Divergence Meets Consensus: A Multi-Source Negative Sampling Framework for Sequential Recommendation
Abstract
Negative sampling is significant for training sequential recommendation models under implicit feedback. The predominant strategy, self-guided hard negative sampling, selects negatives based on the model's current state but suffers from three limitations: (1) the coupling between sampling and model updates triggers a vicious cycle that drives the model into local optima; (2) relying on current model parameters narrows sampling to a small region of the item space, reducing diversity and harming generalization; (3) identifying a hard negative requires scoring the entire candidate pool, causing substantial computational overhead with minimal information gain. To address these challenges, we propose MDCNS (Multi-source Divergence-Consensus for Negative Sampling), a novel ''Teacher-Peer-Self'' framework inspired by Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) theory. The proposed method comprises three components, including multi-source scoring, divergence re-ranking, and consensus distillation. Firstly, multi-source scoring incorporates peer and ensemble teacher models to inject external negative signals and break the self-reinforcement loop. Then, divergence re-ranking exploits prediction discrepancy between self and peer models to enhance sampling diversity. Finally, consensus distillation aligns the self-model with the teacher via KL divergence, simultaneously improving computational cost utilization. Extensive experiments on six real-world datasets and five backbone models show that MDCNS consistently outperforms state-of-the-art negative sampling methods, demonstrating strong effectiveness and generalization.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bo Peng 0009 | 63 | 100 HAM: Hybrid Associations Models for Sequential Recommendation (Extended abstract) (2023) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 100 $\mathop {\mathtt {HAM}}$HAM: Hybrid Associations Models for Sequential Recommendation (2022) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 72 M2: Mixed Models With Preferences, Popularities and Transitions for Next-Basket Recommendation (2023) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation |
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| 2 | Seongmin Park 0002 | 54 | 100 MUFFIN: Mixture of User-Adaptive Frequency Filtering for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 86 Temporal Linear Item-Item Model for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation 54 Linear Item-Item Models with Neural Knowledge for Session-based Recommendation (2025) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Yanan Niu | 51 |
Area-chair candidates (6)
| Yanan Niu assigned | 51 | 15 papers | |
| Xin Xin 0003 COI: co-author | 51 | 10 papers | |
| Kun Gai COI: co-author | 47 | 5 papers | |
| Leyu Lin | 46 | 15 papers | |
| Maolin Wang 0001 | 44 | 15 papers | |
| Pengyue Jia | 43 | 10 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bo Peng 0009 assigned | 63 | 3 | 100 HAM: Hybrid Associations Models for Sequential Recommendation (Extended abstract) (2023) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 100 $\mathop {\mathtt {HAM}}$HAM: Hybrid Associations Models for Sequential Recommendation (2022) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling |
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| 2 | Fei Sun 0001 | 59 | 3 | 100 XDM: Improving Sequential Deep Matching with Unclicked User Behaviors for Recommender System (2022) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 84 SDM: Sequential Deep Matching Model for Online Large-scale Recommender System (2019) Multi-Behavior and Multi-Interest Sequential Recommendation |
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| 3 | Jianling Wang | 56 | 3 | 100 Recurrent Recommendation with Local Coherence (2019) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 74 Sequential Recommendation for Cold-start Users with Meta Transitional Learning (2021) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling |
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| 4 | Seongmin Park 0002 assigned | 54 | 3 | 100 MUFFIN: Mixture of User-Adaptive Frequency Filtering for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 86 Temporal Linear Item-Item Model for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation |
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| 6 | Bowen Zheng 0005 COI: co-author | 51 | 3 | 100 Reciprocal Sequential Recommendation (2023) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 56 Enhancing Sequential Recommender with Large Language Models for Joint Video and Comment Recommendation (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation |
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| 8 | Wei Guo 0006 | 49 | 3 | 76 Dataset Regeneration for Sequential Recommendation (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation 67 FuXi-γ: Efficient Sequential Recommendation with Exponential-Power Temporal Encoder and Diagonal-Sparse Positional Mechanism (2026) Efficient Sequential Recommendation Architectures |
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| 9 | Lantao Hu COI: co-author | 49 | 3 | 80 Modeling User Fatigue for Sequential Recommendation (2024) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation 59 MODEM: Decoupling User Behavior for Shared-Account Video Recommendations on Large Screen Devices (2024) Graph Contrastive and Self-Supervised Learning |
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| 10 | Qiang Luo 0004 | 49 | 3 | 100 FIM: Frequency-Aware Multi-View Interest Modeling for Local-Life Service Recommendation (2025) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 55 MPFormer: Adaptive Framework for Industrial Multi-Task Personalized Sequential Retriever (2025) Multi-Task and Multi-Objective Optimization |
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| 11 | Yang Song 0008 | 48 | 3 | 69 Understanding and Modeling Passive-Negative Feedback for Short-video Sequential Recommendation (2023) Multi-Behavior Recommendation 67 Learning and Optimization of Implicit Negative Feedback for Industrial Short-video Recommender System (2023) Multi-Behavior and Multi-Interest Sequential Recommendation |
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| 12 | Shuchang Liu 0001 | 48 | 3 | 57 Sequential Recommendation for Optimizing Both Immediate Feedback and Long-term Retention (2024) Multi-Behavior and Multi-Interest Sequential Recommendation 54 Comprehensive List Generation for Multi-Generator Reranking (2025) Recommendation with Search and Ranking |
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| 13 | Xiao Zhang 0034 | 47 | 3 | 100 Test-Time Alignment with State Space Model for Tracking User Interest Shifts in Sequential Recommendation (2025) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 57 When Search Meets Recommendation: Learning Disentangled Search Representation for Recommendation (2023) Recommendation with Search and Ranking |
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| 14 | James Caverlee | 47 | 3 | 74 Sequential Recommendation for Cold-start Users with Meta Transitional Learning (2021) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 66 Consistency-Aware Recommendation for User-Generated Item List Continuation (2020) Multimodal Recommendation for Domain Applications |
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| 16 | Zhengyi Yang 0007 | 47 | 3 | 54 A Generic Learning Framework for Sequential Recommendation with Distribution Shifts (2023) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation 51 LLaRA: Large Language-Recommendation Assistant (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation |
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| 17 | Yongjing Hao | 46 | 3 | 62 Feature-Level Deeper Self-Attention Network With Contrastive Learning for Sequential Recommendation (2023) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation 61 Tell Me Where to Go Next: Improving POI Recommendation via Conversation (2021) Conversational Recommendation Systems |
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| 18 | Riwei Lai | 46 | 3 | 67 Proxy-Aware Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation (2023) Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation 55 Proxy-enhanced cross-domain sequential recommendation (2025) Cross-Domain and Cross-Market Sequential Recommendation |
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| 19 | Noveen Sachdeva | 46 | 3 | 100 Explicit Modelling of the Implicit Short Term User Preferences for Music Recommendation (2018) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 54 Attentive neural architecture incorporating song features for music recommendation (2018) Sequential Recommendation with Side and Multimodal Information |
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| 20 | Chunyang Wang 0001 | 46 | 3 | 74 MESA: Plugin Meta-Modulation for Transformer-Based Cold-Start Sequential Recommendation (2026) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 61 Learning Graph-based Disentangled Representations for Next POI Recommendation (2022) Sequential and Session-Based Graph Recommendation |
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| 21 | Jinxin Hu | 46 | 3 | 100 SASNet: Stage-aware Sequential Matching for Online Travel Recommendation (2022) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 50 CSMF: Cascaded Selective Mask Fine-Tuning for Multi-Objective Embedding-Based Retrieval (2025) Recommendation with Search and Ranking |
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| 22 | Jin Chen 0008 COI: co-author | 46 | 3 | 69 Enhancing Multi-Behavior Sequential Recommenders with Behavior-Aware Regularization (2025) Multi-Behavior Recommendation 52 RecStudio: Towards a Highly-Modularized Recommender System (2023) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 23 | Chongming Gao | 46 | 3 | 52 KuaiRec: A Fully-observed Dataset and Insights for Evaluating Recommender Systems (2022) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation 49 On the Theories Behind Hard Negative Sampling for Recommendation (2023) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 25 | Chen Wang 0052 | 45 | 3 | 65 Cluster-Aware Item Prompt Learning for Session-Based Recommendation (2025) LLM-Enhanced Sequential Recommendation 63 Sequential Recommendation with Auxiliary Item Relationships via Multi-Relational Transformer (2022) Graph-Based Sequential and Session Recommendation |
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| 26 | Yuta Saito | 45 | 3 | 49 Off-Policy Evaluation of Ranking Policies under Diverse User Behavior (2023) Recommendation with Search and Ranking 48 Evaluating the Robustness of Off-Policy Evaluation (2021) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 27 | Mengyuan Jing | 45 | 3 | 100 Intent-Aware Cross Attention for Next POI Recommendation (2024) Sequential Recommendation with User Modeling and Profiling 81 Recognizing Semantics-Consistent Subsequences for Sequential Recommendation (2023) Graph-Based Sequential and Session Recommendation |
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| 28 | Bo Chen 0023 | 45 | 3 | 56 ReLLa: Retrieval-enhanced Large Language Models for Lifelong Sequential Behavior Comprehension in Recommendation (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 55 Full-Stack Optimized Large Language Models for Lifelong Sequential Behavior Comprehension in Recommendation (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation |
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| 29 | Hyunsik Yoo | 45 | 3 | 86 Capturing User Interests from Data Streams for Continual Sequential Recommendation (2026) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation 69 Mixture of Sequence: Theme-Aware Mixture-of-Experts for Long-Sequence Recommendation (2026) Multi-Behavior and Multi-Interest Sequential Recommendation |
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| 30 | Junwei Pan | 44 | 3 | 81 Multi-Sequence Attentive User Representation Learning for Side-information Integrated Sequential Recommendation (2024) Sequential Recommendation with Side and Multimodal Information 50 Empowering Large Language Model for Sequential Recommendation via Multimodal Embeddings and Semantic IDs (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 31 | Jieming Zhu COI: co-author | 44 | 3 | 60 FANS: Fast Non-Autoregressive Sequence Generation for Item List Continuation (2023) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation 49 ROMA: Recommendation-Oriented Language Model Adaptation Using Multi-Modal Multi-Domain Item Sequences (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation |
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| 32 | Yongxin Ni | 44 | 3 | 64 Bridging NIP and MLM: A Unified Meta-Learning Framework for Sequential Recommendation (2026) Meta-Learning for Cold-Start Recommendation 53 Global and Personalized Graphs for Heterogeneous Sequential Recommendation by Learning Behavior Transitions and User Intentions (2022) Sequential and Session-Based Graph Recommendation |
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| 33 | Hao Liu 0078 | 44 | 3 | 54 Mitigating Distribution Shifts in Sequential Recommendation: An Invariance Perspective (2025) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation 51 WeaveRec: An LLM-Based Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Framework with Model Merging (2026) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 35 | Huifeng Guo | 43 | 3 | 67 FuXi-γ: Efficient Sequential Recommendation with Exponential-Power Temporal Encoder and Diagonal-Sparse Positional Mechanism (2026) Efficient Sequential Recommendation Architectures 52 AutoML for Deep Recommender Systems: Fundamentals and Advances (2023) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |