<comment><br><br>FYI: I wanted to pass this along. article along.<br><br>This new search engine is still not here for OWW but I'll find out how it will be released and pass on what I find. Hopefully the search engine will become part of Wikipedia or at least available as an Open Source project we can use for OWW.
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<br>From the sound of it, every search is generating a new article. This means that results from search can be treated just like other docs. In a way, the equivalent of an RSS document is manufactured whenever a search is performed. This is speculation on my part. I'll get a handle on it.
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<br><h1 class="artTitle">Wikia Search Engine Goes Live Today</h1>
<h2 class="artSubtitle">Search Wikia, the widely awaited search engine from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, is slated to make its official debut today.</h2>
<h3 class="artByline">Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service</h3>
<div class="artDate"><a href="http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141087-c,searchengines/article.html">http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141087-c,searchengines/article.html</a><br><br>Monday, January 07, 2008 6:00 AM PST</div>
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<div><p><a href="http://www.wikia.com/" target="_blank">Search Wikia</a>, the widely awaited search engine from <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/tags/Wikimedia+Foundation+Inc..html">Wikipedia</a>
founder Jimmy Wales, is slated to make its official debut on Monday,
with the bet that an open-source, community-driven effort can disrupt
and reshape this <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/tags/Google+Inc..html">Google</a>-dominated market.</p><p>However,
people who give the search engine a test drive on Monday shouldn't
expect a Google killer, because they will be looking at a project that
is at a very early stage and will need participation from volunteers to
grow and be refined, Wales said.</p><p>In that sense, Search Wikia is
expected to develop in a similar fashion to Wikipedia, an online
encyclopedia written and edited by a community of volunteer
collaborators who have expanded it and improved it organically over the
years.</p><p>"Search Wikia is an extremely alpha project. It's a
project to build a search engine and not a full-fledged competitor to
Google yet. We want to make sure people understand that it's in its
very early days," Wales said.</p><p>Still, Wales fully expects Search
Wikia to eventually be a better alternative to commercial search
engines from the likes of Google, <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/tags/Yahoo%21+Inc..html">Yahoo</a>, <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/tags/Microsoft+Corporation.html">Microsoft</a>, <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/tags/AOL+LLC.html">
AOL</a> and <a href="http://www.pcworld.com/tags/Ask.com.html">Ask.com</a>.</p><p>"I don't know how long it will take to reach industry-standard quality search results, but I'd say at least two years," he said.
</p><h2 class="artSubtitle">Volunteer</h2><p>People
interested in volunteering will find a variety of options at Search
Wikia, including working with the software to improve and extend it, as
well as suggesting pages for the index and evaluating and rating search
results.</p><p>Those who register to participate in the project will
join a social networking environment where they can have a list of
friends, upload photos, build profiles and be notified of friends'
actions.</p><p>Users of the search engine will be presented with what
Wales calls a "mini article" at the top of the results list. This can
be a photo, a text definition, an external link or whatever else has
been determined is the best answer to that particular query.</p><p>Below
the "mini article" will be the list of results, picked from the Search
Wikia index, which on Monday will have anywhere between 50 million and
100 million Web pages. Wales concedes that number is small, but said it
will continue to grow over time. </p><p>Users will be able to rank the
quality of individual search results, and Search Wikia will factor in
that feedback when solving future queries. "That way, people will be
able to influence the algorithmic search results," he said.</p><p>Those
who try to abuse the system for, say, search engine spamming purposes,
are bound to be quickly noticed by administrators and other community
members, and they will swiftly be blocked and banned, Wales said.</p></div>
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