(I think the link will stick).

It might stick for a while -- a week, a month, even a year.

But nothing on Wikipedia is permanent. Occasionally somebody gives one of my sites a link from Wikipedia. But several of them were deleted later by somebody else. One of those lasted almost 2 years before it was deleted. I think right now one of my sites still has 3, and another site has 2. But who knows how long they'll last.

aristotle - gave up on that.

The wikipedia editors in our niche do not like websites with adsense and delete links in under a week.

Even if we point out a mistake and provide a citation, on at least one instance they kept our correction word for word but deleted the link.

Clearly, the trick would be not to make it look conspicuously like a trick, so the citation and the research data would have to fit your site like a glove. This will only work for a select number of (authorative) sites, and even those that succeed for a while might attract the envy of competitors, but with the audience that Wikipedia attracts even a temporary link is likely to be beneficial (regardless of whether or not link juice flows somehow).

As an experiment, this is certainly interesting, but I'm not sure whether it would always be worth the trouble of creating the information for the citation; so please do post your results, wheel, if you can. It's certainly another creative idea, but perhaps it [filling up gaps on other people's websites by creating the data to back up their unsupported claims] is more likely to work on pages with information similar to Wikipedia's but which are edited only by a single person or organization. These may not outrank you in the search results, but their links might actually be more valuable.

Added: Wouldn't it make sense for search engines to slowly crank up the value of a link on Wikipedia based on the time it is allowed to remain there? After all, the frequency with which Wikipedia articles are reviewed is relatively high (certainly higher than the pages at DMOZ or the Yahoo! Directory) and by more editors, too, so a steady link to your site ought, I believe, to be quite valuable. Whether it actually is, I have no idea.

Many Wiki editors have officially become reincarnations of DMOZ editors. People who protect their own niche due to economic considerations.

SE's shouldn't be attributing ANY value to wikipedia links. They're nofollowed. If the SE's do attribute some value to those links, then the whole thing comes tumbling down. Frankly it wouldn't surprise me that Google was somehow using Wikipedia links in some way, but if they were it'd have to be a dark secret.

My thoughts were that a link on Wiki, on a top ranking page might yield secondary links.

Plus, I'm not filling gaps in their site with content - the content will be published on my website and merely linked to as a citation in Wikipedia.

Plus, creating the citation is directly helping sales. I've integrated into my sales conversation some of this new information and clients are impressed. And since clients in my industry are looking to deal with an expert (my product is generic, clients deal with me because of my expertise) initial results seem to indicate that they're more likely to buy. Particularly if I site a study I did, with results that are directly opposite the advice they receive elsewhere.

One of many dark secrets, no doubt. Search engines have no obligation to play by the rules they make public.

I'm not filling gaps in their site with content - the content will be published on my website and merely linked to as a citation in Wikipedia.

But was that your original intent? Would you have created that content, had Wikipedia not missed the citation? It seems to me that the idea stems from wanting a link from Wikipedia, but your new content turns out to be more valuable than you expected in that it "has provided some newsworthy information." That's terrific -- and it started as a desire to fill the gap of a missing citation as a means of attaining a link on Wikipedia. It just goes to show that thinking outside the box when it comes to link development or content-creation can have widespread effects.

You speak of a merger of thoughts from a couple of threads. I think I've read through most of those, and what I've been wondering is how successful in terms of search engine rankings these techniques you discussed have been for you. Assuming this is mostly for one particular website, is it gaining momentum? Are these newly attained links noticeably working their magic? Clearly, they're much more fun to go after! Perhaps that's an end in itself.

Frankly it wouldn't surprise me that Google was somehow using Wikipedia links in some way, but if they were it'd have to be a dark secret.

One of many dark secrets, no doubt. Search engines have no obligation to play by the rules they make public.

You might both be right about that. But just as a funny note, there have been two recent videos on the googlewebmaster channel on youtube where Matt Cutts is basically begging wikipedia to makes SOME of their links do-follow, so that google can use wikipedia for page rank.

He even goes on to suggest to wikipedia about HOW they should go about deciding if a link should be no-followed or not.

I wonder how the team at google would feel if wikipedia editors started giving google advice on how to rank search results...

My thoughts were that a link on Wiki, on a top ranking page might yield secondary links.

I don't know which niche you're aiming at - however most of the time these thoughts don't bring actual results.

Wikipedia is not the place where to lookup sources to link to.

Many Wiki editors have officially become reincarnations of DMOZ editors. People who protect their own niche due to economic considerations.

Oh my... so we're going to see new posts on how to resubmit to wiki :(