On 3/19/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:06:36 +0000, "Andrew Gray" shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
If anyone is interested, the current discussion is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard#Amazon
- basically, are Amazon internal catalogue IDs a useful and sensible
piece of data to give as a reference? As may be apparent I swing towards HELL NO, but YMMV...
+1 for HELL NO, especially since in the specific example cited Amazon turned out to be *wrong* (see above).
ASINs, in my opinion, are not a useful and sensible piece of data to give about items that have Wikipedia articles, and should not be used as e.g. reference IDs for rare books.
However, I am vociferously against removing links to Amazon which are in use as valid references without the replacement of those references with better sources.
Part of the point of references is so we know where information came from. Removing it because EWWW IT'S A COMMERCIAL SITE is in my opinion contrary to our mission.
-Matt