You can now perform searches on Wikia, the open source search engine from the founder of Wikipedia.

This is from the about page:

We are aware that the quality of the search results is low..

Wikia’s search engine concept is that of trusted user feedback from a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, public way. Of course, before we start, we have no user feedback data. So the results are pretty bad. But we expect them to improve rapidly in coming weeks, so please bookmark the site and return often.

I tried a few searches for things I know about, and indeed the results were poor. I am going to follow the advice.

Wikia’s Jimmy Wales says there is a moral dimension here:

I believe that search is a fundamental part of the infrastructure of the Internet, and that it can and should therefore be done in an open, objective, accountable way.

There are several issues here. The power of Google to make or break businesses is alarming, particularly as it seeks to extend its business and there are growing potential conflicts of interest between delivering the best search results, and promoting particular sites. Google’s engine is a black box, to protect its commercial secrets. Search ranking has become critical to business success, and much energy is expended on the dubious art of search engine optimization, sometimes to the detriment of the user’s experience.

Another thought to ponder is how Google’s results influence what people think they know about, well, almost anything. Children are growing up with the idea that Google knows everything; it is the closest thing yet to Asimov’s Multivac.

In other words, Wales is right to be concerned. Can Wikia fix the problem? The big question is whether it can be both open and spam-resistant. Some people thought that open source software would be inherently insecure, because the bad guys can see the source. This logic has been proven faulty, since it the flaw is more than mitigated by the number of people scrutinizing open source code and fixing problems. Can the same theory apply to search? That’s unknown at this point.

It is interesting to note that Wikipedia itself is not immune to manipulation, but works fairly well overall. However, if Wikia Search attracts significant usage, it may prove a bigger target. I guess this could be self-correcting, in that if Wikia returns bad results because of manipulation, its usage will drop.

I don’t expect Wikia to challenge Google in a meaningful way any time soon. Google is too good and too entrenched. Further, Google and Wikipedia have a symbiotic relationship. Google sends huge amounts of traffic to Wikipedia, and that works well for users since it often has the information they are looking for. Win-win.