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Vaniver comments on Open Thread, October 27 - 31, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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So, I link to Amazon fairly frequently here, and when I do I use the referral link "ref=nosim?tag=vglnk-c319-20" to kick some money back to MIRI / whoever's paying for LW.
First, is that the right link? Second, what would it take to add that to the "Show help" box so that I don't have to dig it up whenever I want to use it, and others are more likely to use it?
This is done automatically in a somewhat different way. So my advice is not to worry about it. But, yes, it shouldn't hurt and and it should help in the situation that viglink doesn't fire. In those comments, Wei Dai agrees that this is the referral code.
Part of the reason why I'm asking is because that info might be old. Apparently "ref=nosim" was obsolete two years ago, and I don't know if that's still the right VigLink account, etc.
I thought LW automatically added affiliate links using VigLink already.
I was under that impression also. [Edit] I prefer doing it by hand because I almost always only open links in new tabs, which I predict others will do as well, and VigLink does not do that with new tab links.
[Edit2]The original text before the edit was:
When I asked why I did it by hand, I got back the answer "I do it by hand because I do it by hand," which seemed silly. But it turns out there was a good reason which I had forgotten; score one for blind tradition.
Maybe it might even sense to let the forum automatically format links to Amazon that way.
I believe this is supposed to happen already, but have not tested it.
That would be a bad thing.
Why?
I should have made more explicit that it's my opinion: "a bad thing from my point of view".
It's a quirk of mine -- I dislike marketing schemes injected into non-marketing contexts, especially if that is not very explicit. It is a mild dislike, not like I'm going to quit a site because of it or even write a rant against Amazon links rewriting.
Yes, I understand that Internet runs on such things. No, it does not make me like it more.
It isn't a marketing scheme. It's a monetization scheme.
(Marketing is presenting products for sale. Monetization is finding ways to extract revenue from previously non-revenue-generating activity.)
(And no, the Internet doesn't run on marketing or monetization. A few of your favorite Internet services probably do, though; but probably not all.)
I accept the correction.
I have another quirk: I dislike being monetized.