Talk:Comet (programming)

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Archive 1 Pre-2008 discussion.

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[edit] Disamb

Hihi

I saw you reverted my disamb edit...I'm trying to learn how to do this right...could you tell me why its correct to link to the disamb page? I've been working from this guideline: "Wikipedia articles should not link to disambiguation pages (with rare exceptions where the ambiguity of a term is being discussed); instead, links should go directly to the appropriate article."

Just trying to figure out whats up...thank you!! Legotech (talk) 06:22, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

I reverted it because “computer virus” is not the proper meaning of the term payload as used in this article. It looks like a new stub article has been created for Payload (communication and information technology), which would I suppose be appropriate. But a) the parenthetical in that title is absurd, b) the stub of an article there doesn't say anything useful, and c) the definition as given at the top of the payload page is quite sufficient in my opinion. I wouldn't mind terribly if the link was pointed at the Payload (communication and information technology) page, but that change wouldn't make much substantive difference I don't think. The purpose of the wikipedia guideline is to prevent links from going to disambiguation pages with nothing to do with the intention of the link. Because in this case the intent of the link is merely to provide a definition, as the concept of a payload doesn't frankly have much depth, I think the current link is fine. Does that make sense? --jacobolus (t) 12:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm pretty new to all this and appreciate the help! Legotech (talk) 16:10, 10 January 2008 (UTC)


I was looking at things again and it looks like someone tried to start Payload (Software) but never got anywhere...I think that would work better than that mouthful of Payload (communication and information technology). What would you think about me moving the info from C&IT to Software and then redirecting C&IT to Software and then using that in this case?
I'm not trying to be a jerk, just trying to figure things out so that they make sense.
Thanks again. Legotech (talk) 23:37, 10 January 2008 (UTC)
I certainly don't think you're trying to be a jerk. :) As for payload (software), that's not quite right either. In that case the implication is that the payload is an executable program, carried by some other container, such as a virus in an email message. In this case, the “payload” is just an arbitrary message. Rewriting the page about payload (communication and information technology) to be clear and understandable, and optionally moving it to a better title, is not worth it to me personally. The benefit to this article of having a link go to such a page instead of the payload page is negligible. If you want to do that though, go for it! --jacobolus (t) 00:16, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Given that the (recently moved to) payload (software) article is confusing and uninformative (also, “software” is not a good description for the field), I disagree with pointing the “payload” link in this article at it, until it has been rewritten. I might point “payload” back at payload in a few days, if it stays that way. --jacobolus (t) 20:02, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

No worries, can you take a look now? Think it should be Payload (network) or something else? I can't come up with any way to describe it. Thanks again for your help! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Legotech (talk • contribs) 00:33, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bayeux

Any objections to adding more detail about the Bayeux protocol? —Preceding unsigned comment added by RealWorldExperience (talk • contribs) 21:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

What kind of more detail? It's quite possible I'll object, if the addition seems excessive for this article. What do you think readers of this page would need to know about Bayeux that they can't currently figure out from a combination of this article and the linked Bayeux spec? My suggestion would be instead to add an article about Bayeux to Wikipedia, and put detailed information about it there. But this article could potentially have a bit of detail added. Depends what you have in mind. —jacobolus (t) 02:10, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
I would be interested to hear more, is this a related technology? - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 21:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Advertisement

This article used to read as a magazine advertisement of this "technology", putting comet as the next step in a sequence of successful web-technologies, and praising some bloggers as luminaries.

Also, it used to be overly detailed in technical descriptions and suffered from some bad sources (like the self-promoting site cometdaily) and original research in the "history section".

I've removed one-by-one the passages that were below Wikipedia standards, and justified each removal with a edit summary. The article is still far from good but at least now it's readable. Mass reverting my editions is unjustified. I'm open to discuss any edition here. --Damiens.rf 15:34, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

The intent is not to put it as the next in a sequence of technologies, but to explain what the heck it is, by first explaining what it is not. I have explained Comet to dozens of ordinary people, and unless preceded by some explanation of how the web works, the consistent response is “huh??!” The point is also not to hold up bloggers as luminaries, but to link to those of their writings which explore aspects of Comet. Several of the articles on Comet Daily are quite useful in explaining aspects of Comet—please go read the ones linked—and at the moment it is one of the few sources diving deeply into how Comet works. It is quite possible to learn useful information from a self-promoting source. Indeed, almost every source is self-promoting to some extent. So I’m not sure that’s a particularly valid criticism.
My expectation is that readers fall into one of three groups. First, the “what the hell is this?” group, second the “how does it work?” group, and third the “okay, now how can I use it?” group. For the first, an explanation of Comet in the context of other web technologies is essential, and is frankly the sort of thing that many many technical articles on Wikipedia are in desperate need of. The intent of the encyclopedia is to be accessible to a lay audience, and for articles to be self-contained. Without that section, this one flies completely over the head of someone not already deeply familiar with Ajax. (See also WP:MTAA.) For the second group, the explanation of how Comet works through different browser hacks, and some basic explanation of how it can be scaled, are the useful meat of this article. It is in the interests of the third group that I've left the implementations section of the external links, though I agree with you that that bit is probably the most questionable.
The history section tries to link to sources, though it would be good to find a few more. The first few years of Comet-like technology aren’t particularly extensively written about. If you are willing to track down more sources, I would certainly appreciate it. But the way to solve problems of poor sourcing is not to rip the section out wholesale. A good history section is integral to most Wikipedia articles.
One-by-one the passages you removed seemed perfectly up to Wikipedia standards, and indeed the article as it stands exceeds the quality of 95% of Wikipedia articles. The article after you chopped out 80% of it is terrible, adequately explaining neither what Comet is, nor how it works.
As for inappropriate, I guarantee you that if you chop out the greater portion of any article on Wikipedia over the course of a few minutes, in a series of 40 edits, each of which only removes a few sentences or a section, your edits will be mass reverted every time. It's what I personally would call vandalism. —jacobolus (t) 18:35, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
I disagre with you Damiens, it seams you have a habit of pushing through your point of view. Giving a reason for an edit is not automatically a justification. Please don't delete the majority of an article without establishing consensus. I am in particular unhappy about the tone (e.g. accusation of 3RR in edit summary), please follow Wikipedia's policy of co-operation and civility. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 21:37, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
You still haven't addressed none of my edits, and insists on bulk reverting them all. Please, remember that you don't own the article, and there's no reason to keep it at your preferred version until yo get convinced of each change.
You wrote most of this article yourself, without discussions or even using edit summaries, but that doesn't makes it you pet article. Your undiscussed and unexplained edits have no better status than my edits. Stop defending your writing as this was your website.
The version you wrote is full of pov and original research, but explicit and implicit, and I addressed that with my edits (and explained that on the edit summaries). Reverting that without addressing the concerns is disruptive.
Again, if you want to discuss any specific change, do it. But by now, you're just using this talk page to complain about changing "your article". --Damiens.rf 15:09, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I am happy to revert each specific deletion, providing as much summary as you provided in performing the deletion, but that would be an utter waste of time. Yes, I did write most of the article myself, but no, that does not make it my pet article. You are right about both of those. Before I started working on it, it was disorganized and uninformative. Now it is significantly better, until you reduced it back to uselessness. Your edit summaries are absurd. Please stop vandalizing this article as if this was your website. You have yet to explain which parts are non-neutral or original research, or to suggest remedies other than utter destruction of the article. —jacobolus (t) 23:44, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I just calculated, and you removed Literally 85% of the article (~5730 words down to ~870 words). To say that such is justified because you wrote 40 one-line edit summaries is simply absurd, and falls completely outside the spirit of collaboration on which wikipedia is based. —jacobolus (t) 00:18, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Conflict of interests

Jacob, you should avoid quoting you and your friends and using them as reliable sources, and promoting your website in the article. I've reported you to Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard. --Damiens.rf 15:40, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

After coming here from the COI page I've noticed a few problems, I would advise User Jacobolus that if they have any connection with the product, service, website or whatever, they should avoid editing this article other than fixing typos etc. I'd hope all users can be polite to each other, even if they're sure that the other person is in the wrong. Restepc (talk) 15:56, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I certainly am not attempting to “promote” anything, but rather to write a decent explanation of Comet. I have no connection with any such “products” or “services.” Sources I have cited in writing the article are useful and informative, and the suggestion that their inclusion is mere promotion is absurd. I find the accusation that my editing has been (“shamefully”?) based on some conflict of interest extremely insulting. Please speak to the content of the article, and attempt to work towards consensus instead of making personal attacks, Damiens.rf. Thank you. —jacobolus (t) 23:41, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Jacob, while I agree that Damiens has on occasion failed to live up to WP:CIV, I don't feel stating that there is a COI is meant to be offensive. You do quite clearly have a COI with your website, and possibly with some of the people you have previously quoted in the article, however I don't think it's necessary at this stage to prohibit you from editing the article, as you seem to be an expert on the subject and I hope your input will be very helpful.
However, you should be extremely cautious about including quotes/links from yourself, your website, your friends/coworkers etc. Your website seems like a very useful source on this topic, but it would probably be best that if you want to include anything from it in the article, you discussed it on the talk page beforehand.
It is clear that you have a preferred version of this article, but I do not feel the version you prefer is the better one, while there are aspects of it that may be appropriate to include (some sort of history section for example), I think it would be better to work from the current consensus version than your version which, whether you agree or not, sounds to us like an advert, or an article in a magazine, rather than an encyclopedia entry.
I hope that you can stay and help work on this article but appreciate that sometimes people will disagree with you about it's contents.
Finally I strongly suggest you stop threatening people with getting an admin to block them for simply editing this article. Restepc (talk) 00:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
a) It is not my website. b) I do not have any preferred version of the article, and welcome additions and changes. c) there is no consensus version, there is only a Damiens version which has been reduced by 85%, and an original version which has not. d) Please explain what the specific problems are with the original version, in new sections, on this talk page, and then we can discuss both those problems, and potential remedies. e) I appreciate that there are disagreements. I have no problem with disagreements. f) I am not threatening finding an admin because he edited the article, but rather because he is edit warring, has far exceeded the 3 revert rule, and refuses to engage in discussion. —jacobolus (t) 00:39, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
It does seem he has exceeded the 3RR yes, but so have you, so I advise everyone forget the unpleasantness from before and start working on it again. I feel the problems with your version of the article have been stated, the removals and word changes Damiens made should give you a fair guide, as I said in my edit conflicted edit below, I'll leave you to it for a while because right now we're just getting confused. Restepc (talk) 00:47, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
His removals don’t give a “fair guide”: they chop out 85% of the article. He opted for large-scale destruction rather than any “word changes”. Give me a break. —jacobolus (t) 02:26, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
to avoid further editing confusion I am going to simply re-ad the 'advert' tag and leave you to edit it for a while, please be aware that unless the COI/adverty problems are addressed I will still revert to the version in which those problems had been removed/lessened Restepc (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 00:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Please explain what those problems are, and I will be happy to work towards “addressing” them. —jacobolus (t) 00:58, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Jacob, it should be clear at this point what the "Advertisement" and conflict-of-interest problems are. You shouldn't necessarily take it as an offense. In some cases, you may have not noticed how your writing was influenced by your extra-wikipedia agenda.
For instance, in the Implementations section, you briefly described almost 40 "comet implementations". In almost all of them you correctly restricted yourself to use neutral and verifiable terms, like "...sponsored by the Dojo foundation...", "...intended for financial trading...", "...commercial Comet implementation..." , "Browser-based", "...written in Perl/C/++/Smalltalk...", etc. These claims are not always sourced, but this is not my point. They are "verifyable" (ie, a source may be found).
My point is that you only used an non-neutral adjective when describing your own Comet implementation: "Orbited", placed 2nd on the list, is the only implementation to be described with an povvy term :"scalable". How would one find a source for the claim that your application is scalable? Linking to some post on your blog saying it is?
But of course, we know you didn't do it on purpose. You don't even notice you were praising your application on Wikipedia. That's the point of WP:COI: We should be careful when writing about topics we feel related to. We may not notice the damage we're doing to wikipedia. --Damiens.rf 07:09, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
But a much better example of WP:COI was including the creation of your website as a important point on the History of Comet ("...In late 2007, the website Comet Daily assembled a group of Comet server implementors to write articles about Comet techniques and usage."), or having almost one third of the references to be links to blogs on your website, cometdaily.com. --Damiens.rf 07:21, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
a) I did not, as far as I remember, add the text about Orbited, and I would be happy to have any objectionable description removed. You are right that most of the implementations should still have their descriptions sanitized; the whole implemenations section is, as you mentioned, problematic. b) Comet Daily is certainly not my website. The reason that most of the external links point there, is that the people behind the site sent out invitations to all of the prominent Comet developers and solicited articles from them, and they have informative things to say about it, much of which was explained better in their articles for Comet Daily than anywhere else. My intent in making such links is certainly not promotion. Indeed, most of the articles linked are written by direct competitors to Orbited; my interest in linking to their words is the content. —jacobolus (t) 10:02, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
a) "I did not, as far as I remember, add the text about Orbited" - You may want to refresh your memory here. --Damiens.rf 14:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
b) First, by "your website", I mean the website you work for. What it true[1]. Second, that you and commentdaily believe that those people have something informative to say, it doesn't means what they say is up to Wikipedia standards. Self-published sources, and non-neuntral points of view, for instance, are highly frowned upon here. And third, while you may consider the other cometdaily contributors as "direct competitors to Orbited", you surely are allies in the task of establishing "Comet" as a well-known buzzword (what would amke you all seem like new-world visionaries). --Damiens.rf 14:48, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comet means pushing, polling, streaming?

What exactly is the relationship between Comet and push technology, could someone familiar with the topic explain the technical differences? Is comet a server side technology, a client side technology (specific form of HTTP requests) or both? Here a quote from the push technology article: "The Comet technique tries to emulate server-push with a lot of overhead in JavaScript programming". Thanks! - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 01:23, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, the push technology article tries (rather unsuccessfully) to describe the idea of pushing data in general, which could be Comet, but could also be push email, etc. That article should probably be completely re-written, as right now it is poorly organized, uninformative, and somewhat inaccurate. Comet, as this article explains, is push-like interaction which sends events to JavaScript callbacks in a web page. Comet requires the cooperation of client-side (in-browser) code and server-side code. --jacobolus (t) 10:19, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I am still having problems to understand where Comet separates itself from other technologies. Sound like Comet is a subcategory of HTTP push using JavaScript (or other browser applications) to handle asynchronous notifications. Isn't this in most cases called AJAX or is the difference between Comet and AJAX that with Comet that you are using server push instead of client pull? Since the article mentions also XMLHttpRequest polling I am confused. It isn't clear for me where those technologies (Comet, AJAX, HTTP server push, HTTP client pull) overlap or which is a subset of the other. Perhaps a distinction between all those technologies could help to explain what Comet is.
Actually I was trying to find out more about Comet... I think a good description is found at http://cometdaily.com/about/. From what I read there, Comet is an AJAX related technology and a collection of non-static web technologies. For an outsider the first impression is that Comet is complex, unshaped (in terms of not focusing on a few core technologies) and has many requirements on server, client and the intermediate transport infrastructure (e.g. HTTP proxies not suited for streaming will harm or block long living server connections). Without wanting to judge, the technology seams relatively unknown (are there any notable Comet applications, where is it in productive use?) and the current Wikipedia article is very hard to understand. My suggestion would be to simplify the article and shorten it. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 13:19, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
“Ajax” means the browser requests new information without reloading a page. “Comet” is a particular type of Ajax interaction, in which the browser requests new information, opens a long-lasting connection, and then receives updates in real time as the server has them ready. “HTTP Push” is often used to refer to a specific Netscape technology of the mid-90’s which is nearly unused. The description at this article is probably confusing if you just arrived after one of Damiens’s edits, which have chopped out all explanation and context. As for notable Comet applications, Google’s Gchat, Meebo, Renkoo, Facebook chat, etc., are all rather notable. Unfortunately, Damiens keeps removing the history section of the article —jacobolus (t) 23:57, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Already in the late 90s there has been code that uses a web server to push notifications to clients... calling it "HTTP server push" not Comet. To give an example, a simple nph-CGI script on Apache [2] could forward notifications, no special web server needed and it works with many web browsers, no Netscape specific MIME type is used here. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 10:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
The Gchat, Meebo and Facebook articles do not mention "Comet" in the article text. I think a well defined terminology is needed that describes what the Comet technology is and what sets it apart from AJAX (or alternatively both could be merged). - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 01:21, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I've added mentions in those three articles. Google also added Comet functionality to Google Gears recently. Search down for “Comet” on this page. What Comet is is sending events to the browser as they come to the server, rather than as the browser requests them. Comet is an extension of Ajax, a way of using Ajax to provide a different interaction model, not really something completely separate. But I think the topic is complex enough that merging the articles is a bad idea, and would confuse readers. The “web application architectures” section tries to explain how Comet works. Is it not clear enough? —jacobolus (t) 01:49, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
About the “web application architectures” section, the current version is confusing in my opinion and doesn't help to understand the topic. I suggest to remove it completly and give a shorter description with images to visualise Comet compenents and the data exchange between them. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 10:46, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
What specifically did you find confusing about it? I agree with you that images would help it substantially. —jacobolus (t) 20:27, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
It talkes a lot about everything around and little about Comet in my opinion. I don't know who is the intended audience for this section, but I would state it can not even explain what Comet is to readers familiar with main stream web development technologies. As long as people don't understand what Comet is, even when they work on related fields, this will have serious problems of being accepted as a notable technology or to find contributors. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 02:10, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Here we go, a short comparison between Ajax and Alex Russel's Comet (including pictures): "Comet: A new approach to Ajax applicatons" [3]. In a nutshell, it's a flavour of Ajax over a streaming (or long lived) HTTP connection. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 23:38, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Looks great; if you want to work info from that into the article it'd probably benefit. Restepc (talk) 00:05, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Currently it seams that we have establised that Comet is not a new technology but a term that describes a group of technologies. I added this yesterday to the article text, correct me if I am wrong. My suggestion would be to write a short section "Comet is a combination of" and list the involved technologies including links to the corresponding articles and a few words (maximum one line per list entry). For an outsider the first impression is that Comet is complex and unshaped, that eveything can be labeled Comet that isn't traditional browser polling (request - response, pause, request - response). We need to get away from this uncertainty and contradictions (e.g. Comet requires Ajax, anything JavaScript, any browser side extension), in the worst case find out that it is just a fancy word for saying "big hack towards interactive web".[4] - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 07:32, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Implementations" section

I believe the "Implementations" section should be reduced. We don't need to link to every Comet-like piece of code ever written (see "pi.comet", for instance).

I should try to establish a neutral criteria for inclusion so that to avoid link spamming.

What could be a good criteria for inclusion on this list? --Damiens.rf 17:46, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree, but have no ideas on criteria, the most basic idea would be to only include those things important enough to have their own wikipedia article. Restepc (talk) 20:34, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree with you whole-heartedly. I have no idea what useful criteria would be, however. None of these, or nearly none of them, deserve their own wikipedia articles, so by that standard the section should be removed altogether. On the other hand, I think mentioning implementations is useful for readers. —jacobolus (t) 23:58, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Use of large marginal quotations

Apparently Damiens and Restepc feel that the use of quotations at the right side of the article makes it feel like an advertisement. Let me attempt to justify them.

This article currently has no images (though it could use some), and so it is essentially a gigantic wall of text. To break up that flow, provide readers with something to look at, provide some more subjective commentary about Comet while properly sourcing it to specific individuals to avoid NPOV, and give readers some idea of what Comet developers themselves think about the technology, and also to link to a number of useful external sources without further expanding the gigantic external links section, I added a series of quotations to the right side of the article. These fall outside the main flow of the article, and so readers uninterested in them can happily skip over them, but are in my opinion relevant and informative.

I see no particular reason to remove these, and neither Damiens nor Restepc has provided an explanation for why they should be removed, or explained how any of them is particularly unencyclopedic.

I readily admit that they lend the article a format slightly unlike many other Wikipedia articles. But as far as I can tell, it does not fall outside the range of Wikipedia policy.

—jacobolus (t) 01:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I think there would be much less of a problem if the quote had been added by someone who didn't know the people quoted....you actually quote yourself at one point I think Restepc (talk) 01:25, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I don’t really “know” most (maybe any?) of the people quoted, other than myself of course. I have since writing this article exchanged emails with a couple of them. Is there any more specific problem with them than the appearance of a conflict of interest? —jacobolus (t) 01:29, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The way you used the quotations makes it sounds like that phrases (or their importance) are being endorsed by Wikipedia. It works ok for magazine articles, but not for encyclopedic articles. Statements like "15 years of plain HTTP request/response has taught us to think in terms of static pages..." or "Comet improves application responsiveness for collaborative, multi-user applications..." are just somebody's opinions, and should not be given that prominence in the article.

And even if we are to add any (inline) quoted opinion, we should make sure we have a neutral criteria for choosing who said something relevant. The fact that you mostly quoted people from your website (commetdaily.com) and yourself shows your conflict of interests influenced your criteria. --Damiens.rf 04:03, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History section

Damiens wants to completely remove the history section of this article. I believe such a change to be unproductive, because I feel that nearly all Wikipedia articles need history sections. Damiens, please explain what you think the ideal history section would look like for an article about a subject like this one, so we can work to form a consensus on how this article’s history section should be structured. —jacobolus (t) 01:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

the article almost certainly would benefit from a history section, it just needs to be a lot shorter than it is now. Restepc (talk) 01:26, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
What should be in it? What is wrong with its current length? —jacobolus (t) 01:28, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with the History section

Jacob, I agree that an article about a technology (assuming this is one (see bellow)) bennefits from an "History" section. But it doesn't implies that it have to be the one that you wrote.

A history section (of such an article) should contain some background on what led to the technology creation and then go on to explain the relevant facts since it was established. For something that is claimed to be just 2 years old, and didn't really caught-up, it's at least suspect to have such a long "history" section.

When I started trying to clean up the article, I noticed that the this section was the most broken-beyond-repair of them all, and I do believe that at this point, the article would be better without that section.

What's follow is, as you asked, a detailed account of the problems I see in this section.

"Server Push"

The (huge) History section starts by describing some technology used by Netscape, "Server push", and eventually copied by IE... and then concludes that "Netscape’s server push cannot really be defined as Comet". Just in this first paragraph I can see a dozen of (overlapping!) problems.

First, it's not Wikipedia's job to declare what can't and what cannot be described as Comet (and I explained that on my edit summary). Second, if that is not Comet, why is it in the History section? (If you really want to mention it as an relevant ancestor, for god's sake be BRIEF). Third, the whole section seem to be taken from just one self-published source (guess what? cometdaily.com). And fourth, and now for a problem that affects the article as a whole, the website cometdaily.com is terribly biased (and here I believe I'm disagreeing with Restepc as well). For instance, the article used as a "reference" for this sub-section starts with "...The increasing success of the Comet paradigm..."[5].

"Java Applets"

The second History-sub-section on Jacob's version of the article, entitled "Java applets", just as the previous "Server push", is also about something that is not Comet. At the end of this sub-section we're at a 15 lines-long history section that haven't talked about Comet yet. Jacob Rus, at this point, I respectfully believe that you should consider leaving the writing of the history section to some less-prolix contributor.

As a starting point for reducing this pre-History section, I would suggest removing the povs like "the ability to embed Java applets into browsers opened richer real-time options", the original research like "..User interfaces in Java applets were often buggy and frustrating for users, suffering graphical glitches..." and waseal words like "web application developers preferred to use browser-native technologies...". Since this all is not even talking about Comet, removing it shouldn't be that hard. Of course, Jacobs, remember to completely avoid to use links from the website you work for (cometdaily.com) as if they we're good sources. They are self-published and have a strong CometIsGreatSoAreWe-directed pov.

As for the last sentence of this sub-section, it's a good example of Synthesis of published material which advances a position: "To mitigate these disadvantages, some developers—for instance, Caplin Systems in 1998—used Java applets merely as a transport mechanism (...)[23]" (or worse, since the reference [23] is not really "published", but self-published).

"Early Comet applications"

The third section (that is still not about Comet, but just part of the "background that led to the creation of Comet") starts with plain unverifiable original research: "...Circa 2000, developers began creating the first pure-JavaScript Comet applications, using the Frame/IFrame transport". Sure. Pure and simple original research. And the original writing continues, as the article author declares that Pushlets "was the first open source Comet implementation" (make not mistake, the "reference" provided[6] doesn't support this claim at all).

(More on "Caplin" software later)

The remaining of this sub-section simply decides what applications were the next relevant "early Comet applications", and goes on to state some unverified facts about them. No reference for "The 2000 startup KnowNow built several Comet demonstrations..". No references for Netscape's Marc Andreessen's Bang-Networks bankrupting while trying to standardize web-push. No reference for "Comet found a niche in financial trading enterprise markets...".

In this discussion at Jacob Rus's blog about the writing of this wikipedia article, it becomes clear what kind of "research" that was done for this section. When his cometdaily.com fellow Alessandro Alinone disagreed about (the software called) Caplin being a pioneer in "...using Comet instead of Java applets...", Jacob Rus explains that he took this information from the blog of the author of the Caplin software! Not exactly a reliable, independent source by Wikipedia's standards. (and as if it wasn't enough, this Caplin software author is also cometdaily.com fellow).

Jacob, please take this criticism prudently. Everybody commits mistakes.

"Popularization"

The title itself is povvy. As far as I know, "Comet" is not popular. But in any case, it's just an opinion. By the way, a fix for this title was one of the my editions that were bulk-reverted.

The pov goes on with "...several prominent applications...". Some claims about googletalk, Meboo, IE go again referenced by the self-published folks at cometdaily.com. Something is said about a non-notable "'event-planning site" called Renkoo, but the reference doesn't mentions comet at all (Am I missing something?)

And at this point we have the pearl "...Meanwhile, Comet continued to make inroads into enterprise markets...". Jacob, I hope you understand how this is an unappropriated tone. This phrase has a footnote (something that also makes this article strange) saying something about "enterprise Comet companies and solutions" being created, and puts the well-established ICEfaces framework (that's not "Comet", but Ajax) side by side with Caplin (that software created by cometdaily's Martin Tyle). Not to be surprised at this point, the "reference" used is Martin Tyle's own blog at cometdaily.

The text them praises one of cometdaily's contributors for coining the term "Comet" and for "bringing attention to the approach" (POV!). Next, no source is provided for the claim that "The term quickly gained currency, and Comet became a prominent lecture topic at web-related technology conferences".

And the sub-section ends with this incredible piece: "In late 2007, the website Comet Daily assembled a group of Comet server implementors to write articles about Comet techniques and usage". That is it. The history of Comet, according to Jacob Rus, culminates with the creation of the cometdaily's website. A link to a cometdaily's press-release is used as a (verifiable, independent) source.

"Standardization attempts"

This sections seems more appropriate as a technical discussion than as a part of "history".

Jacob Rus cites himself on his self-published blog as a reliable reference and some point. In other point the article wrongly claims that "WHATWG's HTML 5 specification attempts to standardize the Comet transport", when it makes no use of the "Comet" buzzword at all.

Some good crystal balling is used in "If HTML 5 is implemented in many browsers, Comet developers will be able to avoid the current need to implement several transports."

"Future"

It's pov and non-sourced to claim that "Comet implementations and applications continued to proliferate". Passages with the tone of "...look no further than the Implementations section of External links, below..." need to be ripped from this article. And of course, using a collection of links to comet implementations as a reference of its "proliferation" is one of the best example of using primary sources I could find on Wikipedia.

The last sentence is complete pov original research: "As broadband-speed connections become ubiquitous, as the web becomes more social, and as users come to expect instant feedback, Comet stands poised for increasing adoption". Attributing it to some cometdaily contributor, or to anyone else as a matter of fact, doesn't make it less povvy. It's just an opinion, and as such, should not be stated as a fact.

...

I think this covers the whole History section. I hope you all see how broken it is, and how desperate I became when first tried to fix it (that was why I removed it completely).

Jacob, I hope you take this criticism respectfully. I understand how you may feel attached to the article you wrote, but please don't let your feelings dominate your judgment this way.

Yours truly,

--Damiens.rf 06:41, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Self-contained article

The section of this article about web application architectures is, in my opinion, absolutely essential to explaining to lay readers what Comet is. Without a clear understanding of what the “traditional” and “Ajax” models of the web are, it is impossible for such readers to understand what Comet is, because it is defined in relation to those. I have tried to explain Comet to dozens of random people, and without a clear explanation of how the web otherwise works, they are invariably left confused. Damiens seems to feel that this section holds Comet up as a newer and better model than these others (and he therefore removed the section altogether). I have tried to keep the article free of such value judgments, but I can see how he would draw such an inference. So the question is, how can we provide necessary context to novice readers, without implying that Comet is superior? —jacobolus (t) 01:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Answer: Using wikilinks. The article on Friedrich Nietzsche doesn't re-explains what Existentialism is, and the article on Existentialism doesn't re-explains what Ontology is... the Ontology article doens't re-explains what's Metaphysics neither this last attempts to re-explain what's Philosophy.
And this Comet thing is waaaay simpler than Nietzsche. --Damiens.rf 07:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes, exactly. It is impossible to have a wiki article which explains Nietzsche’s thought to someone who has no background in philosophy (or perhaps impossible to explain altogether), and reading Wikipedia to learn philosophy is utterly hopeless, because it has no coherent structure or basic explanations. It seems to me that the attempt at an explanation of Comet which gives the newcomer a complete picture, if it can be accomplished in a few paragraphs, is quite reasonable. —jacobolus (t) 10:12, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
By "a few paragraphs" you mean something like your version? I would strongly disagree with this categorization if this is the case. --Damiens.rf 15:13, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the section on web application architectures has about 6–7 paragraphs of background, which provide a clear context in which to explain how Comet works, so that readers are not left scratching their heads. —jacobolus (t) 00:00, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Scalability

The chief problem facing any popular Comet application is how to scale it, and much of the reason that Comet has not been adopted by as many developers as would like to use it, is that scaling such applications is difficult. I feel that addressing this topic is worthwhile in an article about Comet, because it is one of the top questions facing Comet developers, and much has been written about the topic. Damiens removed the section altogether, with no justification. Damiens, can you explain why such a section is not relevant to this article? —jacobolus (t) 01:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the problem with a lot of these is a combination of sources and length, hopefully Damiens can tag 'citation needed' where appropriate rather than deleting the whole section, but be aware that other people may feel it necessary to trim it down. Restepc (talk) 01:30, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
First of all, Jacob, I hope you understand that what you state above is just your opinion about "comet", and it should only consider "addressing this topic" if it can be somewhat attributed to independent reliable sources.
What I mean is, saying that scalability is the "chief problem facing any popular comet application" is an opinion. Just as I could disagree that "Comet has not been adopted by as many developers as would like to use it", preferring to say that it simply didn't catched. But neither my opinion nor yours should find they way into the article just because we can click the "edit" link.

As with the "History" section discussed above, this Scalability section is a soup of original research, self-published sources, and pov.

The first paragraph (including the 2 bullets following it) are, in the lack of sources, pure original research. The sentences saying that comet applications "...typically use more resources than other types of web applications..." or are "often interactive, allowing arbitrary groups of users to communicate with each-other" are generalizations based on the author's own experience (or lack thereof). Saying that traditional web-servers "...cannot cope with such large numbers of open connections..." also needs references.

Also like the History section, the Scalability section suffers from overly-prolix writing. Do we need to explain how threads inside apache synchronously handle http connections? Can't we simply say that the comet application requires a dedicated communication channel to the server while others don't?

Not to mention the complete lack of sources in this apache detailed discussion...

The sub-section on horizontal-scalability starts with some good original research about how web-applications are difficult to scale, and about the behavior of "powerful servers" in heavy conditions and what Jacob believes we should do on these cases: "...distribute across many servers". I would ask for references, but I believe that the greater problem is the text's verbosity. If concisely written, the text would be void of these unverifiable or hard-to-verify statements.

To simplify the arguments, the whole "Scalability" section is a combination of non-sourced material with statements attributed to a link to a slides-presentation. PowerPoint slides are not the best reliable published sources I know about. And it's also important to point here that Jacob Rus was also involved in the making of this presentation (he's credited at least with the "diagrams" (and thus, there are some pics of him among the sliders)).

I sincerely don't see what can be saved from this section in the article. --Damiens.rf 08:23, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Most of these are factual, easily verifiable statements, but you are correct that it is difficult to find sources for them. I don't have the tens of hours it would take to track down sources to your standards, and won’t for the next month at least, but I will try at some point. —jacobolus (t) 10:28, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Browser hacks

The other main problem in Comet development is how to make it work across browsers. I added a large section to this article about how Comet can be made to work in different browsers, because it is a topic of interest to anyone trying to understand the technology and its limitations, or trying to implement their own Comet applications. Understanding how existing Comet transports work is necessary background to understanding the standardization attempts such as that undertaken by the WHATWG. Damiens removed this section as well, without providing much justification. Damiens, please clearly explain why you feel this section is not relevant or not encyclopedic, and what you think it should be replaced by, if anything. —jacobolus (t) 01:19, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The section is basically your original research account of what web-developers liked to use to implement server-pushing. It's ok that you post your findings in your blog (as you did), but the criteria for publishing such information here on Wikipedia is a bit stronger. And of course, using your blog post as a reference (as you did) doesn't changes a thing. --Damiens.rf 08:31, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Use of Notes

Damiens, you removed all the footnotes from this article. Can you please explain why? —jacobolus (t) 01:15, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Footnotes in my experience aren't overly common in wikipedia articles, but working them into the article would be better than simple deletion Restepc (talk) 01:31, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Lack of commonality is no reason to remove them: most articles would probably benefit from more footnotes, which provide clarifications without cluttering article text. They should be dealt with one by one, if they are truly problematic. —jacobolus (t) 01:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Don't forget they were all from a single source (Comet daily blog entries) and you even quoted yourself. As a whole it looked like marketing and personal opinions from a small circle of people. I am sure you can understand the problems that arise from this situation (neutrality, conflict of interest, original research), so the consensus at the time was to remove it. Please don't take it personal. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 07:49, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
We're talking about the lettered footnotes, not the numbered citations. The two are unrelated. —jacobolus (t) 08:04, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, my mistake. I can't remember seeing footnotes in Wikipedia articles. In that case I agree with Restepc, instead of footnotes text should be integrated into the normal article text flow. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 09:38, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] big problems with the article IMO

  • severe lack of sources, which leads me to believe that much of it is original research.
  • length...way too long.
  • the quotes, they're not from notable sources, appear as if there for vanity, I would suggest (indeed I will insist on) scrapping all of them unless any can be shown to be important.
  • many minor things which add up to sounding adverty/NPOV problems, for example replacing "Comet is one of the ways to address this limitation" with "Comet removes this limitation"

Restepc (talk) 01:19, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

  • Which part is unsourced? Be specific. Some paragraphs have a single source, and therefore use only one reference link. Cluttering them with a note after every sentence is stupid (and unfortunately rather widespread at Wikipedia). But I am happy to attempt to track down sources for anything which you think is inadequately sourced.
  • Way too long by what standard? Many Wikipedia articles are much longer (indeed nearly every featured article is). If it is too long, some sections could presumably be made into their own articles, using summary style.
  • What is a “notable” source? I believe these provide useful context, improve the readability of the article, are mostly factual statements, and provide useful external links to further relevant explanations.
  • Please enumerate these, and suggest remedies.
Please separate your concerns into separate discussion sections so that the discussion doesn't get too cluttered. I started some of those sections above. Thanks. —jacobolus (t) 01:26, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

My biggest problem with the comet technology lies in the problem of understanding what it is -and- if it exists as an independent, notable technology. As I have suggested above, a good definition could help a lot here. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 01:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

The concept is clearly notable, and in the last couple of years, the term “Comet” has come to dominate (over the alternatives, which are mentioned in the introduction and redirect here; for evidence go look at the talk titles for any web technology conference), and is used by Google, IBM, and others. As for the “independence” of the technology, it requires completely re-architecting both servers and in-browser applications, so I think it can be considered relatively independent. —jacobolus (t) 01:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Do you have sources for this dominance? As soon as someone describes "Comet" the word AJAX falls, where are the hard facts of what Comet is other than a neolism for dynamic interaction via HTTP that exists since the mid 90s (e.g. nph-CGI, multipart MIME, PSYC, streaming webchats). As long as we don't have a definition of what Comet is and how it separates itself from related technologies I think it is more of a Web 2.0 buzzword. I agree with Restepc on the points he has listed, the article is way too long and leaves the impression that this is original research. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 13:14, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
What would a source for that look like? There are no NY Times stories exclaiming “Comet is the most popular term for this!” if that’s what you’re looking for. Sure, “Comet” could be called a buzzword if you like, just like “Web 2.0” itself, or “RIA” or “Ajax” or many other terms, or for a non-web-related example, “intellectual property”. That doesn’t in and of itself make it non-notable. Also, it is “way too long” by whose standard? Who made you the arbiter of article length? I was under the impression that Wiki is not paper. —jacobolus (t) 20:23, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
If a source can't be found for something, it shouldn't be in the article. Article length is a tricky subject, and is generally down to consensus on individual articles, here the consensus is clearly that the article is currently considerably longer than it should be. Restepc (talk) 20:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Grumble… the point was not that it is not verifiable. Indeed if you look around it is completely obvious common knowledge (you can take Google’s adoption of the term as “credible” evidence of a larger trend). In any case, this “consensus” view is of 2 people who happen to have been looking at this article in the past 2 days, and I am not even convinced they (you) have read the whole article. They certainly haven’t gone out to look at the dozens of linked external sources. —jacobolus (t) 21:08, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
consensus is consensus, even if it's only 3-1. I am trying to prevent this from escalating up the dispute resolution page. Restepc (talk) 21:19, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
If you like, I can easily find a half dozen people to come in here and argue for preserving or extending this article. But that would be a pointless waste of time. You need to give some reason why each part that you think it unnecessary should be cut or shortened, and then I will try to explain why I think they are useful, and then hopefully the dialog will persuade you. Just saying “I have more votes, let’s chop out 85% of the article, because I say so” is absurd. —jacobolus (t) 21:25, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
your involvement with this article has already raised concerns, I can't recommend you start canvassing for your point of view. I would consider myself to have been a neutral fourth opinion in this case, if you'd like to bring this to the attention of a wider audience you could try a request for comment. Also I would remind you that things need to be shown relevant and sourced to be included, not the other way around. For starters I would question the point of the entire 'browser compatibility' and 'scalability' sections.Restepc (talk) 21:45, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Listen, the article has multiple intended audiences. You Restepc, Damiens, and one of the anon IP users, who had never heard of Comet before, are clearly members of an audience that doesn’t particularly care about how the technology works, but would instead like to hear a basic definition and then move on. That is completely fine. Other more technically inclined readers might instead like to learn more detailed information. This sort of diversity of audience presents a problem for any wikipedia article. Indeed, I often find articles go into much greater detail than I personally am interested in, and I skim or skip over entire sections. But that is not evidence that those articles are “too long”, but rather merely that they are not catering specifically to my interests and needs. All of the parts of this article are relevant to the subject, and are in my opinion important to some subset of readers. Why do you personally get to decide that they should be cut? —jacobolus (t) 21:59, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Jacob, why did you personally decided what should be in? You wrote an 11 pages long article without providing 1 edit summary, why is it hard to accept that others my have a say on it? It's not that we need to convince you before making any changes, since you didn't bothered to ask anyone before writing the whole article your way. At this point, the better we can do see to work together and, without any attachments, decide what needs to be done to this text to make it look like an Wikipedia article. The more defensive you are, the painful the process will be for us all. --Damiens.rf 08:40, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I can perfectly well accept that others might have a say. It is the deletion of the vast majority of the text with only a little, extremely vague justification which I found annoying. I generally don’t write edit summaries when adding large amounts of text, simply through habit. It certainly is not through any attempt to mislead or deceive later editors. —jacobolus (t) 10:30, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Jacobolus, I come to believe that you are lobbying for your favourite technology. It should be easy to give a few hundred sources, articles, news coverage if this new web technology would be as popular and the market penetration as dominant as you claim. There are multiple problems with this article in my opinion. You created it without providing hard facts (original research, advertising, conflict of interest, mystification), secondly you added redirects for related terms and can not provide convincing arguments when asked for an explanation, third you effectively deleted the HTTP streaming article despite objections of others. From this point on it would be much better if you would only assist and consult with your technical expertise, the current process of regaining neutrality on this topic has been unnecessarily slow so far. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 02:11, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

I would have to agree with 83.254.208.192 here. As I made clear in #Problems with the History section above, this article, as was written, seems broken beyond repair and needs rewriting from stub, or even become a sub-section in a broader article.
"Comet" is a buzzword created by a blogger called Alex to denote something that is not specially different or independently notable from other existing technologies.
The term became used by a small group (10 or 12) of evangelists (including the buzzword creator) that gathered on a blog called cometdaily.com to promote the use of this buzzword. Jacob Rus is one of these evangelists and is using Wikipedia to spread this meme, and to increase the perceived importance of the cometdaily website (a place where 10 or 12 people blog about comet and post comments praising each other posts).
All comet-related references in the article are from people directly linked to the buzzword creator Alex (usually by being a co-worker in cometdaily.com) or from Alex himself. No notable third part coverage of the topic seems to exist.
Jacob, at this point it seems that you're the only one believing your version of the article is good as it is. Will you help us to re-write the whole article (following Wipedia's standards this time) or we should go back to the COI page (or other conflict resolution help) to settle this dispute? --Damiens.rf 13:33, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't believe further COI action or escalation up the dispute resolution ladder is needed at this point, Jacob is well within his rights to disagree with us. I think the way forward is to merge this article and the reverse ajax article into push technology, as part of a rework of the push technology article. Reverse ajax article should be deleted, and this article cut down to a stub and left for a couple of months to allow adequate time to demonstrate the notability or not of the term 'comet' (what does WHATWG refer to it as for example). Then either deleted or kept as a concise stub/article as appropriate. I am way outside my area of expertise here, but I'll do what I can. Restepc (talk) 18:08, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm worried about the way Jacob ask for justifications for any change we propose, and doesn't receives the justifications very well. I would like to see a compromise from him here. He seems to sincerely believe that his writing style is clear and comprehensible, he doesn't seem to carry about consistence with Wikipedia's style, and he somehow fail to see how this article is, more than anything else, a big advertisement for commetdaily.com and it's collaborators (himself included). --Damiens.rf 18:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
But I'm ready to support stubfying and moving to a subsection of an article about a broader (and more solidly established) technological term. --Damiens.rf 18:45, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
In situations like this I think it's better to discuss things for a while with the other editors of an article, but yes, I think that process has pretty much finished now and I'll start cutting down this article....probably tonight. Do you think it would be better for the broader article this is moved to to be the push technology article, or a totally new one as I suggested below? If we do work on push technology as being that article, would it be a good idea to rename it to 'server push'? Restepc (talk) 19:05, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Good questions. Regarding the last question, the terms 'server push' and 'client pull' (as the opposite) are very common terms when speaking about protocol level, developers do instantly understand what is ment. Perhaps "Push technology" is a more neutral umbrella term for concepts, technologies and protocols - but I really don't have a strong opinion which is better. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 22:53, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
re: Restepc: As far as I can tell there has been no “process”. re:anon user: “the terms 'server push' and 'client pull' (as the opposite) are very common terms when speaking about protocol level, developers do instantly understand what is ment.” Actually these terms have several possible meanings, and are quite general, and it is therefore not usually clear what is meant without further context. —jacobolus (t) 02:02, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
I have trouble believing that you actually are looking for a compromise, since you have consistently rejected anything but complete destruction of this article. But yes, I believe my writing is clear and comprehensible when read, and I still have not heard which parts of what I wrote are hard to understand, but I would be happy to attempt to clarify them. What exactly do you understand to be the meaning of the word “advertisement”? Comet Daily is mentioned exactly once, and then several of its articles are used as sources, as they do a good job explaining various aspects of Comet. I wouldn't mind if you remove the mention from the article; it is mostly incidental, which is why it sits in the “history” section. But using a source in a wikipedia article is very different from “advertising,” in my understanding. —jacobolus (t) 02:02, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
In danger of repeating what was said multiple times by various people: it was broken beyond repair. The consensus at the time was to rebuild it from scratch. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 17:28, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Destroy and rebuild

The simplest way to sort out this article may simply be to cut it right down to a stub and add in more info if necessary, I'm not familiar with the notability guidelines on programming terms, but I'm beginning to wonder if this should even have its own article in the first place.

My suggestion for the form of the article if it remains is:

Comet is a programming term used to describe a method of event-driven, server push data streaming. This method uses long-lived HTTP connections as an open line of communication which the server can use to push data to the client, reducing latency.[1] This method is used in many web applications.[citation needed]
The term Comet was coined by Alex Russell in a March 2006 blog post, as a play on Ajax (Ajax and Comet are both common household cleansers).[2] Though the concept is much older, and has been known by various names[citation needed], the term Comet has come to dominate recent discussion.[citation needed]

Obviously I suggest we actually find sources where I've put citation requests, and I'm far from sure that the article shouldn't simply be merged with push technology.

Restepc (talk) 18:16, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

What the heck? Why is that the simplest way to sort out this article? Comet is not a “programming term”, and the current first paragraph is a perfectly fine description. The current article does an excellent job of introducing Comet in my opinion—and I have had several people read it, both technically inclined and not, and the response has been consistently positive. Where have you put citation requests? As far as I can tell the article is sourced just fine, but I am happy to add more citations. In any case, this is unquestionably a notable concept: seriously, go look at the list of talks at any web technology conference, and you will see large numbers of them explicitly about “Comet”. There is now at least one book about the subject, and the term is used by hundreds of companies and developers. —jacobolus (t) 19:56, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I see. Citation requests in the little bit you've pasted there. No, what you have written is insufficient description, and badly focused. “this method is used in many web applications” is vague and nearly meaningless (no wonder it would need some citation), and the second paragraph belongs where it currently is, in a footnote. The introduction of the article should describe the concept, not dwell overly on the origin and usage of the particular name, since the concept is what the article is about. The specific name used is just a convenience, not some core aspect of the concept. (A rose by any other name and so forth.) Leaving that in a footnote is the best way to avoid cluttering the article with distractions. —jacobolus (t) 20:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
The reasons this should not be merged with push technology are that we have enough to say about Comet that putting push email and other types of push applications in the same article would expand it to an unreadable length, and also that many more readers will search for “Comet” than “push technology”, seeing as the latter term is nearly never used, while the former has become quite popular. If you like, you can put a summary of Comet into the push technology page, and provide a link from there to this page. Indeed, that probably should be done, but I don't personally care enough about the push technology article to completely rewrite it, which is what it needs at this point. —jacobolus (t) 20:06, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
The fact that you could (and havven) write a great deal about comet, doesn't necessarily mean you should do so (on wikipedia). How would you describe comet (in 1-4 words) if it's not a programming term? 'a word used for a World Wide Web application architecture' is a bit of a mouthful.
The relationship between push technology and comet probably needs mentioning, on either the future merged article or both if they remain separate. It seems to be that comet is essentially a modification/upgrade of push technology, in that it eliminates the need for the client to consent to being sent each piece of data, whereas beforehand although the server would be the one initiating the request, it would 'check' with the client it was okay to send it (and before push at all, the server would only send stuff when the client specifically asked for it) have I got that right?Restepc (talk) 21:06, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
How about an “interaction model for web applications” or a “web application architecture”? “programming term” is completely vague to the point of meaninglessness. No, it is not a modification or upgrade of push technology. And your sentence there describes the difference between a run-of-the-mill Ajax application and a Comet application, and has little relation to push technology, which is I think an even broader umbrella term than Comet is, requires no browser whatsoever, and can be used to describe applications like push email. But it’s unclear—the term was mostly used in the late 90’s, (e.g. here)—and I'm not sure in how broadly a sense anyone uses it today. I certainly haven’t heard it mentioned recently, other than on this talk page. —jacobolus (t) 21:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
Server push is clearly not only a term of the late 90s, e.g. "Scalable Server Sent Events" from the 2008 HTML draft speaks about pushing, polling, streaming and AJAX (however not about Comet as far as I can see). [7] - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 02:55, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Restepc, I completely agree and also think that this article is a strong merge candidate -or- that it could gain by being rebuilt from scratch. I think we stumbled across one problem, that is ownership. If we can't make progress with the current article perhaps Jacob could be so kind and take a step back (you know that no information is really lost, since it is always possible to revert back to an older article version if necessary, also I am feeling unhappy that Jacob has recently added a reference to himself, this should simply not happen). Since the terminology is still unclear, my personal working title for 'Comet' is 'Streaming Ajax'. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 02:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

At this point, I would also favor a complete rewrite. We could start with a definition-only stub and start adding only (GOOD-)sourced information from that point. But of course, we would have to first decide if "Comet" is really an independent technological concept, or just a buzzword defended by some clique. --Damiens.rf 08:45, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

It seems I've been confused by the state of the push technology article, many of the phrases which according to this article comet is also known as, currently redirect there. It seems both articles (and possibly reverse ajax too) need work, and the redirects need sorting out.

I'll leave this discussion going for a bit longer before cutting the article to a stub in case Jacob still has objections I haven't considered. Restepc (talk) 16:37, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Done; the first paragraph could do with some expansion (and sources) from an expert. The second paragraph could do with a list of the various names (the list in the previous carnation came under dispute so I'll wait for sources), and would be better being more specific about how much older it is...Restepc (talk) 23:59, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I strongly object to your most recent version. If you don't add a real description of Comet very soon, I will certainly put in a message at WP:RFC. Cheers! —jacobolus (t) 10:04, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
I took the description of comet from the Reverse Ajax article as I am not an expert in this area. If you think it's inaccurate, feel free to change it with a neutral source; our Swedish colleague had a good one the other day. As I already suggested, RFC may be the best option from your point of view if you still think that the wider community would be more forgiving of your recent input to this article and links to it. I now plan to try to help modify the push technology article, and possibly split this sorta thing into a new one if it becomes necessary, you are more than welcome to bring your expertise to help.Restepc (talk) 14:43, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Looks like this is still not sorted out. Many parallel discussions, but at the end of the day there is still no definition of what Comet is on a technical level. On a sidenote, the so called technical experts from cometdaily didn't help that much so far in cleaning up this mess. - 213.115.160.102 (talk) 16:47, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Long list of redirects

I have seen that there are redirects to the Comet article, which should point to other articles in my opinion. The following is my suggestion. -83.254.208.192 (talk) 04:21, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

It's interesting that there used to be an article on HTTP streaming, but Jacob Rus/Jacobolus decided to wipe it out and redirect to his preferred term "Comet", despite the discussion at the time achieved no consensus for doing so. --Damiens.rf 08:59, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I wiped nothing out, but rather merged all relevant content. These articles were all stubs, and the Comet article mentions the alternate names prominently in its introduction. The point is to have one article for a single concept. I honestly don't care all that much what it is called. At the moment, sending “HTTP streaming” and “HTTP push” to “push technology” is a bad idea, because they describe different concepts. Likewise, “Reverse Ajax” should not be an independent article at all, as it is an alternate name for the (“Comet”) architecture described here, a name used by almost no one (all its uses originate from a single source, and the term has gained no currency as far as I can tell). --jacobolus (t) 10:19, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Ouch, this shouldn't have happened. I wondered why there was no HTTP streaming article. From my technical point of view 'HTTP streaming' and 'HTTP server push' are close siblings if not even synonyms for each other. Comet can be a subcategory of a streaming technology but not every HTTP streaming technology is Comet (also see comments from Lynx and Sprocketonline in other sections of this talk page). I strongly suggest to merge the old HTTP streaming article into Push technology for now, maybe it can be reinstantiated as an own article. Having commented on streaming, there also have been objections to say that 'Reverse Ajax' and 'Comet' are the same thing, in any case the term 'Reverse Ajax' has been around longer (already mentioned in 2005 [8]). Jacobus I start wondering on what grounds you decided that 'Comet' is the most prominent term for all these terms? - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 12:00, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I decided based on looking around the web, at the discussion of the topic, at the titles and blurbs from talks at technical conferences, at the books coming out, at the demos and applications using the technology. Comet is by far the most popular term of the last year and a half or so. Which name came first seems like a poor method (by that standard we would merge Istanbul and Constantinople into Byzantium). I honestly don't care what the article is called, or what the technology gets called. My reason for merging these articles is that they all described nearly exactly the same thing, not that I want to stomp out alternative names. It is silly to have 5 wikipedia articles under different names, for the same concept, especially since it is easy to list off alternative names in the introduction. —jacobolus (t) 23:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Ah, it seems we may be in agreement; look below :) Restepc (talk) 01:03, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Merger of all these things into new article

Article title something like 'web server client interaction models'

In that title comet/whatever you want to call it, polling, piggybacking, etc would each be described, rather than have separate articles for each where the less notable ones get merged into the more notable ones when they're not the same thing. Like a more detailed version of the current reverse Ajax article but under a title which isn't a competing term/method.

It seems by far the simplest way to explain each of these concepts is by contrasting with the alternatives.

Sound good to anyone? Restepc (talk) 01:01, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

The one problem I can imagine with that is that it is a broader topic than this one, and so it might lack focus, and become confusing, if it tries to completely cover the subject. Such an article should certainly exist, but I think that the particular case of real-time web applications (as is described here) merits its own article as well. —jacobolus (t) 01:10, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I suggest you try researching and writing an article like that, incorporating text from this article if it is useful, and then come back to this discussion once that is reasonably written, to consider what to do afterwards. —jacobolus (t) 01:11, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't think that is needed right now, there is not the amount of content that justifies an own article. We could start small in the 'Push technoloy' article with individual sections and create extra article(s) if one section becomes too long. This would give an opportunity to focus on the definitions and similarities first, instead of going straight into the details. 83.254.208.192 (talk) 01:40, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Agreed that this is the best option right now. Ripped out of original research and peripheral discussions, very few would be left from the "Commet" article. We should redirect this page to Push technology#HTTP server push and work to improve that article. If that section ever gets too big (what would be reasonable to expect), we could create the independent article HTTP server push (or simply "HTTP push").
Of course, while working on Push technology#HTTP server push, we should avoid the same mistakes committed in Comet (programming). --Damiens.rf 20:52, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] common household cleansers

We need a source for the claim that "Comet" was chosen as a play on Ajax as both are common household cleansers. I know this is probably truth, but... the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. --Damiens.rf 21:25, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

There are several pages of well-verifiable material that were ripped out of this article, in your path to destroy it. Explaining the silly joke behind its name is pointless, by comparison. Go ahead and rip it out. Why leave the vandalism half finished? —jacobolus (t) 06:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
You're just being rude here. If you're not prepare to contribute to an article that will not blindly promote your agenda, consider stepping away of the process. --Damiens.rf 11:35, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
There is no article left to contribute to. —jacobolus (t) 14:00, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I hope you get back when you heal your feelings. --Damiens.rf 15:51, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
Why would he waste his time when you've taken an excellent resource on a very popular technology and butchered it?. Comments above such as "by a blogger named Alex" show your complete lack of understanding of the space. Alex Russell is the co-creator of the Dojo Toolkit and Cometd, among other things, one of the most highly respected people in the world of Comet and Ajax. --Dylan.rf 06:06, 7 June 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.167.219.162 (talk)
Of course he's "one of the most highly respected people in the world of Comet", he made the whole thing up! I, for one, am one of the most highly respected people in the world of Cryptoflugny (that happens to be something I invented myself). Wait until some friend of mine start writing Cryptoflugny (dancing) --Damiens.rf 20:20, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
Dude, seriously? Come on now, see Greg's post below. How do you think the term Ajax came to be? Someone (Jesse James Garrett) in the field came up with a term to describe a group of techniques. Comet accomplishes the same thing, and is widely used across the industry (again, see Greg's post below). Or, take a look at the list of projects on Google Code and Sourceforge that use the term Comet, or the number of implementations on the original page before you removed the list. If Wikipedia doesn't want this information, that's a shame. I still don't really understand your objection to the work done by Jacob over many months with community feedback? It doesn't really matter... the content is open source anyways, I just don't understand why you feel the information presented is not useful? Your objections listed above seem pedantic and it feels like the goal of creating a great resource of useful information is being ignored by your desire for a process that I fail to understand. If any of the open source software projects I contribute to behaved in the manner you have behaved in, I would be embarrassed and ashamed. --Dylan.rf 00:08, 8 June 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.167.219.162 (talk)
Full disclosure here, as Restepc has accused me of WP:CANVASSing “against” him. Dylan, knowing that I wrote most of the Wikipedia article here, sent me an email yesterday asking me what was happening with this Wiki page, to which I have just responded, a day after his comments here, suggesting to him that discussion on the talk page is the method by which Wikipedia disputes are resolved. I have no interest in compromising wikipedia process, and Dylan speaks for himself. —jacobolus (t) 02:26, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Damiens, trivializing this discussion with absurd straw man arguments does not further your position. —jacobolus (t) 02:31, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comet deserves it's own page

This page (as of 8/June/2008), is totally insufficient for the emerging technology called comet.

I'm the main developer of the Jetty webserver and have been working with internet since 1995. Certainly comet relies on pre-existing push techniques and I for one was doing similar things with netscape in the late 90s.

However comet encompasses is more than just "push" protocols - it is a about implementing "push" in a browser environment with the connection limitations and security sandbox issues. Prior to the coining of the term "comet", it was very difficult to simply describe the techniques and the issues they raise with existing network infrastructure.

Through 2007, the term "comet" got increasing traction and is now widely understood in the industry. In 2008, it is mostly possible to use the term Comet without the need to include the terms "Ajax" and/or "Push". For example there were many talks at the javaone 2008 conference that included comet in their title, their abstract, or content.

I am on the servlet expert group for JSR-315 (for the servlet-3.0 specification). The comet use-case has been a high priority for this iteration of the specification and the servlet API is being modified to cope. The popular tomcat server has provided support for this feature with a servlet called CometProcessor. I am also on the Open Ajax alliance, and the specific security and communication issues of comet are given significant consideration in their efforts for interoperability of Ajax and lobbying infrastructure providers for change.

More over, while comet is based on push technology, the terminology used is a little different. In order to discuss comet, you need to define such terms as "long polling", "JSONP callback", "forever frame", "cross domain", "2 connection limit". These phrases are the currency of comet discussions and you will not learn them from the push technology page.

I do not think this page should be merged with a push page, however it can refer to some general techniques that may be defined there. (Note that "push" is not really a good name either... there is no actual push in many techniques).

The current content of this page is totally insufficient for a significant movement in web technology.

I should also say that I'm a contributor to the cometd project at Dojo foundation, and an author on the bayeux protocol specification.

Gregwilkins (talk) 23:42, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Please help to improve this article and contribute with your technical knowledge. I am not convinced about the notability, what makes me wonder is that the Ajax article doesn't even mention Comet. The latest HTML draft doesn't mention it, no other W3C document mentions it. Web developers here in Europe that I spoke with haven't heard of it, so it doesn't look like a well known Ajax design pattern and by far not like a recognisable web technology. Perhaps Comet is a new term used within a small circle? One big problem with this article is that we have seen lobbying (e.g. from/for Cometdaily) and very little facts, where are the sources? Let me comment on some of the "Comet currency" you mentioned: Ajax long polling is also used by AOL's Web AIM and the 2 connection limit as defined in RFC 2616 concerns all HTTP server push technologies. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 09:03, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Ajaxian, a leading site about Ajax, has 45 entries tagged with Comet [9]. Simon Willison, Ajax expert, has given several talks about Comet at conferences: [10] . OpenAjax Alliance talks about Comet: [11]. Every major Ajax and web conference I've attended in the past two years has had one or more Comet talks (JavaOne had approximately a dozen talks on Comet... Sun's Grizzly and GlassFish server has used the Comet term for two years [12], and IBM's WebSphere includes Comet support: [13] Of course it's a newer term than Ajax, but what facts am I missing? Comet is defined as a combination of techniques (long-polling, forever-frame, server-sent events (part of HTML 5 drafts), multi-part MIME, that encompass ways to do things more efficiently than Ajax, and the server-side implementations necessary to make this happen. I'm sorry if you feel that Comet Daily is lobbying... I created Comet Daily as a collaboration between people interested in Comet, to talk about it, and raise awareness for it. That said, I don't care if Wikipedia uses this information enough to go on proving whether a term is important or not... if you don't want it, we'll reuse it at Comet Daily under the terms of the GFDL and get on with more important things. dylanks


I have come to the conclusion that comet does warrant a wikipedia article...and it has one; I realise you preferred the old version, but it went against a number of wikipedia policies/guidelines to the extent that scrapping it and starting again was the best option in my view. This article will continue to exist; if someone was to nominate it for deletion I would argue to keep it, but it needs to be edited within wikipedias guidelines. Restepc (talk) 03:38, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
OK, I've started contributing little improvements to the text here and on the push technology page. They contained a number of minor falsehoods and a few barbs from an obvious comet skeptic. Hopefully I've corrected those and not gone the other direction nor broken any guidelines... but will sit back now for a bit and see if what I've done is acceptable. Note that it is difficult to find definitive citations other than say something like: "google for long-poll". Comet has developed in the era where we look to wikipedia to provide the definitive citations :-) Gregwilkins (talk) 08:20, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Fine. Then the question is: what needs to be said about Comet in a comprehensive self-contained Wikipedia article. I posit that the most important aspects of such an article are:
  1. A description of what Comet is, which requires in my view a short description of how other web application architectures work, without which the description of Comet makes no sense to those not already intimately familiar with web technology
  2. A description of the various techniques used, such as invisible iFrames, XHR objects, dynamic script tags, and the proposed HTML5 Server-sent events, including at least how they work, but ideally also the pros and cons of each one.
  3. A history section
  4. A section on scalability, including some description of what publish/subscribe is would be also very useful to anyone trying to understand Comet as it is actually used, as this is one of the most difficult problems facing Comet developers, and is essential background for anyone wishing to discuss Comet.
Cheers!
Restepc: I expect you and anyone else who objects to the article as it was before to put actual effort in to trying to make a real article, instead of merely pushing for the article’s destruction as you all have so far. —jacobolus (t) 18:01, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Also, I would appreciate a restoration of the introduction as it was before this article was butchered, and barring some convincing argument why it shouldn't be restored, I will restore it in the spirit of WP:BOLD. I believe it does a significantly better job introducing the subject, wiki-linking to key outside terms, etc., than the current introduction, and also is much more readable prose. —jacobolus (t) 18:04, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
At this point, I'm not sure we can write something like an "history section". It seems nothing has ever been published about "The History of Comet", and Wikipedia should not be the first to do so. Do you know some such publication?
About the leading section, I like the current one much, even though it's still isn't perfect.
As a side note, you have been warned before about potentially offensive statements like "...this article was butchered..." or "...pushing for the article’s destruction...". You had enough time to understand how the text you wrote was anything but an encyclopedic article. Time to stop complaining about its removal. --Damiens.rf 21:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
I realize you are intentionally being a jerk in an attempt to make me angry. It has worked. Please stop it now. It is utterly unproductive. —jacobolus (t) 22:38, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Stop the name-calling right now. --Damiens.rf 12:19, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Comet can also be seen as an Ajax design pattern. If that is the case then it doesn't need an own article and can merge with the Ajax page. The visibility outside the Ajax world is close to zero: ask a web developer if they heard about Ajax and they will confirm, ask what Comet is and the answer is very likely 'what?' 213.115.160.71 (talk) 17:43, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
And others describe Comet as a technology collection that includes any kind of JavaScript (Ajax being on of them). I don't know which is more correct, but there is one interesting question: Is the terminology "Comet" actually used outside the Ajax world or has this close relationship simply turned into a synonym for "Ajax push" over the years? - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 10:00, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction / Purpose of "Comet"

I have reverted the piece taken from the original article that used to define "Comet" as an "Ajax-based web application architecture"", to the more realistic and less far-fetched "a flavour of Ajax". I believe giving this neologism the status of an architecture is overly pompous. --Damiens.rf 12:19, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Maybe another valid definition would be "a set of ajax techniques"? --Damiens.rf 12:20, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

What the hell is a “flavor” of Ajax? That is unsourced meaningless babble and is not suitable for Wikipedia. —jacobolus (t) 19:36, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Please chill out and read my (upcoming) comment on the section below. --Damiens.rf 22:05, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Not very constructive, and you know there are also other people who call it a flavour of Ajax. -- 213.115.160.102 (talk) 16:24, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] ComeComet-like technology standards proposals

I've just noticed I have accidentally removed a paragraph that mentioned html5 and json (I though I was just reading a removed mention of json). I'm sorry for that. But re-reading the paragraph, I have doubts if it should be re-added as it is:

"Two standards, Crockford’s JSONRequest and HTML5’s Server-sent events, have been proposed to ease the adoption of Comet-like technology. Neither has seen widespread browser adoption or use"

First, I believe that characterizing things like HTML5’s Server-sent events as "Comet-like technology"reveals an implicit slight pov: Considering the influence of each one, it's more like that "Comet" is a "HTML5’s Server-sent events"-like technology.

And second, we should avoid a kind o loose writing the permeated the old version of the article, where the article tries to guess the motivations behind everyone's steps: "...have been proposed to ease the adoption of...". We should not infer the reasons for the proposal of these standards (let alone to stated that the reason is to allow Commet to be used).

The loose language is seen again with "Neither has seen widespread browser adoption...". Since we have any sources, this is solely based on the author's experience (and thus is original research). In any case, as far as I know, html5 is just a planed proposal. No "widespread browser adoption" should be expected at this point (but the paragraph makes it sound otherwise). --Damiens.rf 12:35, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

The reason I put that paragraph, is that when I removed “JSONRequest” from the list of alternate names for Comet, the anon contributor who had added it reverted my removal. So by way of explanation, when I moved it out of the list of alternate names again, I instead described what it actually is. It seems perfectly reasonable to leave JSONRequest out of this current article, stub that it is. —jacobolus (t) 19:25, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
No it isn't "perfectly reasonable", stop acting like in a highschool debate club. The reason it is in because it is a push technology with JavaScript on the client side... it can't get much closer to what Comet is, compared to e.g. Pushlets which is also listed and use a different programming language. I think you try to water down this article as much as possible, in the past you did not give bare facts but mystifications instead. One reason I could think of why you are doing this is that in an attempt to lobby for Comet you try to weaken or hide all related web interaction technologies (so far: deleting articles, removing related technology terms, ridicolus claims about how popular Comet is, etc). -- 213.115.160.102 (talk) 16:33, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Citation needed

Since we're re-writing the article from stub, there's no need to keep non-cited information in the article. I've just removed some disputed pieces. Anyone should feel free to re-add them with proper sources. --Damiens.rf 12:43, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removal of secondary source

That source is all the article has for the 'definition' of comet; if you want to remove it you'll need to find a better one, if you can't even find a source for the definition we're not going to get anywhere. Restepc (talk) 20:14, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Go ahead and put the article at AfD if you like. Or go look through the dozens of sources that were previously linked: each one was specifically chosen because it was worthwhile for interested readers. The Ajaxian source, as well as the nameless mailing list post, are both throw-away sources, apparently used to give the appearance of legitimacy to this stub, like putting lipstick on a pig. Neither one is worth linking readers to, and using the former to justify calling Comet a “flavor” is intellectually dishonest. —jacobolus (t) 20:21, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I do not recall there being any sources at all in the introduction of your article. Which source from the old article would you suggest using for the definition? Restepc (talk) 20:30, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I am sure you understand why Wikipedia editors prefer external references over personal opinions. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 08:00, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Leading paragraph (or "what's comet anyway?")

  • Powell, Thomas (February 2008). Ajax: The Complete Reference (in English). McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 654. ISBN 007149216X. 

This book on ajax by McGraw-Hill refers to comet as a "networking pattern" at page 280 , and then as a "...push-style communication pattern generally dubbed Comet..." at pages 483 and 515, and as a "...push-oriented communication pattern..." at page 516. I believe it means a desing pattern when it says pattern.

I suggest we use this terminology on the leading paragraph. --Damiens.rf 22:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comet sources

Here is a list of Comet sources. Many if not most of these should be linked from the article, and some others besides. I'll try to keep tracking down more. I'm not going to bother writing prose. It will just be reverted, so there is no point. —jacobolus (t) 21:39, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Also, at least one book about Comet is forthcoming:

Thanks for the step, but please, save us from the self-published ones, like the ones from cometdaily.com (your blog), webtide.com (User:Gregwilkins's blog), lightstreamer.com (commetdaily folk Alessandro Alinone's blog), meteorserver.org (commetdaily folk Andrew Bett's blog), alex.dojotoolkit.org (the Comet "creator"'s blog) and ajaxian.com (some other guy's blog).
Anyway, I'm working on finding good published sources for the article. --Damiens.rf 22:00, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
All of the best sources in the web development world are self-published. Several of the sources listed above come from high-level developers at large companies, or project leaders of prominent open-source projects. Their posts are certainly more reliable than a book from Apress, or a blog post at Ajaxian. —jacobolus (t) 22:15, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
It seems you completely fails to understand what a reliable source is, since you believe these self-published blog posts (including some by yourself) are "more reliable" than an independent, third-part, published book. --Damiens.rf 22:32, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes, that is correct. A blog post by Alex Russell is more reliable than a book published by Apress. —jacobolus (t) 23:07, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Great. So, please, keep the good work on your blog and leave the Wikipedia article for us. --Damiens.rf 23:15, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I have stroked out the blog-entries. Anyone feel free to revert if believing more discussion is necessary, but make sure to read WP:RS and understand the concept of (and the problems with) primary sources. --Damiens.rf 22:39, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

And I have un-stroked them, as it makes the links unreadable. All but a couple of the rest of those sources are also self-published (notice, for instance, conference talks at tech conferences are just as self-published, and certainly no more reliable than, blog posts at edited blogs). You're missing the point. I am putting those links up because I suggest you (or any editor actually interested in productive contribution) go read them, at which point you will have some understanding of what Comet is, and will stop introducing factual inaccuracies into this page. —jacobolus (t) 23:06, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
Ok, as just prefer. But please chill out and try to stop attacking me on every interaction.
About "conference talks", at least they have to be accepted by the conference organizers, it's not just writing something you like and clicking "[Post to My Blog]".
DISCLAIMER: For those willing to follow jacobolus's suggestion above of "go read them", it's never too much to disclaim that the user jacobolu's (Jacob Rus) contributes for the Comet Daily blog (the single-most-linked website above), and most of the other blogs mentioned are personal blogs for other Comet Daily's contributors.
As a last point, what am I missing in the "Webkit Bugzilla bug tracker" reference? --Damiens.rf 23:58, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
EVEN MORE URGENT WARNING: jacobolus may be the root of all evil. Be warned that reading his writing could result in blindness, insensitivity towards small animals, or eternal damnation. —jacobolus (t) 00:20, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
So if the cometdaily site had been unsuccessful in attracting all the major comet developers to contribute, the these citations would be valid. But because there a web site has been created that does link to many of the sources of comet work, that some how invalidates those citations. The white papers I wrote on comet pre-date the creation of the cometdaily website - yet because I now contribute to the cometdaily website, my papers no longer count as separate citations??? Gregwilkins (talk) 02:46, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Not exactly....citing any self published work, which definitely includes cometdaily, is strongly discouraged...although personally I make exceptions, many don't (or don't except in very obvious non-controversial cases, for instance citing rusells blog as him having come up with the term). Also wikipedia in general is highly suspicious of people citing/writing about themselves, their site, or sites they're related to. To give an extreme example, at one point in Jacobs version of the article he actually quoted himself; I'm sure you can see the problem with that. cometdaily isn't absolutely uncitable, but if it were to be used at all people may object to it and remove it purely because it's a blog (and they'd be completely in the right as far as wikipedia policies are concerned).
So unless you were planning on writing 'a beginners guide to comet' and getting it published, I doubt you'd be citable anyway. (but maybe you are...what've you got that isn't self-published?)
You are more than welcome to edit here, but reading WP:COI and WP:RS might help you understand the situation better. Restepc (talk) 03:11, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
I don't quite understand the problem with cometdaily. I can understand that if i start my own website and write something on it myself then that could be questionable - but as a contributer to cometdaily i am not self publishing, i am submitting an article which is reviewed and published by cometdaily. I dont really see how that is different to publishing a book.. or maybe a better example which has been mentioned - a conference organiser (just like cometdaily) gathers speakers/contributers that they see as experts in the subject. Martintyler —Preceding comment was added at 11:12, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Maybe because their credibility is down close to zero? Javobolus did quite a lof of lobbying and quoted (exclusively) himself and his friends for the cometdaily website. Right now it is hard to say if he damaged cometdaily's credibility by dragging them into this conflict or if cometdaily is much more than an advertising factory. Greg (also from same website) didn't help much in regaining credibility on cometdaily's behalf. -- 213.115.160.102 (talk) 16:38, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
I am writing to ask for some clarifications, since I admit I am not an expert of Wikipedia policies and guidelines. I started working on Push Technology in 2000, when I created Lightstreamer. When the "Comet" term was coined within the Ajax community in 2006, we decided to adopt it and to define Lightstreamer as a "Comet server", because this new word describes very well what Lightstreamer is. Before 2006, during trade shows we needed to use long sentences to describe Lightstreamer (something like "a push engine for delivering real-time data to html clients", etc.). Then we started to employ the Comet term, which seems to be pretty well understood, especially at Ajax shows (while at finance shows we are still evangelizing on its meaning; actually I'm right now at SIFMA in New York, explaining people what Comet is and what advantage it can provide to financial institutions). In 2007 I was invited to contribute to the Comet Daily blog, and I was glad to accept. Now, does that mean that all my previous and current writings and talks should be invalidated because I write on Comet Daily too? By the way, Comet Daily has done a lot on effort on helping define Comet and teaching the many aspects of it. It is a very open community which gives space to anybody who has some solid background on Comet (which typically means being the creator of some Comet product, be it open-source or commercial). So, what is bad in having some of the major Comet experts collaborate and interact on the same blog? --Alessandro Alinone 207.41.180.157 (talk) 18:11, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
On Wikipedia, to be considered reliable sources should have gone through fact checking and/or editing by a reliable third party which is normally a trade magazine, a print publisher, a newspaper, etc. Blog sites don't qualify. So any articles that you wrote and got published in a magazine would fine as sources, while any articles that you wrote and just published on a blog or a private website would not be. See Wikipedia:Reliable sources for more detail. This has nothing to do with whether you post on Comet Daily or not - though there is a related point which is that writings that have only been published on Comet Daily are not going to be considered reliable sources according to wikipedia's policies. - MrOllie (talk) 18:29, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. So I think that my article that was published on e-Forex magazine in 2006 should be added as Reference number 8. e-Forex is no doubt a leading magazine in the financial domain. In this article, the Comet term and some of its synonyms are explained. I guess I cannot add the article myself and perhaps it would be better if nobody from Comet Daily does. So it would be good if any of the other contributors to this discussion adds the reference. Here are the details to create the link. Article title: “Next generation Push: a viable technology for web-based FX market data delivery”; published on e-Forex Magazine October 2006 Issue 25. Digital version (PDF) available upon subscription from e-Forex or freely available from Lightstreamer web site (http://www.lightstreamer.com/docs/Lightstreamer-eForex.pdf). --Alessandro Alinone 207.41.180.157 (talk) 21:25, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
E-forex? They say that they "can accept no responsibility for inaccuracies that may appear ... [on] ... editorial and other content provided by other parties". This surely applyies to the website, but I haven't read the disclaimer at their magazine.
Maybe we would have to use our discernment to judge the reliability of this source. In any case, remember that a published opinion is still an opinion, and we should restrict ourselves to take the only the facts from reliables sources.
After a superficial reading, the article looks promising. It's informative, and apparently low on evangelism and mystifications. Thanks for the colaboration. --Damiens.rf 22:01, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Note that I'm not "from cometdaily" any more than damiens.sf (or the anonymous IP address guy) is from wikipedia. Cometdaily is just a media service to which I contribute. But to be constructive, here are a couple more citations:

  • JSR-315 Is the Java Community Process standards process for the upcoming 3.0 release of the servlet spec. It has proposed features for "Async and Comet support" and refers to "The comet style of Ajax web application" as sufficient explanation for these features. Note that I am on the JSR-315 EG and I have proposed a solution to that feature request, but I did not write the 315 Specification Request. It is reviewed by the JCP and the EG includes experts from Sun, IBM, BEA,SAP, ericsson, etc.
  • InfoQ have a page dedicated to comet news and articles.
  • push vs pull is an article on InfoQ reviewing a study (cited above) done by Delft University of Technology about Ajax push and pull. The study (self published by the university) describes comet as "The application of the Service Streaming scheme under AJAX is now known as Reverse AJAX or COMET", but cites Alex Russell for this.

Actually, this is pointless.... every good article I find cites Alex's blog or my blog or one of the other cometdaily contributors. Everybody self publishes now - even the university. Any of the news organizations that review and link to to the self published articles appear to be labelled "blogs" and dismissed. I'm going to comment more on the standdown message below Gregwilkins (talk) 00:20, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Can someone explain why the currently referenced articles are more 'reliable' and less 'self publishing' than all the ones being complained about please? I mean, a usenet post asking a question about a perl cgi script? Come on. Reliable sources and self publishing aside, I think the changes to this article (and any future changes if the current trend is kept to) simply make this article far less useful to anyone wanting to know about Comet, which is what Wikipedia is for is it not? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Martintyler (talk • contribs) 12:57, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I believe the usenet post is being used as an evidence that some term was used back in 1995, and not to endorse what the post's author says. I believe, in this case, this is not a problem of reliable sources, but more of using using primary sources. I'm not completely sure but I would say that it's ok, since the article only make descriptive claims about the information found in the primary source, and make no analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about the information found in the primary source. --Damiens.rf 13:58, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the explaination, but I cant say I understand really - what about the bluishcoder blog, I thought blogs were pretty much not allowed based on what's been said here? Anyway, I've been digging around to find 'reliable source' information, and found some old articles about my company (citynet, now caplin) - [14], [15] and [16] - I actually do not believe these are in any way more useful to someone reading the Comet article than the more recent self published work, but if those are the rules then these are reliable sources at least. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Martintyler (talk • contribs) 16:26, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
Do these articles really talk about comet? What excatly info from them do you think can be useful for our Comet article? (I'm not saying there isn't one (I haven't read them all). It's a sincere question) --Damiens.rf 16:48, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
They mention server push and http tunnelling. As I said, I dont think they are particularly useful compared to other articles that arent allowed, but in a similar way to the perl cgi post they demonstrate that comet was being used back in 1998 in a commercial environment (whereas the perl cgi thing is just a usenet question vaguely related to the subject) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Martintyler (talk • contribs) 16:59, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
The reason that I used the usenet posting for 'server push' was that I couldn't find the original Netscape documentation online anymore (this usenet posting refers too it). I could only find later dated documents on the Netscape site, perhaps if someone digs deeper we can find a primary source from 1995 or earlier. Maybe there is something in old Apache or CGI documentations, you could use a simple nph-CGI-script to deliver a streaming (long lasting) HTTP connection in the late 1990s. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 17:11, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Will the combatants please stand down!

I think it is time for those that have been butting heads on this page to step down and let others have a go.

Specifically Damiens.rf! You may think you are trying to be objective, but you are letting your POV intrude - if not in the text (nothing much of that left) then in your reasoning for your edits. Examples are many: Changing "used" to "created" because you think comet is barely used. You dismiss Alex Russell as a "non-notable tech-blogger", yet Alex is the creator of one of the most notable Ajax framework and I have seen him fill auditoriums with thousands of people interested to hear his opinion at several major conferences. You demand citations, yet dismiss those provided simply because the sources have collaborated. You've whittled away at the introduction that I provided, taking out word or a phrase at a time, until it was meaningless and then you delete saying it is "inessential". Well only because you've taken away all the meaning!

jacobolus, I think that you to should perhaps stand down as well, as you've gotten a little heated.

Following my own advice, I too have gotten a little hot under the collar at Damiens.rf's approach, so I'm going to back off as well! I've got better things to do with my time.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Gregwilkins (talk • contribs)

There's a minor implicit POV in "used". That the term "comet" was created, we have no doubt. But we should be careful when we say it's "used for this or that", since it seems very few people use this term for talking about the same concept. Of course, the fact that there's an perceived effort to push this meme makes things more delicate.
This Alex may have created notable things, but he doesn't necessarily becomes notable for that (at least not on Wikipedia's meaning of notability, that was what I was referring to).
Also, it was not me, but jacob that said that introduction piece was "inessential"[17].
About the "citations" provided, please red Restepc's reply to you on a thread above. He put it better than I could have.
But in general, thanks for the step on the right direction on this conversation. --Damiens.rf 11:58, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Will the lobbyists please stand down! It will make this article much better if they give notable, verifiable resources or simply let neutral editors write this article. It does not help to complain LOUDER if complaining didn't help. The Comet meme is even misunderstood in the Ajax comunity, it is associated with "Ajax Push" but is there anyone who really has a definition of what Comet means? -- 213.115.160.102 (talk) 15:35, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
The “neutral editors” are getting their chance. So far no writing is happening. Yes, there is a definition of Comet. Look at the version of this page from before this brouhaha, and it is clearly defined and explained. —jacobolus (t) 20:39, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
The old version that you wrote has been described that it can not even explain what Comet is to readers familiar with main stream web development technologies, it lacked a definition and provided rather mystification that facts. - 213.115.160.72 (talk) 11:05, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Editors - neutral or otherwise, should not be writing this article. Editors should edit and guide the contributors to improve the quality of their submissions.

The experts in this field are trying to provide content to this article. Perhaps they are violating some wikipedia fundamentals, but surely the editors should be giving them guidance and encouragement to improve the quality of the submissions.

Unfortunately the editors have revealed themselves to be non-nuetral. Their comments show that they are cometd skeptics and are making their POV rather than upholding the standards of wikipedia. These editors resort to name calling (lobbyist, un notable, zero credibility), and simply delete contributions rather than engaging in a process to improve them.

Even when it was accepted the build the page from scatch again idea, the editors have insisted in reverting every contribution to a simple "comet is just some name some guy though of for some technology that already existed" content.

I really think the rules are being over-vigorously applied by non nuetral editors who really want to push their own POV and are using rules as a defense to prevent the experts from contributing.

And yes I know you will say that the experts are self appointed,... but at least we have self published on the topic, there are several business owners whos company sell product described as comet, there are members of standards bodies, there are speakers at conferences etc etc. The contributors have some standing. The editors half the time can't even bother to login so we know who they are.

Is there some process to get a more senior editor involved? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gregwilkins (talk • contribs) 00:41, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Aren't you pushing your point of view? What makes you the neutral expert and gives you the authority to acuse others as not suited for reviewing this article? Your attitude stands against core policies of Wikipedia, reaching consensus and providing neutral facts. If people want to promote an idea, meme or concept they are simply at the wrong place. Here you have to give verifiable facts (read: this is mandantory by Wikipedia policies) and not complain that others will remove personal opinions and other material that is not suited for an encyclopedia. As long as consensus hasn't reached it isn't helpful to try to push trough one or the other opinion. In this situation, I liked the idea of building up this article from scratch. - 213.115.160.72 (talk) 11:44, 12 June 2008 (UTC)


Reply to Gregwilkins points: I don't quite understand the distinction you make between "editors" and "contributors". What exactly do you mean by each of these? (Aren't Wikipedia's editors its contributors?)
Here's guidance for "the experts in this field"": Read and understand the following core principles:
From my side, I've read a lot about comet.
>"...These editors resort to name calling (lobbyist, un notable, zero credibility)..."
Tell me about. I've been called a "vandal"[18] and a "jerk"[19] by one of the "experts in this field"".
> "...even when it was accepted the build the page from scatch again idea..."
It was not quite "accepted". The old author insists in calling this "destruction"[20] or "vadalism"[21] (and other strong synonyms).
> "...the editors have insisted in reverting every contribution to a simple "comet is just some name some guy though of for some technology that already existed" content..."
The whole idea of scratching the article was that we could restart from beginning and include only verifiable/attributable information. So far, that's what we have (either you like it or not).
> "...the contributors have some standing..."
Credentials have no value on Wikipedia. You should be prepared to attribute all material you submit to a reliable, published source if asked to do so.
> "...The editors half the time can't even bother to login..."
Just like some of the "experts in this field" [22][23]. But that's no problem. Anonymous editors are welcome on Wikipedia, and their edits are treated under the same standards than those by logged in editors.
> "Is there some process to get a more senior editor involved?"
Wikipedia doesn't quite have the a concept similar to "a senior editor". Every editor is treated the same (even the anonymous editors, as said above). We do have the concept of "Administrator", that are trusted members of community that can do the technical taks of enforcing policies.
If you want an administrator to take a look at this case, you may ask for help at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.
But if you simply want more editors to take part in the discussion, you may try opening a Wikipedia:Requests for comment.
If nothing works, you may try a Wikipedia:Request for Arbitration.
Thanks, --Damiens.rf 13:49, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
I called you a “vandal” because you insisted on disruptive and destructive edit-warring repeatedly while being pointedly asked to take it to the talk page. I called you a “jerk” after you made several unnecessary insulting and inflammatory statements and edit summaries, intentionally designed to rile me up. These descriptions were not intended as name calling (indeed, I would be surprised if you didn’t yourself find the latter to be accurate); please consider them notices that you should avoid the excessive incivility you have so far brought to this article, and instead work towards constructive consensus. Yes, a requests for comment should be opened at this point. When I have more time, I will open one. For now, I will merely shake my head at the pitiful inaccurate two-sentence stub this page has devolved into. —jacobolus (t) 20:08, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comet implementations

The link to comet implementations was really just a link to cometd implementations (the d is significant). Here is an initial list of companies/products/projects that self describe as comet. I think this should be on the main page, but not sure where?

It shouldn't be there at all. Wikipedia is not a link directory, please don't do original research this includes talk pages. For more information see WP:MOS. - 213.115.160.72 (talk) 11:20, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't a link directory, but a few examples of notable things that use comet (and more importantly say themselves that they use comet (or streaming ajax or whatever they call it that we're all agreed is the same thing)) in the article would be useful. Restepc (talk) 09:36, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
I suggest that entries need to have an existing Wikipedia article. Some projects describe themself as "Comet-like" (does that qualify as Comet or not, do they simply mean "Ajax push"?), perhaps we should wait until a definition was agreed on to be able to verify that everyone speaks about the same. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 12:15, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes, they almost assuredly qualify as Comet (though as discussed above I think these links are somewhat problematic). Some developers have come to the conclusion that “Comet” is limited to a particular transport. “Ajax push” and “Comet” are synonymous in this instance. The definition as this Wikipedia article stated it a few weeks ago predominates, but I'm not sure what exactly you would like to verify. Can you better explain your confusion? —jacobolus (t) 01:57, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
Can you please calm down, it is getting harder to talk to you. The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability. When developers use a vague description like "Ajax and Comet-like" the question arises if they know what Comet means, therefore if the product uses Comet (or just some sort of server push). For Wikipedia editors this means we need an agreed and comprehensive definition of Comet. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 06:58, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
I am perfectly calm, and I am not seeing the difficulty of discussion you reference. It is indeed unclear whether some of those developers have a precise idea what Comet means, but that doesn’t mean that their products do not “use Comet”. Indeed “just some sort of server push” sent to a javascript callback in the browser is the same thing as “Comet”. The definition is widely agreed upon, even if still murky for some minority. I’m not sure what you mean by comprehensive, and I still don’t understand your general confusion about the definition. Can you further clarify? —jacobolus (t) 08:10, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
Not sure if everyone agrees with you. Some people think of Comet as an Ajax design pattern, for you everything that pushes or long-polls JavaScript is Comet (strange that you accept pushed XMLHttpRequest but tried to remove JSONRequest Duplex), for others JavaScript is not even needed (Pushlets) and it describes EVERY non-static web development. Do you see the problem for Wikipedia editors of not having a clear comprehensive definition when categorising software? - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 09:01, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image

I added a picture of a server to the article, as an image always makes things look better IMO. It wasn't perfect for the topic though and has been removed, does anyone know of a more appropriate image we could use? Restepc (talk) 09:19, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

I would be happy to add images, but it is not worth it given the current state of this article —jacobolus (t) 01:57, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
Sounds like a good idea, a picture says more than a thousand words. - 83.254.208.192 (talk) 09:28, 14 June 2008 (UTC)