Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Archive 5

message: A proposed implementation. Suggestions for improvements welcome. -- Macropode 11:31, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Speaking as a new participant in the project, I think it's a great idea to have some QA going on in order to keep standards up for spoken articles. It'd be nice to have some general technical feedback on how well we're doing, too. So... go for it! (At least, in my opinion...) -- Kevin F. Story 17:47, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

text: This sounds like a good idea and I also say go for it! - I'm just not sure how many people will take the time to use it... -SCEhardT 03:20, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure how many people will take the time to use it either. There has been some great work done here, but the general level of interest has been pretty low, at least in the time I've been around. Maybe it's time for this project to have to justify it's existence as a useful part of Wikipedia... -- Macropode 06:30, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I will most certainly use it! I amy not be able to incorporate everything (I'm kind a slow on the mental track if you know what I mean) but please, pretty pretty please with sugar on top, people, gimme feedback (once you have something to listen to of course) Ara Pelodi 21:05, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Sounds good. I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment, so does your above-mentioned suggestion constitute an offer to make these changes, SCEhardT? ;) -- Macropode 09:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure!  I think I can do it in the next couple days -SCEhardT 13:39, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nice work on the template, it's good to see this thing starting to look a little less like a rough hack. I'll look at moving the page shortly. Feel free to criticise, improve or correct anything I do. -- Macropode 06:07, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks!  I've got a rough page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Review, mainly from what you wrote.  -SCEhardT 20:30, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Another new project member here; I fully support the idea of quality assessments, especially for the benefit of new memberslike myself who need guidance on what they are doing wrong/right.  A couple of questions: are spoken articles simply picked up and assessed automatically after they have been submitted to the list on the project page, or does the contributor have to take any specific action to ask for an assessment; and when an assessment has been made, what is the process for notifying the contributor that it has happened?  (Just so that I know what to do and where to look!)  Hassocks5489 15:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Welcome!  Right now there is no formal way to request an assessment - I think Macropode has committed to assessing new articles as they are recorded.  As for notification when an assessment has been made, just add the recoding Image: page to your watchlist.  When an assessment is added to the talk page, it will show up on your watchlist. -SCEhardT 20:30, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[User:Macropode/Spoken article review|Spoken article quality assessment]] 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title:  Currently recording? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Spoken article template link_to_recorded_version field 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  I screwed up--Corrected 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Question about video  

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

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

text: 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)
thread_title: Footnotes?

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

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

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Main page featured articles 

message: 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:<Br />
# Read introduction
# Introduce and read Infobox
# Read out Contents
# 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".<Br />
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)
thread_title:  No Guidelines? 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Jake Gyllenhaal 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Sung wikipedia? 

message: 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)
replies: text: The speaker image is nice, but is the yellow background really necessary? — Edward Z. Yang(Talk) 21:39, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: Looks good to me. Nice work cleaning up the "in progress" table, too. -- Macropode 22:46, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep - a clear and attractive new image.  Nice work!  Hassocks5489 13:28, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A little change 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Audio problems ''(question from MgM)'' 

message: Why would somebody so obviously talented at making "blue humour" versions of encyclopedia articles like  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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: If people want to have their say, I've nominated  and  for deletion. You can get to the discussion via the template on these pages. GDallimore (Talk) 11:55, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Joke spoken articles 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  "In Progress" section layout 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  My Beaky Buzzard Image won't be created 

message: 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 .  Please see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2007 May 22#Pronunciation of scientific Latin.  Thanks.--Pharos 04:01, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  Latin pronunciation in biology articles  

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title:  The RRS feed thing 

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

text: 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)
thread_title:  "Spoken articles make Wikipedia content available to those who can understand English but cannot read." 

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

text: 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)
thread_title: Please help.

message: 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)
replies: text: "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)
thread_title: India spoken article