Introducing Wikia Search

25/02/2008

Jimmy Wales, of Wikipedia fame, launched a 'human powered' search engine in January called Wikia Search (alpha). After much hype, Wikia Search launched with a dummy index, lacking user data, and none of the human relevancy tools available for use. To put it politely, it was not received well by media pundits.

Wikia Search includes the basic technologies of a search engine - a search application, search algorithm and Web crawler. The difference is that people will be able to provide feedback on results, influencing rankings, in an open source environment. Jimmy Wales describes his initiative as a "start to change from being proprietary, top-down, and closed". Could this be a rebellion against the power which is Google?

Can it stay unbiased?

It will be interesting to see how the growth of Wikia Search comes about and if community trust evolves. Will there be a strong cross section of those who embrace Wikipedia editing Wikia Search? If so, would the results be biased towards a certain type of person?

When asked by Michael Calore editor at Wired, how the communities are going to be managed, Wales said "I don't know" with a laugh.

I guess we will just have to wait and see while the project to build the community base develops and Wikia Search evolves into a search engine.

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