Ranking the Web With Radical Transparency (Linux.com)

Linux.com interviews Sylvain Zimmer, founder of the Common Search project, which is an effort to create an open web search engine. "Being transparent means that you can actually understand why our top search result came first, and why the second had a lower ranking. This is why people will be able to trust us and be sure we aren't manipulating results. However for this to work, it needs to apply not only to the results themselves but to the whole organization. This is what we mean by 'radical transparency.' Being a nonprofit doesn't automatically clear us of any ulterior motives, we need to go much further.As a community, we will be able to work on the ranking algorithm collaboratively and in the open, because the code is open source and the data is publicly available. We think that this means the trust in the fairness of the results will actually grow with the size of the community."