[Search-l] Search Team Update: June 18, 2008

[Dan Lewis]

Here's what the Wikia Search team worked on last week.

Nutch 2:
* Completed LinkAnalysis tool for web ranking. This is a big one -- it
allows Wikia Search to recognize the value of web pages based on the
other pages that link to it. Specifically:
1) There's an OutlinkDb tool to create an outlink database
2) There's a LinkAnalysis tool for pagerank type ranking scores within Nutch
3) There's a display tool to view the inlinks and outlinks of a given URL
* Started LinkFarm analysis to remove link farm spam

Search Tools:
* Started work on creating bookmarklets
* Added dismissable message and associated files to make Search the
browser's default search
* Added google ads
* Working on outputting search data to a metrics package which will be
publicly viewable
* Made minor enhancements mapped changes
* Fixed timestamp error which affected recent changes
* Added keyword browser to Fun tab
* Added ability to delete URLs from activity pages
* Improved annotations for IE6, IE7, and Opera
* Fixed hiding and showing of logo when one toggles through related changes
* Began language filtering tools
* Started work on preliminary keyword controls
* Improved bug report form
* Figuring out how to do grouping for collaborative tools
* Initial prep work to continually update results page looking for new changes
* Ongoing annotation hiding/editing
* Deployed Internationalization filtering of KT
* KT loads are now background threaded
* Developed preliminary keyboard control experiments
* Developed preliminary library for starlets (bookmarkets/favlets)

Social Tools:
* Patched relationship.js
* Continuted to improve use of real names throughout interface
* Fixed "avoid" functionality
* Created and style anonymous user page
* Added Wall to anon user pages
* Fixed "What are you doing?" bug
* Fixed "Nudge" bug
* Added blocking functionality
* Added "invite friends" link to header
* Improved privacy options -- if you don't want to be messaged, you
can prevent that; if you don't want people to see your friends, you
can prevent that

Operations:
* Made tweak to improve search results page performance
* Page performance should be improved when there are multiple search results now
* Started work on tools to close the KT <==> nutch loop
* Improved the DB backup tools for KT
* SA support for the new grub site