Hi,
looking through the API:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php I can't find
any way to get at the actual page contents. Is this correct?
I assume this is deliberate to avoid Wikipedia mirroring or the like? I
remember discussions where WP mirroring was frowned upon. While I can
see that folks may not like it if someone uses Wikipedia to make money
through Adsense I don't quite understand how you can prevent it (you
can't, given the GFDL, I think).
More importantly, I can think of many legitimate uses of Wikpedia where
someone wants to mirror it and enhance the functionality. I can envision
many users who are better served through specific apps in front of
Wikipedia than passive contents added to WP like bots do it. And the WMF
is unlikely to write all these apps, nor will it want to operate them I
assume. How is that handled? Simply not allowed?
Finally, and that's why I'm sending this email to this mailing list: How
does Powerset do this: Go to
powerset.com, search for something you
might find in Wikipedia, and see how it provides an uptodate
(click-through) copy of the Wikipedia page. My hunch is that the they
use a database dump for search and then screen-scrape, or is there a
better explanation?
Thanks,
Dirk
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