Tom O'Hara, I foresee several problems with your proposal.
a) The Wikimedia Foundation itself spent a very large amount of money building something essentially the same which was rejected by the community and abandoned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Engine_(Wikimedia_Foundation) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Engine_(Wikimedia_Foundation)> b) Your proposal is for a proprietary software to be added to the core Mediawiki software of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation is notorious for never using third-party proprietary software. c) The design is still in the stone age when compared to Bing/Google, so would not necessarily compete well to attract the target demographic. d) The search bar at https://www.wikipedia.org/ already has images in a kind of drop-down search suggestions function, this is nice, but has not become very popular. I would actually suggest you go down the route of offering it as an extension on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Extensions Warm Regards Jeremy Lee-Jenkins On Fri, Jul 6, 2018 at 3:07 PM, Tomás O'Hara <tomasoh...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi, here's a link to a proposal I have for adding visual search to > Wikipedia: > > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Use_visual_search_frontend_for_Wikipedia > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Use_visual_search_frontend_for_Wikipedia# > Proposed_by> > > (This was created with user ID: tomasohara > <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Tomasohara>.) I can move it into a > better location if desired as it as not a "sister project" proper. The > Proposals > for new projects > <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects> page doesn't > offer suggestions for alternative postings, so I left it there for now. > > Below is a copy of the project overview. See the link above for details on > how this can be applied to foreign language wikipedias. Note that most can > be supported right "out of the box" except for the text categorization used > to select images for documents without images. A Wikipedia-specific way to > do this might be possible (e.g., based on the hierarchy of pages). > > Best, > Tom > > --------- > > It would be good for Wikipedia to use a general-purpose visual search front > end. Note that a big incentive for this is that users will be drawn to > Wikipedia to use this type of search rather than Google Search or Bing. > This would be beneficial because these search engines often show Wikipedia > content for popular entities like sports stars or tourist attractions, > which cuts down on Wikipedia traffic. > > You will be able to use the visual search frontend I developed without > charge for the duration of my patent in the works (a la license free). Here > is a link to an example with Wikipedia search on left and my Scrappy Search > on right: > > http://www.scrappycito.com/wikipedia-vs-scrappy-search-small > -dog-breeds-en-wiki-site.png > > > Two other examples illustrate some added benefits of this visual search > with respect to Wikipedia. First, disambiguation becomes based on images > and keywords rather than just snippets of text. See the following: > > http://www.scrappycito.com/wikipedia-vs-scrappy-search-bob-j > ones-en-wiki-site.png > > In addition, links to other pages for the same entity become much more > engaging: > > http://www.scrappycito.com/wikipedia-vs-scrappy-search-taylo > r-swift-en-wiki-site.png > > > See http://www.scrappycito.com for the stable version of the system and > http://www.tomasohara.trade:9330 for the work-in-progress version. The > latter has support for handheld devices and also better aesthetics (n.b., > version used in examples). > > I think this will be extremely popular with the Instagram crowd and younger > users in general (e.g., younger than 30). To do similar Wikipedia-specific > searches with the visual search front end, just add *site:en.wikipedia.org > <http://en.wikipedia.org>* to the query*,* as in following example: > > Lionel Messi site:en.wikipedia.org > > Scrappy Search uses the Google search API, so all of the search operators > <https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en> are supported. > > The patent for this visual search will be owned by my company ScrappyCito, > LLC. If the company gets acquired, I will require that they honor the > license-free usage of the visual search system by Wikimedia for Wikipedia. > (They will likewise be required to pass along this license-free usage > requirement if they in turn are acquired). You will have access to the > current source code for use in Wikipedia and other approved projects. > > I am doing this both for exposure and because I want to help keep Wikipedia > viable (e.g., by enabling higher traffic). This is a great way for users to > browse the encyclopedia, so it can keep users on the Wikipedia domain > longer. > > If this sounds interesting, I can develop a prototype for the Simple > English Wikipedia for use on one of my servers. After review, I help with > the deployment for the regular English Wikipedia on your servers once > approved. > > ============================================================== > Tom O'Hara, founder ScrappyCito, LLC. PO Box 6430 > tomasoh...@gmail.com Austin, TX 78762-6430 > 737-203-1577 www.scrappycito.com > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/ > wiki/Wikimedia-l > New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
