Mary Hodder on BlogHer. A few words about BlogHer, and this interesting bit:

After 45 minutes of intense anger and frustration from many audience speakers in the room toward Technorati link counts and top 100, I suggested we create a community based algorithm, based on more complex social relationships than links. It’s something I’ve been working on for few months, trying to frame, about what this problem is and how we might solve it. But it’s a complex issue and I’m also busy. So it’s taken a while. However, my blog post is almost done, and I do plan to put it up in the next day or so.

I look forward to seeing how she proposes to do this. I’m also curious about how useful an “open” algorithm will be. Part of why Google is so secretive about their ranking system is that they’re afraid people will cheat the system if they know how it works. Many have talked about creating an open source alternative to Google, but as far as I know nothing like this exists yet. I’m rooting for transparent algorithms, I’d love to see them take off, but I’m a bit skeptical. It does seem that perhaps search algorithms is the one place where secrecy is best.

Of course, Technorati’s system is pretty open: they just count links. At the very least, Hodder’s system should be more nuanced. A more complex rating system should be harder to scam, no?