ErikZ-
Could we not strike a deal with Google similar to the
one with Yahoo by
which Google favours the original content instead of outdated copies, should
be in their interest too.
That seems like the most reasonable course of action. Note, however, that
Google is notoriously unresponsive to any queries regarding search result
ranking (and who could blame them). Taking this from the bottom up could
be difficult. Do we have anyone who has contacts to reasonably high level
Google personnel? Has anyone at Google ever said something about
Wikipedia?
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.
We do need to enforce the FDL requirements more systematically.
phatnav.com, for example, leeches our images, but does *not* provide a
backlink to Wikipedia articles and even calls itself "a Wikipedia". This
is a violation of the FDL and of our trademark.
While these mirrors do hurt our rank, they have the effect of getting
multiple Wikipedia articles into many search queries. I hope this will not
be perceived as search engine spamming.
Regards,
Erik