Hi,
I'm new to Wikipedia and would like to contribute to some of the pages. I would initially like to add a list of recommended books to some of the pages with a review paragraph. Is it permissible ( is it accepted practice ) to link the book into something like Amazon so that if the reader wanted to buy a copy they can ?
Kind regards,
David
PS I'm not proposing this to sell book it's just that it's the sort of feature I would like to see.
On sab, 2002-02-02 at 01:11, David Black wrote:
I'm new to Wikipedia and would like to contribute to some of the pages. I would initially like to add a list of recommended books to some of the pages with a review paragraph. Is it permissible ( is it accepted practice ) to link the book into something like Amazon so that if the reader wanted to buy a copy they can ?
[..]
PS I'm not proposing this to sell book it's just that it's the sort of feature I would like to see.
It's already a feature. Just insert the ISBN number and the wiki automatically links to pricescan.com, which will provide links to a wide range of online retailers which carry the given book. ie, ISBN 0844237639 results in a link to http://www.pricescan.com/books/bookDetail.asp?isbn=0844237639
Fun, huh?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
I'd just like to add that for now, the auto-generated links from ISBNs are not "affiliate coded". So we don't make any money from those links.
However, with the ongoing hard times in the Internet economy, we do anticipate adding some forms of advertising to the site in the near future. One thing that we will do is make sure that ISBN links are affiliate coded.
I would of course view it as inappropriate for people to insert their own affiliate coded links into the Wikipedia.
-----
Some abstract thoughts on these matters:
1. Advertising must not interfere with the content of the encyclopedia. There must be a "Chinese wall" between the two. This is ensured by the fact that the content portions of the pages are always editable by anyone. Advertisements should be separate from content and must be clearly advertisements.
2. Although links to booksellers are a natural fit, a natural feature that people like _anyway_, some may feel that they blur the line to some extent between advertising and content. The important thing here is that even as advertising, automatic book links should be vendor neutral, and I would also support including some kind of library link there, too.
3. Amazon.com is the easiest (to my knowledge) affiliate program to work with. But, Amazon.com is controversial in the free software community for their patent activities, most notably their monumentally stupid and offensive "one click" patent, which they used to restrict competition from Barnes&Noble. I'm sensitive to those concerns.
4. My current thinking on advertising is that people who are logged-in should have ads turned *off* by default, although if they want to help fund Wikipedia, they can turn them back on and make an effort to click through and buy stuff.
5. I know the introduction of advertising will be controversial with some people, no matter how carefully and sensitively we do it. Those people are invited to step forward and pay for Wikipedia out of their own pockets if they like. :-)
--Jimbo
On Sat, 2 Feb 2002, Jimmy Wales wrote:
- I know the introduction of advertising will be controversial with
some people, no matter how carefully and sensitively we do it. Those people are invited to step forward and pay for Wikipedia out of their own pockets if they like. :-)
What are the expenses involved? What is the bandwidth consumed? The storage space required? The load on servers?
-- Daniel Mikkelsen, Copyleft Software AS
Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:
What are the expenses involved? What is the bandwidth consumed? The storage space required? The load on servers?
1. The physical expenses are minimal and easily absorbed. So none of the things you mention are worth worrying about -- I can continue to pay for those things indefinitely. (If Wikipedia were to be 100 times more popular, though, these things would start to add up!)
2. The programming expenses are drastically lower for Wikipedia than they ever were for Nupedia. Volunteers are to thank for this. Nupedia was very expensive to build, because I paid programmers (chiefly Toan) to do it. Currently, Jason and I spent a few hours per week on Wikipedia.
3. The major remaining expense is Larry's editorial leadership, which I believe has been a major factor in the success of the project to date. Fans of random anarchy may disagree, of course. And if they do, I'm happy to provide them (so long as the license is free!) with web space to have a totally unmanaged project. I think they'll get crap, though.
--Jimbo
On Sat, 2 Feb 2002, Jimmy Wales wrote:
Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:
What are the expenses involved? What is the bandwidth consumed? The storage space required? The load on servers?
- The physical expenses are minimal and easily absorbed. So none of
the things you mention are worth worrying about -- I can continue to pay for those things indefinitely. (If Wikipedia were to be 100 times more popular, though, these things would start to add up!)
Yes. Given the wonderfully light format (and nature!) of the project, I'd expect a normal small company could run it today.
I feel certain the project will become very large. When that happens, I'm thinking it shouldn't be too difficult getting a university (or at least some non-commercial entity) to host it, since it is makes very good use of bandwidth (compared to, say, radio streaming) and is Free. Also, although there would some consistency problems, making Wikipedia distributed (something like freenet/newsgroups) should be possible.
As for hardware, it's really cheap these days. I haven't scrutinized the PHP Script, but it occurs to me some creative cacheing (and at the other end, offloading history data to a less optimized method of access) could extend hardware life substantially.
- The programming expenses are drastically lower for Wikipedia than
they ever were for Nupedia. Volunteers are to thank for this. Nupedia was very expensive to build, because I paid programmers (chiefly Toan) to do it. Currently, Jason and I spent a few hours per week on Wikipedia.
Yes, Free Software has basically solved this problem. If the rest of the world's aspects could just learn from this model. :)
- The major remaining expense is Larry's editorial leadership, which
I believe has been a major factor in the success of the project to date. Fans of random anarchy may disagree, of course. And if they do, I'm happy to provide them (so long as the license is free!) with web space to have a totally unmanaged project. I think they'll get crap, though.
I agree that one should have a set of dedicated and involved editors, but do these really have to be hired? The project is way past critical mass, and I see a lot of very active contributors. A rotating voluntary post, or a comittee perhaps? Once enough people participate in something (read: once someone spends the effort and money to get something rolling, like you did), people find all kinds reasons to chip in. Status, the feeling of contributing to something worth wile, desire to influence - didn't ESR make a list of these?
Anyway, my 10c is that both volunteer editorship, and if that fails, random anarchy should be _tried_ before we (I hesitate to say "we" here, as I'm new to the project) try advertisments.
That said, I think you could make back a lot of your investment in effort and money by identifying Wikipedia more closely with Bomis and Nupedia. A lot of people visit these pages.
-- Daniel Mikkelsen, Copyleft Software AS
Hello!
On Sat, 2 Feb 2002, Jimmy Wales wrote:
- The major remaining expense is Larry's editorial leadership,
which
I believe has been a major factor in the success of the project to date. Fans of random anarchy may disagree, of course. And if they do, I'm happy to provide them (so long as the license is free!) with web space to have a totally unmanaged project. I think they'll get crap, though.
This sounds a bit strange if you read it with the national wikipedias in mind. At least the German Wikipedia doesn't have an editorial leadership and is IMHO quite good described by "random anarchy". But it's far away from crap.
Anyway, my 10c is that both volunteer editorship, and if that fails, random anarchy should be _tried_ before we (I hesitate to say "we"
here,
as I'm new to the project) try advertisments.
I don't like advertisments, too. They don't annoy me, because I have a filter program running, but I think they'll lower the reputation (or does "prestige" fit better?) of the project, especially to newcomers. But I don't want Larry to loose his job! :-) So affiliate links to bookstores would be okay for me.
Bye, Kurt
Thanks for the reply and information.
David
----- Original Message ----- From: "Brion Vibber" brion@pobox.com To: wikipedia-l@nupedia.com Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2002 9:58 AM Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New to the Wikipedia with a few questions
On sab, 2002-02-02 at 01:11, David Black wrote:
I'm new to Wikipedia and would like to contribute to some of the pages.
I
would initially like to add a list of recommended books to some of the pages with a review paragraph. Is it permissible ( is it accepted practice ) to link the book into something like Amazon so that if the reader wanted to buy a copy they can ?
[..]
PS I'm not proposing this to sell book it's just that it's the sort of feature I would like to see.
It's already a feature. Just insert the ISBN number and the wiki automatically links to pricescan.com, which will provide links to a wide range of online retailers which carry the given book. ie, ISBN 0844237639 results in a link to http://www.pricescan.com/books/bookDetail.asp?isbn=0844237639
Fun, huh?
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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