[Search-l] wrong questions

Thu May 15 10:19:08 UTC 2008

soo?? we wait again....

mark

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 4:31 AM, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Awesome, right questions, Paul!
>
> So I will write a long post tomorrow about all this, and I am excited
> that we are having this conversation.
>
> Paul Vixie wrote:
> > various folks here, as well as sethf in his blogs, have asked plenty of
> hard
> > questions about wikia.com's search project -- who owns it, is it truly
> open,
> > what is wikia's agenda, and so on.  these are the wrong questions, since
> they
> > focus on the company who sponsors the work, and not on the work itself.
>  i've
> > been trying to think of the right questions.  here's an approximation of
> what
> > critics of this project ought to be investigating.
> >
> > 1. why is ISC's the only backend?  jer's vision is backend syndication,
> so,
> > if his XML schema is stable and if there's at least one f/l/oss
> implementation
> > of crawling and of indexing, then, why aren't there more crawlers and
> more
> > indexers, conforming to jer's XML, possibly flooding data between each
> other
> > and possibly dividing up the workload so that all crawlers don't have to
> > crawl all sites?  ISC ought to have peers, and we ought to be able to
> have
> > gentlemen's agreements, like, "we'll do [a-l].com, you do [m-z].com",
> etc.
> >
> > 2. why is Wikia's the only frontend?  again referring to the syndication
> > model, and knowing that there are other "social search engines", when
> will
> > we see someone other than wikia use ISC's backend, or any other backend
> whose
> > data can be reached using jer's XML?
> >
> > 3. who is driving the syndication model?  it's clear that ISC knows how
> to
> > provide network and power, and that jer knows how to design the system
> and
> > build various parts of it, but who is the champion for jer's vision --
> who
> > will drive us to better answers for #1 and #2 above?  who ought to be in
> here
> > answering critics and beating the drum, which is a distraction to jer
> (and
> > candidly he's too busy to do this part well unless he drops other stuff
> > that's already late)?  remembering that jimbo keeps this issue alive in
> the
> > press, the overall project still lacks a day to day "programme manager".
> >
> > 4. what else is jer working on?  has wikia dedicated him to this project
> or
> > does he also handle day to day fire fighting on wikia's existing services
> to
> > justify his paycheck?  and while we're on that topic, what other
> personnel
> > has wikia dedicated to this -- how seriously are they really taking it,
> in
> > terms of cash on the barrel head?
> >
> > 5. who else is working on this, outside of wikia?  what outside
> volunteers
> > or wikia competitor's employees have commit access to the source pool for
> > the crawler, or indexer, or front end, or have root access to the donated
> > back end machines hosted by ISC?  if the answer is nobody, then is that
> due
> > to lack of outreach (see #3 above) or is it wikia's preference that
> outsiders
> > contribute content rather than code and sysops?  (is that written
> anywhere?)
> >
> > 6. where are the mini-articles stored?  if outside volunteers are mostly
> > contributing data, is that data stored on wikia's front end?  if so, what
> are
> > the redistribution terms -- would wikia flood this data to competing
> front
> > end operators, and accept incoming floods of similar data from
> competitors?
> > or, is this the "secret sauce", there's no way to get access to
> contributed
> > data of this kind except one article at a time, inside wikia's
> advertising
> > system?
> >
> > 7. given that the idea of "taking on google" is silly, given their size
> and
> > focus and ambition and brand strength and so on, and that what we can
> > actually hope to achieve with this project is to change the game and make
> > search part of the internet infrastructure, where are the white papers,
> > journal articles, and outreach glossies explaining what the new world of
> > internet search could look like, and what effect this change will have on
> > google, microsoft, yahoo, and the current market hierarchy, and the rest
> of
> > the "social search" scene?
> >
> > 8. has anybody reached out to yahoo and microsoft to see if they'd like
> to
> > join this effort or at least sponsor it, since as #2 and #3 in internet
> > search today, they're the ones with the most to gain if we change the
> game.
> > and if nobody's doing this now, and i did it, what would wikia say about
> > sharing the sponsorship burden with other players, perhaps larger
> players?
> >
> > this list of questions isn't meant to be exhaustive.  but as in my own
> > controversial efforts over the years, i find the quality of criticism
> here
> > somewhat low.  forget about jimbo and his tv news girlfriend and the
> instant
> > messenger chat logs.  forget about wikia's corporate interests, or
> whether
> > wikipedia was a once in a lifetime event, or whether wikipedia's admins
> are
> > running amok, or what the wikimedia foundation board is up to.  there are
> > plenty of excellent questions about the wikia-sponsored search project
> whose
> > backend is hosted at ISC, which are not salacious or even delicate.  the
> > above list is meant to show the kind of questions i mean.
> >
> > for the record, i'd like it if jer did not jump in and answer any of
> these,
> > because he's got more important stuff to do, and because i'd like to see
> > wikia provide another face, another name, another voice, to this forum.
> >
> > also for the record, ISC's hosting of this project has been a cash
> neutral
> > event for us, which is important since we don't have cash for this kind
> of
> > thing.  the 15-ton air handler wikia bought feeds a room that has other
> > projects in it too, and our network is a fixed cost, and wikia has agreed
> > to pay for the power we use for search, and the servers were all donated,
> > and that donation was targetted for this project, and we got a lot more
> > servers than we needed, and we've been passing the excess along to other
> > f/l/oss and internet security projects.  so no matter whether this
> project
> > changes the world, ISC is already winning.
>
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