aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Sunday, December 31, 2006

The skinny from Wales on Wikia

I finally got round to reading Danny Sullivan’s Q&A with Jimmy Wales on his Google challenging Search Wikia project:

Q. Why do this at all? What do you see wrong with search?

For certain types of searches, search engines are very good. But I still see major failures, where they aren’t delivering useful results. I think at a deeper almost political level, I think it’s important that we as a global society have some transparency in search. What are the algorithms involved? What are the reasons why one site comes up over another one. [Wales also raised the issue of how ads might influence regular listings, perhaps search engines trying to keep commercial sites out of the free listings to make money. From there, he went on....] Those types of incentives are problematic in search. The only solution I know to that is to be transparent.

Danny’s conclusion is skeptical. Still:

I find myself oddly hopeful. I don’t think a Google killer will emerge, but perhaps some new ways of a community to be involved with search will come out of it. I wouldn’t have thought Wikipedia would work. Certainly it’s flawed, but it’s also an incredible resource. Maybe something useful will come from the Search Wikia project.

LATER: The NYTimes has a story on the Wikia search project today.