[WikiEN-l] BBC blog on WSJ study

[Durova]

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 11:46 AM, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2009/11/27 Bod Notbod <bodnotbod at gmail.com>:
> > On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 5:59 PM, Charles Matthews
> > <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> >
> >>> If anything, Wikipedia's habit of referencing historic news articles
> >>> would help Mr. Murdoch's bottom line because it sends traffic to old
> >>> articles...
> >
> > I wonder how true this is.
> >
> > Perhaps I'll be laughed out of court... but my tendency when I read
> > Wikipedia is that I see a sentence in an article, note that it is
> > referenced, click the number to see what the reference is but *hardly*
> > *ever* click the reference link either to confirm that the reference
> > is accurate nor to find out more.
>
>
> We know that there is enough traffic for the SEO/spammer mob to think
> it is worth trying to get there links into the reference section of
> wikipedia. Wikipedia's traffic is also highly targets and actually
> buys stuff and clicks ads from time to time which makes getting some
> of it worthwhile.
>
> The difference is that spammers still usually work with the "external
links" section rather than the reference section.  It's odd how slow people
are to adapt.

Consider all those marginally notable entertainer biographies.  Most of them
receive little traffic.  People think in terms of getting an article onto
Wikipedia rather than in terms of raising their visibility.  Two months ago
during a featured picture candidacy I added the candidate image to the main
article for "head shot".  Until then the article had no illustration.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Head_shot&action=historysubmit&diff=316579742&oldid=313070606

None of the world's entertainers had thought to put their own portrait on
that page, which they could have done with a CC-by-sa license and a
legitimate source link to their personal website.  Between the two spellings
"head shot" and "headshot" the article receives 10,000 page views each
month.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Head_shot&diff=328120481&oldid=316579742

Either human nature is very shortsighted or Wikipedia is very
counterintuitive.  It can't take genius to figure this out...?

-Durova
-- 
http://durova.blogspot.com/