[Foundation-l] The problem with Flash

Sun Jan 20 21:46:54 UTC 2008

Hoi,
You argue as a developer; for a teacher it is irrelevant that something
could have been build in another way. They need educational material, any
material. The cost of replacing material is typically not an option. The
quality of the available educational material is often lacking or missing to
such an extend that it drives some of the more caring teachers into despair.

You compare what we do with the people that are in education, in Wikipedia
we create an encyclopaedia our projects are concentrated on the Internet
while in education there is a direct, personal relation with people who you
are to teach, who are the next nurse at a bed, the next plumber repairing a
faucet, the next clerk helping you with your bureaucratic nightmare.

I agree with you that we should not subsume the world, not all their base
are ours. What we should do is build the best content that we can. It should
be free. What we should do is build the best software that we can. It should
be free. What we should do is promote the use of our platform, because it is
free. While we are at it, we should be friendly and inviting to all the
people who want to use our platform,  who are willing to build extensions on
top of our platform. We should be proud of the fact when an organisation
like  Kaltura chooses our platform to extend. When they succeed, we should
rejoice and still our content will be free.

In the mean time, I am happy that BetaWiki supports the many extensions that
it does. It is something to be proud of. I am happy that a MetaVid is
supported among many, many others. The increasing quality of our
localisation stimulates improvements in the management of extension
messages. This is positive news, is this not what we are about ? Is this not
the way we should reach out ?

We need people to help with localisation. We need people to make our content
more accessible. There is so much work that still needs to be done before
the potential that is our data, our platform is fully realised. These
slideshows are new, they have the potential to do good. The Katura software
is *not *only flash it is much more then that, if it were you would be
right. Slideshows help in getting information across. They are really
powerful. The combination with sound is important because it helps people
that are not helped with static text and pictures only. The Kaltura
framework is meant for collaborative editing... Why do I not hear people say
WOW ?

It is nice that you care about what this data will be like in 100 years
time. I do care as well, but I would suggest that we convert the old into
the new when we get to a next format. This is how I managed tapes when I did
system management and having the best operating system ever, I was able to
run the software and use the data after 30 years. In the final analysis, we
are providing a service now. This is what we should concentrate on and
indeed we can be mindful of the future. Our future is in our technology, in
our data and in how we treat each other. It is as much in our ability to be
welcoming and in reaching out.
Thanks,
     GerardM

On Jan 20, 2008 10:00 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jan 20, 2008 3:39 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > Well given that as, from your point of view, this issue raises its ugly
> head
> > yet again, it cannot be said that the community has reached consensus on
> > this issue. There are people that do not share your opinion and are not
> > afraid to say so. There are good arguments against the use of apparently
> not
> > everybody bought into your ideas or weighs them and comes to a different
> > conclusion.
>
> Certainly, I'm not saying that it's unanimous.  But advocating we
> should roll flash on the sites is something that I've pretty much only
> seen Erik do here.
>
> There are interesting issues and options to discuss here, and I've
> been calling for that. I'm glad both Brion and Robert Rhode have
> contributed some useful discussion.
>
> (And on your part, I agree with the general position of moderation
> that you've held in your posts on this matter)
>
> > There is one thing you should consider, MediaWiki is not only used for
> > educational purposes by the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> Indeed, which is why there are hundreds of MediaWiki extensions
> included in the repository which Wikimedia does not use.  For example,
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Flash
>
> > There is a lot of great
> > educational material available in Flash. This is a really strong
> argument
> > when you use MediaWiki in an educational setting.
>
> *There is*, but every single piece of it could have existed in Java
> instead, and the majority of what I've seen (almost anything that
> doesn't have synced audio, or video) of it could have been created
> using JS+DHTML+SVG and work in today's browsers without any plugins.
>
> Most educational resources do not have the goals of freedom that
> Wikimedia has, so they will take the path of least resistance on these
> things. Our path is a little different, if it wasn't then we'd have no
> reason to exist.
>
> And of course, there are issues of accessibility to the disabled,
> translatability to other human languages, compatibility with diverse
> and low powered computer systems, transferability into other
> non-computer mediums, ease or freedom of authorship and modification,
> survivability/archiveability (can people read it in 100 years?).
> Flash applets, and most other dynamic web toys/tools fail in all these
> areas, to a greater or lesser extent, which may influence our adoption
> of them more than it might influence some other educational groups.
>
> The world doesn't end if we don't vacuum up all the internet's
> educational materials overnight. ;) We can, and do, direct people to
> other useful resources while we build, convert, and promote our
> enormous collection of entirely free knowledge.
>
> In terms of not being an island recognizing that we don't need to
> subsume the whole world should be the first step.
>
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