[WikiEN-l] BBC blog on WSJ study

[David Gerard]

2009/11/27 Durova <nadezhda.durova at gmail.com>:

> It's hard to understand the conjecture that Wikipedia ties in with those
> plans.  If anything, Wikipedia's habit of referencing historic news articles
> would help Mr. Murdoch's bottom line because it sends traffic to old
> articles, which can generate advertising revenue from old news that would
> otherwise be valueless.


Dunno about Murdoch, but the NYT was making similar noises about
Google and in fact claimed that Wikipedia was ripping them off by
referencing their articles:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/technology/internet/22wiki.html

"So, in essence, many Wikipedia articles are another way that the work
of news publications is quickly condensed and reused without
compensation."

This is more than a little rich considering Wikipedia is the
number-one universal backgrounder for working journalists. A number of
us shouted WHAT ON EARTH rather loudly:

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/technology/internet/22wiki.html

- but we've yet to hear a peep from Noam Cohen explaining just
precisely what the hell he was playing at. I urge the next person he
calls to question him closely on this one.


- d.