[wckrause]

I guess I don't view a Search engine as "social software" in the same way that you do. The fact that a concerted effort by a few can manipulate its results doesn't increase its value as a search engine, but rather, detracts from it.

As a practical matter, if I were trying to find a link to Gephardt's speach where he called Bush a "miserable failure", I would be annoyed with the fact that the first hit is a link to Bush's bio (with no mention of the phrase "miserable failure") and not to a copy of Gephardt's speach, or something at least related to it.