Wikipedia talk:How to play Ogg files

message: Hi, I just wanted to point out that:
* there is already a page attempting to fill the same role as this one at Wikipedia:Sound, which contains more and better information (although it, in turn, is in need of further improvement, and may be replaced by something more like meta:Multimedia/Help:Listening to sounds soon)
** which, incidentally, avoids the problem of "should we include 'Vorbis' in the title?" by using a much more memorable title
** I think I'll make this redirect there
* in general, "self-references" to wikipedia within encyclopedia articles, such as linking to this page from Ogg, are discouraged. See Wikipedia:Avoid self-references.
* incidentally, you should always use the Move Page function rather than cutting and pasting, so that page history is preserved.
* most importantly of all, there is discussion currently underway as to how best to deal with multimedia files (including what the help pages should look like, and what policies and additional software features are needed in order to help people find them). Please read and take part in the discussion at meta:Multimedia
Thanks for being bold in this matter, and I hope my comments don't come across as negative; your contributions to meta:Multimedia would be very welcome. - IMSoP 19:29, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why this page is rather redundant 

message: ::Fair enough. I do, however, think that a much nicer solution is simply to replace all these links with something which is inherently more useful. I've just turned my example at m:Multimedia#Software features into a template (m:Template:Sound) which I actually think could/should be copied and used straight away, since it has multiple advantages over the current bits of text:
::*confines the self-reference to one template
::*provides links to both file info (such as copyright status) and help (for now, we can point it at the old page, your draft, or mine, I'm not bothered)
::*lets us track all the affected files, and change the text for all of them with one edit. The only thing I think might be controversial is putting in a coloured frame like that - I was intending to emulate what's now common usage with images. But, of course, we can tweak things like that once the template is in use.
::What do you think? Should we start using it now, even if something even better might come along later? - IMSoP 20:31, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: My reaction is to proceed with caution before changing all those articles.  The people who are doing the substantive work on an article are likely to resent efforts at standardization if they haven't been consulted.  Better perhaps to check to see who has posted sound files, and first invite them to participate in the discussion.  Opus33 16:09, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, you're probably right, I did a bit get carried away. OTOH, part of the beauty of templates is that once the page has been set up to use the template, the actual look of it can be changed radically without having to fiddle with the individual articles (unless some new parameter is added to the template, that is; missing parameters don't get dealt with nicely by the current software). So if someone doesn't like it, they can just make the template look like the original text did that it replaced. - IMSoP 19:25, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Should we install a template in the individual articles?