Talk:Book swapping

Legality
I removed this paragraph:


 * Unlike the illegal swapping of digital music, through site such as napster, book swapping is legal. Legal conditions in the front of books state that re-distributing the book is legal as long as the book has its original cover. "The book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not...be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published"

First, the books I own don't say this. Second, the statement that this is legal is problematic because it is unsourced, and presumably varies by country. I believe it to be wrong, in fact, in the United States. To my understanding there is nothing that a publisher can do to prevent you from lending, re-selling, or circulating books that you've in any form (with or without cover, pages missing, etc.). Copyright only extends to copying. If you've got a source, though, go for it! &mdash; brighterorange  (talk) 22:39, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Elimination of links, see also, etc.
I've noticed over the last few months that when editors add links to a book community, they eliminate others, possibly a competitor's. Wikipedia is suppose to an objective resource meant to inform people. If they want to find out more about bookswapping, let's present them with a logical, alphabetized list for them to peruse. Let them see the merits of each bookswapping community when they visit the links provided.

Let's stop this silliness of eliminating other's links and listing things outside of alphabetical order. Please try to be professional, objective and courteous in your edits.

Book trading communities are a wonderful thing and they are getting books out there into other people's hands, when otherwise the books would be sitting on shelves, collecting dust. Let's help people out by keeping the external links and the see also list in alphbetical order.Mazeface 17:03, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Whats the criteria for linking to a site?
I added a link to a site in New Zealand that swaps books. This gets removed because it also has a section for members to swap other media. The fact is there are many good book swapping sites that also have sections for swapping other media. If this restriction remains then people will not have the opportunity to find these from wiki. Title trader also has similar functions and that link remains. Seems strange that one is allowed and the other not. Thanks kiwiswamprat —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kiwiswamprat (talk • contribs).


 * Actually all the links ought to come out. We're not a directory service and non-citation external links should be limited in number and to material that is about the subject of book swapping rather than to book swapping sites (a history or a respected article on the economic or social issues for instance).  -- Siobhan Hansa 12:10, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Well then why is there an area for listing sites by geographical area?? I thought the person who set this page up was wanting exactly that, ie links to sites by geographical area. Thats what I added. It was removed because mazeface didn't like it but allows others to stay. As I have said Titletrader trades other media - so what the difference? Seems like an uneven playing field to me. Although I have found several others sites I won't be adding any more until its clarified. Not wasting time having stuff deleted becasue it doesn't fit with someones bias. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kiwiswamprat (talk • contribs)


 * Sorry to take so much time responding, I missed you leaving this note.  The person who set up the headers may have wanted that to happen - but what they wanted is not in keeping with Wikipedia policy.  We ought to get rid of the list and focus this article on providing readers with encyclopedic information about bookswapping - like what impact such a concept has had on reading patterns, on the economy, on culture; what it's history is - is it routed in libraries or book clubs or something else?  Listing out the sites that advocate for or facilitate bookswapping is the job of a directory, not an encyclopedia.  -- Siobhan Hansa 13:13, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Timeline
I'm concerned about how relevant the items in the timeline are. It seems to be simply a list of when different websites launched, but there is little about the importance of each entry. the two that do seem to mention something noteworthy (the "first" and the "first in the UK" don't have any reliable sources to verify those claims.  I've added some references for some of the dates, but I think we should probably find some sources that talk about the growth of this sector of online services and build a section out of that.  The list doesn't seem to be much more than a listing at the moment. -- Siobhan Hansa 14:53, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it's significant that the first Book-swapping site on the web was SF-Books.com. Check Wayback machine if you need verification.

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://sf-books.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.9.182.43 (talk)


 * As I said above I think the first book-swapping site is one of the noteworthy ones. But we don't have suitable verification.  Using the Wayback machine is not suitable because it is original research and not necessarily accurate - We can only look up sites we know the names of, it doesn't and can't scan the web to see if there are any other book swapping sites out there.  So to do it properly we'd have to find all the claims to being a book swapping-site and check the wayback machine for all those sites - and this assumes the wayback machine has a reliable and comprehensive archive for all of them.  -- Siobhan Hansa 10:59, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't call the Wayback machine 'Original Research' any more than linking to an article is original research. The research has already been done. The verification is for sf-books.com only, no other site is claiming to be older. It is not necessary to try and seek out other sites that may or may not exist.
 * Using the way back machine to confirm that a website was up at certain time isn't original research - though if no other publication has concerned itself with publishing the fact we ought to wonder why we're bothering to. But using the way back machine as verification that something was the "first" of its kind would be original research.  since a link to the way back machine does not actually verify that a site was the first of its kind, only that it existed on a particular date, we'd have to look through all the other sites that existed before then to see if there were any other book swapping sites - and that would be original research.  I'm going to remove the unsourced assertions and the plain listings about a site being launched without any indication of why its important to the history of book swapping.  If we can find decent verification they can be added back in.  -- SiobhanHansa 18:27, 18 August 2007 (UTC)