[Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in business development

[Andrew Gray]

On 19/05/07, Yonatan Horan <yonatanh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps but the unavoidable fact is that we currently have 26,000 links to
> amazon, many of them being sources for pictures, sources in articles or
> otherwise non-policy violating links. Even if they are violating policy, if
> we aren't removing them, the referral might as well be added. Also, there's
> Special:Booksearch for which one could add the referral id to amazon\Barnes
> and Noble links.

a) Adding it to special:booksearch, one centrally generated URL, is a
relatively sensible move. Adding it to anywhere *else* means that we
have to manually patrol each and every use of the URL in order to add
the referral ID, and check it doesn't get changed to another referral
ID, and deal with people who will editwar to keep them out

b) most material "sourced" from Amazon can be more appropriately
sourced elsewhere

c) it is inappropriate to give our editors a motive, no matter how
well-meaning, to encourage the use of links to *specific* sales sites
in articles. It effectively will create a single, or a group of,
recommended commercial partners.

d) as you say, a sizable fraction of those links are appropriate
"image sourced from this URL" - and, as such, they link directly to
the image generation URL. No-where to put a referral link, and no
benefit to anyone from doing so...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk