Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Archive 7

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Archives

Archives for this page: Archive 1 (13 Apr 05 – 6 May 05) Archive 2 (16 Apr 05 – 16 Aug 05) Archive 3 (24 Sep 05 – 11 Jan 06) Archive 4 (11 Jan 06 – 16 Mar 06) Archive 5 (11 Mar 06 – 25 Jul 06) Archive 6 (4 Sep 06 – 19 Feb 07) Archives from the Article Choice Guidelines talk page: Archive 1 (16 Mar 06 – 22 May 06) Archives from the Recording Guidelines talk page: Archive 1 (7 Nov 05 – 19 May 07) Archives from the Uploading Guidelines talk page: Archive 1 (28 Feb 06 – 13 Oct 06) Archives from the Template Guidelines talk page: Archive 1 (14 Mar 06 – 2 Mar 07)

Contents 1 Currently recording? 2 Spoken article template link_to_recorded_version field 3 I screwed up--Corrected 4 Question about video 5 Spoken Article box 6 German Wikipedia project 7 Footnotes? 8 Quality assessment categories? 9 Quality assessment refinement 10 Main page featured articles 11 Request for brief feedback - The Four Stages of Cruelty 12 No Guidelines? 13 Jake Gyllenhaal 14 Placement of links to Spoken Version of Articles 15 Sung wikipedia? 16 A little change 17 Audio problems (question from MgM) 18 Recording encoding bit-rate 19 Garlic breath and the Spoken project 20 Joke spoken articles 21 Category - unreviewed 22 "In Progress" section layout 23 Choice of Audio Codec: Speex? 24 My Beaky Buzzard Image won't be created 25 Latin pronunciation in biology articles 26 The RRS feed thing 27 "Spoken articles make Wikipedia content available to those who can understand English but cannot read." 28 Please help. 29 India spoken article 30 GNU 31 Spoken articles in Japanese ? 32 Learning the hard way 33 The West Wing 34 Questions 35 Article One of the United States Constitution 36 Wikipedia on your iPod - this makes it possible 37 How do you pronounce 38 Spoken files on Commons 39 Opinion, full recording vrs snippet. Breadth vrs Depth 40 End to the slow progress for the Texas article 41 Wikipedia:No original research 42 Clicky player thing 43 Single-word pronunciations 44 Lisp?

[edit] Currently recording?

Is there a list of articles currently being recorded? I see a list for post-recording editing, but not one so that we don't step over each other's toes and record something twice. --Brad Beattie (talk) 01:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Since I think the post-recording list was actually serving both functions, and that seems a reasonable thing for it to do, I have changed the description to reflect that. -SCEhardT 03:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, some articles have a template on the talk page indicating they are in progress (such as Talk:Nanotechnology) -SCEhardT 03:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spoken article template link_to_recorded_version field

People seem to be having some trouble knowing what to put here when they're uploading a recording, so there is now a brief guide. If anyone can see how to make improvements to it, please do so. Macropode 04:57, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] I screwed up--Corrected

I screwed up the formating when trying to write my pieces into the "being edited" table. I've looked over and can't figure out what I did wrong. I'm going to go hunting so I can figure out how to fix it, but if any body can correct it (without reverting or deleting my entries from the box...because I'll still have to face putting them back in) and tell me on my talk page what I did wrong, that would be super duper. Also, it would prevent me from making the same mistake next time I try to put a piece in the box. Ara Pelodi 20:41, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I corrected it. It was as simple as putting the ending on the next space. Whew, wild ride of fear for the newbie!

Ara Pelodi 20:51, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

The wild ride of fear is the newbie's rite of passage in Wikipedia. I well remember my own. -- Macropode 06:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Question about video

Is there any push to create video of wikipedia articles? For most cases you could just have the spoken version played over pictures describing the item. Remember 17:50, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

There would be some difficult technical issues to overcome, and in any case it's probably outside the scope of this project. -- Macropode 10:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spoken Article box

Why is the default location of the spoken article box in the external links section? The audio file is not an external link outside of Wikipedia. I suggest that this box should appear at the top of the article such that readers will see straight away that they have the alternative option of taking advantage of the recording. This is especially true of very long articles - having the spoken article box right at the end of the article means that readers can't see it easily and won't know that they can listen to that particular article unless they scroll right down, past the (maybe hundreds) of references and other external links. CupOBeans 16:30, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

There's some archived discussion relating to this. -- Macropode 06:05, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

The archived discussion does not explain the reasoning behind the current standard, and I've noticed that enough people disagree with the placement standard (because they don't follow it) that I believe it needs to be discussed again. The spoken version of the article is not an external link. That should be enough of a reason not to put in the external links section. Also, Placing the link at the bottom of the article means that many people might not notice that a spoken version exists until after they read the article, and the little icon that gets added to the top of the page isn't noticeable enough. Some argued that the only problem with putting it at the bottom is that people unfamiliar with the project will miss it.... I think that's a big deal, personally. It's not just an 'oh well, their loss' type of thing... It should be immediately apparent to anyone who opens the article that the spoken version exists, even if they are unfamiliar with the Spoken Wikipedia project. CB Droege 19:26, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

There's a bit of history surrounding this issue that I would rather have let lie. The current standard is what was left after a small group of editors tried very hard to reduce (or remove entirely, depending on your interpretation of their efforts) the Spoken project's presence in article-space, as part of a drive to eliminate "clutter" in the form of meta-data in articles (there are several relevant pages, follow the links through from the TFD discussion). There were, at the time, an increasing number of projects putting icons and other things into articles, and this sparked a rather vehement adverse reaction, the instigators of which paid little regard to the negative effects their actions would have on the Spoken project. Also relevant is T J McKenzie's last (to date) contribution as a Wikipedia user.

To be fair, this project, at the time, was showing many of the hallmarks of a project in decline. Contributions were sporadic, there was no quality control (not even for recordings of featured articles on the main page), very few people were doing any of the regular maintenance jobs. There were sometimes great ideas for improvements discussed, but seemingly little will to implement them. People would discover the Spoken project, say "Wow, what a great idea!", then discover how hard it was to actually contribute an article and lose interest. Lest I sound judgmental, I'm not blaming anybody for any of this. It's simply what happens when there's not enough interest in a project for it to survive as a viable part of Wikipedia.

So, while I wholeheartedly agree that it should be easier than it currently is to spot that a Wikipedia article has a spoken version, I think we're rather lucky to have what we've got now. If you want to take up the torch for a more prominent article-space presence, then do so by all means and I'll offer what little support I can. Personally though, I think we'd do better by building up a solid base to negotiate from first, and that means continuing to make this project better organised, easier for people to contribute their work to, and more widely known throughout the Wikipedia community through our good work. If you think I'm being wrong-headed about this, say so, by all means. Otherwise, CB Droege, go and do another one of your excellent recordings and help bolster our case! -- Macropode 10:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the background on the issue, and the advice. It is good advice. I will continue to contribute to the project, improving the quality and visibility, and hope that the recognition of the project as an important and essential one will follow.CB Droege 03:16, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Don't feel obligated. Do it if you enjoy it! -- Macropode 10:32, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] German Wikipedia project

You guys might be interested in de:Wikipedia:Auszeichnungen, which is apparently an effort to vet quality FA Spoken Wikipedia articles. I wouldn't recommend actually developing a separate "featured" project here, but perhaps in the future having a quality Spoken article will become part of the featured article criteria.--Pharos 19:48, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

It would be an interesting exercise to examine how our sister spoken projects in other languages are doing things. Maybe someone with the necessary language skills would like to do this and draw some comparisons with what's happening here.

Spoken as part of the featured article criteria - now there's an interesting thought! -- Macropode 10:14, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I notice most recent FAs already seem to have spoken versions. Presumably they are placed on priority in anticipation of the Main Page appearance? I would envision the FAC process giving a conditional approval, which is confirmed upon the recording of a quality spoken article based on the final version as passed (artticles often change drastically during the process). The Spoken Wikipedia project probably isn't mature enough for this yet, though. There would have to be considerable development of your proposed review system first, for example.--Pharos 03:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Please excuse me, Pharos. What I should have said was that this is an interesting proposal in light of the Featured Article Director's historical willingness to take actions detrimental to this project without trying to solve the issues concerning him by engaging in any significant discussion here first. -- Macropode 01:45, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Footnotes?

Are they left out, or how are they handled? What about other items like the headers and infoboxes? Шизомби 14:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

As a rule-of-thumb, read the core text, along with headings per the recording guidelines. If infoboxes provide information that isn't covered by the core text, and they won't add too much to the length of the recording, you could read them too. The "See also" and "External links" sections may also be useful to some listeners. Anything else would probably be tedious to read out, of little interest to the average listener (whoever that might be), and would make the recording unnecessarily long. -- Macropode 10:16, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks, although it doesn't indicate how to treat subheadings. Шизомби 21:39, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Some people number subheadings, for example "section one point two". I just read them as they are, with pauses before and after to distinguish them from the rest of the text. It's up to you. -- Macropode 22:09, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

The recording guidelines will be modified to include information like this sometime soon. -- Macropode 00:37, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Just to add to this, when I read subsections, as I am doing in my new article, Politics of the Isle of Man, I read the table of contents like this: "Section 2, (Title), Subsection 1 (Title), Subsection 2 (Title), Subsection 3 (title)." Then I move onto the next section. Maybe that would work for the guidelines. Thor Malmjursson 12:31, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quality assessment categories?

Regarding the new article review section, is there any interest in having categories for spoken articles based on their rating? There are 3 evaluation criterea (technical quality, clarity, accuracy) and 3 ratings for each criterea (corresponding to 0, 1, 2). Thus there would be 7 categories corresponding to the possible sums of 0-6.

• If there is more than one review, the category is determined by the average of the reviews
• If a new version of the article is recorded, the reviews pertaining to the old version will be 'turned off' (they won't count toward the average)

I have an idea of how to write the template to automatically sort the articles (see User:SCEhardt/temp), but since I've run into a snag I thought I would check for interest here before I work on it more. Hope this makes sense :-) -SCEhardT 21:05, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Perfectly, in both senses! I think this is an excellent idea, but one that would only really be simple enough in operation to be practical if it were automated. Please continue! -- Macropode 01:58, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

How will blank fields (i.e. un-rated evaluation criteria) be dealt with? -- Macropode 06:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Sadly, this isn't going to work out. I can't figure out how to get multiple reviews to average in a manner that even comes close to being efficient or easy for other users to understand. -SCEhardT 11:20, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quality assessment refinement

I've got a review ready to post , but have run into a minor problem. The old boilerplate allowed the insertion of comments underneath each criteria heading briefly explaining why that particular criteria was given the rating that it was. Is there any way of setting up the new template to allow this functionality? The alternative would probably be to duplicate the criteria headings and put them and the comments underneath the template, which is a bit of a clunky solution. -- Macropode 06:27, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

If I understand what you're asking, the new template does allow this. Check out this, for example. -SCEhardT 11:24, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I should have found that out for myself, shouldn't I. Thanks for dispelling a bit more of my ignorance. -- Macropode 12:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm working on detailed definitions of the ratings. I need to know if it's acceptable to include things like sound clips or samples, and music in recordings. If so, they'd obviously have to be used appropriately and properly licensed. Opinions, please. -- Macropode 07:12, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a great idea (actually it's an idea I've had myself), and so I've had the time to give it some thought. As written articles include pictures, so spoken articles should include sound clips. I would say that short clips (maybe under about 1 minute) would be placed at the relevant point in the text, while longer clips would fit best at the end of the article. Anything over about five minutes probably doesn't belong in an article (one can always give an excerpt instead). We should give "basic" licensing info for each sound clip on the recording, with a reference to where details can be found online; this "credits" section can go at the end of the recording. We should be especially careful about fair use clips, and explicitly state that they are copyrighted and only being used in an educational context.--Pharos 07:53, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, so barring any opinions to the contrary, I'll work on the assumption that it's allowable, although I'm not inclined to encourage contributors to do it, at least at this stage. This project works fairly well, but has historically been lacking two important things: recording/uploading guidelines that are clear and understandable to non-technically inclined contributors, and an organised method of providing feedback to contributors and maintaining a quality standard for spoken articles. Having audio clips in spoken articles would complicate the implementation of solutions to both these issues, and would mean more ongoing work in the assessment process, due to the need to verify the copyright status of included audio. The horrible grey area of fair use only complicates things further.

There's certainly potential for future development in areas like this, but the small number of people we have working on the administrative/maintenance side of this project dictates that we should address the most pressing problems first, and I'd like to focus on implementing basic, workable solutions to the documentation and quality standard issues, at least in the short term. -- Macropode 07:22, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough, that's a reasonable approach considering that the project is still at a relatively basic stage.--Pharos 14:50, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Can anyone suggest a reasonable method of doing assessments on spoken articles that have been uploaded to Commons, other than just re-creating the template etc. over there? That's the only solution my currently sleep-deprived mind can come up with at the moment, and it's not a good one. -- Macropode 02:44, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing stopping you from just putting the template on the local Wikipedia talk page.--Pharos 02:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Pharos. I've already done that once but wasn't sure that it was the right thing to do. When you create the talk page, there's a little message asking you to verify that the (Wikipedia) parent page exists; technically it doesn't, as it's just some kind of link to the Commons page. I'll ignore the message and continue learning. -- Macropode 04:18, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Main page featured articles

Should we be attaching spoken versions to featured articles in anticipation of them appearing on the main page, as currently recommended by the Article choice guidelines? Spoken articles like

, which was uploaded and linked to the article Shadow of the Colossus shortly before it went to the main page, would seem to bear out the concerns of Pharos. While this recording is fine as a novelty, it doesn't meet several of the spoken article recording guidelines, and isn't appropriate to be attached to a featured article that is being showcased on the main page as the best that Wikipedia has to offer. There have been instances in the past of main page articles with problematic spoken versions.

My own opinion is that this project should not be actively seeking publicity, but that it should earn its place in Wikipedia through the quality of the work of its contributors (which, of late, has been consistently high). This does not exclude, by any means, people who lack some of the skills necessary for the production of good spoken recordings from participating. Everybody has to start somewhere, and this project provides the framework to enable that, for those who are determined enough. There may be a case, however, for the application of a minimum quality standard to spoken versions of featured articles, to ensure that the spoken version matches the standard of the source text version before it's linked to it. The spoken article assessment system currently being implemented could be used for this.

This is an important issue that needs to be addressed, so I'd encourage anybody with an interest in this project (and you wouldn't be reading this if you didn't, would you?) to voice their opinion. -- Macropode 12:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I think spoken articles should be held to a minimum standard to be placed in any article, not just featured articles. I agree that the spoken article review system would be good to use for this. Ideally, any article that has one or more scores of 'low' would be removed from the article until the issue is addressed. The scoring criteria would need to be written in a way that makes this reasonable. We should encourage the creator of any article receiving a 'low' rating to improve the article; this system should not act as a deterrent to anyone. At the same time, I think some system for removing poorly spoken articles should be in place to keep the output of this project up to standards. -SCEhardT 21:57, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Image:Shadow.ogg... Wow, it's certainly hard to imagine a more embarrassing spoken article than that (our first audio WP:BJAODN?). While something of such a nature very obviously doesn't belong on any article, there are always going to be ambiguous cases of sincere efforts that fall short in various ways. We should have basic standards for all spoken articles, and more than that, it might be healthy to have a spoken FA standard that's just a step above (nothing extraordinary) what's considered minimal for the others, especially if all the stars on Wikipedia:Spoken articles are gonna have any meaning.--Pharos 08:22, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Request for brief feedback - The Four Stages of Cruelty

Hi. I've just started working on a recording of The Four Stages of Cruelty. Since this is my first recording, I ran off a quick test

. It would be useful to get a bit of feedback before I continue. Many thanks. I realise I may have spoken more quickly than the guidelines recommend, but have over-enunciated to compensate and wonder, in particular, whether the overall effect is still considered suitable. GDallimore (Talk) 00:34, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

The over-enunciation helps greatly for comprehension. Overall, I think it's pretty good, but don't ask me, I'm embarking on my first spoken article just now too. — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 01:10, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I heard one or two minor breath-on-microphone "pops" near the end, so you might want to experiment with your microphone positioning a bit. Other than that, it sounded excellent. -- Macropode 05:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I forgot to mention - it's encoded at a nominal bitrate of 84 kb/s, a wee bit high. Until I get a chance to work on the guidelines, look here for details on how to fix it if you're using Audacity, and a rough explanation of why it's important. -- Macropode 08:56, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, guys. Macropode, I know what you mean about the breath pops - I'm more used to recording music and sound effects, so am still playing with the positioning. I think I'll have to make a screen.

More importantly, though, I wanted your advice on the bitrate. The stuff I do normally has to be uncompressed or CD quality (I do sound/music for my local theatre) so I don't really understand compression. My Ogg encoder gives the options of either using a "quality setting" or setting the max and min bitrates for VBR encoding. I could crank down the quality to 1, which should have the desired effect, but was wondering if you thought that setting a VBR range between, say 36kb/s and 52kb/s (or some other range) would give a better result than this blanket low quality. The test recording was done with a VBR range of 46 to 96, which explains the high nominal bitrate. How did you work that out, by the way? Was it as simple as dividing the file size by the time, or does Audacity tell you these things? GDallimore (Talk) 10:19, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I've had good results from a home-made screen. If you want that particular sound you get from working close to the microphone, it's probably worth putting the effort into, otherwise just back off the mic a little bit or speak slightly across it.

Sorry, I shouldn't be referring to encoding as "compression". It creates confusion with the entirely separate process of increasing the average amplitude of the signal to make it sound louder.

You can't, unfortunately, get around the file size issue by manipulating the min and max bitrate settings. It still comes down to a question of average bitrate. To increase "quality", you need a higher average bitrate, which results in a bigger file. There's no way around it. The term "Quality" is something of a misnomer here, as it depends on what kind of signal you're dealing with. A higher "Quality" (average bitrate) setting will produce a file encoded with more "space" to allow a signal with a broader range of frequencies, like music or sound effects, to be accurately reproduced. Increasing the bitrate past a certain point will provide more leeway to accommodate a frequency range that your signal just doesn't have in it. That point, for reasonable voice in Ogg Vorbis, is something not very far above 48 kb/s. It's not "broadcast quality" by any means, but produces quite clean voice that doesn't take ages to download, and that minimises the need to break the recording up into separate pieces for large articles. In my limited experience, listeners generally don't like the extra complication in downloading multi-part recordings. I've had good results encoding at 48 kb/s. You should also consider that most people will be listening to these recordings through computer speakers, most of which range from being fairly average to downright awful in quality.

There's no arcane magic involved in determining the parameters an audio file has been encoded with. I use Linux with the KDE desktop (specifically, Kubuntu Linux with the Kubuntu default KDE modifications disabled, because I don't like them). Right-mouse-click on the audio file. From the menu, select "Properties". In the info box, select the "Meta info" tab. This shows some useful information about the file. I haven't checked, but I'd guess it's probably extracting most of that information from the file's header. There's some kudos waiting for the person who can chip in here and describe how this information can be accessed easily in Windows, without having to install extra software, as unfortunately I have no working knowledge of any recent version of Windows.

Meanwhile, GDallimore, you might like to re-encode your test file at a lower "quality" setting and use the "upload a new version of this file" link in

so we can listen to the difference and check the bitrate. If the cold hasn't grabbed you too hard by now, that is. :) -- Macropode 10:18, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

That approach doesn't seem to work in Windows. At least not for me as I haven't downloaded any OGG codecs. As for file bitrate, rather than fiddling with the VBR settings, I just cranked the quality setting down to the minimum. Doesn't sound too bad and is about half the size of the previous version - size of file / time gives a 44kb/s bitrate.

Cold has now killed my voice, so I'll be waiting a week or so before recording any more of the article. :( GDallimore (Talk) 19:02, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

'Scuse me for taking so long to get back. The later version's showing nominal 48 kb/s, average 45 kb/s, sounds good, and the file size, as you can see, is just over half of the original. Whip that cold, man! -- Macropode 03:04, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

No problem and thanks for all the useful feedback and support! GDallimore (Talk) 14:06, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No Guidelines?

Hey, can you direct me to some recording guidelines? - I have a few questions.
Let's say I wanted to record a good article that has a nice big introduction, an info box, a table of contents, and then all the sections.
Should I read the contents of the infobox, and if so when, and if so should I introduce it by saying "Here is a brief summary of factual information about [Article Name]?"
With the contents, should I read out the contents perhaps after I've read out the introduction, for example:

1. Read introduction
2. Introduce and read Infobox
3. Read out Contents
4. Begin reading article.

How does one deal with things like mathematical formulas, images, etc? There may be cases where the article refers to a picture - there should probably be a guideline that a reader mustn't describe a picture - unless it is absolutely necessary. What if the article's text actually refers to a picture, as such: "Below is a picture of a rainbow showing the spectrum of colours" - after that should the reader just say "Picture" or "Editorial: Picture".

If there are no guidelines, then you're going to have a lot of inconsistancy, and mistakes.

I am more than happy to begin writing a set of guidelines -- please first tell me if there isn't one already.

Rfwoolf 00:45, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Here's an example of where a reader might want to slightly paraphrase (from Afrikaans):
Similarly original qu and x are spelt kw and ks respectively. For example ekwatoriaal instead of "equatoriaal" and ekskuus instead of "excuus".
Might be read as:
Similarly, original QU and X are spelt KW and KS respsectively. For example the word "Ekwatoriaal" spelt E-K-W-A-T-O-R-I-A-A-L (that is with an "KW" for the "qwa" sound) instead of being spelt E-Q-U-A-T-O-R-I-A-A-L (that is with a "QU" for the "qwa" sound), and, "ekskuus" spelt E-K-S-K-U-U-S (that is with "KS" for the "X" sound) instead of "excuus" spelt E-X-C-U-U-S (that is with a "XC" for the "X" sound). Rfwoolf 01:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Just thinking again about the infobox, for articles that have lengthy info boxes, it might be an idea to have them read last in the article -- and that the reader should decide this when he records the article. Rfwoolf 01:26, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

• I've created Reading Guidlines

[edit] Jake Gyllenhaal

I've just finished my first recording, Image:JakeGyllenhaal.ogg. Would someone (preferably English) mind listening to it and letting me know what my accent is? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 15:06, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Placement of links to Spoken Version of Articles

I am curious to know the reasoning behind the placement of the audio links? Why are they at the bottom of the article alongside the external links section? I think this topic is something that should definitely be discussed and perhaps changed.

To me this seems like an illogical spot to place the link for this as one has to scroll through the entire article to find out if there is an audio version available or not. It would seem like it would make more sense to place the link at the very top of the article above the introduction, thus letting people know prior to reading the text version that an audio version does exist. I also think it would be significantly easier for visually impaired people to locate the audio version.

It also seems odd to me that these are placed under the external links as I don’t believe they really are as the info page for the file is on Wikipedia itself, and the actual audio files I believe are hosted on Wikimedia along with images et cetera. An image is usually plunked in the relevant section of the article, not at the very bottom. It makes sense to me to put links to other projects such as Wikiquotes as this is linking to further reading or other related media. The audio version is of the actual article itself and not something that is related that should be at the bottom. Links to versions of the same article in other languages are given more prominence on the article pages, and most of the time they are in different stages of completion and are dramatically different then the English version. I think defiantly placing these links at the top of the article is definitely the way to do it.

I am very new to editing on Wikipedia, I hope I have posted this in the right place for discussion.

Leeuwekoning 10:02, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi. If you look carefully (it's not very prominent) there's a little icon at the top right corner of a spoken article so you can immediately see on opening any article whether it is spoken or not. I'm not sure of the reasoning for putting the main template in the external links section, though - just joined this project myself and learning my way around, but then there are always new things to learn, I'm finding!

Oh, and a quick word of advice on editing Wikipedia: it's easiest to start a new conversation topic on a talk page by cliking the "+" tab at the top of the page. That adds your new discussion to the end of the page, which is the preferred format. GDallimore (Talk) 11:53, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

See archived discussion -SCEhardT 14:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sung wikipedia?

I've an interest in traditional (out of copyright) songs, and have recently been looking over a few articles such as Miller of Dee, Greensleeves and Heart of Oak. All great songs, but little to say about them, so the articles are a bit stubby and probably not worth recording. However, I was wondering if there was room in this project to record sung versions of these old songs to help readers who may not know the tune? It's easy enough to make instrumental midi or even wav files of the tune, but you never get the same feel as from actually hearing someone singing.

I'd be interested in getting involved on such a project on a couple of levels. I'm not a great singer, but can hold a tune, so could probably record some songs myself. Also, I'm in a position to produce backing tracks for others to add their singing to karaoke style.

What do people think? Would it be possible for Wikipedia to release their first music album? :0 GDallimore (Talk) 14:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

There are already some efforts going on in this vein. User:Makemi, for example, has done a number of recordings of old songs (she helped me recently with Tippecanoe and Tyler too). You could ask her about recording advice. There are also several instrumental musicians who've contributed to Wikipedia. See also Wikipedia:Instruments and Wikipedia:Requested recordings--Pharos 19:09, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

There was a hilarious recording of the coitus interruptus article done by User:WAZAAAA, but it was subsequently deleted. It was recorded with acoustic guitar in the background and featured him and his friend doing the spoken part.-h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 14:23, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A little change

I gave our main Wikiproject page a yellow background and a speaker image in an attempt to make it more appealing to potential participants who visit the page. Let me know what you think! We can always get rid of it if everyone hates it. =P  Panser Born  (talk) 17:57, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

The speaker image is nice, but is the yellow background really necessary? — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 21:39, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Not particularly, no! I just thought it helped the page stand out from the multitude of other grey pages. Thanks for the feedback anyway, hopefully some other people will have their say too.  Panser Born  (talk) 07:34, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Nice work cleaning up the "in progress" table, too. -- Macropode 22:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Yep - a clear and attractive new image. Nice work! Hassocks5489 13:28, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Audio problems (question from MgM)

I can't help MgM with this speech file-related query, so I have copied the question across from my talk page: (Hassocks5489 08:52, 21 March 2007 (UTC))

"I've recorded two audio pronunciations. One I did in the standard Windows sound recorder before converting it to .ogg with an online utility. The other was recorded and exported from Audacity. Do you have any idea why my VLC Media Player refuses to play the Audacity-created file? Did I do something wrong when I exported it?"

There are too many possibilities to speculate about here. You might like to upload the Audacity recording, or a short test recording made in Audacity with the same settings so we can have a look at it. When uploading, call it something like Spoken_test_recording.ogg so we can re-use the image page for others. -- Macropode 09:12, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recording encoding bit-rate

In the course of doing spoken article assessments, I've come across many recordings that have been encoded to Ogg Vorbis at bit-rates higher than recommended in the recording guidelines, making the files larger than they need to be for voice recordings and in some cases impractical for listeners who don't have fast internet links to download. As re-encoding an encoded audio file a second time only causes a very small reduction in audio quality, I'm thinking of re-encoding these files at 48 kb/s and re-uploading them, (after giving the original uploader time to do so). If anybody thinks this is a bad idea, please state your case. Also, if you want to upload a recording and are unsure what bit-rate your audio editing software is encoding it at, then upload a short test recording encoded with the same settings to

using the "Upload a new version of this file" link in the "File history" section of the page and I'll let you know. -- Macropode 10:15, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Should the recommendation of 48 kb/s be changed to 96 kb/s? Am I just making a big fuss over nothing? Cripes, what does it take to stir up some debate around here? :) -- Macropode 00:35, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

It's the familiar thing. People only say anything if they disagree. I've been doing some testing, and there doesn't appear to be any appreciable difference between 48 and 96kb/s for spoken word (at least to my relatively untrained ears). So, I can't see any reason to raise the bar. GDallimore (Talk) 20:27, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Nor can I, really. The trouble is, since I started reveiwing all the new recordings, everybody has been implicitly disagreeing with the recording guidelines by encoding their recordings at 96 kb/s. In reviewing some 50 or so recordings, despite my pestering, only a few people so far have been willing (or able?) to take the minor step of re-encoding to 48 kb/s. Does this situation constitute some kind of consensus to change the guidelines? What use is a recommendation that's almost universally ignored?

While this might seem like a trivial matter, I (or anybody else who wants to get involved with the spoken article assessment process) have to figure out how to interpret the guidelines and apply that interpretation to each recording, in the form of a review. This is important because soon, any recording that gets a rating of "Low" in one or more of the assessment areas is going to be un-linked from it's text article until the problem is resolved (see this discussion). I'm already, by default, judge and jury, and it looks like I'm going to get to play the role of executioner as well. So before I start pissing people off by un-linking their recordings (after they've been given an opportunity to resolve the problem) potentially partly on the basis of bit-rate, we need to establish whether to: (a) use a very loose interpretation of the current recommendation that's historically at odds with what people want to do, (b) change the 48 kb/s recommendation to 96 kb/s, or (c) take the forceful approach and re-encode people's recordings for them. If I'm going to play the executioner, I want to establish that there's some consensus for doing it. -- Macropode 09:17, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see your dilemma. It is a difficult thing to do, if someone's gone to the effort of making a recording, of making the decision to de-link their work. But then, if they've done all that, why not go to that tiny extra effort of encoding the file at a lower quality setting? Particularly when file-sizes would probably be viewed as a trivial issue by so many people.

Personally, however, I think the MOST important issue is to ensure that there is a link to the version of the article that was being read out. Maybe, if you're interested in ensuring quality by including a "punishment" for not reaching a minimum level of quality, that would be a better and probably less contentious place to start in order to judge the reaction of the community. If your actions are generally supported, then maybe considering not just bitrate, but also file-size would be a good place to start: only de-link files if they are a large bit-rate AND an excessively large file size.

Ultimately, it is in the nature of Wikpedia that any editor is free to come along and change, or even just delete, the work of any previous editor if they don't like it. While recording a sound file can be a very big task, it shouldn't receive overly priviliged status and the same ethos should apply, particularly if the editor in question is not responding to reasonable objections. GDallimore (Talk) 10:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

• • A note to add to this conversation, is that keeping the recording rate for Spoken Word files at 48kbps, is an extremely useful thing. I was advsed by Macropode after doing an article, that I had recorded the wrong bit rate. That made my spoken file excessively large, and by bringing it down to 48kbps, it shrunk the size of the file down something chronic. The original of the file, recorded at 192kbps, was near on 9mb in sixe. When I recorded the new version it came out at just 2.7mb, with no loss of sound quality. The rate of 48kbps is the most effective with no deterioration to the recording, while keeping the files nice and small. Thor Malmjursson 11:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you both for the feedback.

I should clarify. The spoken article assessment effort has two main aims: To provide objective feedback to assist narrators to improve their recordings (hardly necessary lately, as most have been a pleasure to listen to), and to maintain a minimum standard of quality, particularly with respect to recordings of featured articles. Un-linking a recording isn't intended as a punishment, but a measure to be taken only in the few cases where the recording doesn't meet minimum quality standards, and only then as a (hopefully) temporary measure until the problem is remedied. I imagine that anyone who intended their recording as a good-faith effort to improve Wikipedia would have no trouble with this, and assistance with correcting the problem/s will be offered. However, I have no qualms about un-linking spoken recordings where it's clearly justified to maintain the quality standard, and basically started this thread to invite community scrutiny and constructive criticism before this measure is implemented.

I noticed some time ago that many weren't including a link to the article version spoken when they uploaded. Since the creation of this help page, almost everybody uploading new recordings has correctly included this link, indicating that what we need are clear, non-technical (as far as possible) instructions detailing these kinds of procedures (assistance appreciated!). Meantime, I'll look at making the inclusion of an appropriate link part of the assessment criteria, and giving it high weight.

With regard to the bit-rate thing, while for on-line spoken audio recordings 48 kb/s is technically the most suitable bit-rate to use, at this stage it's probably best to be pragmatic and go with the "a" option, i.e. a looser interpretation of the guideline (which I probably should have done in the first place). Reasoning:

• No listeners, to my knowledge, have complained about excessively large Wikipedia spoken audio files. If we get feedback from people who want the files to be smaller for easier downloading, then we could possibly consider re-encoding larger ones at some later stage.
• Making a spoken article can be complex and difficult for first time contributors and those less technically inclined. As (I think) the default setting in many audio editors is 96 kb/s and the setting is done by means of a vague "Quality" control which offers no indication of the actual bit-rate that'll be produced, imposing a strict requirement to encode at 48 kb/s adds another technical barrier for many. It should be made as easy as possible for anybody who can speak reasonably fluent English to contribute a spoken article, whether they're technically inclined or not.
• Some audio editing software may not be capable of encoding at 48 kb/s on it's own, although this should not be a problem for more technically knowledgeable users as there are easy ways to solve this, e.g. do the encoding step via Audacity or another of the readily available utilities.
• I'd like to stop pestering people about this in the reviews. Apart from the above-mentioned difficulty in establishing what bit-rate you're actually encoding at, my guess is that most either don't see it as a significant issue (per your thinking, GDallimore), or are concerned that a recording they've put a lot of time and effort into might end up sounding bad if encoded at 48 kb/s. (Some audio editing software applications promote this misleading impression by labeling their encoding bit-rate setting control as "Quality" when the actual quality after encoding depends on what the frequency range in the original recording is; encoding voice at a low "Quality" setting doesn't necessarily produce a low quality result). There's also another possibility; that people are finding the method for uploading an updated version of their recordings too obscure, as it currently isn't documented in the guidelines.

I'll adjust the rating criteria accordingly.

The downside of this is that the many people without fast internet connections are effectively denied access to at least some of the spoken audio on En.Wikipedia. This would probably include many in country areas, and many who are economically disadvantaged.

Finally, contrary to what I've said above, as part of the effort to maintain quality standards, recordings with problems warranting a "Low" assessment rating will be un-linked from their parent articles as soon as they're reviewed, and the link restored on resolution of the problem/s. If anyone doesn't agree with the rating criteria affecting this, please provide feedback. -- Macropode 10:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

After giving the bit-rate issue further thought, I intend to change the recommendation to explicitly allow recordings encoded at bit-rates up to (but not higher than) what is now the de-facto standard, 96 kb/s. This is, as far as I'm aware, the default bitrate for some commonly used audio editors and so should effectively remove one of the fiddly technical aspects of making spoken recordings. It has the additional advantage that if it's necessary to modify (and thus re-encode) a recording made by somebody else, 96 kb/s recordings will suffer less quality degradation than those encoded at lower bit-rates. -- Macropode 07:06, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Garlic breath and the Spoken project

I'd like to tell the people who've worked on and made improvements to this project what a great job they've been doing, but on a couple of occasions when I've tried to encourage people directly, they've subsequently gone away, so I won't. Maybe it's my breath. :) -- Macropode 08:16, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Hehe. =) We appreciate all the work you've done reviewing so many spoken articles too, not sure what we'd do without you. -Panser Born- (talk) 17:51, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Goodness, I've been feeling guilty enough for my absence as it is! :( I guess I did "go away", more for personal and time reasons than anything else. I left Wikipedia, not just the Spoken project. Lots (and I mean lots) of stuff came up at once, and a lot of things have changed in the last year or so. I do still hope to come back to it at some point, hopefully not too far in the future, and will have to re-assess how much I can get involved at that point.

Part of the issue for me specifically with spoken articles is just that they require a large time commitment. Recording a FA can take several hours, and although it's totally worth it, I just have trouble committing that much time to a single article. I haven't forgotten about you guys though, and believe it or not, I do think about the Spoken project!

I've been thinking a little lately about trying to come back to Wikipedia in a small way, at least at first (hence why I'm reading this page). Maybe I'll try recording some smaller articles, or just work on something else for a while, see if I can't get back into it that way. --Laura S 19:20, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Joke spoken articles

Why would somebody so obviously talented at making "blue humour" versions of encyclopedia articles like Image:CoitusInterruptus.ogg want to put their recordings on a formal encyclopedia site rather than one of the many entertainment-oriented web-sites around? Unless somebody thinks I ought to, I don't intend to review this recording. I've got better things to do with my time than feeding the trolls. -- Macropode 09:59, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

The uploading of spoken versions of articles such as

and Image:Teabagging.ogg clearly highlights the need for better project guidelines defining what is and is not acceptable practice in a spoken version of a Wikipedia article. We can no longer assume that everyone who makes a spoken version of an article is going to abide by the standards that the original article was created by, namely that Wikipedia exists to present information in the form of articles which present pre-documented facts in a neutral and un-biased manner without those facts being coloured by humour, sarcasm or any other distortion arising from the personal motivations of editors. This standard is enshrined in Wikipedia policy and is widely adhered to by the editors of the text articles which are the foundation for our spoken versions. Many people put a great deal of honest effort into maintaining these standards. In making spoken versions of these articles, I believe we should be adhering to the same encyclopedic standards and producing recordings that convey the facts presented in the source text unembellished, unadorned and in as clear a manner as possible. Boring? Not if you love acquiring knowledge and don't need all the superfluous novelty "window-dressing" provided by much of today's media, and which Wikipedia was never intended to provide. Those who want to use Wikipedia as a platform for showing off their comedic skills in articles or the spoken versions thereof should find a more appropriate forum than Wikipedia (Uncyclopedia for example). -- Macropode 03:31, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. Such joke recordings should absolutely be removed from Wikipedia articles as entirely inappropriate. The articles are free-licensed, and people are allowed (indeed encouraged) to make any sort of creative re-use elsewhere that suits their fancy, but Wikipedia is definitely not the venue for this stuff. I'm not saying there should be no adornment at all — possibly in the future people might record radio documentary-style articles, but silly spoofs like this are wholly out of the question.--Pharos 06:43, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I've un-linked these recordings. If anybody wishes to help the creator of them to "drum up support for an InterestingSpokenWikipedia project" (sic) that can accommodate his/their needs, then feel free to reply here, as I don't have the time. -- Macropode 23:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

If people want to have their say, I've nominated Image:Teabagging.ogg and Image:CoitusInterruptus.ogg for deletion. You can get to the discussion via the template on these pages. GDallimore (Talk) 11:55, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Pharos, if you're still following this thread, I'm planning on updating the recording guidelines over time to explicitly state (in plain English, hopefully) the main standards that are currently imposed on spoken recordings by the review criteria. One of the aims will be to clearly define what is appropriate use of music and sounds in spoken recordings, while specifically excluding inappropriate stuff, such as the joke recordings we've been seeing lately.

As an aside, I'd personally love to try doing small radio documentary-style pieces, or even something as simple as adding appropriate sounds to recordings of fauna-related articles (such as

, in which I've done a rather poor imitation of a frog call, for lack of a suitably-licensed recording of the real thing). -- Macropode 07:52, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I imagine it was fun to do the frog call, nonetheless. I think it was fairly-well integrated in the recording, something slightly more than just a pronunciation of the letters, and something less than a full-throated attempt at nature mimicry. This is an interesting subject. Have you reviewed any spoken articles that include third-party sounds (such as animal calls, music, etc.)?--Pharos 01:09, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay. Yes, someone put some music under the Wikipedia intro in one recording, though I don't remember which one it was. -- Macropode 05:21, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category - unreviewed

I was wondering if we should create a category of unreviewed spoken articles (and prompt people in the uploading instructions to add new recordings to that category) to help with the task of performing reviews. Any thoughts. GDallimore (Talk) 13:05, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Decided it could do no harm, so I've created a category Category:Unreviewed spoken articles and have updated the spoken article template so that all articles are automatically placed in that category. When an article is reviewed, it is simply a case of adding the words "reviewed=yes" to the template call on the main image page.

Some things that I came across when doing this:

• Is there much point uploading these files to commons?
• If the file is uploaded to the commons, shouldn't the review be on the commons, too? Not all of them are.

I've started updating templates, and got half-way through E before commons shut down for maintenance... GDallimore (Talk) 23:41, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Ideally, all spoken articles would be on Commons. In practice, this poses a number of problems, particularly for inexperienced users. Details later, as right now I don't have time to scratch myself. -- Macropode 07:01, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Currently, all reviews are here on Wikipedia, even when the recordings they relate to are on Commons. This simplifies administration, for example, parsing all the reviews with a bot becomes a one-step operation. From an administration point of view, having everything here avoids duplication of effort. We don't have a small army of people looking after this project, so we need to keep everything simple and efficient. By the same token, things need to be kept simple and straightforward for spoken article contributors too. Due to this being a wiki, with the limited automation possible, there are already too many fiddly little steps in the upload process that people have to get right. Uploading to Commons would impose one more - the requirement to open and maintain two seperate user accounts just to contribute to the spoken project. I respect people's choice to upload to Commons, but for practicality, I'd prefer everything be kept together here. -- Macropode 07:45, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm confused. First you said to upload stuff to commons, now you're saying not to? I'll assume for now that you agree with me and that files should be uploaded to en.wiki, not to commons.

So, I would like to make a recommendation to make it an official uploading guideline that spoken recordings of English articles be uploaded to the en.wiki and NOT to commons. My two main reasons for suggesting this are that it is of no benefit to upload to commons and is probably less convenient, as follows:

• There is no realistic chance of other projects wanting to easy access a spoken recording of an article on the en.wiki.
• Uploading to the commons makes it more difficult to keep track of the files, making management of the project more difficult.

Any further thoughts? GDallimore (Talk) 09:11, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

There. Hastily written confusing comment deleted. :) Although Commons is specifically intended to handle audio and visual media, I completely agree that all spoken articles should be uploaded here (Wikipedia), and that this should be written into the guidelines, unless anybody can come up with a good case against this. -- Macropode 05:03, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I think we should allow users free choice in whether they want to upload their files to Wikipedia or Commons (though I would say this, seeing how all of my recordings are on Commons!) I don't think it's much more hassle to keep track of the files, as Wikipedia treats files on Commons as if they were on Wikipedia anyway. Personally, I upload to Commons because it allows me to keep track of all of the free content that I've ever uploaded in one place, rather than being mixed in with other fair-use uploads. -Panser Born- (talk) 17:44, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "In Progress" section layout

We've been getting so many new recordings added to the list over the last month that I thought separating the recordings into tables per month was justified. I think it makes it a bit clearer as to which recordings have been there a while, and which haven't. But let me know what you think. -Panser Born- (talk) 09:19, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I've always found that tables are a pain to update. Do we not want to just keep it as simple as possible so that recordings are added and deleted promptly? GDallimore (Talk) 10:21, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I tend to like to keep things simple, but as you're the one who's been putting in the work to maintain the "in progress" list, Panser Born, by all means experiment to see what works best. (Just my 10p worth). -- Macropode 08:29, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

That's quite a valid point - I think in the interest of keeping it simple for newer uses, I'll revert it for now. Thanks for the feedback. -Panser Born- (talk) 17:29, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Choice of Audio Codec: Speex?

What do you think of Ogg Speex? Wouldn't that codec be a good choice for the spoken articles?--Imz 15:45, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Speex would give the one advantage of smaller audio files. By contrast, Vorbis:

• Is a more flexible general-purpose free audio codec, and thus is the agreed-upon Wikipedia standard for sound.
• Is supported natively by the widely available, and very capable Audacity audio editor.
• At lower nominal bit-rates, produces very compact files which are quite suitable for the purposes of this project, and probably compare well to Speex files for size (although I haven't done any direct comparisons).
• Would probably reproduce music or non-voice sounds better, as in future we may have more spoken articles that have these included in appropriate ways. Speex is optimised specifically for voice.

-- Macropode 03:52, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for the reply!--Imz 11:07, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I finally got around to checking my sound editing software. While it supports Vorbis, it doesn't support Speex. Now, this isn't a reason to say no to Speex but with all the furore over not accepting MP3 in favour of Vorbis, choosing a format that has even less support than Vorbis is going to go down like a moderately heavy brick. GDallimore (Talk) 09:56, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My Beaky Buzzard Image won't be created

Beaky Buzzard has only one image and I can't do one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jacob valliere (talk • contribs) 10:21, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I don't quite understand what you're trying to do here? If you don't understand how to add images, you might want to ask at Wikipedia:Help desk instead. -Panser Born- (talk) 17:19, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Latin pronunciation in biology articles

It struck me listening to a biology spoken article that more colloquial pronunciations of binomial nomenclature might be working against us, if after hearing the article we're not sure how the Latin name is actually spelled. So, I asked a question on the Reference Desk to see if their was a standard way to do pronounce this stuff. Folks there recommended a French-type pronunciation wwith all sounds articulated, as at [1]. Please see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2007 May 22#Pronunciation of scientific Latin. Thanks.--Pharos 04:01, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! This should help me to improve one or two of my recordings, and is exactly the sort of helpful critical feedback we need more of around here. -- Macropode 06:28, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The RRS feed thing

After upgrading my software it no longer accept the RSS feed offered here because it's not using the proper content type. I asked around a while back and application/rss+xml is just not a content type you can coax MediaWiki into serving, and it won't be fixed for security reasons (vandals could inject arbitrary HTML etc). I guess lots of other appliations won't accept it because of this either. Why not ask someone with Toolserver access to make a little script that "mirror" the rss subpage here (with some sanity checking) and serve it with the proper content type. --Sherool (talk) 10:50, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

At the time you wrote this, the feed was also invalid for other syntax reasons. That has been fixed, and it might be worth trying your reader again. -SCEhardT 19:24, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Spoken articles make Wikipedia content available to those who can understand English but cannot read."

I might be getting a wrong idea of what this quote is trying to say, but the idea of analphabets using the internet, even more so Wikipedia, does sound rather absurd. After all, they still have to navigate to the page somehow, which would require literacy.~~MaxGrin 17:41, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Let's not underestimate the ingenuity of those who face difficulty with text. -- Macropode 22:05, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

One would assume that some other literate person would get it set up for them to use. They just don't have to read it. — Edward Z. Yang^(Talk) 00:24, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, theoretically, if you're an English heritage speaker raised in a non-English speaking country, you could be literate but not in English. More likely perhaps, someone teaching a literacy class might find spoken Wikipedia articles a useful tool (this is probably one of the only free resources for recordings of complex non-fiction text).--Pharos 20:31, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please help.

I just recorded all the audio for the article with my webcam- Cooper City High School, (just a random article), and I wanted to upload it.

• I went to the upload page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Upload) and pasted the respective template and filled in all the information. Then I clicked 'Upload'.

After a while, a page appears reading - ".wma" is an unwanted file type

I would appreaciate if someone would contact me regarding how to properly upload an audio file for the Spoken Articles project.

Thank You Remember, our burdened goal is to provide all knowledge to the deserving humans. 20:50, 15 June 2007 (UTC) Xunex

Wikipedia seems to support only the OGG format. See Wikipedia:Audio_help.--Seraphiel 07:05, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Recording guidelines, especially the Recommended tools section. I have used Audacity myself, and it seems to work well. I have heard mention of an online utility that will convert wma to ogg, but I don't know about it myself. -SCEhardT 19:38, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] India spoken article

Can someone please check the spoken article on the India page. When the "play in browser" link is clicked, I hear the national anthem of India instead of the article being read aloud. I've asked other Wikipedians here, but they are unable to play the file on their browsers. I would greatly appreciate if someone could help. Thanks.--Seraphiel 07:05, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

"Play in browser" plays some music for me, while downloading the file plays the spoken article. I don't know why - does anybody know where the music file is stored and what it is named? Maybe this is a name conflict? -SCEhardT 19:26, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GNU

On several spoken articles that I have heard, they always say its protected under the GNU license. Only when they pronounce GNU, they say it wrong. They pronounce it as G-N-U. It is pronounced guh-noo. (pronounced /gnu/ (help·info)), approximately like canoe. ^{(The GNU Operating System, <http://www.gnu.org/>. Retrieved on 12 July 2007 )} I don't know how many people are aware of that..But its really nice that they are vocalizing the articles. :) Thanks ✬Dillard421✬ ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:55, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

pronouncing each letter is not incorrect. It is interchangeable, and some prefer it, as it makes clear to the audience that an acronym is being used. CB Droege 17:16, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Ah I hadnt realized that it was interchangeable, i can see how if you were speaking that it might make it more clear. But then again you say the link anyways after you say GNU. ✬Dillard421✬ ^{(talk • contribs)} 03:28, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spoken articles in Japanese ?

I have been using the Spanish spoken articles to learn Spanish, it was a great help to get the sounds and accent of this language !! Now I am learning Japanese but I couldn't find the spoken articles in Japanese :-( On the Spoken_articles category page there are links to 16 other languages but no Japanese. I tried to look for a similar page but did not find anything. Does anybody have an idea where the Japanese spoken articles might be ? Thanks a lot !!! Nicolas1981 23:22, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Learning the hard way

I suppose I should've read the guidelines for recording before jumping in, specifically what to read and what not to read. After spending twelve minutes reading the references, editing the subsequent recording, and all the while wondering, "Why the hell would anyone want this information read aloud?" I found the answer. They don't. Hrmph. In any case, the Starcraft article should be done by tomorrow. Need to record an introduction and a generic "The article and blah blah blah licensed under blah blah bah," thing to put on the end, but that's about it. Consequentially 13:22, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The West Wing

The audio file for The West Wing, recorded by User:Rebelguys2, was for the page as it was in December 2005. In July 2006, I put in a request for the audio file to be updated, my rationale was "The audio file for this page was done in December 2005 and a lot has changed since then. As the show is now off the air, it is unlike that this page will change radically, so would it be possible for the audio file be updated to a more definitive version of the page." The {{Spoken Wikipedia request}} template is still there, where I put it over a year ago, but the audio file has not been updated. --Philip Stevens 14:45, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

This project doesn't have a very high output rate, and most participants seem to prefer recording articles they choose rather than those from the request list. The most effective solution I can suggest is for you to record it yourself :-) -SCEhardT 19:26, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Yeah I thought of that, but I don't have the most pleasing voice in the world. Also I'm British and although my accent would give the audio file a sophisticated twang, I am mindful that this is about a US television series. --Philip Stevens 20:27, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Questions

I hope to record some articles, but I've run into a few issues:

1. Should I include hatnotes?
2. Should I let exclamation marks change my intonation? (One article I'm looking at is Freak Out!, so this is rather important.)
3. When reading quotations, should I modify my tone at all? I don't want to introduce bias by attempting to emulate my conception of a speaker, but I also know that "These Mothers is crazy. You can tell by their clothes" is going to sound strange when read levelly.
4. For embedded quotations (those not set off from the text), should I say "quote" and "unquote" before and after reading? If I don't, it might not be clear that the text was quoted.
5. Should I include track listings, credits, and other information that's in list form?

—Emufarmers^(T/C) 02:59, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Article One of the United States Constitution

Is up for featured article review, and since it has a spoken version, I thought I'd notify you. Feel free to comment or help improve this article to current featured article standards. Judgesurreal777 04:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia on your iPod - this makes it possible

It was great, whilst on a 270 kilometre train journey across the Romanian countryside, to be able to listen to articles about teabagging, the furry fandom, reggae, coitus interruptus, and a number of other weird and wonderful topics. Thanks people.--h i s ^{s p a c e} _{r e s e a r c h} 10:31, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] How do you pronounce

Amanita phalloides

basidiomycete

α-amanitin

Sound files would be my friend, but phonetic spelling would be OK

Plus, does anyone know a good place to post pronunciation questions? This would be extremely useful! —Preceding unsigned comment added by SpeakThings:Mellerbeck (talk • contribs) 21:47, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't know the answers, but I'd suggest asking at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language -SCEhardT 22:06, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spoken files on Commons

A decision seems to have been taken by someone, somewhere, to remove the audio files uploaded by participants in this project from Wikipedia to Commons. A large number of spoken Wikipedia recording pages have been tagged in preparation for this move. The tag states the justification "Wikipedia is not a collection of photographs or media files and appropriately licensed media are more accessible to other Wikimedia projects if placed on Commons".

The use of this justification seems to imply that the spoken versions of Wikipedia articles produced by participants in this project bear no relationship to the source articles they're based on, and ignores the fact that these audio files probably aren't of much use or relevance to other Wikimedia projects. The clear implication is that, in future, we should not be uploading spoken articles here to Wikipedia, but to Commons instead.

This seems to be being done as part of a wider general clean-up of images on Wikipedia, and it seems probable that this decision was taken without an awareness of this project or its work, and the difficulty that a requirement to upload our work to Commons would create for many contributors and the project as a whole. Unless Wikimedia "unified login" has been implemented (has it?), the requirement for all Spoken project participants to upload their work to Commons would make the process of contributing a spoken article, which is already excessively complex, even more so. It takes a significant amount of time, effort and skill to create a good spoken article, and my concern is that to create a functional split whereby the project is maintained here but uploads are required to go to Commons would make contributing to this project even more difficult than it already is, and would reduce contributions to the point where the Spoken Wikipedia project would no longer be viable. -- Macropode 11:06, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

No one has proposed requiring uploads to Commons (though I doubt it would be as dire as you think). The tagging just means that these files will be moved to Commons, since they are free. Nothing more. Dmcdevit·t 14:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

While I would strongly oppose requiring new spoken articles to be uploaded to the commons (due to added complication as you mentioned), if someone else wants to take the time to properly move files to the commons once they are uploaded here, I don't think that will cause any problems for us. -SCEhardT 20:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I'm not against the move per se, it was just the explanation on the tag (I suppose not to be taken literally) that had me wondering. Thanks for clearing that up, Dmcdevit. I'll get off my soap box now. -- Macropode 03:59, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

A bot is taking care of the transwiki, by the way (e.g. [2]). It's a relatively painless procedure. Dmcdevit·t 04:13, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Shouldn't the files have "en-" prepended to their names, per the standard? tgies 23:26, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Opinion, full recording vrs snippet. Breadth vrs Depth

So, I know that full recordings are requested. But is this the best way to approach this project? For this project to really take off I think it needs more awareness.

It feels to me like the spoken project is Languishing a bit. There are only a few hundred recordings or so.

I think that to increase awareness we should go for more of a breadth approach.

This would make that little speaker icon more ubiquitous.

On a side note it would be nice to increase the visibility of that speaker somehow, its too dang small. In addition, if someone clicks on it they are presented with an .ogg which I think confuses a lot of possible listeners. If they scroll down they can click on the handy, dandy java player. But I don’t think many people know to scroll down. So getting the java player to the top and a little larger would sure be nice!

So what do I mean by a breadth approach? I would encourage more readings of only the introduction, by more people. I would consider these stub recordings and maybe we need a designation for them.

I guess my main points are

1. Most people do not have the time to record a full article and will never record a full article. 2. Most people do not know that spoken articles exist 3. If more people knew about them, more people might be willing to record them (if it was easy!) 4. Eventually people would record full articles, or maybe combine forces to record the full article. I wouldn’t care if different sections were read by different people.

What are your thoughts?

SpeakThings:Mellerbeck 17:51, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

A few thoughts:

• There has been resistance in the past to even having an icon at the top of the article. I don't think expanding it would go over well, and it probably makes sense to keep it consistent with the featured article icon.
• Now that we have the browser OGG player, and recognizing that most users don't have OGG codec, I think it would be reasonable to change the function of clicking on the top icon: Instead of linking to the OGG file, it could either jump down to the main spoken article box or take the user to the image page (where the audio file is). Both of these locations would give the user the option of downloading the file or using the browser player.
• I'm not sure that having just an article introduction recorded is very useful, and may reflect poorly on the project. Also, I realize that one article may not be representative of the project in general, but the bicycle article has been partially recorded since Jan 2006 and nobody has stepped up to record the rest.

-SCEhardT 18:41, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

• I can agree with the resistance.
• I think changing the function would be nice
• I wonder how often someone listens to an entire article, sometimes just the intro is just the right amount :-) In the future being able to download a zillion audio snippets would be an interesting way to learn about things. If they were identified as snippets it would reflect less poorly. Also at the moment there aren't enough spoken articles to reflect poorly on the project, most people have no idea it exists! Getting more visibility should be better, at least in my mind.
• I concur that adding on to audio has not really happened. Then again it's also not mentioned anywhere as an option.

SpeakThings:Mellerbeck 20:47, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Recording "stub" spoken versions of full articles would get the project noticed more, but, per SCEhardt's thinking, probably for the wrong reasons, whether they're flagged as stubs or not. I'll use the case of Featured articles to illustrate my point, since many recordings are made of these. When Wikipedia users read a featured article, they are justified in having an expectation that the article meets a certain standard. The editors working on the article to get it up to featured standard put a lot of time and effort into trying to make this happen. Consider what happens when we come along, and attach an incomplete (stub) spoken version to it. The spoken stub, which, because of its incompleteness, is by definition not a high standard spoken article, gets a "free ride". It accrues the kudos due to a featured article, and often gets to appear along with it on the main page, which is supposed to be a showcase for "the best that Wikipedia has to offer". The fact that we get to put an icon at the top, and a link to our spoken version at the bottom of the source text article means that we have an obligation to do all we can to ensure that the quality of the spoken version does justice to the featured article it's attached to. In fact, if I were an editor involved in getting an article up to featured standard, and somebody attached a less-than-featured-standard spoken version to it, I might even be a bit annoyed about it! (People often take pride in their work, and rightly so).

Having complete spoken articles gives the listener the choice to listen to as much or as little as they want (or need) to. A partially complete spoken article might be acceptable as an intermediate stage to a complete one, but, again as SCEhardt has pointed out, partially completed spoken articles usually stay that way. There's nothing currently in the guidelines that says you can't add to a recording that someone else has started, I just don't think the motivation is there for anybody to do it.

In summary, I don't think this project will ever have a large numbers of contributors, increased visibility or not. Making spoken recordings takes a lot more time and patience than I think many people realise until they try it (observe how the "in progress" list fills up with old entries when Panser Born isn't around to clean it up). You have to be both voice actor and recording engineer in one, and for the people who don't have an active interest in the technical side of recording it can be particularly challenging. (I have a good deal of respect for those who have technical difficulties but persist to produce completed recordings anyway). We don't produce a lot of work here, and that's fine, we're building this thing brick-by-brick. But let's earn our place in Wikipedia by making the recordings we do produce worth listening to. If you want to make many short recordings to increase project visibility, find some good short articles to record! Let's try to avoid the tactic of just hitching a ride on the hard work of others. -- Macropode 01:57, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

You make many good and well thought out arguments. I guess after some introspection, I think it comes down to a view of how someone would react to an incomplete recording of an article. This is probably where my view differs. I suppose there are two main reactions, first, wow someone took the time to record some of this. Even though it's not complete it does add to the general worth of the article, seeing how its pretty rare to have anything at all recorded. Or on the other hand, hmmm only a small bit was recorded that wasn't worth listening to it. It would be interesting to get a larger survey of what the answer to that question is. On a side if there are people out there who want to collaborate on sections of articles please let me know! SpeakThings:Mellerbeck 02:47, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

My "making the recordings we do produce worth listening to" comment was rather clumsy, and I hope I didn't offend anyone by implying that standards should be set according to subjective judgments like that. I think the fundamental question here is what should be the role of the Spoken project in Wikipedia? The obvious answer to that is "to make Wikipedia articles accessible in audio form". It follows, then, that the next question to ask is what standards should be set for these spoken versions? It seems appropriate that we begin by sticking as closely as possible to the standards set for the Wikipedia articles that are the source for our recordings. As an example, if an editor removed a large section of text from an existing article without adequate justification, her/his edit would probably be considered unwelcome and reverted. By producing partial spoken versions, we're effectively cutting out information from that article in the same way for listeners. I'd suggest we should be trying to stay as true to the source as possible, rather than making up our own rules regarding what should and shouldn't be included in a spoken article (with the minor exception of things that either don't translate well into spoken form or are inappropriate in a spoken version).

I'd love to make the little speaker icons in articles ubiquitous too, but they have to be backed up with some substance, otherwise they'll be seen as just advertising for this project. It's probably safe to say that the prevailing attitude within the Wikipedia community is against advertising of any description, and internal advertising by projects such as ours would not be seen in a good light by many. -- Macropode 11:42, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

Well said, well said. I just wish that a way could be found to lower the barrier to entry. Maybe I will try to recruit some people to combine sections, to spread the load. Thanks for helping me understand. SpeakThings:Mellerbeck 15:32, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I think Mellerbeck's idea has certain merits, though yes I agree it might not be appropriate to post these on the front side of articles as if they were full recordings. I could imagine something that is not Wikipedia, but is a sort of Wikipedia application, of audio mini-articles running on an iPod, with links being expressed as multiple-choice see-alsos. That would certainly be an interesting application (of course, I would have no idea how to implement it technically), and under the GFDL rules one could develop such a system without any central authorization at all from Wikipedia. And if you want to post a link to a recording of one section of an article on its Wikipedia talk page there wouldn't be opposition to that, I think. Also, if you want to explore the possibility of collaborative recording, you should poke around the LibriVox site and see how they coordinate it (though actually, their individual recordings of book chapters are comparable to our recordings for full-length articles).--Pharos 19:35, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I was actually working on such a project, Audio Hyperlinks[3] which probably also explains my fascination with the topic :-) SpeakThings:Mellerbeck 20:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I am still a bit in dismay with the whole project indeed. I have recently moved over to Wikinews to do their regular briefs and interesting article collections but some things really bug me. One thing is I think we should remove all instances of ANY link that says "download this sound file" because you have to take several steps after that, find the file wherever your computer dropped it in your HD, open it and most likely no one has an OGG compatible player and then you've lost all interested in hearing the article in the end. Of course this has been solved recently with the in-browser player BUT, if you click on the top it gives you a download link, what gives? The recording starts at the beginning and so the little dingy button should start the player. Another issue is of course fellow recorders. I am not great nor perfect, though I am a trained voice actor and have done it professionally, but the standards of a low-quality MONO ogg file is just not doing it. Even if I have a flawless recording in stereo with my mic, the moment it goes to Mono, it dies, the spirit dies, the voice dies, etc. But I know that a 50+ MB file in radio-quality stereo is just not realistic for someone to download or stream. Perhaps here technology hasn't caught up with us to offer this service at the quality we truly want. And especially with mono files, you can't really go back and help people clean them up because there isn't enough information in the file to help your filter work. Blah, anyway, a lot of this has already been discussed but I wanted to point out things that have bothered me lately as I return to do more recordings. (and our standards for recordings, for example, to ask people to slow down is unrealistic for the mainstream audience YET as a voice actor and hearing other professionals perform more radio-ad type speech, is really not helpful in understanding the article content) .:DavuMaya:. 07:22, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] End to the slow progress for the Texas article

Hello everyone, I've been working on the voice version of the Texas article. First of all, I want to apologize for the slow progress. Since it's been going so slow, I'm starting over again from the latest version of the article. I'm kicking it into high-gear now after finding a little more time. I will update my status here periodically; I'm going to make a point to give an update every couple of weeks.

As of 10/1/2007

• Recording: Paragraph 1 of 94
• Editing: not done yet
• ETA: 40 days

--Follow Christ 00:53, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:No original research

WP:NOR is the subject of some proposed changes to help resolve some long-standing disputes over language in the policy. Discussion is present on WT:NOR. Cheers! Vassyana 00:38, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Clicky player thing

When you have an audio sample, sometimes it has a little player button (as for example on Johnny B. Goode). Is there a way of making it so spoken articles have a button you can just click? As it is at the moment for me, when I click the "this has a spoken version" icon I get prompted to download an ogg. Marnanel 14:02, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

The Spoken Article box (usually down in the article's External Links section) should have the play button. -SCEhardT 14:33, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, thanks. I saw the icon in the header first, so I tried clicking on that. I don't know whether this confuses anyone else. Marnanel 18:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

I agree; it is confusing. Maybe a better solution would be a link that sends the user to the box at the bottom of the article (rather than a direct link to the OGG)? -SCEhardT 19:23, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Single-word pronunciations

This is a bit offtopic, but is there anywhere I can request a word be pronounced (e.g. for Template:Audio-IPA). There was an offsite pronunciation link at Grapheme, which I removed, and ideally it would be replaced with a free pronunciation hosted here. Thanks. Superm401 - Talk 09:58, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

There is no specific area set up for this sort of request (yet), but it would be good to have one — I am quite happy to help with the setup and administration of such a request facility, particularly in terms of actually providing pronunciation recordings. In particular, it would be very desirable to have a coordinated, standardised set of pronunciations on groups of things such as place names, chemical names and so on. Hassocks5489 12:36, 8 November 2007 (UTC) (talk)

[edit] Lisp?

Would trying to record an article be a problem if I have a lisp? Purplewowies (talk) 21:57, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I think so long as people can understand what you are saying it would be worthwhile even if you have a lisp.

You could always record a test article to see what people think of it. Thecyberwasp (talk) 20:57, 7 December 2007 (UTC)