Wikia Jimmy Wales Unveil First Public Alpha of Open Source Search Project

[megri]

Wikia, Inc. (www.wikia.com/ (http://www.wikia.com/)) the leading provider of
community resources for building and organizing free information on
every topic, today announced that co-founder Jimmy Wales' project to
create a new search platform founded on open-source search protocols
and human collaboration is now open to contributions from everyone.

Wikia Search has two strikes against it, in a way: the first is that it wants to compete with Google, the $180-billion behemoth that pretty much owns the online search business. And the second is that Wikia Search comes from Jimmy Wales, the founder of the "open source" encyclopedia known as Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/). That's a pretty tough act to follow.

[megri]

But some tech bloggers are already weighing in with reviews critical of Search Wikia, calling the service a “letdown” and “not ready” for primetime. Indeed, even Wales admitted that the quality of the search results is low, but given the very nature of the site this is to be expected as it first needs participation from volunteers to grow and be refined – much like Wikipedia took its time to evolve and ramp up to its position today.

[megri]

Wikia Search (search.wikia.com (http://www.search.wikia.com/)) looks to give users an alternative to today's search engines by using individual feedback rather than secret algorithms, says the organization. This approach is designed to lead to more effective results where the users determine how accurate a page or wiki is based on its relevancy. With the community providing the "fine tuning" of the searches, there will be fewer results with parked pages and ad content, says Wikia, and more relevant data.