[Wikipedia-l] Parasitic behaviour. We loose more than money by it.

Tue Apr 13 01:17:08 UTC 2004

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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