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Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

cuil.com

51–60 of 74 posts

Re: Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

#51
post #43

Haters gonna hate

Actually, this comment sums up what I thought was wrong with the article. Haters are gonna hate. If you ask for feedback, you have to accept that you will get a lot of negative feedback, especially when you're trying something new, unheard of, and label it with a well know suffix (pedia). My main take away from the article was that they marketed it wrong. If you have to explain away the criticisms in a blog post, (and a few of the arguments were valid) that means you promoted it badly. None of the criticisms were wrong per se, just that he thought they didn't get it, or get how hard what they're trying to do is. That is their fault.

Plus I do agree with one of the comments above that the poem should apply to him. One thing I have learned from being in business a long time, its that negative feedback is gold, if you use it to turn a situation around to leave your customer with the feeling that they have been heard, been paid attention to and taken care of. That kind of customer will stick around more than a customer who used your product and it just worked fine. I love to deal with problem customers, as it is an opportunity, not a chore, if handled correctly.

Excuses are a dime a dozen, especially when it comes to cutting edge tech.

Re: Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

#54
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But users don't care about technology, they care about getting something useful - and the few times I used it the results were almost laughably bad.

I think it may be the format the result is presented in. It acts as if it can give the world then gives very little. If they were upfront about the level it is at by making the design more about listing pieces of information rather than trying to assume they all mesh together nicely they may get better reviews.

It might work better if they just presented a list of results, and users could up/down vote the results for relevancy. Overtime they could use that feedback to float more relevant "snippets" to the top. Kinda like wikipedia but without all the hassle of typing.

Re: Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

#58
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it may be the format the result is presented in. It acts as if it can give the world then gives very little. If they were upfront about the level it is at by making the design more about listing pieces of information rather than trying to assume they all mesh together nicely they may get better reviews.

It might work better if they just presented a list of results, and users could up/down vote the results for relevancy. Overtime they could use that feedback to float more relevant "snippets" to the top. Kinda like wikipedia but without all the hassle of typing.

What about allowing users to re-order the snippets by draw and drop - or at least move up, move down, and reject buttons?

Maybe even allow suggested snippets too - sort of like Wikipedia built from nothing but citations.

Re: Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

#59
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blas, for those of you not from the West of Ireland, is the polish a hurley gets from the sliothar when used by a player of unusual skill, a patina on the surface of the wood testifying to the depth of talent of the player that had used the stick. Now, how about explaining this for those poor benighted souls who speak English?

I am Irish too :) Hurling is a popular native ball sport in Ireland which involves two teams playing against each other with sticks called hurleys and a ball called a sliothar. Think of it as ice hockey without ice / skates and the sliothar instead of a puck. A wee bit of violence and tribalism are also as big part of the game, as in ice hockey...

Seamus? Who worked in Arvato?

Re: Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

#60
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it may be the format the result is presented in. It acts as if it can give the world then gives very little. If they were upfront about the level it is at by making the design more about listing pieces of information rather than trying to assume they all mesh together nicely they may get better reviews.

How it's presented is a huge part of why people reacted so negatively. They present the articles as prose, so people expect it to flow like prose. This makes them very sensitive to disorganization. I think they're deserving of the criticism they've received. Cpedia is an interesting idea, and I assume they've done a lot of really good work we're not grasping. But it's not ready for public consumption yet, and they sh…

No doubt it's a huge problem area, been researching around areas that would be involved in this like clustering and summarization,

Google Squared attempts to be less ambitious and still feels very incomplete and they probably have some very smart people and the backing of the most complete index of the internet and probably the most computational power afforded to any work in the area.

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