[Search-l] Input wanted on Mini and main name spaces for Search Wikia

[Tom Wright]

The motivation behind providing links within mini-articles is that
they can provide:

(i) Better links.
(ii) Information describing links (This is absent from search results.)
(iii) Links that might be lower down the search order but are still important.
(Example
i. when looking up programming related terms one often doesn't get
links to documentation because of the profusion of programming
discussion forums.
ii. When looking up books titles links to the full text of the book
(if it is out of copyright) are very useful - but won't, as a rule,
appear in searches.
)
(iv) Links to things that mightn't appear in the search results but
are very important.
(Examples: Javascript is also known as ECMAscript - you won't get
links to ecmascript when searching for javascript - but ecmascript
provides the only formal documentation. Also searching for web related
terms)
(v) A way for people who have found a the necessary link after much
searching to store their result somewhere - thereby preventing the
inefficiencies of other people having to do exactly the same work.

Now certainly you can argue that all of the above can be done by:
(a) Providing suitable disambiguation.
(b) Adding extra features to search results.
(c) Adding the ability to search based on "semantics" rather than syntactics.
and all of this should be attempted.

However the question is will this work in practice?
I think human generated content can always be better than
algorithmically generated content - assuming that the human doesn't
have mal-intent. (Because the humans use the algorithms first.)

Why do you think having links within mini-articles is a bad idea?
The possible risks I can perceive are:
(i) Spam
(ii) Biased content
(iii) Detraction from the search results.
(iv) Distraction due to the links being of a poor quality.

The question is how much can one control these risks, and do they
justify the potential benefits of having links. This is very much an
empirical rather than theoretic question... so I'm not quite sure how
to answer it.

Tom


On Feb 2, 2008 10:25 AM, Mark (Markie) <newsmarkie at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Feb 2, 2008 12:21 AM, jer <jeremie at jabber.org> wrote:
> >
> > >> So I'm suggesting the following to try and get this sorted. Go to
> > >> this page :- http://search.wikia.com/wiki/search:Mini_article/
> > >> Policy_discussion
> > >
> > > I've been there and, frankly, it's far from obvious how to enter
> > > into a discussion there.
> > > I suggest the discussion continue on this mailing list. So to start
> > > the ball rolling :-
> >
> > It is a bit confusing, a conversation in progress, but if anyone has
> > input they should just tack it onto the end and it'll get moved/
> > cleaned up as the page evolves.  A discussion here is of course great
> > too, and any points should/will get recorded into the policy
> > discussion page.
> >
> > > ...
> >
> > > Here's some ideas on rules for mini-articles
> > >
> > >     Mini-articles should be between 50 and 200 words long.
> > >     Mini-articles must include a a tag of some sort indicating what
> > > language they are in.
> >
> > Agree with both of these, I just included an i18n section on the page
> > for ideas on how to do the localization.
>
>
> i agree with this also.  further thoughts on localisation, we could put some
> .js code in the mini:edit pages that say "click me if this article is in
> English, Deutsch etc etc" which would then insert the correctly formatted
> lang code holder.
>
> >
> >
> >
> > >     Mini-articles should not include images or hyper-links.
> >
> > I think both are potentially useful but must have a careful policy
> > around them, small images and good hyperlinks could be very valuable
> > to a searcher.
> hmmm images maybe, if they are informative, i would say no to screenshots of
> the website though, links...well isnt that what search is for??...
>
> cheers
>
> mark
>
> >
> >
> > Jer
> >
> >
> >
> >
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