A Study of the Human Flesh Search Engine：.pdfVIP

COVER FE ATURE A STUDY OF THE HUMAN FLESH SEARCH ENGINE: CROWD-POWERED EXPANSION OF ONLINE KNOWLEDGE Fei-Yue Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences Daniel Zeng, Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of Arizona James A. Hendler, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Qingpeng Zhang, Zhuo Feng, and Yanqing Gao, University of Arizona Hui Wang, National University of Defense Technology Guanpi Lai, University of Arizona This first comprehensive empirical study “people-powered” search. A precise definition in a compu- of a search function that originated in tational context is still forthcoming since, as a real-world China examines its tremendous growth in Web phenomenon, HFS is still evolving. Many erroneous recent years and its uniquely rich online/ notions have appeared on various blogs, on wiki sites, and in offline interactions. media reporting, but because they come from non-Chinese sources, they tend to be narrow and often overly specific. For example, a blog entry on SearchEngineW de- he concept of human flesh search (HFS) origi- fines HFS as “finding and punishing people who publish nated in China where it has become an explosive material Web users consider inappropriate” (http://blog. Web phenomenon in the past five years. In /080627-115435). A June 2008 Times China, Web users routinely employ HFS to iden- Online article (http://techn