5 ms·
Search engines are pretty good at solving the problem they were designed to solve, which is "finding pages which contain all the query words". But they are pret
by hubraumhugo 5y ago
Search engines are pretty good at solving the problem they were designed to solve, which is "finding pages which contain all the query words". But they are pretty bad at solving the much harder problem of rating the trustworthiness & authenticity, intentions of the owner, monetization of the site, etc.
One possible solution to this could be:
- Let the community vote on the most trusted sources
- Include results from enthusiasts that have little incentive to write biased reviews (Reddit, HN, expert forums)
- Look at the ownership of the site and how transparent they are about it
- Regularly reassess these criteria
This wouldn't scale for a generic search engine, but I'm working on a service that does this for many product verticals/niches.
- darkwizard42 5y agoAgreed here, but in your second bullet, people have great incentive to write good quality reviews on Reddit, HN, expert forums... karma/recognition etc. It just so happens that these "forums" have built in voting systems that they spend time preventing from being gamed so the search engine doesn't have to. Not sure if this is a good model for a search engine, but it does work to a small degree in those forums.
- onion2k 5y agopeople have great incentive to write good quality reviews on Reddit, HN, expert forums... karma/recognition Internet points are a terrible reason to write anything. They're completely meaningless. We should all judge comments on their own merit and not because the author has a lot of karma. Apart from mine, obvs.