[Search-l] NPOV for Search?

[Jimmy Wales]

Bryan Bishop wrote:
> Jimbo, how can we ever hope to have true NPOV for search? Let's let 
> people search for any of the existing point of views. That's what 
> search is about. (I can't help but think that the Canonizer might in on 
> this.)

Well, let me explain what I mean.  NPOV for search does not and should 
not mean that only neutral results are shown.  But rather, it means that 
the search engine itself should be as neutral and balanced as possible 
with what it returns.  For me, this is part of what quality search 
should be about.

Let me take a sample search from Google, because I think Google actually 
on average does a pretty good job of this, if for no other reason than 
that on a lot of questions their algorithm pulls in high quality stuff 
from all sides of any debate.  I do not know if "neutrality" is a 
consideration that Google thinks about or not, but they are not bad in 
this regard.

http://www.google.com/search?q=barack+obama

Barack Obama

1 - Official campaign site
2 - Wikipedia
3 - official senate site
4 - official senate site
5 - official myspace page
6 - Washington Post page
7 - official twitter page
8 - Snopes
9 - Official youtube page
10 - "barack obama is my homeboy" - grassroots fan page

Hmm, is that neutral?

6 official pages
3 neutral pages (washington post, wikipedia, snopes)
1 fan page

Well, I don't know what's out there on the net, but maybe a handful of 
pages of thoughtful criticism exist, and perhaps should be included.

http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=4479

is a page I found pretty quickly, from Hillary Clinton.

NOTE: In case anyone wonders, I am not making any political statement in 
this email, nor am I suggesting that Google is intentionally favoring 
Obama or anything like that.  I am just using this as a randomly chosen 
academic example as a starting point for us to think through what it 
means to have "biased" versus "neutral" search results.