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NMH: Memetracker Transparency

With the addition of OPML seeding in aggregators like TailRank and Megite, memetrackers seem to be slowly drifting towards my vision of focused crawlers in aggregators. I like the direction things are going, but have an issue with transparency in these systems.

Maybe it's just the geek in me, but I'd like to have some way to investigate how such systems decide on what to serve up on my behalf. As it is, I can't tell whether they're any better than random. For example, in addition to a hidden algorithm, memeorandum doesn't even reveal its sources. Megite has generated a bunch of pages for me, presumably customized, but I have a hard time distinguishing anything different from what I would have seen in my aggregator.

To put it simply, how do we know these systems aren't just big old Wizard of Oz experiments, "Pay no attention to the man behind the mirror." I admit this is something of a power user/prosumer issue, but this camp can serve to generate confidence amongst the unquestioning masses.

And of course the next thing I'll be asking for is some knobs on the things so I can tweak them, but you can't get greedy.

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