I think the idea that Wikipedia activity (or other social media activity) can be used as some kind of predictor of public popularity is probably relatively sound. If something is attracting a lot of public interest, then one might expect that a certain proportion of interested people to be editors of Wikipedia (or users of Twitter, etc) leading to a corresponding uptick in activity in those spaces. Of course the editors of Wikipedia aren’t a “typical” demographic sample, so probably things that appeal more to the Wikipedia demographics are more likely to manifest as Wikipedia activity, but for very popular movies the target market is somewhat similar to the Wikipedia editor demographic so it probably correlates OK. However, that might account for the lower ability to predict the box office for less popular movies – maybe the audiences for those movies aren’t statistically as likely to be Wikipedia editors? But I am less sure whether there is any practical use for this finding in relation to movies. Where are the Wikipedia editors getting their advance movie information from? Presumably from the marketing activity of the movie itself. Which movies get the big marketing budget? The expected blockbusters. It’s something of a self-fulfilling prophecy I suspect. from the level of WP activity because from their perspective their money has largely been spent long ago on making the movie. They need to be able to predict its success a couple of years earlier, long before there will be a single edit on WP or any tweeting. I guess my point is that the ability to predict something is really only useful if the prediction can be made in advance of making an important decision. A really exciting result would be the ability to predict stock price movements from WP editing behaviour! We could use the profits from that to fund the journal, which could have a policy of publishing only unaffiliated authors as we would all be retired on our stock market riches! :-) Kerry _____ From: wiki-research-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wiki-research-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Taha Yasseri Sent: Wednesday, 7 November 2012 10:34 PM To: Research into Wikimedia content and communities Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Wikipedia Used to Predict Movie Box OfficeRevenues Hello Everybody, In the temporary silence after hot election and Wikipedia research Journal debates and discussions (I hope at least the second one continues), I would like to use the opportunity to introduce our new manuscript, titled "Early Prediction of Movie Box Office Success based on Wikipedia Activity Big Data" and available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1211.0970. There is also a rather fair review of this work at http://www.technologyreview.com/view/507076/now-wikipedia-used-to-predict-mo vie-box-office-revenues. As always, comments, critics, encouragements, etc, are most welcome (if you are shy, please write me off-list). Bests, Taha Yasseri Dr. Taha Yasseri. --------------------------------------------- www.phy.bme.hu/~yasseri <http://www.phy.bme.hu/%7Eyasseri> Department of Theoretical Physics Institute of Physics Budapest University of Technology and Economics Budafoki út 8. H-1111 Budapest, Hungary tel: +36 1 463 4110 fax: +36 1 463 3567 ---------------------------------------------