Mav wrote:
Magnus wrote:
That's really one hard choice to make! ;-)
Actually any economic relationship with Amazon is going to be a
politically
sensitive topic around here. This is due to the large number of people
who
have an almost irrational hatred of Amazon because of their business practices. I for one don't care, and in fact use Amazon often, but we
have to
ask ourselves:
Is the money we would get worth being viewed as selling our soul to
devil by a
not-insignificant number of our contributors and many in the free
software
community?
I personally don't think the amount of money generated would be worth
the
grief. But that is just me.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
That is a fair point but surely the current situation (linking to Amazon but not referrer-linking) isn't great for either side of the divide. (Is referrer-linking a dramtically more "economic relationship" than the free advertising we do for them already?)
Maybe the ISBN page could be re-worded to include make the amazon link a referrer link but also include a notice that this is a referrer link and a link to , e.g., [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia's use of referrer links#Why link to Amazon]] which spells out why someone might prefer NOT to click that page, but to go to another bookseller instead.
Pete
Peter Bartlett wrote:
Maybe the ISBN page could be re-worded to include make the amazon link a referrer link but also include a notice that this is a referrer link and a link to , e.g., [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia's use of referrer links#Why link to Amazon]] which spells out why someone might prefer NOT to click that page, but to go to another bookseller instead.
Also, I have never seen an ISBN reference in Wikipedia unrelated to the actual book title. I'm sure that if someone feels so strongly against Amazon/Wikimedia or their relationship they can still use their minds and skills to make a decision they're happy with regardless of where and how we link (e.g. go to Amazon via direct URL and perform the search manually, search at other booksellers, search on Google, ask friends, place an ad, physically search in bookshops, etc).
The only possible "unethical" possibility would be to actually surcharge the buyer for the reference to Amazon. As long as that's (obviously) not happening, Wikimedia is clean and its spirit is pure--after all, it's offering what most of the commerical community would call a free service: it spares the poor buyer of the agony to manually search the Amazon database (the horror!).
Just my 2c, --Gutza
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