the ranking algorithm is going to need to be decentralized (aka user-configurable) in some way
What do you mean? What configuration options would you like?
What do you mean? What configuration options would you like?
Suppose you're a gamer - You could configure search results related to gaming to be limited to games you own, games you want, the subset of platforms or genres you care about, games your friends own, and so on. It wouldn't be a priority for most search companies to make something like that, but it would certainly provide some value for certain people. Decentralized configuration would allow for communities with given interests to configure and distribute customizations for that audience, in a way that would appeal to that audience. It's not that farfetched of an idea, very realistic both from a tech and adoption POV.
You.com is starting the building blocks of such a thing, but I don't know how far they're going to push the envelope. https://about.you.com/apps/
Can you elaborate?
"Decentralized configuration would allow for communities with given interests to configure and distribute customizations for that audience, in a way that would appeal to that audience."
> This configuration would also need to be sharable, maybe something akin to an App Store, because not all users can be asked to be technical enough to configure everything.
Or, as with any other software, there's this thing called a default, which usually works for the average user.
Having results come up that are also explicitly labelled "You are viewing results through the FOOBAR lens - click here to use another lens".
Our results are already skewed by factors that we don't have much visibility in to - being more explicit/transparent about it, while giving people some ability to influence/change the lens they view results through would be useful.