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> [...] but that also speaks for how hard evaluating search quality is. Would you be able to share some of your personal highlights regarding this? I've parti

> [...] but that also speaks for how hard evaluating search quality is. Would you be able to share some of your personal highlights regarding this? I've partially kept up-to-date with the DIY, non-corporate search space (YaCY and friends). I'd love to understand a bit more behind the engineering decisions made when creating a search engine; it seems like a very hard problem to solve. P.S. Marginalia is a very impressive piece of work, overall -- I've heard nothing but positive remarks from users on here. I've been meaning to try it for a while, but time constraints have... well, constrained, thus far.

marginalia_nu 3y ago
Honestly I understand it well enough that I see it is surprisingly hard, but not enough to have good solutions...
golol 3y ago
I just tested Mariginalia and it was completely unable to lead me to a Wikipedia or imdb page when searching for "driver ryan gosling" and variations. It just listed lots of random articles.
- wisemang 3y ago
  That.. is kind of the point of this particular search engine. > This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed.
  - golol 3y ago
    Well that makes sense, but I wanted to push against the result that the OP seems to take away from their test, which was that Marginalia seems to work well for the common user.
    - marginalia_nu 3y ago
      There's also a known bug with Wikipedia in particular, I do index it but the results are never ranked particularly high. I haven't fixed it because I don't want Wikipedia to be the #1 result for every search. Feels like most people are aware of Wikipedia and don't need help finding it.
      - lbalazscs 3y ago
        I often do a Google search, and then go directly to the Wikipedia result. My reasoning is that during the initial search, I don't know if there's a Wikipedia page about that topic, and I might need a fallback option.
        strbean 3y ago
        Unless it's something related to medicine; then you have to explicitly add "wiki" to the query. Some public health thing to discourage hypochondriacs I guess, but it's very annoying.
      - treetalker 3y ago
        Thanks for your work! I have a suggestion for the “About” section at the top of Marginalia’s landing page. I think it would read better like this: > This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of [instead] of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Showing one thing “in favor of” another seems contradictory in this case.

marginalia_nu 3y ago

Honestly I understand it well enough that I see it is surprisingly hard, but not enough to have good solutions...

golol 3y ago

I just tested Mariginalia and it was completely unable to lead me to a Wikipedia or imdb page when searching for "driver ryan gosling" and variations. It just listed lots of random articles.

wisemang 3y ago
That.. is kind of the point of this particular search engine. > This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of in favor of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed.
- golol 3y ago
  Well that makes sense, but I wanted to push against the result that the OP seems to take away from their test, which was that Marginalia seems to work well for the common user.
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    There's also a known bug with Wikipedia in particular, I do index it but the results are never ranked particularly high. I haven't fixed it because I don't want Wikipedia to be the #1 result for every search. Feels like most people are aware of Wikipedia and don't need help finding it.
    - lbalazscs 3y ago
      I often do a Google search, and then go directly to the Wikipedia result. My reasoning is that during the initial search, I don't know if there's a Wikipedia page about that topic, and I might need a fallback option.
      - strbean 3y ago
        Unless it's something related to medicine; then you have to explicitly add "wiki" to the query. Some public health thing to discourage hypochondriacs I guess, but it's very annoying.
    - treetalker 3y ago
      Thanks for your work! I have a suggestion for the “About” section at the top of Marginalia’s landing page. I think it would read better like this: > This is an independent DIY search engine that focuses on non-commercial content, and attempts to show you sites you perhaps weren't aware of [instead] of the sort of sites you probably already knew existed. Showing one thing “in favor of” another seems contradictory in this case.