On Special:Booksources, I am pointed to places like Amazon.com by ISBN. Why not open an account on Amazon.com for referrals? You can make money, and the only difference to the user is that the URL clicked on will say
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140123456/Wikipedia
instead of
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140123456
Not much of an intrusion, and it would bring in some bucks for Jimbo the capitalist who runs Wikipedia.
-- Lance
Lance Murdoch wikipedia-l@lancemurdoch.org writes:
Not much of an intrusion, and it would bring in some bucks for Jimbo the capitalist who runs Wikipedia.
And what will be the next proposal? Removing the other external booksellers because they don't bring in money?
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
Lance Murdoch wikipedia-l@lancemurdoch.org writes:
Not much of an intrusion, and it would bring in some bucks for Jimbo the capitalist who runs Wikipedia.
And what will be the next proposal? Removing the other external booksellers because they don't bring in money?
Now, now...
If there's no bother for the user, I think we should do this. We link to amazon anyway, and they offer us money because we do. So, the decision is between * take money that is offered to us for doing something we'd do anyway, or * throw away the money
That's really one hard choice to make! ;-)
Magnus
On Amazon,
I think the issue is with their one-ckick patent, which is seen by many people, as a patent, to being counter-productive to the interest of the internet and computer innovation as a whole.
This view is held by enough geek/hacker/tech people that associating with amazon in a money-maker (which would benefit Amazon more than the W) would be considered be a "Bad Thing".
===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/
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On Fri, 2004-01-16 at 18:22, Christopher Mahan wrote:
On Amazon,
I think the issue is with their one-ckick patent, which is seen by many people, as a patent, to being counter-productive to the interest of the internet and computer innovation as a whole.
This view is held by enough geek/hacker/tech people that associating with amazon in a money-maker (which would benefit Amazon more than the W) would be considered be a "Bad Thing".
We already have Amazon in the "Book sources" list; as long as we do nothing to to make the Amazon entries more prominent in that list, the only effect of becoming an Amazon affiliate should be to take money from Amazon and give it to Wikipedia. As somebody who doesn't like Amazon (because of the one-click patent), and who does like Wikipedia, I think this is a "Good Thing" :-)
I would be less happy if the "Book sources" list did change. If it mentioned "We have affiliate programs with the following bookstores: ..." (including Amazon), that probably would give Amazon more money. That could be fixed by also saying "... but you shouldn't buy books from Amazon because of the one-click patent"; but that's a POV statement that doesn't belong anywhere on Wikipedia. A carefully NPOV essay ("Many people feel that Amazon's one-click patent is bad for innovation, and advocate a boycott of Amazon; other people...") would fix that problem, but this essay just doesn't belong on the Book sources page.
Carl Witty
Second what Carl said. Also, surely other booksellers have affiliate programs as well? Or do Amazon make you sign that you shall only have an affilite relationship with them?
Best, Sascha Noyes
Christopher Mahan wrote:
On Amazon,
I think the issue is with their one-ckick patent, which is seen by many people, as a patent, to being counter-productive to the interest of the internet and computer innovation as a whole.
This view is held by enough geek/hacker/tech people that associating with amazon in a money-maker (which would benefit Amazon more than the W) would be considered be a "Bad Thing".
===== Christopher Mahan chris_mahan@yahoo.com 818.943.1850 cell http://www.christophermahan.com/
Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/signingbonus _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
To sidestep the issue of partnering with booksellers for a bit, I have a more fundamental question: why do we have ISBN links at all? ISBN numbers do not identify books; they identify particular printings of books by particular publishers. Our job, as an encyclopedia, is to discuss the books themselves; if the reader wishes to find which publishers have the book currently in print in his or her country, I don't see that as our role (there are plenty of places to look that up, or ask your local bookstore). Not to mention that with the vast majority of books we'd be interested in documenting in an encyclopedia, there are dozens (sometimes hundreds!) of ISBN numbers under which the book has been published. Are we going to end every article on books with a lengthy list of ISBN numbers? Or are we going to arbitrarily pick one from our favorite publisher? I'd propose we instead just leave them out entirely.
-Mark
I do this a lot, but after all I am a book seller. I think it is very helpful to someone who regularly buys books and helps them find one at a reasonable cost once they learn how to use the various links offered. (Although I think Wikipedia has too many choices presented, many of them poor choices for one reason or another)
And yes, when I get going good I will look up every edition of a book and make comments on availablily and cost.
Fred
From: Delirium delirium@rufus.d2g.com Reply-To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 19:47:07 -0800 To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: ISBN numbers (was, Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia funds)
To sidestep the issue of partnering with booksellers for a bit, I have a more fundamental question: why do we have ISBN links at all? ISBN numbers do not identify books; they identify particular printings of books by particular publishers. Our job, as an encyclopedia, is to discuss the books themselves; if the reader wishes to find which publishers have the book currently in print in his or her country, I don't see that as our role (there are plenty of places to look that up, or ask your local bookstore). Not to mention that with the vast majority of books we'd be interested in documenting in an encyclopedia, there are dozens (sometimes hundreds!) of ISBN numbers under which the book has been published. Are we going to end every article on books with a lengthy list of ISBN numbers? Or are we going to arbitrarily pick one from our favorite publisher? I'd propose we instead just leave them out entirely.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Delirium wrote:
To sidestep the issue of partnering with booksellers for a bit, I have a more fundamental question: why do we have ISBN links at all? ISBN numbers do not identify books; they identify particular printings of books by particular publishers. Our job, as an encyclopedia, is to discuss the books themselves; if the reader wishes to find which publishers have the book currently in print in his or her country, I don't see that as our role (there are plenty of places to look that up, or ask your local bookstore). Not to mention that with the vast majority of books we'd be interested in documenting in an encyclopedia, there are dozens (sometimes hundreds!) of ISBN numbers under which the book has been published. Are we going to end every article on books with a lengthy list of ISBN numbers? Or are we going to arbitrarily pick one from our favorite publisher? I'd propose we instead just leave them out entirely.
We had this discussion a long (long, long) time ago, and AFAIR we came up with this * There's no (useful) standard to identify an "abstract" book (in contrast to the "concrete" print) * Giving *one* print of a book is better than none * Some (many?) online book sellers list other prints of that book * Many books (e.g, novels) come as hardcover and paperback, so just link to the (cheaper) paperback
Someone ought to dig through the mailing list archives in case I forgot/altered some of the above, though :-)
Magnus
The simple answer is that they are incredibly useful, and that they are convenient. If there were some other number which uniquely identified books, rather than particular printings of books, I would support using those instead.
Delirium wrote:
To sidestep the issue of partnering with booksellers for a bit, I have a more fundamental question: why do we have ISBN links at all? ISBN numbers do not identify books; they identify particular printings of books by particular publishers. Our job, as an encyclopedia, is to discuss the books themselves; if the reader wishes to find which publishers have the book currently in print in his or her country, I don't see that as our role (there are plenty of places to look that up, or ask your local bookstore). Not to mention that with the vast majority of books we'd be interested in documenting in an encyclopedia, there are dozens (sometimes hundreds!) of ISBN numbers under which the book has been published. Are we going to end every article on books with a lengthy list of ISBN numbers? Or are we going to arbitrarily pick one from our favorite publisher? I'd propose we instead just leave them out entirely.
-Mark
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Thu, Jan 22, 2004 at 11:38:07AM -0800, Jimmy Wales wrote:
The simple answer is that they are incredibly useful, and that they are convenient. If there were some other number which uniquely identified books, rather than particular printings of books, I would support using those instead.
...and if any database would provide lookup based on them. It is maybe important to note that these places actually look up the books, so it's not just an ID but a searchable possiblity. (For example I could put barcodes in the articles about many things and nobody could use them anyway, since there are no places to look it up.)
I find ISBN (or any kind of working lookup, by the way) helpful.
(Just to note that there are supporters, too, but they maybe don't like to make that amount of noise :))
Peter
Karl Eichwalder wrote:
Lance Murdoch wikipedia-l@lancemurdoch.org writes:
Not much of an intrusion, and it would bring in some bucks for Jimbo the capitalist who runs Wikipedia.
And what will be the next proposal? Removing the other external booksellers because they don't bring in money?
There's no risk of that happening. First, I would oppose it strenuously, and second, I can't imagine the community supporting such a notion.
Here's what I propose. I'll sign us up now for an Amazon partner account, and others that I can find for the sites we list there. We'll make no changes to the book links page from the way it is now, except that we'll add the codes and some text properly explaining what's going on (though there's no material change for end users).
We'll track it for one week, to see how it goes.
At the end of that week, we'll evaluate, including a community vote as to whether to include it or not.
If it was *just me*, I would do what we have always done, which is not worry about it. But I feel very strongly that I have a fiduciary and moral responsibility to our donors (who aren't just me anymore) to make sound financial decisions, so as to maximize the impact of the money that has been given to us. It doesn't seem sensible to make this decision, therefore, without some solid indication of what the dollar consequences actually are.
--Jimbo
On Fri, Jan 16, 2004 at 06:02:15AM +0100, Karl Eichwalder wrote:
Lance Murdoch wikipedia-l@lancemurdoch.org writes:
Not much of an intrusion, and it would bring in some bucks for Jimbo the capitalist who runs Wikipedia.
And what will be the next proposal? Removing the other external booksellers because they don't bring in money?
Excuse me to point out that this comment was as constructive as bombing Hirosima.
Naturally following your direction it is LOGICAL that modifying the amazon links means reading wikipedia going to cost you 5 EURO/read (reloads are half priced), and you have to send your youngest virgin daughter to the Wikipedia staff at new years eve.
And quite naturally we have to sacrifice you at the moment you make a derogatory comment about any editors.
Oh, you're dead.
:-)
Peter
ps: lighten up. these people aren't that bad that those all out there.
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