Re:DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disin...
by smsm42 on Thursday March 10, 2022 @01:46PM
(#30630768)
Having worked on search engines, I know it only too well. Defining "good result" is a very complex task, that even without politics intruding involves a lot of judgement and very complex and un-obvious choices. Is good result something people would frequently click on? Then clickbait would be the best search results ever - do we really want this? Is it something a lot of people search for? Is it a popular site? Is it a site belonging to a large advertiser?
And when politics comes to it, it becomes a mess. So pretending it's clear and obvious - just remove "bad results" and show "good results" - is really not understanding the problem.
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Re:DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disin...
by KarlKemp on Thursday March 10, 2022 @02:11PM
(#30631100)
You are listing a bunch of methods that might be useful indicators of "good content", useful for search engine algorithms. But those are merely (possible) symptoms. "Good" is a quality of the content itself, made up of factors such as relevancy, accuracy, completeness, readability etc. Nobody said it was necessarily easy to judge these things, especially at scale. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Re:DuckDuckGo “down-rank sites associated with Russian disin...
by awb on Thursday March 10, 2022 @02:42PM
(#30631471)
> "Good" is a quality of the content itself, made up of factors such as relevancy, accuracy, completeness, readability etc.
It’s impossible to quantify a rating based on these subjective qualities you listed. I think the point is you can’t remove the human element from ranking search results without leaving the search engine open to exploitation.