August 13, 2008

The Problem With Wikia Search

I'm not worthy:

(my blog post is the second result for a Wikia Search on Jimmy Wales)

For those who can't see the image, my Wikia Search Follies blog post is the second result for a Wikia Search for [Jimmy Wales]. The first result is currently an article from The Register, "Jimbo Wales dumps lover on Wikipedia" (n.b., though that makes for an ironic story, I suspect it really didn't happen that way).

In Wikipedia, functionally, articles are effectively controlled by a small clique (forget all that blather about whizzing crowds, it's nonsense). Wikia Search hasn't figured out how to do that for search results. Frankly, I'm surprised the results for a search for [Jimmy Wales] are relatively inoffensive. But then, the net results are basically an approval-voting system, which favors scandal over pure trolling. So there's a lesson there - they may end up not making a search engine, but a selection game seeded by (bad) search engine results.

By Seth Finkelstein | posted in wikia-search | on August 13, 2008 09:29 AM (Infothought permalink)
Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)

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