Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia

Spoken articles as a podcast?

Might it be an idea to have a Wikipedia Spoken article podcast? People could subscribe to it on iTunes and download the latest spoken articles as they become available. It might give the project a lot more attention and get more participants. Richard001 (talk) 10:34, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I think this would need to be hosted on an external webserver since Wikimedia projects can't have mp3s due to copyright/trademark concerns. -SCEhardT 03:17, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

The podcasts could be made available as Vorbis (ogg) and uploaded to Commons and also hosted elsewhere as mp3s. Possibly a website specialising in offering/producing podcasts would be willing to host free. I think it's a great idea; but there is the little issue with reviews. I don't think our spoken articles should go out as a podcast until they're reviewed and . . . well, there's quite a backlog: [1] Maedin\^talk 10:10, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I think a voting process could take care of that, there's enough good ones now to do one a week for quite a while. The only issue I see is setting up an RSS feed, can that be done through Wikipedia? --The_stuart (talk) 16:28, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Whoever put together the RSS feed is my inmortal hero(ine). I am aware of the ogg/mp3 and review issues, but it would be great if they could somehow be downloaded in bulk or turned into a podcast. Muchísimas Gracias!--Mrfoxtalbot (talk) 02:16, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Request to Have This Article Spoken

The article about how to make spoken articles is, itself, not spoken. My mind is blown. Adamlankford (talk) 20:16, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

Spoken articles are largely for people who have difficulty/impossibility reading articles. Such a person would probably have difficulty participating in this project then as that requires reading articles such as this one.AerobicFox (talk) 20:57, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Fixed. Baconpork —Preceding undated comment added 06:08, 23 March 2011 (UTC).

Alt text - a curious omission in the reading guidelines for images

Hi,

Our reading guidelines for images make no mention of alt text. This is a curious omission considering that :

• Wikipedia has a policy page on "alt text".
• Alt text provides alternative descriptions of images in spoken texts.

Would anyone like to comment? AshLin (talk) 07:53, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

That's a very good point! Derfel73 (talk) 11:07, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Pronunciation of Tucson

Hi, I'm not sure whether this is the right place to ask but could anybody upload the pronunciation of Tucson? Thank you and best regards from the German Wikipedia --91.22.251.72 (talk) 12:41, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The C is silent in Tucson. It's pronounced like tooson/tuson. Felipe (talk) 02:21, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I know that and also everybody that is able to read the IPA. But many people don't, that is why I was asking for a sound file. --91.22.217.60 (talk) 09:43, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Your post did not specifically request a recording so I didn't realize that's what you wanted. My mistake. Felipe (talk) 18:34, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Utility / Popularity of Audio Presentations

Is there any way to obtain and assess statistics on the popularity, interest level, or usefulness of audio presentations on Wikipedia articles? What I mean is I'd like to see some numbers regarding hitcounts on articles with audio and the hitcounts on the associated audio file. I don't care about absolute numbers so this could be expressed as a percentage: X percent of visitors to articles with audio go ahead and listen to the audio. Felipe (talk) 21:21, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Canadians and Canada

{{Spoken Wikipedia request|Canadians|Recently GA promoted article that is broad in coverage}}.
Would also like to mention that the Canada (2008) article could use an update since the last FA review (2010). Thank you all Moxy (talk) 08:41, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

API?

Is there a way to find out if an audio version of an article exists (and if so, to get it) through the API?

I'd like to do some development work using it, opening the Spoken Wikipedia through some new outlets.

WBTtheFROG (talk) 00:02, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't know about API.

I think that you need to parse the wikitext in order to find the template "Spoken Wikipedia". E.g. the text of the article Stephens City, Virginia contains the line:

 {{Spoken Wikipedia|Stephens City.ogg|2010-12-07}}

Then the first parameter of this template is the filename of the corresponding audio file at commons. -- Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 10:39, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Article tables

If an article with a table has a spoken version being made, how can the table be read aloud? I was thinking about recording a spoken version of Pillow Pets, which I have heavily expanded on. Thanks, Bulldog edit my talk page da contribs 06:25, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

You can skip table, or you can read only first column (with names). -- Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 14:21, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

New Articles, Feedback Greatly Appreciated

I have done two articles today because I have had a lot of time on my hands. File:Lard 4 30 11.ogg and File:Dreamcast 4 30 11.ogg Afrocatz 02:23, 1 May 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Afrocatz (talk • contribs)

Marble (software)

Marble free KDE route planning software is looking for voice recordings of their spoken commands (in many languages). I bet there are some interested users here. Nemo 22:10, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Ah, thank you for the link. Shall check it out. 24.99.226.8 (talk) 03:33, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Background noise

Hi all. I recently made a recording for Tropical Depression Ten (2005) and I noticed there seems to be a lot of background fuzz. Would this be considered 'a lot'/'too much'? Any ideas on causes/solutions? Thanks in advance! Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 17:48, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't consider that excessive at all. It's not distracting to me at all, and stays fairly constant through the samples I listened to. Noise like that generally comes from less-than-perfect recording equipment and environs. There are tools for removing noise, but I find the cure to be worse than the disease, as it usually causes weird warbles in the desired signal that are even more distracting than the bit of mostly white noise that was removed. Quas NaArt (talk) 08:10, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Great, thanks for the feedback! Arbitrarily0 ^(talk) 21:48, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

All audio articles in one torrent. MP3

Could somebody to gather, convert (to mp3) and prepare (as a torrent) the collection of all audio articles of English Wikipedia? -- Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 14:55, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Done. Partly. I downloaded spoken articles from section "1 Art..." to section "17 Mathematics". The next sections I will make in this year, I hope.

I converted OGG files to MP3, normalized audio level and removed some noise.

So, welcome to download 346 spoken articles in MP3 format (8.05 GB). -- Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 08:48, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Links:

• Spoken Wikipedia 346 // Legit Torrents
• Spoken Wikipedia // isoHunt

Netflix

This article could use it's spoken article file redone, the current one is nearly 6 years old and differs staggeringly from the version used when the spoken file was recorded. This is not my area of interest so I figured I'd bring it here and someone else who love doing this could do it. Thanks. CRRaysHead90 | ^{Another way...} 05:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Portal

I noticed that the German Wikipedia presents their list of Spoken articles as a portal. de:Portal:Gesprochene Wikipedia.

We might generate more interest by converting Wikipedia:Spoken articles into a portal, or creating a separate portal which features the audio. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 02:25, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

This is a late reply, but I think that creating a portal would get the project more exposure and should be seriously considered. CT Cooper · talk 12:36, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

A Project Proposal that Might Be of Interest

Dear Everybody,

I am a Swedish Wikipedian and the last five years I have been an administrator on the Swedish language version of Wikipedia. Recently I put forward a project proposal for a Wikimedia Foundation Fellowship regarding how to make Wikipedia and its sister projects more accessible for people that for different reasons have a hard time reading our material – be it because of dyslexia, visual impairment or blindness, because they are illiterate, because they are children or new to the language etc.

One of the main things that I will look into, of course, is to learn from the existing work on Wikipedia and summarize for example the experiences from this project and the German project Wikipedia:WikiProjekt Gesprochene Wikipedia to create a blueprint for other language versions to follow (if the project proposal is accepted of course). The project is however in no way limited to these specific WikiProjects and what I plan to do is to use a broad holistic approach to find out as many suggestions for further improvements as possible and to outline what is most urgently needed for as many people as possible with the goal of maximizing the project’s impact.

I believe that it is very important to make all of you aware of the project proposal and to give you all a chance to give me inputs also before the final proposal is handed in on the 15th of January. If you think that the project proposal makes sense already and you think that it should take place, be sure to endorse it! You can write comments at the bottom of the project proposal page. However, if you think that it still lacks something fundamental, I would be happy to get your inputs so that I can add it and I would ask you to give ideas for suggestions on my discussion page on svwp (It is perfectly fine to write your suggestions in English there). You can find the proposal here.

Sincerely, Jopparn (talk) 00:56, 9 January 2012 (UTC) addition 00:43, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Foreign words in article?

I didn't get an answer for this question in the reading guidelines talk page, so I will ask here: I was wondering whether to pronounce foreign names in its own language (for example, Madrid or Diego Velázquez) or as I would say it to friends here in California. Personally, I would prefer saying names like that in Spanish, but some readers might not be able to catch the name (or they might want to hear how we pronounce it in English). Rabiddog51sb (talk) 04:35, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Saint Petersburg with foreign words (introduction).

I prefer the variant, when we can here (1) the word in English, (2) the foreign word. See, e.g the intro to the article Saint Petersburg with foreign words. -- Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 09:15, 23 January 2012 (UTC)