[Wikipedia-l] Encyclopedia meta-searcher up and running

Sun Nov 17 00:02:06 UTC 2002

Hi all,

I took a some time out the past few days and used my developing Perl
skills to write an encyclopedia meta-search engine, which will at least
temporarily live at:

	http://www.seeatown.com/search/

The default settings search only four encyclopedias, but you can choose
from up to 18 (and counting).  You can change the encyclopedias searched
on the settings page.

I hope you find this useful!  Obviously, I think Wikipedia and Nupedia
should write articles better than all the articles you'll see via this
interface.  ;-)  But it should be a useful way to get a benchmark idea of
what we want out of a basic encyclopedia article on a topic.

I could really use your help in finding more encyclopedia-type websites to
include.  The way the script is written now, one requirement is that the
source website's search results page reproduce the search terms in the URL
(i.e., for those who know about HTML forms, the website should use "GET"
rather than "POST").

Feature requests are also welcome.

By the way, in coding and testing this website I discovered (at least to
my own satisfaction) that Wikipedia is far and away the most complete
*free* (gratis) resource online.

Larry
-- 
"We have now sunk to a depth at which the re-statement of the obvious is
the first duty of intelligent men." --George Orwell