On 19/05/07, Yonatan Horan yonatanh@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps but the unavoidable fact is that we currently have 26,000 links to amazon, many of them being sources for pictures, sources in articles or otherwise non-policy violating links. Even if they are violating policy, if we aren't removing them, the referral might as well be added. Also, there's Special:Booksearch for which one could add the referral id to amazon\Barnes and Noble links.
a) Adding it to special:booksearch, one centrally generated URL, is a relatively sensible move. Adding it to anywhere *else* means that we have to manually patrol each and every use of the URL in order to add the referral ID, and check it doesn't get changed to another referral ID, and deal with people who will editwar to keep them out
b) most material "sourced" from Amazon can be more appropriately sourced elsewhere
c) it is inappropriate to give our editors a motive, no matter how well-meaning, to encourage the use of links to *specific* sales sites in articles. It effectively will create a single, or a group of, recommended commercial partners.
d) as you say, a sizable fraction of those links are appropriate "image sourced from this URL" - and, as such, they link directly to the image generation URL. No-where to put a referral link, and no benefit to anyone from doing so...