WTF is WTF?

Dave Sifry has always been one of the do-ers in the world of computing. And as someone who has been at the heart of open source for over a decade, he can be counted on to be plugged into hot trends.

His latest wheeze, Where's The Fire? or WTF? - a play on the acronym WTF? - ought, by rights, to be really sizzling, and not just because of it's name:

On January 31, 2007 Technorati released a new feature to help people to get explanations on things they see popping up in the blogosphere.

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You can also write a WTF on any topic that someone would search for, and provide information and resources to them about that topic or subject. So, you might want to write a WTF about yourself or your friends names, or your company (or maybe even your competition!)

If you think that you've got a better explanation than the one that shows up on top of Technorati search results for a term, no worries, just go and write your own, and get your friends to vote for it. WTF uses a special time weighted voting system that means that the most popular recent WTFs will show up on top of the page.

As this indicates, WTF? hopes to tap into the power of both Digg and Wikipedia: user-generated, explanatory content that is voted up or down by peer review. At the moment there's not much there, and it seems to me that there's a crucial piece missing from the WTF idea.

The "blurb", as the basic unit of WTF is called, resides on Technorati's servers, not the blurber's: this means that blurb authors receive no compensation other than "glory". Unless there is some Technorati-juice being dispensed in the form of built-in links to the blurber's blog (and not just ones added gratuitously), I fear that most of the better bloggers will just say: "WTF?".