Karl Eichwalder wrote:
I should have stopped working on WP articles much earlier (as soon as I discovered the ISBN links to the external booksellers).
Yes, because the very act of selling books is sufficiently evil that you should disassociate yourself with anyone even remotely tainted by it. As soon as you discovered that Wikipedia actually links to people who engage in such nasty business, you should have denounced us and left immediately.
Is that really what you're saying?
Look, I appreciate that there are many very real concerns that can and should be raised here. But to storm off in response to a short term test designed to give us information is insulting to our intelligence.
As for me, I fully expect that the net result of the experiment will be to prove, once and for all, that Amazon links would provide us with very little revenue so that it's not worth discussing this any more.
That's what the test is designed to show. Your acting like it's some kind of crime against humanity is not helpful.
It occurs to me that the current state of affairs -- linking to Amazon, but doing so for free -- ought to be the *least* satisfactory to those who hate Amazon. They get the business, and they get to keep all the money. Doing exactly what we're doing now, but including an associates link, will reduce their income, not increase it, at least relative to the status quo.
--Jimbo