[Search-l] Welcome, and let's keep the volume low :)

[Jimmy Wales]

First, some general comments, and then a request.  :)

As of this moment there are 754 people signed up on this mailing list. 
Yay!  This project seems to have really touched a nerve out there, and I 
think the reason is that a lot of us really believe passionately that a 
freely-licensed search engine is something whose time has come. 
Transparency and accountability in search... what a novel concept. :)

As most of you probably know, I had been trying to work on this quietly, 
and didn't really intend to cause the huge press explosion about it. 
Oops.  Well, anyway, I guess the timing is good, under the "release 
early, release often" philosophy, because the world seems very much to 
be in the mood for this.

TODAY I am on holiday... meaning that I am taking my little girl to 
Disney's Animal Kingdom.  (Say what you will about their views on 
copyright, they still make an awesome theme park. :) )  THIS WEEKEND I 
will work on writing up the contents of what I have been working on in 
my head and (partly) in code for the last several years.

One thing I am enjoying... we are getting huge amounts of skepticism. 
"It can't work because...."  Because of spammers, because of community 
fighting, because DMOZ tried and failed, because computers are good at 
it, because of locusts...  Well, I love that kind of skepticism because 
each valid criticism of the project gives us a good idea of where we can 
work to solve problems.  And each invalid criticism gives us something 
to smile about. :)

Reporters keep asking me how this will work, and have a really hard time 
grasping my philosophical answers against excessive a priori thinking. 
As with Wikipedia there are plenty of people (including me!!!) who have 
a lot of ideas about the One True Way that this should be done, but long 
experience has taught me to be slow about drawing conclusions, to be 
thoughtful about leaving design options open, and to not solve problems 
before they actually start to happen.

Well, more about that this weekend.

NOW THE REQUEST: 754 people are signed up on this mailing list.  That's 
rather a lot.  Would love for people to send some introductions, who are 
you, what do you know about, how do you see this working?  But let's try 
to keep the volume down a bit, for now, because a sudden rush of 
irrelevant discussion would probably lose some people who would like to 
stick around for a couple of weeks at least to see what we are working on.

--Jimbo