Andrew Lih wrote:

The original article from SJ Mercury News about Clusty/WP isn't very good: "Clusty is also one of the first search sites to index and display results from the sometimes controversial Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia being compiled from contributions by Internet users. Some researchers do not view Wikipedia as an authoritative source of information because it is created by Web users."

They should have said Clusty features Wikipedia in its own tab very prominently, and it even returns pictures from WP in the search results. Example: http://clusty.com/search?query=octopus+card&v%3Aproject=clusty-encyclope...

I was wondering how they reached that rather bizarre piece of misinformation. Considering that Dan Gillmor works for the Mercury News and has written about Wikipedia frequently (always positively) and knows it well, it's quite surprising to see them botch facts like that, even if they choose a less glowing tone. However, Gillmor didn't write this particular story, and I suppose the original reporter may have been the victim of an editor who doesn't actually know anything about search engines, but decided the explanation was too complex for the audience.

Anyway, it has to be gratifying when the latest innovations in the search wars try to use Wikipedia in their press releases as an example of how great they are.

--Michael Snow