Why does wikipedia hate mp3's?

October 24, 2018 3:53 PM

Why are audio files on wikipedia (generally) encoded as Ogg Vorbis instead of mp3 (or some other format that's generally supported by the browsers on iPhones and other mobile devices?)

Okay, I've been going down a bit of a rabbit hole on this, but I can't seem to find a straight and current answer. I was reading something on the kindle app on my iphone the other day, and it mentioned the mythical hero Cú Chulainn . I enjoy reading stories about this person but I always forget how to pronounce the name. This annoyed me, so I went to the wikipedia article linked above, thinking I'd just listen to the audio clip of the pronunciation and then continue reading my book and get on with my dang life. BUT NO! instead of playing the clip, wikipedia tried to make me download an .ogg file which I did not want to figure out how to play. (Chrome and Safari didn't know and I wasn't about to download some third party app.)

This happens ALL THE TIME and it's infuriating and kind of user-hostile. I've read the "help" page on how to make your iphone play ogg files but they all require some third party app, and I'm just not going to do it. I shouldn't need to and I don't want to.

I tried to find out the reason behind this, and it seems that historically Wikipedia frowned on using any software that wasn't free, open source, etc. The MP3 encoding is, yeah, under a patent. But the patent has been expired for over a year!!

So my question(s) are --- WHY ON EARTH would wikipedia still use a format that doesn't play on iphones? Is there an ongoing behind the scenes discussion? Is it "legal" now, but up to every single page maintainer to add mp3's to their pages?
I'm having a bit of a hard time googling for meta-stuff about the technology used by wikipedia (googling "wikipedia mp3 ogg" does not bring me anything helpful, for instance) so if there's another way to find this stuff out, i'd appreciate that too.

also i low key love pedantic arguments about stuff like this so if anyone has any good links like that i'd love to read em.

posted by capnsue to Technology (11 answers total)

There's a section on audio in Wikipedia Help:Creation and usage of media files which might shed some light on the history.
posted by readinghippo at 4:06 PM on October 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Note that to automatically convert them to MP3, Wikipedia would have to have the original uncompressed audio files somewhere on their servers. So it might be left up to the page maintainers for a real practical reason.

It’s also technically superior to MP3, in that it has generally better sound quality with smaller file sizes. So one can imagine Wikipedians, a stereotypically stubborn and pedantic group, insisting that they must keep using it and mobile browsers are simply wrong not to support a superior and more open format.
posted by vogon_poet at 4:23 PM on October 24, 2018 [7 favorites]

WHY ON EARTH would wikipedia still use a format that doesn't play on iphones?

It's probably worth noting that iPhones are basically the only devices in common use that have this problem. Firefox and Chrome have supported Ogg Vorbis natively for many years. And Wikipedia has bundled its own (less efficient) Javascript-based decoder for IE and Safari users since 2015. I'm not sure why it doesn't work on Safari on iOS.
posted by teraflop at 4:27 PM on October 24, 2018 [11 favorites]

Best answer: Also for the specific issue of Cú Chulainn if you click the tiny speaker icon, it will take you to a page that will play it through some kind of separate interface and works fine in my iPhone browser. Not sure how common this is across Wikipedia.
posted by vogon_poet at 4:28 PM on October 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

The short answer is that until relatively recently, MP3 was patent-trapped.

The question you should be asking is "WHY ON EARTH would Apple fail to support a codec and container that are ten years old, widely used, and technically superior to MP3 along every available axis?"
posted by sourcequench at 4:37 PM on October 24, 2018 [39 favorites]

Ogg Vorbis is an open standard, Mp3 is not. It's supported by pretty much everything except Apple products and has been for at least a decade. This is really an Apple problem.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:41 PM on October 24, 2018 [13 favorites]

This might make more sense the more time you spend learning about WP, who they are, what they stand for, what their goals are, etc.

Have you read about their five pillars and other canonical texts?

One short answer is: trying to transcode millions of .ogg files to .mp3 would be a huge undertaking, and perhaps last decades at huge CPU costs. And it would face mountains of internal resistance, based upon key foundational principles of the project.

The better question indeed is: why doesn’t iOS support ogg, and the answer is: some mix of greed, captialism, and ideology.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:57 PM on October 24, 2018 [9 favorites]

FWIW, at least this Example.ogg file plays just fine on my iPhone 6 w/ iOS 12.0.1, presumably with the JavaScript (+ WebAssembly?) decoder.

So, try this link instead, which has an embedded player.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:08 PM on October 24, 2018

Best answer: In fact, Wikimedia/Wikipedia has already implemented automatic transcoding of Ogg files to MP3 in order to support iOS. If you click the little speaker icon next to the "listen" link, instead of clicking the word "listen", it takes you to a separate player page that will play the sound fine (because there is Javascript in the player page that detects that your browser doesn't support Ogg, and therefore selects the auto-transcoded MP3 version of the file).

The problem you point out only seems to exist with in-line links to audio files, such as those used for IPA pronunciation guides in article leads. There's no problem with embedded audio files, such as you'll find on the Star-Spangled Banner article. The in-line links don't have Javascript associated with them like the embedded player does, so it's probably a bit tricky to make it work. Presumably it's just a matter of someone reporting the problem and some developers finding the time to work on it.
posted by Sxyzzx at 6:29 PM on October 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

Response by poster: Sorry, on re-read a couple hours later I realize my question came across as a lot harsher than i was intending -- i really was frustrated and looking to vent a little and I'm sorry that I was a jerk to Wikipedia and the people that work really hard on it. I love wikipedia and it's so awesome and I just now made an extra donation bc talk is cheap and I should know better than to shit on people's hard work like that

Also, y'all are totally right, my phone CAN play .ogg files, I apparently just need to click on the tiny speaker instead of the "listen" link. Wow. I had always assumed that they well....were the same thing because they are right next to each other and mean the same thing. I do wish that that distinction were more obvious. In fact I'm not entirely sure why there have to be two links at all because you can download the file from the page that the speaker icon takes you to. Sxyzzx - you wouldn't happen to have a link to where I might find any discussion about the speaker / listen thingy?

I had been wondering about whether some kind of auto-transcoding was possible and / or if it was on the original page maintaners had to handle it, and I guess the answer to that is "yes."

Thanks for the helpful answers, and i'm sorry for being jerky! CLICK ON THE SPEAKER! got it.
posted by capnsue at 7:34 PM on October 24, 2018 [10 favorites]

My recollection (though I haven't been able to find a supporting link) is that Apple doesn't support ogg vorbis because they feel that ogg vorbis's patent status is unclear. While there are no known patent encumbrances, there could be a patent troll waiting for a huge company like Apple to support it so that they can cash in. I think the same applies to flac. I could be misremembering all of this, but it kind of makes sense. Apple wants the patent status of any format it supports to be 100% clear and settled. Any uncertainty is potentially a huge financial risk for them.
posted by klausness at 2:06 PM on October 25, 2018