The project planned to draw information from Wikipedia-related projects and eventually to search other sources of public information such as the U.S. Census Bureau. Leaked internal WMF documents stated the "Knowledge Engine By Wikipedia will democratize the discovery of media, news and information—it will make the Internet's most relevant information more accessible and openly curated, and it will create an open data engine that's completely free of commercial interests. Our new site will be the Internet's first transparent search engine, and the first one that carries the reputation of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation." The new search engine was not expected to immediately replace a general purpose search engine because at first it would only draw on information from Wikipedia and its other free knowledge projects, though it might in time also have included academic and open access sources in its search results. Matt Southern in Search Engine Journal attributed media confusion about the Knowledge Engine's scope to the fact that later WMF statements clarifying the organization's intentions were "quite a contrast to the original grant application documents".
The Knowledge Engine had been intended to supplant proprietary search engines, instead showing how a piece of information originated and allowing access to metadata. It would not have had advertisements, and it would have protected users' private data and emphasized collaboration. It would have drawn information from Wikipedia-related projects, as well as potentially other sources of public information such as the U.S. Census Bureau, OpenStreetMap, the Digital Public Library of America, and external sources like Fox News. Jimmy Wales and the WMF stated that the project would focus on improving search on Wikipedia and related Wikimedia projects. The grant application stated that it would "create a model for surfacing high quality, public information on the internet", competing with commercial search engines.
Information about the project was publicized gradually. As early as May 2015, community members asked about the concentration of staff in a new "Search and Discovery" department, though public plans made little or no reference to this work. The grant was applied for in mid-2015 and awarded in September, but only publicly announced in a January 2016 press release.
The project plan had four stages, each scheduled to take about 18 months: Discovery, Advisory, Community and Extension. The initial stage of the project was budgeted to cost $2.5 million, with the whole running to the tens of millions. After a year, the WMF was to evaluate development to date, and at the close of the grant, set plans for the project to continue to the second stage.
A central source of confusion for the project was the extent to which it would directly compete with traditional search engines as a place to search the Web. According to Vice, "the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that finances and founded Wikipedia, is interested in creating a search engine that appears squarely aimed at competing with Google." According to The Guardian, "there was considerable doubt over what the tool was actually intended to be: a search engine aimed at halting a decline in Wikipedia traffic sent by Google, or simply a service for searching within Wikipedia?"
Since 2012, Google Search and other search engines had started highlighting brief informational summaries from Wikipedia in knowledge panels alongside search results, reducing traffic to Wikipedia from those search engines. According to Search Engine Watch, this led to a battle for attention, and this project could have recouped some of that traffic.
Leaked internal documents from early concepts framed the plan more boldly than the final public description. They said the "Knowledge Engine By Wikipedia will democratize the discovery of media, news and information—it will make the Internet's most relevant information more accessible and openly curated, and it will create an open data engine that's completely free of commercial interests. Our new site will be the Internet's first transparent search engine, and the first one that carries the reputation of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation."
The apparent contradiction between different descriptions of the purpose led to confusion in the media and in the community. In response to speculation, the WMF published a response clarifying its intentions: "We're not building a global crawler search engine ... Despite headlines, we are not trying to compete with other platforms, including Google. As a non-profit we are noncommercial and support open knowledge. Our focus is on the knowledge contributed on the Wikimedia projects. ... We intend to research how Wikimedia users seek, find, and engage with content. This essential information will allow us to make critical improvements to discovery on the Wikimedia projects." Director of Discovery Tomasz Finc added "we are building an internal search engine, and we are not building a broad one." Jimmy Wales stated that suggestions that the WMF is creating a rival to Google are "trolling", "completely and utterly false", and "a total lie", while allowing that the Knowledge Engine might in time include academic and open access sources in its search results.
Commenting on the reluctance to share the grant documents with the community, referencing privacy concerns, McCambridge saw "a major difference in culture and values assumptions" compared to previous Wikimedia practice. McCambridge said that "the power of important strategic decisions" here seemed to rest "between funders and the top of the organizational hierarchy" and was "not shared with volunteer editors."
The WMF initially published only portions of the grant documentation, later making the full grant agreement available in February. Further internal documents were leaked shortly after. The full agreement clarified the initial concept for the first stage of the project. Tretikov said she regretted being so late in informing the Wikipedia editing community about the grant.
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