

Wolfram Alpha: The Wikipedia Killer - darwinw
http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2009/05/16/WolframAlphaTheWikipediaKiller.aspx

======
tsally
A lot of the mathematical proofs and descriptions of algorithms on Wikipedia
are surprisingly well written. You're telling me Wolfram Alpha can replace
that? In fact, Wikipedia is a completely different type of service.

~~~
nx
I really want to believe that, but we'll have to check later on. I'd like to
see the OS community triumphing over commercial solutions.

------
zimbabwe
_life expectancy 40 year old male UK_

 _GOOG YHOO_

 _nathan name_

 _president of nigeria 2004_

 _weather seattle christmas day 2008_

 _microsoft_

 _ethnic groups nigeria_

With the exception of Microsoft, none of these are questions I'd see myself
typing into Wikipedia. Some of these might have tangential information
available on Wiki, but this is not Wikipedia's meat and bones.

Wolfram Alpha is not going to kill anything. It provides a new kind of
service, and if it becomes popular the only deaths will be of those services
that offer very limited value to begin with.

~~~
Scriptor
I tried "ethnic groups nigeria". Wolfram Alpha gave me a |-delimited string of
them, Wikipedia gave me a much more comprehensive list
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ethnic_groups_in_Niger...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Ethnic_groups_in_Nigeria))
and each one is a hyperlink.

Perhaps the author prefers to use Wikipedia for "facts and trivia", but I find
myself enjoying the site for providing a detailed and thorough introduction to
almost every non-trivial topic.

~~~
zimbabwe
That's what Wikipedia's good for. It's not nearly as good at what Wolfram is
trying to do, which is to process and comprehend complicated data analysis.
They're two entirely separate things.

------
cellis
If you read "%s Killer" anywhere on a news site, you can safely ignore it.

~~~
jimbokun
Agreed that Wolfram Alpha will not kill Wikipedia, but it is unfortunate that
some interesting points are associated with such a link-bait title.

Using FaceBook for people searches, Twitter for "what are people saying right
now" searches, and Wolfram Alpha for CIA World FactBook searches does
demonstrate the potential for vertical search services to thrive in the shadow
of Google. If services that are better than Google for some narrow kind of
search continue to proliferate, collectively they could become a competitive
threat to Google at some point. Or at least threaten some potential Google
growth opportunities.

I though Dare made this point rather well, and I think it is worth further
discussion.

------
nimbix
I don't see WA as a Wikipedia killer. It's more like a working version of
Wikipedia articles: read about a concept on Wikipedia, then try it out in
practice using WA. I think they complement each other very nicely!

~~~
nimbix
UPDATE: threw together a simple mock-up of what WoframAlpha inside Wikipedia
might look like: <http://bit.ly/3PHMD>

The content and position of a WolframAlpha block would be selected by article
authors. Considering how much space it eats up, it probably wouldn't be
expanded by default, but it certainly needs to appear inline. If there was
just a link to this simulation in the footer section it would be almost
invisible.

Also, another shameless act of self-promotion: <http://bit.ly/FT0qj> (full
blog post)

------
russell
XXX is the YYY killer is pretty much guaranteed to be wrong, esp. if YYY is
good and thriving. (Hardware notwithstanding.)

~~~
harpastum
As much as I don't think WA is a Wikipedia killer, I think that simply writing
off emerging technologies that are attempting to replace the status quo is
naive at best.

If you're commenting on the actual phrasing of the article title, rather than
the sentiment behind it, you're probably right. But I would push that
assertion even farther: Link-bait article titles are 'pretty much guaranteed'
to contain information that's either incorrect or obvious.

~~~
russell
Right. I was going after link bait titles as a guarantee of little content.
The true killers are usually not apparent in the early stages. Was it obvious
that Google was the AltaVista killer? AltaVista had the brand name, a big
parent company, and lots of smart people. WA is interesting on its own without
all the "killer" blogs.

~~~
aswanson
I simply refuse to click on, and thus reward, obviously sensational idiotic
linkbait titles. Hopefully, this behaviour spreads and will be the killer for
the mass of them.

------
darkxanthos
I'm getting very tired of the "Sorry, Wolfram Alpha is temporarily
unavailable. Please try again." or "I'm sorry Dave".

Regardless of whether or not it's "released". It is "released" and I'll be
avoiding it until it's less frustrating to use.

------
csomar
It's the first time i hear about the site: It's great and promising. however
if i happen to use it a lot in the future (and may be several times a day)
it'll not replace Google.

This is not exactly an engine, it's a precious scientific tool

edit: i looked for Google and this showed me the last trade in our local
currecncy (DT)!! this mean they have care about visitors from all over the
world

------
patcito
Wikipedia is one of the main source of data for Wolfram Alpha, so killing
Wikipedia would make Wolfram suck if not die.

~~~
stcredzero
I doubt if the loss of Wikipedia would affect Wolfram Alpha. they'd just
license the information.

------
travisjeffery
Not only are the different things but it will take either a lot more time or a
lot more effort before Wolfram Alpha can compete with the amount of
information that Wikipedia has.

------
erlanger
No, not even remotely:

<http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ruy+lopez>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruy_Lopez>

