hey that is a nice little add on to this story but if I'm reading this right he is going to be treating the new search engine more like a wikipedia layout, the users can contribute to make the system as a whole much better to the average searcher, and lowering the amount of spam.
I think he has a good point here and a bad point here, yes it could lower the amount of spam but it would increase the amount of SEO hacks for that particular search engine, there is a reason why Google keeps their algorithms secret and that is so everyone can have a level playing field, even though we all know its not level, someone with no web experince will be ranked lower then me because I'm implimenting SEO.
With this search engine I think that some SEOs will keep a close eye on it and would be able to learn much more about how they index the web and then would much easier be able to get to the top of their particular search results, without being caught.
Its going to be interesting to see what happens in the future.
