Talk:DARPA Network Challenge

DARPA Network Challenge was nominated as a Engineering and technology good article, but it did not meet the good article criteria at the time (May 25, 2012). There are suggestions on the review page for improving the article. If you can improve it, please do; it may then be renominated.

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This article has been rated as Start-class on the project's quality scale.

This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-class status:
Referencing and citation: criterion not met Coverage and accuracy: criterion not met Structure: criterion met Grammar and style: criterion met Supporting materials: criterion not met

Associated task forces:
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	Military science, technology, and theory task force
	North American military history task force
	United States military history task force

Plans for additions to article[edit]

MFTWrecks and I (we are in a course at Carnegie Mellon University together that has an assignment to improve a WP article) are planning to expand this article by adding more information about the competition and also the strategies used by successful teams, including the MIT team, the GTRI team, and the iSchools team. One source we are planning to use is at http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/4/106587-reflecting-on-the-darpa-red-balloon-challenge/fulltext . A sandbox for our updated version of this article can be found at User:Miestersean/DARPA Network Challenge Sandbox. Any feedback would be much appreciated. Sean (talk) 17:26, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Remove "known competing teams"?[edit]

Should we remove the "known competing teams" section? This seems less informative than the list at http://redballoon.wikispaces.com/Groups Jodi.a.schneider (talk) 13:26, 5 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Article comment[edit]

"References"
— Link to article revision

Use of the Tang et al paper is good. I'm surprised you didn't use the following as reference. [Pickard, G., Pan, W., Rahwan, I., Cebrian, M., Crane, R., Madan, A., & Pentland, A. (2011). Time-Critical Social Mobilization. Science, 334(6055), 509-512. ] Having gone through peer review, they are more authoritative than some of news reports or MIT websites you did cite.

Posted on behalf of robertekraut by InstructorCommentBot (talk) 05:00, 5 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We already had it listed as reference #7. We found that a lot of the information was highly technical (e.g., mathematical models), so we didn't include any of that. The rest of it was mostly summary information about other competitors, so we followed their citations for that information and used the main citation, reference #3, "DARPA Network Challenge Project Report," directly for the article. Sean (talk) 18:01, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Article comment[edit]

"The 2009 DARPA Network Challenge "
— Link to article revision

This abstract can be beefed up. It doens't provide a concise overview of the article that follows. It should describe what the actually challenge was, not just the goals, and perhaps something about the winner or the results. See the description of a WP lead about what is needed: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_%28lead_section%29.

Posted on behalf of robertekraut by InstructorCommentBot (talk) 20:21, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I added a paragraph to the abstract to give a better description of the actual contest. Thanks for the detailed suggestions. Sean (talk) 18:12, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Article comment[edit]

" submissions were legitimate or fake"
— Link to article revision

Need to say something about the problems the winners needed to solve -- not just to find the balloons, but also to weed out false reports posted by competitors or vandals. Then the discussion about ways to deal with assess legitimacy makes more sense.

Posted on behalf of robertekraut by InstructorCommentBot (talk) 20:23, 23 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We added a brief explanation of the purpose of the challenge in response to this feedback. Thank you. (Accidentally wasn't signed in when I responded initially, sorry.) MFTWrecks (talk) 18:14, 29 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review[edit]

This review is transcluded from Talk:DARPA Network Challenge/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Bob1960evens (talk · contribs) 09:52, 18 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I will review. I will make notes as I go. Please indicate what has been fixed below the comments. I prefer comments and maybe the {{done}} template, rather than striking text out, as that makes the review more difficult to read at a later date. Bob1960evens (talk) 10:18, 18 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

References

Ref 6 is dead
Ref 12 redirects to somewhere else. url needs updating.
There are problems with 14 other urls. 7 connection timeouts, 4 server problems and 3 connection refused. Click the external links item on the toolbox above to see which ones. In particular, those to darpa.mil are problematic, but the website appears to have been archived to archive.darpa.mil for research purposes, and so this may be useful.

Specifics of the competition

Paragraphs 1, 2 and 4 are unreferenced. In particular, text such as The verification of balloon sightings was paramount to success. needs referencing, so we know it is not just your opinion.
the $40,000 challenge award should probably be a $40,000 challenge award, since it has not previously been mentioned.
8-foot needs metric equivalent. Suggest using {{convert}}.
the official competition site increased in traffic doesn't read well. Needs rewording.
The final paragraph is a short single sentence. Suggest combining it with the previous one, or expanding.

Winning strategy

Paragraph 2 is unreferenced, and appears to be a direct quote. In view of the challenge, it may no longer be available online, but may be on the internet archive.
as these new people would not be become competitors needs fixing.
a large amount of participants. Suggest this should be a large number.

Second place strategy

Paragraphs 1 and 2 are uncited.
due to the lack of a structure that created much incentive as the winning MIT team's scheme. Doesn't quite make sense. Suggest as much incentive or somesuch.

Tenth-place strategy

Paragraphs 1, 2, 3 and 4 are uncited.

Other strategies

Paragraphs 1 and 2 are largely uncited.
provided that they included details confirming about their submmission needs rewording.
Hotz only prepared for the competition for an hour before posting a tweet an hour before the start. Not very clear. Did he start 2 hours before the start, or are both hours the same?

Reflections

Paragraph 1 unsourced. We need to know that these are not your personal reflections.

Lead

I think this needs some attention. Quoting from WP:Lead, "The lead serves as an introduction to the article and a summary of its most important aspects. The emphasis given to material in the lead should roughly reflect its importance to the topic. Significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article." The lead currently contains much information which is not covered in the article. (Details of DAPRA, Congressional authorization, actual aims of the exercise, etc). I wonder if a solution might be to rename "Specifics of the competion" to "Competition details" or somesuch, and include most of the first para of the lead, and some details of the aims, perhaps linking it with the final single sentence about the 40th anniversary of the Internet. Then have another go at introducing and summarizing the content in the lead. What do you think?

Structure

The detailed analysis of the first-, second- and tenth-placed strategies leaves me wondering why you chose these, and not the fifth or sixth, for instance. It needs a short summary to explain why these strategies have been explored but the others have not.

The formal bit[edit]

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

It is reasonably well written.
a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):
See comments above
It is factually accurate and verifiable.
a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):
It is broad in its coverage.
a (major aspects): b (focused):
It follows the neutral point of view policy.
Fair representation without bias:
It is stable.
No edit wars, etc.:
It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.
a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):
Overall:
Pass/Fail:

I'll wait until some of the ref problems are fixed, before checking that the sources are used appropriately. Bob1960evens (talk) 15:20, 18 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No attempt has been made by the nominator to address any of the issues raised. I have corresponded with the Carnegie Mellon course tutor, who confirmed that the course is finished, and that while some students have continued editing, others have not. If you want to re-nominate this article, please ensure that the issues raised in this review are addressed before doing so. I am failing it for now. Bob1960evens (talk) 22:49, 25 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment[edit]

This article is the subject of an educational assignment at Carnegie Mellon University supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2012 Spring term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from {{WAP assignment}} by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:28, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]