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Former good articleThe New York Times was one of the Social sciences and society good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
October 16, 2008Good article nomineeListed
February 26, 2018Good article reassessmentDelisted
On this day...Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on September 18, 2004, June 13, 2009, September 18, 2014, and September 18, 2019.
Current status: Delisted good article

"The New Orc Times" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect The New Orc Times has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 January 8 § The New Orc Times until a consensus is reached. —Kusma (talk) 16:53, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

230,000+ char change

What's going on with the change today? It looks like contemporary topics were cut down to a bare minimum (with some pretty bad summaries), while the history section was expanded with ridiculous amounts of detail. This size edit is pretty much impossible to properly review. I think it should be reverted and proposed changes should be made incrementally. And for that level of detail about history, it should be a separate article. Hist9600 (talk) 19:01, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Courtesy ping @ElijahPepe sawyer * he/they * talk 19:15, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Changes cannot be made incrementally because the citation system goes against what has already been established; I used shortened footnotes to divide the topics. The length of the history section has already been discussed and it will be split once the article is finished. If you have an issue with content, WP:BEBOLD. I have deliberately avoided contemporary coverage of the Times because the paper is nearly two hundred years old. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 19:26, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Should be split now, rather than later, imo. Eddie891 Talk Work 21:23, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'll echo what Eddie891 said. On one hand, it's an impressive amount of work. And normally, there's a fair amount of leeway for people remodeling an article to go nuts. But this is wildly, WILDLY too large, a rendering issue too large (which makes teling other editors to BEBOLD awkward when one of the effects is making it harder to edit!). It really needs to be split sooner, rather than later - ideally before it was even moved into the namespace. The split doesn't have to be perfect - you can absolutely keep working on it after the split. SnowFire (talk) 21:45, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding history, I agree that it should be split, preferably into at least one article but more likely two or three. (I suggest separate articles for the NYT in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.) – Epicgenius (talk) 21:23, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(In particular, the prose size of the History section alone is 28,000 words. If this were split out, and a 7,000-word summary added to this article, you'd still have 14,000 words: 7,000 summarizing the history and 7,000 for everything else.) – Epicgenius (talk) 02:34, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm concerned about the sheer size of this article, echoing the comments above. The article, which is a high-traffic & important topic, is (as of writing this) over 464,000 bytes and nearly 36,000 words. To be frank, I don't think this size is appropriate for mainspace, and it's rendered this article pretty inaccessible to both readers and editors. I can't properly load diffs because of the size, making reviewing changes to the article nearly impossible. ElijahPepe's work is genuinely very admirable and impressive, but this desperately needs to be split, ASAP. sawyer * he/they * talk 03:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'd suggest moving the new history content to a single subarticle and restoring the original language of that section here, with adaptations for summary style. It's an excellent contribution but I agree too long and warrants its own page. Reywas92Talk 15:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed (though we almost certainly need more than one article for the NYT's history). – Epicgenius (talk) 23:25, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@ElijahPepe I think there's a pretty clear agreement in this section that this content should be split, and sooner rather than later (especially because it raises accessibility concerns with how large the page has gotten). Are you willing to do so? If not, I will do it in the next few days. Eddie891 Talk Work 13:56, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Eddie891: I have established a general framework for how the history articles should be spread out. Removing content should be discussed for each section in this article and the main history article. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 23:26, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, it doesn’t make sense to discuss every single thing to be split. The point here is that this is a highly visited article, and leaving it so long impeded the reader’s experience. We shouldn’t wait until a perfect split is achieved, but do it and reassess. Eddie891 Talk Work 00:51, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Callousness will also impede readers' experiences. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 04:01, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I find myself in agreement with Eddie891 here, this article pretty urgently needs splitting. The current length comes in at 471,003 bytes and because of the length and number of citation and SFN templates, the page takes a very long time to render and edit. The history section alone is around half the page length at 218,923 bytes, and there's absolutely no reason for it to be that long when History of The New York Times was created almost a month ago. Even that article is too long, currently coming in at 366,627 bytes, but that's a discussion for another talk page.
Rather than adding new content to other sections, I would strongly suggest as a matter of urgency re-writing and condensing the current history section in summary style, so that this page becomes slightly more manageable. Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:53, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Sideswipe9th, regarding The history section alone is around half the page length at 218,923 bytes, and there's absolutely no reason for it to be that long when History of The New York Times was created almost a month ago. Even that article is too long, currently coming in at 366,627 bytes, but that's a discussion for another talk page, I and SnowFire proposed splitting the history section into three pages above. However, it seems like all of the info in the "History" section of this page was merely split out to the History article. The History article really should itself be split into three articles, and these articles should be summarized here.
By the way, the reason that wikitext of the History article is 360,000 bytes, while the wikitext of this page's history section is only 210,000 bytes, is because the pages use shortened footnotes. The "Works cited" section alone is 165,000 bytes of wikitext, which actually loads pretty quickly. It may be the images that are slowing down loading times. Epicgenius (talk) 14:55, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It may be the images that are slowing down loading times I don't think it's the images. If I use my browser's developer tools in network capture mode, it takes a little over 10 seconds for the article text to be generated by the server before being sent to my browser. The actual transfer of the article text and all of the images takes about less than 50ms, once the article text is generated.
I'd agree that the history article also needs splitting in to three or four parts, depending on how you want to delineate the 20th century content. I'd probably split it into four; 19th century, first half 20th century, second half 20th century, 21st century, as the 20th century content seems quite long in and of itself. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:44, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding image loading times, that is interesting. Might just be my Internet connection - the whole page loaded within 3 seconds for me earlier this morning.
Splitting the history into four pages may be a good idea as well. SnowFire proposed three (19th, early 20th, and late 20th to present), but we're barely in the third decade of the 21st century, so a dedicated page on 21st-century history may well be appropriate. Epicgenius (talk) 17:32, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The fun coincidence with splitting History of The New York Times into four articles, is that each article will cover a roughly 50 year time period; 1851-1900, 1900-1950, 1950-2000, 2000+. Honestly I think there's enough content on just the 20th century history of the paper to have two lengthy articles. Sideswipe9th (talk) 22:38, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oh and full disclosure, I learnt about this page from seeing Sideswipe9th's edits and discussing this article offWiki. However I was not asked to edit this, just decided to edit of my own interest. So we should be pretty clear from canvassing or similar. Soni (talk) 22:41, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I see ElijahPepe has reverted your edit. On the one hand, the history section does need to be seriously trimmed, but on the other, I don't think just restoring the pre-expansion version is the best way to go about it. Prior to ElijahPepe's expansion, the history section put undue weight on certain aspects of the NYT's history. For example, New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) and The Pentagon Papers (1971) each got their own subsections—the latter with four paragraphs—while the period between 1935 and 1963 got a single paragraph.
    My suggestion would be to take some text from the existing History of The New York Times article and try to summarize each section as, at most, one paragraph with 100-150 words. That article has 33 subsections, so summarizing the history article that way would probably result in this article having a History section with 3,000-4,500 words. This would still be a lot, but not enough to overwhelm readers; the rest of the article combined has 7,000 words, so it would be on the long side of WP:SIZERULE (10,000-11,500 words total). Nonetheless this would be drastically more readable compared to the 35,000 words that this article has now; WP:SIZERULE says a page should almost certainly be split at 15,000 words.
    I also understand that summarizing the history section could take a while, so I'm not opposed to restoring the old history section for a short time while the History article is summarized. – Epicgenius (talk) 23:59, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Epicgenius I was happy to do that, but it's nearly impossible to edit an article when there's 450K characters to work through, basically crashing my browser while editing. It took me about 20ish mins just to get the basic restoration done, that's how badly the load and readability was being.
    I think we absolutely should do this, summarise each section from History in the main article. I just believe that while we complete said summary (probably a few hours to a couple days of work), the article needs to be in pre-expansion version, or it becomes literally impossible to edit. Soni (talk) 00:03, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    My bad, I did not realize it was literally crashing your browser. Yeah, in that case, restoring the old history section for now might be the best way to go about this. – Epicgenius (talk) 00:05, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • @ElijahPepe I am confused by your comment asking to "discuss in the talk page" when that's exactly what I did, just here.
There are 6 editors in the above discussion that requested first reverting to 250K char article - @Hist9600, Eddie891, Sideswipe9th, Epicgenius, Reywas92, and Sawyer-mcdonell:, and just you who preferred we work from the 450K+ char version first. (Sorry for unnecessary ping, please correct me if I misrepresented your takes)
You cannot both invite others to edit the article above, while reverting any changes without discussion. And finally, like I said above, the article contents are nearly identically present in History of The New York Times as well, so we should not be replicating the content doubly regardless. If the article is under work, it should be in draftspace. If it's not under work, the mainspace article should reflect consensus, which is clearly in favour of readability (while we continue to fix simple enough errors such as shortened vs not reference format).
Please do not revert again without consensus.
Soni (talk) 23:58, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is not how this should be done. The article is significantly worse and this is not what this article should look like. I now need to drop everything that I'm doing on this article to deal with this. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 00:29, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have now reduced the article size to 11,000 words. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 00:35, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@ElijahPepe Seeing the discussion below... Nobody except you seem to think the article should stay in it's current state. I am reverting back, if only to actually allow myself to physically edit this page. I am happy to work with you to re-add the content that needs to be added, but we need to start from the pre-data dump version. Or we use a Draftspace page instead of throwing everything into mainspace. Soni (talk) 02:13, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please consider reading WP:OWN. No one person has full editorial control over any article. You seem to consider your preferences on editing style more important than others, which is unhealthy at best and detrimental to articles at worst. WP:CONSENSUS might also be helpful to read.
To me, both wordcount and the overall character size matter. One helps readability, while the other helps browsers. And the article after your 2nd revert fails both. At first glance, I am seeing "just" the History section at 23K words, so this is very obviously not 11K words for the "entire article". It is also not 'roughly 100-150 words per decade' as @Epicgenius: suggested above. Just 1850-1900 seems to be roughly 3000 words alone.
All you've done is restored nearly a large proportion of the parts that needed to be cut, while completely ignoring my request to not crash browsers "while we edit this down". Roughly 15 mins into loading this, my browser still fails. I request another editor to revert this change while we sandbox this, rather than locking editors out completely. Soni (talk) 00:58, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@ElijahPepe: the history section of this article badly needs a drastic cutdown, as Soni stated above trying to edit this article is causing his browser to crash. That is not a good sign for article length. You also don't have to do all of this alone, there are other editors here, like Soni and myself, who are willing to help with this. But as with the section below on transphobia, you're saying that you're having to "drop everything" to work on this. That is also not a good sign. Wikipedia is fundamentally a collaborative environment, but between statements like this and the requests in edit summaries to other editors that they should "hold off on reverts or significant overhauls" collaboration with you on directly improving the article seems incredibly difficult.
Perhaps you could explain to us what your intention is with regards to the article and its content? Just under a month ago you added 230,000 characters from your sandbox to an article that was already over 221,000 characters long. What is your long term goal here? Are you wanting to bring this article to GA or FA status? Are you trying to re-write the article so that it is more up to date and more concise? What can other editors do achieve this goal faster? Is this perhaps such a significant undertaking that we should instead restore the already lengthy version of the article from 1 January 2024 despite its flaws, and instead work on this together in a sandbox so that when there's a consensus that the draft is in a good enough shape to "go live", all of the changes can be made to this article in a single edit? Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:03, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm looking to take this article to featured article status. I don't need help in taking it there, but I'm willing to try to reduce the article size. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 01:06, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@ElijahPepe: Ok, that is not a good sign. As I said in my last reply, Wikipedia is fundamentally a collaborative environment. We are at our best when we're working on content together. No one editor has ownership over an article, article content is always decided via consensus.
Now wanting to bring this article to FA status is a great goal, however based on just the content you added on 14 January, even in isolation from all of the rest of the content in the article, I would quick-fail at FAC per WP:FACR#4 alone, without even needing to look at any of the other criteria. The content that you're adding is far too long. The history section goes into a lot of unnecessary detail, and even prior to the creation of the history of article did not comply with summary style.
Additionally, the review process that's required as part of FAC is collaborative. You will receive a lot of feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of the article, and in most cases will be required to act upon it. It is not an easy process to go through at the best of times, and being resistant to letting other editors help like in this discussion is not going to help that.
So with that all said, again I ask, how can we help? Staying out of your way is not a realistic option here. Even if those of us who are here now disengage from the article and talk page, there will always be some new editor coming along to edit the content. And if you resist those changes, I guarantee that in the medium to long term it would not end well, and I don't want to see that happen. So, how can we help? Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:48, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The only two things that need to be done are expanding several sections that have little to no content and reducing the size of the history section. Reverting to the old history section is not an option. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 01:55, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Even if we completely excised the history section, this article would still be borderline too long per FACR#4. There is around 10,000 words all of the other sections combined. Adding more content elsewhere isn't going to help the page length issues and is only going to compound the issue. If you're wanting to bring this article to FA, then per summary style you need to bring the article down to between 8,000 and 12,000 words total across all sections. That means a lot of content will have to go into dedicated spin-off articles, the history of article is a good start but even that needs to be split into at least 3 or 4 parts. To adapt your phrase, adding more content is not an option at this time.
So, how can we help with that? Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:06, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Up to your interpretation. Re-adding content that ruins the citation style and breaks several citations is not the place to start. I am done trying to argue this. It is patently obvious reducing content over time is not an option. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 02:25, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Restoring that version is only a temporary measure, while we work collaboratively on an improved version either here on the talk page or in a sandbox somewhere. It's an interim measure so that folks like Drmies can actually just load the article for reading. Blanking an entire section, as you did in this edit is not helpful in this circumstance. While blank sections are acceptable in a sandbox or draft space while an article is in the process of being created, they are never acceptable in a live article. That's why we have orange templates like ((blank section)).
It is patently obvious reducing content over time is not an option. That's because you're not letting us help you. You're not giving us any of the information we need in order to share the load. You want to take this article to FA? Great, lets do that together. Collaboration is a fundamental part of the FA process, and the more you work well with others now, the easier it will be to eventually pass the article. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:35, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not looking for help at the moment. Condensing the history section is a great idea, because the history section at present is insufficient. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 03:03, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User talk:ElijahPepe, if you want to bring this up to FA status you will have to a. trim this considerably (I can't load it or read it) and b. give up ownership, since FA review is the clearest example of collaborative editing. Drmies (talk) 02:19, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not second largest circulation as claimed..

The claim links to the wrong page.

It seems to have the 17th largest circulation, if this article is right.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_by_circulation 77.22.202.206 (talk) 17:39, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not incorrect. The Times has the second-largest circulation in the United States. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 14:54, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Transphobia section

To add to my point, @Elijahpepe, a single article defending JK Rowling from criticism is so much less notable when the NYT puts out an article like that at least once a week now. Compare that to the letter, which discusses the overarching trend in coverage and the legal impacts it’s had. Snokalok (talk) 00:58, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fwiw your footnotes style is absolutely artistic, if *very* hard to modify. Snokalok (talk) 01:00, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also I am adding back in the wider impacts on GAC ban legislation, because that is genuinely better than just pointing out Alabama Snokalok (talk) 01:02, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The reason why I didn't include anything past that is because it would take several days to properly assess the entirety of transphobia within The New York Times. The article was included because of its timing.
For what it is also worth, I regularly read the Times and can only recall two times in which the paper itself has had a transphobic article on the front page. I am aware of several conservative opinion writers who have written opinion pieces, but I disregard the opinion section for the weekends. This is a situation in which I need to determine the extent of the information that will be put in and an edit that only mentions a few events and does not include shortened footnotes—which are not difficult to implement, see H:SFN for a guide—is going to be subject to rewrites. That extends to the work that I put here. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 01:12, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I’m sure you’ve only encountered two front page articles yourself, I am certain that there are more than two. As for opinion pieces, those I believe are worth considering for the reasons that
A. They’re still cited in anti-trans legislation
B. Even if the views are treated as opinionated, them being published in the NYT is used to give the underlying reasons for them factual credibility. An example is Pamela Paul saying that 80% of trans people desist. In reality, she’s referring to a widely debunked study from the 1980’s, but because she’s saying it in the NYT, it’s assumed to be factually credible, and the Times has said as much themselves (see the whole “Our transphobia is well researched” statement in response to the open letter) Snokalok (talk) 01:53, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I was referring to my personal viewpoint on opinion pieces. Publishing in The New York Times's opinion section is not an impressive honor; it is a gamified process that has been tainted by James Bennet's desire to turn it into The Wall Street Journal's opinion section. I don't doubt that this is something that should be included, but it will take time. As for how many articles there are, that will also take time to determine. I'm sure it could be more than two, because of the letter, but I'm not sure it could be a weekly occurrence, because I would have observed it. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 01:57, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@SPECIFICO: The above conversation may also apply to you. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 18:01, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You'll need to be more explicit as to the reason you notified me here. SPECIFICO talk 18:32, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are three uncited sentences in the paragraph about transphobia

There are three uncited sentences in the five-sentence paragraph on transgenderism in the Criticism section of this article. This is unacceptible. Either the entire paragraph should be cited with confirming references, or the entire paragraph should be removed (and possibly moved to this talk page until it is properly cited). I cited two of the sentences 24 hours ago (and made corrections per citations) [1], but the necessary and added citations were removed by ElijahPepe 3 hours later [2], and when I restored them the editor edit-warred to remove them again. Now the five-sentence section has three "citation needed" tags. If this situation is not remedied within 24 hours, I will likely draw it to the attention of administrators so that it will be. (BTW, pinging SPECIFICO because they tagged the Criticism section recently as well.) Softlavender (talk) 02:56, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've just filled all three citation needed tags with already existing citations from the article. I did however partially revert the insertion of "transgenderism" from this edit. Transgenderism is not a neutral nor appropriate word to use in this topic, having been co-opted by anti-trans activists in the last 9/10 years (GLAAD, ADL, BuzzFeed News). Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:18, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is exactly what I wanted to avoid. I'm going to ask editors hold off on editing this paragraph, because this has now been made the utmost priority for this article and I'll have to halt my work on finding references for the website section to deal with this. Fortunately, the paragraph looks fine enough to not warrant administrator action. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 03:20, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, after filling those CN tags, and the partial revert, I too don't see any issues with that section. From looking at the history, the major issue from a week ago was that the content was pretty seriously outdated, having not been substantially changed since circa-2018. It looks fine to me now though with the citations in the correct places. Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:24, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Because someone (@ElijahPepe) keeps deleting citations because they don’t fit into a footnote style that no one else uses Snokalok (talk) 11:41, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The criticism section is UNDUE recent events in the 175 year history of this publication and should not be in its own section, or possibly anywhere in this article. Some of it is recent trivia - e.g. Crossword Puzzle bit. I should have removed it instead of reinstating the tag that has long been on that content. Apologies to those who took the time to add refs, but I am going to remove it now and will copy it below in case editors want to work on reusing any of it in the narrative of the article, which may or may not be appropriate. SPECIFICO talk 12:46, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So skimming through the content of List of The New York Times controversies, I think some sort of content on the criticisms the paper has received is due. There have been complaints about antisemitism going as far back as the Holocaust, and anti-Israeli propaganda since at least the early 2000. Likewise for the transgender content, we have at least a decade worth of criticism to cover. Where UNDUE really comes into this for me is that we're only focusing on two specific pieces of criticism. The list of controversies is significantly longer and broader than just those two issues.
The difficulty overall is, how do you work this into the article content, to avoid a criticism section? A lot of the criticisms don't really fit neatly into other sections because of how the article is structured, but overall the criticism of the paper's content on numerous issues is notable in its own right. If this article is to be a summary style overview of the more topic specialised articles, then including a summary of the criticism is due. It might be better for us to transform the List of controversies article from a listicle into something with a more coherent narrative and structure, and then include a transclusion of that eventual article's lead here. Maybe something like Critical reception of The New York Times, as something with that scope would allow us to cover both the negative and positives of their content in a far more balanced way. Sideswipe9th (talk) 22:57, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism section text - for reference

Criticism

This article's "criticism" or "controversy" section may compromise the article's neutrality. Please help rewrite or integrate negative information to other sections through discussion on the talk page. (October 2021)

Main article: List of The New York Times controversies


The New York Times has been accused of transphobia. In August 2015, Weill Cornell Medicine professor Richard A. Friedman authored an opinion piece in the publication intended to be a scientific perspective on gender identity.[1] Vox's German Lopez criticized Friedman's assessments as being incorrect, such as his implying that conversion therapy is beneficial to youth with gender dysphoria despite evidence to the contrary.[1] In February 2023, over one thousand current and former Times contributors wrote an open letter to the newspaper highlighting their concerns with the paper’s coverage of transgender people.[2] Some of the Times' articles have been cited in state legislatures attempting to justify criminalizing gender-affirming care.[3] Contributors wrote in the open letter that the Times has "treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language" and "publish[ed] reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources".[3]
SPECIFICO talk 12:49, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah that looks good Snokalok (talk) 11:39, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh I see Snokalok (talk) 11:41, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Right, posting here for reference also, the paragraph before a certain someone deleted all the citations because they weren't in footnote format.
The New York Times has been accused of transphobia. In August 2015, Weill Cornell Medicine professor Richard A. Friedman authored an opinion piece intended to be a scientific perspective on gender identity. Vox's German Lopez criticized Friedman's assessments for being incorrect, such as stating conversion therapy is beneficial to youth with gender dysphoria despite evidence to the contrary.[1] In February 2023, almost 1,000 current and former Times writers and contributors wrote an open letter addressed to Philip B. Corbett, associate managing editor of standards, in which they accused the paper of publishing articles that are biased against transgender, non⁠-⁠binary, and gender-nonconforming people.[4] Some of those articles have been cited in legislation restricting or outright banning gender affirming care.[5] Contributors wrote in the open letter that "the Times has in recent years treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language, while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources."[6][7][8] Snokalok (talk) 11:47, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ a b c Lopez 2015.
  2. ^ Strangio 2023.
  3. ^ a b Klein 2023a.
  4. ^ Klein, Charlotte (February 15, 2023). "Nearly 200 New York Times Contributors Are Denouncing the Paper's Anti-Trans Coverage". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on February 20, 2023. Retrieved February 19, 2023.
  5. ^ "Nearly 200 New York Times Contributors Are Denouncing the Paper's Anti-Trans Coverage". Vanity Fair.
  6. ^ Oladipo, Gloria (February 18, 2023). "Nearly 1,000 contributors protest New York Times' coverage of trans people". The Guardian. Archived from the original on June 17, 2023. Retrieved February 19, 2023.
  7. ^ Migdon, Brooke (February 15, 2023). "NYT contributors blast paper's coverage of transgender people". The Hill. Archived from the original on February 20, 2023. Retrieved February 19, 2023.
  8. ^ Yurcaba, Jo (February 15, 2023). "N.Y. Times contributors and LGBTQ advocates send open letters criticizing paper's trans coverage". NBC News. Archived from the original on February 18, 2023. Retrieved February 19, 2023.
@Softlavender
Perhaps we change it to “The NYT has received criticism for its coverage regarding transgender people”? Snokalok (talk) 13:15, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That would work, as it neutrally summarizes the paragraph. Softlavender (talk) 22:38, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Deciding the content within the history section

The history section that we are left with after the events of last night—which cannot happen again—is insufficient for an understanding of The New York Times. At four thousand words, it is an appropriate size for continuing forward, though I note that I intend to add additional content and will likely split the website section into a separate article. I have determined the following events to be notable to the Times:

elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 14:32, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is, you're making all of these decisions without allowing for any of the regular consensus based process to occur. I feel like I have to remind you that Wikipedia is a collaborative effort, no one editor can make unilateral decisions about the scope and content of an article. How have you determined that these specific events are the most notable parts of nearly 200 year history? Are you weighing this based on sources? If so, what sources are you using for that? Prior to this decision, have any other editors provided input on what should or should not appear in that section?
You've said that the 4,000 words of the history section is insufficient for an understanding of the paper. WP:FACR#4 requires articles to stay focused on their topic without going into unnecessary detail and use summary style where appropriate. We have, or will have three or four separate history articles, each covering a specific time period in the history of the paper. Per summary style why are we not simply transcluding or summarising their leads? The purpose of those specialised articles, which also could be FAs in their own right, is to go into greater detail about a narrower facet of this overall topic. We should not be repeating huge swathes of their content here, let those specialised articles contain that information, and let this article provide an overview of it.
Splitting the Online platforms section as a whole into something like Online platforms of The New York Times seems like it would be a good idea, rather than just the website subsection. The Online platforms content seems to be a notable enough topic as a whole to support a full article. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:54, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Getting the article to GA

I think I want to help make this article GA. Does someone with more experience have a quick checklist for all the things we would need to do to get there?

I assume step 1 would be deciding the many subarticles this gets split into, right? Soni (talk) 23:34, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

First off, the lead should be condensed to four paragraphs as per MOS:LEAD. Numerous empty and short sections, such as #The New York Times Magazine and the #The New York Times International Edition respectively. Also get rid of 1 sentence paragraphs. I don't know much about the WP:GA process, but those are my comments. Consider seeking feedback through a WP:PR as well. 750h+ (talk) 07:27, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So the lead is something I think we should tackle last. There's no sense re-writing it while the rest of the article is in flux, as the lead's role is to summarise the key points of the article's body. I do think you're right that it should be condensed overall, the current lead has five pretty lengthy paragraphs, and brevity is something we should keep in mind when we get to the point of rewriting it. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:00, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The following sections need to be expanded:
  • Opinion
  • Newsletters
  • Political position
  • Crossword
  • Style guide
  • Website
  • Applications
  • Podcasts
  • Virtual and augmented reality
  • Magazine
  • International edition
  • Awards
  • Recognition
  • Criticism
Please use shortened footnotes and "generally reliable" sources at WP:RSP should you use sources outside of the Times. Books and journals are preferable. Let me know if you need access to an article from the Times. David Dunlap has plenty of articles written on the history of the Times. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 16:45, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So there's a bunch of things we'd need to do to get this article to GA quality. FA is eventually possible, and I think we should be writing the article content with the FA criteria in mind, but right now it's not realistic. The two most immediate issues preventing an FA are WP:FACR#1e and 4.
To address FACR#4, I agree that we need to look at what articles should be split from this one. Splitting the history section into its own series of articles is a good idea, but it's been badly implemented. The current time delineations don't really make sense. In my opinion there should be four history articles, each covering a roughly 50 year period (ie founding - 1900, 1900-1950, 1950-2000, 2000+). The content we have remaining is also problematic, it's far too long and far too detailed. The history content that remains here should be a summary style overview of each of the history sub-articles. As WP:SUMMARYSTYLE states, the purpose of those dedicated articles is to go into the details that we can't go into here. If people want to read the full extent of the origins, or Ochs Ownership, or whatever, that's why we have those dedicated history of articles. The only detail that we need to go into here is briefly (as in no more than a sentence or two) summarising the key points of each of the time periods from the history of articles.
We also need to look at what other content should be spun out into their own stand-alone articles, and make a definitive list of that here. In a section above, Elijah suggested that we should spin out the website section, but I think that is too narrow to be notable in its own right. Instead we should look at spinning out the online platforms section as a whole. That's already a pretty lengthy section, and one that I believe there is more content we could add. However, again per summary style, we should not be adding that content here. We should add it to a dedicated spin-off article.
We should also look into creating a dedicated Critical reception of The New York Times article. The paper has a very long history, and has received both significant praise and significant criticism over the years. Having an article on just the praise, or just the criticism would be a NPOV violation, however we can avoid that by presenting and integrating both together into a critical reception article.
The absolute last thing we should be doing right now is adding more content to this article. At the time of this reply, the article contains just under 13,000 words, which is very much in SIZESPLIT territory. What we should be focusing our efforts on right now is identifying what sections can be split into sub-articles, creating those sub-articles, and then summarising or transcluding their leads (and only their leads) here. Once we do that, we will have trimmed sufficient wording to be able to expand briefly upon the sections that are left behind.
That takes care of FACR#4. For FACR#1e, that just needs time and for edit warring to stop. Editors need to stop going off and doing their own thing, unilaterally making decisions on content size and scope. It is not conductive to establishing consensus for any one editor to dictate terms. Wikipedia editing is a collaborative process, sometimes your ideas will find consensus and sometimes they won't. We need to hash out a plan first, so that we can all go and implement changes taking into account our own respective strengths when writing or copy-editing article content.
I also think we should discuss the citation style. I hate shortened footnotes as a citation style. I don't think they are conductive to either a good reading experience or a good editing experience. As a reader, if you want to find the full citation information you need to click at least three times before you get a link to the original article. As an editor, they're just unwieldy to work with. Personally I much prefer using named references, and using the ((rp)) template where page numbers are needed. I do however like that the Works cited subsection is clearly delineated along the lines of where each citation was published, and if there is a consensus to move away from SFN I would suggest we keep that separation as the reflist template allows for that. We should see if we can significantly cut down on the number of citations to the paper itself, as per policy we should not be relying this heavily on non-independent primary sourcing. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:36, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To facilitate what I've said above, if there's a consensus for it, I'd suggest we make some subsections to this discussion to just try and keep discussions around specific pieces of content organised. I'd imagine this taking the form of something like subsections for each substantive spin-off article/spin-off type, and for each major remaining content section. Sideswipe9th (talk) 19:03, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have the lede for History of The New York Times (1851–1945) and I'm writing the ledes for the other two articles now. Would it not be possible to transclude the ledes onto this article? I intend to split the Online platforms and Critical reception sections. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 20:21, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, absolutely! Transclusion of a sub-article's lead is something we can very easily do, and something that'll help us keep this article in sync if the sub-articles change content in the future. As long as we keep those leads short and concise, that'll also help with keeping this article at a reasonable reading length.
I have concerns about the time delineation of the History of articles however, and exactly how many of them we have. Of the articles I'm aware of, currently there's History of The New York Times, History of The New York Times (1851–1945), History of The New York Times (1945–1998), and History of The New York Times (1998–present). Are there any others that I've missed? If not, for the three articles with years in their titles, how were the time periods for each of those selected? Why do we have an article covering roughly 90 years, another covering roughly 55 years, and the final one covering roughly thirty years? Were there key changes that happened to the paper in 1945 and 1998 that make those natural break points? Or were they chosen arbitrarily? Is there another way we could structure those articles, perhaps so they each cover a more uniform time period (eg, roughly 50 years per article?) Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:33, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The time periods were determined based on article size. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 21:05, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Cool, is there another way we could split those articles? Are there any natural temporal milestones where we could say content after this point goes into this next article? Like say when Adolph Ochs purchased the paper in 1896? Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:10, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
On the Online Platforms and Critical Reception sub-articles, I'm glad you think those are good ideas. We shouldn't start writing those immediately however. Let's give it a day or two to see what other editors think, and then if there's a consensus we can start a subsection to this discussion so that we can start planning their scope and a rough outline of their structure. Once that's done we can then each identify sections of those articles that we can all contribute towards, in line with our respective strengths as editors. Some of us are going to be better at writing certain types of content than others, and some of us are likely better copy-editors than article drafters. Let's take some time to figure out the best way that we can all contribute to making these good and comprehensive articles, and so that we're not stepping on each others toes. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:38, 10 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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