G'day Jimmy and the Group
(and Ray and Brion whose posts crossed this one)
At 11:55 AM 3/12/03 -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
I wrote:
>mmm, yummy. When will we get up the nerve to
turn full-text searching
>back on?
Andrew Alder wrote:
Is this even a good idea? I know everyone has
assumed we will, but the
current use of Google has its advantages too (see the Village Pump).
Or has this been fully discussed here already, long ago?
As for me, I always just assumed it. There are some big drawbacks to
google, namely that it isn't realtime, which makes doing certain kinds
of study difficult. Also, Michael Hardy has reported to me that one
page he used to find in Google can no longer be found in Google, due
presumably to the vagaries of Google indexing.
Hmmmm. The not being realtime may be a plus or minus, this is the very
thing we tossed around a little in the Pump.
Certainly for Wikipedia contributors, realtime is best. But perhaps not so
for readers, who are after stable content.
And there may be another advantage in using Google. AFAIK Google doesn't
publish their ranking algorithms, or even say if they change, so as to
impede attempts to rig the rankings. But, from time to time they may well
take notice if a number of different IPs using their search engine through
Wikipedia. This isn't rigging the rankings, on the contrary, it's providing
Google with accurate and relevant information, which they may use. It can't
do our rankings any harm!
Food for thought? I'm not at all opposed to having an in-house search
engine, I just thought it might be good to consider the pros, cons, and
alternatives.
I've had no trouble using Google, in fact I've had a couple of instances
where "go to" didn't find an article I knew was there, but Google did!
I'm
afraid I haven't documented these, they were no big hassle and may have
been capitalisation or the like.
Andrew A
****
andrewa @ alder . ws
http://www.zeta.org.au/~andrewa
Phone 9441 4476
Mobile 04 2525 4476
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