"Fascinating..."
Sep. 23rd, 2006 08:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
altivoThat's a quote from Spock, by the way, in case you didn't recognize it. ;p I point this out for reasons that will become apparent in a moment if you keep reading.
This grows out of an article that appeared this week in the Sun-Times, Chicago's other newspaper, under the very hyperbolic headline, "Rival Search Engines Leaving Google in the Dust" by one Andy Ihnatko. The columnist claims that Google is being defeated in the market and fading as a result of a backlash against various of its commercial policies. (I am aware of the controversial policies, particularly those involving Chinese censorship and advertising, but hadn't noticed any significant backlash.) He proposes replacing Google with Wikipedia. Huh? Excuse me, Andy, but as useful and interesting as Wikipedia may be, it's no search engine. He does go on to discuss other alternatives, including Ask.com and Microsoft's own Live.com. (Sorry, I'd rather backlash against Microsoft's commercial policies than against Google.)
Anyway, I went to compare Ihnatko's alternatives to the results I get from Google on a few searches. Just out of curiosity, you understand. It's true that Google tends to overdeliver, and one has to learn to fine tune searches to avoid sifting through thousands of false hits. Ask and Live don't deliver as many results and do seem to focus better, but that may be because their pool of sites is not yet as large as the number covered by Google's indexing.
In any case, one of my standard egomaniacal tests is to look up my own name. It's a common name, and I have to include my middle name in order to cut down on the results in any search. Using quotes is mandatory, and should mean the same thing to all search engines (even though it doesn't: some will ignore the quotes if they don't get any results by obeying them.) Google produces a lot of false drops, in many cases inexplicable, but does also find a lot of references that are legit. I also search for "clydesdale librarian" since that site is less than a year old and not such a common adjacency of words.
Ask.com didn't do too well with my narrower, newer search for "clydesdale librarian" because it didn't find the primary site. It did find three references to the site, which would of course lead one to the actual site eventually if followed. Live.com pointed right to the site, as does Google.
Using my own name, Ask.com fails pretty badly when compared to Google or Live.com. It finds one or two references and a lot of irrelevancies, and obviously ignores the quotation marks because it picks pages that have "Gary" in one paragraph and "Lee" somewhere else down the page, etc.
Live.com (much as I hate to give credit to anything Microsoftian) does well. In eight pages of hits, about three quarters were actually what I was looking for and the remainder either referred to others with the same name (one is, unfortunately, a convicted sex offender and another is or was a faculty member at Kansas State University) or were pathological cases where one sentence ended with my first name and the next began with my middle name.
So what am I cited for in search engines? This is the funny part. There are a couple of references to actual sites of my own, such as the one I put up a few years ago on dogsled mail in Alaska, or various comments posted on other blogging sites where I use my real name.
Another frequently cited and reprinted item is a short article I wrote back in 1997, when I managed a web site on Michigan genealogy, offering advice to family researchers on the best way to phrase their inquiries. It was a humorous thing I dashed off in just a few minutes' time, never expecting it would take on a life of its own and spread all over the net, but it has done so.
By far, however, the most surprising hits refer to a quotation: "In all things that involve social pressures, if we want to see change we have to force the envelope outwards." Yes, I did say that, or rather write it, in a single posting to a gay librarians' listserve on BITNET, way back in about 1994. I can't say it has come back to haunt me, because there's nothing wrong with the statement and I still agree with it. On the other hoof, it has appeared in the strangest places since then. I've seen it as a tag line in several signature files (always properly attributed) and then it began appearing on various personal websites in lists of "favorite quotes."
Now, thanks to Live.com, I've discovered that the one-liner has made its way onto several sites that are nothing but lists of quotations. Sort of, I guess, the Internet equivalent of Bartlett's. I have no idea how or why the likes of saidwhat.co.uk, en.thinkexist.com or greatmotivationalquotes.com collect their aphorisms or research the attributions. None of them, of course, have any idea of who I am. I'm flattered that a couple of them say I am an author (though they don't say of what) and insulted that one thinks I'm a politician (at least they didn't name a party.) From there, it seems, various commercial business sites that feature a "quote of the week" or whatever have used my statement on their pages at one time or another. I should send them a bill for royalties. I'm sure that's what they would do if anyone used their stuff. ;p
Oh, maybe this is where someone got the idea that I was a politician. Live.com even finds a quotation taken from a response I made to a poll about libraries and taxation in Illinois. Though come to think of it, that particular excerpt is signed with my full job title, so maybe not if they read all of it.
The moral of the story is that you have to be careful what you write. You never know what might be taken out of context and become a "famous" quotation. No doubt one day Internet historians will be trying to figure out whether the source of that widespread quote was the sex offender or the university professor. Perhaps if Livejournal survives long enough, they will figure out that it was neither, but just the Clydesdale librarian.
(Oh, and no, Wikipedia didn't find me at all... yet... though Live.com did find me in Wikifur.)
This grows out of an article that appeared this week in the Sun-Times, Chicago's other newspaper, under the very hyperbolic headline, "Rival Search Engines Leaving Google in the Dust" by one Andy Ihnatko. The columnist claims that Google is being defeated in the market and fading as a result of a backlash against various of its commercial policies. (I am aware of the controversial policies, particularly those involving Chinese censorship and advertising, but hadn't noticed any significant backlash.) He proposes replacing Google with Wikipedia. Huh? Excuse me, Andy, but as useful and interesting as Wikipedia may be, it's no search engine. He does go on to discuss other alternatives, including Ask.com and Microsoft's own Live.com. (Sorry, I'd rather backlash against Microsoft's commercial policies than against Google.)
Anyway, I went to compare Ihnatko's alternatives to the results I get from Google on a few searches. Just out of curiosity, you understand. It's true that Google tends to overdeliver, and one has to learn to fine tune searches to avoid sifting through thousands of false hits. Ask and Live don't deliver as many results and do seem to focus better, but that may be because their pool of sites is not yet as large as the number covered by Google's indexing.
In any case, one of my standard egomaniacal tests is to look up my own name. It's a common name, and I have to include my middle name in order to cut down on the results in any search. Using quotes is mandatory, and should mean the same thing to all search engines (even though it doesn't: some will ignore the quotes if they don't get any results by obeying them.) Google produces a lot of false drops, in many cases inexplicable, but does also find a lot of references that are legit. I also search for "clydesdale librarian" since that site is less than a year old and not such a common adjacency of words.
Ask.com didn't do too well with my narrower, newer search for "clydesdale librarian" because it didn't find the primary site. It did find three references to the site, which would of course lead one to the actual site eventually if followed. Live.com pointed right to the site, as does Google.
Using my own name, Ask.com fails pretty badly when compared to Google or Live.com. It finds one or two references and a lot of irrelevancies, and obviously ignores the quotation marks because it picks pages that have "Gary" in one paragraph and "Lee" somewhere else down the page, etc.
Live.com (much as I hate to give credit to anything Microsoftian) does well. In eight pages of hits, about three quarters were actually what I was looking for and the remainder either referred to others with the same name (one is, unfortunately, a convicted sex offender and another is or was a faculty member at Kansas State University) or were pathological cases where one sentence ended with my first name and the next began with my middle name.
So what am I cited for in search engines? This is the funny part. There are a couple of references to actual sites of my own, such as the one I put up a few years ago on dogsled mail in Alaska, or various comments posted on other blogging sites where I use my real name.
Another frequently cited and reprinted item is a short article I wrote back in 1997, when I managed a web site on Michigan genealogy, offering advice to family researchers on the best way to phrase their inquiries. It was a humorous thing I dashed off in just a few minutes' time, never expecting it would take on a life of its own and spread all over the net, but it has done so.
By far, however, the most surprising hits refer to a quotation: "In all things that involve social pressures, if we want to see change we have to force the envelope outwards." Yes, I did say that, or rather write it, in a single posting to a gay librarians' listserve on BITNET, way back in about 1994. I can't say it has come back to haunt me, because there's nothing wrong with the statement and I still agree with it. On the other hoof, it has appeared in the strangest places since then. I've seen it as a tag line in several signature files (always properly attributed) and then it began appearing on various personal websites in lists of "favorite quotes."
Now, thanks to Live.com, I've discovered that the one-liner has made its way onto several sites that are nothing but lists of quotations. Sort of, I guess, the Internet equivalent of Bartlett's. I have no idea how or why the likes of saidwhat.co.uk, en.thinkexist.com or greatmotivationalquotes.com collect their aphorisms or research the attributions. None of them, of course, have any idea of who I am. I'm flattered that a couple of them say I am an author (though they don't say of what) and insulted that one thinks I'm a politician (at least they didn't name a party.) From there, it seems, various commercial business sites that feature a "quote of the week" or whatever have used my statement on their pages at one time or another. I should send them a bill for royalties. I'm sure that's what they would do if anyone used their stuff. ;p
Oh, maybe this is where someone got the idea that I was a politician. Live.com even finds a quotation taken from a response I made to a poll about libraries and taxation in Illinois. Though come to think of it, that particular excerpt is signed with my full job title, so maybe not if they read all of it.
The moral of the story is that you have to be careful what you write. You never know what might be taken out of context and become a "famous" quotation. No doubt one day Internet historians will be trying to figure out whether the source of that widespread quote was the sex offender or the university professor. Perhaps if Livejournal survives long enough, they will figure out that it was neither, but just the Clydesdale librarian.
(Oh, and no, Wikipedia didn't find me at all... yet... though Live.com did find me in Wikifur.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
A politician? Well, at least your last name isn't Ryan:
Date: 2006-09-23 03:20 pm (UTC)(For those not knowing, Illinois Governors and other state and local level politicians of both major parties have a long history of being crooked as a dog's hind leg.)
Re: A politician? Well, at least your last name isn't Ryan:
Date: 2006-09-23 03:31 pm (UTC)Another interesting thing: as more older material gets added, the long arm of the search engine reaches farther back into the past. Ask.com found a new item with my byline... in the newsletter of Integrity (the Episcopal Church counterpart to Roman Catholic Dignity, a group representing gays within the church) dated 1974! And yes, it was I who wrote that. One wonders if eventually our high school research papers and other juvenilia will appear on the web as well.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 05:55 pm (UTC)As for the rest... yes, fascinating indeed. In fact, that's sort of why I decided not to word that first line differently.
I'd write more, but there are workers outside loading up huge pieces of tree from next door and concentration isn't happening for me. But I think I'll try to search for me later today. Results are usually interesting.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 08:37 am (UTC)WikiFur is useful for the same reason - sure, you could go trawling through various sites to find the information, but it's a lot easier to read it on one page.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 10:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-23 11:44 pm (UTC)Glad you liked the dogsled pages. They are still open to correction or enhancement, so if you have or come across any information I should add, by all means let me know.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 10:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-24 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-26 06:05 pm (UTC)for the weak.
But I like Google, simply because its becoming the ALL engine.
Though Yahoo is more fun.
And the best off all is discovering the "undernet"
^.~
no subject
Date: 2006-09-26 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 04:07 pm (UTC)or the Hidden Net or the Secret Net. Things that are,
purposfully, not advertised on search engines.
^.~
no subject
Date: 2006-09-27 05:37 pm (UTC)