soo?? we wait again....<br><br>mark<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 4:31 AM, Jimmy Wales <<a href="mailto:jwales@wikia.com" target="_blank">jwales@wikia.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Awesome, right questions, Paul!<br>
<br>
So I will write a long post tomorrow about all this, and I am excited<br>
that we are having this conversation.<br>
<div><div></div><div><br>
Paul Vixie wrote:<br>
> various folks here, as well as sethf in his blogs, have asked plenty of hard<br>
> questions about <a href="http://wikia.com" target="_blank">wikia.com</a>'s search project -- who owns it, is it truly open,<br>
> what is wikia's agenda, and so on. these are the wrong questions, since they<br>
> focus on the company who sponsors the work, and not on the work itself. i've<br>
> been trying to think of the right questions. here's an approximation of what<br>
> critics of this project ought to be investigating.<br>
><br>
> 1. why is ISC's the only backend? jer's vision is backend syndication, so,<br>
> if his XML schema is stable and if there's at least one f/l/oss implementation<br>
> of crawling and of indexing, then, why aren't there more crawlers and more<br>
> indexers, conforming to jer's XML, possibly flooding data between each other<br>
> and possibly dividing up the workload so that all crawlers don't have to<br>
> crawl all sites? ISC ought to have peers, and we ought to be able to have<br>
> gentlemen's agreements, like, "we'll do [a-l].com, you do [m-z].com", etc.<br>
><br>
> 2. why is Wikia's the only frontend? again referring to the syndication<br>
> model, and knowing that there are other "social search engines", when will<br>
> we see someone other than wikia use ISC's backend, or any other backend whose<br>
> data can be reached using jer's XML?<br>
><br>
> 3. who is driving the syndication model? it's clear that ISC knows how to<br>
> provide network and power, and that jer knows how to design the system and<br>
> build various parts of it, but who is the champion for jer's vision -- who<br>
> will drive us to better answers for #1 and #2 above? who ought to be in here<br>
> answering critics and beating the drum, which is a distraction to jer (and<br>
> candidly he's too busy to do this part well unless he drops other stuff<br>
> that's already late)? remembering that jimbo keeps this issue alive in the<br>
> press, the overall project still lacks a day to day "programme manager".<br>
><br>
> 4. what else is jer working on? has wikia dedicated him to this project or<br>
> does he also handle day to day fire fighting on wikia's existing services to<br>
> justify his paycheck? and while we're on that topic, what other personnel<br>
> has wikia dedicated to this -- how seriously are they really taking it, in<br>
> terms of cash on the barrel head?<br>
><br>
> 5. who else is working on this, outside of wikia? what outside volunteers<br>
> or wikia competitor's employees have commit access to the source pool for<br>
> the crawler, or indexer, or front end, or have root access to the donated<br>
> back end machines hosted by ISC? if the answer is nobody, then is that due<br>
> to lack of outreach (see #3 above) or is it wikia's preference that outsiders<br>
> contribute content rather than code and sysops? (is that written anywhere?)<br>
><br>
> 6. where are the mini-articles stored? if outside volunteers are mostly<br>
> contributing data, is that data stored on wikia's front end? if so, what are<br>
> the redistribution terms -- would wikia flood this data to competing front<br>
> end operators, and accept incoming floods of similar data from competitors?<br>
> or, is this the "secret sauce", there's no way to get access to contributed<br>
> data of this kind except one article at a time, inside wikia's advertising<br>
> system?<br>
><br>
> 7. given that the idea of "taking on google" is silly, given their size and<br>
> focus and ambition and brand strength and so on, and that what we can<br>
> actually hope to achieve with this project is to change the game and make<br>
> search part of the internet infrastructure, where are the white papers,<br>
> journal articles, and outreach glossies explaining what the new world of<br>
> internet search could look like, and what effect this change will have on<br>
> google, microsoft, yahoo, and the current market hierarchy, and the rest of<br>
> the "social search" scene?<br>
><br>
> 8. has anybody reached out to yahoo and microsoft to see if they'd like to<br>
> join this effort or at least sponsor it, since as #2 and #3 in internet<br>
> search today, they're the ones with the most to gain if we change the game.<br>
> and if nobody's doing this now, and i did it, what would wikia say about<br>
> sharing the sponsorship burden with other players, perhaps larger players?<br>
><br>
> this list of questions isn't meant to be exhaustive. but as in my own<br>
> controversial efforts over the years, i find the quality of criticism here<br>
> somewhat low. forget about jimbo and his tv news girlfriend and the instant<br>
> messenger chat logs. forget about wikia's corporate interests, or whether<br>
> wikipedia was a once in a lifetime event, or whether wikipedia's admins are<br>
> running amok, or what the wikimedia foundation board is up to. there are<br>
> plenty of excellent questions about the wikia-sponsored search project whose<br>
> backend is hosted at ISC, which are not salacious or even delicate. the<br>
> above list is meant to show the kind of questions i mean.<br>
><br>
> for the record, i'd like it if jer did not jump in and answer any of these,<br>
> because he's got more important stuff to do, and because i'd like to see<br>
> wikia provide another face, another name, another voice, to this forum.<br>
><br>
> also for the record, ISC's hosting of this project has been a cash neutral<br>
> event for us, which is important since we don't have cash for this kind of<br>
> thing. the 15-ton air handler wikia bought feeds a room that has other<br>
> projects in it too, and our network is a fixed cost, and wikia has agreed<br>
> to pay for the power we use for search, and the servers were all donated,<br>
> and that donation was targetted for this project, and we got a lot more<br>
> servers than we needed, and we've been passing the excess along to other<br>
> f/l/oss and internet security projects. so no matter whether this project<br>
> changes the world, ISC is already winning.<br>
<br>
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