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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)
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)
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)
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:
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)
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)
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)
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)
In year articles, including recent years, there seems to be a de facto standard that dates should not repeat.
Rather than
...
We use
— Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:09, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
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 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
See WT:YEARS#Fiction. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:45, 15 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)
Some issues regarding images which I think need some consensus and then to be added to the project page.
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)
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)
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:
![]() | Please make sure all additions to this article are consistent with the
guidelines for articles on recent years. Thank you. |
Thoughts? Beeblebrox ( talk) 22:15, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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
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)
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)
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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)
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)
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)
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:
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)
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)
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)
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)
In year articles, including recent years, there seems to be a de facto standard that dates should not repeat.
Rather than
...
We use
— Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:09, 27 June 2015 (UTC)
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 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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
See WT:YEARS#Fiction. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:45, 15 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)
Some issues regarding images which I think need some consensus and then to be added to the project page.
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)
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)
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:
![]() | Please make sure all additions to this article are consistent with the
guidelines for articles on recent years. Thank you. |
Thoughts? Beeblebrox ( talk) 22:15, 21 March 2017 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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
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)
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)