Project 1: Search Neutrality
Intro to Web Science
100 Points
In recent months, the FCC has debated implementing network neutrality rules which would prohibit Internet
service providers from charging more money for certain services or giving higher priority to some services and
lower priority to others. For example, an ISP could not make hulu.com load slower than a competitor because the
competitor pays the ISP a fee.
The term search neutrality has also been thrown around recently. A majority of users find web content with
Google, and most users look at only the first page of results. Therefore, whether or not your website appears on
the first page of results in Google can have serious repercussions on your business’s bottom line. Or if you create a
website that for whatever reason Google doesn’t like, what is to stop them from burying searches for your site on
page 10 of the results? This begs the question, should there be regulations or limits on how Google or other major
search engines rank web pages? Should their ranking algorithms be made publicly available and transparent?
There is currently a very short Wikipedia article on this topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_neutrality
Your job is to develop a comprehensive Wikipedia article to replace the existing one which discusses the origin of
the term, what it means, the arguments for and against it, and anything else you think would be useful. You
should cite all your sources.
Your article should adhere to Wikipedia’s standards. If you are not familiar with Wikipedia, you should read a
number of articles to get a grasp of how they are put together, and you should familiarize yourself with
Wikipedia’s Manual of Style: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style
You need to cite all your sources properly. See the Citing Sources article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources
Here are some references that will be helpful in creating the article:
1.
Search, but You May Not Find by Adam Raff, Dec 27, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/opinion/28raff.html
2.
Search neutrality? How Google became a "neutrality" target By Nate Anderson, Apr 2010
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/search-neutrality-google-becomes-neutraliy.ars
3.
Some Skepticism About Search Neutrality by James Grimmelmann, book chapter from The Next Digital
Decade
http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=james_grimmelmann
This is a group project. Each of you should contribute to the writing of the article. You may want to work together
in writing your article before you put it on Wikipedia or do all your work on Wikipedia. Make sure you create a
Wikipedia username so that it is easy to see who is editing what on the article.
You should not edit the article after the deadline. I will only read what is posted on Wikipedia on the deadline. I
will also ask each of you to report what percentage of the article you contributed. Ideally the contribution should
be distributed evenly among you. If anyone does not pull their weight, their grade will be reduced. If anyone
works harder on the article than the rest, his grade will be raised.