Essays Low‑impact | ||||||||||
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ALL CAPS title feels silly but Wikipedia:Google Books goes elsewhere. What about Wikipedia:Google Books considered harmful or Wikipedia:Avoid Google Books or Wikipedia:Say no to Google Books or whatever? Nemo 23:45, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
The number of links in articles didn't change much between December 2019 and February 2020 (I'm still waiting for the March 2020 dump):
$ bzip2 -dck enwiki-20200220-pages-articles-multistream.xml.bz2|grep -c books.google 1365146 $ bzip2 -dck enwiki-20191220-pages-articles-multistream.xml.bz2 | grep -c books.google 1366451
Nemo 09:10, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
This essay starts off on the wrong foot with its lede statement:
The essay is clearly attempting to speak for all editors by saying "...why we prefer...", and has not made the argument that "...better opinions exist".
Regarding the proposed reasons... "Why we should stop when possible :"
Given the above realities we actually have a good case here to prefer the use of google books as sources in many cases. This is not to dump on archive.org. They are a great source for public domain literature. Currently, active editors make good use of books from both google and archive.org. We should keep it that way.
See a further discussion about this here. -- Gwillhickers ( talk) 23:16, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
This discussion was archived, but has been moved here for those still concerned about this issue.
Re this edit The bot switched from several google books, which in most cases is preferred, to those found at archive.org. Several of the new links get error results also. Is it possible to let active editors decide where to link to? Sometimes we indeed use archive.org, but not as a rule, and usually only in cases where a publication can't be found via google books. Would appreciate it greatly if the editors who are most familiar with the publications were allowed to make the decision. Thanx for your efforts. Cheers. -- Gwillhickers ( talk) 19:40, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
Gwillhickers, I made some changes. When you revert the bot it will learn and respect that and not restore the IA links, this was a design oversight not intentional - it took me a while to understand what you were saying about 'forbidding Google links', but now that I see your predicament it's understandable because the bot was acting like a dictator. If it continues to fight your editorial decisions let me know ASAP, I now understand the situation. The bot has mostly completed its work, it converted less than 10% of the installed Google book links, and is now only running on newly added links which results in less than 100 changes a week vs. thousands of new Google links added during the same period. Google the elephant and IA the mouse. -- Green C 04:52, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
@ Eissink: and anyone else interested — After being told by GreenC that the IA bot would not return to the American Revolutionary War article it has been back at least twice. See latest discussion here. -- Gwillhickers ( talk) 21:24, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
@ Gwillhickers: see also the discussion currently on Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Stop_InternetArchiveBot_from_linking_books. Eissink ( talk) 02:09, 16 June 2020 (UTC).
I find it shocking that a site like Wikipedia would wilfully link to a Google service. It goes completely against the ethos of freedom that this project was built on. Not only do we have editors linking to Google Books for sources, which is bad enough, we also have multiple templates which link to Google (for instance, "find sources"). While I understand that we're currently pretty much trapped in a world of technology not yet fit for purpose because it isn't yet ethical, it's still frustrating to see this happening. Something really needs to be done. How can this problem be solved overall? I think it will take a lot of effort and time, but sitting idle and doing nothing will only allow the problem to get worse and worse, as has been the case for years now. DesertPipeline ( talk) 07:20, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
How can this problem be solved overall?As you can see above in § Can you call off your bot?, there is (or at least there was) a bot that converts Google Books links to Internet Archive links in citation templates. As you may know, major publishers sued the Archive last year and that lawsuit is ongoing. If the Archive loses that lawsuit then the accessibility of many (non-free) books hosted at the Archive may change. Biogeographist ( talk) 15:45, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
I recently wrote Wikipedia:Product placement to try and explain why we should avoid projectspace recommendations of commercial products like Google Books. It was triggered by a discussion about links to Google in the AfD instructions. – Joe ( talk) 06:05, 8 November 2023 (UTC)
Essays Low‑impact | ||||||||||
|
ALL CAPS title feels silly but Wikipedia:Google Books goes elsewhere. What about Wikipedia:Google Books considered harmful or Wikipedia:Avoid Google Books or Wikipedia:Say no to Google Books or whatever? Nemo 23:45, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
The number of links in articles didn't change much between December 2019 and February 2020 (I'm still waiting for the March 2020 dump):
$ bzip2 -dck enwiki-20200220-pages-articles-multistream.xml.bz2|grep -c books.google 1365146 $ bzip2 -dck enwiki-20191220-pages-articles-multistream.xml.bz2 | grep -c books.google 1366451
Nemo 09:10, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
This essay starts off on the wrong foot with its lede statement:
The essay is clearly attempting to speak for all editors by saying "...why we prefer...", and has not made the argument that "...better opinions exist".
Regarding the proposed reasons... "Why we should stop when possible :"
Given the above realities we actually have a good case here to prefer the use of google books as sources in many cases. This is not to dump on archive.org. They are a great source for public domain literature. Currently, active editors make good use of books from both google and archive.org. We should keep it that way.
See a further discussion about this here. -- Gwillhickers ( talk) 23:16, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
This discussion was archived, but has been moved here for those still concerned about this issue.
Re this edit The bot switched from several google books, which in most cases is preferred, to those found at archive.org. Several of the new links get error results also. Is it possible to let active editors decide where to link to? Sometimes we indeed use archive.org, but not as a rule, and usually only in cases where a publication can't be found via google books. Would appreciate it greatly if the editors who are most familiar with the publications were allowed to make the decision. Thanx for your efforts. Cheers. -- Gwillhickers ( talk) 19:40, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
Gwillhickers, I made some changes. When you revert the bot it will learn and respect that and not restore the IA links, this was a design oversight not intentional - it took me a while to understand what you were saying about 'forbidding Google links', but now that I see your predicament it's understandable because the bot was acting like a dictator. If it continues to fight your editorial decisions let me know ASAP, I now understand the situation. The bot has mostly completed its work, it converted less than 10% of the installed Google book links, and is now only running on newly added links which results in less than 100 changes a week vs. thousands of new Google links added during the same period. Google the elephant and IA the mouse. -- Green C 04:52, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
@ Eissink: and anyone else interested — After being told by GreenC that the IA bot would not return to the American Revolutionary War article it has been back at least twice. See latest discussion here. -- Gwillhickers ( talk) 21:24, 19 April 2020 (UTC)
@ Gwillhickers: see also the discussion currently on Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Stop_InternetArchiveBot_from_linking_books. Eissink ( talk) 02:09, 16 June 2020 (UTC).
I find it shocking that a site like Wikipedia would wilfully link to a Google service. It goes completely against the ethos of freedom that this project was built on. Not only do we have editors linking to Google Books for sources, which is bad enough, we also have multiple templates which link to Google (for instance, "find sources"). While I understand that we're currently pretty much trapped in a world of technology not yet fit for purpose because it isn't yet ethical, it's still frustrating to see this happening. Something really needs to be done. How can this problem be solved overall? I think it will take a lot of effort and time, but sitting idle and doing nothing will only allow the problem to get worse and worse, as has been the case for years now. DesertPipeline ( talk) 07:20, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
How can this problem be solved overall?As you can see above in § Can you call off your bot?, there is (or at least there was) a bot that converts Google Books links to Internet Archive links in citation templates. As you may know, major publishers sued the Archive last year and that lawsuit is ongoing. If the Archive loses that lawsuit then the accessibility of many (non-free) books hosted at the Archive may change. Biogeographist ( talk) 15:45, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
I recently wrote Wikipedia:Product placement to try and explain why we should avoid projectspace recommendations of commercial products like Google Books. It was triggered by a discussion about links to Google in the AfD instructions. – Joe ( talk) 06:05, 8 November 2023 (UTC)