[Search-l] I'm confused...

[Ed Whittaker]

I suspect the following has been discussed before but I couldn't find it so
can someone 'in the know' explain the following:

1) If all algorithms, user data etc are available so essentially anyone can
build a new search engine (presumably as good as Search Wikia if everything
is indeed open) what is to stop anyone doing just that? If Google can
incorporate anything useful into their own algorithms, data collection, UI
they certainly will. Won't they simply be able to produce a faster,
better(?) version of search wikia built on top of what they have already?

2) Why will users help in the first place? I'm definitely missing something
here. The proposed model is very different to Wikipedia since it's Wikia
that's making the profit - there's no way for a simple user to benefit
monetarily by participating, is there? If there were this would possibly
cause problems with users gaming the system so is probably not desirable.
While I'm all for openness and making a profit I don't see why anyone would
do this for free except to make a better search engine. However, when this
better search engine can be duplicated by anyone, and more importantly, by
Google, Yahoo etc. won't things grind to a halt?

I'm not being pessimistic, I'm just confused because someone in Wikia has
definitely considered these issues and decided they're not important. I'd
just like to know why, out of curiosity as much as anything else. On the
face of it it seems like things might actually work better if no-one (not
even Wikia itself!) could access user data (presumably heavily anonymized),
or what algorithms were being used, rather than everyone knowing everything
about the search internals, and instead everything is shaped by the users
who use the system. Alternatively, if users gain some financial benefit by
participating that would make sense too (to me). If someone in answering
claims the "wikipedia works in practice but not in theory" line I guess
we'll just have to see what happens when there's a profit motive involved.
Maybe it really isn't an issue...

-Ed
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