
Cuil responds to critisism of Cpedia - boyter
http://www.cuil.com/info/blog/2010/04/13/cpedia-and-its-detractors
======
lionhearted
My first inclination was towards disliking the writer - he comes across as
arrogant and dismissive of massive criticism, which seems foolish given his
position. If he said something a little more humble, he'd be infinitely more
sympathetic. Perhaps something like, "We're trying to do something meaningful,
and still working to get it right" would go over well.

So my first inclination was dislike. But my second was more sympathy - this
isn't a guy who is being an arrogant jerk, this is someone who is convinced
that the hallmark work of his life thus far is quite good, criticisms be
damned. I'm that stubborn sometimes. This is his biggest, and realistically,
perhaps only shot at lasting greatness. He thought he was building the next
great American technology company, and reality didn't measure up and he hasn't
realized it.

So he points outwards - "they don't understand!" - but I don't dislike the
guy. Who knows how long until he realizes what he's really got on his hands,
and how he takes it. It'll surely be an unpleasant moment, punctuating a
couple years of excitement followed by massive disappointment. I feel bad for
him. I hope I never wind up there.

~~~
braindead_in
As a engineer, I sympathize with him completely. I would react the same if I
had worked on a really really tough problem and made an incremental advance,
which I thought was a breakthrough, but everybody dished it because they
didn't understand it. Not to say what Cuil is doing a great job. But Machine
learning and NLP is a tough thing.

~~~
arethuza
But users don't care about technology, they care about getting something
useful - and the few times I used it the results were almost laughably bad.

~~~
robryan
I think it may be the format the result is presented in. It acts as if it can
give the world then gives very little. If they were upfront about the level it
is at by making the design more about listing pieces of information rather
than trying to assume they all mesh together nicely they may get better
reviews.

~~~
a-priori
How it's presented is a huge part of why people reacted so negatively. They
present the articles as prose, so people expect it to flow like prose. This
makes them very sensitive to disorganization.

I think they're deserving of the criticism they've received. Cpedia is an
interesting idea, and I assume they've done a lot of really good work we're
not grasping. But it's not ready for public consumption yet, and they
shouldn't have pretended it was.

They were over-zealous. It happens. What's important is how they move ahead.
I'm with wheels on this one. We shouldn't write them off yet.

~~~
robryan
No doubt it's a huge problem area, been researching around areas that would be
involved in this like clustering and summarization,

Google Squared attempts to be less ambitious and still feels very incomplete
and they probably have some very smart people and the backing of the most
complete index of the internet and probably the most computational power
afforded to any work in the area.

------
hristov
Sorry, they deserve all the criticism they are getting. The problem is not
that they have few mistakes here and there, it is that every single article I
have tried has been composed of a bunch of mostly incomprehensible unrelated
sentences randomly ordered and placed next to each other with no connection.

If you evoke an encyclopaedia in the mind of your user, the user will expect
what they are getting is an at least somewhat encyclopaedia-like thing. I.e.,
that it is understandable, that sentences follow each other to make coherent
paragraphs, etc. In this respect, Cpedia completely falls on their faces.

~~~
thorax
What if they had a disclosure (maybe until things get "better") at the top in
bright bold red that said:

"Cpedia will quite often be wrong or odd. The web is quirky and we're trying
to make sense of it. Don't take anything below seriously just yet. Let us know
what parts of this article you like, though."

Would that make people criticize them less or give them more slack?

~~~
swombat
That would still be incorrect. For all the searches I tried (including a
number of people for whom "other people write more about them than they write
themselves" is true) the results are laughably bad.

Maybe if they changed it to: "Cpedia will almost always be wrong and
nonsensical."

But then, why release it?

------
sriramk
Sometimes, big companies like the one I work for (Microsoft) or Google or
Yahoo get beaten up for having 'obvious' bugs or failures. People say that
given the scale of our resources, we should do better and perhaps they're
right.

In this case, here's a small startup trying out something new and potentially
cool. Sure, it doesn't work well in some (maybe many) cases but atleast
they're putting themselves out there. That takes way more guts than what a lot
of people have. This probably represents several late nights and weekends
feverishly pounding out code and trying to get things to work.

As an engineer, I'm with Cuil.

To quote Roosevelt " It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points
out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done
them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose
face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs,
who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and
shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great
enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at
the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the
worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place
shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor
defeat."

------
ghosttrails
One unexpected effect of Cpedia aggregating articles about things to build
pages is that the page for the software I write and sell contains both it's
description and links to where to get a cracked version :(

[http://cpedia.com/wiki?q=GhostTrails&disambig=Andreas%20...](http://cpedia.com/wiki?q=GhostTrails&disambig=Andreas%20Morel)

~~~
_delirium
You seem to have done the impossible, and uncovered a Cpedia article that
might actually contain exactly the information a search-engine user was
looking for...

------
allend
If your site is called -pedia, guess what - users expect a wikipedia like
encyclopedia that is useful.

It doesn't matter how incredibly sophisticated your algorithms are or how
smart you are.

It doesn't matter how hard the problems are or even if they are solvable.

It doesn't matter that you know much more about linguistics than anyone else.

If the end result shown to the user is utter rubbish for _their_ purposes,
then you can expect the users to complain and not come back.

If this was supposed to be a tech demo called c-dredger or info-frankenstein
then it certainly is an accomplishment. But as a useful tool, it needed more
work before being shown.

~~~
nostrademons
I dunno about that. When I go to Uncyclopedia
(<http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page>), I have no expectation that
it will be useful, only that it will be like Wikipedia.

------
duskwuff
I've mentioned it before, but I'll repeat it - the length of this article:

<http://cpedia.com/wiki?q=United+States+of+America>

should be embarrassing. I mean, _really_?

(On the other hand, it's the only country which I've so far been able to get
CPedia to spit out any sort of article for. Japan? China? Germany? Russia?
Brazil? France? It can't seem to see the forest for the trees -- it's got
articles on historical leaders an regions, but nothing about the countries
themselves.)

~~~
boyter
Because it seems to want you to be more specific.

[http://cpedia.com/wiki?q=United%20States%20of%20America%20%2...](http://cpedia.com/wiki?q=United%20States%20of%20America%20%28all%20pages%29)

That shows all of the pages and seems to be more what you were looking for I
would say :)

~~~
duskwuff
That doesn't seem much better, really. The second article ("United States of
America (Mark Murray)") is the only one which appears to have any significant
content, and it's pretty disjointed.

------
ghosttrails
I've thought of a use for Cpedia: generating Mahalo pages.

~~~
elblanco
At least sometimes the results would be marginally useful.

------
philwelch
Worth a read, but if they just conceded that cpedia was an exercise in
dadaism, their defense would be a lot more convincing ;)

~~~
nandemo
I looked up cpedia for the first time and though dadaism did occur to me, it's
not really fair. After all, it's not actually random.

Every paragraph in the resulting page _was_ somehow related to my keyword. The
only problem is that the paragraphs weren't very well connected. ;-) Of
course, solving that would be a major AI breakthrough.

~~~
froo
Your example is probably more likely to be an outlier.

I've done several searches, some of the most disappointing were singular
searches of pretty much any animal you could think of - returned nothing.

The search for "cow" is particularly bad, returning no entries for what you
would expect (a cow), but 3/10 entries returned duplicate entries for cow
dung.

------
hkuo
Guys please explain to me why so many of you are coming to the defense of the
engineering effort? Perhaps it's different in this case, but most companies,
particularly ones funded with 33 million dollars, make decisions based on
business and what will eventually lead towards making actual moola. Theirs is
not a charity case. Engineerig efforts there are not acts of chivalry. What is
their big master plan on coming out the end of this tunnel, or are they simply
taking random shots in the dark hoping to hit somethig unexpected?

~~~
hkuo
I will though acknolwedge sympathy to the engineers for having such a
seemingly impossible task laid upon them.

------
nandemo
Note to self: after securing a couple of millions in funding do hire a PR
person; then stay quiet.

------
nash
The more I look at cpedia, the more I'm convinced it's just a Markov bot.

------
OoTheNigerian
If they had learnt from the Cuil episode, they would have ensured at least the
result for "Cuil" or "Obama" made sense. The negative reaction they are
getting stems from the amout of noise they made when they launched their
search product.

I am almost certain even Steve Blank and Eric Reis would have advised them not
to "go to market" so soon

Cpedia and Cuil might be their minimum product, but it is not anywhere near
viable. They are a great example why CLOSED Alpha and Beta exist.

Edit: Their feedback section says "Feedback: Cpedia is the first of its kind
on the web and we'd love to hear what you think. We promise we'll listen!"

That poem is more applicable to him. Maybe he did not realise his smart 6 year
old was talking to him.

------
adammichaelc
Looks like their ears are closed to criticism. ;-)

<http://cpedia.com/search?q=Criticism+of+cpedia>

------
pak
Cpedia: Telling You Whether Your VC Over-Imbibes Since 2010

seriously though, he's trying to construct an argument around the necessity of
bottom-feeding for information?

~~~
apphacker
Well, you can tell he cares about his work. It may be somewhat funny now, but
someday we'll say this was ahead of its time. I'm sure it wasn't easy to make
this. I think there's something to take away, and maybe incremental
improvements will eventually make it more useful. At least it's original.

~~~
chbarts
> It may be somewhat funny now, but someday we'll say this was ahead of its
> time.

Things are usually only 'ahead of their time' if you ignore a lot of the
implementation and operational details. For example, Vannevar Bush's famous
Memex, always cited as the important precursor to hypertext, was flatly
unworkable: A desk-sized machine built around microfilm? It makes as much
sense to talk about Jules Verne as the father of manned spaceflight because he
thought of firing men from cannons.

My point is that being the first to an idea is rarely the important thing.
Being first to a good, solid implementation is what counts.

------
branden
"Cpedia is not an attempt to build something that knows all current knowledge
and can write a meaningful essay on any topic – that would be a stretch goal."

~~~
nash
They are succeeding. They have no meaningful content on any topic at all.

------
qjz
Cpedia is the Lorem Ipsum of search engines! Hmmm, a lot of uses suddenly
spring to mind...

------
terryjsmith
It reads to me like he is defending his team. I would bet that the people
behind the scenes are feeling pretty down and for the most part unfairly:
there was so much hype built up about this company, if they didn't completely
nail it the first time they were doomed to fail in the eyes of the community.

I agree with the others here that he would get more sympathy if he was less
snarky, but I imagine he's dealing with a lot of emotion from his team. I
couldn't imagine trying to build a company with so much pressure, such an
intelligent group of people and all of the negative press at the same time;
what a nightmare.

------
stcredzero
This blog clarified for me what Cpedia is about. As presented in the blog, it
does come across as a powerful tool for mining obscure information from the
web. Maybe panning gold is an apt metaphor. What you wind up with is going to
be full of mud and silt, but if you slosh it around enough, you may get some
gold dust to show itself. Most users are expecting fast access to less obscure
data and don't have a deep appreciation for that sort of process, however.

In other words, it's a useful tool for an unsightly and messy process. In
other words, it is the last thing you'd want to expose to the web at large.

------
Qz
Article seems well written, and I can forgive the defensiveness given how much
bile was spat in their direction.

When I saw the cpedia article on here I also thought it was stupid. With the
explanation it makes a lot more sense what it's trying to accomplish. A little
blurb on each cpedia page with a summary of that explanation would probably do
wonders.

He's right though, often when I google something, there might be 20000
results, but only 3 with unique info. Solving that problem is a reasonable
goal, and it's a bit ridiculous to all point and say 'look, they didn't solve
it perfectly, hahaha'.

~~~
chris11
You are right that googles' results can be repetitive. But I am not expecting
cpedia to be perfect. I am just expecting their solution to be better than the
problem. And that's not the case right now.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, the thing that keeps me from giving it much kudos is that I suspect it
really is just sentences from the search results strung together in random
order, with some noun phrases turned into section headers. And that's not
really particularly innovative, though it's audacious to do it and call the
result an encyclopedia article. If there _is_ any attempt at producing
coherent structure out of the sentences as they're strung together, it hasn't
shone through...

------
dasil003
One has to wonder whether Mahalo primed the pump for reflexive hate of this
sort of project. I'm not suggesting that there's actually anything ethically
questionable about Cpedia btw, but just that people might subconsciously make
the association and work themselves into a rabid frenzy.

------
smallhands
Wow what is all the fuzz about the product is prefect. check out john carmack
on cpedia <http://cpedia.com/search?q=John+Carmack>

well i think the result is excellent

~~~
elblanco
I found the section in the search on Jeff Bezos particularly moving.

------
beilabs
"Blas, for those of you not from the West of Ireland, is the polish a hurley
gets from the sliothar when used by a player of unusual skill, a patina on the
surface of the wood testifying to the depth of talent of the player that had
used the stick."

I'm from Ireland, have played hurling for about 21 years, this is the first
time I have ever heard of this! Cuil finally taught me something, it only took
them 2 years! Granted I never use their service...and there are many things I
don't know.

~~~
chbarts
> Blas, for those of you not from the West of Ireland, is the polish a hurley
> gets from the sliothar when used by a player of unusual skill, a patina on
> the surface of the wood testifying to the depth of talent of the player that
> had used the stick.

Now, how about explaining this for those poor benighted souls who speak
English?

~~~
SeamusBrady
I am Irish too :)

Hurling is a popular native ball sport in Ireland which involves two teams
playing against each other with sticks called hurleys and a ball called a
sliothar. Think of it as ice hockey without ice / skates and the sliothar
instead of a puck. A wee bit of violence and tribalism are also as big part of
the game, as in ice hockey...

~~~
beilabs
Seamus? Who worked in Arvato?

------
cjoh
They'd have done much better if they'd called the project
CrandombitsOfTextFromOurAlreadyBadSearchEngine.info Or
OurCEOSuffersFromAbstractionDisorder.biz

------
ryanb
"We've raised too much money - no turning back!"

------
sanxiyn
I found this article quite enlightening, but then, I guess that is the nature
of the subject.

<http://cpedia.com/wiki?q=rosicrucianism>

------
jorgemendes
I don't realize why the people are pushing down an effort to give us more
power of choice in our searches. There is a lot of room to improve? Sure.
Let's support the improvements.

------
elblanco
The cpedia page on cpedia doesn't yet have a list of criticisms. There's no
wikipedia page on cpedia yet, but there is a list of criticisms of Cuil.

------
ulvund
Haters gonna hate

~~~
nekopa
Actually, this comment sums up what I thought was wrong with the article.
Haters _are_ gonna hate. If you ask for feedback, you have to accept that you
_will_ get a lot of negative feedback, especially when you're trying something
new, unheard of, and label it with a well know suffix (pedia). My main take
away from the article was that they marketed it wrong. If you have to explain
away the criticisms in a blog post, (and a few of the arguments were valid)
that means you promoted it badly. None of the criticisms were wrong per se,
just that he thought they didn't get it, or get how hard what they're trying
to do is. That is _their_ fault.

Plus I do agree with one of the comments above that the poem should apply to
him. One thing I have learned from being in business a long time, its that
negative feedback is gold, _if_ you use it to turn a situation around to leave
your customer with the feeling that they have been heard, been paid attention
to and taken care of. That kind of customer will stick around more than a
customer who used your product and it just worked fine. I love to deal with
_problem_ customers, as it is an opportunity, not a chore, if handled
correctly.

Excuses are a dime a dozen, especially when it comes to cutting edge tech.

------
ajkirwin
What's all this sudden love for the cluster-fsck that is Cuil? It and anything
it touches is just horrific, Cpedia included.

Sorry to say it, but it's true. It will be a huge waste of money and engineer
manhours that would likely be better spent if they were working on web-based
clones of minesweeper, with server clusters dedicated to 2-play minesweeper
MADNESS.

This, THIS is how idiotic Cuil is.

