Wikia Search
Wikia Inc. | |
Created by | Jimmy Wales |
---|---|
URL | search.wikia.com |
Commercial | Yes |
Registration | Optional |
Launched | January 7, 2008 |
Current status | Closed |
Wikia Search was a short-lived
History
On December 23, 2006, Wales made a passing comment regarding the possibility of a wiki-based internet search.
On January 31, 2007, at a talk given at
On December 24, 2007, Wales announced that Wikia Search had entered "private pre-alpha".[10][11]
On June 3, 2008, an upgraded version of Wikia Search was released with additional features such as improved screen display and facilities for users to rate, edit and enhance the search results. In particular, it offered users the possibility of adding pertinent URLs to the results displayed and deleting any misleading results with immediate effect.[12] The improvements were widely welcomed by a number of former critics.[13]
In August 2008 Wikia Search launched an official version of the Wikia toolbar that can be downloaded and added on to the
By August 2008, Wikia Search held a 0.000079% share of the search market in the U.S., compared with Google's 70.77%.[15] While Google was conducting experiments with page ranking based on user feedback around this time, Jimmy Wales stated that Google's random tests and its closed algorithm were different from the open, community-oriented crowdsourcing attempts of Wikia Search.[16] In March 2009, the project ended: "... Wikia Search was not making its numbers. With only 10,000 unique users a month over the past six months, Wales said, it was hard to justify the resources being put into it."[17]
As of April 16, 2009, the site was running, but with "So long and thanks for all the fish! Have a specific question? Try
Search engine
Features
The search engine's result pages provided access to three major components:
- a web search engine,
- a social network serviceand
- a wiki, which hosts so-called mini-articles
Mini-articles
A prominent feature of the search engine were the human-written mini articles. Mini articles were short articles about the topics given by their title. They were hosted by a Wikia wiki.
Whenever a search query is issued with mini in front, the results page looked in the wiki for a mini article with a name that matched the search query. If no matching article existed, the search user was given the opportunity to write a new one.
Social network
The user interface was tied in with a social network application, called "foowi".[18] Users could create an account for the application and fill in a profile. The system linked the wiki login to the social network login. Profile functions include Status, Basic profile, White board, Albums, Friends, Personal and Work.
Web search engine
The web search engine consisted of the following components:
- Crawler(s) (Grub),
- Nutch)
- and browser based results presentation (written in [[JavaScript language
The results presentation used XML-formatted requests to query the index. The XML format is called "Open Index[19] and can be used to query indices other than the one at Internet Systems Consortium (ISC). The results presentation once included an option to select a different index to be used (out of three).
In early 2009, Yahoo! BOSS was being used as the back-end.[20]
Organization
The servers that implemented the web search engine's default index[21] were owned and operated by the ISC.[22]
Although the index servers were donated to ISC, the index server's domain name still remains the one of the Wikia Search software labs,[23][24] The search engine's main page[25] and result pages[26] themselves were served by Wikia (note that the result pages' content was retrieved from the index server at swlabs.org
, not from wikia.com
).
The social network, like the results presentation, was hosted by Wikia.
Search Wikia,
See also
- Knowledge Engine (Wikimedia Foundation) – an internal search engine for Wikimedia Foundationprojects
References
- Wired News. March 13, 2005. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
- ^ "The "public alpha" of Wikia search project". Archived from the original on May 14, 2008. Retrieved January 10, 2008.
- ^ "Wikipedia founder's search engine gets bad reviews". June 7, 2008. Archived from the original on April 23, 2012. Retrieved January 7, 2008.
- ^ Doran, James (December 23, 2006). "Founder of Wikipedia plans search engine to rival Google". The Times. London. Archived from the original on December 27, 2006. Retrieved January 6, 2007.
- ^ "About search". Archived from the original on November 21, 2007. Retrieved January 10, 2008.
- Search Engine Land. December 29, 2006. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
- ^ Wales: Search Wikia Will Succeed Where Google Cannot, InformationWeek, February 5, 2007. Retrieved July 27, 2007. Archived March 7, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Wikipedia founder says to challenge Google, Yahoo, Reuters, March 8, 2007. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
- ^ Jonathan Thaw, Wikia plans editable Web search engine, Bloomberg News, March 10, 2007
- ^ Wales, Jimmy (December 24, 2007). "private pre-alpha invites available". Archived from the original on December 28, 2007. Retrieved December 24, 2007.
- ^ "Wikia Search Project to Launch January 7, Wales says". The Washington Post. December 24, 2007. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
- ^ Wikia Search opens its doors, Heise Online, June 6, 2008. Archived June 10, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Second Wikia Search version gets backing from former critics, Computer World, June 4, 2008". Archived from the original on June 5, 2008. Retrieved June 5, 2008.
- ^ "Search.wikia.com". Archived from the original on October 11, 2008. Retrieved October 18, 2008.
- ^ Wikia Search, Cuil trailing Google by a long shot, Network World, August 19, 2008 Archived August 21, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Boulton, Clint (August 28, 2008). "Google Search Ranking Feature Threatens Wikia Search". eWeek. Ziff Davis Media. Retrieved June 1, 2018.
- ^ Wales giving up on Wikia Search
- ^ "Svn.swlabs.org". Archived from the original on March 28, 2008. Retrieved May 12, 2008.
- ^ "Search.wikia.com". Archived from the original on April 28, 2008. Retrieved May 12, 2008.
- ^ "N2.nabble.com". Archived from the original on February 17, 2009. Retrieved February 14, 2009.
- ^ "Not-quite-ready-yet.index.swlabs.org". Archived from the original on July 28, 2011. Retrieved May 12, 2008.
- ^ Jonas, Trevor (January 7, 2008). "Wikia, Jimmy Wales Unveil First Public Alpha of Open Source Search Project". BusinessWire.com. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011. Retrieved May 10, 2008.
- ^ "Swlabs.org". Archived from the original on April 16, 2008. Retrieved May 12, 2008.
- ^ The JavaScript code that fetches search results from the index server[dead link] directly refers to the current index servers. Archived July 28, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Re.search.wikia.com". Archived from the original on October 16, 2008. Retrieved October 18, 2008.
- ^ "Re.search.wikia.com". Archived from the original on April 7, 2008. Retrieved May 12, 2008.
- ^ "Searchwiki.wikia.com". Archived from the original on February 5, 2010. Retrieved November 30, 2009.
- ^ "The copyrights page of Search Wikia". Archived from the original on May 17, 2008. Retrieved May 12, 2008.
- ^ Beesley, Angela (February 4, 2008). "Re: Mandate". searchwiki (Mailing list). Retrieved May 12, 2008.[dead link]
External links
- Search Wikia (Archived March 2, 2008, at the Wayback Machine)
- "Something Wiki Is Coming to the Web Search Market", The New York Times.com, January 1, 2007 – about Wikiasari, an upcoming search engine
- Leap of Faith: Wikia's new search engine relies on the human touch to outsmart Google. Does it stand a chance? Martin Miller, Los Angeles Times Magazine, March 2, 2008, pp. 36–40.
- Evans, W. "We Find It All: Wikia's New Social Search Engine", Information Today, Inc., January 8, 2008.