[mywittyname]

I don't necessary agree with this argument. Normal people call some files by their extension pretty often -- pdfs, jpegs, gifs, zips, mp3s, etc.

While an OS may hide extensions, not everything does. Notably, gmail shows the file extension for attachments.

[xboxnolifes]

People call things by their common social usage and program association. If all mp3 files types got replaced with a random new standard like "fmp" overnight, id bet my life that most people would continue calling them mp3s for years.

See: people calling any animated image a gif, even though many are apng or webp

[kerkeslager]

Why are people so confident in making generalizations about users?

I've seen my aging father change settings on a new computer to turn on showing file extensions on Windows, because he and a lot of older users were on the cutting edge of computing back when knowing the file extension was useful for choosing how to open it.

Sure, I'm acutely aware that there are stupid users out there; I've worked I.T. But there is also a whole spectrum of computer users with varying levels of computer proficiency out there, who us "computer people" don't see because they're not the ones who necessarily need help or cause problems. You can't necessarily extrapolate a visible minority of incompetent computer users to make statements about the entire population.

I don't necessarily have an opinion on whether that's enough justification to get rid of the .zip TLD. I'm just tired of the anti-user sentiment I'm hearing here.

[trhr]

> I've seen my aging father change settings on a new computer to turn on showing file extensions on Windows

Man, you're lucky. My aging father doesn't know how to change the inputs on his TV. And he doesn't understand why "our Internet is down" implies "the TV will not work" when the TV is clearly working, because it's telling him that it "can't connect."

[iudqnolq]

Technical people are the same. See for example SSL.

[jeremyjh]

Yeah. It is embarrassing to learn this when a PCI auditor says, "wait you don't actually still use SSL do you?"

[xboxnolifes]

Yup. My generalization wasn't about non-technical users. I'm also including my friends (and myself!), some of which who are software engineers, in the category who call animated images gifs.

[kaycey2022]

Not true. 4chan’s gif board is pretty famous for the… uh funny webms.

[Swizec]

> If all mp3 files types got replaced with a random

See also: “Why does the Save icon look like that?” Most computer users these days have never in their life seen a floppy drive, but they still recognize it as the save icon.

[manojlds]

Which would then be the case for Zip too.

[xboxnolifes]

Yes, but my point is is has nothing to do with the extension. It could be a zip, rar, tar.gz, whatever. If they could all be opened in a default windows zip program, most people would call them all zip files.