[Foundation-l] Advertisement and service at the same time

[Andrew Gray]

On 20/03/2008, Florence Devouard <anthere at anthere.org> wrote:


>  I ask the question because my husband opinion is very clear on the
>  matter. When he reads an article about a BOOK, he would like that we
>  provide as a service, a link to a website where he can directly buy the
>  book. Typically, an Amazon link.

I make a practice of removing well-meaning Amazon links, because we
currently have a structure to do this trivially, automatically, and
with a lot broader scope.

[The following is as it works on enwp - I believe many other projects
have the extension, but I wouldn't want to claim to know how they
handle it! The model should be similar, though.]

Any text string of the form "ISBN xxx", where xxx is a ten-digit or
thirteen-digit valid ISBN or ISBN-13 string, will link to a page at
[[Special:Booksources]]. It will create, automatically, a set of
deeplinks into the pages of a wide variety of online booksellers
(including Amazon) - but also to a wide range of library catalogues,
book exchange sites, etc.

There are implementation problems in getting this to work well - and
we certainly don't make it nearly as prominent as we ought to - but a
link to many commercial sites with no implied preference is no doubt
vastly better for our readers than a link to one.

It falls down somewhat for non-ISBNed literature - broadly speaking,
editions published before 1970 and not reprinted since - but this is a
relatively small set of material, and one online booksellers handle
very badly as it is.

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