Talk:British Standards

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I created the page for Publicly_Available_Specification in August 2006. I suggest that the section on this page for Publicly Available Specifications, created at the end of October 2006, be shortened and the examples moved into the existing page. --Dotjay 17:17, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] European standards

This article needs amending or extending to cover European standards and their relationship with BS, especially BS-EN- type standards.

--John Stumbles 11:52, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Availability / pricing

I removed the passage:

Like with the products of other national standards bodies, the per-page price of these documents is substantially higher than that of mass-market books, which may hinder access by students and average consumers with a casual interest in such specifications. The company itself however would assert that the cost of standards reflects the costs of production.

This asserts an opinion about the expense of the Standards documents (an opinion I share FWIW) which is out of place in a Wikipedia article. In my opinion :-)

Perhaps if there were a notable source of criticism of the pricing that could be included? Alternatively (or as well) some figures for the prices of Standards docs could be included (perhaps alongside the example standards quoted).

--John Stumbles 10:03, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I have (again) removed the comparison with the ASTM which seems irrelevant: a more valid comparison would be with ANSI or other national standards bodies (which ASTM is not).

I would like to see a reference for the licence conditions "forb[ding] ... copying of more than 10% of a document by library users". My own experience is that one can print out an entire copy of online standards at an academic library, although they are prefaced "A single copy of this British Standard is licensed to ..." <licensee> and watermarked "Licensed Copy:" <licensee> ... "Uncontrolled Copy, (c) BSI". Perhaps we should extend the article to talk about electronically-available standards.

I removed the word "severe" (in "licence conditions") as being POV (in the absence of reference to a notable source describing the BSI' licence conditions as severe). (It doesn't mean I agree I agree with, am defending or apologising for BSI's actions: just that WP is not the place to slag them off. :-))

--John Stumbles 22:44, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the comments on pricing policy & WP not being the place to debate it. An edit of mine was removevd & although I don't plan on an editing war a consensus would be appreciated. Some of the existing comments appear to be more a complaint about the prices than appropriate for WP. SamsonXX 19:22, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Can we *please* have a citation for this?

The {{fact}} template next to the bit in the "Availability" section discussing the restrictions BSI places on library availability has now been there for about half a year. That is more than long enough for it to have been backed up by a solid reference. I suggest that if it is not given one very soon, that passage should be deleted.

Also, if the text currently in situ is indeed accurate, I'd like to know why BSI doesn't allow open-shelf access. The other restrictions seem fairly straightforward (as others have said, whether or not I agree with the regime is not something that is relevant to an article Talk page), but I don't understand that one. Loganberry (Talk) 16:37, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Why 'BSI doesn't allow open-shelf access'

BSI states that standards cannot be priced like normal commercial publications, see: http://www.bsi-global.com/en/Standards-and-Publications/About-standards/Pricing-of-Standards/ Alkazzi (talk) 11:36, 8 January 2008 (UTC)