4 ms·

Bang on it! Here's the post referenced: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4grb3t/help_improve_duckduckgos_linuxrelated_searches/ https://www.reddit.com/r/

Bang on it! Here's the post referenced: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4grb3t/help_improve_duckduckgos_linuxrelated_searches/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4grb3t/help_improve_...

chris_wot 10y ago
I'm not trying to be obtuse, I'm genuinely confused how to contribute :(
- andrewclunn 10y ago
  https://duck.co/help/features/instant-answers-and-other-features https://duck.co/help/features/instant-answers-and-other-feat...
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    Actually, it looks like to contribute, you need to go here: https://duck.co/ia/new_ia https://duck.co/ia/new_ia
- chris_wot 10y ago
  Ok, I think I see what they are attempting. I like instant answers, but the DDG guys need to learn how to play nicely in this space. They are a search engine, not a content provider. One of the key issues I think sites have with Google at the moment is that if they start pulling in their data then people don't actually visit their page. Wikipedia is a good example - it relies on contributions from the general public, and if people just get aggregated data packaged on the search engine that's great for the searcher, but not very good for the site. StackOverflow is another site that I could well see affected. I'm not sure how this could be solved, but there needs to be a way for sites that rely on community engagement to get active participants, otherwise the unintentional consequences of this may be that they are adversely affected - or they might start competing more directly... Which is what the WMF tried to do, in the most ridiculously crack-handed way possible. I'm starting to use DDG, you guys (I'm assuming you are from DDG?) have improved and you are more nimble and transparent. I'm hoping this big of feedback might lead to some thoughts and with a bit of creativity some sort of mechanism could be put into place to solve this.
  - wallacoloo 10y ago
    > They are a search engine, not a content provider. In regards to scraping SO answers, I don't see the problem. In a classic search engine, the title of the page is listed, with an excerpt of the text on the page immediately below it. In DDG, IIRC, the SO instant answers display the exact same information, but just format it better. Same with the wikibooks answers (those are the only instant answers I can remember triggering recently). What's wrong with that?
    - chris_wot 10y ago
      Nope, that's not how it works. I just had a look to see how it's done and submitted a pull request to update the git cheatsheet - that's a JSON file, and you add a link to the source. Have a look at the pull request here: https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-goodies/pull/2969 https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-goodies/pull/296...
  - falcolas 10y ago
    > I like instant answers, but the DDG guys need to learn how to play nicely in this space. They are only following on the industry standard for this feature. Google, Bing, Yahoo all do this already. DDG adding this feature (but offering to let people correct the entries and open-sourcing the answers) is just achieving feature parity, not diving into new territory.
    - chris_wot 10y ago
      Well, that's fine if you just want another search engine, but DDG seems to be trying to be ethical in it's dealings, so I figured they might want to consider how they impact upon others. If they start tracking me to achieve "feature parity", that's sort of one less feature I can do without!
  - tagawa 10y ago
    DDG staff here. The non-cheat sheet Instant Answers we have all either use data from a third-party API or show a snippet of an external page's content. In all cases we link to the source. For cheat sheets, we either write the information from scratch (as in the tennis cheat sheet) or rely on existing key->value data such as keyboard shortcuts or command parameters. Again, we link to the source in both cases although our cheat sheets often end up featuring improvements or fixes, added by either the author or the community at a later date. They become living, open source resources and are also exposed in our API: https://duckduckgo.com/api https://duckduckgo.com/api You're right - we're not a content provider, but so far we've found people appreciate saving even a click or a page load to find what they're searching for.

Bang on it! Here's the post referenced: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4grb3t/help_improve_duckduckgos_linuxrelated_searches/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/4grb3t/help_improve_...

chris_wot 10y ago

I'm not trying to be obtuse, I'm genuinely confused how to contribute :(

andrewclunn 10y ago
https://duck.co/help/features/instant-answers-and-other-features https://duck.co/help/features/instant-answers-and-other-feat...
- chris_wot 10y ago
  Actually, it looks like to contribute, you need to go here: https://duck.co/ia/new_ia https://duck.co/ia/new_ia
chris_wot 10y ago
Ok, I think I see what they are attempting. I like instant answers, but the DDG guys need to learn how to play nicely in this space. They are a search engine, not a content provider. One of the key issues I think sites have with Google at the moment is that if they start pulling in their data then people don't actually visit their page. Wikipedia is a good example - it relies on contributions from the general public, and if people just get aggregated data packaged on the search engine that's great for the searcher, but not very good for the site. StackOverflow is another site that I could well see affected. I'm not sure how this could be solved, but there needs to be a way for sites that rely on community engagement to get active participants, otherwise the unintentional consequences of this may be that they are adversely affected - or they might start competing more directly... Which is what the WMF tried to do, in the most ridiculously crack-handed way possible. I'm starting to use DDG, you guys (I'm assuming you are from DDG?) have improved and you are more nimble and transparent. I'm hoping this big of feedback might lead to some thoughts and with a bit of creativity some sort of mechanism could be put into place to solve this.
- wallacoloo 10y ago
  > They are a search engine, not a content provider. In regards to scraping SO answers, I don't see the problem. In a classic search engine, the title of the page is listed, with an excerpt of the text on the page immediately below it. In DDG, IIRC, the SO instant answers display the exact same information, but just format it better. Same with the wikibooks answers (those are the only instant answers I can remember triggering recently). What's wrong with that?
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    Nope, that's not how it works. I just had a look to see how it's done and submitted a pull request to update the git cheatsheet - that's a JSON file, and you add a link to the source. Have a look at the pull request here: https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-goodies/pull/2969 https://github.com/duckduckgo/zeroclickinfo-goodies/pull/296...
- falcolas 10y ago
  > I like instant answers, but the DDG guys need to learn how to play nicely in this space. They are only following on the industry standard for this feature. Google, Bing, Yahoo all do this already. DDG adding this feature (but offering to let people correct the entries and open-sourcing the answers) is just achieving feature parity, not diving into new territory.
  - chris_wot 10y ago
    Well, that's fine if you just want another search engine, but DDG seems to be trying to be ethical in it's dealings, so I figured they might want to consider how they impact upon others. If they start tracking me to achieve "feature parity", that's sort of one less feature I can do without!
- tagawa 10y ago
  DDG staff here. The non-cheat sheet Instant Answers we have all either use data from a third-party API or show a snippet of an external page's content. In all cases we link to the source. For cheat sheets, we either write the information from scratch (as in the tennis cheat sheet) or rely on existing key->value data such as keyboard shortcuts or command parameters. Again, we link to the source in both cases although our cheat sheets often end up featuring improvements or fixes, added by either the author or the community at a later date. They become living, open source resources and are also exposed in our API: https://duckduckgo.com/api https://duckduckgo.com/api You're right - we're not a content provider, but so far we've found people appreciate saving even a click or a page load to find what they're searching for.