[Sigia-l] "Best Bets" or "Accidental Thesaurus" Examples?

[Listera]

"Richard Wiggins" wrote:

> With all due respect, I do understand the notion of undercutting serendipity
> and comprehensiveness,

I wasn't referring to either one.

> but I'm afraid you may not fully understand what we've built, what I've
> described, and how and why it works.

I tried pretty hard to not reference what you have done, in particular. But
are you telling me that the introduction of 'best-bets', 'best-sellers' or
whatever they may be called, do not further increase their circulation?
That's why it's called a feedback pattern. I'm not questioning your
intentions or the reasons with which you came by those selections, but this
is a fairly predictable pattern. Once you go down the path of:

> However, given highly popular searches, we often DO know with pretty good
> confidence the page most users likely want.
 
you are managing results and, given enough time and circulation, actual
usage patterns.

Now, this may or may not be good, as I said, but please don't tell me it
can't be abused or used for promotion, as is done routinely in the
commercial world.

> The idea is to, with some careful human input, give the majority what they
> seek at the top of the list.

Wasn't there a time when you typed in, say, "news" into the IE address bar,
you were taken not to <news.com> but to the MSN/news? After 5 billion such
'best-bet' referrals, it wouldn't surprise me if a good portion of users
actually came to believe that news=MSN. I mean, they are both 'news', right?

The logical extreme of this phenomenon was keyword searches being skewed in
favor of advertisers by some search engines, without notice to users. It's a
slippery slope and that one was recently barred by the legal system in a
settlement.

Between your case and the one above, I'm sure there's a zone of comfort for
both the site owners and users, but let's not lose sight of the fundamental
issue of 'guidance' here.

Best,

Ziya