Daniel Brandt oughta like this. Here's my idea: what if Google were to add a new option to its search function?

-w:
would exclude all Wikipedia pages from the search results.

Or how about:

-w++:
which would exclude Wikipedia pages and all pages derived (scraped) therefrom (answer.com, etc.)?

Of course, if these fantasized flags actually existed, then they should be the default.

Add -wikipedia to your search terms. It works already.

Well, I was gonna say!

I still think people ought to switch to ask.com. I've noticed that the results aren't quite as, uh, copious sometimes, so presumably their index isn't quite as big. And Yahoo actually seems to beat both of them in terms of indexing things quickly, i.e., having the most current stuff... But ask.com has much more flexibility. More to the point, you can at least choose whether or not to do an "encyclopedia" search vs. a regular "web" search, and encyclopedia searches aren't the default!

Do a search on both sites for the word "radish," for example... Oh hell, do a search on any one of a hundred thousand words, and it's pretty much the same thing for each one. Google has turned into a complete disgrace, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, why not just go straight to Wikipedia and eliminate the middleman?

Kind of a fun search engine is Kartoo.

Jonny

Hey, that is cool! Sort of like Mind Manager. With thumbnails and everything...!

I mean, when you get right down to it, Google's main attraction from the user's perspective has always been the simplicity of the interface. You can't say it's the quality of the results, if people are always seeing Wikipedia pages at the top of Page One all the time... Something like this is way more sophisticated, and once you get used to it, you often find that maybe sophisticated isn't really such a bad thing.

The problem is crap overload. You put in any search term whatsoever and you are bound to find 50 trillion pages of crap among the one good page.

Now, if I may suggest for http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm the option to get more than 100 results, half the time some "good" results are in the 250-300th result range.

How about a mass cleanup of the internet. Way too much garbage out there, it clutters search results too much.

Spoken like a true wikipuppet of Jimbo Wales, the biggest crap-artist on the Internet.

Jonny

I hope that isn't an attempt to insult nice Mr. Hive.

Having studied the Logic Of Insult (LOI), although I am not a Loi-yer -- recuse my French -- I can tell you that I find the nub of it to turn on this simple question:


So, I might have said that Mr. Hive's record of prior insult to our intelligence more than amply justfies any amplification that I might return, but I won't, since I was merely making the observation that any acute listener might reproduce for herself or himself, to wit, that Mr. Hive's utterants seem to me an echo of something very dissemblar that I heard from another Horse's, er, mouth.

Jonny