Here is a video of a presentation openly selling the SEO value of Wikipedia, and Wikipedia front page appearances, in the name of Wikimedia UK:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO6ZrWJeaOM Quotes: "Can we help put Bristol on the global map longer term, that's why we want to talk to you today." [3.25] "Roger's going to tell you all about Derby Museum, and what we did for them." [3.40] "We partnered Derby Museum. [...] We thought we'd pick on one small museum and give it a lot of it, national attention, even international attention, into one museum, just to see what kind of effect we could have on a museum, how we could affect its profile." [6.23] "We made the front pages of the main Wikipedias [... English, French, Polish, Russian ...] It's giving us more hits to Derby Museum's web page, so it's actually going from our page, clicking through to their web page, it's fulfilling our mission to educate and to share information around the world, and it's raising the interest and status of the city." [12.22] "It's a phenomenally cheap, and very, very imaginative way to absolutely energize a city and put a city on the map." [17.41] I am not comfortable with this sales pitch – especially when it is combined with private consultancy contracts for those making it. It is not consistent with the spirit and ideals of the project I signed up to more than six years ago, and with the spirit and ideals of Wikipedia as communicated to the public. And it is arguably an exploitation of volunteer editors for personal profit. There is a telling passage in the latter part of the presentation about how creating massive amounts of text in multiple languages would have cost a lot of money, and how, just by advertising "prizes of some books and a £50 book voucher" on Wikipedia, 100 articles were created for the project in the space of one week, at no cost. Today, even after the brouhaha all over the European press, another Gibraltar DYK ran on the Wikipedia main page. Andreas
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