Wednesday, September 16, 2009


Who's a recognized authority?

Another debate on Wikipedia. What fun.

Wikipedia's article about "Churn rate" at this moment (though it won't last long) contains an external link to my blog post about churn rates. A couple of editors have indicated that the link is inappropriate, because I am not a "recognized expert" or "recognized authority" on churn rates. The blog post comes up as the #2 Google search result (after Wikipedia) when you search for 'churn rates', and it is this blog's most heavily visited page.

We have one party (me) wishing to help expand Wikipedia's usefulness by including one external link to a sourced, academically-cited blog post. The author's credentials include career work in the area of churn rate research, currently for a Fortune 100 firm where churn is an essential matter.

We have another party saying it is not sourced (even though it is), that the scholarly reference to it is merely a ".edu web page" (even though it is a published subscription journal with ISSN: 1527-6619), and that the author is not a recognized expert.

I've pointed out that Wikipedia has thousands of similar external links to commercial sites with far less expertise and scholarly credibility than my own. Who do you think has the more solid footing in this debate?

I hope that any uninvolved Wikipedia editors in good standing might help weigh in on this debate. Should the link stay, or go?



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