User talk:Uncle G/On common Google Books mistakes

Comments[edit]

I have had some of these thoughts as well, and had a recent discussion on the uses of snippets that is applicable:

Expand to the use of other book sources such as Scribd and Gutenberg
Emphasize that links to online sources are not required, but may be included as a convenience
Linking to the sourced page should not be a requirement; referenced pages may be non-contiguous; reused footnotes would not link to the page
Books with only snippet views should not be linked as the context of the source is missing

---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 22:58, 21 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

How to write page links[edit]

Hi Uncle G, this is your page so I don't want to edit war with you! :) But I feel the way you're writing this is very POV. I'd like to restore the explanation in the text of how to write these page URLs. They do work for millions of people, and they're an excellent way to help editors check sources and avoid the inadvertent plagiarism we've been discussing a lot recently. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 19:28, 23 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The explanation is still there, in the first footnote. But it is important to note that they do not work in general, neither over space for all of the people in the world, nor over time (as Google changes what pages are made available via preview). This is a page about Google Books mistakes, and thinking that these things (which, as noted, aren't documented by Google) work universally for all people, or even for the same people at different times, is one such mistake. Uncle G (talk) 12:46, 29 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

They do work in general, though, especially in English-speaking countries, and this is the English Wikipedia. And the spread is increasing, not decreasing. SlimVirgin ^{talk|contribs} 01:45, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]