Wikipedia's Search Engine Plan

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.

WP is the Anti-Google

[Moryath]

"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.

New heights of vandalism?

[dreamchaser]

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.

Disambiguation

[Sukhbir]

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

I'm hopeful

[sm62704]

Google has become less and less relevant. Way too often I google for a search item, and that item isn't anywhere in the results page at all.

So... this ain't my day. I tried to find a very good example of this, so I put, in quotes, the name of what I thought was a little known group even when they were still together 35 years ago and googled ["joe byrd and the field hippies" lyrics].

Damn, Google must have fixed it. The last time I googled for that I got tons of lyrics sites, none of which had Joe Byrd. This time the first entry is Wikipedia (which is the first place I look for lyrics or track listings any more) and all the rest are relevant as well.

Kudos to Google, good luck to Wales. I'm still hopeful, and besides, an open source search engine can only be a GOOD thing.

They already have 50 percent of the search market

[ckedge]

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.

Re:New heights of vandalism?

[SolitaryMan]

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.

Precisely

[metamatic]

Wikipedia is already a search engine, because the no original content rule means that it doesn't contain anything that isn't summarized from somewhere else, usually somewhere on the web.

If a Wikinews article were this inaccurate...

[brion]

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

Re:WP is the Anti-Google

[vertinox]

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.

Re:WP is the Anti-Google

[UbuntuDupe]

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

Actually, it became "Don't be evil, unless necessary for the greater advancement of the human race." Just a heads-up.

Re:WP is the Anti-Google

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet there are more zombies that can outclick you.

Re:They already have 50 percent of the search mark

[geo.georgi]

You make a good point, but this is mostly true only in english.
In other languages you get much less from the wikipedia.

Behavioural better than editable

[cyberianpan]

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.

Re:Disambiguation

[Achromatic1978]

That has nothing to do with Wikipedia's search functionality. People are required to manually build a disambiguation page, collate entries, and redirect others.

Re:Fucking inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new to Wikipedia. Administrators consider themselves to be above the rules that apply to mere "editors". They also do very little work on the actual articles.

Re:Fucking inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

The encyclopedia is and always has been written by people who are either unaware of, or do not care about, the politics. Surely, as such an experienced contributor, you must be aware of that by now.