The website would be an open-sourced version of Google search, with sections for tech sites, news sites, forums, finance sites, and so forth, similar to Craigslist. The site will be website-only, with no apps and no boosted JavaScript, using only the bare minimum.<p>The website will be run on donations like Wikipedia, and the links will be edited by users. If a certain website is full of spam and low-quality content, users will downvote it. When the vote reaches a certain threshold, that link will be delisted, similar to the stock market.<p>We will call this site "The Great Filter" or "The Open Source Search Engine." There will be no venture capitalists, no shady algorithms; everything will be transparent, and the filtering will be entirely done by users.<p>Unlike videos, which take a lot of bandwidth, this site will be all text and links, which is relatively cheap to host.<p>What major pitfalls am I overlooking here? One problem I can foresee is shady companies either hiring or bribing one of the editors or the majority of the editors. In that case, how does Wikipedia solve this problem when some countries want specific viewpoints to be represented on Wikipedia?<p>What do you think of this?
Sounds like the now defunct <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMOZ</a><p>Also, this just helps you find general sites and doesn't help you narrow down on answering specific questions (who's that actor? how do i fix this bug in my code? why won't my iphone power up any more?) although LLMs are probably taking over those areas anyway.
Nobody donates to stuff like this. Even if they love it and use it everyday, they will never donate a dime to you. Expect to get a total of ten to twenty dollars per month in donations if you have 100 000 active users.<p>And then the vote manipulation, and just the fact that even smart people upvote and downvote like jackasses. The search results will become low in quality.
>> If a certain website is full of spam and low-quality content, users will downvote it.<p>Good to know I can fire up a both which will down-vote my competitors so they get excluded from your system.<p>>> and the links will be edited by users.<p>thus motivating those with commercial web sites (who are getting a return from the links) to spend the most time editing the links. So basically a search engine run by SEO consultants?<p>Presumably you'll also be crawling and full-text search all links - otherwise what would people search on? And you expect donations to fund development, running costs, storage, cpu etc? Because, well, donations have worked out so well for so many projects so far? What will you fund it with until, you know, your site is Wikipedia scale (ie one of the very top sites in the internet?)<p>>> no shady algorithms; everything will be transparent,<p>sounds like an SEO dream. If I know exactly how to score points, then I can optimize my site for scoring points.<p>Frankly, to answer your question, no this isn't a Google alternative.
<i>links will be edited by users. If a certain website is full of spam and low-quality content, users will downvote it</i><p>Links will be also added, edited and up/downvoted by bots and ideological armies, and counteracting that is the most impossible task you are facing.<p>Otherwise a great idea that died many times before.