Talk:John Insprucker

Latest comment: 3 years ago by Nffwp in topic Fan praise and Wikipedia biographies

Fan praise and Wikipedia biographies edit

In the "Work at SpaceX" section, the part that quotes comments from random Twitter and Reddit users doesn't really feel like it belongs on this page, in my opinion. It seems to have been written by admiring fans, and the references attached for the claims made just point to more posts made by fans about the subject. It would be better if this page was more serious and with properly-sourced achievements and praise, not just fan posts. This shouldn't be a challenge considering his career, I'm sure much has been written about him other than on the blogs and Twitter feeds of SpaceX enthusiasts.

For this sentence: John Insprucker is considered by popular opinion to be the best SpaceX webcast host, receiving high appraisal from space flight reporters and Elon Musk., the reference is *one tweet*, and not about him being "the best" (if there's even a way one could objectively make this claim).
Similarly, for the part that says He delivers information in a very steady and comprehensive manner while making far fewer mistakes than other hosts, the reference is a fan page with memes, with no source for the "far fewer mistakes" claim; it was quoted from a comment on Reddit.

Just to be clear: I don't mean to be a buzzkill and have nothing against John Insprucker or the person(s) who wrote this. I just think we can do better here. Nffwp (talk) 07:04, 12 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

@Nffwp: I agree; this was definitely written by admiring fans. I'm watching this page because of this particularly bad one, but I should have been paying more attention from then to now.
The bit about "praise from Elon Musk" is, in my opinion, reasonable. This would be a fine ref for a statement, properly qualified. If we "tell it like it is", it's fine to cite twitter like that (something like "including praise from Elon Musk on twitter[1]").
For the bits about where he was the webcaster, there are a ton of easy sources here. We could have a sentence something like "Insprucker was the host of SpaceX tests SN15[1], Demo-2[2], blah[3], etc".
The "elonx" source is great but it looks like WP:SPS to me, I'm afraid we may not be able to cite it. If we want to say something about him being a fan favorite we'd need a WP:RS for that. I took a quick look if something like that exists; if it does, it's being drowned out by all the different news articles with passing mentions of him as the webcaster of some such SpaceX launch. Leijurv (talk) 22:46, 12 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for the comment, @Leijurv! Yes I agree that there's clearly "praise from Elon Musk" and that his tweet should be an acceptable reference. I think we're on the same page regarding which kind of statements and references would be appropriate for a biography.
I'll go over the News link you sent and might try to rewrite a couple of these sentences. Nffwp (talk) 20:51, 17 May 2021 (UTC)Reply