Comments on: Wikipedia in Search Results

By: Josh

Josh — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:36:03 +0000

Nils: I didn’t know you could download the entire mathematical formula for Google PR. That’s cool; it’d be cooler, however, if I had the mathematical ability to understand it.

Re: PageRank being named after Larry… didn’t know that, but it doesn’t surprise me.

Tom: I’m not sure if that’s what was bugging me or not, but it is a bit irksome, now that you point it out. However, even that idea doesn’t work for long: if I type in “george bush” or “hillary clinton”, I don’t want the official sites for these people, but rather, recent news involving them. Intentions, intentions.

hthth: Your idea of search results sounds pretty nifty. It makes me wonder, if the systems were advanced enough to understand, how could we quickly communicate our wants to them? I think people are generally accustomed to keyword searching, and I find the prospect of typing in “Information about Discworld plots, including some reviews and fan-art” a little off-putting, even if I knew doing so would get me what I was after. Perhaps if the computer systems in question are advanced enough to understand, they’ll be advanced enough to understand such a request via voice. Ah, dreams!

Re: recommending Discworld novels… I’ve only read The Colour of Magic, which I enjoyed. I’m halfway through Mort now, the first book in the series about Death (the character), and it’s hilarious. If you’re into comedy and fantasy, you’ll probably love the series. If you expect all fantasy books to be oh-so-serious and dramatic, you’ll hate them. Short answer: yeah, check ‘em out.

Nils #2: Ajax-y pop ups delivering relevant results out of a package of results, produced based on what people are going to do with said results. Digital bliss or some such.

What about the Nazis? Also, do you mean you’ve had Wikipedia pop up in your search results? If that’s what you meant, yeah; Wikipedia is very often the #1 result when I google something history related.

By: Nils

Nils — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 06:25:35 +0000

Hey, Hrafn, that’s a great question: what would be better search, say for students, or people preparing an article? Google could then deliver you a “package” of relevant results and highlight the excerpts that work best for you. I see Ajax-y pop ups (don’t worry, I see those everywhere, even on the bus).

Oh, and Josh, I’m preparing a post about Nazis. About time I’d say. Anyway, so far, I’ve had Wikipedia pop up all over the place. In a way, I’d just have to collate.

People are afraid to search these days. Makes me wonder how people come up with these cool posts for their tumblelogs and all. That has to involve some deep and specific queries…

By: hthth

hthth — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:01:15 +0000

How would you display search results, if programming limitations weren’t an issue?

I’d like more flexibility in what is returned and how it’s shown. I can imagine lists being involved; but I could also imagine the dreamy scenario of telling a search engine in natural language that you need ‘Information about Discworld plots, including some reviews and fan-art’ and getting a results specifically tailored for you; in a a similar way a human would return it to you if you asked one to do research. Of course, that would require the comp. to be able to have more information on the context — just as a human would. But it wouldn’t have to be mindreading though

Ironically, poking around at both Wikipedia and Pratchett’s site, it seems that Wikipedia actually is more informative than Pratchett’s site.

With Google, knowledge reigns supreme when it comes to ranking! I haven’t read the Discworld novels, even though I’ve heard good things. Would you recommend them (for people over 20)?

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:54:11 +0000

I think as a historian Josh, you place importance on origin. Pratchett’s novels came before the wiki about them, therefore you judge that the works should supersede the commentary about them. (Can’t really be any other way as we haven’t invented time travel). The search results don’t bare this out and it annoys… me anyway.

At least that’s what gets me about this issue.

By: Nils

Nils — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 21:37:23 +0000

I am Searchor, the Beast from Google-Fu!

Okay, that wasn’t funny. I read somewhere this was one of the reasons Google came up with its own user-generated knowledge base KNOL. And perhaps that why Jimmy Wales came up with his search engine Wikia? In any case, there’s some serious rummaging behind the scenes going on.

Google itself is of course infamously silent when it comes to PR. You can download the entire mathematical outline to it (forgot where, it’s on my del.icio.us somewhere) but they don’t have a simple FAQ about it. SEO sites are classically as confusing. So who knows?

Know what I did find out only recently though? PageRank ™ is named after Larry himself. Honestly, I never knew that.

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:53:01 +0000

Richard: Yeah, I know that most users do that, and that’s cool by me. A lot of the time, the first result is “the best” or what the user was looking for.

I think that part of my gripe with it is that it happens so often, and often enough, Wikipedia isn’t the best thing. It just shows up at the top because everyone and their dog, along with the dog’s fleas, link to Wikipedia. Hell, I do it all the time.

Do you know if the order of search results is affected by what people click on in search results? By that I mean, would folks clicking on WP articles in search results help boost the search result rank of other WP articles?

By: Richard

Richard — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:34:10 +0000

Just to add a little more mostly-irrelevant-fuel to the fire: I’m sure you’re already aware, but most “average” users click the first search result that comes up — in this case, they’d have ended up at Wikipedia — and only go further down the results if the first link doesn’t give what they want. (Don’t have a source for this, but it’s widely quoted. I bet it’s on Nielsen’s site somewhere.)

I’m not sure what impact that might have on the question of Wikipedia appearing as the first result (I see it a lot too, particularly for linguistics terms) but it’s worth noting.

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:50:23 +0000

Hrafn: Yeah, search results are probably going to be “off” until computers can read our minds to know our intentions, which will hopefully be never. I’d rather not have contextual advertising based on what I’m thinking, ya’ know?

(is there such a thing as ’searchee’?)

Looking at dictionary.com, it doesn’t look like such a beast exists. “Searcher”, instead, which, while correct, sounds a bit weird to me in the context of googling something.

I say down with the flat list that creates issues such as this one!

How would you display search results, if programming limitations weren’t an issue?

Ironically, poking around at both Wikipedia and Pratchett’s site, it seems that Wikipedia actually is more informative than Pratchett’s site. Lots of well-ordered info on the main Discworld WP page. However, while I can’t really explain why, I still feel that Pratchett’s site should be first in a “discworld” search result, even though the Wikipedia article is more informative. I know, I know; I sound crazy.

By: hthth

hthth — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:32:17 +0000

I’m going to be a smartass and point out the flatness of Google-type searching in the first place. I can see how Wikipedia could be an authority on Discworld in the sense that it probably has links and (often) unbiased information. But, I can also see the silliness of having Pratchett’s site rank lower.

There can be justifiable cases for each of these options, but ultimately it depends entirely on what the user (is there such a thing as ’searchee’?) is looking for. Therein lies the problem. I say down with the flat list that creates issues such as this one!

Sorry, I know that’s not what you were asking. To give you a straight answer I’d have to say that Pratchett should rank higher .. if his page is informative.