all web-surfers partake of
is searching for info
and the usual startingpoint
is google or another search-engine
and one or more typed-in query-strings
which should eventually lead to
the info sought
many searchers may pursue the same info
perhaps by different routes
or related info
which could all be aggregated into a FAQ
with the best search-engine
then being defined
as the one that leads you quickest
to the proper FAQ
wikipedia
is filling the FAQ-role
for ever-increasing numbers of queries
but their policy unfortunately
still eschews
extensive linking of
available web resources
which to my way of thinking
is the natural successor to
google-style page-hit-lists
for example
i held off researching
snapshot indexing-schemes
while i was formulating my
heraldic barcode approach
because past experience suggested
the available web resources
would be more frustrating and confusing
than enlightening
but this morning
i felt i'd progressed enough
to dip a toe into google
trying various combos of
snapshot photographs
ontology classifying metadata etc
and sorely regretting that wikipedia
doesn't yet have
an annotated history on this topic
because what i got was all dead ends
not a single proposal that overlapped mine
which doesn't remotely imply
that these don't exist
only that keyword search is inefficient
for tracking them down
one especially frustrating thing
is that google still doesn't
give any hint of the document types
of the page-hits
article or abstract
project proposal or specific ontology
and this topic is especially messy
because academics are busy poisoning the well
generating clouds of ink
meant to create an illusion of expertise
instead of humbly acknowledging
that the hardest question, as always
involves indexing human behavior...