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Magnus Manske

2 Feb 2003 2 Feb '03

10:18 p.m.

Some people on the German wikipedia want to get rid of the amazon.de link on the ISBN page, because of the "one-click" patent thing. I told them it would be not-NPOV to do so. Now they want to make some two-level ISBN page, with some "all bookstores" and "good bookstores" groups. I'm not sure what exactly they imagine, but it would require a software change. Is there a policy on that? Should we exclude bookstores (the largest one, actually) from the list because some (many?) wikipedians don't like them? Or should we leave the choice where to order to the user? Jimbo? Magnus

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erik_moeller＠gmx.de

2 Feb 2 Feb

10:32 p.m.

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Why not do it the wiki way? Instead of excluding certain sellers from the list, just add an article link to each link: * Amazon.com ([[Amazon.com|Wikipedia article]]) * PriceSCAN ([[PriceSCAN|Wikipedia article]]) ... That way, visitors can read about the seller's business practices before making a decision. I for one am a long time Amazon customer in spite of their patent practices, which I find annoying but common (how about boycotting IBM? do you know how many bogus patents they have?). Regards, Erik

Bryan Derksen

11:38 p.m.

At 11:18 PM 02/02/03 +0100, Magnus Manske wrote:

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How about making the bookstore used by ISBN links configurable in user preferences? Simpler, or harder?

Axel Boldt

3 Feb 3 Feb

1:22 a.m.

I know that I have fought and lost this fight before. ISBN numbers are evil and should not be used to identify books. They identify *editions* of books, and in a couple of years all these editions will be out of print and all ISBN links in Wikipedia will be completely useless. Right now they are already useless if you are interested in buying used books. If versions of a book are being published by different parties, as is true for many important books that are in the public domain, then ISBN's are furthermore inherently POV, since they pick out a single publisher. No reference work, encyclopedia, library catalog, bibliography, article or book ever refers to books by ISBN number. Because they are not book identifiers. Given properly formatted author and title, our software could and should query bookstores and libary catalogs. I think I said it before: meaningless numbers are worse than no numbers. Axel WikiKarma: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_number __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com

erik_moeller＠gmx.de

1:46 a.m.

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I agree with Axel. Having a formatting standard for titles/authors would not only allow us to auto-query library catalogs (which is tremendously useful to see availability if you don't want to buy the book) *and* booksellers, it would also be useful from a policy POV. Right now, all our books and papers are formatted differently, which is very unprofessional. The ISBN support is a gimmick from UseMod days. We have to think of better solutions now. What would be really neat is a BibTeX type set of tags (only simpler and more wiki-style) to format bibliographies and references to them within the text. Axel, since you are probably familiar with the current systems and the requirements, how about proposing such a bibliography syntax? I'm sure the opposition can be quickly stifled once we actually have something to show ;-) (I also agree re: the counters, as I have already stated. If people knew what performance hit they took, nobody would advocate them.) Regards, Erik

Lars Aronsson

3:08 a.m.

Axel Boldt wrote:

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Amazon already has a system to remember out-of-print ISBNs and make redirects to ISBNs of existing editions, don't they? When I look at a paperback edition, Amazon also informs me that there is a (more expensive) hardbound edition of the same title that I might prefer. After all, they want to sell books. I wish there were standardized parts numbers for music CDs and film DVDs, and supposedly the European EAN bar code could serve this purpose, but the CD and DVD shops that I have talked to refuse to use the EAN codes for their online shops, since they are less unique than ISBNs (I don't know the details). Amazon uses their own "ASIN" codes for CDs and DVDs, which look like an ISBNs with an "A" or "B" instead of the first digit, but you don't really want to encourage users to input codes that are only valid for one shop. It is problematic of course that Amazon has such a dominating position on the English and German online book markets, but most smaller online stores have a *painful* lack of understanding for the usefulness of the ability to make links between websites. For example, many just say "we don't have that book" on a blank page when I make a link with an invalid ISBN, they don't even try to convince me to buy something else, like Amazon does.

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No reference work, encyclopedia, library catalog, bibliography, article or book ever refers to books by ISBN number.

Yes, library catalogs use ISBN numbers, but none that I have seen make any links to Amazon. And this is because they didn't know they could. -- Lars Aronsson (lars(a)aronsson.se) Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/

Jimmy Wales

2:36 p.m.

Axel Boldt wrote:

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I'm listening. This sounds like a valid objection to this particular technical detail.

Tom Parmenter

4 Feb 4 Feb

7:37 p.m.

|From: Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com> |Content-Disposition: inline |Sender: wikipedia-l-admin(a)wikipedia.org |Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org |Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 06:36:22 -0800 | |Axel Boldt wrote: |> I know that I have fought and lost this fight before. ISBN numbers are |> evil and should not be used to identify books. They identify *editions* |> of books, and in a couple of years all these editions will be out of |> print and all ISBN links in Wikipedia will be completely useless. Right |> now they are already useless if you are interested in buying used |> books. | |I'm listening. This sounds like a valid objection to this particular |technical detail. Should a system, flawed, dubious, that gives a fighting chance of tracking down a book be replaced by no system at all? If you click on an ISBN and go to an online bookstore, you are in a position to not only buy the edition of the book in question (different editions have different contents, among other things, it may be ''that'' edition is the one you want) , but you are also in a position to track down used editions, alternate editions, etc. If there is a better method, Library of Congress or whatever in the future, then a 'bot can comb through the Wikipedia and replace all those ISBNs with better references. Why send a 'bot out now to remove ISBNs when there is no replacement? (Is there?) None of the online bookstores stops the ISBN user from going further. Of course, people can clip and paste the title to Google. It's true that nothing would really lost by dropping the ISBN except ease of use. What is that worth? A lot, to me. Tom Parmenter Ortolan88

Jan Hidders

10:10 p.m.

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 02:37:31PM -0500, Tom Parmenter wrote:

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I don't think that is exactly what Axel meant. He did not suggest that we shouldn't use ISBN numbers at all but just that (1) we shouldn't use them as the primary means of identifying books and (2) represent them as links that lead to a certain book store. As an alternative we could do the following: 1. Give every book that we want to reference to its own page. That's probably a good idea anyway because it invites people to write a summary and perhaps a discussion of its relevance or whatever else is interesting to tell about it. A naming convention like "<title>, <author>" would probably be a good first approximation of a naming convention. On this page people can also put ISBN numbers if they know them. 2. The ISBN numbers would not link to a single book store but to a special page that contains a list of links that each look the ISBN number up with another on-line book store that provides such a service. Note that this is not a big technical change, but largely a "style guide" change. I believe that this is close to what Axel had in mind. -- Jan Hidders

Brion Vibber

5 Feb 5 Feb

3:17 a.m.

On mar, 2003-02-04 at 14:10, Jan Hidders wrote:

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2. The ISBN numbers would not link to a single book store but to a special page that contains a list of links that each look the ISBN number up with another on-line book store that provides such a service.

That's exactly what we do right now. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Jan Hidders

8:50 a.m.

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 07:17:21PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

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On mar, 2003-02-04 at 14:10, Jan Hidders wrote:

That's exactly what we do right now.

Ah, *blush*, then only my suggestion for an-article-for-every-book remains. Would that make you happier, Axel? -- Jan Hidders

Tom Parmenter

4:26 a.m.

Axel Boldt

4:47 a.m.

Fred Bauer writes:

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But it's not a valid objection, used books are easily located using the ISBN.

I'm interested in buying a used version of the book "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Hofstadter. Which ISBN number do you suggest I use for searching? Which ISBN number do you suggest we list in our Wikipedia article? All of them? How many are there anyway? --- Tom Parmenter <tompar(a)world.std.com> wrote:

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Should a system, flawed, dubious, that gives a fighting chance of tracking down a book be replaced by no system at all?

If that were the only alternative to the current system, then yes, I would vote for removing all ISBN links, since they mislead people into thinking that the identified version is the only one available.

...

If you click on an ISBN and go to an online bookstore, you are in a position to not only buy the edition of the book in question (different editions have different contents, among other things, it may be ''that'' edition is the one you want),

True, but to make that decision, you would first have to know what other versions and editions are out there. If you use the ISBN for the Encyclopedia Britannica (0852297874), not even Amazon will tell you that you can buy the same thing, fully searchable on DVD, for 5% of the price.

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but you are also in a position to track down used editions, alternate editions, etc.

...and you would do that by cut-and-pasting the title and author into the search field of bookstores, auction sites, Google, or maybe even (gasp) libraries. Why not facilitate this? [[ref:book|title:Godel, Escher, Bach|author:Hofstadter]] is turned into a properly formatted link to a special page which allows to search library catalogs and (used) bookstores for a book with that title and with that author. A couple more fields could probably be defined, such as publisher, year, ISBN :-) etc., but they would be less useful for searching. [[ref:article|title:...|author:...]] could automatically link to searches on http://citeseer.nj.nec.com and http://arxiv.org until there's something better. Axel __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com

Oliver Pereira

8:31 a.m.

On Tue, 4 Feb 2003, Axel Boldt wrote:

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[[ref:article|title:...|author:...]] could automatically link to searches on http://citeseer.nj.nec.com and http://arxiv.org until there's something better.

You might want to keep an eye on ParaCite, an article-locating service which searches lots of different resources, including the two you mention. It's still in the experimental stages at the moment, but it seems that it could become very useful. http://paracite.eprints.org/ Oliver +-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+

Erik Moeller

8:47 a.m.

...

[[ref:book|title:Godel, Escher, Bach|author:Hofstadter]] is turned into a properly formatted link to a special page which allows to search library catalogs and (used) bookstores for a book with that title and with that author. A couple more fields could probably be defined, such as publisher, year, ISBN :-) etc., but they would be less useful for searching. [[ref:article|title:...|author:...]] could automatically link to searches on http://citeseer.nj.nec.com and http://arxiv.org until there's something better.

Unfortunately, with the current parser we would have to write references in one line, which would be hard to read. But that should be fixable. I think we need another character than the pipe as field separator though. Perhaps simply a line-end: [[ ref:article title:Ants and their habitats author:Freiherr Josef v. Hungewurz year: 1943 ]] Perhaps we als need: [[ ref:http://www.wikipedia.org title:Official Wikipedia website browser:any ]] I would want to be able to refer to a source using a unique ID, like in BiBTeX, perhaps generated from last name + year + disambiguation identifier if necessary. Here we could use the link syntax: [[#Meyer1987a,23-66]]; automatically turned into a footnote to the appropriate source (preferably using the same counter as our [http://...] link counter). Note I'm only referring to a single article here. It might also be cool to build an encyclopedia-wide bibliography, but that would require a far more complex system. Regards, Erik -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr für 1 ct/ Min. surfen!

Fred Bauder

11:21 p.m.

With regard to this book I would suggest the 20th anniversary edition: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Author: Douglas R. Hofstadter ISBN: 0465026567 Publisher: Basic Books Publish Date: 01/01/1999 Binding: Paperback , 832 pages , 20 edition or the hardcover: TITLE: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R., Hofstadter ISBN: 0465026850 Publisher: Basic Books Publish Date: March, 1979 Binding: Hardcover There are two other paperback editions, one published in 1989 and one in 1979: (I think one of the dates from AddAll below is wrong, these older paperbacks are the cheapest.) TITLE: Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter ISBN: 0394745027 Publisher: Vintage Books Publish Date: May, 1989 Binding: Paperback TITLE: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Hofstadter, Douglas R. ISBN: 0394756827 Publisher: Vintage Books Publish Date: May, 1989 Binding: Paperback It takes a relatively skilled person to find all the ISBNs, and a bit of time. Probably a good stab at it is enough for wikipedia. It is really up to the book buyer to check out the various editions and compare prices and consider condition. The 20th aniversary edition may have additional material in it. Fred Bauder

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From: Axel Boldt <axelboldt(a)yahoo.com> Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 4 Feb 2003 20:47:49 -0800 (PST) To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links Godel, Escher, Bach

Jimmy Wales

12:34 p.m.

Tom Parmenter wrote:

...

|I'm listening. This sounds like a valid objection to this particular |technical detail. Should a system, flawed, dubious, that gives a fighting chance of tracking down a book be replaced by no system at all?

No, I don't think so. A flawed, dubious system that sort of works is preferable in this case to nothing at all.

...

If there is a better method, Library of Congress or whatever in the future, then a 'bot can comb through the Wikipedia and replace all those ISBNs with better references. Why send a 'bot out now to remove ISBNs when there is no replacement? (Is there?)

We certainly shouldn't just remove them, they are informative, albeit imperfectly so. I'm merely endorsing a search for better alternatives. --Jimbo

Pedro M.V.

1:44 p.m.

What about WikIS-BN (Wiki´S-BookNumber). This is, a permanent ISBN number with reference to ISBN for particular editions. Regards. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales(a)bomis.com> To: <wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org> Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 1:34 PM Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links

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Tom Parmenter wrote:

No, I don't think so. A flawed, dubious system that sort of works is preferable in this case to nothing at all.

We certainly shouldn't just remove them, they are informative, albeit imperfectly so. I'm merely endorsing a search for better alternatives. --Jimbo _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

Fred Bauder

4 Feb 4 Feb

9:57 p.m.

But it's not a valid objection, used books are easily located using the ISBN. Fred

...

From: Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)bomis.com> Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2003 06:36:22 -0800 To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links Axel Boldt wrote:

I'm listening. This sounds like a valid objection to this particular technical detail. _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

Fred Bauder

3 Feb 3 Feb

2:37 p.m.

Marvellously wrongheaded, most books published after 1970 have ISBN numbers and are most easily found an purchased if you start with that number (although it can get complicated as books are reprinted under diffent numbers). The general practice in the bookselling business currently relies on the ISBN number and will for the forseeable future. Fred an ABE bookseller

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From: Axel Boldt <axelboldt(a)yahoo.com> Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 17:22:46 -0800 (PST) To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links I know that I have fought and lost this fight before. ISBN numbers are evil and should not be used to identify books. They identify *editions* of books, and in a couple of years all these editions will be out of print and all ISBN links in Wikipedia will be completely useless. Right now they are already useless if you are interested in buying used books. If versions of a book are being published by different parties, as is true for many important books that are in the public domain, then ISBN's are furthermore inherently POV, since they pick out a single publisher. No reference work, encyclopedia, library catalog, bibliography, article or book ever refers to books by ISBN number. Because they are not book identifiers. Given properly formatted author and title, our software could and should query bookstores and libary catalogs. I think I said it before: meaningless numbers are worse than no numbers. Axel WikiKarma: http://wikipedia.org/wiki/UN_number __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

Fred Bauder

2:31 p.m.

Amazons prices are higher (and they are not politically correct), but the listings on Amaazon often include reviews which are quite helpful. I personally have never purchased a book from Amazon (always able to find a cheaper book elsewhere) but frankly if you use the reviews, you might consider buying there. At any rate I think it's a personal choice. Anyway I hate polical correctness so much that I would dismiss that notion out of hand just on that basis. Fred (an ABE bookseller)

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From: Magnus Manske <magnus.manske(a)epost.de> Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org Date: Sun, 02 Feb 2003 23:18:34 +0100 To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org Subject: [Wikipedia-l] ISBN links Some people on the German wikipedia want to get rid of the amazon.de link on the ISBN page, because of the "one-click" patent thing. I told them it would be not-NPOV to do so. Now they want to make some two-level ISBN page, with some "all bookstores" and "good bookstores" groups. I'm not sure what exactly they imagine, but it would require a software change. Is there a policy on that? Should we exclude bookstores (the largest one, actually) from the list because some (many?) wikipedians don't like them? Or should we leave the choice where to order to the user? Jimbo? Magnus _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

Axel Boldt

5:30 p.m.

--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote:

...

Marvellously wrongheaded, most books published after 1970 have ISBN numbers

I don't dispute that. Most books published after 500 BC have an author and a title.

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and are most easily found an purchased if you start with that number (although it can get complicated as books are reprinted under diffent numbers).

Since many books are eventually reprinted under different numbers (softcover, second edition), your second half sentence seems to contradict the first. How is searching for a book by author and title any more complicated than searching for it by ISBN? You will find all editions by all publishers that way, hardcover and softcover, printed, Braille or on tape, whatever.

...

The general practice in the bookselling business currently relies on the ISBN number and will for the forseeable future.

Sure. ISBN's were invented by and for booksellers and serve a useful purpose there, namely to identify a specific edition of a book so that it can be ordered from a wholesaler and delivered to the customer. But they don't serve a useful purpose for someone who wants to locate a book in a (used) bookstore or library. These people are Wikipedia's clientele. Axel __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com

Jimmy Wales

2:35 p.m.

Magnus Manske wrote:

...

Is there a policy on that? Should we exclude bookstores (the largest one, actually) from the list because some (many?) wikipedians don't like them? Or should we leave the choice where to order to the user? Jimbo?

Wow, I don't know. My first inclination is to list several sources, and if people don't like some of them, then they shouldn't shop there. It's really not a good idea for us to get involved in the particulars of endorsing/not-endorsing particular shops. --Jimbo

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participants (13)

Axel Boldt
Brion Vibber
Bryan Derksen
Erik Moeller
erik_moeller＠gmx.de
Fred Bauder
Jan Hidders
Jimmy Wales
Lars Aronsson
Magnus Manske
Oliver Pereira
Pedro M.V.
Tom Parmenter