Wikia Search has four organizational principles: Transparency, Community, Privacy, and Quality
Search currently lacks openness in how the systems and algorithms operate, in the form of open source licenses as well as open content and APIs. This must change.
For hundreds of years, the most respected institutions have treated transparency as a requirement. Those who, of their own accord, promise openness find that with this pledge comes credibility, as, in the words of the late Justice Louis Brandeis of the United States Supreme Court, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." Indeed, those who avoid the light of scrutiny and instead opt for obfuscation are often assumed to be hiding something, and for good reason.
Search is too important to keep under the shroud. As the world becomes increasingly broadband enabled and wireless devices proliferate, society relies on search to find not just web sites, but fundamental questions about our daily lives.
Anything of this importance demands transparency, and we will settle for nothing less.
The best institutions accept criticism and suggestions, and incorporate this feedback into the product. Search should be no different - except that it should go further. Everyone, be it as individuals or entire organizations, must be able to contribute in some way to the project. Search requires a strong social and community focus; one that allows for universal participation.
The goal of any search engine is to provide the user with accurate answers. When we boldly draw the line between insiders and outsiders, we limit our ability to accomplish this goal. The knowledge and insight of a would-be outsider is left at the doorstep to rot away, never reaching the fellow traveler on the other side of the door. This missed connection is a failure that can, and must, be remedied.
Wikia Search will break down this barrier by enabling the users - and not the machine - to dictate the future of Search. The community will be active participants in every aspect of Wikia Search, with the rights and responsibilities that go with a community project of this scale. Criticism and suggestions are embraced, but participation is preferred. At Wikia Search, the door is open; you are welcome to come in.
We must significantly improve the relevancy and accuracy of search results and the searching experience.
The Web is not a network of machines or a series of tubes. It is, rather, an enabling technology, one that links people and communities with one another. Technology which aims to index and rank the incredible amount of content on the Web today is, truly, only exposing the tip of the iceberg in terms of available information. What we, the users, think and learn is the true goal.
We - the people, not the machines - can uniquely determine the quality (or lack thereof) of a data source instantaneously, without aide of a machine-generated estimate. Spam and other noise can be filtered by a community with greater accuracy than by any network of CPUs. And valuable information - which the machines either miss or cannot understand - can be highlighted appropriately.
Today, search undervalues the human touch. Tomorrow, we will wonder how we ever did without it.
A searcher's privacy must be protected and respected, on both a technological and social level.
As we increasingly turn to the Web for answers to all of our problems and concerns, we as searchers need to be assured that the details of our private lives - medical questions, financial advice, a job search, etc. - are not subject to scrutiny by others.
Unfortunately, the current Web climate is running in the opposite direction, using and re-mixing our search history with our personal information - our birthday, address, and sometimes information beyond the standard demographic information. And at some level, the connections made between our lawful, private online activities and ourselves are made public without cause nor concern for the ramifications.