Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Archive 2

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Contents

Template

Icon of loudspeaker
Please note that the audio file may be out of date as the article may have been edited since the recording was made. (audio help)

I was looking at the full-width template, and it's kind of big, and sometimes doesn't play well when stacked with others (see the bottom of this version of Caesar cipher, for example). How about something a little more like the featured interwiki links, such as Wikiquote uses? Also, I thought maybe one project link in the template was enough (so I picked /Info). Here is my attempt at something like that. Demi T/C 00:40, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)

I agree. — Matt Crypto 00:59, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Since I put this here, I put the "Listen" link at the top as the most important item in the template. However, as we discuss it, please feel free to edit [[User:Demi/spoken]] to improve it. Demi T/C 01:27, 2005 Apr 16 (UTC)

I have made some suggested changes to this template. Either way (with or without these changes), I like this template better than the horizontal bar we have currently. Shall we replace them? The sooner we do this, the less work it will be to move the tag in existing articles. — Timwi 12:27, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Since there seem to be no objections, I'm going to go ahead and do exactly that. Demi T/C 19:36, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)

Problem with the template and the mediwiki upgrade: if you look at the Robert_Oppenheimer article you can see that the spoken wiki template acts as a new chapter heading and lists all the following chapters as subchapters. Anyone know how to fix this? (unsigned comment by User:CGP) Oh god, as soon as we implement the thing, the developers go and screw it up! I'm going to Bugzilla to report it. — Chameleon 28 June 2005 11:39 (UTC)

I don't know if that's totally neccesary, we could use div, span or possibly p instead of h1, I think. I will try it out when I've finnished trawling through my watchlist. Joe D (t) 28 June 2005 12:09 (UTC)
I've changed it to a div, which I think will fix it. A change to the stylesheet needs to be made, though. — Chameleon 28 June 2005 13:17 (UTC)
OK, the stylesheet has been changed to allow tags other than H1. However, we still have the problem that the notice is in the wrong place when maintenance notices are also up there. I've asked at Bugzilla, and they have referred me to the cs Wikipedia, which uses the following code (which makes me go a bit crosseyed) for one of their templates:
<div id="geocoord"><p class="geocoord">Mapy:    
[http://kvaleberg.com/extensions/mapsources/index.php?params={{{1}}} {{{2}}}]</p></div>

#geocoord {
  position: absolute;
  z-index: 1;
  border: none;
  background: none;
  right: 12px;
  top: -3.7em;
  width: 45em;
  float: right;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  line-height: 1.5em;
  text-align: right;
  text-indent: 0;
  font-size: 85%;
  text-transform: none;
  white-space: normal;
}

#geocoord a[href ^="http://"] {
background: url(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/d/d4/Gnome-globe.png) center right 
no-repeat; padding-right: 18px; !important;
  }
I've now implemented this. It seems to work. I'm just waiting for a Cabal member to change the monobook stylesheet. — Chameleon 30 June 2005 12:14 (UTC)

Table of completed recordings

Since there's a lot of metadata about each recording here, I agree with Matt Crypto that the table is easier to read and looks better. I also agree with Timwi that it's bulky. I've done a few things to unbulkify the table:

  • I added a "questioning GNU" icon for those recordings that lack a copyleft notice, instead of having a second line for this note.
  • I shrunk all the icons down to 16px as on the {{FA}} template. I think they're still recognizable but they don't stretch the table rows at this size.
  • I modifed the table headings so they should typically fit on one line.

Demi T/C 18:07, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)

Sure, the shrunk version is still good for me — Timwi, is this now sufficiently de-bulkified? — Matt Crypto 01:34, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Yes, thanks very much for your efforts. — Timwi 11:56, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

A better idea?

Someone on IRC claimed that the "best" text-to-speech software out there also happened to be free, and had the ability to act as a server. It's called Festival. Not only is the software free for any purpose, but so are the voices. See for example their demo page where you can enter your own text. Now, since it obviously won't be well-received if we just submit the current contents of the article to their server, the best thing to do might be to create a separate sister project which will host the Festival server, and on which you can create modified textual versions of the articles in question. One would have to manually listen to the articles and fine-tune the text (such as replacing rising with rye-zing), but this would be a much faster way of expanding the Spoken Wikipedia. We could still provide the option for individuals to submit their own recordings, but if this thing is going to take off, it seems like speech recognition, especially when it's free, is the better course of action. --brian0918™ 22:30, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also, the clearest voice on that demo page seems to be bdl_arctic_hts.

This would also make it much easier to update spoken article content as the original article changes.

See also meta:Talk:Wikisound where I am making the same proposal. --brian0918™ 22:38, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • I've used festival. For short blurbs, its sounds pretty good. For long sections of text, less so. In any case (to repeat points covered above), I don't see the utility of doing this on the server side, since it can already be done by users, using, as you point out, free software (though I also note that I can't, since Festival doesn't build for my operating system). But that's just my opinion--don't let me stop you. I don't see how one project interferes with another, so why not go ahead and start processing article's with Festival's text-to-speech system and posting the results? Demi T/C 00:19, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)
    • I haven't actually tried compiling it. I've been using their demo page, and encoding chunks at a time which I'll paste together in an audio program. You can try the same. --brian0918™ 00:32, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I just checked out that demo with the noted voice...it sounds quite bad compared to AT&T's stuff. ¦ Reisio 04:04, 2005 Jun 23 (UTC)
  • Festival is truly an amazing speech synthesizer. It uses much, much more memory and takes longer to start than something like mbrola, and yet it still sounds terrible. The other problem with speech synthesizing an article is that someone has to edit the text of the article to represent only what the speech synthesizer should read. This process would probably take me longer than just reading the article myself. DanielHolth 2 July 2005 18:59 (UTC)

Placing and naming

Should these recordings not be on Commons? Further, couldn't there be a more disambiguous file name so as to not conflict with other possible files. Perhaps "Spoken - [Canonical name].ogg"? --Oldak Quill 23:46, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

  • They are English-specific, so I'm not sure they should. I thought about some name like the one you suggest, but I didn't think there were many instances where you wouldn't think that just Article_name.ogg meant "the whole article, audibly." Anyone else have comments? Demi T/C 00:21, 2005 Apr 18 (UTC)
    • I have, of course, thought about this, but not only are the files English-specific, but they are also Wikipedia-specific. In fact, you can't get any more specific to English Wikipedia articles than this! :-) So I think they should be here on the English Wikipedia. — Timwi 11:56, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
  • I have to admit, when I first saw a link to one by a certain person, I thought it meant "Something by this person," and was somewhat disappointed to find it was just someone reading the article. --Fastfission 03:39, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
    • One of the incarnations of the template had "Listen to someone read this article;" but I think that was when the spoken template was full-width--which was ugly. In the interest of compactness we've been trimming the template; I'm not sure how to make it more clear when the audio file consists of. Demi T/C 18:48, 2005 Apr 21 (UTC)

I think they should be on the commons because, although they are English Wikipedia specific therer are other specific sound files. But, if a Japanese user is browsing the La Pez, Bolivia commons page and then sees the file it might be a good listen for those who are bilingual and run into it. gren 07:06, 18 May 2005 (UTC)


I would like to point you to commons:Category:Spoken Wikipedia - ther's not much there yet, but that's why i'm here;) I belive spoken articles should be on the commons, because they are a good resource for learning the language (as an addition to the pronunciation files already collected on the commons). Also, some Wikipedias already force all uploads to the commons, and it may be a good idea to have a central point of coordination for the audio efforts, for technical help, common templates, etc. -- G. Gearloose (?!) (aka commons:User:duesentrieb) 12:31, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

It should all go on Commons. Also, any recording in English uploaded to the Commons should be suffixed by _(English) so that there is no conflict between commons:Image:Triquetra_(English).ogg and future versions such as commons:Image:Triquetra_(français).ogg, commons:Image:Triquetra_(italiano).ogg, etc. — Chameleon 12:44, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
The reading of Triquetra should be called "en:Triquetra.ogg" at the Commons. That is, after all, the canonical name for linking an English Wikipedia article from the Commons. dbenbenn | talk 15:25, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)


If you want to put your audio on the commons -- ok, I guess -- but when I visited wikipedia I see an "Upload file" link that is easy to use. The commons does not make uploading as obvious. DanielHolth 20:11, 26 Jun 2005

"See also" vs "Consult also"

Maybe we should say "consult also" instead of "see also", to be absolutely PC for the blind folks. --brian0918™ 23:14, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Good idea, I agree. Everytime I said it it seemed odd. -Willmcw 23:21, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)
I think that's being a little too PC. One accepted meaning of "see" is "to understand" or "to consult". -- Tarquin 21:37, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Agree with over PCness. See See (Verb). If you want to come up with an alternative, it better be the same length or shorter. --CGP 28 June 2005 19:15 (UTC)

I've been using "For further reading within Wikipedia see ... and the categories ...", and then the external links section as "For further reading outside of Wikipedia see ...". Joe D (t) 28 June 2005 19:19 (UTC)

The Wikipedia Manual of Style states that "Related topics" may be used in place of "See also". Epolk 16:39, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Link at top of article?

This may sound like a long shot, but would it ever be possible to have a link to the sound files at the top of the page? It's just users may not realise that spoken versions are available until they get to the bottom (in which time, they'll have probably read the article anyway). ♪ Craigy ♫ 00:45, May 7, 2005 (UTC)

Yes, there should be some sort of link at the top. — Chameleon 17:55, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I agree also. It makes sense to place the link at the top to make it easily accessible. — Peter McGinley 11:07, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've just noticed that the Spanish project does this (see es:Cigarrera). It would require a software change to get the link directly to the right of the article title, but right now we can put it just below and to the right, as on the Spain Wikipedia. If nobody objects, I'll implement this change. — Chameleon 11:15, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've took the liberty of copying the Spanish markup into Template:Spoken Wikipedia Test and placed it at Anne of Great Britain just to test it out. If others are happy with it then we could just copy into Template:Spoken Wikipedia and keep it like that. The only thing is that it doesn't have the information about when the file was made and it not containing subsequent edits. Would this be a problem? Craigy (talk) 00:26, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

I've submitted an enhancement request at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2528. — Chameleon 13:09, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I closed it as INVALID since you can already do that with CSS, see for example what the Vietnamese Wikipedia has done. —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 13:20, 2005 Jun 26 (UTC)
Thanks, I've requested a little css be added, and will have the template ready soon. Joe D (t) 13:56, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
{{SpokenTop|File name}}. If they don't start working right away, you'll need to refresh this page. Thanks Ævar and Smoddy. Joe D (t) 14:05, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I wouldn't implement the coding yet. You will need designs for classic (mediawiki:standard.css), cologne blue (mediawiki:cologneblue.css), and nostalgia (mediawiki:nostalgia.css) so that it looks correct on all skins. If you tell me what the coding you need is, I'll implement it. But this would look odd at the moment for the minority who don't use monobook. smoddy 14:21, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
No, there's no problem. I've had a look at how they do it on the Vietnamese Wikipedia and what they do is add 'style="display: none;"'. With this, it is invisible to anyone not using a skin that switches the display back on. This means that we can safely add this template to all articles. Nothing will be displayed. If you want to see the link, you edit your personal skin (e.g. User:Chameleon/monobook.css) to make it visible. It can then be added to the standard skins. When that happens, the hidden text will magically appear beautifully and correctly on everyone's screens. In the mean time, we can keep the other template at the bottom of each article. This is not totally redundant because it is important to still have a notice declaring that the recording may be out of date. — Chameleon 14:40, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Well, OK. But if you sort out where you want it to go in the other skins, any admin can make it look correct. smoddy 14:43, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As per Chameleon, but I've sorted the code for Classic skin (MediaWiki:Standard.css):

h1#spoken {
 display: block !important;
 border-bottom-style: none;
 float: right;
 font-size: 150%;
 position: absolute;
 right: 2%;
 top: 7.5em;
}

MediaWiki:Cologneblue.css:

h1#spoken {
 display: block !important;
 border-bottom-style: none;
 float: right;
 font-size: 150%;
 position: absolute;
 right: 2%;
 top: 10.5em;
}

MediaWiki:Nostalgia.css:

h1#spoken {
 display: block !important;
 border-bottom-style: none;
 float: right;
 font-size: 150%;
 position: absolute;
 right: 36em;
 top: 1.5em;
}

Joe D (t) 14:42, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

At the moment, that gives me this:

Image:CojonesSpokenScreenshot.png

I should have said here: {{SpokenTop}} isn't actually neccesary now, as I've added it to {{Spoken Wikipedia}} to avoid having to use two templates, and to avoid having to update existing articles. It does appear to be putting the link in the wrong place (see [1] for the intended position, and position Opera is displaying it in). Does your browser do the same with the Vietnamese Wikipedia? Joe D (t) 15:03, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm using Firefox 1.0.4 on Xp Pro, and it appears as in the screenshot. I've just tried it in IE, and it looks like in Firefox. In Opera, nothing is displayed at all. The Vietnamese Wikipedia displays perfectly in all browsers. — Chameleon 15:16, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
If I change display: block !important; to display: inline !important;, it gets a little better:

Image:CojonesSpokenScreenshot2.png

— Chameleon 15:25, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I see what it is, you've pasted the code designed for the classic skin into User:Chameleon/monobook.css, which is positioning it in the optimum place for the classic skin, but not for monobook, if you remove the code altogether from User:Chameleon/monobook.css, and refresh the following two: [2] [3], it will hopefully look right (and as others with the same browsers will hopefully see by default). Joe D (t) 15:27, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Ah, I thought I needed to add that or it would be invisible. But now I see that Smoddy has edited the stylesheet. It's good to have a member of the Cabal on our side! — Chameleon 15:41, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Should we add the noprint class to the template? — Chameleon 16:01, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
OK, I've add that. I've also added the top thingy to {{Spoken_Wikipedia-2}}, {{Spoken_Wikipedia-3}}, {{Spoken_Wikipedia-4}} and {{Spoken_Wikipedia-5}}. — Chameleon 17:06, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The whole thing looks very neat indeed, I went ahead and added class=plainlinks to all the Spoken Wikipedia templates (I think it looks better). I take it this suits your purposes and that you won't be needing bug 2528? —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 17:57, 2005 Jun 26 (UTC)

I don't know whether it's anything to do with class=plainlinks, but I'm now getting this:

Image:NotherScreenshot.png — Chameleon 18:18, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

See this diff for the reason why. The site notice had gone up, so the top of the page is slightly moved down. I'll comment out the code while the site notice is up. smoddy 18:31, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Is it just me or does the new version not show up in Firefox? It's working fine for me in Opera and IE, logged in or logged out, but not working at all in Firefox. Joe D (t) 28 June 2005 13:08 (UTC)

The article lacks a spoken icon at the top, because it's sitting outside the article in a part of the page meant to be ignored by most users

Today I see someone is moving the Spoken boxes to the bottom of Spoken articles. But in my mozilla firefox browser the o) Listen to this article is outside the article's box! Instead of being next to the article title wher it is readable, it is in the blue background of the page next to the tabs and underneath 'my watchlist my contributions log out'. This is very annoying because it is sitting in a part of the page that is not the article. Normal people who aren't clicking on 'my watchlist' all the time will read everything to the lower right of the article's title and ignore the rest of the page. DanielHolth 2 July 2005 18:57 (UTC)

Yes I'm using Firefox too Daniel and I see the same. It would seem appropriate to have it next to the articles title like before but I think there was a bug with it. I realise we've asked a lot from those fixing bugs, but is it possible the spoken link can be placed next to the article's title - anyone? Craigy (talk) July 2, 2005 19:01 (UTC)
I started getting that yesterday evening - neither the template, css or template position had changed - in Opera, but needed a break from this template so ignored it for a day. Then today it started showing up in the right place but in size 150% font and I gave up altogether. Joe D (t) 2 July 2005 19:10 (UTC)

Just joined the project!

Came across the project today and thought I'd join. I will record a sample of my voice for everybody to hear and to offer comments on. This will not be until I purchase a microphone though.

Oh and to those who are wondering where I am located, I'm from Melbourne, Australia. - Peter McGinley 11:06, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'd like to do this too

Hey, I'm 16 and from California; I'd be glad to record an article for this project, if needed. I have a microphone, so I can provide a voice sample. If an opportunity arises, please leave a message on my talk page - thanks! -Grick(talk to me!) 04:54, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)

RSS feed

I've been playing with an RSS feed at /rss, which you can subscribe to with the URL

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/rss&action=raw

I'll try and keep it up to date, though the job would be made easier if we had a list of spoken articles ordered by age of recording. I don't know where to put a link to it on the project front page though. Joe D (t) 21:53, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Another RSS feed

http://dingoskidneys.com/~dholth/spokenwikipedia.xml is an automatically generated list of spoken media orderd by upload date. With enclosures so it may be subscribed to by a podcast client (about . Wikimedia Commons media don't currently get dated correctly because it is slightly more complicated to crawl wikipedia for that metadata; all those files are listed at the bottom of that RSS.

This program http://dingoskidneys.com/~dholth/spokenwikipedia.py crawls wikipedia starting at Category:Spoken articles, building a list of media based on the gallery at the bottom of that page. This RSS is not a comprehensive list of spoken media, just (apparently) the most recent 75. I've been updating the feed approximately daily.

The total enclosure size of that list is around 450 MB.

Note: the date format in the HTML has varied in a way that breaks my script so the feed is no longer being updated. An alternative might be to parse the actual wiki history & wiki markup DanielHolth 06:40, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Template placement

A quick survey of spoken articles shows the template being put in semi-random places near the bottom. I've spotted it in the See also section, Further reading, External links, and "just at the bottom". There should be some sort of consistent preferred placement for the thing. -- Cyrius|✎ 00:46, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

My vote goes to "to the right of the table of contents". At the bottom is silly, it's too late by then! Joe D (t) 00:59, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Let's have a straw poll. If a majority want it at the top, I'll implement that. — Chameleon 21:11, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Top
  1. — Chameleon 21:11, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  2. Fenice 06:16, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  3. --Dubaduba 08:15, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  4. Joe D (t) With the new template I no longer think this matters.
  5. Timwi 16:08, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Bottom

Implementation

OK, before moving the template to the top, we have to agree on what it is going to look like. There isn't much space at the top, especially with taxoboxes, images etc. What shall we do? — Chameleon 19:28, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Mac problems

I can't listen to these articles on my Mac (OS 10.3.9), and when I download the applications for Mac listed on the page, the system doesn't know how to handle them. Is there any way to listen to these audio pages other than .ogg, so that Mac users don't have to fiddle around so much? Or is it just me? SlimVirgin (talk) 06:43, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)

Hi Blankfaze, thanks for that. I'm getting the same response as I did with the other apps: the article says to drop it into the Quicktime library, but when I do that, I get a message saying the Quicktime library can't be modified. It's the same with all the other apps on the page: my system is saying it doesn't know how to handle them. I don't mind for myself, as I was just curious, but I'm thinking that people who have a need for audio pages and who use Mac are having to fiddle around a lot. SlimVirgin (talk) 12:11, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)
I have no problem playing OGG Vorbis files in WinAmp, Windows Media Player, etc. but I too can't get iTunes to play these files. It can play MP3, but it just ignores OGG Vorbis when I open such files. It also ignores the those patches when I try to install them (not that there is any info on how to install them). — Chameleon 12:46, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I tried with iTunes, Quicktime Player, and Windows Media Player for Mac. The first two said the ogg files weren't recognized, and Media Player said they were the wrong format. The patches get the same response: the system doesn't recognize them. SlimVirgin (talk) 12:52, Jun 19, 2005 (UTC)
Aha. Windows Media Player (I'm using Xp on a PC) complains that it doesn't recognise the format, but it plays it anyway (perhaps because I have the K-lite Codec pack installed). When I try to open the patches in iTunes, or try to open OGG Vorbis files in it, absolutely nothing happens. Does anyone else have a Mac? — Chameleon 13:03, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

GNU License

I am interesting in contributing to the spoken Wiki project, but I have one question before I begin. Is it necessary to license the files under the GNU document license or would a creative commons free license (such as cc-by) be acceptable?

--CGP 17:54, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • Those should be alright as well. --brian0918™ 19:14, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Are you sure? If the text is GFDL, surely derivatives like these must be as well? Joe D (t) 19:22, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Yes, I am 99% sure that spoken articles can only be under the GFDL, unless you are the sole contributor to the text article. This is regretable, because the GFDL is terrible for audio. Never mind. — Chameleon 19:27, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I was asking because I don't think that the GFDL is the ideal solution for audio. Would it be possible to get around it by saying something like this at the end: "The audio recording of this article is licensed under the creative commons attribution 2.0 license while the text itself is licensed under the GFDL" or would this kind of interaction cause problems? --CGP 20:06, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Either way, with or without the dual license the copyright situation is horrible :( Joe D (t) 20:16, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

On a side note, is there a human-readable summary of the GFDL anywhere? I must admit that reading through the actual text I don't clearly understand what is and what is not allowed / required by it. --CGP 06:26, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think the closest thing to a human-readable version is this: GFDL. — Chameleon 15:48, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Measurements and Figures

I'm thinking about recording Bicycle. Is there a convention yet on reading numerical data? A sentence like "An average cyclist at 30 km/h (a good road pace) will burn about 1890 kJ (450 calories) per hour, or about 63 kJ (15 calories) per kilometer." is going to sound awful. I'm thinking of either

  • dropping the non-metric measurements
  • saying "An average cyclist at 30 km/h (a good road pace) will burn about 1890 kJ per hour (that's 450 calories)," etc

The sentences further in that paragraph get even more fun!

I would second the notion of droping the non-metric units, but I'm also looking for ideas on how to read an article like this. ...all those tables :\ --CGP 17:47, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)


For the elements, perhaps read the first sentence or paragraph then go through the element box reading each item as you come to it. To use hydrogen an example:
"Hydrogen (Latin: hydrogenium, from Greek: hydro: water, genes: forming) is a chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol H and atomic number 1."
"Chemical series <pause> nonmetals"
"Group <pause> 1"
"Period <pause> 1"
"Block <pause> s"
(etc.)
Alternatively, you could scan through the text and mark items off the table that are already covered in the text then read items from the element box that have not been covered.
Epolk 18:10, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Headings and Expanded section links

The policy is to read links as text, but what about links at the start of a section such as "Main article: Bicycle brake systems"? Should those be read in some way, eg "An expanded version of this section is in the article titled Bicycle brake systems"? And by the way, is there a convention on reading headings? Do we just say the heading title with a pause? -- Tarquin 21:44, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I would personally say that seems fine (talking about the expanded article, and the paused title). Perhaps alternatively something like "for more information on this section, see bla bla"? - Jacen Aratan 21:55, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I've been reading it as "<title>. This section is a summary of the article .", though the other suggestions seem equally good. Joe D (t) 08:55, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Boldness

This project is a bit sluggish (lack of contributors), so I've been bold and made several changes to the project pages in order to get things done. I hope nobody minds. — Chameleon 11:35, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cheerleaders

The ones who keep us motivated
The ones who keep us motivated

I've moved this list from the project page. It really is more of a "talk" thing rather than a serious list of practical information about the project, don't you think? — Chameleon 11:40, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • Matt Crypto — big fan of the project, but my voice is too naff to do recordings!
  • Sparky the Seventh Chaos – Love the idea, but alas I have no recording equipment. Maybe someday.
  • Danny — I think this is an amazing project and near to my heart, since I used to direct cartoon dubbing. Unfortunately, my voice sucks for this, but thanks to everyone who is participating.
  • Smoddy — really cool idea, but having me record it would be as bad as having nothing at all (possibly considerably worse).
  • Merovingian — This is a great idea, but I have a teenage voice.
    • But all the better! That will give our recordings more liveliness! :-) I think you should give it a try :-) — Timwi 11:49, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I have a mild lisp. Neutralitytalk 23:53, May 1, 2005 (UTC)
    • You might want to record a sample for lisp, it would demonstrate the concept much better than the text could. Greg Robson 13:32, 3 May 2005 (UTC)
  • EasilyAmused — I can't wait to be rid of this insufferable sinusitis...
  • Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis)—I love the project, but can't participate due to my mild, but annoying accent. Keep up the great work though!
  • Eequor — hee, great idea!
  • Golbez - Dear god, Wikipedia continues to amaze me. Good show!
  • Gkhan -- Dear god, you guys rule! I'd love to help but i fear I have an accent and no recording equipement
  • Hermione1980 — Rock on, y'all! I'd also love to help, but my microphone stinks and I have one of the worst American Southern accents you ever heard.
    • A better microphone isn't that much, and I'd love to have a bunch of different accents represented--I hope you reconsider. Demi T/C 20:09, 2005 May 21 (UTC)
      • Maybe after I get out of college and finish paying off the student loans… Hermione1980 15:48, 22 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Hedley. Geordie accent.
  • dbenbenn. I'd love to participate. Perhaps I'll get a microphone ...
  • Ground. Wow, awesome. I think I might try recording an article sometime (I do have a $30 mic and have done a little experimentation with Audacity...)
  • Jacen Aratan – awesome idea, and whilst I do have the equipment for it... not a native English speaker. Perhaps for the Danish common phrases.

Intro only recordings

Does anybody else think we should discourage the recording of only the intro to an article? Recording only the intro makes the recording useful to far fewer people, and is ultimately wasted effort, as ideally somebody will one day record the whole thing. Joe D (t) 28 June 2005 19:13 (UTC)

Intro recordings sound like a bad idea to me. — Chameleon 28 June 2005 19:27 (UTC)
Agreed, though I would still support limited abridgement --CGP June 28, 2005 19:32 (UTC)
I disagree. There are 500,000 articles. I've cut down on recording because it is substantially harder to record a long article than a short one. I'd do more if there was a list of short/abridged articles. Has there been a problem with lots of abridged recordings? Cheers, -Willmcw June 28, 2005 20:26 (UTC)
Hooray for short recordings over no recordings, says someone who recorded the intro to a longer article. Part of the magic of a printed encyclopedia is that you read it in the basement and discover new subjects because they are also in the "Ca-Co" volume etc... with a podcast encyclopedia introductions as audio could get people interested in new subjects, and if they found it interesting enough they'd come over and read. It is indeed substantially more difficult to produce a long article. I have certainly learned about things I wouldn't have looked for by listening to them on Spoken Wikipedia, then came back to read more about the Galveston Hurricane, England Expects, ... (those articles are great for the spoken word because they tell a story, a list of articles that tell a story would be nice for potential readers). Also I would like to see articles about a field, with many sub-sections, having each section read by a different voice. DanielHolth 30 June 2005 05:47 (UTC)g
I'd tend to discourage having only intros. -- Arwel 28 June 2005 20:30 (UTC)

Experiment

I've just uploaded Image:Fireworks Music.ogg as an experiment, but not linked it to the article since depending on the reaction it may need to be taken down! What do you think of this as a possible treatment of articles on musical subjects, as we could certainly argue fair use to using a short piece of classical music as background to the article (it's the start of the overture). -- Arwel 28 June 2005 20:30 (UTC)

God damn do you read fast in that article, but I must say that I love having the music in the background in this case (though possibly a tad softer) --CGP June 28, 2005 20:51 (UTC)
Do you still have the original file? I think you should use the "change tempo" option on the spoken track to make it slower. — Chameleon 28 June 2005 21:29 (UTC)
I'll play around with the files a bit - I do speak a bit quickly in this one, but of course if I speak slower you get more music! :) -- Arwel 28 June 2005 21:44 (UTC)
OK - try Image:Fireworks Music 3.ogg - this is the last edit I'll try tonight! -- Arwel 28 June 2005 22:17 (UTC)

Constructive Feedback For Readers

I was just wondering if it would be feasible to implement a constructive feedback system/page for the contributors to this project. I've been listening to the articles as they come up through the RSS feed and the quality of the recordings and readings is uneven. Some people have voices that seem inappropriate for the project while other seem to have technical difficulties. It would reflect badly on the project to have a large number of poor quality recordings -- and since it is not possible to incrementally improve a recording as can be done with text, I think feedback is absolutely vital. I know this would be possible to do on each individuals talk page, but I was hoping for something a bit more systematic. --CGP June 28, 2005 20:30 (UTC)

Perhaps using the file's talk page? Joe D (t) 28 June 2005 20:58 (UTC)

External software for the project

I'm currently musing over the possibility of creating combined podcast and spoken wikipedia software for the blind over at this musings page. I'm opening it to consultation amoungst you lot before asking software developers and the RNIB tech people to take a look. Joe D (t) 28 June 2005 22:07 (UTC)

Spoken template placement

There's now an automatic link at the top of an article with a spoken version. Can we now move the visually obtrusive template to the bottom of the article? – flamurai (t) June 29, 2005 17:51 (UTC)

Yes. Joe D (t) 29 June 2005 18:07 (UTC)
I've been slowly doing that. — Chameleon 29 June 2005 18:25 (UTC)

Java applet?

There is a java applet available to play ogg/vorbis. If it was possible to include the applet, people who had java but not ogg/vorbis players could listen. (unsigned comment by User:DanielHolth — Chameleon 29 June 2005 18:53 (UTC))

You'll have to talk to the developers about that. — Chameleon 29 June 2005 18:53 (UTC)

Add revid to template?

What do you think about adding the revid/oldid to the template, now that the current version of articles has a revid (was oldid)? – ABCD 29 June 2005 19:11 (UTC)

I think the oldid should be in the talk page template, along with a link to the diff between the spoken and current version so we can see if it's worth rereading the article. The main namespace template should be kept as simple as possible though, IMO. Joe D (t) 29 June 2005 19:20 (UTC)
People seem to be having trouble with the current template for describing their uploads. Making it more complicated? I have doubts. I noticed much of the audio doesn't have tags in the ogg vorbis, the 'recorded date' given by the user varies in format, the user has to specify things like 'playback time' and 'bytes'. There ought to be a bot to fill out metadata in both directions. It could harmlessly take the bytes and playback duration from the actual media with no user intervention, and with supervision add ogg/vorbis tags to a file. DanielHolth 30 June 2005 05:34 (UTC)

Non-native English recordings

I just had the crazy idea of recording an article or two. What if the policy, if any, towards non-native speakers of English making recordings? Is it discouraged, or is it seen as "better than nothing", or what? I suppose this ought to be mentioned somewhere -- unless it's there but I've missed it. LjL 18:07, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Anybody can contribute. Strong accents may be a problem if they're difficult to understand, but only if speaking fast--as long as one speaks at a moderate speed and clearly, accent shouldn't matter. Joe D (t) 18:42, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

8MB File limit

I am trying to upload an ogg vorbis file, but it is a little more than 16MB. When I try to upload it, it tells me the current limit is 8MB. Any way to work around this? -- BMIComp (talk, HOWS MY DRIVING) 23:23, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

I tried to do the same when recording Order of the Garter which was about 14MB or so. I got round it by splitting the article in two - try that maybe? Craigy (talk) 00:58, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
What bitrate or quality did you save the recording as? In audacity even the lowest quality is good, and it will be a small file size. Joe D (t) 12:12, 23 July 2005 (UTC)
You could upload it to the commons which has a 20Mb limit —Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 21:47, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Request for feedback

I submitted by first spoken contribution, The Gruffalo, a couple of days ago. Before I undertake another recording, I'd welcome feedback (sic), both technical and stylistic, on this recording. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 22:27, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

I am also new to the spoken article project and would love to contribute, I have recorded a couple of article and would like some feed back on their quality [ [1],[2],[3] ]

--Dirtyliberal | Talk 02:08, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

File Type Issue

I'm really am fortunate to hear that there will be spoken articles. As a blind user myself I believe it's Wikipedia's another milestone. I have some issues that I would like to point out. I read some posts under "Mac issues" and found that people are having compatibility with ogg format. I know that Winamp could handle this format, but it won't be recognized by other players other than Winamp. So I would like to recommend this: choose alternative format that is compatible for all users (such as mp3). Again I'm looking forward to see many amazing Wikipedia articles to be spoken, so many of us, particularly blind folks like me can enjoy Wikipedia and other projects more.

The MP3 format has already been turned down on Wikipedia. That's because of patents issues and things like that. As far as I know, MP3, WMA and OGG are the three leading compressed sound formats; if MP3 is avoided, then WMA is obviously avoided like the plague, and the one left is OGG. But I don't think it's a bad format at all! To my ear, it sounds better than MP3 and much better than WMA. Compatibility issues shouldn't really be a problem: it's an open format, I'm sure that there is a decent player for just about any OS running on something fast enough for decoding compressed audio. LjL 12:19, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

It may have more features than you need, but the open source app Audacity is often recommended and plays OGG. Runs on Linux, OSX, Windows, and more... It is also on live distros like Knoppix It works well for me -John No 06:46, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Different Perspective

How about articles, or portions of articles, that are meant to be listened to while studying the object, or take advantage of an audio program instead just reading the text?

I've completed an audio program about M13 The Globular Cluster in Hercules. It is short and not too professional. However, it is certainly suitable for listening while viewing the object in one's telescope. (This is my intent.)

http://home.comcast.net/~john_norris_test/m13/audio_tour_m13.ogg http://home.comcast.net/~john_norris_test/m13/audio_tour_m13.txt

I would like to place the audio and text where others can improve upon it, as well as create similar audio programs. I am thinking of the wikipedia/commons.

I would like advice on copyright issues (the music was obtained under a creative commons license,) where would be a good community based site to do this project, and critiques of the program itself.

Hopefully not too far off topic. The whole podcasting phenomenon got me thinking about using these ideas for astronomy. I was not bold enough to simply post it!

--John No 14:29, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Other languages

Does anyone know how to find the spoken articles category page in other languages?--2tothe4 04:11, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Do many other languages have spoken articles? -- Arwel 22:09, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
Have you tried clicking the inter-wiki links on this page? :-p — Timwi 22:29, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured sound candidates

Though Spoken Wikipedia articles wouldn't themselves be appropriate for this, you folks with general audio experience might want to have a look at this proposal and comment on its talk page. Thanks.--Pharos 04:33, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Indexed spoken articles

As has been noted previously in these talk pages, some of the articles are REALLY long. When we are reading the articles, we have option to skip over sections that are not of interest to us.

Some of the spoken articles I have listened to have been as long as 30 minutes. There may be sections of that article that are not of interest to me and I may wish to skip over them. While listening to a recording of an article, a listener's audio player (in most cases) has an option to Fast-Forward or Rewind an audio file. The problem comes from knowing where to Fast-Forward to when you wish to skip a particular section of an audio article.

Perhaps an index of section headers and time stamps for those section headers would be helpful in allowing listeners to access the information they want to hear.

Of course, the problem of where to list the index comes up. I saw the earlier posting about the size of the Spoken Wikipedia box and I certainly wouldn't want to expand the size of that box.

Any feedback or suggestions on where the index information could be stored?

Epolk 18:21, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

It could be stored on the description page as additional information. "image:article-name.ogg". You would have to type this address in the search box to access it. This update could be done even by others. Kind of table of content with time info. Longbow4u 20:45, 16 August 2005 (UTC)