Talk:Complex Event Processing/Archive 1

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Contents 1 Products 2 External Links 3 Comments By Mr Hu on the Complex Events entry 4 Proposal: Add product links back to this page 5 A Note to Mr. Hu on Commercial Links 6 Disinterested observation 7 List of Notable Vendors

[edit] Products

• This section has been removed. Listing of selected companies can be seen as representing bias or endorsing more weight on a few "selected' companies. It's probably best to continue keeping sections like this out of the article in order to maintain Wikipedia's Neutral point of view Hu12 01:00, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

I understand your point, however I think it is important to provide NPOV lists of major products in an area - it's one of the key strengths of WP. I often use WP for this purpose when researching a product. The list can be improved, but I definitely vote to keep it. Anyone else? Ronnotel 02:01, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

• As policy states, Wikipedia is not a repository for lists, directories or Advocacy of commercial products and/or websites. NPOV requires views to be represented without bias, this applies not only to article text, but to companies, products, external links, and any other material as well. Although it may have been helpful in the past, it is not Wikipedia's purpose to include a comprehensive list of companies, products or external links. Hu12 06:02, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

But I believe there is still a way to include examples of the major products in this space that still conforms to WP policy. Quite frankly, excluding all mention of the products makes this article fairly uninformative. Is there no middle ground? Ronnotel 13:36, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Hu12, I would appreciate a response to my request about middle ground - if we take your interpretation to the extreme, all mention of commercial entities would be stricken from WP. I think it is possible to describe the major products in this space in a manner that is consistent with WP policy. Do you disagree? Ronnotel 15:56, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure you can understand Wikipedia's reasons for having these policies. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, its not for individuals or companies to promote products or websites that they have an interest in. However, I'd like to help you by suggesting Yellowikis which can be found www.yellowikis.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page here for something of this nature. Hu12 16:30, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I have no particular ax to grind - I have no interest in any of these products per se. However I am interested in the product space in general - and because the space is in large part defined by the available products, I believe it does a dis-service to the reader to exclude all mention of them. There are literally thousands of references to products in WP - do you believe they should all be removed? If not, can you point me to an example of one that does meet WP policy in your view? I'm not saying that the description that was removed was optimal - however I think it is rather narrow-minded to simply assert that no products can be mentioned. Ronnotel 17:09, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that Hu12 does not have the CEP expertise to make the decision he or she is making. ~~— 70.174.144.171 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. The preceding unsigned comment was added at 20:09, 26 April 2007 (UTC).

I believe Hu12 is correct. It has nothing to do with Hu12's CEP expertise, it has to do with Wikipedia policy Bardcom 20:37, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

I disagree entirely. There is information (good for Wiki) in allowing an informational list of suppliers (per some classification schemes that may be relevant to readers... commercial, academic, vendored, classified as ESP, Rule-driven, NeuralNet or Other). This is info that may be difficult to ascertain quickly from a search. Having adverts, promotions or discussions of the products concerned is what should be removed. And the same argument applies to so-called "academic research" by the way (all vendors do R&D) (see below) 207.59.166.194 11:42, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Dissagree. Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia, WP:NOT an internet guide or directory. Also these conflict with Wikipedia policy.--Hu12 11:46, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Here is my opinion (Stanford, English + Software Architect of Options Trading systems) Hu12 is incorrect in removing commercial references. Ford and Ferrari are two manufacturers of commercial products whom the Wikipedia's usage admits on a regular basis. Their products are examined microscopically and enthusiastically. Stanford and other universities are also commercial institutions full of bias about CEP/ESP (and I have over 30 years of experience, should scientific data streaming from high energy accelerators and mass spectrometers be considered early examples of ESP.) More examples abound of commercial products being admitted for discussion and reference. Wikipedia defines itself as "An encyclopedia, encyclopaedia or (traditionally) encyclopædia is a comprehensive written compendium that contains information on all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge." "All branches of knowledge" does not exclude some branches. It is the practitioners, both professional, scholarly and certainly the day-to-day users whose aggregate opinion is what we seek when we consult the Wiki. Once final example, check out "wine caves." Scott Lewis is the leading professional engineer of wine caves throughout the Western US. He gets money for his services. His article on wine caves is a great contribution to those who are not professional practitioners. Il.marcuccio 13:42, 29 September 2007 (UTC)vote to include ALL practitioner's statements and to interview them by holding them to be verifiable and accurate. Send the secret policemen back to the Ball.

Wikipedia has a published policy document that clearly states as point 5 under links to be avoided: "Links to sites that primarily exist to sell products or services". From this, it's clear that Hu12 is correct to remove these external links as per WP:EL under "Links normally to be avoided" Bardcom 21:36, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

The reason that so many commercial links appear on WP is that they provide context to the article3s that they accompany. If the links have no value, they should not be included. But when they add context to the article, they are perfectly valid. No one would care about CEP if not for the features available in products from commercial vendors. Links to vendors provide context that is critical to understanding CEP. In other words, without looking at the products implementing CEP, there is no hope of understanding the topic. Since these products provide critical context, they should be included on the WP page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.185.106.156 (talk) 14:46, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Folks, this is a classic case of editors using lack of objectivity as an excuse to delete text. This whole issue can be avoided if the editor instead adds text to counter the bias, see section 1.1.2 of the FAQ: WP:NPOVFAQ. In this way, content that is valuable remains on the site but is balanced by an opposing view. For example, the editor can add text indicating that these links are to biased vendor sites. In terms of the idea that WP is not a links site, this applies to articles that consist mainly of links. Nowhere does it say that WP should not have any links to commercial sites. When the links are part of the critical context of the article, there is nothing wrong with including them. --Hans —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.185.106.156 (talk) 15:16, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

As a precedent for my previous comment on linking to software vendors, please see 9.1 in j2ee. Here we see many links to software vendors. Why? Because looking at those products is critical to understanding the J2EE ideas. Note that these links are kept in a clearly marked and separate section. Links to vendors should be treated the same way on this page. These links allow people to fully explore the space. Note that I don't work for a CEP software vendor, I simply think that editing out these links detracts from the quality of this page. --Hans 24.185.106.156 15:49, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Hans, if you examine the j2ee article, you'll see that it's been flagged for cleanup. The addition of the product links is against Wikipedia policy, as explained above. Bardcom 22:05, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Added link to a separate list of vendors (per ERP and RDBMS handling). Undone by Mr Hi - will undo his undoing until I hear why? Also added a prefix to try and make CEP more interesting - also undone. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.211.128.242 (talk) 21:38, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] External Links

A rather determined Hu keeps removing the link to www.complexevents.com and cites a number of reasons.

The discussion to date is here: [Discussion between Hu and Bardcom on the link to www.complexevents.com]

Please vote on whether you believe it is a worthy link to keep in the external links section, or not by editting this section and adding your vote under the correct heading (sign by using four tildes ~ in a row. Thank you. Bardcom 15:44, 28 September 2007 (UTC) 193.13.72.65 16:27, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Keep (3)

• My reasons are at the end of this page - [Discussion between Hu and Bardcom on the link to www.complexevents.com]Bardcom 15:44, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

• Me too 80.176.152.54 16:31, 28 September 2007 (UTC)This Keep me too !vote has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

• There was a statement on the Yahoo CEP group that the reference to Luckham's complexevents.org site keeps being edited out of Wiki by someone. For the record, this is a vendor-neutral informational site. 207.59.166.194 11:42, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

• Guidelines are not set in stone, lets allow this link to be included.--Hu12 14:22, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Exclude (1)

• Its a blog aggregated results page. Its not difficult to see this clearly violates External links policy in Links normally to be avoided. --Hu12 17:32, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

As a reply to Hu, it is more than a blog aggregated results page. It also contains complexevents.com/?p=149 use cases, [http:// complexevents.com/?p=14 research papers], the (latest version of the) Event Processing Technical Society [http:// complexevents.com/?cat=15 Glossary of Event Processing Terms], links to [http:// complexevents.com/?p=57 Rule Languages], etc, etc. All of this material is hosted and downloadable directly from the website. Perhaps you are basing your opinion on solely the News section, which is often busy (especially recently, since the latest EPTS meeting was held on Sept 17th, and Gartners inaugral conference on Event Processing was held on Sept 19th). Bardcom 17:54, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comments By Mr Hu on the Complex Events entry

There seems to be an ongoing debate about the inclusion of a link to the CEP website , complexevents.net. Mr Hu seems to be under the impression that the site is commercial. It is a not for profit website operating at a loss, and its purposes are well documented in http:// complexevents.com/?page_id=3.

Mr Hu would be well advised to read the following categories on the site: 1. research papers: http:// complexevents.com/?cat=14 2. articles: http:// complexevents.com/?cat=3 3. use cases: http:// complexevents.com/?cat=16, including the presentations at the CEP workshops:

   http:// complexevents.com/?p=149
   http:// complexevents.com/?p=150

Mr Hu would also be advised to note the links to academic research projects on the home page; this will be expanded shortly to include 5 more research projects. In addition, the website is a candidate to become the official website of the Event Processing Technical Society, a newly formed organization and proposed Special Interest Group of the ACM.

If the link to this website is not included, then the interests of completeness of the Wiki entry would dictate including all individual references to research and fielded applications on the site. I think Mr Hu's opinions are somewhat hasty and ill informed. He should reconsider. 00:58, 30 September 2007 (UTC)David Luckham, http:// www-ee.stanford.edu/~luckham/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by Topfatcat (talk • contribs) 19:55, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal: Add product links back to this page

I propose that product links should be included on this WP page.

I assert that the arguments against these product links are invalid as follows: 1. There is no WP policy banning commercial links. The policy says that they are to be avoided, not that they are banned. If those links add significant value to the information on the page, then they should be included. In other words, if a discussion of CEP is not complete without referencing products, then those product links can not be avoided. In the interest of completeness, they should be included. For example, editors feel that the J2EE page would not be complete without these links. 2. It is wrong to exclude product links only on the basis that they might represent bias. If these links provide significant value to the page, then they should be included but should be clearly marked as being biased. This method of editing is described in the WP:NPOVFAQ .

So the question at hand, as far as I can see, is whether product links provide significant value to the understanding of CEP. I say that these links are crucial to understanding CEP because only through the product links can someone really get a good picture of the capabilities of modern CEP.

Since the product links are crucial to understanding CEP, I propose that they be added back to this page on CEP.

--Hans Hgilde 20:33, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Hans - while I agree, in the mean time I created a separate list of CEP vendors. Although it seems Hu wants to delete it too, as its been marked for deletion. --PaulV —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.211.128.242 (talk) 21:53, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A Note to Mr. Hu on Commercial Links

Mr. Hu,

I have been watching your deletions of technology-related links for quite some time. You appear to have a special interest in CEP, MOM, middleware and other technology topics, which leads me to believe that you may be a technologist yourself.

I challenge you to visit the Unix or the Linux wikipedia pages and start removing all the commercial links to ATT, GE, HP, Sun Microsystems, RedHat... the list goes on and on. I don't think you will find your actions accepted there, to be frank.

It is not possible to visit the universe of technology and draw a black and white line between technology and technology implementations and companies; as you have taken on yourself to do in this particular technology domain.

I am glad you finally stopped removing the complexevents.com external link; but your actions over the past few months on the CEP site and others demonstrate that you take a very narrow view of the guidelines; but the same guidelines are not applied to other technology areas that are well written wikipedia pages.

Taathagata 02:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Disinterested observation

I am a long-time link-spam deleter for the financial pages. However, I'd like to propose that we add a closely monitored, minimal verbiage collection of links to the major vendors in this space. Naturally, the notability of such companies must be asserted by references to reliable sources such as citations in independent trade press, and maintain strict neutrality in their descriptions. My $0.02. Ronnotel 03:08, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

This makes sense to me as a start. Although I don't think that you'll find too many spammers trying to add their links to this page just yet. :) The WP guidelines suggest that vendors ask for links to themselves in the talk section of the page (along with their reliable sources), so that impartial editors can determine whether they are valid for the page. Hgilde 03:29, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I've created a starting list with relevant citations. I'm sure others can add to or subtract from this list as per WP:N and WP:RS. Ronnotel 04:06, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

See List of CEP vendors as I couldnt find Ronnotel's list. Initially included some citations but these were edited out by someone without discussion.

[edit] List of Notable Vendors

Ronnotel, I have removed the new section you added listing vendors because it is not a neutral point of view WP:NPOV, and it is obvious from the discussions above that the early concensus was to remove vendor links. Before adding vendor links, please start a discussion here first and try to reach a concensus on why you believe adding vendor links is appropriate. Bardcom 22:35, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Bardcom, first please add comments to the bottom of the talk page - as per WP:TALK. Second, I apologize but my casual examination of this page indicated the opposite consensus. I did start a conversation as you will note just above this section. But, yes, let's please get agreement on this before proceeding. My intent was as per other examples cited regarding J2EE and Linux. Notable vendors are prominently mentioned on those pages. I believe the paramount policies to follow are WP:N and WP:RS. So long as the notability of a vendor can be supported by reliable sources, I believe it becomes appropriate to add those vendors provided it is done in an WP:NPOV manner. Why do you think my edit was WP:POV? Also, I would ask you to restore the citations to reliable sources as I don't think there was a good reason to remove those. Ronnotel 23:22, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

• Hi Ronnotel - I didn't remove the reliable sources - no concensus has been reached on this yet. We can start a secondary discussion on this.

• Hi Ronnotel (did you really get to be the leet admin!). My comments were added in the Products section because that particular discussion was reopened - I was replying to a comment recently posted there.

I believe there is a significant and important difference between the J2EE and Linux examples you quote. Both are well established and adopted as a standard by many organizations. Both are covered by certification and standards. Looking at articles such as Enterprise Service Bus, Event Stream Processing, and Business Intelligence is more appropriate as they are not covered by standards, etc.

Including a list of CEP vendors in the main article is very contentious. There is no yardstick to apply in order to transparently know what is appropriate and what is not. There are no standards and no certification. If you examine the use cases gathered on http:// www.complexevents.com you can see that there exists a diverse range of vendors and applications, and very little commonality between them.

You maintain that WP:N and WP:RS are the paramount policies to follow. This is an inappropriate use of these policies. WP:N is policy to govern whether an article itself is notable, not the contents. WP:RS is policy to govern what constitutes a Reliable Source to back up a fact, not to justify the inclusion of a vendor list in an article. It also states that the Reliable Source must be reliable 3rd party that have a reputation for fact-checking. Do you think magazine articles qualify?

The heart of this debate comes down naked promotion by software vendors. Your list adds no value to the article. It does not explain anything about CEP. It has no purpose but to promote the vendors in your list.

The correct and most appropriate policy to follow is WP:EL. It has already been established that WP:EL makes it very clear that on what should be linked, and what should not.

Since a concensus has previously been reached on this subject and you were not aware of this, your list has been removed (at least until another concensus can be reached to include it) Bardcom 00:13, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

A footnote. It would be easier to set up a new page called "List of CEP Vendors". Then link one to the other. Bardcom 00:13, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Again, I apologize for the comment regarding sources, I see now that you didn't remove them. And, yes, people who understand these things far better than me tell me that I was indeed l33t admin, whatever that means. :) Your suggestion regarding list of CEP vendors is well taken (again, providing WP:N and WP:RS can be met). Anyone else care to comment? Ronnotel 00:29, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Good idea having a separate list - see List of CEP vendors as a starting point. 85.211.128.242 (talk) 21:59, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi folks, my intention was to start this debate when I posted the proposal above. Anyway, I'll tell you why I'm advocating including vendor links. I'm not a vendor, I do not work for a vendor, nor does the success or failure of any vendor impact me one bit. Neither am I a journalist, an analyst or in any profession making money from CEP. I'm strictly a user of CEP technology. But I came to CEP through research and at that time, I didn't have a good list of vendors at first. The problem here is that one gets the wrong idea of what's happening in CEP. You see three academic projects, all of which are very similar. But really, there are many available languages and systems for working with CEP, each with their own capabilities and failings. All of these things are, it seems, only available as products. So reading a page that doesn't include these products, you get the idea that there are only a few developments in CEP when really there are surprisingly many.

I honestly don't understand how CEP is different from J2EE in the sense of listing vendors. While there is no standard, neither is there much argument about which products are CEP and which ones are not. This is pretty much a niche market and we have yet to see a non-CEP vendor attempting to spam themselves into a CEP page, list, group, etc.

But since there seems to be so much resistance to these links, here are a few alternatives:

• Someone can write an explanation of the features that are available from various vendors, but not link to them. This sounds ok, but I can't volunteer at the moment. So unless we have a volunteer for this, maybe a set of links would suffice instead.
• We can add a separate page containing product links, then link to that from the main CEP page. This seems like an unnecessary complication, but whatever.
• A blurb can be added saying "There is a great amount of innovation in CEP, with a dozen or more products each having features not available in the others or anywhere else, but we won't link to any of that because those kinds of links 'are to be avoided'."

Hgilde 03:36, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

After reading over this talk page, I don't a consensus. Each comment about removing the links is immediately followed by a disagreeing opinion. In no case has any party come over to the views of another party. Honestly, it looks like the links were removed in the first place without discussion. So we are not, in fact, changing an existing consensus, rather we are coming to an initial consensus about this page. Hgilde 15:01, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Hu points to specific policies WP:EL that make it very clear what links should be considered. I cannot see any rational reason to date why this article should include vendor links. Looking back over the various discussions, the objections to date seem to center around:

• Ignore the policy
• Then point out other policies that appear to allow vendor links (but which require you to ignore WP:EL)
• Argue that the article needs the links - "for completeness" or "to present an up-to-date picture of the industry".
• Argue that other articles ignore the policy, therefore CEP should too

If we can start with WP:EL. This policy exists for very good reasons. The article on CEP is perfectly fine and stand-alone without vendor links.

Your suggestions above are very good suggestions. I have already suggested (2) above as this is what is done for the Relational Database article. Your suggestion (3) can just as easily be achieved by linking to WP:EL and without resorting to sounding churlish. And the problem with (1) is that in the absense of standards, each vendor will try to get their USP's included as a mandatory feature. The EPTS (Event Processing Technical Society), which is made up of just about all of the leading vendors in this space, recently met and I believe suggested a workgroup to be formed to try to abstract common event processing concepts from use cases and vendor products - but it will be some months at least before the workgroup is formed and has produced meaningful output. But it is an excellent idea that the output from this workgroup helps to define the CEP product functionality, and to include that in this article! Good thinking. Bardcom 17:35, 3 October 2007 (UTC)