Archive for March, 2004
March 8, 2004
The Quality of Your Indexers Matters
Came across these 12-year old stats recently:
Bad news I think…
1. If two groups of people construct thesauri in a particular subject area, the overlap of index terms will only be 60%.
2. Two indexers using the same thesaurus on the same document use common index terms in only 30% of cases.
3. The output from two experienced database searchers has only 40% overlap.
4. Experts’ judgements of relevance concur in only 60% of cases.
[Source: JAA Sillince, 1992, Literature searching with unclear objectives: a new approach using argumentation. On-line Review, 16 (6), 391-409]
I think that just goes to show that the quality and knowledge of your indexers (human or otherwise) is incredibly important.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | 5 Comments
March 8, 2004
The Day the Webmonkey Died
That day was a couple of weeks ago, apparently. Webmonkey ceases publication after a final round of layoffs.
The how-to content of the Webmonkey site is what got me rolling in my early efforts at developing web pages in the ’90s. I haven’t used the site as a reference in years but I’m bummed that it’s finally gone kaput.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
March 3, 2004
Google Goes Atom
Google spurns RSS for rising blog format | CNET News.com. I typically don’t pay much attention to the syndication standards wars but this is kind of interesting. Google has gone with the Atom standard instead of RSS for syndication on its Blogger network. Existing Blogger Pro users with RSS feeds can keep them but all other Blogger customers will only be able to deploy Atom feeds.
As long as all the popular newsfeed readers implement Atom, I don’t think it will make much difference to the end users. Anyone maintaining a list of Atom adoption in reader software?
Update: I should have dug a little deeper on the Atom site. Here is a directory of client software (mostly readers) that supports Atom. Thanks, dw!
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | 2 Comments
March 2, 2004
Yahoo Paid Search Listings
Came across this link on RC3 that translates Yahoo’s new paid search listings: Yahoo Paid Search, Translated. I really don’t like that these paid listings won’t be identified as such in the search results. Ultimately this will hurt them if it degrades confidence in their search results due to not-so-valuable paid listings crowding out other content.
Permanent Link | Subscribe via RSS | Subscribe via Email | Comment
+1 (410) 742-9088 | david@highcontext.com
Copyright © 2010 High Context Consulting
Privacy Policy: HCC will never share your information with anyone without your permission.