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ITNR addition proposal: The Game Awards

The annual ceremony of The Game Awards has been posted for four years in a row (Misplaced Pages:In the news/Candidates/December 2021, Misplaced Pages:In the news/Candidates/December 2022, Misplaced Pages:In the news/Candidates/December 2023 and Misplaced Pages:In the news/Candidates/December 2024. I know that among other editors Rhain usually makes sure these are of quality after the ceremony is completed, so most of the quality issues are quickly resolved.
Key point is that with each of these cases, we do see coverage beyond the video game media of the show's results (that is, meeting the ITN aspect). I know that there are multiple other award events in the video game area, but of those, neither the DICE awards or the GDCA awards gain major press coverage, and while the BAFTA Games awards can see some coverage, that event also has some limited participation (eg some categories exist only for British games), whereas The Game Awards remain open for any published game. The BAFTA Games also lacks the type of ceremony of similar scale (its more a cut and dry ceremony), and its article doesn't see the same type of quality due to that, making it harder to be a suggestion.
If added there is only the one ceremony per year and the blurb should be used to identify the game of the year winner. This would be the first instance for an ITNR video game related category, not that I can see any other video game ITNR coming any time soon (closest would be one of the esport tourneys but those have had problems with quality updates as well as type of coverage they get). — Masem (t) 14:49, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose for now I think it needs more time to mature and establish itself as the highest game award, particularly since, AFAIK, there hasn't been the top tier video game award before that to consider that would have honored the 1980s or the 1990s era, for instance. Most awards in that regard at WP:ITNR are several decades old, with the "youngest" probably being Abel Prize (21 years now). The Game Awards#Reception also leaves some room to wait. Brandmeister 15:53, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Support, clear that it meets ITN standards in previous years, and it will be in the news. Provided the quality is good enough, I'm happy enough to have this as reoccuring. Lee Vilenski 18:34, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

• Support (as a primary contributor). Been waiting for this one. I think the Game Awards established itself as the "main" video game awards years ago, and has only continued to solidify its lead each year. The often mixed critical response is no different (perhaps even more positive) than those to the Emmys, Grammys, and Oscars, and certainly has no impact on their significance or newsworthiness. I think its last four ITN appearances prove that. – Rhain ☔ (he/him) 03:50, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:NOTPROMOTION as the show is a promotional trade show dominated by advertising, hype and log-rolling. Andrew🐉(talk) 16:43, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
  • By that metric so are the Oscars, Emmys, Grammy, the Super Bowl, the World Series, World Cup etc. As long as the underlying event itself is not something of corporate promotion, like in this case a large independent body of ppl in an industry voting on the winner of an award, that's not promotional. All the promotional stuff attached to the presentation are not aspects of why these events are ITNR — Masem (t) 16:52, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

  Isn't every award show? Lee Vilenski 18:49, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

  Football (association) kits are literally billboards lol Howard the Duck (talk) 18:52, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

  I mean, yes but then the only exciting bit about the Superbowl is the half-time advertisements... Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:38, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

  Andrew Davidson on what part of WP:NOTPROMO are you basing your argument? Ed  19:15, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

  Its general prohibition of "Advertising, marketing, publicity, or public relations". The prohibitions of endorsements and puffery also seem relevant. Andrew🐉(talk) 08:42, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

  “Information about companies and products must be written in an objective and unbiased style, free of puffery. All article topics must be verifiable with independent, third-party sources, so articles about very small garage bands or local companies are typically unacceptable.” — I'm not so sure that this is applicable to this conversation. If NOTPROMO really were applicable to the page about TGA, the page should have a cleanup tag or be nominated for deletion. But the article is fine every year, and it'd be very hard to make a compelling case that the subject matter itself inherently fails NOTPROMO.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 15:48, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

  Where exactly is the advertising/puffery in say The Game Awards 2024, which is the scope of what we are talking about. Lee Vilenski 17:43, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

  I can think that one might consider that 75% of the actual show is trailers for upcoming games, however, our coverage of this facet is one brief section of listing such games, or commentary from third party sources on the imbalance between game reveals and actual ceremony. Which is minimizing or eliminating the promotional elements to emphasis the actual awards and the rest of the presentation. Masem (t) 17:57, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

• Support although I would have waited for 5 years... Only in death does duty end (talk) 19:38, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose Of limited general interest. Mvolz (talk) 12:46, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

  Last show had a viewership of 154 million, far exceeding the viewership of the latest Oscars, Grammy, or Emmy program, and falls in the same ballpark as the Super Bowl (200million last time around). Masem (t) 12:57, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Support Reoccurring event that consistently gets broad consensuses in favor of posting year after year, with notably fewer and fewer oppose !votes each time. The rationales for opposing from Andrew and Mvolz are unconvincing per Masem's responses to them. With respect to Brandmeister, I don't think we need to arbitrarily wait a few decades just to decide if it should be ITN/R. I may not personally care enough about the Game Awards to watch them, but I can't deny that an enormous number of people do, and most any argument against posting TGA also applies to just about any ITN/R award show.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 15:46, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Support per Vanilla Wizard and others above. ~~ Jessintime (talk) 16:34, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Support per Vanilla Wizard as well. I also personally don't care about this, but enough other people do, and it has been regularly featured. Khuft (talk) 19:49, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

• Support. Has been consistently posted without issue and covers a major cultural sector. Not super concerned about the commercial nature since lots of entertainment awards are the same. -- Patar knight - /_{contributions} 04:12, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
• Oppose - It's hard for me to say why, but I really don't like this. I think it's the fact that not all gamers (possibly not even most gamers) will agree that this should be considered the single most important measuring stick for video game awards. I think it's possibly the fact that ITN seems to be sticking its nose in an area where there is very little contemporary cultural analysis. Whatever the case may be, I just don't like it. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:47, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

  I think the whiff you're catching is Misplaced Pages's systemic bias toward the topic area of video games. Sdkb  23:48, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

  I would argue that there's historically always been a very strong systemic bias against coverage of video game related topics on the encyclopedia. From the ITN/C nominations linked in the original post here, we can see that a sizeable percentage of oppose !votes to TGA nominations are very often WP:IDONTLIKEIT rationales such as "Videogames are not exceptional or significant" and "Nothing could be more niche than video games." even as the video game industry has far outpaced the global film industry. I think we'd recognize that "Misplaced Pages has a systemic bias towards movies" or "Misplaced Pages has a systemic bias towards sports" would be very weird sentences. There's just a sizeable segment of the Misplaced Pages editor base that will likely never perceive video games as being in the same category as other culturally significant pillars of entertainment simply because they didn't grow up in a world where interactive media was a major art form. This is becoming less of a problem with every passing year, but it's always been one.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 18:03, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Vanilla Wizard, your comment saps my faith in hope for the future of this project. Your concern is that older Wikipedians are likely biased against video games? Well, lucky for you that Wikipedians are disproportionally young, overlapping perfectly with the main demographic who plays video games. How about gender? Disproportionally male, overlapping perfectly with the main demographic who plays video games. Other characteristics? Wikipedians are disproportionally online/tech-savvy, overlapping perfectly with the main demographic who plays video games. Is this bias reflected in content? 275 video game FAs would say yes: That's more than the number of FAs on companies, chemistry and mineralogy, education, food and drink, health and medicine, language and linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy — combined. WP:WPVG is one of the 10 most active WikiProjects by participant count, maintaining things like a customized source database even as most other WikiProjects get barely enough talk page activity to count as active. I could go on.

  And ditto for sports, which benefits from such a huge amount of systemic bias that it took more than a decade to claw back the SNG that exempted articles in that area from the notability standards everyone else has to meet. Please consider that your social circle may not be representative of the global population or even your broader society, and that this may impact how culturally important video games seem. If we are to have any hope whatsoever of fighting Misplaced Pages's systemic bias, cultivating the introspection needed to recognize its most glaring manifestations needs to be the first step. Sdkb  21:48, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

  I won't leave any comments beyond this one as we've probably gotten far too side-tracked already, but I want to respectfully say that the featured articles stats show that the 275 FAs is consistent with large numbers of media and entertainment FAs more broadly. 526 music FAs, 477 television FAs, 365 literature FAs, etc. Add games to that and you've got at least 1,643 media/entertainment FAs. It's a shame that there's only a grand total of 16 mathematics FAs, but that stat is wholly irrelevant to the question of whether there's historically been a bias for or against games compared to other forms of media. While I did claim that Wikipedians who make WP:IDONTLIKEIT comments about video games are likely to be older, I did not claim the other way around. Though if I were to play devil's advocate and argue that there's such a direct correlation between an older userbase and bias against games, the provided stats also show that half of all editors are over 45 and a third are over 55, which makes the Misplaced Pages userbase significantly older than other widely used websites like Facebook which have a reputation for having an older userbase than most. But again, that was not what I said and that is not my position, I simply said those who do argue games are niche and insignificant likely grew up in a time when that was still true.  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 22:30, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

  @Sdkb You hit the nail on the head. The metrics being used to prop up the significance of video games (number of FAs, activity level of WikiProjects, GDP of the industry) really are somewhat tautological in nature. Something being popular does not translate to encyclopedic significance, and we should have care about becoming a TOP10 of the World Wide Web in lieu of covering encyclopedic topics that do not have the benefit of those same disproportionate metrics mentioned above. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:59, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

• Support. I believe there is consensus to say that the general ITN voter considers TGA the top awards show in gaming. Not that we NEED more awards shows, but that's water under the bridge if everyone else disagrees. DarkSide830 (talk) 17:41, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Terrorism and shootings

I would like to encourage discussion on whether linking mass shootings to 'terrorism' should be considered a valid argument when evaluating a nomination. Despite the fact that there is no policy stating that terrorist attacks should be assigned higher significance, some editors regularly use it as a rationale to support or oppose nominations in the same way as WP:MINIMUMDEATHS is used for deadly events in general. If you think this is a valid argument, then this should become a policy; if not, it should be documented in an essay or added to WP:ITNCDONT. Either way, it should be elaborated somewhere. In my opinion, 'terrorism' should not be used as a valid argument because mass shootings result in the death of innocent people regardless of the motive, and there is no evidence that the ensuing response by authorities is stricter for terrorist attacks (in some countries with low terrorism incidence, authorities impose strict measures and security restrictions even after domestic shootings). Furthermore, there is a very thin line between people with mental health problems and terrorists (in principle, terrorists are mentally ill people). Your opinions are welcome.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 08:22, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

If you think this is a valid argument, then this should become a policy: But WP:ITNSIGNIF is very open-ended:

It is highly subjective whether an event is considered significant enough, and ultimately each event should be discussed on its own merits. The consensus among those discussing the event is all that is necessary to decide if an event is significant enough for posting.

Ideally, we'd have more detailed general guidance, and not piecemeal rules. —Bagumba (talk) 08:47, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Some editors literally hang on to that argument as if it's a rule written in stone, so something needs to be done to prevent it in future discussions. The 'terrorism' rationale is equivalent to WP:MINIMUMDEATHS. I agree with a more detailed general guideline (similarly, WP:MINIMUMDEATHS was added to WP:HOWITN).--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 08:54, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Some editors literally hang on to that argument: And if they did, the way ITNSIGNIF is currently worded, a closer should allow it, as there's very little that isn't subjective (save for core content policies e.g. WP:V, WP:OR, WP:NPOV, WP:BLP).—Bagumba (talk) 09:05, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

I fear that what you say doesn't work in practice. How's the 'terrorism' rationale different than 'minimum deaths' or 'event related to a single country'? ITNSIGNIF covers those cases as well. The problem is that we're selective in (dis)allowing subjective opinions.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:12, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Of recent memory, most !voters don't directly mention a minimum (anymore?), and the one's that do tyoically get rebutted with "there's no minimum". "Single country" is codified at WP:ITNCDONT, so I guess you're arguing for a similar one-off exception? —Bagumba (talk) 09:31, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that's probably because WP:MINIMUMDEATHS was added to WP:HOWITN and 'single country' is already at WP:INCDONT. Nothing prevents us from doing the same with 'terrorism' if the majority think it's not a valid argument to support or oppose a nomination.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:45, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

WP:HOWITN is an essay, so you have more freedom to edit that (frankly, I think that's an easier route, and see if a related shortcut resonates or not.) —Bagumba (talk) 12:07, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

As much as I think WP:HOWITN essay would be a fine place to make such a point (speaking as one of the original authors of this essay), I would caution that HOWITN aims to be descriptive of the ITN/C culture with the intent of advising new contributors and/or users who are new to ITN in general. It has recently been picked up as a vehicle for ITN reform, but I think the best way to go about making that point is through an enthymeme, presenting the eccentricities of ITN/C as they are and allowing readers to draw their own conclusions from them. The use of terrorism as an argument might be effectively a cliche due to the varying definition of the word "terrorism" from place to place, but as far as WP:ITNSIGNIF and WP:HOWITN is concerned, it is a valid argument so long as administrators actively factor it in when weighing consensus.

In fact, scroll down to the WP:MINIMUMDEATHS section and you'll see that our tendency for posting attacks tends to increase if it is classified as terrorism in a developed nation, or a nation that is not prone to terrorist attacks. One might even say, tongue-in-cheek, that the "minimum deaths" required for a terrorist attack is zero, because we posted the October 2018 United States mail bombing attempts which killed 0 people and injured 0 people for a grand total of 0 casualties.

As a result, I think consensus has tended to go against Kiril Simeonovski even though I agree it is a purely subjective argument. However, it might be worth a second look anyway since a lot can change in a few years. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:14, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

The word "terrorism" has lost its more concrete meaning in recent years, with the word thrown around any time there is violence against others. There is actually (at least in the US as in other countries) a legal aspect of "terrorism" as if a crime is considered by law enforcement agencies, they are often granted additional powers to assure the terrorism threat is ended quickly. But that's often a claim made by non-enforcement officials within the first hours of such events , people like mayors of the cities affected. We absolutely should not assure that just because "terrorism" has been attached to a crime that it is actually terrorism (and thus not heighten the reason to post), unless we have affirmation from authoritative agencies that they consider it an act of terrorism; even then, not all such acts of terrorism are always significant. So I agree that trying to claim significance because some non-authority people claimed it was terrorism, is equivalent to trying to justify significance based on MINIMUMDEATHS. Masem (t) 15:13, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Masem opposed the Trump International Hotel explosion, writing "a single death is not significant to post as a story, unless it was determined to be an act of terrorism". These rationales are based on both MINIMUMDEATHS and terrorism as concepts. Have they changed their mind or what? Andrew🐉(talk) 20:05, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Of course not. There is no current authorative statement that that was terrorism related, in comparison to the New Orleans event. As such, it should be treated as a domestic crime, which then with only one death and destruction limited to the truck itself, plus the likelihood this was a suicide, is something we shouldn't be trying to highlight at ITN. And to clarify, my concern around MINIMUMDEATHs as a means of pleading a reason for posting is that even if the event exceeds the MINIMUMDEATHs threshold, its not always a suitable reason to post. For example, we do no post routine deaths from annual flooding im SE asia which often number in the hundreds to thousands, primarily because those are unfortunately routine. Masem (t) 20:16, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

The OP doesn't like these concepts being used "as a rationale to support or oppose nominations". Masem's position seems to be that it's ok when he does it. So, you guys don't seem to agree. My view is that such complexity and sophistry is unwise per WP:CREEP. Andrew🐉(talk) 21:13, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

I think there is a distinction between terrorist attacks and "lone wolf" mass shootings - the first ones are more likely to have longer-term relevance and impact (e.g. the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack (12 dead) is still widely remembered, while the lone wolf Zug massacre (14 dead) is now, I would wager, mostly forgotten outside Switzerland). A terrorist attack committed in the name of an ideology (e.g. Islamism, but also e.g. Communism in the 1970s, e.g. by the RAF in Germany) has a higher potential to stoke fear among the broader population than lone wolf massacre. I would agree with Masem, however, that the word terrorism is (like so many others) widely over-used nowadays, so we should await official confirmation, or at least usage of the word by reputable media, before accepting it as an argument. Khuft (talk) 20:39, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

I think that’s something that cannot be easily generalised, especially in countries with very low incidence of terrorist attacks. For instance, the Belgrade school shooting has had long-term impact and is still very well remembered even though it wasn’t a terrorist attack.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 21:10, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Sure, I wasn't saying that other mass shootings can't be posted. Khuft (talk) 21:15, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Maybe my position wasn't entirely clear. I think that editors should be able to use "terrorist attack" in their argumentation (as it can help assess significance), but whether a blurb gets posted remains subject to finding a consensus - and this will depend on other aspects too (including whether a certain event is rare or not in the country/region in question). Khuft (talk) 21:29, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

I can remember as early as the 2019 El Paso shooting nomination that a hate crime motive was proposed as a rationale to post.—Bagumba (talk) 15:12, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm more or less in agreement with Masem. "Terrorism" as a word has had it's meaning changed, and quite frankly, heavily broadened in recent years. Beyond that, whether or not something is "investigated as terrorism" usually has a lot to do with what the legal definition of terrorism is in the jurisdiction where the attack happened, and who is investigating. I don't think it means anything besides being contextual information for ITN posting. DarkSide830 (talk) 18:39, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

That's correct. The definition of 'terrorism' differs from one to another legislation. In some legislations, any attack on a public institution is considered an act of terrorism.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 17:36, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Mentioning country in blurbs

In the recent blurb about the New Orleans car ramming, "United States" was removed with the explanation that its location was well known.

By that reasoning, a U.S. state like California seems to be even more recognized (similarly Texas and New York) than New Orleans, and seemingly also wouldn't require "United States" in the blurb.

Should blurbs:

1. Include the country, and avoid the debate on what locations are not "well-known"
2. Omit the country as redundant from well-known world locations

—Bagumba (talk) 09:02, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

We really should be consistent, and not let the dominant US culture rule us. "Well-known" is obviously subjective. HiLo48 (talk) 09:23, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

What are the “well-known” locations? Are these locations “well-known” to every part of the world. And do we want to have the debate all the time? Stephen 09:51, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

I could have sworn we had more concrete advice about this than in MOS:OL, and while it applies to linking, it implies that well known locations do not need state or country specifications as long as it is clear from context. Yes, what is "well-known" is subjective, and this is where I thought we had more extensive advice that is clear what is well-known. I think we should still avoid inclusion of state/providence or country for what should be well-known places that one should be taught with a basic elementary/grade school education, with the idea that if someone actually does not know these things, they can link to the bold article which likely will have that included. Being able to do this helps with conciseness of blurbs. Masem (t) 13:03, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

I'd've sworn the same - I remember specific mention of New York (city), London, Paris, and Tokyo - and went looking through the MOS for them when I first saw this section. No luck. —Cryptic 12:21, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

• Space is tight in blurbs and common sense should be used to present the key facts succinctly. The worst offender in the current set is "Tingri County in the Tibet Autonomous Region, China". That should be "Tingri County in Tibet". Any such geographical place might be unknown and so the detailed location should be linked. That's been done for Tingri County. If it's done for places like New Orleans and Southern California then that should suffice and so we don't need to add "United States" too. The functional test is like WP:DETERMINEPRIMARY which likewise relies on common sense. Andrew🐉(talk) 09:33, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Case-by-case. A rule that works for one blurb won't work for another. Just accept that sometimes we'll have inconsistencies when the concept of following a rule to the letter is sacrificed for style and brevity in a blurb. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 13:48, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Option 2. Space is indeed tight, and omitting countries from locations that everyone already knows will help create room for other, more important pieces of information. Yes, this opens the door to debates on what counts as "well-known," but that's why evolution gave us the capacity to make editorial judgments (okay, maybe evolution didn't have Misplaced Pages editors in mind). The right level is somewhere between VA level 3 and VA level 4. Note that this is similar to the approach I advocate for short descriptions. Sdkb  23:29, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Please provide a list of " locations that everyone already knows". HiLo48 (talk) 02:05, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

As I've mentioned above, I could have sworn we had some advice along those lines, maybe not explicitly listed every location, but at least common sense advice when something should be well known (based on lengthy discussions from the MOS-focused editors). I simply can't find that anymore.

But I think it still is a common sense thing, and where if there's any real question, default to inclusion. eg: Places like New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Syndey, etc. shouldn't need any country modifiers. Masem (t) 02:14, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

I was watching an American movie last night that chose to say London, England on a scene introducing a new location. HiLo48 (talk) 02:25, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Which is silly stupid Hollywood dumbing down. (I could point to several YouTube movie critics that bemoan the need to apply location titles when the skyline is obviously a well-known city). Masem (t) 02:27, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Chances are the scene being filmed wasn't actually London anyway. It may have been filmed in Toronto. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:08, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Having travelled multiple countries in multiple continents (including non-Western), everyone knows it is commonly known what country California, New York, and Texas is in. —Bagumba (talk) 03:17, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

I do now, but I didn't always know. Your "everyone" is obviously inaccurate, and involves assumptions about our readers that we probably shouldn't make. HiLo48 (talk) 03:30, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Adjusted. However, MOS:OVERLINK tells writers to make assumptions: words and terms understood by most readers in context are usually not linked.—Bagumba (talk) 03:37, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

We're not talking about linking though, we're discussing whether the country should be there in the first place. Stephen 03:48, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Yes, I was just using it as an example of editors needing to make assumptions about our readers. —Bagumba (talk) 03:52, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

I think it needs to be option 2, but only at the discretion of admins. If the full place name pushes the blurb out another line beyond what is reasonable for the box's length at the time, admins should be empowered to truncate as is reasonable. DarkSide830 (talk) 06:21, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

• For the record, I’m not sure we’ve ever deeply cared about a blurb's length, and we manage balance for the box as a whole. Stephen 08:47, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
• I believe this could be related to what the above editors were looking for (from WP:USPLACE), though it only lists US cities:

The cities listed in the AP Stylebook are Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Honolulu, Houston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, New Orleans, New York, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C.—although Washington, D.C., does have a territorial qualifier and New York is naturally disambiguated.

These places are titled without a (city, state) format, and so presumably are "well-known" places in the US. Natg 19 (talk) 23:54, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Toronto stands alone for Canada. Then Montreal and Vancouver, in either order. After that, it depends on the reader. InedibleHulk (talk) 01:22, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Has anyone ever run a worldwide survey asking people which city names they recognize? That's really what we want. AP Style has a list of cities that stand alone in datelines, which is pretty close, but it's U.S.-centric/dated/a little arbitrary. Sdkb  01:45, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Perhaps a Sporcle quiz has it? Sdkb  01:54, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

I would worry about the methodology of such a survey and whether the demographics represented in these surveys correlate with those that use, read, and edit Misplaced Pages, respectively. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 14:09, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

They are well-known places intended for Americans (which is anyways debatable given the country's general poor knowledge of geography) —Bagumba (talk) 02:04, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Types of impacts in the wildfires blurb

The current blurb for January 2025 Southern California wildfires is A series of wildfires in Southern California, United States, leaves at least 10 people dead and forces nearly 180,000 others to evacuate. I notice that this includes only two of the three types of impacts in the article's lead, which says As of January 10, the wildfires have killed 10 people, forced nearly 180,000 more to evacuate, and destroyed or damaged more than 13,400 structures.

Personally, I think that the structural damage, the omitted element, is easily the most significant impact of the fire. It's crude to have to compare any loss of life to property damage, but as a very basic calculation, if we use FEMA's $7.5 million value of a statistical life estimate, assume the structures destroyed were worth on average $500,000, and assume people would pay on average $1000 to avoid the inconvenience of having to evacuate, we get $75 million for the deaths, $180 million for the evacuations, and $6.7 billion for the property damage. This concurs with media coverage, where destroyed homes have been the primary focus and loss of life a more secondary one.

Given this, would editors support adjusting the blurb to add the structures destroyed (and shorten other parts if needed to create space)? Are there past precedents that would be helpful here? Sdkb  23:43, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

I propose a change to "A series of wildfires in Southern California, United States, kills at least 10 people, damaged or destroyed more than 13,000 structures, and forced over 100,000 people to evacuate." Wildfireupdateman :) (talk) 00:04, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

The number of evacuations is not necessary. It's a begging the question of how big it is. Alternatively, a number that has been floating in the news is the near $60B cost of damage that the fire has caused , so saying "...kills at least 10 people and has caused an estimated $57 billion in damage." is far better way to represent the extent. Masem (t) 18:12, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Agreed that the evacuations seems the most dispensable. And I like the suggestion of the damage cost! My main qualm with it vs. structures is that it's harder to comprehend — most people can roughly visualize 13,000 structures (basically a small town) but $60 billion is more just an abstract large number. On the other hand, the cost does capture the damage with more granularity (13,000 structures could theoretically be 13,000 outhouses). What do others think of structures vs. damage cost? Sdkb  20:42, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

As a bartender's close, I've updated the blurb to replace evacuations with structures, but if others have thoughts we can always update it further. Sdkb  00:25, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

To be terribly honest, I know it's relevant in many cases, but I don't think we are subject to a singular definition of a value of life. What these numbers imply would be that nearly 100 deaths would be needed to account for the damage, and I think that's absurd. Damages property can be replaced. Lives can not. I can see why 10 deaths would not be the main story, as it isn't a massive number for a natural disaster, but I don't believe that is the best way to prove it shouldn't be the feature story here. The way I see it, for syntax reasons, the blurb reads better with two datapoints. Maybe the properties damages should supersede the evacuations, but I don't think it should be a major concern either way. DarkSide830 (talk) 06:27, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

The small number of people killed is not the reason that this story has attracted so much attention worldwide; it is the nature of the fires. Instead of a summer fire season, people all around the globe are now apprehensive about fire all year round due to climate change. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:46, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

• "Structures" seems wrong as that would include things like fencing and streetlamps but I suppose they really mean buildings or properties. What seems especially significant is when distinct communities such as Altadena have been razed. Another common measure of the devastation seems to be acres. I'm not comfortable with that measure though and find square miles or km easier to understand. A way The Guardian explained it was "LA fires burn area twice the size of Manhattan" but that's a bit misleading as the terrain is quite different.

Anyway, the area burned was 62 square miles (162 km) as of Sunday according to the NYT. To put that in proportion, the area of Greater LA is 34,000 square miles so that's about 0.2%. The number of people affected by evacuation seems to be about 1% of the total. Andrew🐉(talk) 12:16, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

The challenge with square miles burned (we'd also want to list square kilometers to globalize) is that it doesn't convey that the fires swept through an urban area, which is one of the main reasons this is notable/impactful — there are many larger fires every year that just happen in remote areas. Sdkb  15:19, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

When it comes to an ITN blurb, if we determined through our own exhaustive process on ITN/C that the wildfires are significant enough through varied criteria to merit being posted, I honestly think that it really doesn't matter what criterion we use. One is not more important than the other. If this were posted as an ongoing story, we wouldn't even have the opportunity to specify casualties. The point is to direct the reader to stories of interest, and even if it has "only" killed at least 10 people, the fact it's on the Main Page is a damn good clue to the reader that there's a significant impact that can be inferred from the article's contents. _{Duly signed,} ⛵ WaltClipper -(talk) 15:41, 13 January 2025 (UTC)