Talk:Backend as a service/Archives/2013

Revisiting the issue of company name inclusion

Recently, an anonymous user made a change to this article, adding Backendless as an example of a BaaS provider. However, the source currently supporting the sentence does not mention them, the outbound link contradicts Wikipedia's style, and its inclusion seems merely promotional. (I should note here that I work with Kinvey, also mentioned in the article,.)

Late last year, there was some discussion as to which companies should be included in this article. At the time, I suggested a company named Kii did not belong, though discussion was inconclusive. It's a difficult issue, as more providers than are truly significant are going to want listing. I would like to suggest basing the list of included companies on the original articles by TechCrunch and ReadWrite, along with a newer one by the analyst Forrester. Currently, the sentences read:

Current Version

According to TechCrunch, some providers of broad BaaS services are Kinvey, Parse, Backendless, Kii and StackMob. ReadWrite includes Appcelerator along with these three.

References

The first sentence previously included the word "major" to describe the providers, which was problematic and removed (see discussion above). Unfortunately, removing major means that any company, even minor players like Backendless, could be included, getting us into the current mess (even though they aren't mentioned by TechCrunch). I'd thus like to propose the following revision, focusing on the companies TechCrunch, ReadWrite, and Forrester agree upon:

Proposed version

The most commonly discussed BaaS providers are Appcelerator, Kinvey, Parse, and StackMob.

References

Each of the providers included here are mentioned in at least two of the three articles cited. This provides a clear criterion regarding who should and shouldn't be included in the list. Minor companies (like Backendless) are out, but only until they've generated enough coverage that we can find at least two sources which discuss them as important providers of BaaS services.

I'm open to other suggestions about how to handle this section, but I think using the 2-of-3 from reputable sources will help us get back to neutrality. Looking forward to your feedback! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 18:20, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I think we should just remove all company names. Using Web hosting as an example, it mentions no web hosting companies. Wikipedia is not a directory, and having even one name mentioned is going to encourage the addition of more. Gigs (talk) 18:25, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey Gigs, Thanks for taking a look at this so quickly! While I see your point regarding how including any company names acts like a magnet for additions, I don't think cutting all of them out is the right solution.

There are a whole bunch of other providers of other services mentioned in the article (for example, iOS and Android), and although Web hosting lacks any providers, there are lots of other tech articles that do include providers and manufacturers—Operating system, Mobile phone, and Cloud computing, for example. The last even includes lists of providers of similar "as a service" products, like IaaS and PaaS.

I'd like to return to what I see as the core of the issue—people are adding names of companies which are clearly not referenced in the source that is linked as the reference for that sentence. I think we can agree that these should be removed. That's all I'm looking for here—that these additions either come with a source that supports the claim, or that they be removed as unsubstantiated.

If you're too busy to deal with this at the moment, I certainly understand—I'm happy to run it by an appropriate WikiProject if you'd rather wash your hands of it, but certainly appreciate your time so far! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 19:10, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

First, I just wanted to say that I'm very, very impressed with your ethical approach to the discussion; especially with the way you've been clear and professional about your COI. Gigs position is likely the result of dealing with a large number of random vendor lists that sort of creep into articles and eventually become random spam magnets. I usually remove them on sight if they are not bound and sourced to something significantly reliable. It most cases, I just don't see what the value is - how does a random list of vendors enhance a reader's understanding of the topic? In this instance, your proposed text seems a bit like WP:OR; you've synthesized a conclusion that is not directly supported by the sources. Maybe I'm missing something, but in each of those articles there is a simple throw-away line with an almost random list of providers. No real information is provided on the companies themselves; even the Forrester link is a pre-analysis blog posting. Is there some actual coverage of notable products/companies in this genre that could be woven into a narrative, maybe? Kuru (talk) 01:52, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Kuru, thanks so much for taking the time to weigh in on this. I certainly get where Gigs is coming from—these lists can often get unwieldy, and I'm sure that Gigs is busy and dealing with this in the quickest way possible.

I can see where you're coming from re: WP:OR—I wasn't thinking about it as such, given that it's a very low level of synthesis, but I think we can find an easier solution. I'd like to propose that we take a different tack and use only one source, which clearly indicates who the major players are. This article includes the line: "The standard bearer for the BaaS companies was StackMob, joined quickly by Parse, Kinvey and Cocoafish." (Although note that, as the article mentions, Cocoafish has been acquired by Appcelerator.) I'd like to propose that we use this source, and include it as citation for a sentence along the lines of: "Leading providers of BaaS services include Appcelerator, Kinvey, Parse, and StackMob."

This would avoid the issue of original research, while pointing to a source that clearly indicates that these companies are the major players in the market. Note that this also provides a clear criterion for removing other companies from the list, should they be added in the future—if they want in, they need to point to an independent source which lists them as a major player in the market. What do you think? I'm open to suggestions, but I think this would be a good way of dealing with the situation. Thanks again for your thoughts here! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 16:10, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I articulated my position on list entries over here about a week ago. In short, sourced entries are something to encourage, but getting the right balance between sourcing of articles and sourcing of facts is tricky. Gigs has a solution (remove them all); the question is whether there is a ground to be found between the not-a-directory and is-an-encyclopedia pillars. We know that red-links are allowed and indicate potential for article creation; I would suggest that the middle ground sits in that area of "could be an article at some future time". Now, the _inclusionist_ stand is that _any_ topic has the potential for article-hood, while the _deletionist_ stand is that _most_ topics do not have the potential for article-hood. There is an article which addresses this balance: Wikipedia:Featured list criteria. My suggestion is that lists of providers should conform to the requirements of featured lists, while conforming to the MoS guideline regarding embedded lists. This removes notions of topic-specific list inclusion criteria and raises the conversation to a more general level. To this end, I've noted at Wikipedia talk:Featured list criteria#Embedded lists and featured list criteria this discussion and asked whether someone who has been involved in the development of the guideline could weigh in here on the suitability of this suggestion. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:21, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Responding to the request at WT:FLCR mentioned in the post above: I haven't read this entire discussion, just the above post, but it appears to me that User:Ceyockey jumped the gun a bit. The featured list criteria are a tool we use at WP:FLC to determine the quality of "list articles". They have no jurisdiction over article content; they are not a content or style guideline. To elaborate a bit: Featured list allow all three kinds of "links", blue, red (in small quantities) and black (for list items which are not sufficiently notable for independent articles, but notable enough to be mentioned in a particular list). We fully expect lists in earlier stages of development to include more red links than we would allow for at FLC. What is often done on particularly large list articles, however, is to limit item inclusion to topics which are undoubtedly notable. Hope this comment was of help. Goodraise 02:02, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Jurisdiction? I was not saying that the FLCR currently applies here but that that it points a way forward which is already established. In other words, instead of working across an untracked field, it provides a way to work forward from an established point. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 11:54, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

It's not an established way of dealing with inclusion of items. At FLC, we only demand that notable list items are linked, and that few of the links are red. Editors of a list can of course decide by consensus that only notable (in the sense of WP:N) items are included, but that has nothing to do with the FLCR. Check out WP:DUE, it might provide what you're looking for. Goodraise 20:30, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi folks, I really appreciate all of you taking the time to talk about this and provide your thoughts. I think I agree with Goodraise that using WP:FLC isn't the way to go here. However, I think the WP:DUE criteria they suggest can help guide us, despite being intended to address a different problem. If we consider WP:DUE, we need to be sure that we're representing the majority opinion about who important players in the BaaS marketplace are, and not the minority opinion (i.e., minor players are out). I originally tried to do this by citing a number of articles and including the providers that they had in common. Unfortunately, as discussed above with Kuru, synthesizing articles in this way might be seen as violating WP:OR.

It seems that the most obvious solution, then, is to point to one article that indicates who the major players are. And we have that, in this article. So, I'd like to again propose that we add back in a sentence about major providers, sourced to this article, that reads, "Leading providers of BaaS services include Appcelerator, Kinvey, Parse, and StackMob." Thoughts? ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 17:17, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Lists of companies or products become spam magnets. In my experience it works really well to move such a list to a separate article (e.g. List of BaaS providers) and link to it in the See also section. -—Kvng 15:22, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, Kvng. I don't think moving the list to a new article is the way to go, though. The list article itself would probably act like an even bigger spam magnet than the short list of major providers in the main article.

So, it looks like the consensus is to not include any BaaS providers in the article, which I'm fine with for now. The BaaS marketplace is relatively new, and there's not yet an abundance of discussion about who the major players are. I might well be return to this discussion in the future, though, if a more in-depth source is published that very clearly indicates who important providers are.

Given that we've decided not to include company names, I'm wondering if someone would be willing to undo the most recent revision to the article by ‎User:Gaara akash (then edited by User:Imyaman), who added a rather biased-looking, unsourced table yesterday.

And thanks to everyone for providing their thoughts here and helping to build a consensus about the best way to handle this issue. It is very much appreciated!! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 13:38, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I've removed the table. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 13:55, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick turnaround, Demiurge—appreciate it! ChrisPond (Talk · COI) 14:23, 26 February 2013 (UTC)