[Search-l] Defining this community (was Re: IRC Meetup for Technical Discussions)

[Seth Finkelstein]

On Wed, May 16, 2007 at 02:11:06AM -0400, jer wrote:
> I believe that this isn't about just one project, one index, or one  
> wikipedia/google mashup.

	Let me clarify that in discussing the Google and Wikipedia
models, I was speaking at a very high level of abstraction, and not
referring to simple things such as using Wikipedia as a seed site for 
Google or using Google-type algorithms within Wikipedia. Rather, I
was talking about the overall approaches, where Google is all Machine
(with a few tiny human tweaks) and Wikipedia is all Social (with a few
tiny robot tweaks). It's almost mythic how they're such complete
opposites, like the kind of science-fiction novel where there's a
high-tech city next to an agrarian farming commune.

> So... while that sounds great and all, the practical matter is that  
> there's a tremendous gap here between some grand vision and an input  
> box that does something useful.  The only way I know to cover  
> tremendous gaps is one step at a time :)  Assuming the above  
> resonates with folks here, the first little steps are the continuing  
> discussions here and getting our community wiki to express all this  
> better by providing more context and frameworks, IMO.

"No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy." - Field Marshall
Helmut Carl Bernard von Moltke

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