
Wikipedia edits have impact on tourism, say economists - luxpir
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/18/wikipedia-edits-have-massive-impact-on-tourism-say-economists
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Freak_NL
> A senior editor on the Dutch site had spotted the experiment in progress,
> and proceeded to ban all future updates from the team. Commercial editing is
> not allowed on the site, and the research was deemed to cross the line.

From the paper:

> Community reaction:

> In the first day after the treatment, we checked the articles, and in French
> and Italian language, no problems occurred. In German Wikipedia, an
> administrator contacted us and asked about the purpose of the content
> uploads and whether we have any commercial interest. We replied, providing
> information about our institution and the research group, and about the
> research project. This response was sufficient.

> In Dutch Wikipedia, a single editor reverted all our edits within 24 hours.
> We discussed the issue with this editor, but the editor was not willing to
> accept our contributions and therefore we decided to stop the uploads on the
> Dutch Wikipedia and accept the reversions.

I am not surprised.

The Dutch Wikipedia has one massive drawback compared to other non-English
Wikipedia editions like the German, Spanish, or French; most Dutch capable of
contributing to Wikipedia with any kind of depth of knowledge are also
proficient in English, and seem to prefer to invest their energy in the
English Wikipedia instead, if at all. This leads to the Dutch Wikipedia being
even more insular and cliquish then the English one. If you encounter the
wrong editor unwilling to accept your edit (even if it is factually correct,
non-commercial, and fully compliant with Wikipedia's values) you will need to
invest literal work-weeks in hours to get it fixed via arbitration and other
such instruments (after carefully studying the Wikipedia policies the editor
uses as munition), or, you just give up.

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Freak_NL
Massive impact even, according to the headline.

The full paper referenced in the article is available here:

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3046400](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3046400)

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Freak_NL
I didn't find a list of the actual Spanish cities for which they edited
Wikipedia though. This unfortunately makes it impossible to view a diff of
their edits. That would have been informative.

