:Talk:Main Page#Inaccurate fact in the leading hook

The 'In the news' section on our main page looks more like a sports page than a news forum. Currently there are three spots related stories in this section The story at the top, which has been posted at least two days, "A nightclub roof collapse in Santo Domingo", while interesting, is certainly not world headline news. Rarely do we see the latest breaking events where it concerns e.g. Ukraine, Israel-Gaza, etc as the lead story. The latest Ukraine missile attack in Sumy should be the top story right about now. We should be seeing more top story news, and fewer stories about sports figures that only appeal to fans of the respective sport involved. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 18:01, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

:Sports-related items are put into the In the news section of the main page according to the guideline WP:ITNSPORTS. This guideline can be discussed at Wikipedia talk:In the news.

:Editors are welcome to participate in the discussions of candidate news story to put on the main page at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates. —⁠andrybak (talk) 20:04, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

:::Guidelines was not the issue. Lack of top news stories is the issue, with disproportionate sports coverage. Since this is the Talk page to main page, where this situation exists, it seems appropriate that the matter be discussed here.. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 20:21, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

::::The 3 sports blurbs in a row is a bit of a fluke. That usually doesn't happen. Rarely, it's 3 national elections. Rarely, it's 3 natural disasters. Usually, it's a mix of those. It's whatever gets approved at WP:ITNC, using ITN guidelines as a ... guide, so yes, guidelines are the issue. ITN is not a news forum, and it is not intended for "top news stories". It is a place to see quality articles that have been substantially updated about subjects that are in the news. ITN has a system. If you want to change that system, WT:ITN is, indeed, the place to discuss it. If you just want to complain, then here is fine. Floquenbeam (talk) 20:36, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

:::::Don't appreciate the inference that I'm here 'just' to complain.

:::::::{{tq|It is a place to see quality articles that have been substantially updated about subjects that are in the news. }}

:::::There are articles for the Ukraine-Russia war and the Israel-Gaza war, and they are routinely updated as significant events occur. I suppose this is more of a case of no one nominating the article in question, or if they have, it didn't get off the ground. -- Gwillhickers (talk)

::::::both of those are in the “ongoing” section of ITN, on the main page right now, and have been for months/years. Floquenbeam (talk) 22:14, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

:There is no 'top news' or 'news forum' section. The section is called 'in the news' because it highlights high-quality encyclopaedic articles that have been updated (or newly created) to reflect current events, see WP:ITNPURPOSE. These are high-quality Wikipedia articles about topics that are in the news, not news stories that happen to link to some articles. The section is not intended to be a news reporting website or to feature every story that is getting media attention. The primary limitations on what gets posted are a) the quality of the associated article, and b) participation in the nomination process at WP:ITN/C. If you would prefer to see more items on other topics, I encourage you to write/improve those articles, and to participate in the nomination process. The section could always do with more volunteers to help keep it running. Modest Genius ^talk 11:44, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

:I would suggest going to a news site for news, rather than coming to an encyclopedia and complaining about the poor quality of its news reporting.--User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:01, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

::Too right, {{u|Khajidha}}. Schwede66 23:31, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

The Jet Set nightclub roof collapse mentioned above had 231 fatalities which is very significant. For context, this is about 7.75% of the fatalities in the 9/11 attack and one of the largest losses of life in the country outside of natural disasters. The "Ongoing" section covers the various conflicts so that individual battles and attacks don't dominate the ITN space. There is a reason why sports and elections tends to dominate: which is they're straight forward and objective, thus they pass through the approval process much more easily. Through happensatance, there tends to be a lot of sports stories now. You and anyone else is free to nominate an article at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates Harizotoh9 (talk) 21:46, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

::Thanks for the explanation. The roof collapse story, which is indeed significant, has been posted now close to a week, while other significant events have not. It's understood that articles must be nominated and approved. When people see the title section heading, "In the news", it's very easy to assume that this a news forum and is where new stories appear, which they often have. Of course we don't want to post something on ITN every time a new battle occurs, but this last one brought an abrupt and unexpected end to the cease fire. With Ukraine and Russia firing missiles at each other at the same time, in such alarming proportions, many around the world were concerned that this may have triggered a world war, dragging countries like China, Iran, United Kingdom, USA, etc, into this highly unstable situation. This was not just another battle. And just for the record, I don't come here to get news, or "just to complain", per some of the other complaints, I just happened to notice that the story in question had not appeared.. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 17:22, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

:::If you aren't here to get news, why are you treating this page like a news ticker? It isn't one. Saying that it doesn't meet the expectations for one is nonsensical. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 18:17, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

::Portal:Current events is more akin to a news tracker, but they post everything. Wikipedia:In_the_news/Candidates is where news articles are posted to be debated on adding to the ITN bar and in fact most don't make it. Harizotoh9 (talk) 17:10, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

• {{u|Gwillhickers}} ITN has a dedicated talk page, WT:ITN, so you should raise your concerns there. The war in Ukraine is already posted to Ongoing, so every massive attack Russia makes is unlikely to gain traction to post separately. ITN is not a news ticker or for "breaking news", it's a means to highlight quality articles about topics that happen to be in the news. It's not required that they be top headlines. You are free to participate at WP:ITNC; you are free to oppose posting sports events(though you would need to get consensus to strike them from the recurring events list). 331dot (talk) 18:27, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
• :The Pope’s death seems to have resolved the issue. The ITN Section is no longer dominated by sports. Blueboar (talk) 18:34, 21 April 2025 (UTC)
• ::Boston Marathon is probably going to be posted next. Sports events, deaths of major figures, etc are much more straight forward to quantify their importance than others. There was a few ITN candidates for recent court cases in USA and UK, and there was not a determination of their importance, because at this second it isn't. History books may look back in 50 years and say so. So yes, there's a slight bias towards major sporting events. Harizotoh9 (talk) 22:43, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

How do you define "active"? The 118,000 figure is wildly exaggerated and seems to be full of newbies and vandals. I doubt there's more than a quarter of those we could truly consider active and productive. It was 124,000 a few days ago. I'd rather see an accurate and useful figure of how many articles of quality we have. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:35, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

:"Active" is defined as "Users who have performed an action in the last 30 days". It appears it does not include IP editors. Floquenbeam (talk) 17:05, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

::You can actually see the list at Special:ActiveUsers. The exact number is meaningless for a variety of reasons, but the order of magnitude gives people a rough idea that "many" people write Wikipedia. Kind of like the article count, actually, which isn't particularly meaningful either. —Kusma (talk) 18:33, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

{{Edit fully-protected|Wikipedia:Main Page/Yesterday|answered=yes}}

On the page Wikipedia:Main Page/Yesterday, please change:

to

to mirror the changes done to the Main Page in Special:Diff/1225315602/1276485694. —⁠andrybak (talk) 01:16, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

:{{done}} , thanks! Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:25, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

::Could you please also do the same for Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow as per Special:Diff/1286940913?

::Side note: unfortunately, when viewing the source of fully-protected Wikipedia:Main Page/Yesterday and Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow the button "Submit an edit request" leads to Wikipedia:Requests for page protection/Edit. I've tried to dig into this issue during the HTML layout overhaul in 2022, but never figured it out. —⁠andrybak (talk) 01:31, 23 April 2025 (UTC)

::: It has to do with the talk page being protected, since the template infrastructure can't tell whether you're autoconfirmed or not. And looks like FFF already did that. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 04:01, 23 April 2025 (UTC)