Fort Towson

	The 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 Date Process Result October 16, 2008 Good article nominee Listed February 26, 2018 Good article reassessment Delisted
	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

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The following references may be useful when improving this article in the future: Rindsberg, Ashley. The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times's Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History. Hungary, Midnight Oil Publishers, 2021.

A few edits have been made recently that add to the first sentence of the article that NYT is liberal. Is this accurate or do we need consensus before we can add this claim? X-Editor (talk) 14:04, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I believe this is the most recent edit in question. The Fordham ref looks like a blog, whose author conflates the NYT with National Geographic magazine for rhetorical effect, with some handwaving about how NYT readers ostensibly expect it to be "sensitive about notions of language and power". That's an essay, not a source for the paper's editorial slant. The CJR ref looks like a Marxist's complaint that the NYT doesn't lean far enough to the left. Neither of those refs seems like a solid definitive source for the claim that the Times is a "liberal" paper.

If this discussion is going to get anywhere, the first thing to do is reach agreement on a working definition of "liberal" in this context. Just plain Bill (talk) 14:31, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Just plain Bill: I was able to find this article from WaPo that says that NYT’s audience is more liberal according to Pew research, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the content in NYT itself is liberal. X-Editor (talk) 19:31, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That 2014 Pew study shows up on media article talk pages every so often, but extrapolating from an audience survey to saying, in Wikipedia's voice in the first sentence of the lead, that a publication has a "liberal" editorial slant is more of a stretch than WP policy allows. Just plain Bill (talk) 12:42, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Just plain Bill: Agreed. X-Editor (talk) 13:01, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've reverted. Consensus for such a characterization should be obtained on the talk page since it's historically been a controversial thing. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 14:54, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Left or Left-center would be an appropriate description of the current paper. Keep in mind they've never endorsed a Republican Presidential candidate.

[1] (just 3 days after this discussion)

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

I mean I can go on, but these are all clear indications of leftward bias. There's no need to omit it. The overall facts are generally accurate, but the manner of publication is an issue. Buffs (talk) 22:03, 2 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Buffs: Some of the sources you have provided are unreliable, but you would still need to get consensus first for claiming that the NYT is left or leaning left based on the reliable sources you have provided. X-Editor (talk) 05:31, 4 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• Those are almost all unreliable sources (New York Post, Media Bias Fact Check, Allsides, Adfontes, the Heritage foundation, a student paper, Fox on politics), or opinion pieces (the NJ.com piece, the Reason piece, the heritage piece, the WSJ piece), or in some cases opinion pieces from unreliable sources. Most of them are also severely biased (The Post, Fox, WSJ, the Heritage Foundation, Reason). None of them are usable for statements of fact in the article voice. --Aquillion (talk) 13:42, 4 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

• You've unilaterally decided that they are untrustworthy, but there's tons of research to the contrary: https://www.journalism.org/2020/01/24/u-s-media-polarization-and-the-2020-election-a-nation-divided/pj_2020-01-24_media-polarization_0-03/ . When 50% of a population don't trust a publication, it's safe to say they aren't trusted by those groups. When you look at the articles I cited above (as a wide smattering of articles, not as specific, definitive sources of such a claim), you decided to simply ignore them and dismissively label them as "unreliable" when, in fact, they ARE reliable FOR THOSE OPINIONS. You're literally following this line of logic:

"People don't feel that way"

"Here are some examples of how they feel"

"Those aren't reliable sources"

"How aren't they reliable sources? That's LITERALLY them saying how they feel"

• Does this mean they are 100% accurate across the country? Of course not. But that wasn't the point I was trying to make. Buffs (talk) 15:59, 6 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  It was not Aquillion who "unilaterally decided that they are untrustworthy" but consensus through Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources. They are not reliable because they may lack fact-checking, get key and uncontroversial facts wrong, etc. There may well be a liberal bias but certainly not in the way you interpret it or in a left-wing way, and most generally reliable sources are able to remain reliable because their bias does not affect them to get most things right. All sources are biased but the ones you used are either self-published, lack fact-checking, and their bias affect them in a much bigger way that simply does not make them reliable for facts. Davide King (talk) 03:50, 28 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

  "there may be a liberal bias...but not in a left-wing way"? DenverCoder9 (talk) 08:19, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Is the New York Times a liberal newspaper? Of course it is." This quote is taken from Daniel Okrent in a New York Times editorial. The paper itself claims to be liberal; I don't understand the reticence to use a label that the newspaper uses to describe itself. (https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/the-public-editor-is-the-new-york-times-a-liberal-newspaper.html). I note that Blaze Media is properly characterized as a conservative media company, and Pod Save America is properly characterized as a liberal political podcast. Why should Wikipedia refrain from using these labels when appropriate? Other evidence:

• Allsides characterizes the newspaper as leaning liberal (https://www.allsides.com/news-source/new-york-times)
• TheFactual characterizes the paper as "moderate left." (https://www.thefactual.com/blog/nyt-bias-credible/)
• Media Bias Fact Check rates the NYT as "left center" (https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/) but of note also received a "high" rating for factual reporting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Davidcnorris (talk • contribs) 00:55, 22 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Two sentences after "Of course it is [liberal]" Okrent addresses criticism of the paper from the left. If you want to call the New York Times "liberal", that would be fair. However, do not conflate that with the left. 71.185.178.141 (talk) 02:53, 20 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"liberal" and "left" generally refer to "Democratic" in the United States. Are you saying you'd agree to add "liberal" to the lede? DenverCoder9 (talk) 08:20, 1 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Allsides characterizes the paper as "Lean Left". I suggest we add something along those lines to the lede. Pakbelang (talk) 23:26, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@SPECIFICO please comment. Pakbelang (talk) 23:54, 21 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

My view is that such labels are frequently misleading and iimprecise. The Times' editorials may be liberal but readers are likely to think we are (baselessly) saying its news reporting is biased. So I don't support such a description in the lead. SPECIFICO talk 02:42, 22 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Your worry about readers not understanding the literal interpretation of the text is not relevant. Many, many news organizations have their political slant listed in the lede. DenverCoder9 (talk) 03:15, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The news reporting is not documented by RS as having such a "slant". SPECIFICO talk 13:01, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It absolutely is: moreover, sources at Times have said as much.

1. When it became clear that there is good evidence that the Times leans to the Democratic Party (point 1), you brought up a separate point about being misleading (point 2).

2. I'm speaking to the substantive point (point 2) you attempted to make about being misleading.

3. You ignore this, and switch points again rather engaging in substantive discussion about point 2.

You are toggling between objections, unable to justify any of them. 17:41, 26 August 2023

This is not substantive discussion. (UTC) DenverCoder9 (talk) 17:41, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I want to offer my summary of the discussion so far about adding the possibly-true fact "the New York Times has a liberal slant" to the lede (statement X)

1. No editors have offered reliable sources against statement X

2. The debate has been purely about the reliability of sources corroborating statement X

3. Editors for inclusion have stated and shown reliable sources

4. Editors against inclusion have stated that corroborating sources are "almost all unreliable", not that there are no reliable sources.

On almost any other page, this is well past the point statement X would have been included. DenverCoder9 (talk) 18:02, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

More reliable sources:

• Gentzkow, M. and Shapiro, J.M. (2010), What Drives Media Slant? Evidence From U.S. Daily Newspapers. Econometrica, 78: 35-71. https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA7195
• Hassel et al, Does the Ideology of the Newsroom Affect the Provision of Media Slant? https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2021.1986613
• Riccardo Puglisi, "Being The New York Times: the Political Behaviour of a Newspaper", https://doi.org/10.2202/1935-1682.2025

The New York Times is generally regarded as having a liberal slant. DenverCoder9 (talk) 18:44, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I support adding a short sentence along the lines mentioned by @SPECIFICO: The Times' editorials have been characterised as tending to "lean left" (using the sources cited by @Denvercoder9. We can also add something along the lines that its news reporting is considered to be reliable. Pakbelang (talk) 00:28, 29 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I second your original suggestion of adding "lean left" to the lede and not limiting the discussion of slant in the body to editorials.

Many of these reliable sources do not limit their analysis to the editorial section.

It is a broad point about the Times coverage. DenverCoder9 (talk) 15:46, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What sources do you have for your assertion? SPECIFICO talk 23:28, 22 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Might be nice to delve a bit into the profitability of the company. As that's missing, but it would be interesting to know how much they earn as they are a paywall news company. CaribDigita (talk) 09:27, 3 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. This is especially interesting because they were quite profitable before social media, dipped significantly in the mid-2010s before they figured out a business model for the digital age, and are now earning significant revenue. DenverCoder9 (talk) 17:42, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The second makes it clearer that there are multiple newspapers of record in the country the times is a record for (the United States), while the first makes it sound as though there may be many nations, each with a single newspaper of record. DenverCoder9 (talk) 03:13, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That's not how it is, or was, called. It's Original Research to change that. SPECIFICO talk 13:06, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It is not WP:OR to change to a logically equivalent phrase for clarity. DenverCoder9 (talk) 18:38, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@DenverCoder19: you're right that it's not original research to state that the US has several newspapers of record. Reliable sources mention The New York Times in relation to others (or that's what I believe). But do notice that our article says "a" not "the". Politrukki (talk) 08:43, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Consider the following sentences:

1. Washington, DC is a national capital

2. Washington, DC is one of the national capitals

The first sounds better than the second, because, while DC is one of many national capitals in the world, the second sentence makes it sound like there are multiple national capitals in the United States.

That's the difference between these phrasings, and why the second is more appropriate for the Times, because it clarifies that the Times is only one of several newspapers of record within the United States. DenverCoder9 (talk) 15:37, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I made a couple edits to shorten up and improve the concision of the lede to the editorial section. [12] [13]

SPECIFICO, all of whose edits on this page have been reversions, reverted these almost instantly without discussion. I won't dwell on my doubts about whether SPECIFICO read what he reverted. I would normally re-add them given the lack of expressed reasoning against them. However, I don't know if re-adding these 2 qualifies as "aggressive editing", so to stray wide on the side of being nice I'm opening this talk page instead. SPECIFICO, why is the longer wording preferable? e.g. ("in editorial pages" vs. "editorals") 19:43, 26 August 2023 (UTC) DenverCoder9 (talk) 19:43, 26 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The burden is on you to demonstrate why your version is preferable. I find your two edits make no improvement to the article. It's such a small change this isn't really worth having a discussion over. Might be a good opportunity to let it go. ––FormalDude (talk) 23:48, 27 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please focus on content, not the contributor. Specifico made a wholesale revert with vague reference to NPOV and asked this to be discussed on the talk page. And then failed to show up in this discussion. If you think something is too insignificant to be discussed, please just move on. Politrukki (talk) 08:47, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

With regards to this, because "editorial pages" captures the idea that both editorials an op-eds are typically liberal. This looks like an improvement, because "in their position" is redundant. As nobody has specifically justified why trimming would not be an improvement and as Specifico has not defended their position, I think it would be best to redo the trimming. Politrukki (talk) 08:45, 16 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The Arthur Brisbane quoted in this section is not the one discussed in the Arthur Brisbane article, and the link to said article should be removed. 64.203.244.11 (talk) 15:06, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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]

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. Reywas92^Talk 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]

• • I will say that I don't think I agree with Epicgenius's suggestion of 19th, 20th, 21st centuries for how to split - the problem is that the 19th century would be too short and the 20th century would be too long. Maybe 1851-1945, 1945-1999, and 2000-present? So History of The New York Times, 1851–1945, History of The New York Times, 1945–1999, and History of The New York Times, 2000–present. (The split in 1945 being the end of World War II in August, which is a pretty standard splitting spot - e.g. contemporary history uses it.) SnowFire (talk) 19:53, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Yeah, 1851-1945, 1945-1999, and 2000-present makes sense. I was honestly just spitballing dates. – Epicgenius (talk) 00:18, 19 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]

• Seeing clear consensus here, I've re-added the History as it was before this addition. There were a couple copyedits I did during that re-add, happy to discuss those as well. There is already a nearly identical history section at History of The New York Times so no article content is being lost. Soni (talk) 22:22, 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]

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]

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]

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 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) [14], but the necessary and added citations were removed by ElijahPepe 3 hours later [15], 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]

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

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]