Stumpedia: Yet Another Human-Powered Search Engine - Signing Up and Submitting
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Creating an account is simple. Stumpedia asks for an email address and username, and then challenges you with a captcha. Click “register” and an email is sent to you so you can complete the process. The box in which you submitted your information doesn't close automatically, however, which seems a little odd for something that appears to be AJAX-powered.
This is the first time I've registered for a web site that forced you to handle the creation of a password as a separate step; I created my password by clicking on the link in my email, which took me to a page on the Stumpedia site. After I completed the process, I received the message that my password had been successfully changed. That's a little odd, considering I didn't have a password to begin with.
Once I registered, I saw a lot more links on the Stumpedia home page. Added links included Profile, Change Password, Invite Friends, and Logout (top right). A Profile link showed up just under the Stumpedia logo, too, as well as MyVotes, MyActivities, MyBookmarks, MyFriends, and MyDeletions. Now it's time for me to see what I can do.
The Profile is pretty simple; it asks for your sex, birthday, location, description and a personal photo. It doesn't look like anything is absolutely required, however. Again, though, Stumpedia has the annoying habit of leaving what you did on the page, even while it gives you the message that you've been updated.
It was very easy to submit SEO Chat, vote down the site I was concerned about, and even submit a spam report on it. I could even delete the offending link, which then showed up under MyDeletions. I can only assume that Stumpedia deleted the link “for me alone,” that is, it would show up in searches conducted by others, but not if I conducted the same search again. And in fact, I was able to confirm this by logging out and repeating the search.
So what's my bottom line analysis? I honestly don't see how this site offers anything different from what you can find on many other sites that let you rate search results submitted by other users. Also, there was too much that went unexplained on the site. The mysterious “Points” feature, for instance. Clicking on that link on the upper left revealed user names with “community points” totals next to them, but no explanation of how points are earned or whether they're worth anything beyond being a marker for site activity. Stumpedia sorely lacks an FAQ page. Even more sadly, Stumpedia seems to lack originality. There are other places on the web you can go that do this kind of search engine better.
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