Search for George Washington on www.google.com. There doesn't seem to be any stuff about George Washington's underwear on the internet that Google has indexed. But there are some stuff about George Washington's penis (go figure) so we have that as example. With the search "George Washington" you will not encounter anything about his penis in the 100,000 first hits or so. The reason is that Google manages to figure out that there are atleast 100,000 pages that are more releveant to the search George Washington then the pages about George Washington's penis.
I don't know why Google in almost all cases seem to, almost magically, to figure out what you were looking for. One reason appears to be that Google rates pages that many pages link to higher, and therefore kinda exploits what other humans thinks are relevant. Google's search algorithm is a secret and there are many more around that knows much more and can explain it much better. See also [[Googlebomd]].
In anyway, the argument that bad articles will cripple the search function, is false.
Why not? It's going to bring up every article with the term "George Washington" in it, and if [[George Washington's underwear]] begins ... [[George Washington]] wore white [[boxer shorts]], then Google will certainly pick it up.
RickK
"Eric B. Rakim" eric_b_and_rakim@hotmail.com wrote:
So, what happens when you search for "George Washington" and "George Washington's underwear" shows up?
RickK
It will not show up. Atleast not if google search is used. I can't test whether it would show up with mediawiki's search algorithm, but if it does, that algorithm would be very much broken.
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Message: 8 Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:05:25 +0200 From: ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason avarab@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Image of Gandhi To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org Message-ID: 51dd1af8040826120559af4bcd@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mahatma_Gandhi.jpg
"This image may not have information on its source. It may be usable under fair use but this has yet to be verified. It might be public domain or under a licence compatible with the GNU FDL. To the uploader: Please provide licensing information as soon as possible. Images without this information may be deleted in the future. If you want to publish an image as fair use, please list it on Wikipedia:Fair use."
We do not know.
On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 08:15 -0700, Danavir Goswami (USA) danavir.goswami@pamho.net wrote:
Dear Friends, Aug. 26, 2004
Greetings. I am a monk writing a book on celibacy---the title is "Brain Gain" (1,000 copies) and would like to use, within the book, an image of Gandhi I found on your website.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi
If you could be so kind as to inform me A) whether the image is in the public domain (copyright-free), or B) if you have the ability to grant permission for its use, or C) you could suggest how I might seek
permission.
The seminary is non profit and the publication is also not a profit enterprise.
Thank you so much for your help.
With best regards,
Dr. Dane Holtzman
Rupanuga Vedic College (USA) 5201 Paseo, Kansas City, Missouri 64110 Tel: (816) 924-5619, (800) 340-5286, Fax: (816) 924-5640 E-mail: danavir.goswami@pamho.net Website: www.rvc.edu _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Message: 9 Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:53:39 -0500 From: dpbsmith@verizon.net Subject: [WikiEN-l] Renaming VfD now under discussion... To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Message-ID: 20040826195339.JKAR24594.out001.verizon.net@outgoing.verizon.net Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
I got enough of an encouraging reception on this list to have started a discussion about it at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion
There does seem to be support for renaming VfD and rewriting the VfD page notice, so I want to concentrate on that part of my proposal.
And my campaign slogan for the change is: as we currently present VfD, some newbies are feeling _bitten_ when they should really only feel _barked at._
Message: 10 Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:52:19 -0400 From: Sj 2.718281828@gmail.com Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Renaming VfD now under discussion... To: English Wikipedia wikien-l@wikipedia.org Message-ID: 742dfd0604082613526f445692@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
I'm all for it.
It *would* be nice to be able to tell people who scoff at WP's lack of editorial review, "actually, [[WP:Editorial Review]] is the three most active pages on the site."
=sj=
On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:53:39 -0500, dpbsmith@verizon.net dpbsmith@verizon.net wrote:
I got enough of an encouraging reception on this list to have started a discussion about it at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion
There does seem to be support for renaming VfD and rewriting the VfD
page
notice, so I want to concentrate on that part of my proposal.
And my campaign slogan for the change is: as we currently present VfD,
some
newbies are feeling _bitten_ when they should really only feel _barked
at._
Message: 11 Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 22:08:26 +0100 From: Pete/Pcb21 pete_pcb21_wpmail@pcbartlett.com Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 65 To: wikien-l@wikipedia.org Message-ID: cglj4p$b6h$1@sea.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Rick wrote:
Why not? It's going to bring up every article with the term "George
Washington" in it, and if [[George Washington's underwear]] begins ... [[George Washington]] wore white [[boxer shorts]], then Google will certainly pick it up.
that algorithm would be very much broken.
If Google listed it that highly (in GW's case in the first dozen pages or so) then people are clearly interested in it, and that is a strong argument for having the article.
Pete
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
End of WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 66
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Where did I say that?
RickK
"Eric B. Rakim" eric_b_and_rakim@hotmail.com wrote: In anyway, the argument that bad articles will cripple the search function, is false.
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Not that exactly, but you did write "Do you not understand what it says about Wikipedia when Google and Yahoo! mirror all of the crap and that's the face that Wikipedia presents to the world?" Histrionic belittling of other WPians is not a reasoned argument.
Stan
Rick wrote:
Where did I say that?
RickK
"Eric B. Rakim" eric_b_and_rakim@hotmail.com wrote: In anyway, the argument that bad articles will cripple the search function, is false.
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I don't see that that quote is either histrionic nor a belittlement. But then, since most of the belittlement on this mailing list is directed towards me, it seems that there aren't very many people on the mailing list that know what belittlement really is.
RickK
Stan Shebs shebs@apple.com wrote: Not that exactly, but you did write "Do you not understand what it says about Wikipedia when Google and Yahoo! mirror all of the crap and that's the face that Wikipedia presents to the world?" Histrionic belittling of other WPians is not a reasoned argument.
Stan
Rick wrote:
Where did I say that?
RickK
"Eric B. Rakim" wrote: In anyway, the argument that bad articles will cripple the search function, is false.
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