--- Andrea Rapp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Some battles are not worth going to the barricades > for. Now signators to the petition have succeeded in > giving a windfall of publicity to the antisemitic > website. > Andrea
Ironically, many of the websites (including the "Remove Jew Watch" petition site which are trying to push down the ranking for "Jew Watch" are probably having the reverse effect. You see, Google will count the number of links to a website, as well as the number of times a particular phrase (in or near the hyperlink phrase) is used at the website that it's "spidering". So, for example, if 100 websites added the following Google has ranked the anti-semitic website Jew Watch <http://www.jewwatch.com> #1 when searching with just the word JEW. We should all sign a petition asking Google to do something about it. to their websites, Google would calculate that 100 more websites are associating "Jew" with the website http://www.jewwatch.com. **** Aside from that, not only do I agree with Andrea that we must carefully choose our battles, we also have to consider what a Google ranking really means. By making Jew Watch the #1 ranking for "Jew", Google is saying that Jew Watch is the most popular website that has the term "Jew" in it. However Google calculates "popularity", it is a fact that Jew Watch is the nost popular "Jew" site at the moment. Think of Google as a "reference librarian" for the Internet, whose sole reference tool is the Internet. If asked the question, "What is the most popular / most referenced / most linked website on the Internet that contains the word "Jew" in it, the answer would be (at the moment) Jew Watch. Not the AJL, not the JDL, not the American Jewish Historical Society. A reference librarian might not like the answer s/he is providing, but won't change the answer just to make him/herself or the patron feel better. We don't change answers. We teach critical evaluation of research and also how to effectively search for all of the facts, using a variety of resources. I don't know much about alghorithms, but I don't think it would be so easy to alter the algorithm just to change the ranking for one site. To use a crude analogy, suppose a Christian fundamentalist started a lobbying campaign to reprogram new calculators so that, e.g. the calculation "665+1" no longer equals 666 and "70-1" no longer equals 69. Though technically it is possible to program a calculator that way, noone would ever trust a calculator that gives the result "68" for 70-1. I imagine the Google programmers are similarly puzzled as to how to reprogram the Google site's computers so that it excludes "Jew Watch" without compromising the integrity of the algorithms and without making Google lose its reputation. I don't even know if Google can remove the website from its database. I do know that they have a filter for filtering out "adult sites", but I'm not sure if they can filter other types of sites. All I know is Google's algorithms can be manipulated if there is enough of a group effort. This is its strength and may ultimately be its downfall, as well. B'shalom, Steve Messages and opinions expressed on Hasafran are those of the individual author and are not necessarily endorsed by the AJL =========================================================== Submissions for Ha-Safran, send to: Hasafran @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu SUBscribing, SIGNOFF commands send to: Listproc @ lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Questions, problems, complaints, compliments;-) send to: galron.1 @ osu.edu Ha-Safran Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/hasafran%40lists.acs.ohio-state.edu/maillist.html AJL HomePage http://www.JewishLibraries.org
