Talk:Deep Blue (chess computer)/GA3

GA Review

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Reviewer: Bwoodcock (talk · contribs) 03:26, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Overall thoughts

The article is not GA quality yet. It fails to clearly and unambiguously address or answer a fundamental question up-front: Is this an expert system, implemented as software on general-purpose hardware, or implemented partially or wholly in hardware, or is it a machine-learning system? Clues are buried way down in the Aftermath/Chess section and in the Design section, but this is a fundamental deficiency in the article. In general, citations are well provided and structured.

Origins section

The two "Origins" paragraphs need copyediting by a native English speaker.

I have done so. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)}

Deep Blue versus Kasparov section

Use of the word "upgraded" is ambiguous and would seem to require further explication. Does it refer to more or faster hardware? Further training of a machine-learning system? Development of additional constraining rules?

Added more context. Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 04:27, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

The word "mistake" is likewise ambiguous. Is this being used in its commonly-understood sense, as in, Kasparov meant to move a piece from one square to another, but mistakenly moved it to a different square? Or Kasparov meant to execute one strategy, but got confused and made a move from a different strategy instead? Or is this some chess term-of-art with some other meaning? After watching the documentary, it appears that the "mistake" was instead a defensive one, in falling for a relatively common ploy. Yet such ploys would not exist if people didn't fall for them. So the word "mistake" seems to mischaracterize the situation here.

Fixed, Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 04:46, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

The attribution of the information about the software bug to Nate Silver is incorrect. Silver's extensive Wikipedia article makes no mention of his having any expertise in chess, nor do search engines find anything of substance at the intersection of "Nate Silver" and "chess." I've just watched the short Silver documentary, and it's clear in context that he's merely reiterating what the interviewees have said, and which they in turn attribute to the Deep Blue team, or are in fact members of the Deep Blue team. So, that needs to be fixed.

Fixed, Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 05:00, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Aftermath/Chess section

The passive voice needs to be fixed. The repetition ("was the first computer to face a world chess champion in a formal match") needs to be fixed.

Fixed Repetition. Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 03:58, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Fritz is referred to earlier out-of-context but is internally linked to an explanatory article. In this section, however, "Deep Fritz" is referred to without any explanation. Why is this relevant to an article about Deep Blue? Are they related somehow?

It's relevant to Deep Blue because the earlier mention Fritz beat the prototype of Deep Blue in 1995. In 2006 Deep Fritz (The "Upgraded" version of Fritz) beat a world champion with only searching 8 million positions compared to Deep Blue's 200 million. Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 16:00, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

What's a "plie?"

Added info about it. Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 04:52, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Aftermath/Cultural section

This section seems to be being used as a dumping-ground for trivia which hasn't been woven into a narrative. Which isn't a characteristic of a "good" article.

• • I've integrated this a bit more into the prose. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:29, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Design section

This finally gets to the meat of the article, in a burying-the-lede sort of way. It feels like a discussion of IBM's many cited refusals to disclose information would be worthwhile relative to the much different context of open-source development that obtains today. From a 21st-century perspective, that kind of caginess gives a "they must have had something to hide" sense, lending credibility to Kasparov's assertion of mechanical-turk intervention; but in the context of IBM as a slow-moving company in the mid-1990s, their behavior really wasn't that unusual. Proprietary closed-source software was still the norm, and trade secrecy was commonly employed and fought out in the courts.

The article seems close to GA. A thorough copyedit, some trimming of trivial factoids, and general promotion of core content up to the lede will get it there. A fun read, and the Nate Silver mini-documentary provided good context. Bill Woodcock (talk) 03:26, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

@Bwoodcock: Thanks for your review. I think me and Lee have fixed most of the problems. Feel free to add more comments. Thanks again. Best, Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 16:01, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Formal review

Rate	Attribute	Review Comment
1. Well-written:
	1a. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct.	The writing is now clear, the organization is straight-forward, and it reads easily.
	1b. it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.	"Aftermath" is a little dramatic, a more neutral section name might be appropriate. It might also be useful to separate the two Kasparov matches each under their own subheads.
2. Verifiable with no original research:
	2a. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline.	The references seem comprehensive, and they're well and clearly formatted. And relatively uniform in their formatting.
	2b. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).	The references cited to support the hardware architecture of the RS/6000 were in conflict. (fixed) Per this discussion Mental Floss is not a reliable source. (fixed) Apparently the New York Daily News isn't always a reliable source, but I don't see any problem with it here. Citing IBM's own publications about their own champion, or its importance or consequence, would be problematic, but as used in citation 36, regarding a matter of fact on something someone else did, I don't see a problem with it. It's a little hard to evaluate the reliability of the "Top 500 List" as a source, so if there are other sources that say something useful on the topic, which may have specifically validated claims, that would be great, but if not, this probably suffices. Everything else looks fine.
	2c. it contains no original research.	I don't spot any claims that aren't backed by a citation.
	2d. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.	Appears to me to properly summarize its sources.
3. Broad in its coverage:
	3a. it addresses the main aspects of the topic.	The article doesn't appear to miss anything I think a casual reader would want to know. My first reading of it was frustrating because of vagueness on what exactly Deep Blue was, and I think some of that has been addressed with more detail in the Design section. For a modern reader, who'd be very used to something like this being implemented as a machine learning system trained on winning and losing sides of historical games, I think it would be very useful to point out that this is an expert system, and that its success depended upon evaluating the state of the board and comparing it to a lot of stored rules about how the game could subsequently play out, devised by experts.
	3b. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).	The article spends quite a lot of space on name-dropping, which won't be of interest to most readers, though may be useful to people researching and trying to follow up in more detail.
	4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.	I don't see any examples of bias, and the controversial issues are handled fairly and well.
	5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.	No evidence of any edit-warring here.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:
	6a. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content.	Both seem plausible.
	6b. media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	The illustration situation is ok, under the circumstances. The lead photo is actually of half of the cabinet, in the Computer History Museum, so that's appropriate. The photo of Kasparov is from an unrelated and dissimilar match a decade earlier.
	7. Overall assessment.

• As a note, we don't use "further reading" if it contains sources used within the article. This is both a repository of Harvard references, and also a general list of references. I'd be against changing the name. I also wouldn't want subsections for the two games. We don't need subsections simply based on things being different, it should be a natural place to split the text. I don't think it's currently long enough to warrant a subsection. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:07, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

That all seems reasonable. Just wanted to make sure you'd considered the options and were making an intentional choice. Bill Woodcock (talk) 18:47, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

We can't really magic up an image of the computer itself if it doesn't exist on commons (the GA criteria doesn't force people to take images). However, we have added an image that may be helpful. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:19, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Yep, I'm well familiar with the problem, and recognize how frustrating it is, particularly when something's well covered in the news media and so forth. Not looking for magic, just wanted to make sure that it had your attention. Bill Woodcock (talk) 19:24, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

@Bwoodcock Yeah, It doesn't really need more images, plus there isn't really any pictures. I think with the picture we added it's good. I think we have done everything we needed to. Feel free to add more comments. Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 19:47, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

@Bwoodcock We have copy-edited the prose. Feel free to check. Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 20:22, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

@The4lines: is the use of "drawn" in "it defeated Kasparov winning three and drawn one" a chess term-of-art? One would expect that to be "drawing" in regular English. In the past tense, "three won and one drawn" works, or without tense "winning three and drawing one" but if this isn't a term of art, it seems like it's mixing tenses. Bill Woodcock (talk) 12:06, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@Bwoodcock Yeah it is. It means when a player has made the same moves, or is about to make the same move, three times in a row. Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 15:06, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

@The4lines: I understand what a "draw" is, and (now) I understand the formal definition of it in chess... My question is about agreement of tenses. Whether "drawn" means something different than the past tense of "draw," and what I gather from what you're saying is that, no, that's what it means. So do you want to make the tenses agree, between "won" and "drawn" or "winning" and "drawing"? I don't care which way you go, either is fine, it's just the mixing-and-matching that's grammatically problematic. Bill Woodcock (talk) 15:14, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Bwoodcock Looks like Lee is fixing it. Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 15:36, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

- agreed. Changed. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:34, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Discrepancies regarding RS/6000 platform

It looks like there's some confusion regarding the hardware architecture, which is understandable given that it went through at least three major generations, but I think some clarification is warranted. This source describes the 1995 state, without going into much detail about which model of PowerStation was used, since that wasn't really the operative part. Then you've got this which seems quite clear, and was undoubtedly taken directly from an IBM press release that would have been checked for technical accuracy before it hit the wires. That says that they went from a PowerPC 604 High 1 to a PowerPC 604e High 2 and the dates match up. Contradicting that, you've got this Summers and Winters of Artificial Intelligence reference, which you quote as saying it was a POWER2 Thin model. Which could also be possible, given the dates, but I can't check the reference because I don't have the paper book. Then you've got a discrepancy between whether there were 30 processor nodes or 32 (I assumed 32 was the correct number and changed the single reference to 30 before I realized how deep the discrepancies were running), and whether there were 512 VLSIs, or 480 VLSIs, or 512x32=16,384, or 480x30=14,400. So, I'd like to see that cleared up with some references that I can check without buying a $600 book. And, yes, I get that all of this is incidental to chess. But not to the subject of the article, which is the first major intersection of chess and computing. Bill Woodcock (talk) 15:14, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm a little confused. As you say, there are contradicting sources. Is there something specific we don't say? We can't magic up a source that disproves one of these sources. You'll have to WP:AGF on the book source. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:36, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Interesting. The current values were added in this edit in 2004, overwriting previous values, one of which (32) agreed with the other sources. It was an IP edit, from an IP that's made no other edits, all of that predates the citation to a paper encyclopedia which now follows it. That citation (as well as a bunch of others) was added by Renamed user 5097696514 which is a permanently-blocked sockpuppet of a permanently-blocked account. So, we probably won't get very far trying to track that down. Er, no... the blocked sockpuppet just cleaned up and added detail to this previous edit by you, The4lines on 18 June 2020. In that edit, you replaced a citation to this PDF] which requires a password to get to, but is in the Archive here. This first-hand account is pretty clearly the source of the 30 and 480 numbers. It also says that the VLSI was a 32-bit device, it had about 148,000 gates, and there was a backup FPGA which they included in case they needed to patch the VLSI, but wound up not needing to use. He also says that it was a 0.6 micron (600µm) CMOS, which is very coarse, but was used for automotive applications in the 1990s, so would have been relatively inexpensive. So, I guess the question is, The4lines, why did you replace that citation, and what did the paper one say? Or do you want to roll back to the archived version of the original source? Bill Woodcock (talk) 16:35, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I went ahead and cleaned it up, so we can get this finished. Bill Woodcock (talk) 18:02, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Bwoodcock, Hey! Sorry I wasn’t able to fix it earlier, I’ve been busy all day, thanks for going ahead and fixing it. I would like to thank you for the review and the work you did. Best, Signed,The4lines |||| ^{(Talk) (Contributions)} 01:22, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

The4lines, Lee Vilenski, my pleasure, glad it worked out, and thanks for your quick responses. I feel like the article is quite strong, and I'm glad that we were able to work through some of the discrepancies. Bill Woodcock (talk) 12:32, 12 January 2022 (UTC)