Re: Yoohoo

Terence Sin (zippy@myna.com)
Tue, 14 Jul 1998 00:10:03 +0500

> So, it's hard to see this as an "open-source" project per se,
> even though they are clearly trying to duplicate (and profit from!)
> the "community spirit" which many of those projects seem to exemplify.

You're right. This does smell like another Internet Movie Database kind
of deal. I do agree that NewHoo is being a little disingenuous for
masquerading as an open community effort, yet on careful examination, it
is nothing more than a MiningCo copy-cat without the paid editors. It
doesn't help that the official response from NewHoo was (loosely
paraphrased) "Get lost you freeware freaks, we don't care." Nice
people.

Thanks for pointing out the controversy.

For those who are interested, here is the URL:

http://www.slashdot.org/search.pl?query=Gnuhoo

===========

In Salonmag last week, there is an article by Scott Rosenberg that
characterizes Alexa as "Groupthink ware."

http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/rose/1998/07/08straight.html

This is a problem that has been on my mind since I tried Alexa a few
weeks ago. The idea of evolving a Yahoo out of tracking people's
surfing pattern sounds like a cute (or even viable) idea, but is this
particular implementation a good first-step toward the proverbial
web-of-trust, or will it degenerate into a web-of-trash, serving as
little more than an indicator of flocking activities?

Does anyone know if Alexa only tracks the website votes, or if also it
tracks the frequency of the suggested links that are selected. What are
the assumptions behind it's fitness functions? And is there any
safeguard that prevents it from spinning out of control?

I guess the question that has been nagging me is, if Alexa is adopted en
masse, would it turn into the bland Top-40 chart of the web?