To Search Smarter, Find a Person? 136
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.'"
New Ingenious Filtering System! (Score:5, Interesting)
Tag article "activelyavoid" and move along.
Interestingly enough, this whole thing sounds like an idea Rob Malda thought up about 10 years ago, except Brijit lacks a discussion and moderation system where experts and opinionated thinkers can vie to share their collective wisdom to enhance the content of the original article.
just around the corner (Score:3, Interesting)
Expect to lose your job soon after the paperless office arrives. It's always just around the corner but something human gets in the way every time. AI will be much the same.
Webrings writ large (Score:3, Interesting)
While I have not RTFA (this is Slashdot, after all), the summary makes it sound like the combination of Webrings and "Top X" lists, both of which are used much less now and don't carry as much weight but still require user interaction on a grand scale.
I'd be interested to see how this kind of search engine turns out- however, you also have the problem of "majority think", so searching for, say, evolution might have a first result for a page "debunking" it. But then I browse at +4, so I shouldn't complain.
It's not that hard to get rid of the crap (Score:5, Interesting)
We're back to the Yahoo! model because people have figured out how to game the system, namely Google, without adding content that's important to the searcher.
It's not hard to throw out most of the bottom-feeders. [sitetruth.com] We do it. The crowd at Search Engine Watch (which, despite the name, is all about advertising, not search quality) is writing me angry messages for doing that. Now that we've demonstrated that 36% of Google AdSense advertisers are bottom-feeders, they know they're being watched. Some feel they're being targeted.
Bear in mind that most search requests are really, really dumb. [google.com] That's what Google has to answer. In fact, most Google search requests don't hit the search engine at all; there's a cache of common queries and answers in all the front end machines, and a sizable fraction of requests are answered from cache.
Wow, perhaps it's just me, but.... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not really difficult, many of those sufferers know how to use a library, which is the real world equivalent of searching on the Internet. (not that the Internet is not real world) Most people were taught how to use a library in their school days and that usage has not changed much with time. The usage of Internet searching does change, and there are multiple ways of doing it. People who are not interested in learning new ways will always just say it is too difficult.
Using boolean modifiers or advanced search is always there, people just don't use it. They also don't fix their own lawnmowers or other things. They just replace them or pay someone else to do the 'hard' stuff. There is enough information on the Internet to allow anyone to learn to protect their home computer from infections and malware, yet it still is a problem.
The human problem of search engines will NOT go away, it can only be made to look less with smarter UIs. A tag cloud system of bookmarking could be used to refine search results but would not work in all cases. The URL history with timestamps might help, but not in all cases. Analysis of search results and those pages actually visited might help narrow the criteria to personal bias but not in all cases. That is why the operator has to be smart enough to know what they want and don't. The Internet does not come with your very own personal cruise director to make sure all goes well. People just believe that it is supposed to be easy because they want to do the cool things that they hear about on television and from their friends etc.
Perhaps one day the interface will be fast enough to be considered good when our brains can be plugged into the computer itself, something like The Matrix, reducing click delays and reading to milliseconds. Until then, teaching people how to use complex search strings will help reduce the angst and pain.
"cars +toyota -hummer 2005" aobut 2.98M hits
is better than
"cars 2005" about 19 million hits
but you have to teach people that those extra characters really REALLY do help.
If people don't know how to use a soldering gun, please don't give them one... or something like that. Oh yeah, car analogy: you apparently can't drive on the streets of the USA legally without a license, which you cannot obtain without demonstrating proficient control of the vehicle.
Yahoo! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But isn't AI and metadata just around the corne (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:But isn't AI and metadata just around the corne (Score:2, Interesting)