[mb-users] Amazon ASIN url's

[Lauri Watts]

Hi,

There is a small argument going on about Amazon URL's, after the
change Amazon recently made, the wiki was not yet adjusted to
accomodate: http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/AmazonRelationshipType

For those not up to speed, Amazon recently changed their URL's from
the format http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/<ASIN> or
http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/<ASIN> to include an abridged version
of the product title in the url.  The original url's do work, and we
have no reason to expect they won't continue to.

It's also noted very clearly, and in bold, that the user should not
edit a url, just copy and paste it.

Since people are now beginning to vote no to edits using the new
format, this needs to be fixed, one way or another.

We need to decide:

1:  Is it ok to add the URL's with the title information in, in which
case the wiki needs changing to reflect that this is ok, or

2: is it ok to edit the url, in which case the wiki needs changing and
very clear and explicit instructions how to perform this need to be
added.

Example of contentious edit going on right now:
http://musicbrainz.org/show/edit/?editid=5729275

The simplest way from an end user's point of view would be to have the
javascript parser break up the pasted url, any format, and
reconstitute a corrected URL (it'd be fairly simple to grab just the
ASIN and the domain out of there).  Given our dearth of developers,
that's probably not going to happen in a hurry.

I will also note that the wiki doesn't explicitly say that these url's
are unacceptable and there's been hundreds of them entered in the past
couple of months.

Regards,
-- 
Lauri Watts