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

[Tom Wright]

Certainly it's a good idea to add features for ranking results.

I feel that an argument why the absense of links in mini-articles
articles is better than their presense needs to be clearly enunciated
before one removes their possible benefits.

Is your argument that presenting links in mini-articles will detract
from their other purposes of disambiguation - hence the possible roles
of mini-articles should be restricted to only providing
disambiguation? This may well be a reasonable argument.

What is it that is  wrong with having links presented in both
mini-articles and the main search results? Plausible arguments might
include:
(i) Irritation of having to look in two places for links.
(ii) Damaging duplication of effort between modifying search results
and creating mini-article links.
(iii) Causes links to be created rather than disambiguation.
(iv) Providing a disambiguation to a suitable term will almost always
provide a suitable link as the first result - requiring just one more
click. Hence you can have "links without external links"
(v) Risks of spam.
(vi) Giving an individual user the power to place a link at the top of
search results is excessive iand likely to cause conflict.
(vii) The space of search terms is far too large to police.

But as to whether these apply, I am not sure.

I don't see why other mechanisms are any more scalable than
mini-articles - though they might be fundamentally better.

Sorry, I'm not trying to be argumentative, though it might seem like
I'm doing a good impression...

As an example of when the links provided with extra information and
grouping can be useful look at
http://re.search.wikia.com/search#britney%20spears versus the search
results for britney spears on google - mentally try to create an order
of links that will provide the same amount of information. (Sorry,
couldn't find a more cultured example.)

Tom

On Feb 2, 2008 11:28 PM, Balinny <balinny at gmail.com> wrote:
> Tom Wright wrote:
> > 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.
> >
> IMHO we have a problem in that mini articles is the only way we can
> currently influence search results.
> "Better links" or "Links too low" shouldn't be on mini articles. They
> should be got right by the search engine.
> This is the only way it can scale
> On the other hand, v, disambiguations, etc. are suitable for miniarticles.
> Maybe we should allow the user to "reorder this search result". But
> using that isn't easy either...
>
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