Dan Lewis, developer for the user-edited search engine Wikia, was researching a recall on a car seat, and pasted what he found on the search for “marathon recall.” Later on, he had to look up more information on his car seat, and realised he’d created a kind of bookmarklet—one he could just tell his wife over the phone, or tell a friend at a party. The results will vary, of course, with how often your search term gets edited, but with Wikia still in its nascent popularity, you can share information on specific things without having to worry about emailing a link. Using Wikia Search as a Group Bookmarking Tool — An Accidental How-To [Wikia Search Blog]
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is trying out the technique that succeeded in putting together an online encyclopedia—opening it up so that anyone can edit it—to improving search results. Wales’ user-edited search engine Wikia Search is now out of alpha and open to the public for edits. Search for a term on Wikia Search and rate the results to change their ranking, edit link titles and descriptions, and add links to results. To see what’s perhaps Wikia Search’s best feature, click the Annotate link. This lets you select a section of text on the web page to clip and add to the result.
