by Brian Steel

By the mid-1990s, the information needs of the growing Internet market were being served not only by online versions of traditional commercial encyclopedias like the Encyclopedia Britannica, Grolier’s New Book of Knowledge and the World Book Encyclopedia but by Microsoft’s vigorously marketed Encarta, which had begun to attract significant numbers of online customers. Both Encarta (http://encarta.msn.com) and Encyclopedia Britannica (www.britannica.com) have maintained a high online profile during the innovative cyber-developments to be described below. (Surfers may even browse the articles of the 1911 (E.B.) edition at www.1911encyclopedia.com.)A much more recent online presence, still in its beta stage, is the High Beam Encyclopedia (www.encyclopedia.com), which offers articles from the sixth edition of the Columbia Encyclopedia as well as newspaper and magazine references and a commercial backnumbers service for newspapers, magazines and journals.

At the turn of the century, Larry Sanger was hired by Jimmy Wales to organise the (short-lived) Nupedia project which was launched in March 2000. The aim was to attract encyclopedia entries from volunteer experts for eventual publishing as free content after peer review and approval. During the following twelve months of snail-pace progress, Sanger proposed to speed up the process with preliminary versions in wiki form (Wikipedia), involving voluntary contributions from any Users. Within a further year, this idea had produced such rapid progress that the original idea of articles by experts was discarded and Sanger left the company shortly afterwards. (Ironically, Wales would eventually be forced to reconsider and partially reinstate the experts theme into Wikipedia.)

In the intervening seven years, Wikipedia, financed by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation and supported by the enthusiastic efforts of thousands of eager volunteers, has been experiencing exponential growth, not only in English but in many other languages. It currently dominates the online encyclopedia field. There is no denying that the 2 million entries of this seething online co-operative venture is of incalculable daily value to its millions of users as a quick free source of reliable data on basic factual topics. On other topics it has proved to be much less satisfactory. (See ‘Wikipedia’s Grudging Recognition of its Self-imposed Limitations’.)

However, with Wikipedia’s success have come many problems and controversies and subsequent necessary adjustments to its rigid structure. For example, the following new departure was announced in mid-2006 with reference to the German Wikipedia:

“The German Wikipedia is set to introduce editing restrictions that may spread to other language versions if successful. This involves identifying a set of “trusted users” and allowing only their changes to be instantly visible. New contributors’ work would be moderated by these users, who might be selected on the basis of how long they have been on the site and the number of their edits that have gone unreverted.”

(http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Wikipedia)

Incidentally, the following brief extracts from an announcement about the German version of Wikipedia (with its 700,000 articles) is of particular interest to those used to the conditions under which the English Wikipedia has notched up over 2 million articles of varying quality:

“The German Wikipedia is different from the English Wikipedia in a number of aspects.

There are severe rules of relevancy. Contemporary people usually have to reach a high level of fame before an article on them is allowed. […]

Many controversial articles are protected for months and cannot be edited by unsubscribed or recently subscribed users.”

The progress of Wikipedia in its initial rigid form has produced a great deal of alternative Internet activity from disillusioned editors, critics as well as from users and editors who have preferred to set up their own ‘forks’ or alternative Wiki encyclopedias to produce what they see as less inhibited or more permanent results. The most interesting of these forks are the following ones set up by non-English-speaking groups:

Germany: www.wikiweise.de

Russia: www.wikiznanie.ru

Spanish-speaking countries: wikilibre.org/index.php/

Perhaps the most interesting ‘fork’ is on display at http://en.wikipilipinas.org

WikiPilipinas is a very interesting but also very localised offshoot, launched in mid 2007. It deals with Philippine-related topics, is non-academic, allows original research and is not bound by the NPOV principle. It presently contains 57,000 articles.

“WikiPilipinas is an encyclopedia dedicated to anything and everything that matters to Filipinos and the Philippines. It is an encyclopedia of Philippine content and includes elements of an almanac, directory and community pages. A centralized repository of Philippine content, it is intended to serve Filipinos anywhere in the world. Wikipilipinas allows Filipinos to document themselves in a manner they deem proper, whether or not it agrees with what foreign sources say.”

A strong indication that the management of Wikipedia is getting tired of the growing intensity of public criticism and disparagement of its inflexible rules and the instability of some of its articles through constant changes or “edit wars” is the recently launched feeder project ‘Veropedia’ (http://en.veropedia.com), to which Wikipedia writers of ‘good’ articles can apply for their articles to be saved INTACT.

Officially, Wikipedia announces this late 2007 development thus:

“Veropedia is a free, advertising-supported Internet encyclopedia project launched in late October 2007.^[1][2]”

“The site is based around collaboration within Wikipedia, whereby Wikipedia articles that meet Veropedia’s reliability criteria are chosen by its editors, scraped, and then a stable version of the article is kept on Veropedia. Any improvements required for articles to reach a standard suitable for Veropedia occur on Wikipedia itself. This model is intended to provide benefits to both projects with Wikipedia providing a large amount of free content suitable for potential improvement, and Veropedia contributors providing improvements and fact-checking within Wikipedia articles.^[1][2][3]”

“As of April 2008 the site, still in beta, has checked and imported over 5700 articles^[4] from the English Wikipedia into its public database.^[5] Although Veropedia intends to eventually support itself completely through advertising as of January 2008 the project is run mainly from personal savings, investments and loans of those involved in the project.^[6]”

This novel choice for seasoned Wikipedian editors is openly solicited by a Wikipedia User named Moreschi (and perhaps other editors) with some of the Wikipedia edits he makes. They link (through a superscript hyperlink) to the following announcement:

“If you’ve written a quality article, here’s a suggestion about how to save your stable, quality version, and preserve it from vandalism, spam, POV-pushing, and the addition of inaccuracies that so often decrease the quality of Wikipedia articles over time. Want to really preserve your classy work for humanity? See it expert-reviewed? Get it uploaded to Veropedia (FAQ, see also my user and talk pages.)! You don't have to do this yourself; though we welcome new contributors, if you feel you haven't got the time, simply send an email to us suggesting your article as suitable for upload, or any other you might know of that you think good enough. To do this, go to the Main Page that I linked to above, put your mouse on the Contacts tab, and click “Suggest an article”. Cheers, Moreschi ^Talk 13:38, 10 November 2007 (UTC)”

Moreschi also makes this astonishing further comment on his Wikipedia User page:

“Veropedia is going to be taking up more and more of my time, and I would encourage others who care about Wikipedia's articles to join in with our efforts there and help out. The best of my work has already been saved there as a quality stable version, and for that reason I do not regret the time I have spent on Wikipedia since March 2006. I’m not overly optimistic about Wikipedia’s condition at the moment, but it is not beyond repair. All it would take is for more to understand that truth is a woman, and she will not let herself be assailed with the cold bludgeons of policy.”

“I will still do everything important: contribute regularly to articles, put in the hours at the coalface at the Opera Project, write and discover quality content for Veropedia.”

The recent appearance of rival fledgeling Web encyclopedia Citizendium and Google’s announced Knol project (still under wraps since December 2007) add further incentives for incorporating greater flexibility into the Wikipedia system.

Citizendium [= Citizens’ Compendium], a project in preparation since 2005 by Larry Sanger.

Launched in early 2007, with the laudable aim of providing expert contributions under contributors’ own names, Citizendium also announced a feeder project called Eduzendium (proposed by Professor Sorin Matei) which would harness the talents of doctoral candidates. In spite of these attractive proposals, the project was not received very optimistically by experts as diverse as Professor Clay Shirky (a Wikimedia advisory board member) and Nicholas Carr, an eloquent critic of Wikipedia. After just over a year of publishing, the progress of this new online encyclopedia (with a non-charismatic name) does not seem very encouraging in terms of properly finished and approved articles.

Knol Web Encyclopedia

Announced in late 2007 by Google, also to consist of expert and peer-reviewed unalterable articles. Apart from one sample published, its initial work has so far been conducted in secret.

At the same time others have been setting up their own Wikipedia-derived encyclopedias and specialist groups have begun to offer restricted wiki-type encyclopedias.

Scholarpedia

A very serious scholarly restricted scientific Wiki, of value to specialists.

Conservapedia

Also aimed at a restricted audience, this wiki-based encyclopedia is written “from a socially and American Conservative Christian viewpoint” in order to counter a perceived “liberal, anti-Christian and anti-American bias” in Wikipedia. Its editorial policies are guided by the “Conservative Commandments”.

Also to be taken into consideration in a survey of online encyclopedias are the offerings of those organisations which (in accordance with Jimmy Wales’s expressed philosophy and wishes) have copied Wikipedia, or parts of it, to their own websites, some of which permit further editing by visitors. Since each site downloads the copies at different times, they enshrine versions of Wikipedia articles which may subsequently undergo significant amendments. Such cyber-debris may therefore be misleading, or may preserve fossilised versions of controversial Wikipedia articles which have (long) since been ‘reverted’ in ‘edit wars’.

Caveat lector! (Online Encyclopedia readers should take care!)

PS If all of these bewildering sources of information become too much, it may be time for a brief ‘R & R’ visit to Uncyclopedia(hosted by Daniel Brandt).

]]> http://jennylu.wordpress.com/?p=178 Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:05:08 +0000 jennylu http://jennylu.wordpress.com/?p=178 A comment on my blog from Charles Knight led me to this visual search engine that I hadn't seen before. Searchme has huge appeal for all those visual learners out there. It has huge appeal for me and I don't necessarily think I fall into the visual learner category (but I could be wrong about that!). 

I love it because of the way it represents search results. It's like the iTouch - your search returns are represented with the actual page on the screen - behind it are the other pages that you can view by clicking on them or using the scroll tab at the bottom of the page. Here's what it looks like. I searched for one of my all time fave bands, the Red Hot Chili Peppers. 

You get the idea, right? I'm loving it. I can see the appeal for students today. Most of mine default to Google because they don't know what else is out there. They get a page of results and click through text after endless text trying to find something suitable. With Searchme they get a eyeball on the page straight up and can start assessing its suitability from the get go. When you start typing your search request categories pop up to allow you to filter your search or you can choose the search all option. It's still in Beta so you can't expect brilliant returns every time, but Charles at AltSearchEngines has posted about it saying that it has just received another billion or so in funding so things can only get better.

Don't you just love what's happening with Search engines today? Semantic search engines like Mahalo and visual options like Searchme are helping to make search more meaningful for our students. If Google don't watch out they might have some competition on their hands. Better get Knol out there soon I'd say! 

Thanks Charles for the comment and for your great site. AltSearchEngines - check it out!  

Om Moa kan du läsa idag på Aftonbladet. Både här och här.

Dessutom kan du läsa Bloggen om Moa här.

Säger som jag brukar: Jävla knöl.. jävla sjukdom.. jävlar anamma...

Barncancerfonden hittar du här.

Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om Moa, Pysan, cancer, barn, knöl, blogg

Knol stands for knowledge. If your are guessing it as wikipedia then you are right. Unlike wikipedia google will soon open it up for everyone. Currently it is on invitation only, as it is on testing. There is this wikipedia where there are articles on a subject written and edited by two or more people whereas knol is a user based 'wiki' edited and written by a 'particular person'. Google will give advantages like showing up adsense or advertising from third party.

Though this will be a success in itself but question arises that will it be a quality article?.
Wikipedia has done incredibly well because it a subject is edited by many people and thus has a good share of knowledge and balancing its quality and accuracy of correctness on a subject . Now that knol is written and edited by one person sharing his/her id - there is a small risk. But that should not be worrying  much!.

Rest see after its launch! How it works.....

Dessutom är det Norges nationaldag..

Alla blommor och presenter får lämnas här.. eftersom blogginnehavaren är på fotboll hela dan idag..

Mitt allra första blogginlägg hittar du här: 17 maj 2006

Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om pysan, blogg, bröst, cancer, årsdag, knöl, fotboll

À l’occasion de la Fête de l’Internet, 430 Espaces Publics Numériques de 250 communes se mobilisent pour sensibiliser les jeunes et leurs parents aux bons usages de l’Internet avec Internet Sans Crainte. L’opération est relayée au sein des écoles et collèges par le Ministère de l’Education Nationale.

• Ça vous dirait que dans 10 ans votre futur employeur sache comment s’est passée votre dernière petit fête entre amis ?
• Cela ne vous dérange pas d’être une cible publicitaire ?
• Je peux publier ce que je veux ! Quand je veux ! Si je veux ! Sûr de çà ?
• Peut-on me retrouver même si je ne laisse aucune info personnelle ?
• Dans un combat contre un robot « aspirateur de mail », vous auriez le dessus ?
• L’intimité est-elle encore d’actualité à l’heure du web collaboratif ?
• Si ma liberté s’arrête là où commence celle des autres, où s’arrête ma liberté sur le web ?

http://www.cnil.fr/index.php?id=2429

Using Wikipedia in the University Classroom

One of the article commentators explains that s/he uses Wikipedia for course assignments, where students work on entries of relevance to the subject matter of the course, with the aim of finding inaccuracies and making corrections. As that teacher states, "They learn 4 things 1) that Wikipedia can be useful but has its limits 2) how to assess knowledge 3) how to research a topic 4) how to actively put their knowledge to work as Wikipedia guerrillas. My aim is for the students to see themselves as active producers of knowledge and as contributors to scholarly debates".

Jbmurray, an academic and Wikipedia contributor, who would nonetheless advise students against using Wikipedia as a research source, produced a very interesting page on Wikipedia itself, explaining the advantages, and pitfalls, of using Wikipedia for assignments.

One of the critically important things that students learn by contributing to Wikipedia articles, or creating new ones as part of coursework, is the value of revision. In addition, the projects helped to teach collaboration, and open up peer review beyond the judgment of a single professor. Jbmurray calls this "collective, public, peer review": collaborating with Wikpedia editors, feedback from other Wikipedia contributors, and members of the public. Professors, on the other hand, can track the inputs and changes made by students, a system that allows for a greater degree of transparency, Jbmurray argues.

While Jbmurray worries that argumentation is not a skill that is developed in such assignments, that the development of a cogent thesis is not the core of the activity, students learn to think critically of information. In addition, they learn skills that will be of value in work settings outside of academia: "information gathering, presentation, meticulousness, teamwork, and the ability to negotiate with the public sphere".

As Jbmurray points out, Wikipedia itself is actively promoting the idea of being used in school and university projects. Against the backdrop of dozens of university projects that it documents, Wikipedia states:

If you are a professor or teacher at a school or university or college, we encourage you to use Wikipedia in your class to demonstrate how an open content website works (or doesn't). You are not the first person to do so, and many of these projects have resulted in both advancing the student's knowledge and useful content being added to Wikipedia. An advantage of this over regular homework is that the student is dealing with a real world situation, which is not only more educational but also makes it more interesting ("the world gets to see my work"), probably resulting in increased dedication. Besides, it will give the students a chance to collaborate on course notes and papers, and their effort might remain online for reference, instead of being discarded and forgotten as is usual with paper coursework, or classroom systems which are routinely reinitialized.

Continued Worries

As Andy Guess' sources notes, there are continued worries around quality and the peer review process revolving around Wikipedia: "the very structure of Wikipedia encourages editors (who can be anyone) to disregard expertise and undermine the basic mechanics of peer review and academic credibility". Wikipedia is rife with conflict and anonymity, many have noted, which can lead to the erosion of the accuracy of an article and even acts of repeated vandalism, as outlined in a memorable, ethnographically sensitive, piece on Wikipedia by Nicholson Baker in the 20 March, 2008, issue of The New York Review of Books ("The Charms of Wikipedia"). As Andy Guess puts it: "the site’s openness — the ability of everyone to participate, without having to identify themselves by name — leads to an erosion of accountability and, often, an increasingly shrill cacophony".

Academic, Peer Reviewed, Open Source Encyclopedias

Not having to conform to the constraints and vagaries of Wikipedia, as if it were "the only show in town", some academics have opted to create wikis that are more in line with professional standards of accountability, peer review, and credible research. It is still open access, but not quite as open at the source of knowledge production.

Guess provides a very good outline of these various initiatives, some of which, like Citizendium, still try to build linkages with coursework. This is spelled out in a press release on the site, dated 24 January, 2008, part of which follows here:

In a striking departure from traditional methods of teaching, a new way for students to gain course credits is emerging. As with so much else this decade, it is all down to the Internet.

Traditional teaching saw students laboring to produce essays that to them felt onerous and oftentimes pointless. Once read by the lecturer their writing was generally consigned to the dustbin.

For some students, that situation is now radically changing.

In a never-before-seen new initiative, the online reference encyclopedia project Citizendium (http://www.citizendium.org), in collaboration with expert teachers and lecturers, has launched Eduzendium. The Eduzendium project allows students to write their assignments online on the Citizendium on a given topic allocated by their teacher.

Students can take responsibility for their work for course credits, and teachers grade the finished work based on the quality of the final article produced from each student's input.

But students not only get to earn grade credits, they add to the global store of knowledge as they earn their written course assignment credits. By collaborating with the rapidly growing Citizendium (CZ) community of expert and non-expert authors, they can have their essays become a lasting article in the Citizendium.

Perhaps best of all, students actually get to learn in a highly collaborative real-time way, enjoying direct online access to highly competent help with their work, in the form of the Citizendium authors and expert editors. The community is small, but growing and quite lively. It is also polite, in no small part because real names are required. For these reasons, the Eduzendium program differs crucially from using Wikipedia in a similar way.

And many basic topics are still wide open.

One of the thrusts of these scholarly efforts is to create resources that will attract scholarly input, especially if contributors become "curators" of their pieces online, and are able to show that they received peer review by other scholars in an often cited resource. This is one of the principles that we find driving the site, Scholarpedia. The primary emphasis of Scholarpedia, howevers, seems to be the natural sciences and computation sciences.

Google is also currently developing a resource, knol, which so far has contributors working by invitation only. Knol describes its mission, in preliminary terms:

Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it. The tool is still in development and this is just the first phase of testing....The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors

What About Anthropology?

Citizendium currently has, among other such groups, an Anthropology Workgroup. It currently has a small group of identifiable editors, and a few dozen contributors, to most fields in anthropology aside from cultural anthropology which is still very limited on that site. The group is clearly working slowly and carefully, with articles at different stages of completion, review, and approval, and only about a dozen actually approved at the moment.

A recent commentator on this blog noted an absence of open source/open access course textbooks in anthropology. Apparently anthropology is "distinguishing" itself as one of the few fields not to have these freely available, freely amendable, open source course texts.

This is indeed surprising, given the number of Internet-literate anthropologists, given the growing number of anthropology blogs, and anthropologists interested in open source and open access issues, and given some of the freely available resources that would permit networking and content management needed for collaborating on building these course texts.

If anyone is interested in pursuing this course, please count me in.

Introduction

The recent entry of Google into the online encyclopedia market (‘Knol’, announced in December 2007) and the equally bold counter move by Wikipedia’s original commercial sponsor, Wikia, Inc. into the Search engine market (‘Wikia Search’, launched on 7 January this year) signal direct mutual challenges by the two Internet giants. Whatever the eventual effects on their corporate Internet success, there are also interesting implications for millions of Internet users of these two essential types of instant online information as well as for other competitors in both of these cyber-arenas (encyclopedias and search engines).

The present study concentrates on the phenomenally successful but increasingly controversial (non-profit) Wikipedia product, whose enormous prestige is (rightfully) enjoyed by Wikia, Inc. Regardless of the outcome of the Wikia Search launch, this challenging Google ploy adds extra pressure on Wikipedia to reconsider its flawed open structure and accelerate the sorts of changes (including the recent Veropedia option) which it has already been obliged to introduce or contemplate over the past three years of intense criticism and embarrassments.

A similar study of the potential effect of Wikia’s move into the Search Engine market combined with a reassessment of Yahoo’s continuing progress in this market would also be welcome, especially to disgruntled users of Google Search. We live in interesting times.

Since the December announcement, little is on show about Knol on Google’s vast network of sites, except the display of a specimen article (www.google.com/help/knol_screenshot.html) and the promise of further articles by experts (which are apparently in preparation). Meanwhile, the Wikia camp has already displayed the first fruits of its beta version of Wikia Search (http://re.search.wikia.com), so preliminary impressions may be drawn. In spite of the instant condemnation by many professional commentators and bloggers and without offering a guarantee to this beta product, attention should be concentrated on how Wikia delivers on its promise to be “more transparent to end users”. For example, the ‘Discuss these results’ option for each search could eventually provide an alternative to those who find Google’s attitude to searchers and website owners too arcane and dictatorial. At the outset of this fascinating contest, the signs indicate that Wikia Search has the interesting potential to become the overdue selective Search Engine that many Netizens need, thereby, perhaps, having a positive influence on the bloated Search Engine Optimisation market. Any frivolous or commercial misuse by Wikia and CEO Jimmy Wales of this longstanding promise to deliver a truly discriminating Search Engine would deserve total public condemnation and flagellation by eagle-eyed Internet observers like Nicholas G. Carr.

IF Wikia fails to deliver the goods, someone else MUST take up the challenge and compound their shame.

*

Since 2001, Wikipedia has established itself as the most successful online encyclopedia. It has proved to be a basically excellent primary source on factual topics. Nevertheless, the seven years of Wikipedia’s phenomenal growth (in many languages) have also been punctuated with strong and vociferous criticism, controversies, complaints and embarrassments in connection with some of the unsatisfactory results produced by its totally open Wiki format. A growing snowball of Internet, media and academic literature expresses both praise and extreme dissatisfaction.

…………………………

(The complete article (‘Internet Niche Markets. 1. Online Encyclopedias. Wikipedia and Others’) will soon be available on my web page: www.briansteel.net/writings)

So what is my VC friend talking about? The larger the Web grows, the more important search becomes, right? That’s probably so, and as a note of clarification, he changed his statement slightly to say, “Search, as we know it, is dead.” What he means is that, with the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Second Life, LinkedIn and even Google’s own Orkut, the next generation of Web users may find what they want by using their social network rather than a search algorithm. After all, the people in your online social network should know you better than a mathematical equation, right?

I have written about this idea before too. Google and other search engines index an incredible amount of information, but it it often up to the experience of the search engine user to get a good result. If I ask the right question Google delivers quicker than anything else. If I ask the wrong question I'm forced to scroll though millions of search results to find what I need.

There are different possibilities to tackle that problem. We could replace the Google bot indexing by human indexing, like Mahaloo does. Humans can interpret information better than computers, but the downside is off course that they can process much less information too. We can create large encyclopedias on-line which are updated by anyone (Wikipedia), or by experts in the field (KNOL). We could analyze surfing behavior, social interaction and social graphs of people and use that information to provide the user with more targeted information (which for now is used more often in advertisement). This is where the VC friend is pointing too. If Facebook, or any other social networking site knows more about you, and your friends it might be able to do a better job at search. While I can agree with that up to a certain point (I'll get to that), the article takes a false turn in my opinion. Glenn provies he following example:

But what may turn out to be the strongest signal of all is the footprint you make with your online identity. Consider how much information you voluntarily provide on your Facebook profile. Now imagine if you could combine that with your Netflix renting and Amazon buying habits. Then throw in the suggestions of your friends and the pages you visit the most often. All those various sources of information about you are currently stored in different locations—on your computer’s browser history, on your Facebook page, on the servers for Netflix and Amazon—but just imagine how accurate a search could be if every time you had a query, the mass of data about you that exists on the Internet could inform the results. (Google and Yahoo already do this to a limited extent by tracking your search history to refine results, and surely startups will try.)

This is the Walhalla of search, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. A Social Network owners wet dream. But it's just too good to be true. I don't buy it. I'm not saying that knowing things about a person might help a service provider provide more targeted results, but I don't know of a single example where this has been implemented successfully. Every social network site is hogging data to accomplish just this. Whether it is to target ads or to provide the user with search capabilities. But it is likely to fail at least as often as it will succeed. Google provides me in 80-90% of the time with the answer I'm looking for. If a search engine that knows about my profile fails half of the time, I wouldn't bother using it.

Why would such an attempt fail half of the times (or something in that order)? Because it doesn't take human behavior into account. There are at least two barriers that can hardly be overcome by any computer algorithm or data hog system. First of all, on-line I'm not who I really am off-line. On-line people can have multiple identities, lie about themselves, provide us with profiles that look better than real life. I wrote about that earlier in an article called "The Future of advertisement lies outside of Social Networks". I wrote:

I’m hiding behind thousands of friends, only showing you the public me, a persiflage of real life. You might think that this universal social network will provide you better information than demography does now. Yes, I am 39 years old, married to a lovely wife, I have four kids and I live in the Netherlands. But that really is just a small, public part of me.

Here I am ;-)

Secondly, a computer algorithm can hardly interpret my mood of the day. Depending on how I feel, what I have experienced earlier, what I'm about to do in the future, the coffee I had for breakfast, etc, etc, I might be looking for different things when I type "I am looking for a car" in the search bar. Chances are that by taking into account my profile information, social graph, interactions on Facebook or any other social network, the "social search" algorithm will be way off.

Depending on the question you need answered, people will start using different search algorithms. If you want to know the phone number or address of a doctor you rarely visit, you will use Google. If you want to buy a new espresso machine, chances are that you will read all kinds of reviews on the Internet (which always contradict each other and are often biased) but will end up in a store tasting the espresso right there (nothing beats that experience). But if you need answers to complex questions, then the best way to go is to ask your family, friends, colleagues, Twitter followers. You will get the best answers there. Finding information is great, interacting about it is even better. No search engine or social search algorithm can beat that.

Social search algorithms will definitely have their place in search the coming years. But I doubt they'll perform much better than Google does right now. Adding social information into a search query might work really well, but not always. And when it's off, it's likely to be way off.

I wouldn't just write off Google yet.

Men etter et lite søk på nettet fant jeg raskt ut av det. De som er interessert kan titte innom bloggen min.

Knol, according to Google, means ‘a unit of knowledge’. I think it is great to have a better version of wikipedia and I am sure Google will do greater job in this area.

I am firm admirer for Google way of doing business. But I would certainly not advocate the monopoly. To overpower Google or Microsoft, you got to be smarter and quicker to kill the beast, otherwise the story repeats itself.

Yes, I have heard that Chief of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales was talking about creating Search Engine to beat GooG and see … what Google has replied with!!! A beta and running service of Knol.

I think in business, you got to stay ahead, not just by talking and letting your opponent know your thinking patterns rather strike them when they least expect you and materialize on the gain from their on. Google did same to Yahoo and Microsoft. Wikipedia just lost it.

Por RAMÓN PECO (SOITU.ES), 12-03-2008

Al leer sobre Jimmy Wales, fundador de Wikipedia y Jimbo para los amigos, lo que más sorprende es el cúmulo de contradicciones con las que uno se topa. Una de las más evidentes incoherencias de este estadounidense, nacido en Alabama hace 42 años, es haber creado la mayor cooperativa de conocimiento del mundo tras abrazar una filosofía liberal profundamente individualista: El objetivismo.

.

. 

La cosa tiene su miga porque la fundadora de esta corriente de pensamiento, Ayn Rand, suelta en sus libros perlas como esta: "Cualquier forma de altruismo es inmoral". Así, no es de extrañar que la discusión en la Wikipedia española sobre si Wales sigue comulgando o no con el objetivismo esté al rojo vivo.

Los escándalos

Lo cierto es que este ex broker, que ganó a los treintaitantos el suficiente dinero para no tener que trabajar durante unos cuantos años, no parece moverse por mero altruismo. Danny Wool mano derecha de Jimbo en la fundación Wikimedia, acusó recientemente a este de apropiarse de fondos para pagar carísimos masajes, botellas de vino de 600 dolares, y alguna comida cuya factura era superior al sueldo de muchos de los que realizan donaciones a Wikipedia. A Jimbo le tuvieron que retirar la tarjeta de crédito de la Fundación.

El otro asunto que últimamente ha puesto su nombre en los titulares de todo el mundo tampoco pinta muy bien. Rachel Marsden, una comentarista política canadiense de tendencias conservadoras y ex novia de Wales, puso a la venta en eBay un camiseta supuestamente de este con dos misteriosas manchas. La cosa, por lo que se dice, era una venganza tras enterarse la periodista por la Wikipedia, tal cual suena, de que la relación entre ambos había terminado.

Wikia, en busca de los dólares

En cualquier caso habrá que ver si estas informaciones no están relacionadas con las envidias que despierta el tremendo éxito de la enciclopedia. Es evidente que para atacar un proyecto tras el que no se encuentra ninguna empresa es necesario disparar contra algo identificable, y no es un secreto que Jimbo, a día de hoy, es para bien y para mal el rostro de Wikipedia. En su última aventura empresarial, el buscador Wikia, quiere rentabilizar el haber fundado la mayor obra de consulta de todos los tiempos. Para ello utiliza dos de los pilares en los que se basa el éxito de la enciclopedia mundial: la colaboración de los usuarios y el uso del código abierto en las entrañas de la plataforma. Las críticas por la pobre capacidad de búsqueda del invento no han tardado en llegar, lo que por otra parte quiere decir que existe expectación.

Wales es ahora visto con recelo por los grandes de internet, léase Google y Yahoo, pues Wikia, a diferencia de Wikipedia, entra en competición directa con los intereses de estas y otras empresas. Como si se tratase de una revancha por haber tocado el de Alabama el botón que no debía, Google anunció el desarrollo de su propia herramienta de consulta: Knol. Con ella el buscador californiano, clave en el éxito de Wikipedia, quizá busca terminar con lo de no ganar ni un solo dólar dirigiendo cada día a millones de usuarios hacia los distintos proyectos de Wikimedia.

Distorsionando Wikipedia

Sin embargo, más allá de luchas empresariales cada vez son más los que pueden estar interesados en socavar la credibilidad de la enciclopedia. Es un hecho que este enorme sitio web se ha convertido en el primero hacia el que los internautas se dirigen para recabar información sobre casi cualquier cosa, por lo que que más vale prestar atención a los intentos por manipular los artículos en vez de cotillear con quién se acuesta Wales. Es conocido que Wikipedia Scanner, la herramienta de la Fundación para detectar la procedencia de los usuarios que editan artículos, ha detectado que el Vaticano, la CIA y el Partido Demócrata se encuentran en la lista de los que, por un motivo u otro, han modificado datos para apoyar sus intereses. Lo más sensato parece ser vigilar las entrañas de Wikipedia en vez de perder el tiempo con la vida privada o pública de su creador, que por otra parte a estas alturas parece estar en otra guerra.

Foto: Wales fue llamado 'la peor pesadilla de Google' por la prestigiosa Fast Company en abril de 2007 (Foto: Steve Rhodes, Flickr)

"The individual user has been king on the Internet, but the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward edited information vetted by professionals."

 The article champions the idea that we are moving into a new phase of the internet - internet 3.0, where the wisdom of crowds (web 2.0) is being supplemented by another layer "of truly talented, compensated people to make the product more trusted and refined." (Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis) The article uses Google's Knol (still in development), About.com, who employ guides to find relevant results for search terms, and Mahalo, a people powered search engine, as examples of the new direction the web may be heading in.

Another featured new entry into the market is BigThink.com,  "a self-styled "YouTube for ideas" backed by former Harvard president Larry Summers and others (It) debuted its cache of polished video interviews with public intellectuals." I took a look and I liked what I saw. The videos are arranged into topics including History, Business and Economics, Science and Technology, Media and the Press, Truth and Justice as well as many others. Our Year 10 students have, 'What makes us human', as an overarching question for their study of English for a semester. Low and behold, there's a video on this site dealing with exactly that question. I could see that this site would be an easy sell to the sceptics out there who doubt YouTube. (Personally, I love it!) Most of the videos on BigThink.com are less than seven minutes and offer the hook for stimulating class discussion. You can register into the site and contribute to the discussion surrounding ideas they are talking about. A great classroom activity and one I'd like to try with my students. Definitely worth a look.  

I really like the final quote from the article from Glenn Reynolds, author of 'An Army of Davids'.

"There's always a Big New Thing, but the old Big New Thing doesn't really go away," says Reynolds. "It becomes just another layer—like we're building an onion from the inside out."  

I certainly hope we don't see the demise of user-generated content. It's one of the things I love about the web  - its democratic nature allowing all to have input. Appeals to my upbringing.  

Pour l'instant, en l'état du droit, c'est la diffusion de l'information diffamatoire qui est sanctionnée. Donc tous les sites reprenant des infos sont menacés, depuis Google et Yahoo jusqu'à Fazed, Slashdot... et Libertés-Internets. Ca va pas être simple.

Mise à jour du 11 mars 2008 : le propriétaire du nom de domaine n'est pas responsable

C'est une décision de justice du tribunal de grande instance de Nanterre, en date du 19 février, qui risque de faire couler beaucoup d'encre dans les jours à venir.

« Un signal fort »

„Der erste Schritt der Informationsrecherche ist heute meist die Suche im Internet - das bedeutet für die meisten: Google.“ – zu lesen im Wikipedia-Artikel „Wikipedia:Recherche“ und gültig für 99,9 oder mehr Prozent aller Internet-User.Google dominiert den europäischen Suchmaschinenmarkt - und in den Top-Ergebnissen der meisten Suchanfragen ist fast immer ein Wiki-Artikel zu finden.

Google-Suche, -Bücher, -Toolbar, -Blog, -E-Mail, Notizen… Tendenz der Angebote stets steigend! Nun plant der Daten-Gigant Google ein Konkurrenz Tool zu dem Wikipedias fast freier Enzyklopädie. Google Knol soll es heißen . Auch wenn in den Medien die beiden bereits als Konkurrenten angesehen werden, stimmt das meiner Meinung nach nicht ganz.

Sollte es zu einem Konkurrenzkampf kommen, wird vermutlich Google bald als Sieger aus dem Ring steigen: sie haben Kraft und Geld um den Kampf mit Wikipedia zu gewinnen (Wiki „lebt“ von gesponsertem Geld , Google ist derzeit eine der größten und mächtigsten Firmen auf dem Markt).

Jedoch ist ein Kampf nicht das Ziel von Google.  Die Knol-Seiten werden sich zwar in Aufbau und Gestaltung gleichen, aber das war's dann schon mit den Ähnlichkeiten.Die zwei größten Unterschiede möchte ich hier erwähnen:

1. Bei Knol soll ein Bild von demjenigen angezeigt werden, der den Artikel ursprünglich verfasst hat (werft einen Blick auf das folgende Beispiel hier). Anonymität wie bei Wikipedia wird also nicht gewährleistet.
2. Bei Wikipedia gibt es einen gemeinschaftlichen Artikel pro Thema. Bei Knol darf hingegen jeder seinen eigenen Artikel schreiben, wodurch es auch viele verschiedene Knols zum selben Thema geben wird. Damit werden die eigenen Beiträge nicht von anderen verändert und man hat Gestaltungsfreiheit - es wird auch eine Bewertungsfunktion eingebaut, um den besten Artikel ganz oben zu zeigen.Negative Auswirkung auf Wikipedia? - die wird's geben. Wiki wird Zugriffe und an Einfluss verlieren, da Google die eigenen Knol-Seiten natürlich bevorzugt in den Suchergebnissen einbauen wird.

Mein Fazit: Mir ist es irgendwie schon zu viel "Google" und ich trauere jetzt schon um mein geliebtes Wikipedia. Der Ruf, die „erste sehr gute online Enzyklopädie“ zu sein, wird für mich immer in Verbindung mit Wikipedia stehen.Wer sich eine weiteführende Information wünscht, der könnte diese hier und hier finden.

Wikipedia oder Google-Knol: wer gewinnt? Auf die Diskussionen mit euch würde ich mich freuen!

* Knol (Enciclopédia do Google)
* Knol
* Google Knol

Isso é um bom sinal, pois mostra que o internauta deseja informações de alta qualidade na internet, coisa que com certeza o Google conseguirá proporcionar através do Knol, a nova enciclopédia online da rede.

Fonte: Wiki News