To Search Smarter, Find a Person?

Svonkie writes "Brendan Koerner reports in Wired Magazine that a growing number of ventures are using people, rather than algorithms, to filter the Internet's wealth of information. These ventures have a common goal: to enhance the Web with the kind of critical thinking that's alien to software but that comes naturally to humans. 'The vogue for human curation reflects the growing frustration Net users have with the limits of algorithms. Unhelpful detritus often clutters search results, thanks to online publishers who have learned how to game the system.'"

People already know this

[dcobbler]

I run a virtual reference service for a provincial public library collaborative [bclibrary.ca]. Our stats are off the chart. We are running at triple the customer traffic that we had expected. So, essentially, lots of people already know that a person can find them stuff way better than an algorithm. There are two basic problems with this:
1. is that most people hate looking for things
2. is that most people are lousy at looking for stuff on the web.

Our solution, of course, is that we have institutions full of people what *do* like looking for things and *are* very good at it. THose people are called librarians.

Ciao, Dcobbler.