[WikiEN-l] BBC blog on WSJ study

[Durova]

On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 1:59 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Nov 27, 2009 at 12:13 PM, Durova <nadezhda.durova at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> You could say the same thing about goggle search, yet some of these
> organizations are claiming that google search is ripping them off
> for linking to them (and not just the google news headline scraping).
>
> It's complicated. The advertising income these kinds of sites get
> is strongly driven by keeping users within their garden. When someone
> pops into their site grabs only the information they need the paper
> makes a lot less money then if the users hang out. Compare to the
> standard grocer's practice of putting common goods (like milk) at
> the back of the store.
>
> True.  Which is one reason why it would make intuitive sense for webmasters
to restructure incoming links from Wikipedia as entry points to their sites.

It ought to be feasible for news site webmasters to design a functionality
around certain keywords in historic articles, so that visitors are directed
to other stories from that news source about the same subject.  That would
be quite useful and keep readers within their garden.

For instance, the two NYTimes links for operat soprano Mignon Nevada:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mignon_Nevada

One NYTimes source is a PDF hosting that goes nowhere; the other is a 1909
review for one of her performances.  Advertisements and links fill the
screen, but none is remotely related to Mignon Nevada's career or to opera
or to Ireland, where she performed on that occasion.  A large banner
trumpets a Consumer Reports sweepstakes.  A sidebar links to Blackberry ad,
flu treatments, a health care firm, career opportunities, and home value
estimates.  Then another ad section for financial advice, health care, and
weight loss.  This is completely untargeted.  The average reader skims the
one paragraph of useful information and then flees.  They'd have a better
chance of keeping my attention if they linked to other articles about that
opera--or at the very least to ads for the New York Metropolitan Opera and
Irish vacation spots.

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