Though Wales just shut down Wikia search last March, he still has an interest in social search. That’s what’s driving his decision to join Hunch’s Board.

On his blog, Wales wrote:

Hunch.com’s combination of community-sourced content and algorithmically-driven smarts is forging a promising path towards this potential future. And that’s why I’ve decided to join Hunch as a Board Member and an active advisor for the company’s ongoing development. As a result, I’ll be spending some time in Hunch’s NYC offices.

Hunch, of course, is thrilled, as they should be. Per their blog:

We have always considered Wikipedia to be the gold standard to emulate in terms of fostering community involvement and generating substantive content that benefits millions. Internally we even like to think of ourselves as aspiring to be something along the lines of “Wikipedia for decision making.” So we couldn’t be happier to have Jimmy join Hunch and share his talents, vision and depth of experience with us.

What do you think of Wales joining Hunch’s board? Share your thoughts socially in our comment community below.

Decision engine Hunch has unveiled a new Question and Answer interface. The reasoning behind the new design is the ability to see real-time recommendations from Hunch as you answer the questions.

If you haven’t spent a lot of time on Hunch, you’ll want to know that answering questions is how you “teach” Hunch how to make suggestions tailored towards you. The more time you spend teaching Hunch, the better your suggestions should be.

On the left hand side is a box where you answer questions. On the right hand side are Hunch’s suggestions – which you can approve or nix.

If you’ve used Hunch, you know that you can go through several questions in order to “teach” Hunch about you. Now, Hunch is attempting to improve the process of answering those questions with a new test. And they want your feedback.

They test involves non-yes or no questions – and you’ll have to accept a cookie to participate. But you can turn the cookie off as you see fit. Visit the Hunch blog to learn more about the test.

Hunch is hoping to learn how to better refine the question process so that the can deliver better answers to searchers in a quicker manner.

Hunch, the “decision engine” launched shortly after Bing (another “decision engine”) has updated the design on their homepage. Check out the new digs:

When Hunch launched, there was a single task presented on the homepage – to begin answering a series of questions to “teach” Hunch about you. The idea is that the more Hunch knows about you, the better decisions they can offer up.

This new design seems more engaging, giving users a few more options on how they would like to participate on the site.

What do you think of Hunch’s redesign? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.