Comments on: Cpedia Founder Says Errors Are "Intentional"

By: Michael Martinez

Michael Martinez — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:54:02 +0000

This is the key message in Tom's post: "When people search the web for information, a lot of times the first few results do not contain all the information there is about the subject. Almost no one can continue through all the other pages, because they are almost all regurgitations of the same material, with perhaps a few extra nuggets. Cpedia processes all the pages about a topic, and extracts the unique ideas."

Cpedia is not about collecting and organizing knowledge -- it's about speeding the discovery process for the user.

THAT MAKES SENSE.

Google's search results are cluttered with so much "brand value" crap that you often have to change your queries or scroll through pages of database-served, keyword-injected drivel from all of Google's favorite sites before you get to the unique content.

There's a lesson to be learned here on both sides of the equation: first, Cuil needs to figure out what its real value proposition is and put that forward; second, Cuil really is providing value that Google just doesn't seem to have figured out.

Cpedia is nothing to Wikipedia because Wikipedia's "facts" are constantly changing -- you cannot trust what it says. At least Cpedia's facts won't change until the unique content on the Web changes. Cpedia is about what is actually on the Web; Wikipedia is about being Alice in WebWonderland with no narrator to help you figure out why everything looks psychodelic.

If only they had announced Cpedia this way in the first place.

By: Eats Wombats

Eats Wombats — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 21:05:08 +0000

Let me get this right: you do not speak Irish but you presume to criticise the guy’s knowledge of his own language based on what you can find with a search engine? And the guy has a PhD from Stanford in computer science and he works on search?

Criticise the search results all you like but that is offensive and unworthy.

In any case, it seems you’ve missed the point. My curiosity was aroused by your post so I went to read the original blog post. It addresses the issues pretty fairly.

Your headline and interpretation are dishonest. The article doesn’t say that “errors are intentional” in the sense of deliberate, but that some are unavoidable in a maximally inclusive search and that, in effect, a tradeoff is involved.

It’s the 2nd deliberate misreading I’ve read today. Here’s the other:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/17/palin-obama-superpower-re_n_541833.html

Are you a graduate of the Sarah Palin school of journalism? Of any school of journalism?

By: Onu

Onu — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 06:55:03 +0000

The interesting thing from my point of view is that I do think the duplication of search results is a particular problem with search engines that has not been adequately resolved yet. Sure Google presents 15 pages of results, but how many people go beyond the first 3/4 when looking for a relevant and useful link? More likely is rewording the search to try and get more targeted results.
It would be great if his system for condensing results to make options more unique actually worked – unfortunately I agree with the consensus that Cpedia hasn’t actually found a useful way yet to make search results that much more useful then they currently are

By: Harry Hawk

Harry Hawk — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 05:03:45 +0000

I checked out my name and I had a fairly good entry.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 23:18:27 +0000

Agreed.

By: Mae Bee Hostile

Mae Bee Hostile — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 22:24:16 +0000

It's kind of like a bicycle with five wheels, all at cockeyed angles.

By: Andrew Mayne

Andrew Mayne — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:28:50 +0000

If it's intentionally unreliable, how can we rely on it?

The useful piece of information about a VCs drinking could just as easily be a random bit noise. How do you trust it?

By: Louis Gray

Louis Gray — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 17:13:29 +0000

I'm amused to be listed as a "hater". I said CPedia was to Wikipedia as Cuil was to Google. The results are ridiculous. Do vanity searches fail? Of course. But so does everything else. It's a mess.