The Mike Abundo Effect

A paper encyclopedia can contain only the most “noteworthy” topics precisely because it’s restricted by paper. Wikipedia has none of those restrictions, yet some Wikipedians still want to impose those restrictions.

A dispute over whether volunteer administrators have become too quick to delete entries has produced two clashing factions within the ranks of “Wikipedians,” sparking enthusiastic and sometimes nasty sparring on blogs and discussion groups.

On one side are the inclusionists, who argue there are no space restrictions, so why not include articles that have limited interest?

On the other side are the deletionists, who counter that the compendium, which marked its two-millionth English entry this fall, should focus on quality rather than quantity.

I’m reminded of the early days of the Web, when Yahoo imposed a hierarchical structure for its topical directory. Hierarchical structures are necessary for paper card catalogs, precisely because they’re restricted by paper. The Web has none of those restrictions. Google understood that freedom early on, while Yahoo did not. We all know what happened next: Yahoo’s ass got kicked. Will that happen to Wikipedia, too?

(Via Steve Rubel.)

Gallian lost his parents, barrio folks and the entire baranggay of Kukurukuku because of Le-ar’s evil conquests and was then adopted by the Galactic Farce. He has run-of-the-mill skills in combat because he has heroin in the blood. As Blue-baby Zaido, head of the Zaido, he was tasked to look for other Zaido all over the world to entice them to fight supposedly for the safety of the universe, but in fact to solve a problem he has to solve all by himself.

Gone are the days when Philippine TV went unchallenged by passive audiences. Reader Shishiyo Makoto creatively vandalized the Wikipedia entry on GMA 7’s Shaider ripoff Zaido, with hilarious results. Check out the truth about Zaido on Wikipedia.

GMA clearly lives in an analog dreamland, wishing for the days when “audience feedback” was filtered through “ratings” paraded by marketers. Welcome to the new digital reality, where any joker with an Internet connection can have a persistent public voice.

Considering that Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales used to run erotica galleries and a babe blog, and currently runs a babe search engine, I actually trust the guy to build an accurate general search engine. It takes a special kind of honesty to show the world its own sensuality.

Mr Wales has begun working on a search engine that exploits the same user-based technology as his open-access encyclopaedia, which was launched in 2003.

The project has been dubbed Wikiasari — a combination of wiki, the Hawaiian word for quick, and asari, which is Japanese for “rummaging search�.

Mr Wales told The Times that he was planning to develop a commercial version of the search engine through Wikia Inc, his for-profit company, with a provisional launch date in the first quarter of next year.

Search results will include tag based navigation, the top three results will be wikipedia content, and the remaining results are determined by sites wikipedia considers to be “reputable� because they are external reference links from wikipedia pages.

Since all search results will be tied to wikipedia, either directly by linking to wikipedia content or because the sites are linked to from Wikipedia, real people will eventually be determining all search results and rankings within Wikiasari. The search engine will be opensource, and the index will be available under a GFDL. Wikia will operate the master version of the index, but others are free to take it under the terms of the GFDL.

Wow, free search engine code and index. You could build all sorts of custom search services on those. With Wikipedia’s popularity behind the project, expect an explosion of plugins and forks once they’re out. I’m a huge Google fan, but people who can’t wrap their brains around Google’s algorithms might prefer a human-edited version of the wisdom of the crowds.

I’m staying with Google for its all-inclusive crawling power, and recommending Wikiasari to people who need the benefit of SERPs backed by human editors. The latter is still a huge market.

(Via Hugh MacLeod and Michael Arrington.)