Jimmy Wales: Wikia to be more meaningful

Jimmy Wales: Wikia to be more meaningful, more transparent, and better than Google

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said that Wikia could become the engine which Google has failed to be. He said: “For developers, it would be kind of cool to say ‘Google has 11 gazillion dollars, and we’re going to get a bunch of people together on the Internet, and we’re going to kick their butts.’ That’s cool, right? I think it’s cool.”

He also made it clear that the project should be open, transparent, participatory, and democratic. The engine would be provided as a free service to the web users.

He said: “Search is a fundamental part of the infrastructure of the Internet and therefore it is a fundamental part of culture and human society as a whole.”

He added: “People want to know how these searches are being determined. I love Google. I love Yahoo. I don’t think they’re doing anything evil.”

Wales further said that a “trust network” of users will discuss and debate what should come as search results for a particular keyword. He further talked about the popular image hosting service Flickr: “Flickr has almost no spam. When I first saw it, I thought there was going to be acres and acres of porn spam.”

Wales ended by saying: “As soon as we announce beta, people will chime in, ‘It’s going to suck,’. In order to get the media to calm down, we’re going to say, ‘We know it sucks. Just come try it. If you don’t like it, come back in a year.’ ”