[Search-l] wrong questions

[Jimmy Wales]

Paul Vixie wrote:
> working with which "us"?  is it wikia's remit to recruit new co-backends,
> to add flooding features to the backend so that crawlers can bulk-share
> their findings with other crawlers?  if so, please be as transparent as
> possible about it, up to and including writing "open letters" to prospects
> which are cc'd to search-l, and doing an RFC-like public review on search-l
> of the protocols and mechanisms that will be used at the backend-backend
> layer.  this request follows from my observation that everybody is excited
> about search syndication, but the voices we most need to hear belong to
> people who don't want to be "along for the ride" with wikia as sole driver.

Makes sense...

> domain names are brands, and swlabs.org isn't a meaningful one for an SVN
> used by this project.  i suggest moving it to svn.search.wikia.com or
> svn.search.isc.org or similar, and adding a bug tracker, or installing a
> sourceforge instance, or similar.  a wiki by itself does not a community
> make.

That sounds good to me, but I know Jer was interested in swlabs.org as a 
domain to really help with the perception problem you identified about 
Wikia as "sole driver".

> you've gotta write a whitepaper to that effect.  not just an e-mail message
> and not a wiki article, but an honest to gods high end marketing hit piece
> which you roll up and brandish at audiences when you speak about wikia
> search.  the noncredibility of the early claims about "taking on google" is
> the biggest weakness wikia search has got.

And this meme (which comes mostly from the media that loves a David and 
Goliath story) is also probably the biggest strength we have got right 
now.  It's a monster either way. :)