Forum:ISBN numbers and BookSources

Ventry Girl made an update to The Coming of the Terraphiles that included QuickLink brackets around the ISBN numbers. I noticed they were red links, so I backed out the brackets and noticed that Wikia makes it into a link just from plain text.

When I click on the link for those ISBNs, they go to a special:BookSources page, and thence to a few different book sellers. Most of those book sellers are either offline or no longer recognize the URLs we send them.

Who is in charge of those links: Tardis or Wikia? Who would be the one to get those fixed/updated?

-- Gousha talk to me 04:20, January 21, 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, it's not quite a plain text thing. Note that I can type the number 978-1-84607-983-2 and nothing happens.  Type ISBN 978-1-84607-983-2 and ya get a link. ISBN is essentially a magic word, when it's followed by a proper number of digits (either with or without hyphens).


 * As for who manages the booksellers, I dunno. It's not us. And as this is a core part of the MediaWiki software, it may not even be Wikia.  I'll put in a query to Wikia to find out.  Watch this space!


 * Having said that, we at the local wiki level can leverage the BookSources feature by building a link onto a page. For instance, we could do something like: * Find this book on Amazon.com That would create something like this:


 * Find this book on Amazon.com.


 * But I doubt we would ever implement such a feature, because that would be tantamount to direct advertising for Amazon.  04:22: Sat 21 Jan 2012
 * Okay, question officially asked of Wikia. We probably won't hear anything back before Tuesday.   08:53: Sat 21 Jan 2012