Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
My sense of it is that the inconvenience is minor. The point about libraryies and schools is well-taken, but I don't know (none of us do) how many people would actually be frustrated by that. The question about what is required of end users is also a valid one, but it seems like nothing to me to download a plug-in... most people do that sort of thing all the time.
Having thrown up the concerns that I did, and listened to the responses, I personally now agree we have to go with OGG.
In particular
- The OGG for Windows Media Player plug-in site has an "unofficial"
look about it. We should consider asking permission to host the download on our site (with full link backs to authors) to reassure users.
- Provide a mechanism for users to give feedback. "Can't play OGG?
Can't download the plugin?
This is an important point, Sites with Acrobat files make it very easy to download the reader, and are not at all stingy about adding the needed links. This is even most of us start to believe that surely everyone must have this program by now.
Outside of the geek world there is bound to be resistance to downloading yet another program which may be only occasionally useful. We often end up with software that we use just once, but has nevertheless insinuated itself into the start-up file. This certainly hampers the performance of computers, especially older ones, and the unskilled user finds it very difficult to rid himself of useless files. He has no way of knowing what files can be safely removed from the start up.
Ideally there should be a single free software program that can decipher all audio files, including MP3s. In the meantime, EVERY page with a link to an OGG files should have a link to download the siftware.
Please let us know where you are trying to access Wikipedia from (home/school/college/etc)" We could then even have a standard form letter to send to sysadmins of the school/college in question.
My school district is a suburban one with 38 elementary and 11 secondary schools, compared to many other school districts its computer inventory is very good. Kids begin to learn keyboarding skills in the first grade. They are very concerned and in my opinion overly cautious about copyright infringement. At the same time they are extremely wary about any kind of free software. A few years ago they took the position that all the computers in all the schools should have only software that was approved and loaded by the district level technical staff. No individual school would be allowed to choose and load its own software.
I still believe that individual schools should have more autonomy, but I can understand where they were coming from. Very few of the teachers charged with overseeing the computers in a school had any technical background at all. When this was left up to local teachers they were flooded with maintenance calls arising from incompatible software that the teachers could not cope with, and that might have knocked out a series of computers. Having specally trained district staff going around to install programs was much more cost effective. The challenge is in marketing free software to district systems administrators, and convincing school boards that this software works just as well as professionally distributed software with expensive licences for multiple sites.
Wikipedia is one of very very few projects where regular Joe User comes into contact with the _idea_ of FOSS and free content. We can't sit in geek "ivory towers" expecting Mr AOL User to figure it out. Those who, like me, have given tech support to the average intelligent fifty year old will appreciate just how alien an environment computers to them. We go with OGG, and we help people out.
Yes. Geeks find it difficult to conceive how amazingly unobvious much of this stuff is. Help files and FAQs only manage to make the situation worse. They invariably answer all the wrong questions. It is often easier to flip through a physical book and land at the right page than looking it up in the index, but much software now comes witnout much of an instruction book. In our family I have with my limited knowledge defaulted into the role of system administrator for computers. My wife feels completely lost when something goes wrong with the family computers, yet where she works (as a bookkeeper) her colleagues consider her the most capable one for dealing with such things. Every time she mentions something that she has had to fix I find it hard to restrain my laughter. That crowd for whom she fixes problems is a lot more populous than computer experts would like to believe.
Ec