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Wikia, Search for Wikipedians
Wikipedia introduce their new engine in alpha
by Rupert Sharp
of http://www.oyster-web.co.uk
Last updated: 14 Jan 2008
Hark, the Wiki engine cometh. The hyped up 'Google killer' has recently been launched in alpha mode and by the general consensus has not made a fantastic impression on the eager internet community. The main murmur is that it has a long way to go before people will even consider using it, that it has the skeleton of an engine and really needs to be beefed up a tad before it will start heading starward.
The first thing that struck me was the huge lack of results, which is after all the whole basis of a search engine. After searching the term 'cat food' it returned a mere 34,078 results, for the term 'sports trainers' it returned an equally pathetic 6,291, the real clincher; I decided to simply search the word 'cat' in Wikia it returns 198,952 results and in Google it returns 806,000,000. To cut a long rant short, it seems there is barely anything indexed to be searched in comparison to the big guns, which proves fatal to a budding engine. Although this is dis-heartening; it has just started in alpha so there is only so much you can expect, the aim of Wikia is to have a community driven Search Engine that people can add to and build on. For example you have the option of narrowing down the results by searching the 'Whitelist'; a list of recommended results of “must have sites” for your term submitted by the wikia community, currently however the only form of community based input is the mini article at the top of the search results which gives a short description of the term. Other search modes include 'smaller test' which is slightly confusing; I presumed it would shorten description's or do something else but it's apparently an entirely separate index which pulls back just as useless results, the final mode searches the engine Visvo whose bare, faceless results are a force to be reckoned with... I found it amusing that on the 'About Us' page they have in bold “We are aware that the quality of the search results is low.” talk about starting on an apology eh?
Other not-so-joyous features include the inability to send a results page to a colleague as all results look like this 'http://re.search.wikia.com/search#cat', you can't go directly to a page in the index without having to hit an irritating green button at the bottom of the page to repeatedly trawl through the results. In keeping with the current trend, they have their own social network which has it's own box to right of the results which include people who have included your Search Term in their interests. The SN as far as I have gathered has the basic add friends, comment etc. system and also you can start your own wiki's that people can browse and add to.
It's a start even though it was a bit of a stilted one, Wikia needs a definite bit of polishing and thinking through before it can start crawling its way to the top. Anyway go look and form your own opinion :-P
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