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Reddit can't build a better search engine

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Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#261

Post by redwall_hp »

bjarneh wrote: post #187

> I was too young to use Google when it first got started, but according to many, in the beginning, Google had better or more accurate search results. I'm old enough to remember when Google came, and the main difference was this: With Google you did not have to flip through 3 pages of completely unrelated search results; that were paid for. Google used to display advertisements on the right as well, i.e. not among th…

The competition at the time was relying on HTML meta tags' keywords. It was purely based on faith that the web developer would be honest and help classify pages. Which was reasonable at the time, before the Web was so commercial, but that ship has long since sailed. Keyword-stuffing was already a thing that was happening, and other sites simply neglected to tag pages. Some search engines were starting to read the page content and count keyword frequency, so a page that had "apple" many times on it would be deemed relevant to a search for "apple."

Google's whole thing was it did something smart, and treated the Web as the big graph it is and more or less measured the in and out degrees of the vertices to rank their popularity. The idea that something relevant would be linked frequently. This was the subject of an academic paper and had associated patents for awhile. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank It was a big deal at the time, but once again the Web has changed.

Google's search relevance is a function of the changing Web and how it's now highly commercial and populated by everyone instead of being the world's largest community of nerds. Links aren't a measure of popularity, because gulf between the average user and people who operate web sites has widened...and the common denominator has dropped to the point that optimizing for popularity is questionable in the first place.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#262

Post by tshaddox »

pojzon wrote: post #92
conjecTech wrote: post #34

This thesis is off. It's not as if Reddit just appeared on the internet yesterday. It's been a place people look for this kind of info for a long time, and people have been trying to game it for just as long. And it already has a good search engine - that just happens to be Google. So it still leaves the question: why does Reddit still have such a high signal-to-noise ratio. A few things I've noticed: 1. A lot of con…

Recently have noticed a business creating fictional threads on reddit (multiple on different communities) working as an AD to sell something. Example: „What is the cheapest best cooling for cpu now?” All discussions point to product that more experienced users know its crap. But still the wrong product is at the top with most (botted) upvotes. Companies realized that ppl look for opinions on reddit -> that created de…

I don't think that's a particularly new thing. I used to be a very active reddit user, but I haven't been active on the site for 2-3 years now. But even 3+ years ago I recall plenty of (granted, anecdotal) reports of commercial astroturfing even for relatively nice subreddits.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#263

Post by oversocialized »

ravenstine wrote: post #221
quixoticaxolotl wrote: post #206

I've searched for Reddit in the past because Reddit is the only site where I can get community answers to an important question. In those cases, the community aspect mattered to me - for example, I recently moved to Boston, so I solicited Bostonian's recommendations from r/boston; my partner and I were having troubles, and I wanted to hear from people who'd gone through similar experiences; I wanted to learn about co…

Reddit doesn't replace all of search, but for me it does effectively replace search engines when I'm looking for an opinion. Life is short... I don't have time to weigh all the facts about something and make my own decision. While I do that a lot, when getting started with something, an initial opinion to go on is very useful. Search engines have become really bad at surfacing genuine opinions. Crappy GPT-2 generated…

imagine using overly censored, social credit priming reddit as your search engine

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#264

Post by jayd16 »

conjecTech wrote: post #34

This thesis is off. It's not as if Reddit just appeared on the internet yesterday. It's been a place people look for this kind of info for a long time, and people have been trying to game it for just as long. And it already has a good search engine - that just happens to be Google. So it still leaves the question: why does Reddit still have such a high signal-to-noise ratio. A few things I've noticed: 1. A lot of con…

I think it's just that Reddit threads the needle on openness and moderation.

Subreddits are moderated by the subreddit community. Well moderated subs attract and produce good content. Multiple subs on the same topic can exist, often a poorly moderated sub will be replaced by a better one.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#265

Post by hayleox »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #134
pojzon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently have noticed a business creating fictional threads on reddit (multiple on different communities) working as an AD to sell something. Example: „What is the cheapest best cooling for cpu now?” All discussions point to product that more experienced users know its crap. But still the wrong product is at the top with most (botted) upvotes. Companies realized that ppl look for opinions on reddit -> that created de…

I still think if you are internet savvy you detect these things almost instantly. Uncanny valley works on text too and the revulsion is just as strong. And all it takes to destroy your best cooling for cpu now bot setup is one user saying “No it is not and here is why…” right under the comment.

That might happen if the product being pushed is awful. But if the product meets a baseline – not amazing, but perfectly cromulent – then a positive comment might not get such a rebuke.

I guess it's not the end of the world if you get astroturfed but you still get a decent enough product, but still, it's not ideal.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#267

Post by mda »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #218
mda wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why you think this particular website must be the top answer? I looked at googles results and and I disagree, they are not bad, e.g. actual program examples, videos and papers for example.

Besides the ads, the Wikipedia article, the next result I'm getting is this: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/strongly-connected-components/ Which seems to mostly just be paraphrasing the Wikipedia article and the page I linked. The kent.edu-page seems aimed at teaching you the material, the geeskforgeeks-page seems primarily to focus on getting you through your introduction to computer science exam. It gives answers, n…

I disagree, you can get a pretty good understanding of the subject, there are many resources linked there you are focusing on a few perceivably weak ones, your link is not an exhaustive answer. e.g i prefer learning from actual code examples and videos.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#268

Post by noncoml »

I wonder if is Google the defacto search engine because they actually cannot be beaten or is it because it's virtually impossible for a new player to "scrape" the internet as easy as Google does.

Websites, including Reddit, are happy to give all their data to Google bots, but if anyone else tries to crawl them they will get black-listed very fast even if they follow the robots.txt rules.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#269

Post by dionian »

quixoticaxolotl wrote: post #206

I've searched for Reddit in the past because Reddit is the only site where I can get community answers to an important question. In those cases, the community aspect mattered to me - for example, I recently moved to Boston, so I solicited Bostonian's recommendations from r/boston; my partner and I were having troubles, and I wanted to hear from people who'd gone through similar experiences; I wanted to learn about co…

Right. I still use google to search reddit. It's that Reddit's content is more directly from people - not marketing departments or SEO optimizers.

Re: Reddit can't build a better search engine

#270

Post by dionian »

oversocialized wrote: post #263
ravenstine wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit doesn't replace all of search, but for me it does effectively replace search engines when I'm looking for an opinion. Life is short... I don't have time to weigh all the facts about something and make my own decision. While I do that a lot, when getting started with something, an initial opinion to go on is very useful. Search engines have become really bad at surfacing genuine opinions. Crappy GPT-2 generated…

imagine using overly censored, social credit priming reddit as your search engine

It's great when you want to search for niche information. Especially because google won't do all its censoring and boosting on the contents as much as it would on a typical google search. That's the point. Neither Google nor Reddit are actively censoring certain types of information. E.g. what is your favorite nail polish or best ice cream in NYC.

I think we might agree that if you search for anything politically censored on either, you're going to be led astray.

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