[Search wiki] Scale of Search wiki

[Jimmy Wales]

I think it does not scale very well... one of the things we want to make 
widely available (and soon!) is a list of the most popular search terms, 
sorted and ranked.  These have to be carefully screened for privacy 
implications (i.e. we need to make sure that a search has been done by 
10 different ip numbers over an extended period of time or something).

But writing mini articles is only ever going to cover the "fat head" not 
the "long tail" of search, for sure.  Even the first million most 
popular search terms, if we become as successful a wiki as major 
language wikipedias, would not cover the long tail.

Rainer Blome wrote:
> [Second try, I used the wrong sender address with the first one.]
> 
> Hi.  Missing a "free" search engine, I was delighted to read of Wikia Search.
> And it looks like a good beginning.
> 
> Has anyone got any idea how far the concept of creating one mini article per search query can be taken?  Is it possible to keep up indefinitely?
> 
> It appears to me that the number of different queries can quickly reach millions, and billions in the long run.  
> Mini articles will not be written for every query. 
> What is the ratio between number of new queries and number of mini articles writen?
> 
> Looking for this topic, I found only this:
>>From jwales at wikia.com  Thu Jan  4 00:51:34 2007
>> peter burden wrote:
>>> the scale of the whole enterprise. Are we 
>>> intending to outdo [...]? If so a long careful look at the 
>>> numbers is called for.
>> Eh, I dunno.
> 
> This may have been discussed elsewhere.  If so, please provide a pointer.
>