I recently saw a quite remarkable news item on the Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB). With a background of 10 years in Dutch language reference works, I was eager to see what was the next step of EB. I heard of the EB when I started my publishing career in the reference department of the Dutch publisher Het Spectrum Uitgeverij. The company had just been bought by VNU and needed a kind of flagship. In 1969 the first plans were formulated for the Great Spectrum Encyclopedia (Grote Spectrum Encyclopedie, abbreviated to GSE). In 1970 I walked in and became the first editor (in time; not in rank) of the GSE. One of the first jobs was to familiarise myself with the various editorial formulae: alphabetical order; systematic formula; hybrid formula, using a systematic approach in alphabetical order. It was a great time. Besides it was the first time that I was involved in a project, where a computer was used for editorial purposes; a computer was in fashion as an enlarged calculator but not as an editorial tool. In the Netherlands, already Excerpta Medica was using the computer for editing editorial tools, photo-typesetting and as archive; as Excerpta Medica had a terminology thesaurus at the heart of its operation, the computer took care that no dead links and senseless links were created and recorded. In that environment I got familiar with the EB. It was a fascinating time.
I have been watching the EB during the CD-ROM decade (1985-1995) and later on into the internet era. It has been a stormy time for EB to survive. With internet as the new encyclopedia, EB lost influence dramatically. EB got a real blow when Wikipedia appeared on the horizon and when the scientific magazine Nature made a comparison between articles in EB and Wikipedia. Wikipedia articles were as good as EB articles. The EB rebuttal in a 20 page paper did not have much effect. But it has set the editorial staff of EB thinking.
It has taken some time, but EB will now allow users to write for the encyclopedia. Users will be able to send in contributions, but in contrast to Wikipedia, the users will not be able to adapt the content of the articles right away.
The publisher of the EB says that he will not shirk his responsibility and give in to the wisdom of the crowds and mass intelligence. Editors will remain responsible for the content of the articles and decide on what user information is incorporated. User will have to make themselves known by first name and surname. Experts in certain fields, who can demonstrate their expertise, will get more freedom in changing and adding to the articles. The new system is called ‘together, but not democratic’; it is basically a repressively tolerant editorial policy. It is clear the Wikipedia is hurting EB. Wikipedia is indexed completely, while EB is not. The renewed site of EB is still beta.
Blog Posting Number: 1128
Tags: encyclopedia, wisdom of the crowds
Showing posts with label Wikipedia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wikipedia. Show all posts
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Wikia not moving Fast
There is some movement in the field of search engines. Jimmy Wales has launched the first prototype of Wiki Search, while Bill Gates is attempting to leave Microsoft with the legacy of a decent search engine by bidding for the Norwegian search engine Fast Search & Transfer.
Wikia or Wiki Search is part of a commercial project, contrary to Wikipedia, and is now in its alpha version and it will take another two years to mature. Wikia is open source and will have to develop with the input of users. Presently mainly English language websites are indexed; the alpha version has some 50 to 100 million web pages of the 18 billion indexed pages by Google or the unofficial estimate of 30 billion pages. Search results will come with mini articles with a small explanation or photograph. Users can write mini articles regarding the subject like in the Wikipedia. User can also rank articles thus providing better results. The site starts out for searches, but in the future images should be searchable as well as news. To protect Wikia from spamming the same methods are being used as with Wikipedia.
I have had a look at the search system and can imagine that it will take at least another two years. Of course with help of the open source community and open content community it should be possible to reach a competitive stage with Google earlier. But this help might be sparse as Wikia is a commercial operation.
The results of the search were very disappointing. I did 3 searches. One calibration was searching for my name, one search action for the blog and one search on cross-media. The search for my name Jak Boumans delivered 11 results, of which 6 were displayed and the series of 7 to 11 was not accessible. The first 6 results were not impressive: 3 results were duplications, 2 were not really important references and one result was okay. For the first 6 results the search engine had picked up references fitting the multiple word criterion; what I did not get to see is whether the other results dealt with Jak and Boumans separately. Searching for this blog’s name, I had 2 hits, both referring to secondary sources and not to the blog itself. Last but not least I searched for cross-media. I did this in order to see how it would handle cross-media, with or without a hyphen and perhaps even a word morph like x-media, with or without a hyphen. The list of its results was overwhelming 1490 hits, again only 10 hits were displayed; there was a reference for the hits from 11 to 20, but again this did not work. Of course, asking for such a fashionable media term is like asking for the word God in the Bible or Allah in the Koran. Clear is that the search engine looked for cross-media and cross media, but not for crossmedia and the search engine did not sidestep to the term xmedia.
On the search engine front there was some encouraging news: Microsoft had made a bid for 837 million euro (1152 million dollar) for Fast Search & Transfer. I have written about this search engine before. I consider it as one of the best one in Europe and a better search engine than Google. So far it has been oriented to the business market. It has dived into the mobile search market and in the advertising sector. When Microsoft has bought this company by the second quarter (it is a friendly acquisition), it most likely will start out to exploit it in the business sector as Fast Search is active there already. I would not be surprised, when Microsoft would start to build up a competitor of Google in the background.
Blog Posting Number: 972
Tags: search engine
Wikia or Wiki Search is part of a commercial project, contrary to Wikipedia, and is now in its alpha version and it will take another two years to mature. Wikia is open source and will have to develop with the input of users. Presently mainly English language websites are indexed; the alpha version has some 50 to 100 million web pages of the 18 billion indexed pages by Google or the unofficial estimate of 30 billion pages. Search results will come with mini articles with a small explanation or photograph. Users can write mini articles regarding the subject like in the Wikipedia. User can also rank articles thus providing better results. The site starts out for searches, but in the future images should be searchable as well as news. To protect Wikia from spamming the same methods are being used as with Wikipedia.
I have had a look at the search system and can imagine that it will take at least another two years. Of course with help of the open source community and open content community it should be possible to reach a competitive stage with Google earlier. But this help might be sparse as Wikia is a commercial operation.
The results of the search were very disappointing. I did 3 searches. One calibration was searching for my name, one search action for the blog and one search on cross-media. The search for my name Jak Boumans delivered 11 results, of which 6 were displayed and the series of 7 to 11 was not accessible. The first 6 results were not impressive: 3 results were duplications, 2 were not really important references and one result was okay. For the first 6 results the search engine had picked up references fitting the multiple word criterion; what I did not get to see is whether the other results dealt with Jak and Boumans separately. Searching for this blog’s name, I had 2 hits, both referring to secondary sources and not to the blog itself. Last but not least I searched for cross-media. I did this in order to see how it would handle cross-media, with or without a hyphen and perhaps even a word morph like x-media, with or without a hyphen. The list of its results was overwhelming 1490 hits, again only 10 hits were displayed; there was a reference for the hits from 11 to 20, but again this did not work. Of course, asking for such a fashionable media term is like asking for the word God in the Bible or Allah in the Koran. Clear is that the search engine looked for cross-media and cross media, but not for crossmedia and the search engine did not sidestep to the term xmedia.
On the search engine front there was some encouraging news: Microsoft had made a bid for 837 million euro (1152 million dollar) for Fast Search & Transfer. I have written about this search engine before. I consider it as one of the best one in Europe and a better search engine than Google. So far it has been oriented to the business market. It has dived into the mobile search market and in the advertising sector. When Microsoft has bought this company by the second quarter (it is a friendly acquisition), it most likely will start out to exploit it in the business sector as Fast Search is active there already. I would not be surprised, when Microsoft would start to build up a competitor of Google in the background.
Blog Posting Number: 972
Tags: search engine
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