User talk:Aitch Eye/Archive 01

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Book Share

I noticed you added a ton of external links to Book Share, which just go to a search page for Book Share. This isn't really what the external links section is for. If you don't mind, could you please remove them..,? ike9898 01:42, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Except in the case of Robert Asprin, I believe that all the links I added go to specific pages for the authors whose entry I put them in, rather than a search page. Asprin had entries under three different variations of his name, with no cross referencing between them, so I linked it to the search term rather than linking to each of them.

Is the problem specifically with the linking to a search term, or do you think the author's individual bookshare pages are inappropriate for the external resources section as well? If it's the latter and you could explain your reasoning, I'll certainly consider removing them. Aitch Eye 03:59, 24 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The official Wikipedia guidelines on Wikipedia:External links:external links state that "Links to a site that is selling products" are not appropriate. I think that it is irrelevant that Bookshare is non-profit. ike9898 02:28, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

It probably would be just as well for me to remove them, and I'll get right to it. While I do think there is some greyness on this particular point, this page is obviously to obscure a place to deal with the issue. A case could also be made that while the links might be useful to some users, they're not so relevant to an encyclopedia article that it's obvious they should be included.

I'll just point out that I had looked at the guidelines, before putting up the links, specifically at the phrase "If a book or other text that is the subject of an article exists somewhere on the Internet it should be linked to." I see now that I improperly failed to note that it required paid registration. I'm not sure that "a site that is selling products" really matches BookShare, and there is the "unless it applies via a 'do' above" qualification at the end. However, unless this sort of situation was taken into account during the discussion that led to the guidelines, I'm not sure my interpretation of them matters, and in these cases the books weren't the specific subjects of the articles anyway.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Aitch Eye 06:59, 25 July 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. By the way, many users (but not all) converse in the following way: I leave you a message on your talk page, you respond by leaving a message on my talk page. The advantage to this is that when you reply, I will see an 'alert' that I have a message. There is one big disadvantage to this method - it is harder to follow the conversation if there are several rounds of back and forth messages. See you around. ike9898 18:56, July 25, 2005 (UTC)