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Wikipedia's Search Engine Plan

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the just-because-you-can dept.

jasonoik writes "Wikia, the commercial company founded by Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales, reveals plans for a new, editable search engine. They say that the goal of the project is to get 5% of the search market. The service does not yet an official release date. The article also leaves open the possibility that the search results may contain ads, and concludes by listing figures of the web advertisement market." Update: 03/11 17:24 GMT by KD : Wikia and Wikipedia are separate companies.

8 of 102 comments (clear)

  1. WP is the Anti-Google by Moryath · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Do No Evil" became "Be as corrupt and evil as possible."

    An "editable search engine"? Great, now even MORE of the searches I run will pop up ads for v14GR4 and enhancements for body parts I don't possess, nevermind those linkspam sites that just insert the entire fucking dictionary in metacode.

    You searched for: Bill Gates
    you got: 400 pictures of penises, vaginas, and one picture of a penis covered in something that looks like it came out of the OTHER opening.

    1. Re:WP is the Anti-Google by vertinox · · Score: 4, Insightful

      An "editable search engine"? Great, now even MORE of the searches I run will pop up ads for v14GR4 and enhancements for body parts I don't possess, nevermind those linkspam sites that just insert the entire fucking dictionary in metacode.

      True, but to be fair I wish you could have some sort of voting system based off unique IPs.

      Every time I do a search for something, chances are I'll come across a site or two that is listed that is totally crap, spam, or blatantly used some sort of method to get hits with the search.

      If I could only vote "This is spam!", "This is crap!", "This has nothing to do with the search query!" , and "Ban this site from all search engines for all time!" then I think we would see prevalent results more than not.

      --
      "I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
      -Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
  2. New heights of vandalism? by dreamchaser · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just imagine what all those malcontents out there with too much time on their hands will do with this! It could be truly amusing.

    Not *everything* works best when edited by the hordes.

    1. Re:New heights of vandalism? by SolitaryMan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Just imagine what all those malcontents out there with too much time on their hands will do with this! It could be truly amusing. Not *everything* works best when edited by the hordes.
      This is *exactly* what has been said about Wikipedia first. With things like this, you have to *try* to know for sure, so while this idea *may* not work, it definitely worth trying.
      --
      May Peace Prevail On Earth
  3. Disambiguation by Sukhbir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The thing that really rocks about Wikipedia's search is the Disambiguation function. Even Google does not have something like this.

  4. They already have 50 percent of the search market by ckedge · · Score: 4, Insightful


    They might not realize it, but they already have 50 percent of the search market. At least 50 percent of the "Intelligentsia" search market.

    Fifty percent of the stuff I used to "look up" through a google search - I now get through wikipedia. You just have to be smart enough to know that the info you are looking for is most likely in wikipedia. And it most often is. Especially since wikipedia is so open - they've got articles for tons and tons of things that no mainstream encyclopedia would ever touch. I no longer use "fan sites" or "episode guide companies" for the episode guides of TV Series, they're all in wikipedia, and the layout and presentation is even better.

  5. If a Wikinews article were this inaccurate... by brion · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...at least it would get corrected. ;)

    --

    Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?

  6. Behavioural better than editable by cyberianpan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Problem is this will require a small band of fanatics to do the editing. Now for the "central/core-cultural" stuff that you might expect in an encyclopedia this model may work but web searches are probably more long tail/niche. Not sure that the editing group could ever be representative. Furthermore the risk of bias on small sample size gets even larger. Some of the bias mightn't even be conscious: e.g. exhibiting a preference for a rigourous page over a "dummies guide" (which might be more popular/widely useful).

    Much better would be a behaviour based search engine that inferred when users were un/happy with results- e.g. user doesn't come back for more searches or click more links on existing return.Also even say if a user does a "poor" search firstly & then uses "clearer" terms then engine ought in future suggest the "clearer" terms as alt search or even return some of the results. Indeed even better the engine might "cluster" you with other similar users & retunr more relavant results (e.g. effectively inferring that you prefer rigourous complete guides rather than dummies intros).

    This would be simpler & actually rely on the wisdom of masses rather than some central command editors, in fact this type of thinking was behind PageRank.