The new version would remove the toxic meta community. It would focus on narrow and defined topics ("science", "art over 50 years old") and would have rigorous fact checking and sourcing. It would aim for truth and accuracy, not whatever the hell WP currently does.
It would also have much better introductory paragraphs for every article.
The concept I mentioned relies heavily on Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha. It seems like unfortunately Wikipedia is starting to see it's own share of not so important/factual information.
Also look up "linked data" (I'm not sure if DDG uses linked data or not[2]).
[1] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+many+people+speak+B... [2] https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=linked+data
edit: so "Hacker News" doesn't allow even basic HTML? Meh meh meh.
I think that's to try to keep the focus on content rather than presentation, and also because parsing user-submitted HTML to pick out the safe bits is a pain in the neck. If you absolutely need presentation features you can't get on HN, then turn your comment into a blog post or a webpage and link to it from here. (But you probably don't need those features, and HN's formatter is easy to get used to.)
I think there's huge value in a search engine of knowledge and facts, where all sources are verified. A search engine that is objective and contains no opinions, crappy blogs or tweets, content farms. A search engine where you can't game your rankings through SEO techniques or through higher add spend.
Google is amazing. Google Search is going to be here for a long time. I doubt anyone will be able to come up with a solid replacement. But one of the current problems with Google is that they have too much information.
So far, i've put together a tiny version of this concept, which i've found very useful when i'm trying to learn new things or do some research. I would love to see some smarter people turn it into something more.