[Web4lib] Authority + Wikipedia

[Peter Morville]

It's a great idea Rich. Of course, in 2005, you'd have to use "sliders"
rather than knobs or dials:

http://www.iaslash.org/node/7678

Seriously, it would be great to have this sort of control (and algorithmic
transparency)...perhaps Yahoo! will deliver that sort of openness in order
to beat Google. Otherwise, we'll need an open source search engine.


Peter Morville
President, Semantic Studios
http://semanticstudios.com
http://findability.org



-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Wiggins [mailto:richard.wiggins at gmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 7:43 PM
To: Peter Morville
Cc: Jennifer Heise; web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Authority + Wikipedia

In 2003 I wrote an article for Searcher magazine proposing that we
need a "graphic equalizer" for search engines -- knobs and dials that
we can twist and turn to control how a search engine orders the hit
list.

The article made a (perhaps tortured) comparison of undergraduate
admissions at the University of Michigan (UM), the college football
Bowl Championship Series, and Google.  It appears that Information
Today has moved my piece behind a full text subscription service, but
the point was that it'd make sense to let the user influence the
ranking algorithm.

So you could imagine knobs that let you dial up or down certain dimensions:

-- Trustworthiness

-- Authenticity (close to the above, but different)

-- Humor

-- Popularity

-- Cynicism

-- Controversy

... etc

By the way, we still debate the admissions algorithm at U-M, the BCS
formula, and Google's PageRank.  :-)

/rich

On 10/12/05, Peter Morville <morville at semanticstudios.com> wrote:
> Excellent points Jennifer. I would add that we can also accomplish the
goal
> of making high quality information more findable by encouraging companies
> like Google and Yahoo! to integrate better "authority algorithms" into
their
> search engines. And I'm using "encouraging" in a broad sense that includes
> "making it difficult for them not to." Perhaps librarians need to become
> authority activists.
>
>
> Peter Morville
> President, Semantic Studios
> http://semanticstudios.com
> http://findability.org
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
> [mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Jennifer Heise
> Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 5:47 PM
> To: Thomale, J
> Cc: web4lib at webjunction.org
> Subject: Re: [Web4lib] Authority + Wikipedia
>
> However, the opposite of the point mentioned below is what i'm really
> interested in. I think it's our job to make authoritative information more
> findable, instead of lamenting that information we consider less
> authoritative is findable.
>
> As it is, I see the library profession complaining about what is made
> findable instead of working to make things more findable themselves.
>
> How can we do that?
> Well, with improved indexing. Improved searching and linking capabilities.
> Metasearching. And yes, training.
>
>
>
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