All entries for Wednesday 07 February 2007

Web users shaping our search engines?

Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6335793.stm

An interesting news item that the founder of Wikipedia would like to create an alternative search engine. I like the comment:
“The way that things are sorted and ranked and presented to us, really does shape our view of the world.”

I’m not sure whether there is space for a new search engine, even if it is one with open information about how it works. It would have to be pretty comprehensive, whizzy and different to entice people away from Google, but I shall watch the space with interest.

There is, of course, already a directory site that you can contribute to if you’re interested in a user-led way of searching that you can (theoretically) contibute to and thus help to shape our view of the world:
http://dmoz.org/
and of course Google uses this Open Directory too.

Their site makes it sound easy to become an editor, but how easy is it really?
Then again according to the BBC article, Wikipedia have had to restrict in some way who can contribute what to their site, too, so perhaps it isn’t as easy as it once was to contribute to Wikipedia.

Jenny Delasalle : 07 Feb 2007 17:18 |  Tags: Google Wikipedia |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem