Comments on: What happens when you cross a search engine with a wiki?

By: Jon Awbrey

Jon Awbrey — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:36:29 +0000

Just by way of following up further developments and criticisms, here's a link to the The Wikipedia Review thread on Google Sidewiki.

By: Jon Awbrey

Jon Awbrey — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 08:28:29 +0000

Oh, hey, they have a linky thingy, too!

By: Jon Awbrey

Jon Awbrey — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 08:22:26 +0000

Wiki Nelson says:

“Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to be sidekicks”

Okay, so I’ll be a sidewinder, instead …

Veni, Vidi, Wiki

Jon

By: Gregory Kohs

Gregory Kohs — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 17:41:59 +0000

That was Modernista.com. What a hoot that was. I’m sure Jimbo’s at least a little bit rattled over the possibilities of this Google Sidewiki. Some information is REALLY going to want to be free!

Fear not. I am already conducting an experiment to measure the pervasiveness of this new Sidewiki tool. I should have results within a month.

By: Jon Awbrey

Jon Awbrey — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 03:32:12 +0000

Remember the Big Fuss that Jimbo made about that gimmick site that pasted its frame over Wikipedia (or any) content?

By: Nihiltres

Nihiltres — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 21:05:43 +0000

I have to agree here in your central point that it's gameable. It rewrites one of the core rules of the Internet, which is that you can't write on other organization's pages without permission. Even Wikipedia follows this rule, though loosely: administrators can block people (that is, revoke the permission to edit) if they cause trouble. Your headline's misleading, though: Sidewiki is neither a search engine nor a wiki. It's like Twitter or blogs, or anything else, just Sidewiki is on everyone else's page. Sidewiki lacks the virtues of a wiki: it lets everyone edit (that is, add posts) without letting everyone remove garbage. Google just assumes that up-or-down votes on each post will sort everything out. Can you tell where this is heading? I don't see Sidewiki as being particularly useful or ground-breaking, mostly because it just emulates a tool that's already available: blogs. It is not a wiki, it's just mini-blogs splashed over other people's sites. If I wanted to read blog entries, I'd use Google's existing blog-search tool. I certainly hope that Google will allow site owners to opt out.