Talk:SAS Institute/Archive 1

Improvement
As discussed on my user page I have a conflict of interest with SAS Institute, but understand Wikipedia's policies for neutrality, verification, encyclopedic tone and so on. I've written a proposed draft of an improved SAS Institute Wiki here and I've also asked admin Alpha_Quadrant to review the draft here to make sure my COI is not showing through.

He said "Very nice work on the draft. I don't see any issues with the content. I think the article relies a little too heavily on first party sources, but other than that, I don't see anything concerning. I agree, it is much more neutral than the current article."

As discussed on the draft page, I believe this Wiki is far more complete, neutral, heavily verified, updated and accurate. Since I have a COI with the subject matter and the draft constitutes significant changes, I'd like to encourage the volunteer community here to review to ensure you feel my contributions are an improvement to the Wiki.

Please contact me on my Talk page if you have any questions or concerns using Assume Good Faith.

CorporateM (CorporateM) —Preceding undated comment added 23:15, 1 December 2011 (UTC).

Name of company
According to their website, the company has dropped the "institute" and is now just "SAS". I don't know how to change the main listing. Can someone make that change (after, of course, validating the facts)?--Itsgeneb (talk) 17:43, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

it's their trading name still, so there is no need to change it Markthemac (talk) 02:46, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Picture of the campus
It would be very interesting to include an aerial photo of the SAS Institute campus (Cary, NC) to the right of the contents-box at the top of the Article. There is a lot of white space there and it would improve the appearance of the article in addition to giving a flavor of why it is called SAS Institute. Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 23:38, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

updating Community and Awards section
I work for SAS and would like to suggest an update to the Community and Awards section. In 2008 SAS was named to the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work for in America list for the 11th consecutive year, at #29, and to the Computerworld 100 Best Places to Work in IT list, at #5. In 2007 the company also received best workplace awards in Mexico, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Europe, Portugal and China, in addition to the award in Canada already mentioned. Thanks.

DaveNC001 (talk) 14:38, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

not exactly neutral points of view, nor universaly accepted
SAS's core technologies are unsurpassed in their field, unfortunately they employ an army of salesmen who know this. The strength of the product allows them to get away with some very hard nosed customer management.

One of the most exciting developments in recent SAS history was the hiring of the revolutionary business thinker Bill Driest. It is widly speculated that Driest will change the market for high end analytics and predictive modeling as we know it today.

Gzuckier 18:02, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Choice Employer?
While I was impressed with the list of "qualities" of SAS as an employer, I am informed by an employee that not all of "global SAS" are treated so nicely; it appears to only be the US where conditions are quite so rosey. Walkin777 02:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

neutrality dispute
I second the statement that this article's tone is in no way neutral. (unsigned-comment)
 * Awards are what they are; when documented, they speak for themselves. Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 05:04, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Dear "unsigned", Can you be a little more specific? Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 11:09, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

"see also JMP" is insufficient; JMP needs discussion too
While the JMP entry's discussion (though brief) is actually fine, it is not sufficient to have the only JMP mention in the SAS Institute article as the "see also JMP". Some discussion of JMP must be included in the SAS Institute article itself. Support of this contention (besides the a priori obviousness -- JMP being a major product of SAS Institute), can be found in the sascom special issue on JMP in which SAS Institue has devoted an entire magazine to JMP -- and half of that content concerns JMP & SAS software comparisons / contrasts / talking-to-each-others. This a posteriori evidence for my contention that JMP must be in the SAS Institute article proper is emminently clear from reading that sascom special issue.199.196.144.16 15:42, 10 August 2007 (UTC) ———————————————————————————————————————-———————————————————————————————————————-———————————————————————————————————————-——————————————————————————————

Yes JMP is very much a SAS Product. The integration between SAS and JMP has increased with the release of JMP7. JMP8 will further increase this integration. (unsigned-comment)
 * JMP is an amazing SAS Institute product. It is said that SAS (as a suite of platform/tools) is your minivan for you soccer team; and JMP is your sports car to tour the Alps of discovery and preliminary analysis (statistical graphics). Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 11:21, 31 August 2010 (UTC)  . . . PS: See JMP_(statistical_software)

Request edit
I would like to submit an improved version of the article for consideration. The draft has also already been vetted reviewed by multiple a couple editors with an interest in the subject and represents a substantial body of work to improve the article. User:CorporateM 18:21, 9 July 2012 (UTC)
 * On the talk page of the article I see 1 editor who reviewed it some months ago and made positive comments. (or did I miss something?) Who are the other editors and when did they review it? links or diffs please. DES (talk) 03:40, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * Just AlphaQuadrant and Charles.
 * "Very nice work on the draft. I don't see any issues with the content. I think the article relies a little too heavily on first party sources, but other than that, I don't see anything concerning. I agree, it is much more neutral than the current article. Best wishes, Alpha_Quadrant (talk) 16:58, 13 October 2011 (UTC)"
 * Since receiving this feedback, SAS cut down on the number of first party sources and added more secondary sources. Alpha has gone on a Wiki-break, so is unable to fulfill the request edit. I am working on potentially getting the images Charles mentioned as well, but would be comfortable adding those as non-controversial edits.


 * To be fair, the number of first party sources are still an area of reasonable criticism, however the article will remain for others to continue to improve. User:CorporateM 04:49, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think that quite constitutes being "vetted by multiple editors with an interest in the subject". This may well be an improvement, but I am not prepared to take responsibility for making the edit on this basis. OTOH, neither will I decline the request, rather I will leave it open. However, if you can have other editors (plural) review and vet this, I would be willign to make the edit. DES (talk) 04:56, 22 August 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd like to help but proposing a completely new version of the article requires me to go back and forth sentence by sentenced to see what has changed. That's a big job, not one I'm ready to undertake. I suggest breaking your proposal down to smaller pieces and then you may get more participation and make more progress.

request edit I'm going through and doing some anti-promotional trimming and reducing primary sources, while I expand the article based on the draft, but I wanted to pull out areas that may be touchy for request edits.

My first request is as follows: under SAS_Institute I would like to delete the following:

"More recently, SAS Institute has followed the lead of other major corporate software suppliers by offering SAS Certification for SAS programmers, users, and developers to eliminate some of the risk of hiring individuals of unknown ability; like many such programs, it has met with mixed success. The Institute has similarly launched a program of SAS Partners, who provide a pool of available consultants for corporations who wish to begin incorporating SAS applications into their operations but lack any experience with the software. These individuals also serve as unpaid ambassadors, evangelists, and salesmen for the Institute; as they market their services and products to corporations, as a consequence licensing fees naturally will flow to SAS."

I have added the paragraph intended to replace it as the first paragraph in the section. The new content does show a slow start per the # of certifications, but I think is less editorialized. CorporateM (talk) 20:16, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

sasCommunity.org
For latest information on the SAS community, check in on http://www.sascommunity.org In particular, there is a new leadership council for the SAS community (described on the homepage.) For the SAS Institute article, I'll be paying particular attention to user-related information. PS: I've invited several WP editors in the SAS community to review this article. Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 13:59, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Some issues
There are quite a lot of major issues here, and the article needs a good clean. I've started on that but a few issues I can't decide how best to fix. I will list them here as I see them:
 * Employees are given a large amount of autonomy and trust, all the while being well-compensated and well-taken care of.; cited to the Fast Company article. I'm having a bit of trouble seeing the first part of this sentence in the source. Also, the source itself reads worryingly like a PR piece so statements like this could do with additional citation at the least. Given all of that the opening to this sentence feels like synthesis.
 * The Management style section covers much of the same ground as the campus section. Not sure what to do about that but the duplicate material needs to be in one place or the other :)

More as I see it --Errant (chat!) 14:30, 24 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks Errant! The redundancy is caused because the draft article has been on the Talk page for almost a year, and during that time overlapping content was added. I'm in the process of merging it and figuring out structure. My leniency will be mostly to favor volunteer-written content over anything we wrote out of basic respect for the process. CorporateM (talk) 14:49, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm paying attention for a bit :) so if you want to work through specific section replacement/changes a few at a time I am happy to give it some time. --Errant (chat!) 14:57, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * My next request edit was going to be for the Business Intelligence Market section, which I see you already addressed. I was going to suggest renaming it "Market Share" and moving it to the SAS (software) page for improvement later on. The company page is already crowded and since there is a dedicated page for the product, it might be better there. CorporateM (talk) 15:22, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Yep, that is the perfect solution. I was stumped what to do with it. --Errant (chat!) 15:55, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Ok, the next one is under Users Groups (second paragraph under Global Forum and the last sentence under User's Groups)

They both refer to how SAS's users groups are less independent. I have added the precise details of SAS's support and involvement. I am also removing some positive editorializing and am comfortable doing that myself, but didn't feel comfortable removing these myself. CorporateM (talk) 16:10, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Request edits
I have gone through the article carefully, merging our draft with pre-existing content, trimming positive editorializing, working out a better article structure, reducing primary sources and making general editorial improvements. It could probably still use more work, but I'm sure it will improve over time.

I have removed a lot of positive editorializing, but have left the negatives ones to avoid the appearance of white-washing.


 * "They also serve the Institute by providing essentially free customer service and public relations functions."


 * "Unlike entities such as the Independent Oracle Users Group, however, the Global SAS User Group has never been a completely independent and self-sufficient users group; instead, SAS Institute and the Global SAS User Group Executive board have formed a collaborative relationship in the formation of the conference structure and control of finances. Full-time employees manage and run the logistics of the SAS Global Forum conference itself, with the help and participation of volunteers (serving in such roles as section chairs and speakers) from the user community."


 * "Similar but more independent user conferences are."

I have added content like "SAS Institute often supports users-group events by inviting local users, providing logistics support, contributing speakers or sharing expenses" and "The board is composed of 25 SAS users and three SAS Institute representatives" to try to replace these with more precise facts, but would appreciate an impartial editor taking a look.

CorporateM (talk) 18:08, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, generally the article looks a lot better in structure and content. I removed most of that uncited material too. --Errant (chat!) 10:14, 26 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Awesome. I'm happy to take a closer look at anything that looks promotional as well. For now I'm scooting over to some other SAS-related articles. CorporateM (talk) 12:20, 26 October 2012 (UTC)