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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