Re: [mxug:1821] Digest for mxug@googlegroups.com - 2 Messages in 1 Topic

[Bernie Schelberg]

On Sat, Aug 27, 2011 at 9:17 AM, <mxug+n...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

 Topic: Search Engine Hack Night - Monday 29 August, Melbourne

Sam Watkins <s...@nipl.net> Aug 26 07:40PM +1000 ^

 
On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 09:26:09AM +1000, Bernie Schelberg wrote:
> You mean like delicious.com or the like? How would a 'people powered' web
> search engine work?
 
Well I was thinking to use instant messaging. Someone types in a query
maybe "good cookie recipe with spice but no nuts".
 
The query goes to a 'general handler' person who is online, not a specialist.
They would redirect it to a cooking expert, who might give the answer or
redirect it to a pastry chef / baking specialist. That person can give a
good response, in the form of a single suggestion, a link to a list of recipes
on some webpage or whatever. A diolog could take place at any stage,
to clarify the query or just for fun :)
 
I think it would work best if at each stage two or more helpers are contacted,
in case one is not there, or to get a range of responses. Or this might be a
search option. A random or 'round robin' system would be used. If there are
100 cooks online, it might send the query to 1 or 2 of them.
 
Of course this might only work well once lots of people are helping,
however the number of helpers would I suppose grow with the number of users,
and without specialists, an expert searcher or an ordinary geek like myself
could probably find something decent on a regular search engine for them.
 
The response time would be much slower than e.g. google, maybe from 10 to 30
seconds or more, but the quality of the response could be much better.
And it could be more fun perhaps, since you are interacting with real people.
 
I think there are some similar search systems with 'human cogs' out there on
the web, but the ones I looked at looked overly commercial for my liking.
I'm not sure if I want to dedicate a substantial chunk of my life to sitting in
front of the computer helping other people find things, but anyway that was the
idea. As I spend a lot of time at the computer anyway, it might be okay.
 
 
Sam

 I like your idea of society working together in such a manner, but unfortunately my cynicism prevents me from sharing your vision wholeheartedly at this point. I think the problem is here (in your own words):

I'm not sure if I want to dedicate a substantial chunk of my life to sitting in
front of the computer helping other people find things, but anyway that was the
idea. As I spend a lot of time at the computer anyway, it might be okay.

But then, if someone had asked me about Wikipedia 10 years ago, I probably would have said that it wouldn't work, but somehow it has... Perhaps we could start with a topic that we have "experts" for, who are willing to devote their time to the project. Given that we're predominantly about computers, and development etc, perhaps a StackOverflow-esque type project would be a starting point. (I'm trying to think of topics that people who spend a lot of time at their computer already could help with).

So, just to clarify things in my mind, it sounds like what you're kind of working towards is something like a forum, but more realtime, and with a dedicated "moderator" to farm out queries to signed in "experts" who could help the user find what they want..?

Bernie

[Sam Watkins]

On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 11:33:39AM +1000, Bernie Schelberg wrote:
> So, just to clarify things in my mind, it sounds like what you're kind of
> working towards is something like a forum, but more realtime, and with a
> dedicated "moderator" to farm out queries to signed in "experts" who could
> help the user find what they want..?

Pretty much. There would hopefully be many 'moderators' or first-level
handlers farming out queries to more specialised people who could attempt to
answer them. Perhaps more than two layers, like reception->department->expert

The 'reception' people might I guess have some basic librarian skills;
they would know roughly where to go or who to ask to find someone who can best
answer the questions. Come to think of it, the Dewey-decimal system might be a
decent foundation I guess, if we imagine there are helpful people on the
shelves instead of books!

I'm not actively working on this, it was just an idea. I did some work on a
nice simple chat protocol for a while. If I ever finish that, I might do this
search thing as a demo of it. Too many crazy ideas, not enough effort and
perseverance!

Sam

[Craig Pearce]

Hi all,

Hope that things are going well. Am I able to get a list of
participants who attended MXUG on Wed 20 July for the Historical
Computing presentation? As part of my video submission I was supposed
to write down the attendee names :-)

If you were in attendance, then are you able to shoot me an email to
'craig.w...@gmail.com' ?

Regards,
Craig

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