4 ms·

> Harnessing real user experiences (blogs, etc) This is what we need more than anything. More independent blogs. The ability to search events now, or 10 years

> Harnessing real user experiences (blogs, etc) This is what we need more than anything. More independent blogs. The ability to search events now, or 10 years ago, mass indexing of RSS feeds, etc. A general search engine is kinda way out of the ballpark for now. But you could specialize for long form blogs, from all sides, hard-left, hard-right, women in tech, white supremacists, all the extremes and moderates. I've love to have an interface to search a topic and see what all kinds of people have posted long form, without commentary or Twitter/Facebook bullshit "Fact checking" notices. I what to see what real writers are seeing across the spectrum on a given topic for the week or month.

ant6n 6y ago
Its hard to get readership writing blogs these days. Thats pretty demotivating.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  Also difficult to distinguish a blog from a content farm if you are just crawling the web. Any content pattern you select for would likely be quickly adopted by SEOs.
  - jdm63 6y ago
    You could use machine learning instead of a hard-coded heuristic.
  - spc476 6y ago
    I've found a direct correlation between the chance of a content farm and the number of ads on the blog. With 0 ads, the likelyhook of a content farm is 0%.
grey_earthling 6y ago
> This is what we need more than anything. More independent blogs. The ability to search events now, or 10 years ago, mass indexing of RSS feeds, etc. Thought experiment: what would a search engine look like if it only indexed RSS and Atom feeds?
Mediterraneo10 6y ago
> More independent blogs. The problem is that content farms have mastered the art of writing like an ostensibly independent blog. This is most visible in recipe blogs, where for example the site will look independent, the blog owner’s "About Me" page will say that she is a young woman born and raised in Louisiana and passionate about her home region’s cooking, but the English is replete with the sort of mistakes that non-native speakers make. You can tell that the content writing was farmed out to someone from Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia, and basically the whole blog and its owner are fake. (Even all the recipes were drawn from other blogs, but someone was paid to rewrite them slightly.)
- account42 6y ago
  I wonder how viable it would be to just exclude all sites with ads.

ant6n 6y ago

Its hard to get readership writing blogs these days. Thats pretty demotivating.

CameronNemo 6y ago
Also difficult to distinguish a blog from a content farm if you are just crawling the web. Any content pattern you select for would likely be quickly adopted by SEOs.
- jdm63 6y ago
  You could use machine learning instead of a hard-coded heuristic.
- spc476 6y ago
  I've found a direct correlation between the chance of a content farm and the number of ads on the blog. With 0 ads, the likelyhook of a content farm is 0%.

grey_earthling 6y ago

> This is what we need more than anything. More independent blogs. The ability to search events now, or 10 years ago, mass indexing of RSS feeds, etc. Thought experiment: what would a search engine look like if it only indexed RSS and Atom feeds?

Mediterraneo10 6y ago

> More independent blogs. The problem is that content farms have mastered the art of writing like an ostensibly independent blog. This is most visible in recipe blogs, where for example the site will look independent, the blog owner’s "About Me" page will say that she is a young woman born and raised in Louisiana and passionate about her home region’s cooking, but the English is replete with the sort of mistakes that non-native speakers make. You can tell that the content writing was farmed out to someone from Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia, and basically the whole blog and its owner are fake. (Even all the recipes were drawn from other blogs, but someone was paid to rewrite them slightly.)

account42 6y ago
I wonder how viable it would be to just exclude all sites with ads.