[Wikimedia-l] RfC: Should we support MP4 Video on our sites?

[Andrew Lih]

I'm not sure what debate you're referring to. If it's about whether video
belongs in Wikipedia, I don't think it's even in question.

Wikipedia started in 2001 as all text.

It didn't have photos then, we now have photos.
It didn't have audio then, we now have audio.
It didn't have video then, we now have video (albeit not that much).

Video shouldn't need special justification to be a full-fledged part of
Wikiepdia's content.



On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 12:12 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 12:07 PM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > One thing that hasn't come up in the debate is the relative importance of
> > Wikimedia's approach to video, given the existing video ecosystem.
> YouTube
> > enables cc-by uploading and has 4 million videos with a free license, and
> > 6.5 million videos that are explicitly educational. Are we sure focusing
> on
> > our own base of uploaded videos is the approach best calibrated to
> serving
> > Wikimedia's mission?
> >
>
> Actually it did come up, allow me to reproduce the comment in a vote posted
> by Brad Patrick (former WMF general counsel):
>
> I agree that the dominant file format means we need to be able to
> comprehend what is ingested. But it is not okay to ingest and spew using
> that file format if it means we are putting on someone else's intellectual
> property yoke. Commons' great benefit to the world is no-questions-asked
> reusability, and I don't want to see it compromised in this fashion,
> license freebie or otherwise. I'm with User:David
> Gerard<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard>
>  on this. On the whole it is of far less importance to me as there is no
> guiding principal or idea that WMF is intended to be an *exclusive*
> repository of anything. Others do nothing but video, and that's great. I
> want there to be video, *but it is not part of a grant vision to
> out-YouTube YouTube, or Vimeo, or any other huge site with billions of
> hours of video*. User:Fuzheado<
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fuzheado>
>  is right - we lack the present toolset to be able to address such volumes
> of video, and I'm not sure that's a bad
> thing.--BradPatrick<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:BradPatrick>
>  (talk <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:BradPatrick>) 14:45,
> 16 January 2014 (UTC)
>
> Emphasis is mine. I'm sure smart people have debated this before, can
> anyone point me to it?
>