大象传媒

Wikipedia to enter search arena

• By Paul Crichton
• 2 Jan 07, 04:53 PM

Jimmy Wales, the developer of the user generated online encyclopaedia, , announced recently that he is planning a . Given that Wikipedia is fairly accessible, may turn out to be a good accessible alternative to the other search websites in the 2.0 market such as and so is worth keeping an eye out for.

The content in Wikipedia has not been put together by professional writers, but by the public. Search Wikia will follow the same model, with the users themselves suggesting websites for inclusion, and determining the order of search results.

We don鈥檛 really know how it is going to work at this stage, but it might be something like this. Imagine that you are searching for information about a digital radio, so you type in the make and model into your regular search engine.

Amongst the relevant results to your search, you may get some dross from Ebay, price comparison websites (that inevitably don鈥檛 have your radio) and other forms of spam. Most search engines rely on an automated algorithm, and because of that they can be fooled into ranking irrelevant pages higher than they should. Or they may even allow website owners to pay for a high position in the results, sometimes letting you know when this happens, and sometimes not.

Since each page will be assessed for relevancy by human contributors on Search Wikia you might get a page of results that includes the manufacturers page, or reviews of the radio, or retailers that actually sell the radio. If, for some reason, you think a search result isn't any good, or isn't relevant to what you are looking for, then you can update the entry on Search Wikia to reflect your views so that it will be more accurate next time you, or someone else uses a similar search.

People are using web 2.0 technologies to develop new search engines already. But these have largely focused on helping users refine searches, and providing them with more information to find exactly what they are looking for, and snazzier interfaces. These have largely resulted in making them inaccessible to some user groups. We looked at Quintura a while ago, which is a case in point. The interface might be effective for sighted users, but it is an obstacle to everyone else.

At this stage, Search Wikia is barely off the ground, with Jimmy Wales only just starting the recruitment process. So we have no idea when it might be available for us to look at, but we鈥檒l keep you informed of any interesting developments.

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