Today Wikia Search (or referred to as Search Wikia, depending if you’re reading their logo or title), the search engine based on the idealism of Wikipedia and the fundamentals of social search, released a statement that the engine has seen some 20,000 registered users make nearly 60,000 edits to search results and write nearly 25,000 mini articles.
Wikia Search project also rolled-out several new social features which were demanded by its community of users. Wikia nw gives its users multiple opportunities to influence and customize search results, including:
- * The ability to edit any result, title and summary. The edits are then instantly available to everyone
* The ability to add new results for any search query instantly
* The ability to delete and/or hide any result
* Every result item can be rated 1-5 stars, which will slowly influence the ranking position
* The ability to add suggested and/or related searches for any query
* The ability to add public comments to any result item
* The opportunity to see site previews and annotate text, images, links and forms directly into the results
* The ability to try any search on Google, Yahoo, or any other search engine with a single click
* The ability to customize the background on the header for a more themed result for any search
* The opportunity to view the change history showing all the social actions for any page
According to Wikia, other new features include revamped social profile pages, which now include an “activity” feed showing search result changes, revamped messaging including the ability to “nudge” friends and overall style improvements. The project also has a new index, built from community input, that includes a whitelist directed master index and has the Grub community crawler input included.
Here’s a video about the new Wikia Search (or Search Wikia) features.
“Collectively, these new features put us a step closer to our goal of making the search process a much more participatory and democratic one,” said Jimmy Wales, co-founder and chairman, Wikia, Inc. “So, if someone runs a search and doesn’t find the result they’re looking for, we’re giving them the power to go in and fix it. It continues to be our belief that, over time, by adding the human element into search we’ll be able to produce more relevant, insightful results.”
