[Wikipedia-l] Soundfiles; chicken and egg - now with loads of Italian politicians

[Gerard Meijssen]

Hoi,

The use of .ogg files is a chicken and egg situation. Yes, we want 
people to use .ogg files but when there are no .ogg files people will 
not download the stuff they need to listen to it. There are many people 
who do not upload soundfiles because it is not .wav or .mp3. There are 
no sound files because people do not create them.

I propose that we have an ommlette and break some eggs. I have uploaded 
some Dutch politicians, and I was really happy with the "George Walker 
Bush" soundfile that I together with "Silvio Berlusconi" and "Jaap de 
Hoop Scheffer" added to those wikipedia that have an article about these 
gentlemen. Today I received the first installment of a large collection 
of the pronunciations of Italian politicians from Sabine Cretella. They 
are now available on the Commons. :)

What is needed to make this happen is people to record in the .ogg 
format, upload it to Commons and make this the standard that it is; the 
soundfile to be used on the Wikimedia projects. When we /show /that we 
care about this standard, we can ask Mozilla.org to create a plugin. By 
showing that we care, we make a difference.

By having LOADS of soundfiles in the .ogg format we can make this format 
really relevant.

Thanks,
   GerardM