searching for good sites

At 01:56 PM 1/3/99 +0000, Jonathan Chetwynd wrote:

>I am looking for and researching search engines that allow one to qualify
>the content.
>
>Interactivity
>Whitespace
>Filesize
>Number of words
>Flesch reading ease
>
>Well these are a few, and you will have your own

This is some research I have wanted to do an have not done.  Would you be
willing to post a web page somewhere with search URLs representing the best
you have found?

>Why is their not a search engine that uses personal Qualia to refine the
>search?

I would be inclined to suspect that it is a combination of performance and
understanding issues.  The kind of query language that you or I might put
together could have to be interpreted against each page visited by the
spider.  That would not be an acceptable performance burden.  But if we can
demonstrate in an interpretive environment that certain qualia are
effective in finding the "good sites" for a given user interface mode,
then we can look at how to formulate affordable statistics that could be
incorporated in the indexing and would be nearly as effective as the
rifle-shot qualia tailored exactly to the user need.

The W3C is in the process of organizing a "Web assessment" activity, and
the WAI has an opportunity to influence the shape this activity takes.
This is of interest at least to the EO group because they want to
understand our audience for outreach, and the Evaluation and Repair group
because what you are talking about are evaluation techniques.

WAI-ER gives you a chance that some of your ideas for "Qualia" may be
supported by programming by others.  Please consider airing your ideas
further in the ER Interest Group.

Al

Received on Sunday, 3 January 1999 11:30:59 UTC