Wikia Search moves closer to open ideal

 

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Posted on 4 Jun 2008 at 10:54

Wikia Search has been revamped with a wealth of editing tools, to build on its early promise of being a more open search engine.

Click here to read first looks, rants and musings on the PC Pro blogs

The search engine was initially launched with the aim of leveraging its community to offer more relevant results, however its alpha phase only offered the ability to rate search results, dictating where they appear in the rankings, and add mini articles which appeared over popular results.

This disappointed many who were expecting Wikipedia-like control of their search, but Wikia now appears ready to rectify that situation and has introduced a wealth of editorial tools allowing users to directly edit and annotate results with text, images and links, as well as spotlight specific searches or even delete a site from the search results, a change which affects everyone who conducts that search in the future.

Wikia Search also includes buttons allowing users to try their search on the other major search engines with a single click, giving them the opportunity to compare results. There's also a new link box, allowing users to quickly add websites that have been missed by the crawl.

Community search

As with Wikipedia, logs keep track of all edits, which a feed on the right hand side of the page listing all recent changes to results. Users who are deemed to be abusing the system are banned.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and Wikia Search, claims the company has introduced the features in response to its community, which so far consists of 20,000 registered users contributing 25,000 mini articles, and 60,000 edits.

Admitting the first version wasn't what he'd hoped, Wales claims the latest version is much closer to what he envisages the site becoming: "If someone runs a search and doesn't find the result they're looking for, we're giving them the power to go in and fix it. Over time, by adding the human element into search we'll be able to produce more relevant, insightful results."

Read our interview with Jimmy Wales here, where he lays out the future of Wikia Search.

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Author: Stuart Turton