Talk:Director of National Intelligence

External links

What is up with the "External links" dumping ground. A section, subsection, and eleven links fertilizing a link farm where three or four would be more than enough! Maybe someone can take a look at trimming or integrating. Otr500 (talk) 19:58, 25 January 2019 (UTC)

About that John Ratcliffe section

I think we should reconsider whether to have a whole section on Ratcliffe's proposed nomination. Sure, it was newsworthy at the time, but now it's yesterday's news - didn't even really pass the one-week test. And we don't have any detail in this article AT ALL about the nominations of the previous directors. Or in most other articles about cabinet level positions. I think we should reconsider whether this section even belongs here or whether it should be removed as WP:NOTNEWS. -- MelanieN (talk) 01:54, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

I added it and I think it should go now. My bad. soibangla (talk) 01:56, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

You didn't know how it would turn out. -- MelanieN (talk) 02:12, 4 August 2019 (UTC)

I agree, and removed it. The article doesn't discuss any other nominee, it's out of place. 173.217.182.134 (talk) 22:48, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

So Ratcliffe is in now I believe. Not entirely sure because my understanding of bureaucracy is sort of poor. Funny that I still use this site given that. Here are some articles. puggo (talk) 00:57, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

References

Capitalization

In the lede, "The director of national intelligence (DNI)" should have lowercase "d", "n", and "I" per the closed RfC at RfC: First mention in the first sentence... (MOS:JOBTITLES). —Eyer (If you reply, add {{reply to|Eyer}} to your message to let me know.) 21:44, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

@Eyer: I disagree. That RfC closed with No consensus moreso, this article clearly is used to talk about the entity that is The Director, not just a director. If you disagree, then Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and plethora of others should be changed too. Bulhis899 (talk) 07:52, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bulhis899: If "the president of the United States" ins't capitalized (per MOS:JOBTITLES), then why would "the director of national intelligence" be capitalized? —Eyer (If you reply, add {{reply to|Eyer}} to your message to let me know.) 11:05, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Eyer: If "the director of national intelligence" isn't capitalized, then why should "the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency", "the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency", "the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff", and plethora of others should be? Anyway, as per your linked RfC, there is clearly broad dissatisfaction with the guideline in its current form. I'll resign and wait if there are any changes due to consensus with regards to MOS:JOBTITLES. Bulhis899 (talk) 15:42, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

@Eyer: Further addendum: in case you didn't catch it, I conceded to your edit on undoing my capitalization on "director" only because there is no clear community consensus on which standards Wikipedia should adhere to with regards to this issue. My edit was for consistency with other articles on this wiki about directors, secretaries, and other entities of a significant leadership role which is why I linked the above example articles.

Wikipedia uses MOS:JOBTITLES, not government sources, to determine capitalization. —Eyer (If you reply, add {{reply to|Eyer}} to your message to let me know.) 01:19, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Eyer here. And the parallels suggested are not very parallel. "National intelligence" is not the name of an org like "Central Intelligence Agency" and "Joint Chiefs of Staff" are, so those get caps. But "director" only does when attached to a name, like it says at JOBTITLES. Dicklyon (talk) 03:21, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes. See MOS:JOBTITLES and innumerable previous discussions (including very similar ones at what is presently Talk:Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (but should be moved to lower-case "chairman"). Unless it's prefixed to the person's name, the title is "director of national intelligence" in encyclopedic writing. Just in case anyone misunderstands the OP, see also MOS:ABBR: This stuff has nothing to do with how the initialism is rendered. Except for conventionalized cases that are near-universally rendered lower-case in English (e.g. "e.g." and "scuba"), or more rarely in mixed case (e.g. "DoJ"), acronyms and initialisms are always given in upper case regardless of the casing of the words that make up the acronym/initialism.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:13, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

NIP acronym undefined

The acronym NIP is used twice but is not defined anywhere on the page. It’s first referenced in the lines about the 2013 and 2014 budgets where MIP is also used. It’s hard for me to know whether NIP is a typo of MIP or something else. Christopher.Eagan (talk) 20:58, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

​ Fixed (it's the National Intelligence Program).

Nomination date of Avril Haines

I have added President-elect Biden’s nomination of Avril Haines to the article. But the date of her nomination is a bit ambiguous: Biden’s intention to nominate her first leaked to the press on Saturday, November 21, was confirmed by multiple sources on November 22, was confirmed by the transition office on November 23, and formally announced at an event in Wilmington with other national security nominees on Tuesday, November 24.

I have included the November 23 date in the article, given that this is the date when a) the incoming administration confirmed her nomination to the press, and b) the press referred to her as “nominated”, past tense. If there’s a more-correct official date to use, that should be substituted in the article. Informal words like “announced”, “named”, or “presented” could allow the use of the 22nd or 24th, but would mostly just increase the ambiguity in my opinion.

(Addendum: Also, in looking for sources to cite, I only found reputable news articles from Nov 23, using the past tense for “nominated”; it would be rather odd to cite a news source as authoritative when referring to an event that wouldn’t happen until after its publication—even if that event had since occurred.) TreyHarris (talk) 21:54, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

November 2020

Inappropriate to add Bidens' selections at this time. He is NOT the presidential successor yet, nor is he the president-elect. The president-elect will not be selected by electors PER the Constitution of the United States until Jan 6th

THus this section has been removed. (Personal attack removed) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 162.255.168.210 (talk) 02:13, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

As the unsigned commenter’s edit has already been reverted, this is needless to say to experienced editors, but just in case anyone else might feel the same urge and stumble across this talk comment (unlikely, I know, but still—good to document):

The text I added was a row appended to the list of DNI’s (clearly reading “Nominated” under Avril Haines’ name), below text that read (boldface added here for emphasis):

On November 23, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden nominated Avril Haines to assume the office in January 2021. If confirmed, she will become the first woman to hold the position.

This text suffers merely from not being future-proof, which (as always on Wikipedia) is impossible when dealing with current events. We prefer to include useful information that we know will “become stale”, especially if its “expiration date” is clearly marked, than to delete such information entirely because at some future time it may become dated.

It’s reasonable to think that someone wanting to know if Joe Biden has made a choice for DNI, and if so, who that was, would come to this article looking for that information. It’s hard to imagine any other article that would reliably carry it; any given Biden nomination or hiring may—or may not—be notable enough to include in, say, the “Presidential transition of Joe Biden” article, and one wouldn’t check “Avril Haines” unless one already knew her nomination was a likely possibility.

If the pedantry being requested by the unsigned commenter were actually required of Wikipedia articles, we couldn’t include the current DNI in the present tense, or have the list-by-tenure section at all, without clumsy As of Date… annotations everywhere. We don’t do that. We simply use the present tense and, when possible, mention future dates after which we know certain information will become stale.

I won’t get into the politics surrounding Biden’s election but to mention that the traditionally-trusted secondary sources we use called the election on Nov. 7, and the General Services Administration ascertained Biden to be President-elect on Nov. 23. There is no reason for this article to host accommodate a view unsupported by fact (i.e., the idea that Biden is not actually President-elect as of December 1, 2020). TreyHarris (talk) 19:26, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• Avril Haines portrait 2.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:52, 22 January 2021 (UTC)