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
1) 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.
2) 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