability on WP:RY should be changed, and in general parts should be rewritten/added to/updated to reduce ambiguity. Thanks. WClarke (talk) 04:24, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
Repeating this argument without providing a better alternative is wasting everybody's time, you know? — Yerpo Eh? 08:06, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Railway completions

I fail to see how the completion of even an international railway could have international significance. Look at, for example, 2021, with two recently added, but two others already present. There may be some exceptions (longest tunnel, deepest tunnel, longest bridge), but, in general, I don't see it. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:08, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Removed the rail completions fron 2012 as clearly of no international significance. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 20:59, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
Also airliner completions Boeing 777X, first commercial flight (or scheduled commercial service) between X and Y (again with exceptions; longest flight, or flights between the US and Cuba, the PRC and Taiwan, or even possibly Israel and Iraq.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:21, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Scope of this project

This project currently covers all the years from 2002 onward. Obviously this will keep growing and it is already difficult to maintain adequate coverage of the existing years (there being so few active project members). I think we should consider placing a time limit on the scope, either 10, 15 or 20 years before the current year. Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by DerbyCountyinNZ (talk • contribs)

In the absence of guidelines for inclusion in non-recent year articles, I don't think we should lose the existing guidelines for inclusion in (say) 2002. I can see reasons the project might be rescoped, but we should keep in place restrictions against everyone (with a Wikipedia article) born in 2002 ending up in 2002#Births. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:43, 4 January 2017 (UTC)
I would note that this isn't actually defined as a project with members at all but rather is an editing guideline that happens to be maintained (and indeed known about at all) by a small number of users. It's a tiny little area of Wikipedia with it's own rules that don't exist anywhere else, that is what keeps there from being more people contributing to this area. That being said, I agree with the basic proposal, at some point a year is not "recent" anymore and can be released form these restrictions and just be an article on a year. Givn the low level of particpation I would suggest either 10 or 15 years would keep the workload manageable. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:04, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Calendar and Births

Why does Wikipedia use the Gregorian calendar era as its default? There are myriad other calendars in the world. For example, in Iran and Afghanistan, the Solar Hijri Calendar is the official calendar used, and, in India, it is the Indian National Calendar. I understand that the Gregorian calendar is the most widespread calendar system in use today, but, if this were to change in the future, and some other calendar would overtake and supplant the Gregorian as the world's most commonly-used one, then, would Wikipedia's usage of it as the default calendar system change to accommodate this? And the same for the base-ten (decimal) number system, which is used as the default radix for the labelling of years and dates on Wikipedia, for now, quite understandably, as any other bases, or even the concept of number bases in general, is foreign to much of the world's human population. But if, like the calendar issue, this situation were to change in the future, would Wikipedia adapt to this change, as well? And, finally, I have noticed that Wikipedia uses the date of birth to the date of death to demarcate people's lifespans, which is understandable, as well, since, at this time, that is the predominant human cultural convention. However, since it is well-established, biologically, that someone is alive during the intrauterine (i.e., antenatal) portion of their lives, but society does not count this period of life as part of someone's age (a big part of which is, I presume, the difficulty inherent in finding out exactly when someone's life, including the antenatal portion of it, truly began, as the exact date can be very difficult to pin down), if technology were to, hypothetically, advance enough in the future that exact dates of conception could be ascertained, and if this technological advance caused a change in society that caused governments around the world to count people's ages from conception instead of birth, would Wikipedia reflect this change, as well?

Basically, to reiterate, there are three norms used on Wikipedia's year articles (the Gregorian calendar, the decimal number system, and counting people's ages and lifespans from the dates of their birth) that are not grounded in scientific or mathematical necessity, but are, instead, merely human cultural conventions that happen to be predominant at the moment. If any of them ever change among society, would Wikipedia also change its conventions on year articles to reflect said changes? 68.225.173.217 (talk) 19:40, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Your concerns have nothing to do with this Wikiproject. Take this to Wikipedia:WikiProject Time etc. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 21:59, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
True, but I would add that the simple answer is that this is the English language Wikipedia and the vast majority of people for whom English is their first language use the Gregorian calender. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:06, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Multi-part RFC on Wikipedia:Recent years

See Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Multi-part RFC on Wikipedia:Recent years. Just to clarify: I put it there instead of here because I believe the core issue is that not enough people partipcate here and this is an attempt to get broader input on how RY issues are handled. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:48, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Since it looked like nobody else was going to do it and the results were fairly obvious, I have just closed the RFC [4] Beeblebrox (talk)

Fiction

See WT:YEARS#Fiction. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:45, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Sigh. This means we will have to establish suitable criteria for inclusion. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 03:33, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
I believe the conseus arrived at was that fiction set in a. particular year should not be in either the article for that year or a stand alone article. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:58, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
In which case it is surprising that the project page was not changed to reflect that. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 07:39, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
The projects weren't informed of the multiple AfDs. That might be considered sufficient to invalidate all the closes.... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 20:03, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
Funny, because you particpated in at least one of them, and mentioned that someone should inform the project, yet you didn't do so (because you "didn't trust yourself" to provide a simple link to a discussion? really?) and now you want to use that as a rationale to ignore the consensus arrived at there? I don't think you're going to find many users who agree with that line of reasoning. Beeblebrox (talk) 23:33, 18 January 2017 (UTC)
Actually, the project wasn't informed of any of the multiple AfDs of these articles. I only commented on the last one. You could make a case that the last one was valid because I failed to inform the project. However, there were at least two previous bulk AfDs, and no project was notified of any of them. That would normally be enough to reopen those AfDs, removing the precedent for the last AfDs. — Arthur Rubin (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 08:35, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

If you really want to try that I don't suppose I can stop you, but again, I don't think the community will see it that way. Firstly, while WP:YEARS is in fact a project, this page is defined as an editing guideline, not a project. I'll grant that in practice it kind of functions like one, but I cannot think of anytime, ever, that I have seen a requirement to inform an editing guideline of a discussion of some pages that may fall under its scope. And actually, there's no requirement to do so even if it is a WikiProject, project members should be watching pages that fall within the scope of the project and would therefore see the nominations in their watchlist, especially bulk nominations.

The usual methods of spreading the word about AFD nominations is informing page creators and adding to relevant WP:DELSORT lists, but even these steps are not actually required. Trying to do a back-door reversal of the consensus arrived at in those discussions by talking about here, on a page that you know from your long experience participating here is only watched by a few people is not going to end well. Things didn't go the way you wanted. It happens. I imagine all this sudden attention on what is usually a very closed shop over here is a bit disconcerting, and I understand and sympathize with the work put in here to maintain standards at these articles, but if the community says it doesn't want a particular type of content it is not within the purview of a group of editors who happen to specialize in that area to just overturn that consensus. So, like I said, you can try this if you want but all I can see coming out of it is a lot of bad noise and needless re-arguing of closed discussions. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:34, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Images

Some issues regarding images which I think need some consensus and then to be added to the project page.

  1. We need to point out that images should not overflow the Deaths section.
  2. We need to clarify that the selection of images is based on relative importance and balance among the subjects of notability (i.e. no bias towards Americans/entertainers)
  3. Overcrowding of images, including use of multiple images. I think this makes the articles look messy and think it should be avoided.

Thoughts? DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 23:49, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Good ideas, but some of the multiple image templates nearly match the height and width of the images. Come to think of it, I'll try and see what I can do to match the width and height of the multiple image templates. It's really hard to find some of them that are non-Americans/Entertainers. 206.45.42.137 (talk) 23:52, 25 December 2016 (UTC)


I had been bold and added a summary of consensus and standard practice under Wikipedia:Recent years#Picures. Please improve and/or discuss. You can also just state your support for this addition if you agree, so we can direct people asking when was it decided to this discussion. — Yerpo Eh? 14:08, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Births condition

Does the 10-language test for births apply to years before 2002? I've seen a particular user add a massive number of names to some years (especially 1935 and 1936, which I reverted for now), many of whom have no languages other than English. I think the criteria should apply, because it is impractical to list every individual with birth-year 1935 in one article, and there is no reason for years before 2002 to be different. EternalNomad (talk) 16:11, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Years before 2002 are not covered by WP:RY, they come under WP:YEARS. That project (still) has no clearly defined criteria, but it should. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 16:46, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Edit notice

So, there really wasn't enough discussion at that RFC to say there was a consensus to have an edit notice for recent years articles, but I think it would be a good idea ot have one so we can at least say we tried to let people know about the existence of these guidelines. We could also use it as a talk page notice. Experience has suggested that it is best to keep these things simple and to the point or people don't bother reading them, so I would suggest something like this:

Thoughts? Beeblebrox (talk) 22:15, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 03:07, 22 March 2017 (UTC)
Per WP:SILENCE I'm going to proceed with implementing this. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:32, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
 Done and I also created Category:Recent years. There may have been some fancier way of doing this, but I just copy/pasted the code from above to manually create each notice. If there is a desire to have an actual template each individual notice wil have to be edited to include it, didn't seem like a big deal since there is literally only one new article added to this category a year. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:54, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

Terrorist incidents again: objective viewpoint

The Manchester bombing raises, yet again, the issue of whether such incidents are appropriate for inclusion in Recent Years. As with many others, this incident was perpetrated by the individual of a country against other people of that same country. It is therefore not an International incident and does not merit inclusion in Recent Years. From and objective viewpoint, there have been many other such incidents that have not received the same coverage merely because they have occurred in countries where such incidents are now relatively commonplace. To treat such incidents differently because of the country in which they occurred is subjective, not objective, and not an appropriate basis on which to decide inclusion/exclusion. Comments. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 08:11, 24 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree, terrible though this incident is, it is just one of many terrorist attacks worldwide already this year. There's no infdication this is some sort of watershed moment that is going to change the world. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:31, 24 May 2017 (UTC)
See also my earlier attempt at resolving this above! DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:17, 25 May 2017 (UTC)
Exactly - there's no justification to include this, but not the many terror attacks in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc. Jim Michael (talk) 18:23, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

2017: June 27 – The UN announces that FARC has fully finished their disarming process

Clearly this is only relevant to a single country, just because the UN announced it, it doesn't make it internationally relevant. So should it stay or be removed? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:27, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

An international organisation has made a declaration about an armed international group, so it seems relevant enough. This discussion should be on Talk:2017. Jim Michael (talk) 18:33, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
I see. But sports events attended internationally, reported on internationally by global news organisations isn't relevant enough? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:37, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
And isn't FARC's activity Colombia-centric? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:40, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
We have 2017 in sports especially for that.
Yes, but they operate to a lesser extent in several other countries.
Could someone please move this to Talk:2017?
Jim Michael (talk) 18:45, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Which other countries? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:51, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
They're listed in FARC's infobox, next to Area of operations. Jim Michael (talk) 18:52, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Aha. So remind me again why Cloudbleed isn't allowed? Or Ceres (dwarf planet) or Malta Declaration (EU)? The Rambling Man (talk) 18:55, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Security bugs aren't usually historically notable. Ceres wasn't discovered last year, it's merely that something about the planet has been. The Malta Declaration doesn't have an article on any other WP, which shows it's not that important. Jim Michael (talk) 19:07, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Are you joking? You have one in the 2017 article already. Ceres was featured in WP:ITN recently. Malta declaration is important because it's been reported globally, and the "other WP" argument is looking weaker by the second. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:14, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
I guess you're referring to the WannaCry ransomware attack. That wasn't a security bug - it was an organised attack. Jim Michael (talk) 20:26, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Your point being? Suddenly the criteria excludes security bugs that affect the world, but includes organised attacks that affect the world? The Rambling Man (talk) 20:31, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Edit notice

Apparently, according to this project guideline:

All articles within the scope of this guideline should be added to Category:Recent years and should have the same edit notice as other pages in the category.

I'm not seeing that happen at all. Is it real? Or should it be removed because it is simply ridiculous to add such a category to so many death articles? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:23, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

It means the year articles from 2002 onwards, not every article within each of them. Jim Michael (talk) 19:37, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
That's not what it says. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:05, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
The wording is ambiguous and should be improved. Jim Michael (talk) 20:13, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Suggestions please. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:17, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
The scope of the guideline is only 15 articles. If that is unclear from the rest of the page I would suggest that is where a change is needed. Perhaps this will help clarify the extremely limited scope of this guideline. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:00, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Other Wikipedias

Just a polite question before we get started properly on this, why is "nine other Wikipedias" considered the bar for notability for inclusion? Most Wikipedias, such as German, Italian, French etc that might report the same kind of things that are here have very few concerns over referencing, tone, notability etc. I don't believe we should be decision-making based on the content of other Wikipedias (which, as we know, are all unreliable sources anyway). This "significant notability" needs to be determined some other way. Thoughts (before I open this up to the rest of Wikipedia)? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:26, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

The short answer is that someone made that up out of thin air some time ago, and it has become entrenched. An RFC earlier this year on this project's rules produced no usable results regarding this particular rule, and so it was considered upheld as there was no consensus for an alternative metric. Seems to be a problem of inertia combined with the fairly low profile of this page. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:52, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Ok, that's what I had feared. I think we'll try again shortly to revise entirely these criteria, some of which seem to be irrelevant, some of which seem to be incomplete, some of which seem to be unwritten (or tucked away in archives). Certainly "nine Wikipedias" is the most bizarre criterion I have seen in 12 years here. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:18, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
The nine non-English articles plus English is a guide, not a hard-and-fast rule. We've made many exceptions to it. Jim Michael (talk) 18:35, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
I think it's completely ridiculous to judge international notability on Wikipedia entries. We need to re-work this completely. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:40, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
What would be a better guide? Jim Michael (talk) 19:26, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Internationally recognised reliable sources per WP:RS. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:29, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
You mean if it has international media coverage? Thousands of events each year (including many deaths of people of marginal notability) have that. Media coverage doesn't equal notability. Jim Michael (talk) 19:32, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
One of the project's own criteria suggests the opposite. Plus it's much more reliable than Wikipedia coverage. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:36, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
That's only part of the criteria, not enough in itself. It would result in pages being swamped with domestic events that were reported internationally. Jim Michael (talk) 20:15, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
This "swamped" argument is often repeated but not relevant. What we're discussing here is what actual criteria should be applied. The current criteria, including this bizarre dependency on "Wikipedia coverage" (without any quality assessment) is clearly absurd. I keep hearing this "it's only part of the criteria, not enough on its own" but that's not what the criteria says. So, I suggest we remove this absurd criterion and stick with genuine reliable sources, not Wikipedia articles which, as we all know, are not reliable sources. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:40, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Project statement regarding the quality of items included within its purview

As I work on numerous projects that usually impose some kind of minimal quality threshold, I was surprised to discover that this project has absolutely no minimum threshold whatsoever (not withstanding relying on other Wikipedias (which are not RS) to demonstrate so-called "significant international notability"). In all cases, in all such projects, there's a statement to contributors to enable them to understand the minimum level of quality expected of all items included within the scope of the project. I have assessed this and attempted to add a suitable paragraph to the project guidelines, but have been reverted a couple of times, most recently by involved admin Arthur Rubin. We need to establish a sentence or two for the guidelines that enables our contributors to understand what quality of items is suitable. Right now, I started assessed it as The quality of included articles does not need to be considered at all. because that appears to be the case from both recent experiences, and talk page archives. There has been practically zero discussion about the quality of items linked herein. And it's very important that this is noted to our editors (and, until we can demonstrate to our readers what this project applies as its inclusion criteria, our readers), so the continual edit warring, reverting etc can be somewhat alleviated. So, I propose that a section be added to the "===Inclusion and exclusion criteria===" section which establishes that the quality of linked articles is of precisely zero concern to this project. If anyone is prepared to argue against that, please provide some substantive evidence that those which are linked herein have been assessed for some minimal quality level. Thanks! The Rambling Man (talk) 20:44, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Odd balance

I keep being told that we mustn't include certain news items because it might "swamp" the page. Right now, the page is completely and utterly swamped with deaths. E.g. 2016 has 36 events, 3 births yet around 300 deaths. Is that what our readers expect to find at a year article, ten times more death notes than actual events? The Rambling Man (talk) 22:03, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

There are very few births because very few people are born internationally notable. The number of internationally notable people who are dying has increased a lot in recent years. There may be too many deaths, but you think that Prodigy is important enough, which is contributing to setting a low bar for international notability. Jim Michael (talk) 22:17, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Not at all, I'm with the community consensus on this one, i.e. four people in favour against you. But then if it was up to me, there'd be no "deaths per nine Wikipedias" here, it would just be "deaths in 2017" which is much more informative than this page, and comprehensive, without any hidden criteria. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:24, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
You seem to have trouble counting, and with the definition of "the community". So far I see you and 1 other against all active members of this project. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:17, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
No, the consensus for the guidelines has been built by regular editors over a period of years. That's a huge list of deaths, which the readers would have to look through individually to see who was internationally notable. Jim Michael (talk) 22:38, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
This is a huge list of deaths, especially compared with the number of "notable" events. It's out of balance completely. The Rambling Man (talk) 04:51, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm in favor of setting the bar for deaths higher. — Yerpo Eh? 05:18, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, it does seem necessary now. This seems an appropriate point to ping a few more editors who are currently, or were relatively recently, active in Recent Years. Elephantpink (talk · contribs), Rusted AutoParts (talk · contribs), MilborneOne (talk · contribs), ProjectHorizons (talk · contribs), MelbourneStar (talk · contribs), Arthur Rubin (talk · contribs). Hmmm, not many! DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 07:18, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Also it appears that a vast number of those included here should actually be in the lower level categories (e.g. 2017 in music, 2017 in sport etc). The Rambling Man (talk) 05:52, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

They probably are already. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 06:52, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Ah, so listed at 2017, Deaths in 2017, 2017 in music .... all with slightly different criteria. How unhelpful to our readers. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:59, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
I would think any reader of reasonable intelligence who wanted to find out which musicians died in a particular year would look for and be able to find the relevant Year in Music article, it's in the infobox at the top of the page. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 07:21, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
So they needn't be repeated in the 2017 article then. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:02, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

It does seem that there's a fairly trivial number of events from the year in these articles and masses of deaths and I think the solution is to work at both ends - trim the number of deaths and add more events. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 08:33, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm also in favor of setting a higher requirement for deaths, but I'm also curious as to how many foreign language articles an individual should attain before their death. – Elephantpink 12:05, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
I dont think we should include deaths and leave it to Deaths in 2017 to cover this area, the fact that some are internationally notable is a bit of an artificial concept so I would support not including them at all. MilborneOne (talk) 15:35, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Interesting idea. I could possibly go with that. What if a Pope / President / King / Beatle died? --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 15:36, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
I would consider that (or the events around it) a noteworthy event rather than just the death of an individual and could be treated as such on the year page. MilborneOne (talk) 15:44, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
Only a tiny proportion of internationally notable deaths are major events (political and religious leaders, royalty, an occasional celebrity), so you'd be excluding the vast majority of them. Jim Michael (talk) 21:19, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
I agree with MilborneOne, these deaths are covered at Deaths in 2017 or if really notable, at a page such as 2017 in film. They should not appear in all three locations so as a minimum they should go into the subpages if possible for consistency with the way the articles are treated. And we simply must not use foreign Wikipedias as a guide to "international notability", foreign Wikipedias are just a guide to how many editors contribute to those Wikipedias. We should just opt for reliable sources, of which Wikipedia is not one. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:07, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Couldn't agree more. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 10:55, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Reliable sources don't usually say what is or isn't internationally notable. Merely being reported in many countries doesn't mean that an event is internationally notable, because many trivial events are reported by the mainstream media in many countries. Jim Michael (talk) 22:04, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia coverage is worse than that. It depends on people writing foreign-language articles with no editorial oversight and with no reliable sources. Why would you imagine that nine of those supersedes reliable international coverage? The Rambling Man (talk) 22:08, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
The nine non-English WP articles plus English is a guideline for including deaths, not events. International coverage doesn't equal international notability - if it did, we'd have to include Pippa Middleton's wedding and many events in Kim Kardashian's life. Jim Michael (talk) 22:10, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
It doesn't matter, the "nine non-english WP articles" thing is absurd, regardless of how it's applied, as described above. Utterly absurd. And no, we wouldn't, just as the rest of WIkipedia doesn't do that. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:12, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia guideline

Can someone please point me to the evidence that this project's style guide has been accepted globally as a Wikipedia guideline? I'd like to see how this was achieved and when, because I imagine things have changed here substantially since it was accredited as a guideline, not just a project guide. Thanks. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:51, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Apparently one editor can simply change the guideline without consensus, while I can't. Involved admin Arthur Rubin, presumably you'll be reverting that change too? The Rambling Man (talk) 21:21, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Actually, it only became a Guideline earlier this year. Check the edit history for the precise date and location of the RfC. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:46, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
No, give me the precise link here please. I didn't find anything which amounted to an RFC that accredited this project's terms and conditions as a Wikipedia guideline. It should be very simple to link to it, thanks. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:49, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
I'm on my smartphone, so I cannot search easily. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:53, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
But that's part of the whole POINT. If you can't point to the moment this tiny project's style guide became a whole Wikipedia guideline, something's really wrong. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:55, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
The RY inclusion criteria have developed over the years. You've suddenly taken a huge interest in it, having previously showed no interest. Jim Michael (talk) 22:08, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
RFC at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 133#Scope of recent years guidelines. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:13, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, I missed the part of that where it said it was a Wikipedia guideline and not simply a project guideline? The Rambling Man (talk) 22:16, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
No, I found it: "After some discussion between about five users on the talk page, it was moved into project space and marked as an editing guideline one week later." and then reinforced by three or four editors at that RFC. Wow. This all needs to change! The Rambling Man (talk) 22:19, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
In the meantime, Arthur Rubin, are you just reverting my edits to the guideline, or all edits? Please be specific. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:20, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
You showed no interest before and you haven't suggested better inclusion criteria. No-one's reverting all your edits - many of them have been reverted because you're going against the guidelines and in some cases prior consensus. Jim Michael (talk) 22:24, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

No, Rubin is selectively reverting me. And please Jim, use preview, you continually tweak your posts causing endless conflict, stop it. And so what if there was little interest in this odd set of guidelines before recently? There certainly is now! You will soon be seeing some serious changes. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:35, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

Only if you can come up with better inclusion criteria than international media coverage or the current criteria. Jim Michael (talk) 22:54, 30 June 2017 (UTC)
You'll only use preview if I can come up with "better inclusion criteria than international media coverage or the current criteria."? And actually, I already did come up with better, and that was to use reliable sources not Wikpiedias (which are _not_ reliable sources). The Rambling Man (talk) 20:56, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
No, I meant we'll only see these serious changes to the inclusion criteria if you (or someone else) comes up with better inclusion criteria. RS don't usually state whether or not an event is internationally notable. Simply being reported in different countries doesn't prove that, because loads of stories are reported in many countries. Jim Michael (talk) 02:13, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
The great news is that the community is dead set against your current approach, so that's one thing! The Rambling Man (talk) 18:46, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
  • @The Rambling Mad: This question had it's own section at the RFC earlier this year. As I recall, I found that in fact the initial decision was made unilaterally by just one user some years ago, so I brought it up in the discussion. I've already shared this diff, which would appear to be the one you're looking for as it is the exact moment when a consensus was declared. As you can see participation at the RFC was rather light even though it was well advertised at CENT and so forth and was open much longer than 30 days, so I don't know where you could go next if you want to change thigs, but I don't think your current, rather acerbic approach is doing you any favors. Beeblebrox (talk) 05:01, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
    It's okay, the RFC on various items is already more than enough traction to give this project a complete audit, and to ensure it gets more than the handful of comments than the last debacle. Your opinion on my approach is noted. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:56, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Consideration 1: WP:RY as part of WP:YEARS

Given the concerted efforts by a single editor to overturn consensus and at the same time change the aims and content of this project it is pertinent to point out that this project comes under the greater scope of WP:YEARS ([[Category:Recent Years]] coming under [[Category:Years]]). The essential difference being that are, or at least were (see Consideration 2 below) frequently being edited at the time the entries occurred, with little or no account being taken of the international or historical notability of those entries. It was agreed, by consensus, that stricter criteria (three in fact being no criteria defined for [[WP:Years]!, a continuing issue!) needed to be applied to such years, the result being this guideline/project.

Substantially changing the content of Recent Years, such as removing the Deaths section, to the point where the average reader will notice, and presumably query, such changes does not seem constructive. Therefore any such changes would have to be made to ALL years. Good luck with that! DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 23:34, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

You missed the main point. How do our readers know what's included at this odd project? We'll be addressing the fact that consensus has clearly changed in due course, but claiming this to be suitable for our current readers is way off the mark. And as for what we do with "ALL years (good luck with that!)", not relevant right now. We focus on what is happening here and now, and then assess how that works prior to 2002. As we all agree, right now the readers of this encyclopedia have not one clue how the people in the deaths section are selected, nor why some of them feature in half a dozen places while other events are consigned to a sub-page "because there's a sub-page for it". We have a long way to go, but at least we're now on step 1, and that's accepting we have a problem here. Step 2 (the RFCs ongoing at Talk:2017) is demonstrating that a problem shared is a problem that more people understand and are willing to help out with. This project has clearly stagnated with regulars believing they're doing the right thing, but sadly that's no longer the case. We're going for the long game here, and plenty of RFCs to come. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:00, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
Actually, what you are doing is bullying, or, at best, redefining terms with an established technical meaning in Wikipedia, rather than attempting a reasoned argument. I suggest you correct your user page. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:27, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
Funny that, four of you and one of me? I'm standing up to your tactics, and thankfully the RfCs are demonstrating that it's a worthwhile endeavour. Now until you have something positive to contribute to the RfCs or suggestions or actions on the "guideline" (e.g. Reverting your lopsided actions, as an admin you should know better...) better let others discuss this as their input is proiving invaluable. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:29, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
You've written as many words as all four (or is it five) of us together. Whether the words have any meaning is a separate issue. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:41, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
Seriously, the RfCs are proving that beyond any doubt whatsoever. They aren't dealing the abuse of your position, that's a separate issue we'll come to. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:49, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Proposed change/clarification of "internationally notable"

Propose clarifying "international notability" for events by adding "one of the most internationally significant events of the year" (for past years) and "expected to be one of the most internationally significant events of the year" for the present year. I thought it was the obvious meaning, but it appears I was mistaken. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 18:25, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

  • Oppose too subjective as the RfCs are adequately demonstrating. What one man thinks is significant, another thinks is purely domestic. This would not help. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:37, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
    Less subjective than any of the other credible alternatives so far presented, but there does appear to be some problem with it. I don't see how it is more subjective than the present guideline.... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:45, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
    Once again, you need a crystal ball to determine if something is going to be significant. That's not what we're here to do, this is an encyclopedia, we work using reliable sources, not guesswork. The Rambling Man (talk) 04:36, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
    Nonsense. I would consider reliable sources stating the event to be internationally significant as a minimal requirement, but all Featured Lists have editor discretion in determining what is to be added, usually as to whether the entry should be considered significant. "We" use reliable sources, but we are not required to include everything they say. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:15, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
    I'm not saying it likely that we should strive toward Featured List status; I'm just saying the TRM's stated goals are not met in any of them. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:17, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
    "but all Featured Lists have editor discretion in determining what is to be added" completely incorrect. Most lists in fact have a clearly defined and usually purely objective scope which defines their content, there is rarely "editor discretion", so please don't make things up. Attempting to determine if something is going to be significant is crystal balling, and you should know that. The Rambling Man (talk) 05:59, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Consideration 2: When do Recent Years stop being "recent"?

This point has been raised before but no consensus was reached. Given the discussions above, and noting in particular that immediately preceding, this is something which now needs some urgency. The project's aim at its inception was to put in place criteria which would reduce the effect of editors adding content as it happened without regard for its international and historic notability. Obviously as time passes this is no longer happening and content is being added as it would for any historic year. So at what point does the Recent Year become a Year? At the end of that year? 5 years? 10 years? In any case the year would move from the scope of WP:Recent Years to that of WP:YEARS, which as noted above means that the criteria for its content would change. Under the current criteria for this project the change would be fairly significant, under the changes suggested on this page, even more so. So, how to deal with this so that the average reader is not perplexed, not mention retaining whatever consistency there is (currently less than ideal) between recent years and all other years? DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 00:04, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

All years from 2002 onwards should be under RY. If we removed older years from the scope of RY, it would give people free rein to add loads of domestic events to them - as there are on year articles prior to 2002. Jim Michael (talk) 02:38, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
WP:YEARS could be amended to not only establish criteria for years formerly under the scope of WP:RY but also all other years, there being practically no criteria for them in any case, an issue which has been long overdue for a remedy. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 05:55, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
We'll pick this up in the forthcoming RFC, but it would still be interesting to hear what the regulars think. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:01, 1 July 2017 (UTC)
I am genuinely curious as to how you think you are going to get better participation. Beeblebrox (talk) 05:43, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
Well, just take a look at those RFCs, already getting plenty of contributions and plenty which point to the fact that the current approach is wrong. Early days but a very good start! The Rambling Man (talk) 06:01, 2 July 2017 (UTC)
You lost me, which RFCs are you referring to? Beeblebrox (talk) 17:14, 3 July 2017 (UTC)
Have a look at Talk:2017. They're about to shake up the way items are included since the community are vastly against the status quo as applied by the "project regulars". There have been more comments there than when this oddity was enshrined in actual Wikipedia guidelines...! The Rambling Man (talk) 18:08, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Letting the reader know what is included here

There's been a lot of chat on Talk:2017 about the complete confusion that both readers and several editors have in getting to grips with the inclusion criteria here. What's become obvious is that this is really unhelpful, and that our readers should be informed, clearly at the top of each of the recent year pages, what criteria applies. After all, it is obvious to us all that more than one single notable event took place in each of February 2017, April 2017 and May 2017. While this is a significant problem, it is just the first hurdle needed to be negotiated; this curiously selected set of so-called "significantly notable international" events does not seem to serve the purpose of an encyclopedic "events of 2017" article. But that's for another day. Right now we must focus on informing our readers how items have been selected here. This is not unusual at all, especially when intricate inclusion rules are deployed, and will be helpful in guiding our readers to other articles which contain what they are looking for when land on these principally empty pages. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:02, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

There is an edit notice at the top of each page when a reader edits. That readers take no notice of the notice(!) is their problem. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 11:47, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Sorry, you misread, I wasn't talking about editors, I was talking about readers. Thanks. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:50, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
TRM's suggestion is a good one. More communication is a good thing, responding that there is already bad communication is a bad reply. I clicked through various places looking for information you mention and only found it after a good hunt. It isn't on the talk page, it's not very visible on the edit page - how many WP:CENT notices do you spot when you look at your Watchlist? Why resist a perfectly sensible suggestion? (And TRM's reply is even better). --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 11:52, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
Yes, a notice at the top of all RY articles would be useful. Jim Michael (talk) 18:35, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
As someone who knows precisely what criteria are applied to each section, please formulate appropriate wording for each of the relevant sections, including exceptions and those items which are "usually" not included (as you told me, e.g. "We don't usually include awards or space-related events." even though that's not indoctrinated in the criteria, as far as I can tell....) The Rambling Man (talk) 18:39, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
You must have missed this bit

Events which usually do not merit inclusion (I've highlighted the pertinent part, excuse the formatting):

Annual championships such as the World Series, Super Bowl, Stanley Cup, or NBA Championship Annual world or continental championships in any sport, such as European or African football tournaments

Any other annual contest, such as Eurovision Song Contest or American Idol

What is missing is that entirely predictable events (such as astronomical events) which otherwise lack anything which identifies them as more extraordinary than all the other similar events, are not notable. We also don't usually include spaceflights unless they are a global first. A formerly rare event which becomes increasingly common reduces notability accordingly. For simplicity (avoiding arguments as to when it completely stops being notable) it is best to stop at the first occurrence. Of course the next manned moon landing will be an exception. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:29, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I think you missed the point yet again. These are instructions for editors, not for readers. The Rambling Man (talk) 06:31, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Ah, of course! We have to explain everything to the lowest common denominator reader! Actually, no we don't. A general summary at the top at the top would be sufficient. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 06:51, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
What are you talking about? Who mentioned anything about a "lowest common demoninator reader"? All that's been said here is that because such odd inclusion criteria are applied, it's basically impossible for any reader to understand what should and what should not (currently) be included. A notice at the top of every page is essential. The Rambling Man (talk) 05:53, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Historical education: One editor's history of this project

As the current discussion has been extensive and rapidly changing (I have not wasted my time reading the last few hours' additions to this talk page), and, due to time-zone issues, much of this happens during periods when I have not been able to respond in a timely manner I thought it best to try and summarise as much as possible in one hit. Given the length necessary for this, I have had to do it off-wiki as it obviously was going to take considerable time which I have precious little of to waste, but it is clearly necessary. With allowances for memory fade over the intervening 9+ years (I am happy to accept any factual corrections) these are my recollections of the development of this project.

WP:RY was instigated after my attempts to remove some obviously inappropriate entries in 2008. Anyone who thinks that the state of this article at this point constitutes an appropriate representation of the most important and encyclopaedically relevant entries for the year is probably never going to be on the “same page” as I and most other members of this project. A “quick” check of the editing history shows that Arthur Rubin (talk · contribs) is the only member of the project from that time who is still active (mores the pity).

The guidelines were drawn up by editors other than myself, but, if memory serves, my only concern was with the likelihood that the requirement of non-English Wiki articles for the Deaths section would be problematic due post-death creations (the requirement was later amended to 9 non-English articles ‘’at the time of death’’). There are obviously issues with this as the basis for inclusion, but as no-one was able to come up with anything better, then or subsequently, it has remained the standard and has worked well. As always there are exceptions, for both inclusion and exclusion, and these have been resolved by consensus on the appropriate talk page. The point of this criterion is to have an ‘’’objective’’’ basis to avoid the otherwise endless talk page arguments which largely consist of “he’s exceptionally well-known where I come from vs “no-one where I come from has ever heard of him”. I, and others, have tried to come up with better criteria, but most people are more intent on a criterion which allows someone they want included (largely American sports/media personalities and to a lesser extent British) to pass rather than considering the wider implications. In reference to a matter brought up elsewhere, it has also been the long-standing consensus that state leaders are by default internationally notable and therefore exempt from the minimum articles criterion (except in the case of a tenure so short as to have no international notability whatsoever). I don’t believe that there has ever been a suggestion that any state leader be excluded, nor any argument that any should not be included.

At this point it seems appropriate to determine how “consensus” has been applied. WP:CONSENSUS states “Consensus on Wikipedia does not mean unanimity (which, although an ideal result, is not always achievable); nor is it the result of a vote. Decision-making involves an effort to incorporate all editors' legitimate concerns, while respecting Wikipedia's policies and guidelines” An admin I encounter on other aspects of Wiki has summarized this as (something like) ”Not a mere vote, but policy-based arguments with the intention of maintaining ‘’the integrity of the article in an ongoing basis/project”. The latter part is crucial as consensus in this project, especially early on, has often been the result of a plethora of “me too” votes with the particular aim of getting an individual/event included while completely disregarding the purpose of the article. It is clearly stated on the project page that “Any of the standards set below can be overruled by a consensus to ignore those standards in a given case.” Most of the more persistent attempts to change this project have resulted from editors who have not been able to accepts that they failed to get consensus to make an exception to the criteria.

Which brings us to “the purpose of this article”. It has been my view, and also, I believe, that of other long-standing members of this project, that the purpose of this article is to present the most internationally and historically significant events, births and deaths of the year. The argument that “everyone who is notable enough to have a wiki article is notable enough for inclusion” is completely nonsensical. Not only would the article balloon to well beyond the recommended article size, including “everyone” would duplicate [[Category:<Recent Year>]] and [[Deaths in <Recent Year>]]. With regard to Events, the minimum standard at the start of this project was the “three-continent” rule. Clearly any event which failed this basic test could not be internationally notable. Unfortunately this has never been modified, although it has been long-standing consensus that merely “making the news” is insufficient. Making the news is (obviously) no criteria at all. Everything from internationally notable, local event, transient media “storm in a teacup” to absolute trivia makes the news. ‘’’This cannot be used as an objective criterion for inclusion’’’. The difficulty has always been the threshold, or rather, thresholdS, as the determination of “international” and “historic” notability clearly varies across the types of event. Disasters are the most obvious event and probably the most frequently argued events. Disasters which directly affect multiple countries, cyclones, earthquakes and international flights being the most obvious, are usually included without argument. There is also the argument that the number of deaths is irrelevant. So an earthquake resulting in 200,000 deaths solely within one country, the deaths being of that country only, receiving no physical assistance from any other country (just the usual condolences messages) would be excluded but an earthquake resulting in the deaths of citizens of multiple countries and receiving actual physical assistance from other countries would be included. As you might suspect from this example it is my feeling that the number of deaths ‘’’should’’’ be taken into account (allowing for that fact that different types of events should have different minima). This is something I have tried, unsuccessfully (obviously!), to establish on more than 1 occasion. Again I would like to emphasise that the point is to establish ‘’’objective’’’ criteria. It is far easier to point out to editors that something fails a specific criterion and then argue to make exception, than to argue that it is/is not “internationally notable”. As usual there are exceptions but even these have usually been at a manageable level, which I doubt would be the case if inclusion rested solely on media coverage. A bias which most members of this project have sought to avoid is the emphasis on Western, particularly American events. This results in attempts to include events such as an earthquake (I’m really NOT obsessed with earthquakes, it’s just that they’re scope is the easiest to compare!) which caused nothing more than mild panic on the eastern seaboard of the US whereas earthquakes causing hundred or even thousands of deaths in third world countries are ignored.

A similar problem exists regarding terrorist acts, and as these become increasingly prevalent this will only get worse. Even if a minimum death requirement were implemented this could soon become outdated. It was not so long ago that even deaths in the double-digits were rare enough (at least in the West) that there was little argument against their inclusion. I’m sure there was more I was going to include, but it’s been a long day and I have other stuff to do. One last thing: Any attempt, or rather, persistent attempts, to impose the standards of WP:In the news to this project are, IMNSHO, NOT constructive. They have clearly different purposes, which I would have thought was obvious but apparently not. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 10:45, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

I don't think they do have "clearly different purposes", they both should be seeking to bring information our readers want to find about events that have taken place throughout the year, just these ones are about the year as a whole, ITN is about the last week. Same concept, different timescales. That's really simple. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:25, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
A minimum death toll for terror attacks, accidents etc. wouldn't work. If it were applied worldwide, the large majority of events would be in parts of Asia and Africa where there are wars, insurgencies, poor health and safety standards etc. If you had different death minima for different parts of the world, that would be biased and West-centric. Jim Michael (talk) 18:32, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
They certainly do have different purposes. RY articles are for international events and deaths of internationally notable people. Jim Michael (talk) 18:32, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
No, RY articles are for an extremely limited number of international events, and for a bizarre inclusion criteria of so-called "internationally notable people". Wikipedia already has WP:N and Deaths in 2017 for the latter, a pseudo-subset based on dubious criteria is completely unhelpful. As for the events, well we'll work on that. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:43, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
It's not dubious - it's the best way so far. Jim Michael (talk) 22:19, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
No, not at all. That this project believes that 300 deaths per year versus 30 events per year to be a suitable ratio is clearly problematic. But don't fret, we'll get to this eventually, one step at a time. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:22, 28 June 2017 (UTC)
Yet again you show your ignorance of the aims of this project, I suspect deliberately. "this project believes that 300 deaths per year versus 30 events per year to be a suitable ratio". No it does not, and it never did. No upper or lower limit has even been proposed (AFAIR). The issue has always been quantity, not quality. That there are too few events and too many deaths means that the criteria for inclusion need to be redefined. DerbyCountyinNZ (Talk Contribs) 04:03, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
And yet again you bring no helpful argument to this discussion. What you said is what I said: the ratio is problematic. I'm glad you agree. The Rambling Man (talk) 04:48, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
The purpose of WP:ITN might be to report what news articles (say, in the past week) are notable, when added. (That might be why it's not archived – it would just make us look foolish, listing events which appeared notable, but turned out to have no signigicance the following week.) The purpose of the year articles is to report the (internationally) significant events which occur(ed) during the year, regardless of when significance is established. (For deaths, it is supposed to be deaths of a person significant during life.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:41, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
Yes, I understand your interpretation of the purpose of this page, it's abundantly clear, that's why there's only a single "internationally notable" event for three months of this year! The Rambling Man (talk) 04:48, 10 July 2017 (UTC)
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