[Wikipedia-l] Re: [associates at amazon.com: Amazon.comAssociate sprogram - your application approved]

Wed Jan 21 16:36:42 UTC 2004

----- Original Message -----
From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 07:55:00 -0800
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [associates at 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
-- 
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