[Search-l] What Is Wikia and How Real Is It?

[jer]

John, I can understand your pessimism when looking at what we're  
doing as trying to be a "Google Killer" but we're on different  
wavelengths.

We are not building yet-another-search-engine, we are putting our  
efforts into making building ANY search engine easier, better tools,  
better methods, more shared systems, etc.  This isn't one project,  
it's tens or even hundreds of them, and likely to take years.

Clearly you're neck-deep in search development yourself, so you would  
have a great opinion on what kinds of tools and resources would make  
your life easier, do you have any suggestions?

Jer

On Aug 5, 2007, at 4:53 PM, John McCormac wrote:

> (I've just spent the last day or so checking approximately 2.5M .uk
> domains and websites so apologies in advance if this appears as a  
> bit of
> a rant.)
>
> What exactly is Wikia? Is it a search engine or just a form of hybrid
> super directory based on Wikipedia and similar sites?
>
> So far there has been nothing real about this project beyond what is
> effectively just another wiki about the idea of a search engine.  
> Talking
> about search engine development is all well and good but there has  
> to be
> real development taking place. Otherwise this will just end up as
> another vapourware search engine like Dipsie and so many others.
>
> What worries me about this whole project is that the people at the  
> top,
> despite having a lot of other experience, have no recognisable search
> engine development experience (from what I've seen). Having the search
> engine software is only a small part of the project. It is like  
> having a
> jet without a pilot or fuel. Though with Grub, it is not so much a jet
> aircraft as a bicycle with the handbars and wheels missing.
>
> Perhaps Wikia has a few people who have been hired who actually have
> done more than just read about search engine development. If Wikia  
> is to
> be a Google Killer then it has to have such real operators rather than
> toy soldiers. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all take search deadly
> seriously and have a lot of research going on. They will not concede
> marketshare gracefully. This is why I think that talk of Wikia being a
> Google Killer is marketing hype when compared to the reality of these
> search engines. Looksmart (the company that bought Grub and sold  
> (?) it
> again to Wikia) got slaughtered by these players.
>
> I'd like to see a lot more diversity in the search market. Hopefully
> Wikia has a chance of providing some. How may websites does Wikia  
> expect
> to spider? Does it have a clear idea of how many websites are out  
> there
> on the net? How will it deal with the languages issue or is it  
> going to
> be a universally English language operation?
>
> This talk of Open Source and opening up search is all very nice. The
> whole opening up of search engine algorithms is quite ridiculous  
> because
> once they are open, it becomes easy to game the search engine. (This
> would be an argument for the hybrid quality controlling effect of a
> wikipedia type approach.) Google found this out with its Page Rank and
> other search engines had similar problems. The gaming of the  
> algorithms
> is one of the major problems that the large search engines spend a lot
> of time trying to solve. They continually tweak their algorithms to  
> make
> them more effective and less prone to gaming.
>
> Making the data available is also a bit of a red herring. Just how  
> much
> data do the people in Wikia think would result from a full crawl of  
> the
> web? Or just taking some of the minor gTLDs - how much data would  
> result
> from a crawl of .info or .biz?
>
> How would webmasters react to their data being made freely available
> like this? Every spam scraper and MFA (Made For Adsense) plagiarist
> would have a field day with this data. But the sheer size of the data
> resulting from a full or even a limited crawl makes the whole
> downloadable aspect highly questionable. Google and the other major
> players have thousands of servers. Unless Wikia is to be some P2P type
> engine, it will take a lot more investment to make Wikia a viable  
> threat
> to the main players.
>
> Who benefits?
> What makes Wikia different?
> How close to realisation is it?
>
> Regards...jmcc
> -- 
> ******************************************************
> John McCormac  *  e-mail: jmcc at whoisireland.com
> MC2            *  voice:  +353-51-873640
> 22 Viewmount   *  web:  http://www.whoisireland.com/
> Waterford      *  blog: http://blog.whoisireland.com
> Ireland        *  Irish Domain Stats & Market Research
> ******************************************************
> _______________________________________________
> 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