Wikia has just launched and the general response has been 'not so good' with a general air of disappointment at its limitations and poor results. If you want to start off with a nice overview, the BBC has an interview with Jimmy Wales.
They do have a nice little logo:
It's important to remember that they say We are aware that the quality of the search results is low.. So they're upfront on that. And yes, they are, so let's not be too critical of that; if you're creating something that requires people input it's to be expected.
At the moment there's nothing particularly special to see. You can run a search, see that there is (or most likely isn't) a 'mini article' on a subject area, and you can dip in and write one, or update something that already exists. They're very hot on the subject of spam - if you go and create an article you are immediately faced with: Do not spam. If you spam you will be blocked and your website blacklisted. For a long time. You will be sad. Do not spam. We do not want you to be sad. :-) Do something useful. You will be happy. Fair enough, though I'm not exactly sure what their definition is, but it's a good point, and one that they need to be concerned about.
Results are fairly basic, with a title, summary, URL, cached version and some sort of rating. Here's the one for the top ranking site relating to Web 2.0 - see if you can work out what it means! That is so going to keep the SEO bods intrigued. There's also a star rating system, which you can click on, but you get a message saying that they don't actually do anything yet. Please - either make them do something or take them away until they are ready to do something.
Advanced search syntax. Absolutely no idea. I tried a few things, but they didn't work, and there's no link for any kind of advanced search. There is also no help screen. I don't care how alpha, beta or any other letter you are, if you're putting out a product for people to use, not having help screens is, quite frankly, bad.
The social aspect. You can register, fill out a profile, invite friends, add your interests and a photograph. If you're lucky, when you run an appropriate search your photograph and details will be posted as well (if you've given permission), although this seems buggy - I didn't appear for any of the things that I mentioned I was interested in, and the same set of photo profiles kept appearing over and over again. Doubtless this is a bug that will be fixed shortly. There are also secondary indexes; a white list, a 'smaller test' and Visvo, a 3rd party index. At the moment however, they don't appear to do anything of any great interest.
I'm sure that there's a great deal more to explore, but so far (and this opinion is subject to change as I learn more about the thing) my overall impression is one of being totally underwhelmed. There are a great many blanks, unfinished sections, links that don't go anywhere and lots of not much else. It's like looking inside a large house - I can see the rooms, stairs, basement and so on, and the lights work, the water is on, but not much else. Which is more of an observation than a criticism. I'll return to it a bit in the next few days and weeks.
[Edited to add:] Most of the reviews that I've seen so far have been at best very critical. Over at Techcrunch it's referred to as 'a complete let down' and from Mashable 'miles behind the competition' in their comparison with Mahalo. CenterNetworks says 'it's not ready yet' though it's not all doom and gloom with another commentator saying that he's more intrigued than he expected. Over at Search Engine Roundtable the comment that I particularly noticed was 'Honestly, it seems very lacking'
Meanwhile Mr Wales is running around commenting on the comments, trying to make the point that the engine has been overhyped, that he's not saying its a Google killer, and that it just needs time to develop. I think he's in for a long night!
Doesn't light my fire either, to be honest. I searched for my own name...didn't find me. Searched for my own name with the word "science" and some Phil Bradley character was the 3rd hit! Pah ;-)
db
Posted by: David Bradley | January 07, 2008 at 02:36 PM
Hi Phil, just a quick note to offer a "me-too" response. Basically, I agree with your comment on TechCrunch - I can understand if the product is weak at launch (namely due to both its alpha status and the nature of any open-source community project) but if it relies on community participation to grow, then at a reasonably high-profile launch there must be very clear explanations of how things work and how the enthusiastic user can help.
Anyway I hope that things with you and family are going OK, and happy new year!
James
Posted by: James Brown | January 07, 2008 at 06:09 PM