[Search-l] vision

[Jim Papadopoulos]

Hello, I am notoriously bad at lurking, these days. So I apologise if I am
repeating something old, or speaking at odds with the general direction.

 

I am speaking as a 'search' visionary, not a computer expert. I see 'search'
as being more powerful than the old concept of 'library'. I have hopes for
what will someday be available, and that is why I tried to make contact as
soon as I heard of Wiki Search.

 

Two or three major points, which I hope intersect with this venture in some
way:

 

Configurable ranking algorithms. I imagine that there must be more or less
complicated ranking algorithms that 'weight' various factors such as 'type A
spam', 'type B spam', 'authoritativeness among other non-spam pages',
'commercial content', 'specificity', etc. etc.      I would like to see some
user choice in making those weightings. In other words, if a ranking could
be simplified as 100 weighting factors, let a user fiddle with those
factors. Several 'standard' weighting assignments would always be available,
but the user would have the opportunity to 'interpolate between weighting
vectors' or even 'create a weighting vector from scratch'. Weighting vectors
could be widely shared. Probably some committed souls would do their best to
create a 'weighting vector closely matching google performance'. This kind
of 'open weighting source' freedom would eliminate the current one-weighting
tyranny of google and others.

 

 

Commercial taint: On one hand, commerce is immensely powerful, and can fund
useful things. On the other hand, it can diminish free and fair access. Even
though I have always heard that Google does not accept pay for rank, my
sense is that somehow, a large commercial venture can achieve high rank
SOMEHOW. (By linking to its own websites, by continual SEO.) Isn't it true
that Google has the possibility of political influence, for example simply
not ranking a large category of pages if they don't match the prevailing
trends?

 

I have two thoughts:

 

1. The first is that with an 'open source weighting system', any company
(Ford?) or consortium (Better Business Bureau) can provide a search gateway
with their own weighting system. If they have a way of providing extra value
while pushing their own members, such an initiative can freely try to
attract users.

 

2. The second is a 'government responsibility' idea that may not go down
well with all. Just as the Library of Congress evolved into a nationally
supported gateway to information, I have this feeling that LC should also be
supporting and promoting a NEUTRAL CONFIGURABLE search engine such as Wiki
Search. Of course this could only work if it is not run by ideologues. Maybe
it should be an international effort? I think open access to information via
search is the library of tomorrow. We don't want a Coca Cola TM library, in
many cases we want a Community Library.

 

Talk first, think later. Now I will take a look at the alpha site. Thanks
for your patience.

 

Jim Papadopoulos

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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