Talk:Collaborative filtering

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[edit] AlexLit

The AlexLit.com is not a collaborative filtering company or product but rather a booko store that sells eBooks. I think it should be removed.

Actually, AlexLit.com has a recommendation system that uses collaborate filtering. Look at the left hand side of the page for 'Recommender' under Departments.

[edit] Barnes & Noble

On the other hand, where is the collaborative filtering on Barnes & Noble?

"B&N Customers who bought this book also bought...". See an example.

[edit] Analysis of applications

[edit] For Wikipedia

Some enterprising graduate may want to create a tool that recommends Wikipedia articles you would like to edit based on the set of edits made by users.

Heh, see SuggestBot. -- ForteTuba 00:14, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Difference bet. "passive filtering" and "implicit filtering"?

What really is the difference between "passive filtering" and "implicit filtering"? --Amit 20:22, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

It's subtile passive is checking what you do ... implicit will be more convert action into data. I.e first one is looking at your surf ... second one is more say that what you buy is what you like. | french user Leafar

They seem like the same thing, I think the sections should be merged. --Robbrown 23:23, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Only if there are sufficient references stating that they are the same would a merger be recommended. At this time the sections could probably be made clearer. --Amit 00:01, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Reading this article, I really can't see any difference between the two. It's very confusing! -- orangejon

Just as a passerby, I think the section on active vs. passive and implicit vs. explicit is a little off. Active filtering does not imply explicit voting, and passive filtering does not imply implicit voting. Rather, passive filtering is where one collects metadata about an item and ranks it thus (ex, everyone buys this book, so you should, too). Active filtering is where one collects data on each user than compares them to each other (or items, if its an item-centric CF). The way you collect the information, either explicitly or implicitly, is not directly linked to the filtering method - for example, one could use product purchases in an active filtering way, or take votes for articles in a passive way (think of Digg). Just my two cents.

These are the same thing. See my comments on this under the "Cleanup" section. --Donn 30 avril 2008, 14:07:29 (UTC+0200) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.180.79.78 (talk) 14:08, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Broken link

"A collection of past and present "information filtering" projects (including collaborative filtering) at MIT Media Lab" is broken - anyone fancy figuring out whether the same content is now elsewhere?

[edit] Cleanup

This article needs a cleanup, along with the ones on information filtering systems and recommender systems. There is too much overlap between these articles. —Preceding unsigned comment added by IKiddo (talk • contribs) 22:29, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree. A brief appraisal of relevant literature shows that there are two broad types of CF - user-based and item-based. Although item-based is shown as one of the "Types" (a list which seems to contrast factors of CF which are not really comparable), user-based is not, and is instead discussed in the introduction as if it is the default method. User-based finds users that are similar to the active user, and then attempts to predict ratings for items which the active user has not rated but the similar users have. Item-based CF, on the other hand, finds similarly rated items and, for an active user, recommends unrated items in this group. Think of user-based CF as clustering similar users, and item-based CF as clustering similar items. ref - page 144

The article also blurs the distinction between CF techniques (e.g. item-based vs. user-based) and the sources of CF data (implicit ratings vs. explicit ratings). These should not be compared this way, as they are on inherently different levels. ref - page 17

As for implicit versus explicit, and active versus passive, these are the same concept. Implicit CF collects the ratings data without having the user explicitly rate the items. That means exactly what is said in the current article. The implicit ratings are inferred by some user interaction such as purchasing an item, clicking on search results, etc. Explicit CF collects ratings by having users explicitly rate them, such as films (Netflix) and books (Amazon). The implications are that explicit data is usually more accurate, but the users have to spend the time and energy to make the recommender system work well. --Donn 30 avril 2008, 15:58:03 (UTC+0200) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.180.79.78 (talk) 14:06, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Addition of introductory paragraph on the definition of CF

I wanted to explain why I wrote an introductory paragraph. The term collaborative filtering is in fact a general term, like planning and scheduling or robotics. It includes recommender systems, and they are very popular at the moment, however it seems insufficiently general to define CF without a broader inclusion of other applications.

Cindy Mason www-formal.cs.stanford.edu/~cmason —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cindymason (talk • contribs) 21:29, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

It's a good introductory paragraph, and an excellent point (I know someone who is looking at using collaborative filtering to find relationships among diseases). However, the rest of the article is still written as if the term only applied to recommender systems; in fact, there are two introductory paragraphs. The article needs to be rewritten to incorporate this information. Tritium h3 (talk) 19:24, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup References to Software Libraries

I just completed an evaluation of some of the available tools to aid in CF. I used the list provided here as a starting point, but quickly learned that a few of the open source tools are no longer being actively supported (in particular, both Cofi and Cofe are not being supported). I was wondering if someone could either remove these or potentially add a note that they are unsupported open source tools? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cjpeltz (talk • contribs) 13:07, 10 August 2008 (UTC)