On Apr 11, 2004, at 11:04 PM, Erik Moeller wrote:
There are other options aside from downranking
Wikipedia mirrors.
Google
does have a deal with
reference.com, whereby when you enter a word like
"elephant", it provides a link to a dictionary [definition]. I'm not
sure
if
reference.com pays them for that, and if so, how much. I could
imagine
a similar link [encyclopedia article] for searches which match
Wikipedia
titles.
I've thought about this possibility for a while. Personally, I think
Reference.com is becoming a much poorer resource as it tries to become
a richer
company. First it was advertising, which was a pain, but not too bad.
Now it
seems to often favor its "premium" definitions over the standard ones,
meaning
if you don't subscribe you can't find definitions for certain words.
I'd like
to see Wiktionary one day take over this function in Google.
Obviously, if
Reference.com pays for the placement, which they probably do, this is
pretty
far-fetched, at least for a while.
Adding an encyclopedia link might be feasible/plausible, since we're
not trying
to replace the dictionary link.
Peter
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