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Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

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Re: Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

#61

Post by beilabs »

chbarts wrote: post #30
beilabs wrote: post #23

"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." I'm from Ireland, have played hurling for about 21 years, this is the first time I have ever heard of this! Cuil finally taught me something, it only took them 2 years! G…

> 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?

Hard to explain, better to watch!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmzivRetelE&feature=fvw

Re: Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

#62

Post by stcredzero »

braindead_in wrote: post #26
lionhearted wrote: post #6

My first inclination was towards disliking the writer - he comes across as arrogant and dismissive of massive criticism, which seems foolish given his position. If he said something a little more humble, he'd be infinitely more sympathetic. Perhaps something like, "We're trying to do something meaningful, and still working to get it right" would go over well. So my first inclination was dislike. But my second was mor…

As a engineer, I sympathize with him completely. I would react the same if I had worked on a really really tough problem and made an incremental advance, which I thought was a breakthrough, but everybody dished it because they didn't understand it. Not to say what Cuil is doing a great job. But Machine learning and NLP is a tough thing.

I would react the same if I had worked on a really really tough problem and made an incremental advance, which I thought was a breakthrough, but everybody dished it because they didn't understand it.

I was once part of a company that thought it had superior technology that everyone else "didn't understand." It was true, it had marvelous technology. It was also true that lots of people didn't understand it.

Here's what it also had: 1) a deployment system everyone agrees is a pain in the @@@, which they never paid much attention to, 2) user interfaces which didn't repaint themselves like native widgets and which looked terrible and had terrible APIs, 3) intermittent bugs the customers kept reporting and getting disregarded and blamed for, 4) a less than open, "not invented here" culture with a big dose of "us versus them."

It's cool to make an incremental advance. The hard part is getting people to understand it. The hard part is reaching your audience. For this, it's more productive to enlist their help, not to blame them.

Re: Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

#63

Post by stcredzero »

This blog clarified for me what Cpedia is about. As presented in the blog, it does come across as a powerful tool for mining obscure information from the web. Maybe panning gold is an apt metaphor. What you wind up with is going to be full of mud and silt, but if you slosh it around enough, you may get some gold dust to show itself. Most users are expecting fast access to less obscure data and don't have a deep appreciation for that sort of process, however.

In other words, it's a useful tool for an unsightly and messy process. In other words, it is the last thing you'd want to expose to the web at large.

Re: Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

#64

Post by dc2k08 »

chbarts wrote: post #30
beilabs wrote: post #23

"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." I'm from Ireland, have played hurling for about 21 years, this is the first time I have ever heard of this! Cuil finally taught me something, it only took them 2 years! G…

> 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?

Blas is the Irish word for 'taste'. A hurley stick develops a 'taste for the ball' in the hands of good player. Supposedly the tough leather ball (sliothar) hitting the soft ash wood creates a sort of sheen over time when done right. The stick becomes tempered. Tom's allegory is that Cpedia has not yet had the time to develop 'a taste for the ball'.

Re: Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

#65

Post by thorax »

hristov wrote: post #14

Sorry, they deserve all the criticism they are getting. The problem is not that they have few mistakes here and there, it is that every single article I have tried has been composed of a bunch of mostly incomprehensible unrelated sentences randomly ordered and placed next to each other with no connection. If you evoke an encyclopaedia in the mind of your user, the user will expect what they are getting is an at least…

What if they had a disclosure (maybe until things get "better") at the top in bright bold red that said:

"Cpedia will quite often be wrong or odd. The web is quirky and we're trying to make sense of it. Don't take anything below seriously just yet. Let us know what parts of this article you like, though."

Would that make people criticize them less or give them more slack?

Re: Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

#67

Post by kordless »

houseabsolute wrote: post #39
wehriam wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tom ends with a poem implying his users should shut up, which is worth citing in it's entirety: "A wise old owl sat in an oak \ The more he heard, the less he spoke \ The less he spoke, the more he heard \ Why aren’t we all like that wise old bird." I imagine the working in the consumer web space - "bottom-feeding" - as he put it, is not his ideal career.

I think it's interesting that he took it upon himself to write this unnecessary and unnecessarily long blog post then demonstrated his complete lack of self-awareness by putting this poem at the end.

It's plausible he is the owl here.

Re: Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

#69

Post by hkuo »

Guys please explain to me why so many of you are coming to the defense of the engineering effort? Perhaps it's different in this case, but most companies, particularly ones funded with 33 million dollars, make decisions based on business and what will eventually lead towards making actual moola. Theirs is not a charity case. Engineerig efforts there are not acts of chivalry. What is their big master plan on coming out the end of this tunnel, or are they simply taking random shots in the dark hoping to hit somethig unexpected?

Re: Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia

#70

Post by hkuo »

hkuo wrote: post #69

Guys please explain to me why so many of you are coming to the defense of the engineering effort? Perhaps it's different in this case, but most companies, particularly ones funded with 33 million dollars, make decisions based on business and what will eventually lead towards making actual moola. Theirs is not a charity case. Engineerig efforts there are not acts of chivalry. What is their big master plan on coming ou…

I will though acknolwedge sympathy to the engineers for having such a seemingly impossible task laid upon them.
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