Yahoo Backs Up Wikipedia

Hmm. Yahoo and Wikipedia have announced that Yahoo will be supporting Wikipedia with "hardware and resources" and in turn will be integrating Wikipedia results into their search results over the next several weeks, via shortcuts. The official announcement is at http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/050407/75258.html .

This could be a two-win situation. Wikipedia gets support from a search behemoth, Yahoo gets content to integrate into their search engine properties. One thing troubles me, though; this immediately raises Wikipedia's profile dramatically. Does that make them a more attractive target for content spammers? Are we going to see automated bots trying to plaster ads in the midst of Wikipedia in order to sneak them into Yahoo content? I don't know. I hope not.

And Yahoo. Please. For Pete's sake. If you're willing to do this, SEE IF YOU CAN GRAB THE OPEN DIRECTORY PROJECT. It would be another good community project which you could support, and it seems like the ODP has slowed down a lot in the last -- year? 18 months? (Don't believe me? Check out this URL, which searches the ODP for the word podcast: http://search.dmoz.org/cgi-bin/search?search=podcast . Three results. Meanwhile, Yahoo's directory, which doesn't impress me all to bits, has about two dozen. LookSmart's directory has four.)

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