Hello all, very much enjoying the forum here. My story is similar to so many others here; thefive pillars tumbled under the weight of a cabal of jobless sycophants. It's just disintegrating now.

So be it. What does bother me, tho, is that wipedia is so badly polluting google search results. A search on any noun produces multiple hits in the top ten.

Pardon me for being a bold and naive newbie, but i'd like to float something. A few points first,

* Wikipedia derives its influence from google's page rank algorithm (no revelation here)
* Wikipedia and Google have positioned themselves as adversaries, Wikiasari,
Knol
* Some users don't want to see wikipedia hits on a search. They can go to wikipedia's search page for that. Wikipedia entries are non permanent and any jackass can (and does) edit them. This creates the bizarre situation where google's top search entries are in the hand of aforementioned jackass(es). The anonymous manipulation of wikipedia by a cabal of jackasses is really the manipulation of google. Google does a disservice to its users and itself by allowing this.

What if we, as former editors, campaigned google to address this in some way (by adjusting their ranking algorithm, or providing the searcher the ability to opt out of 'anonymous content' in some obvious, graphical way.) This would be especially useful to students where schools disallow wikipedia.

I don't know how/if google would respond, but the request itself - coming from (admittedly digruntled) wiki-evacuees, just might be newsworthy.

Thoughts? --CC

"When you find yourself arguing with an idiot, the other guy is actually doing the same thing." -- anon

Yeah, like Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat "positioned themselves as adversaries".

Jonny

P.S. "wiki-evacuees" ??? 2ez …

liek bin laden and bush positond demselves as adverasaries

rite now, osamas is in teh white house, having a beer with gorge, laughing at u

About your idea, though, CeilingCrash, it won't happen. A while back Jewish groups complained about the anti-semitic website, jewwatch.com, being the top hit for searching "Jew." Google responded by saying that they won't modify their algorithm in specific cases because they think that tends to make it less accurate. Then they tagged certain controversial searches (Jew, certain racial expletives, etc..) with a disclaimer that said that Google doesn't have any editorial control over which links make it to the top, and they had an explanation in their FAQ. It's probably still there.

If they're not going to deal with white supremacists, it's doubtful they'll listen your "campaign."

Indeed. Wouldn't you be disturbed by this?

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=jew&meta=

I said was. Also, I don't remember if it was the top hit or just one of the top hits.

Don't nitpick, plz.