Ron Schenone

Wikia Search – A Real Threat To Google?

Posted by on Jun 4, 2008 | 3 Comments

Wikia Search is an distant cousin to Wikipedia, the popular information web site that a user can edit the definitions. But since its inception, Wikia Search has not been able to gather a following of supporters and it’s search share is so low, that it can not even be measured. Over at Wkia Search they state on their site the following information:

Wikia Search has four organizational principles: Transparency, Community, Privacy, and Quality

Search currently lacks openness in how the systems and algorithms operate, in the form of open source licenses as well as open content and APIs. This must change.

The best institutions accept criticism and suggestions, and incorporate this feedback into the product. Search should be no different – except that it should go further. Everyone, be it as individuals or entire organizations, must be able to contribute in some way to the project. Search requires a strong social and community focus; one that allows for universal participation.

We must significantly improve the relevancy and accuracy of search results and the searching experience.

A searcher’s privacy must be protected and respected, on both a technological and social level.

Give Wikia Search a try and see what you think. Share your thoughts and compare this search engine to Google and let us know your opinion.

Comments welcome.

Source

  • Ryan

    Well, this was tried way back with the Open Directory Project, and is in fact still there, but hardly anybody knows about that or uses it, it’s at http://www.dmoz.org if you’re curious.

    The problem is that while a group of humans tend to build a higher quality database, the spider bots that are used by Google and such do a good enough job the majority of time, of course they run into more scam sites and such, but then they also benefit from being able to weed out dead links faster.

    Whether Wikia search would be a success or not depends on many, many factors, and they do have the openness of being based on free/libre software, but another problem is that any search engine based in the United States is subject to having their First Amendment rights abridged by censorship/anti-free speech laws such as the DMCA, so they need the following to succeed, by my definition anyway:

    1. Many project volunteers that are willing to spend their own time building the index.

    2. Being based on free/libre software databasing tools and making their own database available under something such as Creative Commons licensing.

    3. An web crawling spiderbot that crawls the index every once in a while and removes dead links, mark them the first time, then delete them a week later if they still aren’t there.

    4. Administrators that respond quickly and fairly to abuse reports.

    5. Being based somewhere outside of the United States, where there are no DMCA-style laws and they don’t have to answer to an overly harsh government regarding links that don’t correspond to said government’s agenda. (Such as Isle of Man, Sweden, etc.)

    Anyway, that is my recipe for a successful project, but the Wikimedia Foundation is based in the US, so they will be censored by corporate harassment with DMCA take-down crap, but I don’t see why 1-4 would be a problem.

  • http://lifeofnavin.blogspot.com/ Navin

    I know tht many people are critical of this idea…. but who would have thought tht wikipedia would reach the heights it has reached today?? I mean a few years ago, when wiki was introduced, everyone dismissed it without a thought but now……

    Read my blogpost on the same topic
    http://lifeofnavin.blogspot.com/2008/06/wikia-launches-hackable-search.html

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/blade/ Ron Schenone

    Thanks Navin for stopping by.