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
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