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Re: web resources, reliable or otherwise

No, the problem is the searcher. I should, as suggested, have used iris
MYTHOLOGY.

I abandoned alta vista immediately after reading the article in the "New Yorker"
about google -- six months ago?


I think it was in the NY'er article; it also (six month memory) wrote that google
ordered by number of references, similarly to how research institutions are
"graded."

bc

P.s. Yes 40% of first ten is good, though most of my searches satisfy me with in
the first few. I checked iridescence myself and found the four plus iridescent
weather photo's and the one for kids, which took too long to load for me to
decide, may also be "relevant."


John Denker wrote:

At 11:23 AM 1/11/01 -0800, Bernard G. Cleyet & Nancy Ann Seese wrote:
Not so fast! What amazes me is the junk out there

We agree there is certainly more than enough junk out there.

and the inadequacy of search engines.

Some are more inadequate than others.

My initial search was just "iris". I've heard that commercial sites are
displayed first by commercial search engines. This certainly seemed evident.

What search engine(s) does this refer to?

I only skimmed the first 20; most were commercial services e.g. IL
research info. service. Giving up too soon, I posted. Just now I skimmed
30 more. Finally no 48 gives the history of the iris plant relating it to
the Greek goddess interesting reading!.

Using Google,
-- 4 of the first 10 hits for "iridescence" were relevant.
-- Hit #12 for "iris etymology" included the OED etymology:
http://www.heraldica.org/topics/fdl.htm
-- Hit #1 for "iris greek goddess" was quite detailed, including parentage:
http://www.loggia.com/myth/iris.html

Viewing, as recommended, the first ten of I g. of the r., I found not
reliably informative. One was passwd protected (University page) and
another "not found."

This is a symptom of using a poor search engine. Better ones exist.