On Thursday, November 8, 2012, Kerry Raymond wrote:

I agree, the movie distributors and the movie theatre owners can probably benefit from one month out predictions. ****

Taking this on a tangent... Some of the research being done on Wikipedia

and related projects has commercial value. It isn't necessarily in terms of direction monetary gain as a result of having links placed on Wikipedia articles or people read about something on Wikipedia and make a purchasing decision they might not otherwise. How does this match with English Wikipedia's culture at times that eschews an hint of commercial interests, and possible benefits to any organisation? How do academics working in this space deal with any such conflicts? Especially when many papers have recommendation sections or ideas on further research which could be seen as supporting such work?

The reason I ask is I am doing research through my university for an external government body. The opportunity to do research came up because of my thesis topic and recognition that the work I was doing on Wikipedia was valuable in terms of freely sharing information. I've never been paid to edit, but my research references my own editing work and has recommendations about engagement. (Donate pictures. Host meetups and editing workshops. Recognise Wikinews media accreditation. Invite Commons photographers to events like you would other media. Make information more freely available on your own site.) I've been advised that this is a good academic path to take given the interest in the space and the lack of research available in it.

I don't think this is particularly controversial. My own research suggests marketers are generally telling companies to leave Wikipedia alone as the ROI is not worth it. (Bad press is not good press in this instance.) My own research has also suggested there are no direct monetary benefits to editing: organisations do not convert citation clickthroughs to parts of their site where they can get money off them either through sales or through donations that would make the time, effort and possible controversy worthwhile. How does the balance go? How do other academics writing about these things manage if they are active contributors?

Sincerely, Laura Hale