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Wikia Search Launches Alpha, Not Ready Yet

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the release-early-and-often dept.

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.'"

3 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Work on wikipedia's search first by mcsqueak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

  2. Awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Highlighted article when I search for "sex":

    Mini Article About "sex"

    Sex is a term which is very often searched in the internet. Thus, a mini-article about pages with free pictures / videos without spam would be important.

    First result for "George Bush"

    George Bush Is A Crackwhore!
    ... handjobs for cash. George Bush is addicted to smack ... some blow.. yah know... like George Bush ...
    http://www.george.bush.isacrackwhore.com/ - Cached - 1.26

    This is genius. I think I know what I'll search site I'll use next time I need some entertainment.

  3. Which part of ALPHA... by KingSkippus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.