See the discussion here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ITN...s_for_August_26

All I have to say to the opposers is, "Are you freaking kidding me? Stefanía Fernández of Venezuela winning the Miss Universe pagent is a more notable event than the death of one of the United States' most elder statesmen? More notable than the death of the oldest member of the once most venerable political family?"

I guess most of Wikipedia/Wikinews admins went, "Kennedy who? The MTV VJ?"

No wait, even Kennedy on MTV was before their time.

Putting Kennedy on the main page would diminish both Kennedy and Wikipedia.

It would diminish Kennedy for the obvious reasons.

It would diminish Wikipedia because it would recall WP's atrocious record on BLPs of public figures.

Wikinews: the place to go for the latest on cricket match results in Sri Lanka and Nepal.

Of course it is! Really, what kind of silly question is that?

Stefanía Fernández...Horsey mucho gusto

Newyorkbrad wants to IAR on this and is getting shot down. What a bunch of maroons!

Well, as shooting targets go, Brad is kind of hard to miss.

Good on Brad, because if I had seen it first.. well.. I'm not one of the more polite folks when presented with idiocy, and I think I would have said it more.. vehemently, shall we say.

I can understand WP don't want to be too US centric, but...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baitullah_Mehsud

and not Ted Kennedy?

That's just stupid.

I think this is comical. That discussion is full of anti-American bleating about how
"non-notable" Kennedy was......plus a lot of twaddle about the ITN being "inaccurate"......


Excuse the hell out of me....isn't the Wikipedia (that they're soooo fond of),
an American invention, hosted mostly on American servers?

Let's see, the opposers bitching about America-centrism include:
Natrajdr (T-C-L-K-R-D) (Indian),
Modest_Genius (T-C-L-K-R-D) (Brit),
Daviessimo (T-C-L-K-R-D) (Brit),
Ashishg55 (T-C-L-K-R-D) "I AM CANADIAN!!"
Cargoking (T-C-L-K-R-D) (Irish),
Stephen (T-C-L-K-R-D) (I think he's Irish, can't tell for sure--major vandal-warrior)
Offliner (T-C-L-K-R-D) (appears to be Russian)
Dendodge (T-C-L-K-R-D) (Brit).....

....and Lar. I think he's being sarcastic:Plus:

Good point:


Whilst all these twits argued, Juliancolton added it himself.

I find it comical that these British Commonwealth, ex-Commonwealth, and Irish Wikipedians are aggressively anti-American....on a nominally American website. If they hate America, why don't they start their own British-o-pedia or somesuch? Then they can be as anti-American as they please.

Maybe I should report this to Fox News or Rush Limbaugh.....

You ... think ... I was being sarcastic? Apparently I did not lay it on quite thick enough?

I passed this link along to my colleague who teaches public affairs reporting and online journalism at a western land grant university. The discussion, in a nutshell, reveals the extent to which Wikipedians lack mature editorial judgment. It's as if Beavis and Butthead were in charge, creating an Idiocracy.


Lar, what this needs is a good song parody, suitable to the comic opera that it caricatures.

Good spot. Robert Kennedy and JFK were linked to the Seigenthaler incident, which began the serious focus on BLPs in the first place. While vandalism to Ted Kennedy's bio this year prompted Jimmy Wales to announce the implementation of flagged revisions.

Has the discussion been removed? I don't see at the link given, or on the talk page.

If Americans don't want English editors to have a say on what is supposed to be the "English Wikipedia", then why don't they use another language? Cheyenne perhaps. At least it would mean your "nominally American" website wouldn't appear at the top of British online searches.

It has been archived.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=310242366

Oi Lar, leave the Ashes out of this!

2-1, to the ENG-ER-LAND.. (can't stand the whining of the Aussies.. started watching the sport back in 2005 when I was working overnights, it was the only sports on at that time of night)

Do you think the ITN Cabal would argue against putting the Super Bowl on the main page?

It was collapsed, but it's all still there Under August 26, Ted Kennedy.

And the fun just keeps on coming. Ashishg55 and Cargoking are bitching at each other on their talk pages. Cargoking is Irish, and objects to an In The News listing for the death of the most famous Irish-American politician in Washington. For once, Tanthalas39 and Crotalus are right. This ITN insiderism and anti-Americanism is a bad thing for Wikipedia if it continues.

Touché.

Well, if nothing else, this was an interesting bit of wiki-humility for me, posting a change and being reverted within one minute.

Right now, I have a feeling that there's quite a few ITN "regulars" who are wondering what the name of the truck that just hit them was.. a good thing, probably..

How is that being sarcastic? He's quite right.

They have before.

It's one thing I quite like about Wikipedia. The Main Page "In the News" section gives quick overview of international news with no overt geopolitical bias. So we learn about elections and other incidents in regions of the world not normally headlined in the media.

I'm glad to see Ted Kennedy's been restored. But reading that history is pretty disappointing: an administrator reapplies his removal of Kennedy with the justification "please, dont IAR"?

Either way, I can understand the motivation to weed out a systemic bias towards American news, particularly when it comes to fluff pieces like beauty pageants, sports, and "bra and panties matches." But if an elder statesman with a half-century-long career in globally important politics dies, it's certainly newsworthy.

It's also a convenient place to engage in anti-American bigotry. Go ahead Kato, keep deflecting.

Woah, I think Kato has a point, to a point.

In The News should not just be what you can see on the front page of every newspaper. I don't mind ITN mentioning things around the world, (it can be a good opportunity to learn more things about what's going on around the world).

But considering the amount of press (national and international) Ted Kennedy's passing got, the ITN reaction, was quite frankly, stupid

International News = Anti-American bigotry.
Facts = Anti-American bigotry.
Reality = Anti-American bigotry.

etc etc...


Ted Kennedy is a well known international figure and his death is more newsworthy than many stories that have appeared in the Main Page section. As for Miss Universe - I didn't know that crap still took place?

I'm not sure what you are trying to say there, Kato, it doesn't really make sense. Seems you're trying to brush off absolutely any complaint of anti-American bigotry as flying in the face of reality etc, etc.

The truth, Kato, is that there is American-centric editing at Wikipedia, mostly because a lot of Americans edit there - to be expected. And there are a lot of people who try to counter that. Then there are anti-American bigots, like yourself, who look for any opportunity to take a dump on American policies, topics, and, if you can get away with it, Americans in general.

Then report me to the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Charges include preferring international news rather than American-centric news.

Whether or not it was appropriate to show Mr Kennedy's death in the news section, it is well-known Wikipedia has a strongly American bias. For what claims to be a neutral encyclopaedia, its coverage of western world topics well outranks those elsewhere. This is certainly an issue. The useless "Did you know" section is as biased as you can get, with a message telling the admins there to update with half of the articles based on American topics.

I had fallen asleep early last night, with the radio in the other room still on, tuned to my local NPR station. I was sleeping soundly when, around 2AM, the overnight BBC feed carried an interview with Jimbo Wales. His loud annoying voice woke me up. I could barely hear the BBC newscaster, who was querying Jimbo about the flagged revisions.

Immediately after the interview with Jimbo, the BBC carried the first bulletin of the death of Kennedy. That story dominated the BBC coverage for the next two hours. At 4AM, the local morning news began, and they have been covering the Kennedy story all day, non-stop.

As for NYBrad's experience of being reverted within minutes, that was my normal experience, two years ago, when I first began editing out the errors in the articles patrolled and controlled by IDCab.

Looks that way. Trout truck, I think.


I think they over-reached with this one. I would expect this stunt to attract more anti-anti-US observers on a regular basis.

Oh dear, that's a desperate grab as far as responses go. By all means, keep deflecting. It's entertaining.


No, you got it backwards, Kato. You reversed the order, inserted it into others mouths and then ridicule them for something they didn't say.

Just out of curiosity, Kato, have you had any formal secondary education?

Um.... knock it off. There are plenty of bigots of all stripes at WP (and WR, and everywhere else) but to my way of thinking, anti-Americanism isn't one of Kato's bigotries and trying to badge him that way makes you look a bit daft.

IMHO anyway.

Kato opened this door, unjustly labeling me. Turns out he's the one who's a bigot. I've watched his snide, smug sideways swipes at America for months now. The hypocritical little shit needs to be put in his place.

Well, that is as it should be, as America is the world's neatest country so far. In the past, Egypt, Greece, Rome, England, have all had their turns. Right now, it's still the U.S. You might as well try to outswim Michael Phelps.

Now, it's true, America is not perfect. Sometimes we act like this leopard after it was poked too many times with a stick, by a game warden that had drugged it and was trying to get it back out of the cage into the wild. The warden with the stick doesn't quite get the window cranked up, before the beast comes right over the window and bites his ass. He manages to kick the still-somewhat woozy animal out of the truck, with both feet. He wasn't permanently injured (the only thing that makes this video watchable). But he learned a valuable lesson. Do not poke large dangerous animals, as their actions cannot be trusted to be nice. And probably some people have learned much the same about America also, in the last few years.

But still, are leopards not neat? Even when they misbehave?

All this narcissistic wounding and character assassination, and still there is no mainspace article on narcissistic wounding, even though it's the number one sport of WikiCulture.

Let the Eaaaaagle Soaarrrr!

Take it away John Ashcroft (79th United States Attorney General).

For the World's Neatest Country so far!!!

Hey, Tan got into the act and shot off his big stupid mouth in typical Tan fashion: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=310269471

So, folks, what do you think is the end route for Ted Kennedy: heaven or hell?

I always just thought of In the News as a bad joke anyway. People on Wikipedia try to overcompensate for a bias towards more coverage of American topics by keeping them out of ITN, and it's frankly just kind of funny. Most of the world's major newspapers (not just the American or even English-language ones) put Ted Kennedy on the front page; he was one of the most powerful people in the world and the last remnant of the most important political family of the second half of the 20th Century. I've also observed a general ITN bias against political topics, and in favor of scientific ones, this too works against Kennedy.

Consider, the Tianyuraptor making ITN; it's interesting to paleontologists maybe, but let's be frank, who gives a &^%$. Do you know how many Tianyuraptor GNEWS hits there are ever? ZERO. In what sense, then, is the tianyuraptor in the news?

Clearly, Teddy is due for a stint in Libertarian Hell where all four walls of his hot cell will be papered with work-comp and safety regulations which are never followed.

The only thing that can be said the 300 pieces of legislation Teddy shepherded through his side of congress was: they one-and-all acted to INCREASE the power of the central government over the individual citizen. From said citizen's wallet to his kids' schools to his very bedroom and medicine cabinet, Teddy was an all purpose, a-political, central- govenment-expander. He was happy to see the federal gov expand into private matters and public matters. If the Republicans wanted more goverment in kindergarten, he'd work with Bush (the devil himself) on that. If for some kind of national service paid for by your tax dollars, he'd work with Orrin (Borin') Hatch, Mormon senator from Utah, on THAT. Didn't matter whether it was a Republican way to have the feds control your affairs, or a Democratic way to have the feds control your affairs, Teddy was all for making it happen. He will be remembered for that.

Milton

N.B. I think somehow he would have been against tougher federal drunk driving standards to make deaths resulting from this, into (say) 2nd degree murders. As some states are starting to do. But that bill never really came up on the federal level. Federal laws against wife-beating, for minimum wage regulation, against employee harassment-- Teddy was all for any of those. Drunk-driving and alcohol regulation stuff, though, not so much. So on drunken-Irishman issues, he was libertarian-- but that's about it.

This one's much more impressive, although I did laugh out loud when they got to;
"Sing to the MotherLand, home of the free"

You see. Self-deluding propaganda is universal. It isn't just people like John Ashcroft at the White House who spread that kind of nationalistic nonsense - the Soviet Union were at it as well. Would you believe it?

We could be even crueler and ask...

Why does an "encyclopedia" need an "In the News" section anyway?

How strange is it that the great Irish-American politician dies, and over on Wikipedia,
there's three Irish editors (including this guy), all objecting to his death being on ITN?

I'm missing something here. Do average Irish folk hate the Kennedys or something?

Why does an encyclopedia need RFA, talk pages, admins, ANI, blocks, etc?

Wikipedia isn't strictly an encyclopedia; in incorporates aspects of almanacs, gazetteers, and occasionally, news reports. Therefore ITN is appropriate.

Then why is it called an "encyclopedia" or is Wikipedia threatening to change the very definition of "encyclopedia?"

Probably have little idea who Ted Kennedy was, despite the fact he was a background figure during the Northern Irish peace talks.

Don't get me wrong, Ted Kennedy was on the whole a known figure internationally deserving of the same treatment as others who make that ITN page, but his profile wasn't exactly titanic abroad. You had to be a US politics buff to know anything about him beyond simply his family ties, and he could probably have walked the streets of Ireland in anonymity if he wished in later years.

Kennedy disappeared off the international radar a long while ago, and these Irish guys were likely not around in the 1970s. Maybe oblivious or resentful of all that Irish-American Green Beer blarney that really gets on many Irish natives' nerves. Modern Irish people tend to want to escape from that old crap and view people like the Kennedys as about as Irish as Colonel Gaddafi. So you won't get as much loyalty as you'd think.

It claims to be an encyclopedia though. Then again, it claims to be editable by anyone.