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DDG staff here. The non-cheat sheet Instant Answers we have all either use data from a third-party API or show a snippet of an external page's content. In all c

by tagawa 10y ago

DDG staff here. The non-cheat sheet Instant Answers we have all either use data from a third-party API or show a snippet of an external page's content. In all cases we link to the source. For cheat sheets, we either write the information from scratch (as in the tennis cheat sheet) or rely on existing key->value data such as keyboard shortcuts or command parameters. Again, we link to the source in both cases although our cheat sheets often end up featuring improvements or fixes, added by either the author or the community at a later date. They become living, open source resources and are also exposed in our API: https://duckduckgo.com/api https://duckduckgo.com/api You're right - we're not a content provider, but so far we've found people appreciate saving even a click or a page load to find what they're searching for.

chris_wot 10y ago
Apologies if I came off as being hyper critical, that wasn't my intent. Actually, I'm pretty impressed with what you are doing - I just setup a codio account and submitted a pull request to update the git cheat sheet, just to see how you are doing things. Pretty cool :-) My only point is that all search engines tend to cannibalise the ones they index to a certain degree when they aggregate or present results from their own website. It doesn't make it wrong to do so, or even unethical. I just think it would be nice if some sort of mechanism could be worked out to encourage people to visit and contribute more to the sites that generate the data being used. DDG makes it quite plain where the data is coming from, and is very open and transparent with what you guys are doing, so please just take what I wrote as a comment and maybe a request, but certainly not a criticism. Edit: I just reread my comment and I expressed myself rather poorly I think. The sentence "DDG need to learn how to play nicely..." was not at all what I was trying to convey. DDG do play nicely with others, far more so than anyone else. I apologise for that phrasing, that was unintentionally rude.
- tagawa 10y ago
  No need for the apology! As much as we need contributions, we also need feedback beyond just code, whether it's praise or criticism. I didn't take your comment as rude at all and you make valid points. We're continually looking at how best to serve our users, contributors and the wider web while building trust and protecting privacy, and such feedback helps us do that.

by tagawa 10y ago

chris_wot 10y ago

Apologies if I came off as being hyper critical, that wasn't my intent. Actually, I'm pretty impressed with what you are doing - I just setup a codio account and submitted a pull request to update the git cheat sheet, just to see how you are doing things. Pretty cool :-) My only point is that all search engines tend to cannibalise the ones they index to a certain degree when they aggregate or present results from their own website. It doesn't make it wrong to do so, or even unethical. I just think it would be nice if some sort of mechanism could be worked out to encourage people to visit and contribute more to the sites that generate the data being used. DDG makes it quite plain where the data is coming from, and is very open and transparent with what you guys are doing, so please just take what I wrote as a comment and maybe a request, but certainly not a criticism. Edit: I just reread my comment and I expressed myself rather poorly I think. The sentence "DDG need to learn how to play nicely..." was not at all what I was trying to convey. DDG do play nicely with others, far more so than anyone else. I apologise for that phrasing, that was unintentionally rude.

tagawa 10y ago
No need for the apology! As much as we need contributions, we also need feedback beyond just code, whether it's praise or criticism. I didn't take your comment as rude at all and you make valid points. We're continually looking at how best to serve our users, contributors and the wider web while building trust and protecting privacy, and such feedback helps us do that.