Monday, 23 April 2007
Wikia Search - Not Happening 
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A few months back, there was a lot of talk about Jimmy Wales' new idea - the Wikia Search. The idea behind this search engine is/was that it would (somehow) be "community-driven" (vague - what exactly does that mean?). I believe the other part of the idea is that the search engine software to run this engine would be best on Nutch and Lucene (something I know a little about, and provide consulting services).
Lots of talk, but as far as I can tell, nothing came out of it yet. There is a (now pretty inactive) mailing list that never included more than very high-level and unorganized discussion (check archives from March, February, and January for examples). As Simpy's dad, I also emailed Jimmy and offered help. I never heard back from Jimmy. Busy man, I'm sure. However, everything I've seen so far makes me thing the Wikia Search is either not going to happen any time soon, or maybe not at all. Does anyone have any more information about it?
Comments on this entry:
Just thought the same - subscribed to the mailing list yesterday, had my look around in the forums, and oops, nothing there. I guess replying here in your blog is as efficient as answering to the Mailing List (lol). Pity, I really like the idea, even I might referring more to my ideas, then to the ones I found there…
Regards – Ursula
Yeah, pretty empty list now, no discussion. No wonder, as it was pretty chaotic and unorganized earlier this year. Give people no direction, and they'll leave. That developer community needed/needs a good leader.
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