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Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

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Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#291

Post by dsparkman »

IanSanders wrote: post #189
ovi256 wrote: post #110

Everyone has missed the most important aspect of search engines, from the point of view of their core function of information retrieval: they're the internet equivalent of a library index. Either you find a way to make information findable in a library without an index (how?!?) or you find a novel way to make a neutral search engine - one that provides as much value as Google but whose costs are paid in a different w…

I think heavy reliance on human language (and its ambiguity) is one of the main problems. Maybe personal whitelist/blacklist for domains and authors could improve things. Sort of "Web of trust" but done properly. Not completely without search engines, but for example, if every website was responsible for maintaining it's own index, we could effectively run our own search engines after initialising "base" trusted webs…

This was devised by Amazon in 2005. They called it OpenSearch (http://www.opensearch.org/) Basically it was a standard way to expose your own search engine on your site. It made it is to programmatically search a bunch of individual sites.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#293

Post by ex3xu »

Like others here I don't have too much problem with indexing.

What I would like to see is a human layer of infrastructure on top of algorithmic search, one the leverages the fact that there are billions of people who could be helping others find what they need. That critical mass wasn't available at the beginning of the internet, but it certainly is now.

You kind of have attempts at this function in efforts like the Stack Exchange network, Yahoo Questions, Ask Reddit, tech forums etc. but I'd like to see more active empowerment and incentivization of giving humans the capacity to help other humans find what they need, in a way that would be free from commercial incentives. I envision stuff like maintaining absolutely impartial focus groups, and for commercial search it would be nice to see companies incentivized to provide better quality goods to game search rather than better SEO optimization.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#294

Post by josephjrobison »

mavsman wrote: post #287
adrianmonk wrote: post #257

I think it would be helpful to remember to distinguish two separate search engine concepts here: indexing and ranking. Indexing isn't the source of problems. You can index in an objective manner. A new architecture for the web doesn't need to eliminate indexing. Ranking is where it gets controversial. When you rank, you pick winners and losers. Hopefully based on some useful metric, but the devil is in the details on…

How about open sourcing the ranking and then allowing people to customize it. I should be able to rank my own search results how I want to without much technical knowledge. I want to rank my results by what is most popular to my friends (Facebook or otherwise) so I just look for a search engine extension that allows me to do that. This could get complex but can also be simple if novices just use the most popular rank…

I think Facebook really missed the boat on building their own "network influenced" search engine. They made some progress in allowing you to search based on friends' posting and recommendations to some degree but it seems to have flatlined in the last few years and is very constricting.

One thing I haven't seen much on these recent threads on search is the ability to create your own Google Custom Search Engine based on domains you trust - https://cse.google.com/cse/all

Also, not many people have mention the use of search operators, which allows you to control the results returned. Such as "Paul Graham inurl:interview -site:ycombinator.com -site:techcrunch.com"

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#295

Post by davemp »

msla wrote: post #242
davemp wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously a naïve web directory isn't going to cut it. What would make the approach viable is if there were a nice way to automate and crowd source most/all of the effort. Maybe that means changing the idea of what makes a website. Maybe there could just be little grass roots reddit-esque communities that are indexed/verified (google already favors reddit/hn links). Who knows, but it's an interesting problem to kick…

> Maybe there could just be little grass roots reddit-esque communities that are indexed/verified Verified by who, exactly? I know, I know... "dismissive comment", but it's an important thing to think about: Who decides what goes in the library? It's an evergreen topic, even in real, physical libraries, as those tedious lists of "Banned And Challenged Books" attest. It seems every time a copy of Huckleberry Finn gets…

I imagine the communities would kind of serve as a public index in aggregate that have a barrier to entry / reputation. If one turns to crap just ignore it with whatever search tool you're using.

It wouldn't be about policing, just organizing.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#296

Post by kickscondor »

ninju wrote: post #272
kickscondor wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Directories are still useful - Archive of Our Own ( https://archiveofourown.org/ ) is a large example for fan fiction, Wikipedia has a full directory ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Main_topic_classifica... ), Reddit wikis perform this function, Awesome directories ( https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome ) or personal directories like mine at href.cool. The Web is too big for a single large directory - but…

How about this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lists_of_lists

Yes! But, of course, for directories outside of Wikipedia. This is very interesting for its classification structure. It's so typical of Wikipedia that a 'master list of lists' (by my count, there are 589 list links on this page) contains lists such as "Lists of Melrose Place episodes" and "Lists of Middle-earth articles" alongside lists such as "lists of wars" or "lists of banks".

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#297

Post by greglindahl »

mavsman wrote: post #287
adrianmonk wrote: post #257

I think it would be helpful to remember to distinguish two separate search engine concepts here: indexing and ranking. Indexing isn't the source of problems. You can index in an objective manner. A new architecture for the web doesn't need to eliminate indexing. Ranking is where it gets controversial. When you rank, you pick winners and losers. Hopefully based on some useful metric, but the devil is in the details on…

How about open sourcing the ranking and then allowing people to customize it. I should be able to rank my own search results how I want to without much technical knowledge. I want to rank my results by what is most popular to my friends (Facebook or otherwise) so I just look for a search engine extension that allows me to do that. This could get complex but can also be simple if novices just use the most popular rank…

blekko and bing both implemented ranking by popularity with your Facebook friends, and the data was too sparse to be useful.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#299

Post by tracker1 »

adrianmonk wrote: post #257

I think it would be helpful to remember to distinguish two separate search engine concepts here: indexing and ranking. Indexing isn't the source of problems. You can index in an objective manner. A new architecture for the web doesn't need to eliminate indexing. Ranking is where it gets controversial. When you rank, you pick winners and losers. Hopefully based on some useful metric, but the devil is in the details on…

Absolutely spot on... I've been using DDG as my default search engine for a couple months. But, google has a huge profile on me. I find myself falling back to google a few times a day when searching for technical terms/issues.

Re: Ask HN: Can we create a new internet where search engines are irrelevant?

#300

Post by brokensegue »

kickscondor wrote: post #233
iblaine wrote: post #228

Yes, it was called Yahoo and it did a good job of cataloging the internet when hundreds of sites were added per week: https://web.archive.org/web/19961227005023/http://www2.yahoo... I'm old enough to remember sorting sites by new to see what new URLs were being created, and getting to that bottom of that list within a few minutes. Google and search was a natural response to solving that problem as the number of sites…

Directories are still useful - Archive of Our Own ( https://archiveofourown.org/ ) is a large example for fan fiction, Wikipedia has a full directory ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Main_topic_classifica... ), Reddit wikis perform this function, Awesome directories ( https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome ) or personal directories like mine at href.cool. The Web is too big for a single large directory - but…

Ao3 isn't really a directory since they do the actual hosting
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