a) I was thinking of a mediawiki implementation (and here's an evil idea,
include it in the version everybody uses so they have to manually remove it
if they don't want to). That avoids the whole edit war thing.
b) Good point, but I don't see anyone removing the 20k links to amazon we
currently have.
c) Good point.
d) Actually they [should be] link[ing] to the page that has the image on it,
not directly to the image on amazon's servers, at least from what I
understand.
To everyone else, how about we try coming up with ideas on how to help the
foundation make more money rather than perpetuating this off topic flame
fest? I'd personally like to hear if any of my other ideas were
good\bad\stupid.
-Yonatan
On 5/20/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 19/05/07, Yonatan Horan <yonatanh(a)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...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
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