Something Wiki This Way Comes

This is going to start off sounding geeky. I don't want to scare off my non-nerd readers but, being a stickler for correct explanation, I feel the need to define a wiki before I get onto what I really want to write about: what one pioneer is doing to improve the way you use the internet.

A wiki is a type of website. The name comes either from the acronym "What I Know Is..." or from the Hawaiian word "wiki-wiki", meaning "fast". I have no idea which is correct, and I don't really care. Look it up for yourselves if you really must know.

A regular website is created as a series of pages by an author, known as a Webmaster. These pages are then published on a web server, and from that point on the site is available on the internet as a read-only source of information. If you don't agree with what's there and want it changed you have to try and convince the Webmaster, who is the final authority and would have to make the change. A wiki is different. It's basically a database that you can edit, right from your web browser window. To the casual observer it may look like just another web page, but the big diffference is, if you don't like or don't agree with what is said, you can click the Edit button and change it!

The best-known wiki software is called Medawiki, and the best known example of the usefulness of a wiki is wikipedia : a free on-line encyclopedia containing over two million articles in 250 languages. Regular readers will know that I link to wikipedia entries regularly for further reading (see the Tweel piece as an example). Wikipedia is a great example of how free software can not only make the internet a better place, it can also leave control in the hands of the people who use the site.

Why bring all this up now?

Well I mention it as a prelude to telling you about a recent news story about Wikimedia's founder, Jimmy Wales. Jimmy, like many of us, sees how success can go to a company's head and turn them into corporate giants that can lose touch with the audiences they serve, to the point where their services are moulded and designed more to satisfy corporate profit targets, big-money investors or advertisers than the poor unsuspecting customer. Microsoft is an obvious example, but a less obvious one is Google.
Google is hugely successful. In a few years they have made the internet search market their own and even spawned a new verb: "It's true! Google it if you don't believe me!" Google makes its money from advertising and creates formulas called algorithms to take the words you type in and return the results. The two most important criteria are that those results should come back very quickly (internet users are an impatient bunch) and they should, wherever possible, provide links to the products and services of their advertisers, relevant to the search term. All well and good, but this puts Google in a position to "colour" your results in a way that benefits their clients and, by extension, them. If you are no longer sure of getting objective, unbiased results based purely on a close match with the string you typed, then perhaps it's time to wonder if there's another way.

Enter (or re-enter) Jimmy Wales and the world of wiki. Jimmy already has wikia, which is free wiki hosting for you and me. Anyone can go to wikia and start a wiki of their own and invite others to join, without having to install anything, for free. Now Jimmy has announced a new project called Search Wikia, which aims to give Google a run for its money by creating a search engine that gives users what Google cannot: real, honest, relevant search results that have no motive other than helping you find what you're looking for, all chaperoned by real people and algorithms that are open, transparent, and editable. It's in its infancy but progressing quickly. I wonder if Google are worried yet?

I already have my own two-pronged approach to internet search: if I'm looking for web pages or something here-and-now like concert tickets I'll use Google, but if I want to do some research or just find out more about a particular subject I go straight to wikipedia. I wonder how long it will before all my searches are handled by wikis.