b schewek wrote:
There has not been one reason given so far why WP
should link to
booksellers in the first place.
Well, that's a conversation that we've had more than once, see.
It's clearly useful to many readers. It's not evil to buy books.
It's not even evil to sell books.
Let's say we have an article about Stephen King (we do). And an
article about one of his books (we do). Why should we not link to a
page that lets people know how they can do more research by actually
obtaining the book? The user might want to buy it, or borrow it from
a library, or read reviews of it, etc.
I've seen arguments that I respect (though I'm ultimately unconvinced)
as to why we should not link to Amazon in particular. But I've seen
no argument to suggest that linking to booksellers _generally_ is a
bad thing. Why should it be?
I suppose some might argue that any form of voluntary exchange, money
for books, is immoral. But, I'd like to see it.
WP does not link to
Art/Music/Video/Computer/Coin/Stamp/...
sellers as well? Maybe the whole "link to seller" idea should be
reviewed.
I see no problem with such links, so long as they meet the kind of
helpfulness criteria that we use for books. One nice thing about
books is that the ISBN does exist as a universal identifier that makes
this technically feasible... I don't think such numbers exist for
things link Coins, Stamps, etc. (For music and video, perhaps they
do?)
Just for the record, after nearly 24 hours with the link on the book
sources page, sales and revenue to us are $0.00. It's a bit early to
tell, but I think it's fairly clear that this (linking for money) is
going to be a complete nonissue anyway.
--Jimbo