A surprisingly large part of the value of Google & other search engines is just Wikipedia.
This paper shows that Wikipedia articles appear in 67%-84% of all search engine results pages & they are the source for most “knowledge boxes” or other excerpts. nickmvincent.com/static/wikiser…
This paper shows that Wikipedia articles appear in 67%-84% of all search engine results pages & they are the source for most “knowledge boxes” or other excerpts. nickmvincent.com/static/wikiser…
Because Wikipedia is usually used as a starting point that others expand upon, I think most people don’t realize how influential it is & how much of our world is built on it. For example, it plays a surprisingly large role in guiding the direction of scientific research 👇
https://twitter.com/emollick/status/1401282268589608966
Real world behavior is also strongly influenced by Wikipedia articles: Adding two paragraphs of text & nice pictures to randomly selected articles about small European cities led to an over 9% increase in hotel stays; the edits are worth $190k per year! marit.hinnosaar.net/wikipediamatte…
Even forum-type sites like Reddit & Stack Overflow rely on Wikipedia. So much so that this study estimates in 2016 alone, “Wikipedia may have been (conservatively) responsible for about $1.7 million in revenue [for these sites], entirely from volunteer work of the community.”
Given Wikipedia’s importance, it is good news is that real experts do play a big role. By first connecting Wikipedia editors to Google Scholar entries, and then training a system to recognize experts, it looks like 10%-30% of edits are made by experts, especially in narrow topics
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