40 million monkeys, jumping on the bed

There's a fine line between a media buzz and runaway speculation and MediaWiki's effort -- apparently called WikiAsari-- to redefine how web searches are done.  At the moment, it's hard to tell which way this one is going.

The idea is classic distributed-smarts in origin.  When you or I go to a smart algorithmic seach engine to look up, say, "Steady-Cams for Super 8 cameras," we end up with lots and lots of stuff that's just, well... wrong. 

What if I could pluck out and tag certain big fat 'hit lists'  with search results that are useful (and red-line those that aren't) AND if those following in my search paths also had a chance to assess search results?  What would probably happen, or so goes the argument of the folks who've brought us Wikipedia, would ultimately be searches that more accurately reflect honest-to-god and flesh-and-blood querries. See:  http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9075-2517026,00.html

Why is this important?

1.  If this works search results will be 'magically' closer to what we're really looking for ,

2.  The people who want to make this happen already know how to run Wikipedia (the web's 15th most popular site, by the way)  We should also point out that Amazon-dot-com is investing in the effort.

3.  We're talking about a market of - literally - billions of daily web searches.

Comments

[Adam Jusko]

The question is whether searchers will bother working to make results better, or whether the only contributors will be those who want to promote their own sites.

Wikipedia works because its beneficial and no one's making a buck from it. In Wikiasari's case, ads will be run and Wikia will take half the proceeds---will volunteers want to help when they get nothing and Wikia makes a profit.

Bessed at http://www.bessed.com is doing a human-powered search site that uses paid editors and encourages user participation via comments on each topic, but we make the final decisions on rankings and what's included. It's not pure social search, but we believe it's the only way social search can really produce a useful end product in the search space.

[Tom Portante]

I need more time to look at Bessed - but I agree at a thoroughly visceral level. I believe there ARE times when collective work needs to be nudged along by a greater hand.

An argument can be made that Wikipedia is unique in the world of collabortive efforts because it's acquired a critical mass that acts to counter overt partisan- or malicious- imbalances. Getting TO that critical mass fast enough -- before people start to dismiss WikiAsari (or whatever it will be called) as a place of petty self-promotion -- will be one of the grand challenges for this new venture.

The idea that comes to mind as I write this however, is that I routinely underestimate what seems like a social *need* to contribute to intellectual mashups. WikiAsari's critical mass may arrive sooner than anyone expects...