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Filed under: social networking, Sweden, tech, web | Tags: google, google search, Jim Wales, open-source, search engines, Sweden, weather, Wikia, Wikia Search, Wikipedia
So, while Google has been working on its version of an open-source Web search engine, Wikia’s been letting users play around with theirs for a few months now. I remember hearing about this at the beginning of the year and thinking, now what the hell is that good for? and not spending any time on it. I just didn’t think that people were going to appreciate or use a search engine that was partially user defined. Sure, throw an algorithm and a logarithm and a biorhythm in there, but if someone can still add “This site sucks” as a comment on a search engine listing… Well, then… objectivity? Hello?
At the time, I thought of it like this: Imagine in the days of big-ass phone books (let’s pretend that those days are far behind us, it just feels nice to do so…) if every single company were to print their own version of the book… Imagine opening up the Domino’s Pizza Yellow Pages and finding a lot of highly rated entries for Domino’s Pizza under the heading “pizza,” and very few, if any, listings for other pizza places. Well, what would be the fracking point of that? Um, yeah, hey, Domino’s? Yeah, I’d, um, hey, like to place an order… Well, THAT would be the point of that.
But I have wisened up (albeit ever so slightly) and am now thinking of it like this: Imagine that there is just one big-ass phone book, and everybody has to share it, pass it around, and can pencil in (ink would be strongly discouraged) their favorite pizza places and place less relative pizza listings (like those that list pizza restaurant supplies, for instance) lower down on the significance scale. That would mean that the Domino’s Pizza listing would only make it to the top of the list if enough people moved it up there. And there you have it: open-source pizza. Or something like that.
So now I think I’m starting to really see the point with open-source Web search engines–you get search results that have some comments and some user input, along with your own customizations… Okay, uncle, uncle… Sounds like a pretty good deal.
So after watching the video to see what the Google version is apparently going to be all about, I decided to have a go at Wikia Search. Comparing two cars without driving one of them is pointless, but I knew that playing around with Wikia Search would give me an idea of what both versions are basically all about. Though this blog entry written by Jim Wales (creator of Wikipedia) does want to make the point that the Wikia version has what Google has and then some:
So let’s see:
That’s really all they added. What about
-
- Adding search results? We can do that.
- The super-cool annotation tool
- And all the other stuff?
So, I played around with the Wikia Search for a while, and it was pretty cool. I started by searching for “sweden weather,” mostly to find out if it is going to rain today, because if so I can call off the BBQ and stay inside and go around tagging the walls of the Internet. The results came up showing some sort of Swedish rock band first, then a Wikipedia entry on Sweden, and then some weather forecasting sites. You can see that here. (Click on the images to go to the large versions on Flickr.)
Okay, so I don’t need The International Noise Conspiracy to lead off my search results about Swedish weather, so I deleted that listing. (I, of course, now feel bad for deleting them and so am linking to them here, a much better place for a link to them than in a “swedish weather” search.) Then I added a listing that didn’t come up, which is the one that I use all the time–SMHI–which is the Swedish Meteorological Institute. After it was added and went to the top of the list, I even added a little comment about it, gave it a 5-star rating and then highlighted it, since I believe that it is the most accurate weather forecasting site for Sweden. And that looked like this:
So all of this is pretty darned interesting and it does look like this is the way Web-searching will be heading in the future, though there is much to learn and lots that I am very unclear about.
I still, for example, do not know if it is going to rain today–but that is no fault of either Wikia or Google. I’m just a numbskull.
Read more about Wikia Search and try it out, if you are so inclined.
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