Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer • Hacker News Board

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#11

Post by aswanson » Sat, May 16, 2009, 7:47 PM UTC

russell wrote: post #8

harpastum wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I don't think WA is a Wikipedia killer, I think that simply writing off emerging technologies that are attempting to replace the status quo is naive at best. If you're commenting on the actual phrasing of the article title, rather than the sentiment behind it, you're probably right. But I would push that assertion even farther: Link-bait article titles are 'pretty much guaranteed' to contain information th…

Right. I was going after link bait titles as a guarantee of little content. The true killers are usually not apparent in the early stages. Was it obvious that Google was the AltaVista killer? AltaVista had the brand name, a big parent company, and lots of smart people. WA is interesting on its own without all the "killer" blogs.

I simply refuse to click on, and thus reward, obviously sensational idiotic linkbait titles. Hopefully, this behaviour spreads and will be the killer for the mass of them.

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#12

Post by travisjeffery » Sat, May 16, 2009, 7:55 PM UTC

Not only are the different things but it will take either a lot more time or a lot more effort before Wolfram Alpha can compete with the amount of information that Wikipedia has.

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#13

Post by cellis » Sat, May 16, 2009, 8:21 PM UTC

If you read "%s Killer" anywhere on a news site, you can safely ignore it.

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#14

Post by csomar » Sat, May 16, 2009, 9:09 PM UTC

It's the first time i hear about the site: It's great and promising. however if i happen to use it a lot in the future (and may be several times a day) it'll not replace Google.

This is not exactly an engine, it's a precious scientific tool

edit: i looked for Google and this showed me the last trade in our local currecncy (DT)!! this mean they have care about visitors from all over the world

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#15

Post by stcredzero » Sat, May 16, 2009, 9:10 PM UTC

patcito wrote: post #10

Wikipedia is one of the main source of data for Wolfram Alpha, so killing Wikipedia would make Wolfram suck if not die.

I doubt if the loss of Wikipedia would affect Wolfram Alpha. they'd just license the information.

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#16

Post by Scriptor » Sat, May 16, 2009, 9:26 PM UTC

zimbabwe wrote: post #2

life expectancy 40 year old male UK GOOG YHOO nathan name president of nigeria 2004 weather seattle christmas day 2008 microsoft ethnic groups nigeria With the exception of Microsoft, none of these are questions I'd see myself typing into Wikipedia. Some of these might have tangential information available on Wiki, but this is not Wikipedia's meat and bones. Wolfram Alpha is not going to kill anything. It provides a…

I tried "ethnic groups nigeria". Wolfram Alpha gave me a |-delimited string of them, Wikipedia gave me a much more comprehensive list (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ethnic_groups_in_Niger...) and each one is a hyperlink.

Perhaps the author prefers to use Wikipedia for "facts and trivia", but I find myself enjoying the site for providing a detailed and thorough introduction to almost every non-trivial topic.

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#17

Post by darkxanthos » Sat, May 16, 2009, 9:40 PM UTC

I'm getting very tired of the "Sorry, Wolfram Alpha is temporarily unavailable. Please try again." or "I'm sorry Dave".

Regardless of whether or not it's "released". It is "released" and I'll be avoiding it until it's less frustrating to use.

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#18

Post by zimbabwe » Sat, May 16, 2009, 9:57 PM UTC

Scriptor wrote: post #16

zimbabwe wrote: post #2

life expectancy 40 year old male UK GOOG YHOO nathan name president of nigeria 2004 weather seattle christmas day 2008 microsoft ethnic groups nigeria With the exception of Microsoft, none of these are questions I'd see myself typing into Wikipedia. Some of these might have tangential information available on Wiki, but this is not Wikipedia's meat and bones. Wolfram Alpha is not going to kill anything. It provides a…

I tried "ethnic groups nigeria". Wolfram Alpha gave me a |-delimited string of them, Wikipedia gave me a much more comprehensive list ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ethnic_groups_in_Niger... ) and each one is a hyperlink. Perhaps the author prefers to use Wikipedia for "facts and trivia", but I find myself enjoying the site for providing a detailed and thorough introduction to almost every non-trivial topic.

That's what Wikipedia's good for. It's not nearly as good at what Wolfram is trying to do, which is to process and comprehend complicated data analysis. They're two entirely separate things.

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#19

Post by nimbix » Sun, May 17, 2009, 1:00 AM UTC

nimbix wrote: post #5

I don't see WA as a Wikipedia killer. It's more like a working version of Wikipedia articles: read about a concept on Wikipedia, then try it out in practice using WA. I think they complement each other very nicely!

UPDATE: threw together a simple mock-up of what WoframAlpha inside Wikipedia might look like: http://bit.ly/3PHMD

The content and position of a WolframAlpha block would be selected by article authors. Considering how much space it eats up, it probably wouldn't be expanded by default, but it certainly needs to appear inline. If there was just a link to this simulation in the footer section it would be almost invisible.

Also, another shameless act of self-promotion: http://bit.ly/FT0qj (full blog post)

Re: Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer

#20

Post by erlanger » Sun, May 17, 2009, 2:21 AM UTC

No, not even remotely:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ruy+lopez

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruy_Lopez