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Wikia Search Launches Alpha, Not Ready Yet
babooo404 writes "Jimmy Wales' latest project, Search Wikia has launched into alpha this morning. Most reviews have been negative. The system is a 'social search' and uses the Nutch search algorithm. You can friend people along with creating profiles, and the system uses a Wikipedia-style format for 'mini articles.'"
Ok, let me see if I understand this. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia that can't have proofs or in depth reference materials, because more detail is out of scope for really no reason. But, they can somehow try and turn wiki into another google or a facebook.
Interesting!
Me thinks wiki should focus on its content.
This is my sig.
I tried it on a bunch of fairly simple queries and got nothing but extremely lousy results.
On the web first impressions really matter and I think wikia fails horribly in that respect.
Please Jimmy Wales go and fix wikipedia, it needs urgent attention, especially protection from editors running wild, and please, google go work on getting rid of that spam and fixing the rankings...
MP3 Search Engine
Sorry, these reviews are not from reliable peer-reviewed sources and all references to them should be deleted. In fact, this whole article should be speedy deleted as non-notable.
Maybe this will be rolled into Wikipedia once it's done, but it seems me to that their search algorithm needs *plenty* of work. Thanks to the glories of SpellChecker, I can't spell worth a damn... when I misspell something in Wikipedia, it rarely finds it in the results, whereas Google always know what I meant to type AND OFFERS ME A CORRECTION. On Wikipedia, I have to go look how to spell whatever I'm searching for correctly, then put it back into Wikipedia's search just to find what I'm looking for.
Very frustrating...
Highlighted article when I search for "sex":
First result for "George Bush"
This is genius. I think I know what I'll search site I'll use next time I need some entertainment.
Which part of Alpha did these guys not understand? It is, by definition, "Not Ready Yet"!
Jimmy has pointed out that they're not even running against a real index yet, just a placeholder index. He even went so far as to say, "the search sucks today." The idea wasn't to launch a finished product that's ready for primetime. It wasn't even to launch a particularly working application. The point was to put something out there to demonstrate some rudimentary functionality while they continue to work towards something that does work.
You know, like a Beta.
I think it's kind of sad that Jimmy put something out and said, "Here's what it kinda will look like, and sorta how it will work," and people's first reaction is, "It's not a fully-functional working product? What a piece of crap."
I think I'll wait a little longer before judging. If you don't like the concept, fine, don't like the concept. But to bust its chops because it's not fully functional is a bit premature and silly at this point.
I can't find anything in terms of documentation on Wikia, but it appears Wikia search is blocking sites on Wikipedia's blacklist from being listed in the search engine. I've pulled a few examples from the blacklist and searched for them and have yet to receive any results on any of those searches.
Can anyone confirm or refute this? Maybe it's just because the Wikia is in alpha it hasn't indexed much yet?
If this is the case I'd probably steer clear of Wikia; I'm not sure I ant my search results to be filtered like that.
Not only are the reviews bad, but using it could get you banned from Facebook.
Competing in the search engine space just dilutes their effectiveness even more. Google currently links to Wikipedia and one might guess that a very large % of Wikipedia access comes via Google hits.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
... before blasting the effort like the top level story poster.
BTW, last night I looked at their technical information site: http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Search_Wikia
Some interesting stuff that I did not know about in their "Semantic lab".
Anyway, it is at least an interesting idea - time will tell how it works out for users, and as a business.
Let me wee if I can begin.... nope... trying again...
OK, so the WikiMedia Foundation, of which Wikipedia is one (and the best known) project, includes Wikibooks, Wiktionary, and many more.
Wikia isn't any of those.
Wikia is a project of Wikia, Inc. So you're WAY off in your throwing stones at Wikipedia over Wikia's search... the two have nothing to do with each other, other than the fact that Wikia search will almost certainly index Wikipedia and Wikipedia will almost certainly have an entry for Wikia search.
Now, on to your proofs beef. Proofs are tough. Sometimes overviews of them can be important, but they're fundamental examples of primary sources, which are not nearly as useful to an encyclopedia as secondary sources that give the context within which the proof is notable.
Has anybody used Wikipedia's normal search on their site. I can never find anything, It's horrible. Yahoo & Google do a much superior job with searches than they do on their own site. With that in mind, it doesn't make much sense for them to development a brand new search engine type thing when their own isn't that good.
"During My Service In The United States Congress, I Took The Initiative In Creating The Internet." -Al Gore
Wikipedia is so awesome that it has changed by web habits, and half replaced google for me already. When I need to learn about something, from political events to computer games, I find myself starting off with a wikipedia search BEFORE going to google. I usually follow by visiting the external links from the wiki page. Great for getting to the "official page" of whatever I am interested if there is one, without crappy ad spam sites filling up the google search. Not a true knowledge source? Depends what you mean by "true", but Wiki pages beat the regular web for me hands down when what I want is just the naked knowledge and not a whole web page full of "content". Wiki gives me a concise body of text, and a relevant picture most of the times, no ads, no marketing, and no aggressive pushing of any kind of text, image, video etc. When you use wikipedia, you feel in control, while with the commercial nature of the web, you feel like a customer.
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You don't.
Wikipedia can (and does) have proofs (e.g., in the article on Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.) Usually, in-depth reference is out-of-scope, and appropriate for other Wikimedia projects which may be linked from Wikipedia articles, like Wikibooks (if it is contributor-developed) or Wikisource (for source texts that can be reproduced without copyright problems.)
Wikia is not the same thing as Wikipedia, even though Jimmy Wales is centrally involved in both. Wikia competing with Google or Facebook is not Wikipedia (or even Wikimedia) doing so.
He's actually not at the helm of either, though he exerts a lot of influence over Wikipedia.
Wales was quoted recently complaining about Google's results for "Tampa hotels", and talking about how Wikia was going to be better. So I searched Wikia for "Tampa hotels".
The first three results from Wikia search are all from the domain "visit-tampa-bay.com". That's one of those bottom-feeder ad link sites. The site is supposed to redirect traffic to Orbitz, but doesn't even do that right. Very disappointing result. Could they have been spammed already?
Trying "Tampa hotels" in Google gets us "travel.yahoo.com" for the top two results, which indicates that Google isn't biasing their search against their biggest competitor. Next is "traveladvisor.com". Those are OK results; you'd be able to get a hotel room that way.
Trying "Tampa hotels" in Yahoo search gets us a page from one of Yahoo's special cases. Yahoo knows about "hotels", so we get a list of hotels and prices from Yahoo, and three sponsored results. The top organic result is "tripadvisor.com", which is at least a big-name travel site, followed by "visittampabay.com" (not to be confused with "visit-tampa-bay.com"), the site for the local Convention and Visitor's Bureau. Yahoo certainly tries hard for hotel searches, and seems to be doing OK.
Trying "Tampa hotels" in MSN search gets results that look much like Yahoo's, but with lower result quality. MSN understands hotels as a special case. There are three sponsored results, and addresses and phone numbers for three real hotels. The first three organic search results are Yahoo Travel, "tampa-hotels.net" (an ad-laden landing page), and "tampa-hotels-discounts.net" (a bottom-feeder generic landing page that isn't even on topic.) Poor results.
Trying our own SiteTruth the top result is "all-hotels.com", which has a list of hotels with pictures and a reservation interface. The second result is Yahoo Travel, and the third is Expedia. We're sorting Yahoo results on business legitimacy, so that's not surprising. OK here.
So there's where Wikia is today, on their recommended demo search.
How dare you try to spoil a good Slashdot argument with facts!