Talk:Answers.com

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Contents

[edit] I removed one section

There was a section entitled "Mirroring Wikipedia and Manipulating SERPs" -- I don't know what "SERP" means and there was no discussion in that section of any 'manipulation'.

The content appeared to me (and I haven't checked the edit history) to be added by someone pushing a pov against mirrors. The point, if there was one, is that in some cases Answers.com comes up higher in google than Wikipedia does. I fail to see why this is interesting.--Jimbo Wales 22:32, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree that this image was tacky. But I'm surprised that you don't consider this fact "interesting" (although it may not be appropriate for the article). Doesn't most of Wikipedia's traffic come from Google and other search engines? Wouldn't this trend in Answers' rankings have an impact? If we start linking to Answers.com and their tools, won't their relative rankings only increase more?
You also deleted someone's claim that Wikipedia content is selectively included... Is this true or false? Tfine80 01:13, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Has this article been gutted by some P.R. person? The web site seems to primarily get it's info from Wikipedia. This fact is worthy of mention in a Wikipedia article, but is conspicuously missing. Including this little fact would not be "original research" any more than an observation that the sky is blue could be considered "original research"; this info belongs in the entry. And surely a third party source has also made this observation, if a citation is really needed.--Drvanthorp (talk) 21:52, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The answers.com employee needs to stay out of this article

Whoever you are, please stop erasing sourced info because it is not burnished to your taste. Lotsofissues 04:30, 16 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Mirroring Wikipedia and Manipulating SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages)"

Today I brought back the "Mirroring Wikipedia and Manipulating SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages)". I believe it is important to let wiki users know that Answers.com is the only website that is currently indexed by the search engines that shows duplicate entries for Wikipedia article -- see two screenshots. I resized them to make the article look better.

Answers.com currently is the only major Wikipedia mirror still ranked by Google. Even though many pages on Answers.com are dominated by Wikipedia content they are included in the Google index and ranked high in the search results.

For example, take a look at http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Bristoe+Campaign%22.

Another example is http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Abu+Ghraib+torture+and+prisoner+abuse%22. Both examples only have Wikipedia content and they are beating Wikipedia in the rankings.

On one hand, Answers is a site of questionable value, everything it has is copied from other sources, all of them freely available. They do not create any content but rather assemble somebody else's work, drive lots of traffic by dominating the Google index with duplicate content and selling this traffic with lots of ads. If this site disappears from the Net, nothing will be lost in terms of publicly available content. It is hard to see how it is beneficial for the Wikipedia project that many users go to Answers while actually looking for the content that was created on Wikipedia.

The business model of Answers is a very well done combination of techniques called site scrapping and index SPAM. This may sound too harsh for a good looking website, but that what it really is behind the hood.

On the other hand, they spend a small portion of their ad revenue on donations to wikimedia and have created a very good PR for themselves. It seems the question is whether anybody can buy their way into preferential treatment by the wiki board so the opinion of the user community is ignored and distorted? [unsigned contrib from Wiki is the future]

Some of us believe it is important to note answers.com's dependence on us but no one else outside of this community cares. The POV is based on original theory and research. I am going to remove it. Lotsofissues 05:40, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
The place for the relationship is Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks/Abc#Answers.com. Encyclopedia articles are not about user opinion. --Henrygb 12:03, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I love both wikipedia and answers.com :) Answers.com often has something when wikipedia does not. There search is good. Mathiastck 00:29, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
The argument that answers does not provide anything they created themselves is fatuous. That also applies to google. 222.153.11.117 07:58, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
You are correct, Answers.com provides a good example of how to successfully and legally steal and profit from others' hard work and dedication.

[edit] References to Wikipedia

"In the same fashion, if the most-available entry is an encyclopedia entry, Answers.com displays a commercial data feed, before an old version of Wikipedia. Answers.com displays Wikipedia content under the auspices of the GNU Free Documentation Licence, as a mirror site. Thus there is a live link to each Wikipedia entry"

" Since some of the entries have copyrighted commercial sources, that entry might state its copyright, and the notice "all rights reserved", in contrast to the Wikipedia entry's license, all on the same Answers.com page"

Why such a focus on Wikipedia? Why should answers.com be compared to WP ? Apokrif 15:20, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I would agree. There seems to be an excessive amount of self-reference here. Time to cut that down and show rather more variety. --Henrygb 23:30, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

the site answers.com is in nasdaq making thousands of millions to the depens of wikipedia.these folks in wikipedia are blind?let is turning wikipedia on to profit.user felisberto17 march 2006

Why such a focus on Wikipedia? Why should answers.com be compared to WP? Perhaps because Answers.com relies heavily on Wikipedia for its content, gives Wikipedia minimal credit, has a donation button for "wikimedia" which is really just themselves, and makes a lot of money off of advertising. Pretty sleazy on their part, if you ask me... Jcbutler 16:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Do the donation really go to themselves? When I clicked on the link to make a donation to wikimedia from the answers.com page it took me to http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising. I agree that they make a lot of money off of advertising but there's no law against that. I hate seeing wikipedia's "property" being used by other websites for profit too, just on the principle that the user isn't getting the same quality wikipedia experience, but I think we may have set ourselves up for this by freely contributing our edits for free. I guess we just have to find some kind of solace in the idea that maybe, just maybe, someone out there who only uses answers.com to get their info is benefiting where they otherwise would not. --Cdogsimmons 17:36, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not impressed with Answers.com making money from Wikipedia - whether that's done directly or indirectly. I'm pretty sure that others will share my view. If they're making money from the work that I put into creating/editing articles and photographs, then they should pay me (and others who have contributed to Wikpedia) our fair share of the profits. Of course that's not going to happen and obviously I don't work on Wikipedia for financial reward. My point is this: if I don't make money out of working on Wikipedia, I don't see why others should. I'm quite happy to work for free (as are countless thousands of other Wikipedians) and nobody even has to thank me because I do it pro bono. However, I do object to people/organisations making money from work that is done purely for the good of the internet community. What's much more damaging is the effect it could have on the morale, motivation and altruism of the general Wikipedia community. In any case, what specific "value added" does Answers.com offer that Wikipedia doesn't already provide? - Nabokov 12:18, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] This is what I would like to know

Which version of each individual Wikipedia article does answers.com display? For example, does answers.com just take a snapshot of Wikipedia at a point in time, or do they edit Wikipedia content so as to improve on it? Or do they mirror Wikipedia but only after first screening vandalism out? A "professionally-edited" version of Wikipedia might serve the public well. 69.140.173.15 02:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I would also like to know that. I doubt that Answers.com actually takes the time to check each article because I think they include every single article that Wikipedia had at the time of their upload/update/download/whatever. It is possible that they may have some vandalized versions of Wikipedia, which would be funny because they only update every few weeks like Google.

[edit] Mention of contextual lookup?

Contextual lookup technology is at the heart of a recent suit against Babylon/Formula, suggesting it might be worth mentioning in the description of how the software. +sj + 06:44, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright

Does anybody else feel that there is something wrong with Answers.com profitting from content they have not written? Can anybody explain why this is allowed or does Wiki get a donation ? Stamford spiney 12:58, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Try reading Gratis versus Libre#Free as in beer versus free as in speech --Henrygb 13:58, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

This does not answer my question. There is also the fact that Answers takes a snapshot of Wikipedia, and the entry I looked at had errors. Stamford spiney 15:19, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Let me try to answer your question better than Henrygb. If Answers.com is not adding value, it won't get hits, ad revenue will decline and it will go bust. If it adds value, by compressing content from various sources and outscoring Wiki on Google, users will tolerate the ads and it will profit accordingly. If entries have errors, as you suggest, users will come to see this and punish the site with fewer hits. The cream rises to the top, in that teachers the world over are pushing Wiki, not Answers.com, for the very reasons you suggest. Even if you think Answers.com entire business model depends on sneaking up the Google rankings, remember Google stands to lose by promoting weak content and can be punished by users just as quickly. In short, (market failure resulting from) market power is only a problem where barriers to entry are sufficiently high, as they are generally not on the internet. Wiki has nothing to fear from Answers.com. In any event, Henrygb is right in that this entire discussion has no place in the article until we can show its taking place outside our community. Ribbit 11:43, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Actually, there is something wrong with Answers.com. It's violating copyrights because it is a commercial company. Wikipedia is able to use some resources because it is a non-profit. For example, images of the European Space Agency can only be used for non-commercial reasons. See their policy.[1] But Answers.com uses wikipedia pages indiscriminately for commercial reasons. They have a picture here that wikipedia was able to use but which they are using illegally as far I can tell. Sounds like liability to me.--Cdogsimmons 01:04, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suspicious?

When one sees the mirror of this article on Answers.com, it omits the following phrase: Its content appears to be primarily a mirror of Wikipedia's. Interesting? It proves that Answers.com does edit articles to suit their own fancy. –- kungming·2 | (Talk·Contact) 22:17, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

No - it just means that they do not have the 19 June anon edit. This is common with mirrors. Nor is the statement clearly true. Look at http://www.answers.com/be or http://www.answers.com/sickness as examples --Henrygb 22:32, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. I had no idea that the edit was so recent. –- kungming·2 | (Talk·Contact) 01:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
Answers.com reminds me so much of ebaumsworld.com: Taking other people's content and then filling the pages with ads. At least these guys credit the sources though.
Yea your right, it is the ebaum of Wikipedia. Though, I don't think just because they credit the sources makes it all okay. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.175.63.11 (talk) 03:09, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Does Answers.com have some sources from wikipedia?

Well I was the one who added info on this article claiming that answers.com does take information from wikipedia. When you see the info on the article in answers.com it has the the heading wikipedia and then information but this doesn't exist in all articles. Some articles are purely answers.com and some are just having a part of source from both. Visit this article and you will see what I mean, http://www.answers.com/starcraft. It has at the top, Wikipedia. Am I right or am I wrong?

To conclude I see no reason to remove the section I put as when looking at the answers.com database. It at the top, Wikipedia. Which means they want to interpret this as wikipedia source information so I will add the source back.

[edit] Why did some put on the external link section the same page but in answers.com

That article does not have any information from wikipedia. No reason to post it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pendotigers (talk • contribs).

If you really think http://www.answers.com/Answers.com#Wikipedia has nothing from this article, you might try comparing them. It shows in a neat ironic way how Answers.com uses Wikipedia without having to spend paragraphs explaining it. --Henrygb 09:18, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How do you know about the technology section of this article

Isn't it in HTML?

I'm not sure how the contributor knew for sure, but it is not pure HTML. When you request a page from Answers, it searches its multiple databases for matches, then assembles the page for you. Actually, Wikipedia does the same thing to. -- Zanimum 14:14, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Revenue

In what ways answers.com gets its revenue? I guess it is from ads. Any other ways? I personally dont see any adds on the pages so I dont know :P--Anupam Srivastava 09:38, 26 July 2006 (UTC) I am adding a line for using ads in the Revenue section.--Anupam Srivastava 09:39, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing

Can you edit articles on answers.com ?--Always Gotta Keep it Real, Cute 1 4 u 04:17, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

No. The only way to edit Wikipedia articles is on Wikipedia. Answers uses archived versions of Wikipedia, anywhere from a week to three months old. -- Zanimum 14:07, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comparing Sophie Blake

I might not be the first one to notice that but I haven't yet found an answer: The Sophie Blake article here at Wikipedia says that it "does not cite its references or sources". Further down, however, it says it "was taken from www.answers.com http://www.answers.com/topic/sophie-blake ". If you follow the link, Answers.com will tell you exactly the same. What's going on here? <KF> 23:50, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

It's probably someone messing about. i'll try to tidy the WP version up a bit, which will affect the answers.com version (and make it less weird) when they next pull the db. Chris Cunningham 09:26, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! <KF> 21:58, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] blufr

Is Blufr.com a relevant external link or not? Sure its "powered" by answers.com, but if thats the case, wouldn't we need links for the sites "powered" by geocities? I move the link be removed - any opinions? Gohst 11:42, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not think the link should be removed because blufr is not merely "powered by" but is rather a product created by the company and also appears embedded on its homepage. They are vitally connected and so adding it as a link seems fair and perhaps not even enough.

I do not see any relevance between blufr and a page about Answers.Com. The site does not give any obvious information about either Answers.Com, or the topics generally raised in the original article. You might as well add a link to every company owned by GM on the GM Wiki page. I would say remove it, since the content is not relevant to the article. 72.161.163.15 15:23, 30 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Donations

Someone asked an interesting question, which didn't get answered. Does answers.com donate to Wikipedia, and if so how much? I appreciate that Wikipedia has nothing to lose from answer.com's use of its articles, but on the other hand, answers.com benefits enormously from Wikipedia's free content. So it would seem to me grossly unfair if it didn't contribute financially. Palefire 08:05, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree71.74.70.152 03:31, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cross-referencing and using Answers.com info

We should compare Wikipedia articles to their Answers.com counterparts and should add the additional information on Wikipedia. That way, articles can be made bigger and better with information from many sources. Of course, we have to note the references. --128.6.30.214 14:51, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question

Why does the site copy Wikipedia's work? Does it have Wikipedia's permission? After all, copyrighted work should not be copied without the author's permission!

See the GFDL --Henrygb 15:27, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

However, Answers.com does violate some copyrights. See above.--Cdogsimmons 01:06, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How often does Answer.com update itself from Wikipedia?

The copies of Wikipedia articles on Answers.com are usually missing the latest updates. So how often does Answers.com update itself from Wikipedia? Is it the same for every article or are some articles updated more often than others? 218.215.130.26 03:52, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I've determined that Answer.com's version of 'list of fantasy films' was last updated on 2 April 2007. Can someone check if it's the same for other articles. 218.215.130.26 10:13, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I have the same question, the article discusses Answers as a Wikipedia mirror but many of the articles are way out of date. When do they update? Enigma3542002 21:46, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
  • They were updating bimonthly (with some articles updated as needed), but they haven't updated since July 9. I've written and written and written about it, but I haven't gotten a repsonse since October 3, despite their claim that "We do our best to respond in a timely manner. You can expect a response ... within the next few days". The last time they actually responded, they said it would be "when we are ready to do so". Needless to say, I'm still waiting.SPNic 19:55, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More Questions than Answers!

So many good questions raised here and, unfortunately, so few answers.

Ironic for an entry on answers.com ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eitz Chayim (talk • contribs) 11:37, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree. What their sources are apart from WP might be listed in the article. The dictionary definitions, I wondered if they were from Wiktionary, but now I'm not sure. I just looked up rip-off: "n. Slang. 1. A product or service that is overpriced or of poor quality. 2. Something, such as a film or story, that is clearly imitative of or based on something else. 3. A theft.4. An act of exploitation."
Funnily enough that isn't the same as the Wiktionary page. Hakluyt bean (talk) 23:05, 4 April 2008 (UTC)