[Search-l] _Forbes_ - Andrew Keen - Down With Internet Democracy

[Seth Finkelstein]

[Disclaimer - Forwarding this article segment should not be taken as
unconditional endorsement. In fact, I have been critical of its author
in general in terms of writing going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket pandering]

http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:eJkP3xZto-YJ:members.forbes.com/forbes/2007/0521/038.html

On My Mind
Down With Internet Democracy  Andrew Keen 05.21.07, 12:00 AM ET

Why you don't want anonymous volunteers powering your search engine.	 

[...]

If, like me, you believe that Wikipedia has spawned a mountain of
unreliable, unprofessional and often corrupt so-called knowledge, then
Wales' radical new search venture is of deep concern.

According to Wales, search is "broken." It lacks "freedom,"
"community," "accountability" and "transparency." He argues that
Google can be gamed by spammers, marketers and other Internet cheats
who have learned to outwit the algorithms, thereby earning their
products or services inappropriately high rankings. So Wales' solution
is to staff Wikia Search with unpaid programmers who will develop
algorithms that can sniff out the spammers and challenge the cheats.

What will Wikia Search be like? I fear it will resemble
Wikipedia. Rather than gang up against the gamers, it will compound
the corruption by giving search-engine editorial power to anonymous
volunteers. This is exactly what has damaged Wikipedia's reputation as
a people-powered encyclopedia. How many supposedly altruistic
programmers will really be in the pay of Wal-Mart (nyse: WMT - news -
people ) or al Qaeda or the millions of other organizations that could
be tempted to pay to have their products and services better positioned?

[...]

If you want to supplement artificial intelligence with real human
intelligence, you need to reward the real humans with real money in
exchange for their services. Because real people have real mortgages
to pay off and real families to feed. A genuinely people-powered
search service should, therefore, employ and pay a professional staff
to check the accuracy of its entries. Traditional media have a word
for these gatekeepers. They are called editors.

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  http://sethf.com/
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php