User talk:Bluethricecreamman/SPS RFC

About this

@Bluethricecreamman, I know you saw the notes at WT:V; basically, I think it needs a complete re-write.

One question I've been thinking about is whether the community agrees that an organization's website (e.g., coca-cola.com for The Coca-Cola Company) is written by "the company" and made available to the public by "the company", vs written by "Em Employee" and made available to the public by "Mo Manager". This is largely a question of fact (or at least, a question of how we interpret the facts), and editors seem to have different POVs, which result in different understandings. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:04, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

im reading through comments slowly and trying to incorporate suggestions, byt i havent spent much time on it and there is a lot of chatter on this topic to parse through. i legit have to take notes at this point to figure out folks ideas.

i still think it needs a lot more tightening and need more time to read through all this, and i have stuff outside of wikipedia ive been upto.

wrt coca cola, etc. im using grey literature as per someones suggestion of whether it counts as sps or not. i dont think its worth debating what is or isnt grey lit except as a separate rfc in some other context. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 20:37, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

the main thing is, i wanna ask a singular question with few options that answers the crux of discussion and figure out what current community consensus is.

i think some question along the lines of “is grey lit sps?” remains abstract enouhh that folks can say yes or no and then folks csn debate what is or isnt sufficiently policed enough sps or what counts and ngo and what doesnt in separate discussions. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 20:40, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm concerned that asking people about "grey literature" is going to lead to an answer of "it depends on what you call grey literature". Even just asking about the narrow question of government reports is unlikely to lead to a simple answer. The Cass Review is a government report, and some editors have suggested that it should be considered self-published under Wikipedia's rules. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:31, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

agreed. but we need some nebulous thing to ask if its sps or not. then we can tackle if that nebulous definition applies to cass report or cato institute or coke website later. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 22:07, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't think we need to ask about a nebulous concept. Most Wikipedia editors are happiest when they're down in the nitty gritty details, and giving general answers is not necessarily going to produce an answer that we can depend on.

An RFC such as "Do you think that the websites for large corporations such as www.coca-cola.com or www.spirit.com should be considered self-published or non-self-published?" or "Should press releases be considered self-published or non-self-published?" would probably result in answers that we can depend on in the future. "Should a whole heterogeneous general category be considered self-published or non-self-published?" is not likely to result in an answer that survives the next dispute. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:18, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

There are too many slight but more precise variations of the same questions to debate in the various discussions. The precision tradeoff is that it may be harder to get folks to agree to a useful definition of WP:SPS.

My thought is that this RFC exists to get a perspective on community consensus between two broad nebulous camps, without falling into pitfalls of someone pointing out an absurd scenario where one definition should obviously be WP:IARed. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 05:25, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

If people agree to something vague, it won't actually help in the end. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:17, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Additional support

I will try to parse out the discussion at WP:RS/N and WT:V, but they are ~ 1.4 WP:Tomats long at this point.

It will take a bit longer to read all that and try to trim this RFC to answer the crux of the question folks are debating, though Alpha's original wording on grey lit was a really good start.

If anyone wants, feel free to edit this further and play around with it. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 03:28, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I will probably post an RFC on WP:RS/N in a week or so at this point, unless someone else jumps the gun and does it first. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 03:44, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

Speaking only about formatting, I think you've made this too heavy.

Also, RSN is already overloaded (roughly 3 times the desirable maximum size, if we want mobile users to be able to participate equally), and there's a chance this would attract a large number of responses. Consequently, you should be thinking about a stand-alone page. WP:RFCTP suggests two typical names for stand-alone pages. You can also ask for help in writing the question at WT:RFC. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:22, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

You might also be interested in looking at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Example formatting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:05, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

• I don't see much difference between this RFC and Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Example_formatting#Separate_votes_from_discussion, and the collapsed section keeps much of the most heaviness out.

* Agree RSN is crowded, disagree that a standalone page is useful for such a momentous question initially. I suspect this RFC will stay lively and active on RSN for a while, and will eventually work its way to top of RSN, and would prefer all the initial responses we can. Can separate out into separate RFC page as required, I know admins will do it if the noticeboard needs cleanup eventually. actually, coming around to your idea.

• Haven't seen much answers from WT:RFC.

Will probably post this sometime tomorrow. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 04:14, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't think the collapsed sections help. If anything, they discourage people from reading it. (That must be unimportant, since they hid all of it...) WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:16, 8 November 2024 (UTC)