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> Search for "gun rights" in Google, and the Wikipedia feature box on the top-right of the results page is the Gun Control article. That could have a very simp

> Search for "gun rights" in Google, and the Wikipedia feature box on the top-right of the results page is the Gun Control article. That could have a very simple explanation: There is no Wikipedia page for "Gun Rights". There is however a Wikipedia page for "Right to Keep and Bear Arms" which is exactly what appears in the Wikipedia box on the right or as the first Wikipedia article when you search for "right to bear arms", "right to guns" and "arms rights".

partiallypro 8y ago
There is a "Gun Rights" page on Wikipedia (at least that's the slug,) Bing pulls it to the top of the results for that same query (along with advocacy groups.) While Google puts "Gun Control" at the top right. So, I see OP's point. I do have a hard time believing that is purely algorithmic.
- acct1771 8y ago
  Or, it's a well-trained algo. Either way.
  - Covzire 8y ago
    "Well" "trained", indeed.
    - tumetab1 8y ago
      I think you, and others, seem to ignore that deep learning bots produce what the data contains. The data maybe be skewed in one direction or another, as in, it may be the case that most content is for gun control and most users seek gun control content. The philosophical question is if a search engine return what people want or should return return what is most biased for truth and informative.
      - atypicaluser 8y ago
        > I think you, and others, seem to ignore that deep learning bots produce what the data [and the rules it uses] contains. The bot uses data, sure, but like the humans it also-- * Chooses what data it uses based on... * The rules that make up its processing which in turn are... * Influenced by the peculiarities of its creator(s). Those last two can't be emphasized enough. A subject matter expert, for example, will choose data differently from a layman, who will choose data differently from someone completely ignorant on the subject. Someone driven to keep certain data suppressed will choose data differently from someone driven to research the matter, who in turn will choose data differently than someone wholly disinterested in the topic. Unless a person builds a bot with a 'willingness' to question both its data and its own programming (and perhaps even its creator) to present the best linkage the web has to offer, all bots will be mere dummy proxies of the creator programming it.
      - justtopost 8y ago
        As of you could decide either... even optimsing in good faith for either outcome could have serious drawbacks as we may be seeing here.
Lazare 8y ago
> That could have a very simple explanation: There is no Wikipedia page for "Gun Rights". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_rights is a valid link, and seems like the obvious wikipedia page to deem relevant for that phrase. And Bing gets it right. I have no reason to think it's some dark conspiracy, but it's certainly a pretty silly failure of their vaunted algorithms. Are there a lot of searches for common phrases where a Wikipedia page exists and Google returns a different Wikipedia page as the top item? It's a bit like searching for "USA" and getting a result for "Canada"; just because the canonical wikipedia URL is "United_states" doesn't mean that a page about a different country is more relevant. :)
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  It’s not a conspiracy when emails leaked of employees discussing how they could put their thumb on the scales of sensitive political topics
  - intended 8y ago
    It is a conspiracy, if there’s proof of a conspiracy. Put a finger on the scales, show us how it’s done. Modeling this behavior, without tilting the scales completely is perhaps impossible. I’m interested in seeing how such code could work, while scaling and not creating artifacts. I can’t think of anyway for such code to be deployed without breaking search and letting attackers gain even more
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- 24gttghh 8y ago
  It's actually a redirect to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms ...
- brandonjm 8y ago
  > it's certainly a pretty silly failure of their vaunted algorithms. I totally agree, it could be as simple as the algorithm finding more usages of 'gun' and 'rights' on the Gun Control page than on the Right to Bear Arms page and basing its decision solely off that. However it could be as complex as skewed data in a deep learning model that takes in every users search term and subsequent selected result. No one really knows exactly how its decided except Google's own engineers. The fact that most other, very similar search terms provide the expected results suggests to me that it is not an intentional misdirection, otherwise the other search terms about guns would also show the Gun Control page.
ekianjo 8y ago
You are wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms This is coming right up when you look for "gun rights" on DuckDuckGo.
- jasonlotito 8y ago
  That's the top Wikipedia link in the search results when searching for "gun rights" I don't see the issue.
  - partiallypro 8y ago
    He's not saying it's an issue that "right to keep and bear arms" is the top result on Bing/DuckDuckGo...it's that on Google it's not, it's "Gun Control" which is not the top result on Wikipedia nor is it necessarily a related term. The top organic result on Google is a tag page from NPR. How is that even possible for such a popular topic? That's something you'd expect from a rare term.
    - jasonlotito 8y ago
      I know what he said, and I'm saying that the top Google result for Wikipedia was that entry in the organic results. As for everything else you said, it's meaningless.
      - partiallypro 8y ago
        But the top Wikipedia article (if you use Wiki's own search tool for that term) is not what Google showed...so I don't think you do.
HeadsUpHigh 8y ago
DuckDuckGo gives you this https://www.nationalgunrights.org/ https://www.nationalgunrights.org/ as the first result with this being the first wikipedia resulthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms along with news articles about gun rights.

partiallypro 8y ago

There is a "Gun Rights" page on Wikipedia (at least that's the slug,) Bing pulls it to the top of the results for that same query (along with advocacy groups.) While Google puts "Gun Control" at the top right. So, I see OP's point. I do have a hard time believing that is purely algorithmic.

acct1771 8y ago
Or, it's a well-trained algo. Either way.
- Covzire 8y ago
  "Well" "trained", indeed.
  - tumetab1 8y ago
    I think you, and others, seem to ignore that deep learning bots produce what the data contains. The data maybe be skewed in one direction or another, as in, it may be the case that most content is for gun control and most users seek gun control content. The philosophical question is if a search engine return what people want or should return return what is most biased for truth and informative.
    - atypicaluser 8y ago
      > I think you, and others, seem to ignore that deep learning bots produce what the data [and the rules it uses] contains. The bot uses data, sure, but like the humans it also-- * Chooses what data it uses based on... * The rules that make up its processing which in turn are... * Influenced by the peculiarities of its creator(s). Those last two can't be emphasized enough. A subject matter expert, for example, will choose data differently from a layman, who will choose data differently from someone completely ignorant on the subject. Someone driven to keep certain data suppressed will choose data differently from someone driven to research the matter, who in turn will choose data differently than someone wholly disinterested in the topic. Unless a person builds a bot with a 'willingness' to question both its data and its own programming (and perhaps even its creator) to present the best linkage the web has to offer, all bots will be mere dummy proxies of the creator programming it.
    - justtopost 8y ago
      As of you could decide either... even optimsing in good faith for either outcome could have serious drawbacks as we may be seeing here.

Lazare 8y ago

> That could have a very simple explanation: There is no Wikipedia page for "Gun Rights". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_rights is a valid link, and seems like the obvious wikipedia page to deem relevant for that phrase. And Bing gets it right. I have no reason to think it's some dark conspiracy, but it's certainly a pretty silly failure of their vaunted algorithms. Are there a lot of searches for common phrases where a Wikipedia page exists and Google returns a different Wikipedia page as the top item? It's a bit like searching for "USA" and getting a result for "Canada"; just because the canonical wikipedia URL is "United_states" doesn't mean that a page about a different country is more relevant. :)

creaghpatr 8y ago
It’s not a conspiracy when emails leaked of employees discussing how they could put their thumb on the scales of sensitive political topics
- intended 8y ago
  It is a conspiracy, if there’s proof of a conspiracy. Put a finger on the scales, show us how it’s done. Modeling this behavior, without tilting the scales completely is perhaps impossible. I’m interested in seeing how such code could work, while scaling and not creating artifacts. I can’t think of anyway for such code to be deployed without breaking search and letting attackers gain even more
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
24gttghh 8y ago
It's actually a redirect to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms ...
brandonjm 8y ago
> it's certainly a pretty silly failure of their vaunted algorithms. I totally agree, it could be as simple as the algorithm finding more usages of 'gun' and 'rights' on the Gun Control page than on the Right to Bear Arms page and basing its decision solely off that. However it could be as complex as skewed data in a deep learning model that takes in every users search term and subsequent selected result. No one really knows exactly how its decided except Google's own engineers. The fact that most other, very similar search terms provide the expected results suggests to me that it is not an intentional misdirection, otherwise the other search terms about guns would also show the Gun Control page.

ekianjo 8y ago

You are wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms This is coming right up when you look for "gun rights" on DuckDuckGo.

jasonlotito 8y ago
That's the top Wikipedia link in the search results when searching for "gun rights" I don't see the issue.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  He's not saying it's an issue that "right to keep and bear arms" is the top result on Bing/DuckDuckGo...it's that on Google it's not, it's "Gun Control" which is not the top result on Wikipedia nor is it necessarily a related term. The top organic result on Google is a tag page from NPR. How is that even possible for such a popular topic? That's something you'd expect from a rare term.
  - jasonlotito 8y ago
    I know what he said, and I'm saying that the top Google result for Wikipedia was that entry in the organic results. As for everything else you said, it's meaningless.
    - partiallypro 8y ago
      But the top Wikipedia article (if you use Wiki's own search tool for that term) is not what Google showed...so I don't think you do.

HeadsUpHigh 8y ago

DuckDuckGo gives you this https://www.nationalgunrights.org/ https://www.nationalgunrights.org/ as the first result with this being the first wikipedia resulthttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_keep_and_bear_arms along with news articles about gun rights.