SearchPhilosophy.org » User Behavior http://searchphilosophy.org Thoughts about Searching Sun, 11 Nov 2007 03:45:48 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en Clicks and Cliques http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/01/25/clicks-and-cliques/ http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/01/25/clicks-and-cliques/#comments Wed, 25 Jan 2006 23:24:57 +0000 EveMedia http://searchphilosophy.org/?p=5 It seems to me that google is in a weird way the old high school popularity contest recreated on its head. By privileging sites with a great number of inbound links, it makes certain popular sites rise to the top of the pile. While this may produce relevance, a worthy goal, it may be doing so at the cost of privileging more conventional knowledge over more estoretic or revolutionary versions of ideas. So let’s say you have a crazy theory about the universe that noone agrees with. It may mean that noone links to you. Unless we can add something to the search interface which will allow someone to uncover fringe theories, we end up in the situation potentially hindering knowledge progress by foregrounding the popular version of events over those people trying to challenge the common understanding.

To rectify this it would be nice to have something which would be a kind of lowest sensible relevance filter. So, show me something which is related to what I am looking for through on page grammatical/semantic analysis, but from a linking standpoint is a relative orphan. It would also be cool to have meta data being collected from users about whether they agree or disagree with what they are reading, so that I can eventually read news that people agree is decent versus news they might classify as bogus (cough fox, cough), or vice versa.

]]> http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/01/25/clicks-and-cliques/feed/ Power to the People - Reader Response in Action http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/01/18/power-to-the-people-reader-response-in-action/ http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/01/18/power-to-the-people-reader-response-in-action/#comments Wed, 18 Jan 2006 12:12:07 +0000 EveMedia http://searchphilosophy.org/?p=4 Though search engines are fixated on meeting their users’ needs (they should be anyway), too little control is given to the user in determining their own fate. There should be many more tools for users allowing them to help give the engines data to fine tune their algorithms. For example, it should be a one click operation for me to tell the engine that the result I got was a spam result due to the fine SEO efforts of some agency, with little or nothing to do with what I was looking for. There should be an easy way for users to enter meta data about results that please or offend them for the benefits of later users. Let users comment on results, and let the community of users moderate those comments like one of the many great forums out there (slashdot, etc.). While initially giving users more power might lead to more spamming, over the long run, it might be the most effective anti-spam filter out there.

Yahoo’s efforts in this area are interesting. I will have more comments on what Yahoo is doing in this sphere later this week.

]]> http://searchphilosophy.org/2006/01/18/power-to-the-people-reader-response-in-action/feed/