Comments on: 200 Signals, Still Only One Route

By: jeremy

jeremy — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:35:27 +0000

@Daniel — Yeah, it doesn’t mention PODC and SPAA until the very end. They built up to the punchline very differently in the beginning, from what it turned out to be in the end. Oh well.

By: jeremy

jeremy — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:29:43 +0000

todd,

As far as I know (which I don’t), those different relationship specializations are not something that Google and Bing consciously strive for. I think it is something that unconsciously arises out of unrelated design decisions. But yes, I agree that, whether or not the specializations are intentional, they should be made first-class, and therefore alterable.

By: todd

todd — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:00:04 +0000

That makes a lot of sense Jeremy, thanks. I think of it as traversing relationships. Entities relate to other entities in a set of ways and you traverse those relationships depending on what interests you. I even think identity is established by those relationships.

I did not know the different relationship specializations of Bing and Google. That’s interesting and it would be useful to expose those relationships as first class entities.

By: jeremy

jeremy — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:26:43 +0000

@todd: A “route” in this analogy is the ordering in which the search engine returns results to you. Just as there isn’t only one route from Point A to Point B, so also might I not want to traverse the ranked list in the order that the search engine thinks is best for me. Over on Daniel Tunkelang’s blog, we’re discussing right now our observations about how Bing tends to return popular, how-to, and business-related links toward the top of the list, and Google tends to return academic, scholarly, journal-oriented articles. On Bing, there is only one route through the results: The popular, how-to route. On Google there is only the academic route. What I want to be able to do is tell the engine, “Hey, no! For this query, find me a different route. I know all my other queries about information seeking and retrieval tend to favor the academic route. But right now I want to learn about the aurora borealis, without having to learn a complex technical jargon. So the academic article from the journal of climatology, topically relevant though it may be, is not the particular route that I want to take through the search engine at this moment. So let me choose another route.”

Does that make more sense? The analogy to maps should be clear. Lots of times, you want the shortest-time route. But some times, you also want to be able to take the scenic route. The search engine should give you the option of explicitly choosing.

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:13:06 +0000

They’re systems guys, not information scientists. PODC and SPAA–you’re not going to hear about exploratory search there. Though amazingly you will if you come to this year’s SIGMOD!

http://www.sigmod09.org/program_sigmod.shtml#invited

By: todd

todd — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:23:10 +0000

I’m not sure what “essentially still on finding only one route from Point A to Point B” means. Could you talk a little more about the discussion you were hoping to have?