Talk:GroupLens Research/Archives/2013

Notability

Since I am a member of the GroupLens Research lab I've paid special attention to the WP:NOTE and WP:COI guidelines. The citations in the article include quite a few papers written by GroupLens Research members. Although these papers' contributions are confirmed through formal peer-review systems of third parties (conference and journal referees), they arguably lack independence from the topic of the article. For this reason, I've also included a wide variety of third-party articles to establish the notability of the lab and the listed contributions. Here are a few examples from the article:

• "Cycloplan". Retrieved 2010-1-4. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
• Goldman, Alvin I (1999). Knowledge in a Social World. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0198238207.001.0001. ISBN 9780198238201. Another possibility is "social filtering" systems, such as GroupLens. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
• "Collaborative Filtering". March 16, 1996. Retrieved 2009-12-30.
• "Minnesota in the .Com Age" (PDF). Minnesota Public Radio. 1999. Retrieved 2009-12-30.
• MIT News Office (May 19, 1999), Firms honored at e-commerce awards, MIT, retrieved 2008-2- {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
• Dragan, Richard (2001), "Net Perceptions for E-commerce 6.0", PC Magazine, retrieved 2008-1 {{citation}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• "Technology Gets Personal". The Wall Street Journal. July 18, 2008. Retrieved 2009-12-23. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Gladwell, Malcolm (October 4, 1999). "Annals of Marketing: The Science of the Sleeper: How the Information Age Could Blow Away the Blockbuster". New Yorker. 75 (29): 48–55. Retrieved 2009-12-29.
• Krulwich, Robert (December 10, 1999). "ABC Nightline: Soulmate". ABC. Retrieved 2008-2. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
• Lueg, Christopher; Fisher, Danyel, eds. (2003). From Usenet to CoWebs: Interacting with Social Information Spaces. Springer. ISBN 978-1852335328.
• "Biking website pools cyclists' expertise". Minneapolis Star Tribune (MN). July 18, 2008. Retrieved 2010-1-4. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• "Mapquest for the cycling set". Saint Paul Pioneer Press (MN). July 19, 2008. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Segaran, Toby (2007). Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications. O'Reilly Media. ISBN 9780596529321. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• Schneier, Bruce (2006). "Schneier on Security: A blog covering security and security technology". Retrieved 2009-12-29. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• "False Web Ratings Swing Opinion, Study Says". The New York Times. May 22, 2003. Retrieved 2009-12-23. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
• Stefik, Mark; Stefik, Barbara (2004). Breakthrough: Stories and Strategies of Radical Innovation. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262195140. Mentions John Riedl and his research {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

With these, I feel that the notability of GroupLens Research and its contributions to the state of the art have been established. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 18:22, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

which of these do you think talk about the lab, rather than about collaborative filtering?. I see the New Yorker article does not even mention the lab. Neither does the Star Tribune. TheWSL article mentions Reidl, but not the lab. DGG ( talk ) 20:15, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Many of them do. Some of them don't specifically reference the lab itself, but they reference the lab's projects and members. All of the citations are relevant to the lab and its activities. --EpochFail^(talk|work) 20:23, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

The contributions section still reads like an ad for the group. These are all fine sources for articles about the topics mentioned, but for the notability of academic research I'd really like to see citations from textbooks or review articles. IMHO (but I'm not sure what Wikipedia policy says about this), news articles are not reliable sources for establishing the notability of research. The topics journalists pick to write about are just too haphazard. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 14:28, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's wise to restrict notability in that way, sources which establish any other subject's notability should just as well apply to academic research. There is an issue around how haphazard it is, but it seems to me that's more likely to be an issue of under-coverage than over. Sjgknight (talk) 12:21, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

COI template and next steps for this article

Qwertyus added the COI template to this article page, but has not suggested what might be problematic (WP:NOTE, WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE, etc.). I'd like that this discussion take place and the article either be cleaned up or have the template removed, but without raising specific concerns, I'm not sure what should be done. Is there concern that GroupLens Research is not notable enough to be covered? Are some of the lab's projects covered with unnecessary detail? I'd like that discussion take place without my interference, but since it hasn't happened yet, I'd like to see if there's a way I can help. You'll have to forgive me for my ignorance. Most of my wiki activities involve software and research, not article writing, so I'll need some help here. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 06:51, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Apologies, I should have posted here. WP:UNDUE is indeed my main concern, not notability. As for how to fix things, might it be an idea to move the history of recommender systems to the page recommender system? Right now, this page contains phrases such as "Netflix even offered a $1,000,000 prize for improvements in recommender technology", which are obviously true but not directly related to GroupLens and IMHO better discussed elsewhere. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 09:11, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Just happened to be looking at this, I've made a couple of minor changes to the page. In places I wonder if WP:ORIGINAL might apply (e.g. "In order to broaden the set of research ideas and tools they used"). But I think the recommender system stuff belongs on this page, it's written as a narrative around GroupLens (not recommender systems more broadly) and is integral to the group's work and history. Sjgknight (talk) 12:17, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your work. For what it's worth, I agree with Qwertyus' concerns. My plan is to try to stay out of the discussion about what cleanup is necessary, but to try my best to help out with the cleanup decided upon. If anyone has concerns over my edits, I'll stop immediately. Please let me know. --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 01:08, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Page structure (specifically, the History section)

Hey folks. When I first put this page together, I started by sitting down with the professors in the lab and discussing the history. The structure of the article was largely based on the chronological ordering of that conversation. How *should* this article be structured? Are there other research lab/scholarly organization articles that we might borrow a structure from? --EpochFail (talk • contribs) 01:22, 11 August 2013 (UTC)