San Francisco (CA) - An extension of the idea behind Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia which is driven by the user community, is about to be extended to a new search engine. An early alpha version of Wikia Search went online today, allowing for users to begin contributing to the search engine construct which, according to Wikipedia and Wikia founder, Jimmy Wales, could eventually prove to be a "Google-quality search engine".

The idea behind Wikia Search is fairly simple. A voluntary group of users will collaborate to fine tune the Wikia Search engine. The service will rank pages based on a relatively simple algorithm. Users will then come in behind that ranking and rate pages for quality and relevance. Wikia will then incorporate that feedback over time into its own rankings, therefore potentially delivering increasingly more useful answers to search queries.

The Wikia project is an independent, for-profit company which is not part of the Wikiamedia Foundation which runs Wikipedia today. Wikia will generate revenue by selling ads. So far the endeavor has received $14 million in startup capital, $10 million of which came from Amazon.com.

The Wikia search engine software will be an open-source project. Anyone with programming skills desiring to alter the algorithms can potentially contribute.

Read more ... New York Times.