----- Original Message ----- From: Jimmy Wales jwales@bomis.com Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 07:55:00 -0800 To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [associates@amazon.com: Amazon.comAssociatesprogram - your application approved]
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.
Sorry, that was before my time. If you could point me to those arguments. (Those might render my further remarks obsolete.)
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.
I never suggested it would be bad in and by itself to engage in trade, to link to booksellers or to promote reading or... I just question if it is *within the WP-idea* to link to people or organizations selling the item itself.
Many things are useful to people. But WP's purpose is to be useful in a specific way, and one would have to argue that pointing to a book (or whatever) seller enhances this usefulness.
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.
Well, if there is no revenue it means there was no use which means we can remove the link. (Just kidding.)
-- Schewek