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Our Bureau

Thiruvananthapuram, Dec. 12 Mr Jimmy Wales, founder of the free online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia, and Chairman of Wikia Inc, is now excited about the possibilities that Wikia Search, a new search engine, offers. Wikia Search (http://search.wikia.com) is a freely licensed search engine being developed by Wikia.

Addressing a conference on ‘freedom in computing, development and culture’ in the city on Thursday, he explained that Wikia Search is something he is “personally engaged in”.

Unlike other search engines that offer no transparency about the way they operate, Wikia Search — currently a feature on Wikia.com — uses free software and is open and transparent. More important, it is a community initiative, as users control search results, he pointed out.

Commenting on Wikia, his new for-profit venture, Mr Wales explained that it uses the Wikipedia model, but is different. While Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, Wikia is more like a library and seeks to aggregate in-depth knowledge on a particular subject, he pointed out. And unlike Wikipedia, Wikia is supported by advertising, he added.

Wikipedia, which is supported by donations and the work of thousands of volunteers, is based on the premise that every single person should get access to the sum of all human knowledge, Mr Wales said. With 11 million articles in 250-plus languages, including 2.5 million articles in English, Wikipedia is the fourth most popular Web site in the world, he added.

Several Indian language versions of Wikipedia exist, including ones in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Urdu and Telugu. The Telugu Wikipedia, with 41,000 articles, is the largest among the Indian language versions of the site, Mr Wales said.

More Stories on : Events | Internet | Kerala

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