I believe which paper you implement matters less than you think. Most papers take some kind of well-known base model, make a few tweaks, and then run experiment

I believe which paper you implement matters less than you think. Most papers take some kind of well-known base model, make a few tweaks, and then run experiments. To implement it you need to follow the references and start with the base model, and 99% of all papers within some field will eventually lead you back to implementing the same base model, so it really doesn't matter where you start. The overlap is huge.