From sethf at sethf.com Thu Apr 12 21:30:28 2007 From: sethf at sethf.com (Seth Finkelstein) Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 17:30:28 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] ChennaiOnline - "Wikipedia planning search engine" Message-ID: <20070412213028.GA26814@sethf.com> [We all know it's Wikia The Corporation, not Wikipedia, I'm just forwarding the article for people's interest] http://www.chennaionline.com/colnews/newsitem.asp?NEWSID=%7bD86A39D3-BCFD-47B7-A594-A9A5874348D4%7d&CATEGORYNAME=TECH Wikipedia planning search engine Chennai, April 11: As part of efforts to widen its reach and showcase the power of 'wikis', online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is planning a search engine that is intended to rival that of Google. "Yes, Wikimedia Foundation is planning an open search engine that thrives on the knowledge of users. The search engine is in its early stage," said Kiruba Shankar, an editor of Wikipedia here and a well-known blogger. Shankar, who runs a web development firm, was an organiser of the recent Wikicamp-Unconference where all participants could interact freely in an informal session. "Wikicamp was India's first real event devoted to wikis," he said referring to the websites and collaborative software that allow people to add, remove, edit or change content. "The response was better than expected. We expected around 100 people to be part of it, but over 350 turned up. It greatly helped that Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, flew in to attend the event," Shankar said. The main reason for organising the event was to showcase the power of wikis. Shankar strongly feels that the wiki is a severely underestimated power tool and there are excellent uses that people are ignorant about. "The event helped in highlighting those advantages." Many techies knew about Wikipedia but quite a few did not know how to edit a wiki. The event had a workshop on how to edit wikis. "Many corporates have installed wikis as part of their intranet to disseminate information internally," he said. (Our Correspondent) -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com/ Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php From sethf at sethf.com Tue Apr 17 10:06:56 2007 From: sethf at sethf.com (Seth Finkelstein) Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2007 06:06:56 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Long FastCompany article on search project Message-ID: <20070417100656.GA26355@sethf.com> http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/114/features-why-is-this-man-smiling.html [Just a few excepts] ... The community has responded quite enthusiastically so far, catching even Wales by surprise. "I just thought we'll put a couple of developers on it and kind of play with it on the side and see what comes up," he says. "But now there's a huge developer community that's really interested." As Gil Penchina, Wales's handpicked CEO to lead Wikia, says, "Since the news leaked out, people have been lining up, saying, 'I'll clean the toilet bowl, let me in here.'" ... Wales talks about Wikia and his new search project as if it's his rich-man's toy, his version of playing golf. "As long as it's fun, I don't care," he says. "As long as we're having fun," he repeats, "and it's an interesting project and once people are interested, let's take a shot at it. Search can pay for itself even if you don't become the market leader. Well, why not?" Go deeper, though, and he betrays hints of the tenacity and ambitiousness of a true mogul. When Wales talks a lot about the public good and just having fun, one can forget that he's the founder of a startup that runs paid advertisements alongside the content created by its communities. Although Wales still sits on the board of the nonprofit Wikipedia Foundation, he gave up its chair to focus on Wikia, a separate and independent for-profit company, working with Penchina, who used to run eBay's (NASDAQ:EBAY) European businesses. (Penchina is more of the inside-operations guy, while Wales is the public figure.) -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com/ Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php From sethf at sethf.com Tue Apr 24 02:24:08 2007 From: sethf at sethf.com (Seth Finkelstein) Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:24:08 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Wikipedia founder mulls revenue options [including search engine] Message-ID: <20070424022408.GA5499@sethf.com> http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070423/wr_nm/wikipedia_dc_1 CORRECTED: Wikipedia founder mulls revenue options By Wendell Roelf Mon Apr 23, 1:00 PM ET [snip] The Wikipedia Foundation, which runs the encyclopedia Web site, last year raised some $1 million from donations and was expected to spend up to $3 million this year, Wales said. He said he was looking at ways to capitalize on the strength of the Wikipedia brand -- which is ranked among the world's top five -- to raise funds. Wales reiterated that his company Wikia Inc., which is not linked to Wikipedia, was working on a search engine to rival Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), which it expects to finish towards the end of the year. "Hopefully it's successful and would provide funding back to Wikipedia," Wales said. Wales said last month that Wikia is aiming to take as much as 5 percent of the lucrative Internet search market. The former futures trader, who has become an evangelist for the free sharing of technology, has said users should work together to improve search engines, working on the same principle as Wikipedia. -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com/ Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php From sethf at sethf.com Thu Apr 26 10:15:21 2007 From: sethf at sethf.com (Seth Finkelstein) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 06:15:21 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Wired Blog: Where Are The Announced Wikipedia Projects? Message-ID: <20070426101521.GA16587@sethf.com> http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/04/update_where_ar.html Meanwhile, Jimmy Wales's Open Serving project that was supposed to revolutionize user-generated content has quietly started to allow users to create their sites, but it appears that this is an invite only situation (an odd move considering Wikia's other open participation projects). In case you missed the news on Open Serving months ago, it is a wiki platform that offers free bandwidth, free software tools, free storage, Digg-like news voting, RSS feeds and allows the creator of a site to keep 100 percent of the ad revenue. How this project will generate enough revenue to sustain itself is unclear. The catch might be buried in a fact that some users may be unaware of unless they read the fine print: You won't have copyrights to any of the content on Open Serving. Hmmm, another commercial DVD perhaps? Also promised, but so far missing in action, is the Wikia Search engine. Months ago, Wales announced it as a potential competitor to Google, but with tools like Googlepedia around, it will be interesting to see if Wales can offer a real competitive alternative to Google. If the continued delays and dust-ups with competitors persist, accomplishing such an ambitious feat is unlikely. -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com/ Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php From beesley at gmail.com Thu Apr 26 10:23:14 2007 From: beesley at gmail.com (Angela) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 11:23:14 +0100 Subject: [Search-l] Wired Blog: Where Are The Announced Wikipedia Projects? In-Reply-To: <20070426101521.GA16587@sethf.com> References: <20070426101521.GA16587@sethf.com> Message-ID: <8b722b800704260323m5e745781m22572eb4ea27a7c8@mail.gmail.com> > The catch might be buried in a fact that some users may be unaware of > unless they read the fine print: You won't have copyrights to any of > the content on Open Serving. This isn't true at all. Authors always retain their copyright on all Wikia sites. They freely license that, usually under the GFDL, allowing others a non-exclusive right to use it under the terms of that license. Angela From KENNETH.EVANS at tccd.edu Thu Apr 26 15:56:46 2007 From: KENNETH.EVANS at tccd.edu (EVANS, KENNETH (WOODY)) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 10:56:46 -0500 Subject: [Search-l] vizual searching In-Reply-To: <8b722b800704260323m5e745781m22572eb4ea27a7c8@mail.gmail.com> References: <20070426101521.GA16587@sethf.com> <8b722b800704260323m5e745781m22572eb4ea27a7c8@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <5318BFF5FF22A94DA94311D534716B4D45FAC0@netc021.ALL.DISTTCCD.NET> I'm a librarian, and I've been thinking about visual searching a lot because I get frustrated with the searches I have to settle for... If I want a "blue" picture, I have to count on someone using the word "blue" as a tag, subject heading in metadata, or in the filename (blueboat.png). I've been working on an idea I was calling "Vizibiz" -- a search engine that would let you upload or paste images, and return results that were visually similar. The notion was that every pixel would be analyzed, and metadata would be created for each pixel -- color, position in pic, color of neighboring pixels. Vizibiz would also search in traditional metadata and filenames, file sizes, and other attributes (page context). This idea never got off the ground because 1) I don't write code. I'm code ignorant. 2) When I started searching for open software that could get me started doing this job, I discovered a couple of companies that already seem to be on this track: http://www.evisionglobal.com/tech/basic_demo.html http://able.mulabs.com/ What if this were web-based? And free for anyone to use? Is there any traction for this sort of search interface in Search Wikia? Kind of like a "music genome project", but automated and for visual rather than audio elements... Thoughts? -- Woody Evans http://woodyevans.com/ From charlie at juggler.net Thu Apr 26 16:14:02 2007 From: charlie at juggler.net (Charlie Hull) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:14:02 +0100 Subject: [Search-l] vizual searching In-Reply-To: <5318BFF5FF22A94DA94311D534716B4D45FAC0@netc021.ALL.DISTTCCD.NET> References: <20070426101521.GA16587@sethf.com> <8b722b800704260323m5e745781m22572eb4ea27a7c8@mail.gmail.com> <5318BFF5FF22A94DA94311D534716B4D45FAC0@netc021.ALL.DISTTCCD.NET> Message-ID: <4630CFCA.2090400@juggler.net> EVANS, KENNETH (WOODY) wrote: > I'm a librarian, and I've been thinking about visual searching a lot > because I get frustrated with the searches I have to settle for... If I > want a "blue" picture, I have to count on someone using the word "blue" > as a tag, subject heading in metadata, or in the filename > (blueboat.png). > > I've been working on an idea I was calling "Vizibiz" -- a search engine > that would let you upload or paste images, and return results that were > visually similar. The notion was that every pixel would be analyzed, > and metadata would be created for each pixel -- color, position in pic, > color of neighboring pixels. Vizibiz would also search in traditional > metadata and filenames, file sizes, and other attributes (page context). Unfortunately it's considerably harder than this to work out if images are 'similar' - I've seen a few projects that have had a go, but I don't think there is anything that actually works. Think of the problems of magnification, of different RGB colours that actually look similar to the human eye, of partial (clipped) images...there's a reason that a large part of our brain is taken up with processing the data from our retinas :-) > > This idea never got off the ground because 1) I don't write code. I'm > code ignorant. 2) When I started searching for open software that could > get me started doing this job, I discovered a couple of companies that > already seem to be on this track: > http://www.evisionglobal.com/tech/basic_demo.html > http://able.mulabs.com/ > > What if this were web-based? And free for anyone to use? Then everything would be lovely :-) however I suspect that anyone who has cracked this problem will be making money selling it to security agencies and governments, rather than giving it away to the world. Don't hold your breath. Charlie >Is there any traction for this sort of search interface in Search Wikia? Kind of > like a "music genome project", but automated and for visual rather than > audio elements... > > Thoughts? > From DDay at westridge.org Thu Apr 26 17:40:53 2007 From: DDay at westridge.org (Diana Day) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 10:40:53 -0700 Subject: [Search-l] vizual searching In-Reply-To: <4630CFCA.2090400@juggler.net> References: <20070426101521.GA16587@sethf.com> <8b722b800704260323m5e745781m22572eb4ea27a7c8@mail.gmail.com> <5318BFF5FF22A94DA94311D534716B4D45FAC0@netc021.ALL.DISTTCCD.NET> <5318BFF5FF22A94DA94311D534716B4D45FAC0@netc021.ALL.DISTTCCD.NET> <4630CFCA.2090400@juggler.net> Message-ID: <463081B5.97DE.00B9.0@westridge.org> Don't know if this will meet the standards of the techies on this mailing list, but the website for the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia has a color search (and a layout search too.) Here's the link: http://www.hermitagemuseum.org/fcgi-bin/db2www/qbicSearch.mac/qbic?selLang=English Diana >>> Charlie Hull 4/26/2007 9:14 am >>> EVANS, KENNETH (WOODY) wrote: > I'm a librarian, and I've been thinking about visual searching a lot > because I get frustrated with the searches I have to settle for... If I > want a "blue" picture, I have to count on someone using the word "blue" > as a tag, subject heading in metadata, or in the filename > (blueboat.png). > > I've been working on an idea I was calling "Vizibiz" -- a search engine > that would let you upload or paste images, and return results that were > visually similar. The notion was that every pixel would be analyzed, > and metadata would be created for each pixel -- color, position in pic, > color of neighboring pixels. Vizibiz would also search in traditional > metadata and filenames, file sizes, and other attributes (page context). Unfortunately it's considerably harder than this to work out if images are 'similar' - I've seen a few projects that have had a go, but I don't think there is anything that actually works. Think of the problems of magnification, of different RGB colours that actually look similar to the human eye, of partial (clipped) images...there's a reason that a large part of our brain is taken up with processing the data from our retinas :-) > > This idea never got off the ground because 1) I don't write code. I'm > code ignorant. 2) When I started searching for open software that could > get me started doing this job, I discovered a couple of companies that > already seem to be on this track: > http://www.evisionglobal.com/tech/basic_demo.html > http://able.mulabs.com/ > > What if this were web-based? And free for anyone to use? Then everything would be lovely :-) however I suspect that anyone who has cracked this problem will be making money selling it to security agencies and governments, rather than giving it away to the world. Don't hold your breath. Charlie >Is there any traction for this sort of search interface in Search Wikia? Kind of > like a "music genome project", but automated and for visual rather than > audio elements... > > Thoughts? > _______________________________________________ Search-l mailing list Search-l at wikia.com http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/search-l Change options or unsubscribe: http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/options/search-l -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/search-l/attachments/20070426/713df691/attachment.htm From marcnaweb at gmail.com Fri Apr 27 01:29:01 2007 From: marcnaweb at gmail.com (Marc .) Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:29:01 -0300 Subject: [Search-l] vizual searching In-Reply-To: <5318BFF5FF22A94DA94311D534716B4D45FAC0@netc021.ALL.DISTTCCD.NET> References: <20070426101521.GA16587@sethf.com> <8b722b800704260323m5e745781m22572eb4ea27a7c8@mail.gmail.com> <5318BFF5FF22A94DA94311D534716B4D45FAC0@netc021.ALL.DISTTCCD.NET> Message-ID: <5f2640d0704261829q733aa77as3e94e9029231b063@mail.gmail.com> Maybe these links can help for this kind of search, "just" adapting their technologies. However, I think that, probably, even if it can be apply for an internet search engine like Wikia Search, these links will by more useful for a next step, when the project will be more mature. I think that: 1- let's start something, even if it is very "simple" and not so much "useful" , than 2- more people will know about this work, and will join the community, than 3- a more developed kind of search engine can be create by an "big" on-line collaboration team for one goal: build a better search engine. (That's very similar with most of open source projects, I know, but it can be useful to remind it, sometimes) Here are the links http://www.facedetection.com/index.htm http://torch3vision.idiap.ch/introduction.php http://www.torch.ch/ BR Marc Rosenfeld PS: I studied management, so I don't write codes neither... ; ) 2007/4/26, EVANS, KENNETH (WOODY) : > I'm a librarian, and I've been thinking about visual searching a lot > because I get frustrated with the searches I have to settle for... If I > want a "blue" picture, I have to count on someone using the word "blue" > as a tag, subject heading in metadata, or in the filename > (blueboat.png). > > I've been working on an idea I was calling "Vizibiz" -- a search engine > that would let you upload or paste images, and return results that were > visually similar. The notion was that every pixel would be analyzed, > and metadata would be created for each pixel -- color, position in pic, > color of neighboring pixels. Vizibiz would also search in traditional > metadata and filenames, file sizes, and other attributes (page context). > > This idea never got off the ground because 1) I don't write code. I'm > code ignorant. 2) When I started searching for open software that could > get me started doing this job, I discovered a couple of companies that > already seem to be on this track: > http://www.evisionglobal.com/tech/basic_demo.html > http://able.mulabs.com/ > > What if this were web-based? And free for anyone to use? Is there any > traction for this sort of search interface in Search Wikia? Kind of > like a "music genome project", but automated and for visual rather than > audio elements... > > Thoughts? > > -- > Woody Evans > http://woodyevans.com/ > _______________________________________________ > Search-l mailing list > Search-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/search-l > Change options or unsubscribe: http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/options/search-l > From sethf at sethf.com Fri Apr 27 08:34:05 2007 From: sethf at sethf.com (Seth Finkelstein) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 04:34:05 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Wired Blog: Where Are The Announced Wikipedia Projects? In-Reply-To: <8b722b800704260323m5e745781m22572eb4ea27a7c8@mail.gmail.com> References: <20070426101521.GA16587@sethf.com> Message-ID: <20070427083405.GA29343@sethf.com> >> http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/04/update_where_ar.html >> The catch might be buried in a fact that some users may be unaware of >> unless they read the fine print: You won't have copyrights to any of >> the content on Open Serving. Hmmm, another commercial DVD perhaps? > > Angela Beesley > This isn't true at all. Authors always retain their copyright on all > Wikia sites. They freely license that, usually under the GFDL, > allowing others a non-exclusive right to use it under the terms of > that license. People not steeped in the subtleties of copyright law often write something like "not copyrighted" as a sloppy way of saying "freely redistributable", since "copyrighted" is popularly taken as a synonym for "all rights reserved" (which of course it isn't). But the gist of that article's statement seems reasonable. That is, the business model of Open Serving is arguably that in return for the free hosting service, it gets to be a *commercial* reseller of all the material. While having a nominally non-exclusive license, branding and bulk access issues could form a barrier which make it exclusive in practice, as well as the potential threat of litigation against anyone who looks like they might succeed in actually using the non-exclusive aspect (that is, such litigation threats might be wrong, wrong, wrong, but trying to win against better-financed lawyers is a costly proposition at best, and quite an intimidating prospect). Note it's not clear if this is a *workable* business model, which is a slightly different issue. -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com/ Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php From sethf at sethf.com Fri Apr 27 08:39:38 2007 From: sethf at sethf.com (Seth Finkelstein) Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 04:39:38 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Valleywag: Is one of these eight search engines the next Google? (Hint: No.) Message-ID: <20070427083938.GA32322@sethf.com> Search Wikia (nee Wikiasari): Today Britannica, tomorrow the world Twist: Open-source search engine by Wikia, the company of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, contrasts with the "black boxes" of Google and Yahoo. Hubris: CEO says Wikia wants 5% of the search market. Wales: "The idea that Google has some edge because they've got super-duper rocket scientists may be a little antiquated now." Also: "Search...is broken." Results for "house": Well we have to build a search first, no? Status: Much-hyped, but the actual site is just a placeholder-style wiki Chance of success: Five percent share? 30/1, if Wikia actually sticks with the project. Look at this this way: director Quentin Tarantino talks about a million projects before he finally makes one. Of course that one kicks ass, but don't get fooled into thinking the others will ever see daylight. -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com/ Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php From sethf at sethf.com Sun Apr 29 07:25:36 2007 From: sethf at sethf.com (Seth Finkelstein) Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 03:25:36 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" Message-ID: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com> http://blog.simpy.com/blojsom/blog/2007/04/23/Wikia-Search-Not-Happening.html Monday, 23 April 2007 Wikia Search - Not Happening A few months back, there was a lot of talk about Jimmy Wales' new idea - the Wikia Search. The idea behind this search engine is/was that it would (somehow) be "community-driven" (vague - what exactly does that mean?). I believe the other part of the idea is that the search engine software to run this engine would be best on Nutch and Lucene (something I know a little about, and provide consulting services). Lots of talk, but as far as I can tell, nothing came out of it yet. There is a (now pretty inactive) mailing list that never included more than very high-level and unorganized discussion (check archives from March, February, and January for examples). As Simpy's dad, I also emailed Jimmy and offered help. I never heard back from Jimmy. Busy man, I'm sure. However, everything I've seen so far makes me think the Wikia Search is either not going to happen any time soon, or maybe not at all. Does anyone have any more information about it? -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com/ Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php From lucychili at gmail.com Sun Apr 29 08:04:35 2007 From: lucychili at gmail.com (Janet Hawtin) Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 17:34:35 +0930 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com> References: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com> Message-ID: On 4/29/07, Seth Finkelstein wrote: Wikia Search? Hi Seth I think if I had JW's last week I'd be looking for palm trees about now, He has been flying from state to state in AU helping our education sector think about readwrite culture and collaborative creation. Ripper stuff. On wikia search at the Adelaide talk JW did mention the wikia search so I expect that it will be happening when the dust settles. For myself I think it is a fascinating project and feels like a natural but challenging next step. The trickiness will be around working towards a NPOV on use of keywords We are all pretty individual in our use of language and I do some pretty eccentric delicious tagging. I guess when groups of people negotiate to use a term in an agreed way then we will be able to search reliably using our collected comtributions or mappings. Are others working on projects which crosspollinate between folksonomy and taxonomy? Cheers Janet From sethf at sethf.com Sun Apr 29 11:58:13 2007 From: sethf at sethf.com (Seth Finkelstein) Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 07:58:13 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: References: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com> Message-ID: <20070429115813.GA29709@sethf.com> > Janet Hawtin > On wikia search at the Adelaide talk JW did mention the wikia search > so I expect that it will be happening when the dust settles. Janet, just to clarify, that last message was entirely by Otis Gospodnetic. I merely posted it here because I came across it in my readings and thought it was interesting and worth sending to the list. My own personal view, as a professional programmer, is that it's no big deal for a project to start out with huge fanfare, and then slip, slip, slip, maybe into oblivion. I've seen it happen many a time in my working life. Nobody has gotten hurt here, and that's more than can be said for much vaporware. So I'm not criticizing JW on this point myself. But I think it's reasonable to forward some of the varied articles about the project, even if negative. Again, if you want to know what I think (and JW might not like his, sigh, I recently got flamed by him over certain strategic analysis on a different topic), the project will happen if/when venture capitalists and/or "second-tier" search companies are convinced to put up the appropriate funding. It takes time to get that sort of sign-off by corporate executives. Here's where he talked about that: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325896.300-interview-knowledge-to-the-people.html "Since news of this venture broke (see search.wikia.com) we have been contacted by more than one second-tier company that develops search engines. They recognize that acting individually they are going to have a hard time catching up with Google, because Google has so much money and so many great people. ... So it makes sense for second-tier search companies who are falling behind Google to contribute to a free search software project that will make us equal to Google in terms of search quality." To be clear, I'm *for* that, in a general sense. One should be careful about any programmers-work-for-nothing part. But the overall concept of a consortium of Google's competitors funding an open search project seems to me to be a good idea. But again, the difficulty of negotiating such an agreement goes up dramatically with the number of investors involved. -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com/ Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php From jwales at wikia.com Sun Apr 29 13:07:01 2007 From: jwales at wikia.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 09:07:01 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <20070429115813.GA29709@sethf.com> References: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com> <20070429115813.GA29709@sethf.com> Message-ID: <46349875.1000300@wikia.com> Seth Finkelstein wrote: > Again, if you want to know what I think (and JW might not like > his, sigh, I recently got flamed by him over certain strategic analysis > on a different topic), the project will happen if/when venture > capitalists and/or "second-tier" search companies are convinced to put > up the appropriate funding. I flamed you before for doing exactly this, yes... speculating randomly when you are completely wrong and have exactly zero access to information. Everything is underway just fine. If people think that we can put together a project magically and overnight, they really don't understand how these things work. :) --Jimbo From sethf at sethf.com Sun Apr 29 14:22:16 2007 From: sethf at sethf.com (Seth Finkelstein) Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 10:22:16 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <46349875.1000300@wikia.com> References: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com> <20070429115813.GA29709@sethf.com> <46349875.1000300@wikia.com> Message-ID: <20070429142216.GA30198@sethf.com> On Sun, Apr 29, 2007 at 09:07:01AM -0400, Jimmy Wales wrote: > Seth Finkelstein wrote: >> Again, if you want to know what I think (and JW might not like >> his, sigh, I recently got flamed by him over certain strategic analysis >> on a different topic), the project will happen if/when venture >> capitalists and/or "second-tier" search companies are convinced to put >> up the appropriate funding. > > I flamed you before for doing exactly this, yes... speculating randomly > when you are completely wrong and have exactly zero access to information. Now, now. You should note I base my statement here on the _New Scientist_ interview: Seth Finkelstein: "... the project will happen if/when venture capitalists and/or "second-tier" search companies are convinced to put up the appropriate funding." Jimmy Wales, _New Scientist_ interview: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325896.300-interview-knowledge-to-the-people.html "It's too early for specifics, but one thing that has worked is an alliance in which people contribute to a free software project. ... So it makes sense for second-tier search companies who are falling behind Google to contribute to a free search software project that will make us equal to Google in terms of search quality." I could perhaps be criticized for too unqualified paraphrasing (from "one thing that has worked", to "the project will happen if/when"), but it's clear I'm just giving my speculation. It's hardly random as I do supply the information I'm using, which is your own interview statement. This is the sort of thing where it looks like the problem is really in being right. > Everything is underway just fine. If people think that we can put > together a project magically and overnight, they really don't > understand how these things work. :) Well, I think it's a little unfair to criticize people given that there have been so many public statements that the project is operational now, when it's not (or at least, in terms of access to information, nobody outside of Wikia (?) seems to have seen it - not that I'd want someone to throw some servers together so as to meet a milestone, I'd think that a waste of resources). I know how it goes, I've seen far worse in my time (heck, to a reasonable approximation, here I can only get flamed, not fired). But still, the shoot-the-messenger strategy is morally wrong. [P.S.: If you don't believe the moral argument, the cynical argument is that it makes you look desperate to the moneybags :-). Blame the media instead, that's traditional :-)] -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com/ Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php From wsurowiec at gmail.com Sun Apr 29 15:43:30 2007 From: wsurowiec at gmail.com (William Surowiec) Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 11:43:30 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] [Appreciation] Message-ID: <4634BD22.2040907@gmail.com> I have found the links provided by many posters to be informative. I believe this is a valuable contribution to the community and should be encouraged. I have two suggestions to foster this and invite commentary and other suggestions. First, let the author know of your appreciation assuming it exists and privately if possible. I know I have been remiss in this. I intend to mend my ways. To those who wonder if they should post a link to something that may be of interest to others I ask that you do so. And I apologize to those who already have and have not heard from me. I believe I have visited every link offered and have frequently felt like a kid in a candy store - and behaved as inappreciatively as only a child may be permitted: taking things for granted. Also, for those already practicing this, please accept this posting as from one approaching the light and not a claim that there is no one there. Second, there is an associated wiki to this mailing list (http://search.wikia.com) I wonder if a filter might be created, monitoring the mailing list for postings with links and automatically updating a special "raw" page.It would function as input into a human refined listing of links, an extract of the original author email (context), and subsequent commentary (directly posted on the edited wiki page.). I offer this in the belief that emails are more ubiquitous and potentially less intimidating than wiki page editing. Bill From chrisdesouza at yahoo.com Sun Apr 29 15:44:37 2007 From: chrisdesouza at yahoo.com (Chris Desouza) Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 08:44:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <20070429142216.GA30198@sethf.com> Message-ID: <815551.73706.qm@web54101.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Seth Get a life! Go feed the cat or something.... Seth Finkelstein wrote: On Sun, Apr 29, 2007 at 09:07:01AM -0400, Jimmy Wales wrote: > Seth Finkelstein wrote: >> Again, if you want to know what I think (and JW might not like >> his, sigh, I recently got flamed by him over certain strategic analysis >> on a different topic), the project will happen if/when venture >> capitalists and/or "second-tier" search companies are convinced to put >> up the appropriate funding. > > I flamed you before for doing exactly this, yes... speculating randomly > when you are completely wrong and have exactly zero access to information. Now, now. You should note I base my statement here on the _New Scientist_ interview: Seth Finkelstein: "... the project will happen if/when venture capitalists and/or "second-tier" search companies are convinced to put up the appropriate funding." Jimmy Wales, _New Scientist_ interview: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325896.300-interview-knowledge-to-the-people.html "It's too early for specifics, but one thing that has worked is an alliance in which people contribute to a free software project. ... So it makes sense for second-tier search companies who are falling behind Google to contribute to a free search software project that will make us equal to Google in terms of search quality." I could perhaps be criticized for too unqualified paraphrasing (from "one thing that has worked", to "the project will happen if/when"), but it's clear I'm just giving my speculation. It's hardly random as I do supply the information I'm using, which is your own interview statement. This is the sort of thing where it looks like the problem is really in being right. > Everything is underway just fine. If people think that we can put > together a project magically and overnight, they really don't > understand how these things work. :) Well, I think it's a little unfair to criticize people given that there have been so many public statements that the project is operational now, when it's not (or at least, in terms of access to information, nobody outside of Wikia (?) seems to have seen it - not that I'd want someone to throw some servers together so as to meet a milestone, I'd think that a waste of resources). I know how it goes, I've seen far worse in my time (heck, to a reasonable approximation, here I can only get flamed, not fired). But still, the shoot-the-messenger strategy is morally wrong. [P.S.: If you don't believe the moral argument, the cynical argument is that it makes you look desperate to the moneybags :-). Blame the media instead, that's traditional :-)] -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com/ Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php _______________________________________________ Search-l mailing list Search-l at wikia.com http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/search-l Change options or unsubscribe: http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/options/search-l ----------------------------------------------------- Why are those young beautiful kids dying in war? Instead, Send these useless drug addicts there. Most people are conditioned to wait a maximum of 2 weeks to see results of their labor. Those people are the ones with a J.O.B Why would you want someone to do good for you more than you would want to do it yourself? What have I done for me lately? There is always an audience for your finger pointing woes. One cannot spell change in their lives by reading the past over and over again. - Chris The Buddha I, Chris Desouza is the Buddha. I am the know it all. I am the enlightened one. The person who says it can't be done shouldn't interrupt the person who is doing it.- from the wall of the Mountain Rose Cafe in Winter Park, Colorado. I don't want to be successful. No one can take credit for it. (Me said that!) I'd rather be poor than dishonest. (Me said that too!) ----------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------- Ahhh...imagining that irresistible "new car" smell? Check outnew cars at Yahoo! Autos. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/search-l/attachments/20070429/5b63b3eb/attachment.html From aerik at thesylvans.com Sun Apr 29 16:29:22 2007 From: aerik at thesylvans.com (Aerik Sylvan) Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 09:29:22 -0700 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <815551.73706.qm@web54101.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <20070429142216.GA30198@sethf.com> <815551.73706.qm@web54101.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <355a36af0704290929w522b362aqcf806253ae99aae0@mail.gmail.com> This is mostly written to Jimmy, but I wanted to send to the whole list: I've got to admit to feeling a certain amount of pessimism myself. Perhaps a month ago I wrote and asked if anyone on the list had the prerequisite knowledge of java and time and ability to set up a lucene/nutch setup on a/some server(s). I did not see any replies. Also, traffic on the list seems to have pretty much died off. So, despite some great discussions, I believe a lot of folks may share my perception that right now at least, this is not going anywhere. However, I think that you should recognize that we're fans. We're here because we like the idea, no matter how much criticism we may offer. With Wikpedia (and the other projects, to a lesser extent), you changed the world for the better. Reading between the lines, I perceive that you are very proud of this achievement, but at the same time you have drive to find a a way to make some money. I want to do both those things too :-), and I'm sure lots of people feel exactly the same way. If this thing ever gets going, I'll use wikia search for all the reasons you've stated you want to build it: for transparency, and to support and utilize a search engine that doesn't endorse censorship. Despite their "Don't be evil" slogan, Google is coming up somewhat short. It could be worse, but it could be better too... I remember cringing when I read, "There's a subtext to 'Don't be evil,' and that is 'Don't be illegal.'" Many horrible acts have been committed behind the shield of legality. (Slavery, anyone?) I'd like to suggest that, if this really is moving forward, more transparency on the part of Wikia corporation might help with our perceptions... we'd all love to know what's going on. And if it's as stalled out as it appears to be, I can understand not wanting to share that with the media, but on the other hand... I think it'd be commendable to lay the cards on the table. It might make getting some VC a little tougher, but on the other hand, if we had a better grasp of what's going on, maybe we could help. We're professional programmers, consultants, business people... smart people who are interested in seeing this happen. Remember, we're fans. We want to change the world too (and maybe make some money on the way). Best Regards, Aerik Sylvan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/search-l/attachments/20070429/3c77ccfc/attachment.html From macrakis at alum.mit.edu Sun Apr 29 17:56:31 2007 From: macrakis at alum.mit.edu (Stavros Macrakis) Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 13:56:31 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <46349875.1000300@wikia.com> References: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com> <20070429115813.GA29709@sethf.com> <46349875.1000300@wikia.com> Message-ID: <8b356f880704291056s77df3576g42191c68fa1535f9@mail.gmail.com> On 4/29/07, Jimmy Wales wrote: > > speculating randomly when you are completely wrong and have exactly zero > access to information. So much for transparency, which I thought was one of the points of this project. Like others on this list, I'm not in a position to say that nothing is happening on Wikia Search; what I can say is that I have no evidence that anything is happening. The light traffic on this mailing list and the little substantive material on the search Wiki certainly give no such evidence. The absence of anyone from Wikia at the annual Search Engine Meeting (SEM) last week in Boston, where lots of interesting work was presented -- including groups like Exalead, Powerset, Inquira, and Choicestream -- gives no such evidence. The lack of any substantive information from anyone at Wikia gives no such evidence. Of course, the lack of evidence is not the same thing as the non-existence of the project. What's more, despite the community having been asked to contribute to the project, there is no channel for contributing. Consider my own situation. I have some real experience in Web search, having been director of Search Innovation at Lycos (which no longer does its own Web crawl) and responsible for the MetaWeb Web mining project (which does) at Fast Search. At Lycos, we worked directly with engines like Ask, MSN, etc., and spent a lot of time listening to pitches from innovators. I got the Best Paper prize at SEM last year for my work at Lycos. I'm quite familiar with Wikipedia, having contributed thousands of edits and written tools to mine semantic relations from it at Lycos. And I'm also an active contributor to the open-source Maxima project. So I am not a newcomer to Web search, to Wikis, or to open source. What's more, I am ready, willing, and able to contribute to Wikia search. But I can't see any way to contribute to the Wikia search project in a meaningful way (and yes, I have asked). So all that is left for us on this list -- people who, as Aerik Sylvan says, are a priori supporters -- is to speculate. Not the sort of community involvement I had in mind. -s -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/search-l/attachments/20070429/58ef4506/attachment.html From nathan at litepost.com Sun Apr 29 19:04:04 2007 From: nathan at litepost.com (Nathan Braun) Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 12:04:04 -0700 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <8b356f880704291056s77df3576g42191c68fa1535f9@mail.gmail.com> References: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com> <20070429115813.GA29709@sethf.com> <46349875.1000300@wikia.com> <8b356f880704291056s77df3576g42191c68fa1535f9@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <49a251870704291204p1e5bbd4ao64694f198a64361@mail.gmail.com> On 4/29/07, Stavros Macrakis wrote: > What's more, despite the community having been asked to contribute to the > project, there is no channel for contributing. Consider my own situation... Hey this seems as good a place to chime in as any? I've been thinking about this problem for a while (as many of us have) and have come up with some ideas I think could prove really useful. I think one area people have not explored nearly enough is the true, personalized contextualization - or 'hyperpersonalization' - of search results. To date, Search has generally been treated as "one massive problem" -- as in "one size fits all." with one solution suitable to everybody: that's Google. But I don't think this is the right way to approach the problem at all. What people are searching for is highly individual, and we need to treat it as such. I think the core problem we need to address, if we want to build a world-beating search application is: "the evolving matrix of authority." Let me explain what I mean by that (for those who are interested): - By "evolving matrix of authority," I mean our informational needs change over time. This is sort of self-evident and obvious, but it isn't sufficiently addressed by any existing information infrastructure (ie including Google's Personalized Search and the majority of other search ideas coming down the pipeline..) The key problem is a way to auto-index or self-index, the "evolving matrix of authority" for any individual person, in any individual situation, for any given context. This sounds difficult, but may actually be quite easy to do. Has anyone seen the movie THE GAME? In that movie, the protagonist (played by Michael Douglas) goes through an intense barrage of personality tests, in order to develop and design a Game suitable to his needs. I am suggesting that roughly the same thing needs to be done with regards to search results. There is hardly a "one size fits all" solution. Each solution needs to be individually tailored and measured. Fortunately, this should be relatively easy to do-- at least in comparison to the Game's intense barrage of testing! Search results could be improved enormously if each individual searcher were to do a brief questionnaire prior to searching (or at least after they had tired of the generic results). Google is probably experimenting with some sort of technology along these lines. Such a questionnaire could simply ask (things like the following): Which of the following is most authoritative for you? [] The Bible [] Wikipedia [] Cosmopolitan [] Google ... this could be a 2- to 4- to 10-page quiz. The search algorithm could be radically improved..for each individual user..on the basis of such simple quizzing. Alternatively, (ie in 'lieu of quiz') a persons Bookmark Folder could be analyzed, to help come up with appropriate sources of information FOR THAT INDIVIDUAL. I'm not going to elaborate extensively here, but suffice to say, this is one main avenue where traditional search falls severely short, and where it could be radically improved. I doubt any 'mainstream search company' is going to take up tactics along these lines anytime soon. People need to learn that there is not "one main authority" (ie Google, Wikipedia, Cosmo or the Bible) but that authority varies by individual taste and preference and belief system. Search results need to take this into account in order to be truly effective and successful. The best part of such a system, is that it could be cleverly built - in a decentralized way - usefully integrating aggregating meta-data from the existing search engines/results. I mean, I can see how this approach could literally be built "right on top" of Google, by way of Wikia/Wikipedia (a perfect place to utilize such an approach). I for one (probably like many on this list), often want to prioritize Wiki results in my google results (as a result of "the evolving matrix of authority" i refered to earlier, where Wikis have increasingly greater and valid authority), and so I google: whatever I'm looking for wiki (the very act of doing this indicates that wiki _for me_ generally has greater authority than the unedited, raw Google search results themselves.) Google results are not "objective," as they claim to be - they are highly subjective (determined in part by the subjective preferences - and thus the collective accumulated experiences - of whoever created the algorithms to begin with). What search needs to do is become highly subjective -- ie intersubjective and thus personalized. Another word for this is 'hypercustomization' and it is the only way of the future, IMHO, as far as search goes. Everything else is just re-inventing the wheel - er, Google. etc etc ad nauseum Please provide compelling evidence to the contrary so we can demolish this line of though in the most systematic, scientific way possible. Warmest Possible Regards, nathan braun The core idea I > have some real experience in Web search, having been director of Search > Innovation at Lycos (which no longer does its own Web crawl) and responsible > for the MetaWeb Web mining project (which does) at Fast Search. At Lycos, we > worked directly with engines like Ask, MSN, etc., and spent a lot of time > listening to pitches from innovators. I got the Best Paper prize at SEM last > year for my work at Lycos. I'm quite familiar with Wikipedia, having > contributed thousands of edits and written tools to mine semantic relations > from it at Lycos. And I'm also an active contributor to the open-source > Maxima project. So I am not a newcomer to Web search, to Wikis, or to open > source. What's more, I am ready, willing, and able to contribute to Wikia > search. But I can't see any way to contribute to the Wikia search project in > a meaningful way (and yes, I have asked). > > So all that is left for us on this list -- people who, as Aerik Sylvan says, > are a priori supporters -- is to speculate. Not the sort of community > involvement I had in mind. > > -s > > > _______________________________________________ > Search-l mailing list > Search-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/search-l > Change options or unsubscribe: > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/options/search-l > From daniel at ktorn.com Sun Apr 29 19:22:37 2007 From: daniel at ktorn.com (Daniel Farinha) Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 20:22:37 +0100 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <8b356f880704291056s77df3576g42191c68fa1535f9@mail.gmail.com> References: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com><20070429115813.GA29709@sethf.com> <46349875.1000300@wikia.com> <8b356f880704291056s77df3576g42191c68fa1535f9@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <046801c78a93$bf88fd00$6401a8c0@neuron> My uninformed gut feeling is that it's already happening. It's just that it'll take some time for most people to be able to get involved. I've contributed with what I could so far, which was some early opinions/ideas on this list. I'm now mostly just following developments until I see an opportunity to contribute again. I'm guessing I'm not alone in this, this list is probably full of people on stand-by. Whatever comes out of this project, Jimmy aleady did the community a great favour in bringing so many like-minded people together. -- Daniel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/search-l/attachments/20070429/8a239ec6/attachment.html From jwales at wikia.com Sun Apr 29 22:53:35 2007 From: jwales at wikia.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 18:53:35 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <046801c78a93$bf88fd00$6401a8c0@neuron> References: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com><20070429115813.GA29709@sethf.com> <46349875.1000300@wikia.com> <8b356f880704291056s77df3576g42191c68fa1535f9@mail.gmail.com> <046801c78a93$bf88fd00$6401a8c0@neuron> Message-ID: <463521EF.2050704@wikia.com> The project is going full speed ahead. I'm sorry Seth is trolling about it, but you know, that's Seth's way. He's a complete skeptic of everything that I do. My solution is simple: I just do it, and mostly ignore him when he is making no sense. I advise everyone who thinks this is going to be a hell of a lot of fun, turning the entire industry upside down... to do the same. :) I'd kick him off the list, but that's not my style. A few critics around to stir the stew can keep us on our toes as we move forward. --Jimbo Daniel Farinha wrote: > > My uninformed gut feeling is that it's already happening. It's just that > it'll take some time for most people to be able to get involved. > > I've contributed with what I could so far, which was some early > opinions/ideas on this list. I'm now mostly just following developments > until I see an opportunity to contribute again. I'm guessing I'm not > alone in this, this list is probably full of people on stand-by. > > Whatever comes out of this project, Jimmy aleady did the community a > great favour in bringing so many like-minded people together. > > -- > Daniel > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Search-l mailing list > Search-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/search-l > Change options or unsubscribe: http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/options/search-l From sethf at sethf.com Mon Apr 30 02:37:51 2007 From: sethf at sethf.com (Seth Finkelstein) Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 22:37:51 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <463521EF.2050704@wikia.com> References: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com> <20070429115813.GA29709@sethf.com> <46349875.1000300@wikia.com> <20070429142216.GA30198@sethf.com> Message-ID: <20070430023751.GA2140@sethf.com> > Jimmy Wales wrote: > The project is going full speed ahead. I'm sorry Seth is trolling > about it, but you know, that's Seth's way. Jimmy, is this sort of very personal attack justified by anything I've written? Inversely, is there *any* downside at all to you from flaming me here? Do you see why I might develop a certain skepticism? But it is inaccurate to claim the project is going full speed ahead, per: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/search-l/2007-February/000224.html Jimmy Wales jwales at wikia.com Wed Feb 7 16:03:10 UTC 2007 ^^^^^^^^^^ "We have the test servers scheduled for install on Friday, and then I want to turn people loose on them to start playing around and testing." If I *were* trolling, I would have made a big deal of that, mocking it. I'm only citing it now in defense of my integrity, to prove how off-base are the accusations. To my mind, it's *OK* here if the schedule slips, there's some resource crunch, or a partner doesn't sign-up when planned. Nobody quit a job or moved across the country to be a part of this project, as has happened to people who have been burned by vaporware. Any longtime programmer could heat their home by burning a department's obsolete schedule documents. That's life. > He's a complete skeptic of everything that I do. Ahem. Before the flaming, I believe a fair-minded assessment of what I said about the project was overall favorable to you. Perhaps too much of an environment of sycophants and yes-men makes anything less than worshipful deference seem out of place. I'm actually less skeptical, in a complicated way, than search super-expert Danny Sullivan, see http://searchengineland.com/061229-193718.php However, I regard you as a smart businessman (not a holy guru). So I analyze things in terms of the common factors of business - funding, model, executive sign-offs, partnership agreements, etc. > My solution is simple: I just do it, and mostly ignore him when he > is making no sense. I can deal with being mostly ignored - it's the other part of the "solution" which is a problem :-(. > I advise everyone who thinks this is going to be a hell of a lot of fun, > turning the entire industry upside down... to do the same. :) > > I'd kick him off the list, but that's not my style. A few critics > around to stir the stew can keep us on our toes as we move forward. > > --Jimbo Considering our relative power differential, this is all *amazingly* abusive. Are you really so put-out by a few mailing-list messages, which, in absolute terms, aren't even all that critical? It should be *way* too early in a project lifecycle to be scapegoating people. -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com/ Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php From Keith at Botley.net Mon Apr 30 05:08:48 2007 From: Keith at Botley.net (Keith Botley) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 01:08:48 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <20070430023751.GA2140@sethf.com> Message-ID: <002701c78ae5$a2f704f0$b900a8c0@Botley.local> > I advise everyone who thinks this is going to be a hell of a lot of fun, > turning the entire industry upside down... to do the same. :) > > I'd kick him off the list, but that's not my style. A few critics > around to stir the stew can keep us on our toes as we move forward. > > --Jimbo You have to give Seth credit for keeping a dying mailing list alive. He has provided some informative posts related to what others are saying about wikia search and certainly hasn't posted anything that deserves a punt from the list. This was my first attempt to join a community driven development project. I was intrigued because of the value that Wikipedia provides to the web at large and that the founder of Wikipedia was involved to make search a community driven process. My question is what and who is the "us" that JW refers to above? I thought that the whole idea was to be transparent and bring together a community of technology experts. < The project is going full speed ahead. Sounds like smoke and mirrors to me, based on what I have to go on. It appears that Wikia Search is falling faster than Brady Quinn in the NFL draft and unless I can get concrete information that wikia search is actually going full speed ahead a certain amount of skepticism is in order. I'll probably get kicked for this ;-( Keith Botley From jacob.andresen at gmail.com Mon Apr 30 05:43:15 2007 From: jacob.andresen at gmail.com (Jacob Kristian Andresen) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 07:43:15 +0200 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <002701c78ae5$a2f704f0$b900a8c0@Botley.local> References: <20070430023751.GA2140@sethf.com> <002701c78ae5$a2f704f0$b900a8c0@Botley.local> Message-ID: Let's take this opportunity to actually write content on http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Brainstorming I just outlined the idea of "community ranking" on the wiki. I welcome comments there. Jacob Andresen On 30/04/07, Keith Botley wrote: > > > > > > I advise everyone who thinks this is going to be a hell of a lot of fun, > > turning the entire industry upside down... to do the same. :) > > > > I'd kick him off the list, but that's not my style. A few critics > > around to stir the stew can keep us on our toes as we move forward. > > > > --Jimbo > > > You have to give Seth credit for keeping a dying mailing list alive. He > has > provided some informative posts related to what others are saying about > wikia search and certainly hasn't posted anything that deserves a punt > from > the list. > > This was my first attempt to join a community driven development project. > I > was intrigued because of the value that Wikipedia provides to the web at > large and that the founder of Wikipedia was involved to make search a > community driven process. > > My question is what and who is the "us" that JW refers to above? I thought > that the whole idea was to be transparent and bring together a community > of > technology experts. > > < The project is going full speed ahead. > > Sounds like smoke and mirrors to me, based on what I have to go on. It > appears that Wikia Search is falling faster than Brady Quinn in the NFL > draft and unless I can get concrete information that wikia search is > actually going full speed ahead a certain amount of skepticism is in > order. > > I'll probably get kicked for this ;-( > > Keith Botley > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Search-l mailing list > Search-l at wikia.com > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/search-l > Change options or unsubscribe: > http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/options/search-l > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/search-l/attachments/20070430/5b4ebeca/attachment.html From jwales at wikia.com Mon Apr 30 09:35:07 2007 From: jwales at wikia.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 05:35:07 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <20070430023751.GA2140@sethf.com> References: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com> <20070429115813.GA29709@sethf.com> <46349875.1000300@wikia.com> <20070429142216.GA30198@sethf.com> <20070430023751.GA2140@sethf.com> Message-ID: <4635B84B.3060808@wikia.com> Seth Finkelstein wrote: >> Jimmy Wales wrote: >> The project is going full speed ahead. I'm sorry Seth is trolling >> about it, but you know, that's Seth's way. > > Jimmy, is this sort of very personal attack justified by > anything I've written? Inversely, is there *any* downside at all to > you from flaming me here? Do you see why I might develop a certain > skepticism? Seth, on a Wikipedia mailing list recently you accused me of handling a difficult and complicated matter as legal maneuvering rather than assuming good faith. Here you have been speculating about investment matters that you don't know anything about. Of course there could be downside to flaming you, if I was flaming you. But I don't take it to be a flame. I am just saying, you have come here with negativity from day one, and when you say things that aren't true, then I simply have to say so. > "We have the test servers scheduled for install on Friday, and then I > want to turn people loose on them to start playing around and testing." I am sorry that you haven't been invited. I think you can understand why, though. --Jimbo From jwales at wikia.com Mon Apr 30 09:49:18 2007 From: jwales at wikia.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 05:49:18 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <002701c78ae5$a2f704f0$b900a8c0@Botley.local> References: <002701c78ae5$a2f704f0$b900a8c0@Botley.local> Message-ID: <4635BB9E.70708@wikia.com> Keith Botley wrote: You have to give Seth credit for keeping a dying mailing list alive. He has > provided some informative posts related to what others are saying about > wikia search and certainly hasn't posted anything that deserves a punt from > the list. :) We will make a big announcement soon. From jwales at wikia.com Mon Apr 30 10:05:05 2007 From: jwales at wikia.com (Jimmy Wales) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 06:05:05 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <355a36af0704290929w522b362aqcf806253ae99aae0@mail.gmail.com> References: <20070429142216.GA30198@sethf.com> <815551.73706.qm@web54101.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <355a36af0704290929w522b362aqcf806253ae99aae0@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4635BF51.1000401@wikia.com> Aerik Sylvan wrote: > Perhaps a month ago I wrote and asked if anyone on the list had the > prerequisite knowledge of java and time and ability to set up a > lucene/nutch setup on a/some server(s). I did not see any replies. > Also, traffic on the list seems to have pretty much died off. So, > despite some great discussions, I believe a lot of folks may share my > perception that right now at least, this is not going anywhere. This is my fault. We have been involved with a long process of hiring, and then I spent 2 months traveling all over the world. But things are moving forward! > However, I think that you should recognize that we're fans. We're here > because we like the idea, no matter how much criticism we may offer. And I like criticism. Criticism I can deal with. > I'd like to suggest that, if this really is moving forward, more > transparency on the part of Wikia corporation might help with our > perceptions... we'd all love to know what's going on. Ok. I don't think anything is stalled, but I do see that this list has not been kept as up-to-date as it should be. We have a big announcement soon. Possibly today. I would blurt it out right now, but I better wait until they wake up in California. :) --Jimbo From sethf at sethf.com Mon Apr 30 12:37:44 2007 From: sethf at sethf.com (Seth Finkelstein) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 08:37:44 -0400 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <4635B84B.3060808@wikia.com> References: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com> <20070429115813.GA29709@sethf.com> <46349875.1000300@wikia.com> <20070429142216.GA30198@sethf.com> <20070430023751.GA2140@sethf.com> <4635B84B.3060808@wikia.com> Message-ID: <20070430123744.GA9485@sethf.com> On Mon, Apr 30, 2007 at 05:35:07AM -0400, Jimmy Wales wrote: >>> Jimmy Wales wrote: >>> I'm sorry Seth is trolling about it, but you know, that's Seth's way. >> >> Jimmy, is this sort of very personal attack justified by >> anything I've written? Inversely, is there *any* downside at all to >> you from flaming me here? Do you see why I might develop a certain >> skepticism? > > Seth, on a Wikipedia mailing list recently you accused me of > handling a difficult and complicated matter as legal maneuvering > rather than assuming good faith. At the risk of too much detail, for anyone interested: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007-April/069370.html Pre-emptive rebuttal #1 there addresses the issue. But this objection is, I think, the heart of the dispute. I'm very bothered by the way an ideological system is constructed so that someone being anything less than completely credulous, and doing some critical thinking, can be accused of acting in bad faith. And then, given that they weren't "assuming good faith" - which seems in practice to be "take whatever Jimbo says at face value" - they're considered fair game for much harsher, *personal* attacks. Someone who made his living as a futures trader is a sharp character, not a giddy (literal) evangelist. I see no reason to sign-up to a taboo that we must not talk about interests. That is, if you speak of peace, love, and happiness, and I point out matters of funding, partnering, and execution, that shouldn't be deemed gauche and not "assuming good faith". > Here you have been speculating about investment matters that you > don't know anything about. Even if that were true - The horror, the horror. And I cited your own statement. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325896.300-interview-knowledge-to-the-p eople.html > Of course there could be downside to flaming you, if I was flaming you. > But I don't take it to be a flame. I am just saying, you have come > here with negativity from day one, and when you say things that aren't > true, then I simply have to say so. Repeat: I'm actually less skeptical, in a complicated way, than search super-expert Danny Sullivan, see http://searchengineland.com/061229-193718.php Again, there's the extremely disturbing aspect that "negativity" justifies flaming a person. C'mon Jimmy, it's not that I'm so deeply sensitive, but *own* *your* *words*. Objectively, it's *not* justified, and coming from someone in your position, it has the possibility of being far more damaging than you might intend. >> "We have the test servers scheduled for install on Friday, and then I >> want to turn people loose on them to start playing around and testing." > > I am sorry that you haven't been invited. I think you can understand > why, though. This is a shameful deflection of a supported point by using a personal attack. The only defense I can make is to point out how wrong it is to do that. -- Seth Finkelstein Consulting Programmer http://sethf.com/ Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php From mathias.schindler at gmail.com Mon Apr 30 13:25:50 2007 From: mathias.schindler at gmail.com (Mathias Schindler) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 15:25:50 +0200 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <20070430123744.GA9485@sethf.com> References: <20070429072536.GA15261@sethf.com> <20070429115813.GA29709@sethf.com> <46349875.1000300@wikia.com> <20070429142216.GA30198@sethf.com> <20070430023751.GA2140@sethf.com> <4635B84B.3060808@wikia.com> <20070430123744.GA9485@sethf.com> Message-ID: <48502b480704300625j175819bei563da36be8025ef5@mail.gmail.com> On 4/30/07, Seth Finkelstein wrote: > This is a shameful deflection of a supported point by using a > personal attack. The only defense I can make is to point out how wrong > it is to do that. Hi there, I am getting more and more tired of that "debate". Regardless of the status of that list, I don't consider the low volume of posting here a reason for flaming. I would like to ask people to take a deep breath and to consider which postings are relevant to the topic of this mailing list. Personally, I am still interested in how that search wikia announcement will turn out. Mathias From KENNETH.EVANS at tccd.edu Mon Apr 30 15:05:44 2007 From: KENNETH.EVANS at tccd.edu (EVANS, KENNETH (WOODY)) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:05:44 -0500 Subject: [Search-l] what is happening: how about live 'help'. In-Reply-To: References: <20070430023751.GA2140@sethf.com><002701c78ae5$a2f704f0$b900a8c0@Botley.local> Message-ID: <5318BFF5FF22A94DA94311D534716B4D45FACE@netc021.ALL.DISTTCCD.NET> The brainstorming page is a good start. If Search Wikia is making a big announcement soon, maybe that'll provide some direction for those of us milling around on this list, thinking about how a good wiki-search should work... I mean, this list is a place to be generating ideas, throwing off sparks, rallying the base... not spitting and spatting and flaming to and fro. http://www.chacha.com/info/about Cha Cha is kind of interesting... but any mediation or live guidance will be overwhelmed by the volume of search requests... This happens in librarianship... one example is the Ask-a-Librarian feature many libraries have for patrons, where you can use an e-mail form to request help. When librarians look at search histories (in databases vendors like EBSCOHost), they can guide students/patrons and make suggestions on how to better frame search syntax. EBSCO recently changed its default search interface for all (or most?) of its databases to make "exact phrase searching" the default... teaching patrons the differences between "exact phrases" and (exact AND phrases), and therefore how to get more out of your search, is a big part of what librarians do. It's info literacy. so... a mediated (or collaborative) search engine of any volume whatsoever will, seems to me, have to be asynchronous... which brings in a load of new limitations... one fix could be some sort of IM search help. NYPL does it: http://www.nypl.org/questions/chat.html The Air Force librarians do it: http://aal20.tutor.com/nGEN/Apps/SocWeb/main.aspx?ID=de076e6e-1391-47e6- 87b1-d5e2897dd03b It could be that thousands of committed Search Wikia users could provide this service for each other. Woody Evans "Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education & free discussion are the antidotes of both." - Thomas Jefferson ________________________________ From: search-l-bounces at wikia.com [mailto:search-l-bounces at wikia.com] On Behalf Of Jacob Kristian Andresen Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 12:43 AM To: search-l at wikia.com Subject: Re: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" Let's take this opportunity to actually write content on http://search.wikia.com/wiki/Brainstorming I just outlined the idea of "community ranking" on the wiki. I welcome comments there. Jacob Andresen On 30/04/07, Keith Botley wrote: > I advise everyone who thinks this is going to be a hell of a lot of fun, > turning the entire industry upside down... to do the same. :) > > I'd kick him off the list, but that's not my style. A few critics > around to stir the stew can keep us on our toes as we move forward. > > --Jimbo You have to give Seth credit for keeping a dying mailing list alive. He has provided some informative posts related to what others are saying about wikia search and certainly hasn't posted anything that deserves a punt from the list. This was my first attempt to join a community driven development project. I was intrigued because of the value that Wikipedia provides to the web at large and that the founder of Wikipedia was involved to make search a community driven process. My question is what and who is the "us" that JW refers to above? I thought that the whole idea was to be transparent and bring together a community of technology experts. < The project is going full speed ahead. Sounds like smoke and mirrors to me, based on what I have to go on. It appears that Wikia Search is falling faster than Brady Quinn in the NFL draft and unless I can get concrete information that wikia search is actually going full speed ahead a certain amount of skepticism is in order. I'll probably get kicked for this ;-( Keith Botley _______________________________________________ Search-l mailing list Search-l at wikia.com http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/listinfo/search-l Change options or unsubscribe: http://lists.wikia.com/mailman/options/search-l -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/search-l/attachments/20070430/a46cf935/attachment.html From pallas at alexa.com Mon Apr 30 15:44:47 2007 From: pallas at alexa.com (Derrick Pallas) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 08:44:47 -0700 Subject: [Search-l] Simpy Chichimichi - "Wikia Search - Not Happening" In-Reply-To: <4635BF51.1000401@wikia.com> References: <355a36af0704290929w522b362aqcf806253ae99aae0@mail.gmail.com> <4635BF51.1000401@wikia.com> Message-ID: Jimmy Wales wrote: > We have a big announcement soon. Possibly today. I would blurt it out > right now, but I better wait until they wake up in California. :) I'm in California; also, awake. :) ~ Derrick From aerik at thesylvans.com Mon Apr 30 17:03:25 2007 From: aerik at thesylvans.com (Aerik Sylvan) Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 10:03:25 -0700 Subject: [Search-l] I'm awake too... plus, an idea Message-ID: <355a36af0704301003u59350706v4b75766edc07809a@mail.gmail.com> Okay, it's 10:01am in Silicon Valley and I'm awake and even reasonably alert :-) Here's something I don't know if I've mentioned before: One thing we could do to apply the community to improve search results is to constantly rotate in different algorithms and let users rate the result relevance. Sure, maybe Joe Averageuser wouldn't want to have much to do with that, but even a dedicated core of few hundred power users could quickly create significant statistics about what algorithms are *actually* working better. But you'd never want to stop - constantly take in new ideas about what data to collect and how to weight it, then collect data about how well the algorithm is working in real time. Use the feedback from that to "evolve" the algorithms. (Cross-posting this to Brainstorming as well). Aerik -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.wikia.com/pipermail/search-l/attachments/20070430/cee0b555/attachment.html