On 3/20/07, 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).
-1 for HELL NO.
There are many cases where the amazon (.com, .co.uk, .de and .fr are different) contain metadata that simply is not available in other accessible catalogs. [[James Hanratty]] has an example. People understandably get a bit stroppy when you try to remove these amazon links unless you can find a better catalogue to use for verification.
+1 for systematic and careful improvement of citation data.
IMO, that the amazon metadata can be wrong is all the more reason why simply removing the amazon links / ASINs isnt the best way to address this. Incorrect citation data will be left behind unless they are handled case by case.
Like many other commercial databases that are referenced in Wikipedia content, Amazon is used because it is an accessible and extensive catalogue. If it goes down, we can deal with that then. If an ASIN disappears, we can deal with that like we deal with broken links. In the mean time, we can vet the use of amazon links to see if they can be replaced with links to international catalogue numbers that are built to be more stable, _where possible_. It wont take long; a team of about eight people fixed ~2500 articles with Invalid ISBNs in less then two months. (see [[User:EdJohnston/ISBN_fixing]] ). This ensures a bit of care is taken to ensure that the resulting citation data is 100% accurate, and the original contributor is respectfully contacted if the citation data cant be pinned down without guessing.
I am concerned that some people are foaming at the mouth to remove them all instantly (like suggesting that the ASIN template be deleted). There are WikiProjects that can deal with this, as it doesnt require admin privileges. While AN/I may be a useful place kick start a discussion, I dont think it is the appropriate platform to make any final decision on how to tackle these links.
-- John