Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Podcasting/Archive 8

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Guidelines for style of podcast articles

I would like to discuss what the standard manual of style is for podcast articles. I'm not sure how this is normally done so I'm just taking a stab at it and see what the response is to my attempt. I'll be basing my manual of style on these articles: The Adventure Zone, Serial (podcast), Welcome to Night Vale, TMRO, and Ear Hustle.

Here's an outline of how I think a podcast article should look:

1. Introduction

   • Short description of the article's highlights
   • The description should include what genre and type of podcast it is
   • Infobox

2. Background

   • History behind the creation of the podcast
   • Associations with networks, collectives, regular guests, other podcasts or other media

3. Format

   • Description of the podcast's various segments
   • Description of the podcast's advertising methods

4. Synopsis

   • Short description of the podcast's topic or a summary of the story's plot

5. Episodes

   • Episode table if many of the episodes are notable

   • Episode Number Overall
   • Episode Number in Season
   • Title
   • Guests
   • Released
   • Duration
   • Notes
   • Rating (?)
   • Short descriptions of episodes (?)

6. Live events

   • List containing each live event or prose if notable enough

7. Reception

   • Reviews, critiques, ratings, and awards

8. Controversies

   • Description of controversies

9. Adaptions

   • Video or book adaptions, etc.

10. See also

    • Hosts
    • Provider, platform, collective, or network
    • Genre of podcast or lists of podcasts in the same category
    • Related podcasts (i.e. podcasts that have collaborated with the subject)

11. Notes
12. References
13. Further reading
14. External links

    • Official website

15. Authority control

    • Links to platforms like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, etc.

16. Categories

TipsyElephant (talk) 18:50, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

I personally based my changes to Welcome to Night Vale on the manual of style for articles on television programs. I think live events and reception should be switched so that its kind of sorted by category. This looks good. Also we should not link to the patreon because that may be considered as advertising. If someone follows the link to the official website they should be able to find the patreon easily enough. starsandwhales (talk) 17:31, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

I'd personally make an effort to show the networks podcasts are a part of, as well as any related podcasts. For instance, with The Adventure Zone, many of the relationships in that show find their groundings in My Brother, My Brother & Me, in Polygon's Besties and YouTube content, and more. In shows like Reply All, it's network, Gimlet, and it's subsequent changes as a result of its acquisition by Spotify, have created many changes for the show in addition to the network as a whole. If we're trying to give a bigger picture into podcasting, providing more of the behind-the-scenes stuff, things that readers will have more trouble finding without a quick google search, should be a part of it. 9:33, 10 December 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gabrishl (talk • contribs)

I've made some corrections based on the responses and I've expanded the contents so it's easier to understand. I'm curious what everyone thinks of the external link to the podcast on itunes/apple podcasts? Should it be <subject name> on Apple Podcasts or <subject name> on iTunes? Also, is it alright to include any location whatsoever or only the major platforms? Similarly what constitutes a major platform (maybe it has to have it's own article)? TipsyElephant (talk) 15:46, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

I've added some external links to a few articles and I'm realizing that it kind of looks ridiculous to add a link to every platform or even the top three or four. So I think we have to have some kind of criteria for which platforms get listed. We can't do the platform's that are notable enough for their own articles because even then we'll have half a dozen or so. We could choose not to include platforms that aren't explicitly dedicated to podcasts. For instance, a lot of music players can play podcasts such as Spotify or Deezer, whereas Stitcher or Player.fm are explicitly dedicated to podcasts. Based on that criteria Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts could go either way because each company has music players, but they have separate apps for podcasts. If we use that criteria though we're still left half a dozen apps including Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Player.fm, Anchor.fm, TuneIn, etc. and I'm not sure why one would be considered more relevant than the other. I'd consider including just Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher because the first two are probably the biggest competitors and Stitcher seems to be the most used independent alternative, but I don't know if that's a good reason or not. Also, what if a podcast isn't on the major platforms? Is it okay to simply include the few locations it is or does that make the formatting inconsistent between articles? TipsyElephant (talk) 16:25, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Revisiting this after looking at the latest collaboration at Draft:Dirty Diana (podcast). Are there any thoughts on moving Synopsis/Plot points in front of the Background and Format sections? This is closer to what the MOS:TV and MOS:FILM layouts follow. The reason I ask is it seems like the first thing a reader will really want to know is what the show is about. Then if it seems interesting, the rest of the article will provide nitty-gritty details. Granted every single MOS page puts in the caveat that exceptions (and common sense) apply, but it seemed worth asking. -2pou (talk) 19:07, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

@2pou: So when I started this discussion I didn't realize you could make subpages and wasn't sure how to create an entire manual of style in a single section. The end result obviously is very lacking and I hadn't written any articles for podcast yet. Now that I've spent some time on looking through articles and creating pages I have new ideas. Also, seeing a different project's manual of style is helpful. Would you be willing to make the official subpage or whatever in the correct location? I'm not exactly sure where it's supposed to be made or if I'm allowed to make it yet, but I'd be willing to start trying to add content to it and then the discussion can move to that article's talk page. If you don't have time could you maybe point me in the right direction for guidelines on how to start MOS pages? TipsyElephant (talk) 02:24, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

@TipsyElephant: I'm not sure the official procedure of creating one. Technically, page creation can be done by simply going to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Podcast (or wahatever title is appropriate), and adding the content. The MOS pages, though, are supposed to be fairly controlled and only updated with demonstrated consensus. The WP:TEAHOUSE is probably your best bet. -2pou (talk) 16:30, 8 February 2021 (UTC)

@2pou: I asked about this at the Teahouse and got this response. I think perhaps we should keep a guide here at the project until it's more official. I'll start a subpage here at the WikiProject Talk page is that's okay and we can improve it until we think it's good enough that it might be worth proposing it again as a MOS article. TipsyElephant (talk) 15:33, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

External links

Hi! I'm coming from TipsyElephant's invitation at the Teahouse. Here's my two cents regarding the external links issue. There are a ton of different podcast providers, none of which are so popular as to warrant special treatment from us. The situation is very similar to one that we already handle: book providers. In that case, {{ISBN|978-0-300-14424-6}} renders as ISBN 978-0-300-14424-6, going to Special:BookSources which I believe is filled out by Wikipedia:BookSources. The design of Special:BookSources is quite a mess, but the general idea I think makes sense. I would very much suggest going down a similar route for podcasts by creating Special:PodcastSources, which will link to all the providers. Setting up a special page isn't something we do every day and will take some work, but it'll be worth it in the long-term because it'll give us a standardized solution to the issue, rather than allowing a bunch of variations to spring up that future editors will have to wrangle into a standardized format. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:14, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

Sdkb, I looked into it a little bit and I'm unsure whether it'd be the appropriate route for podcasts. I looked through quite a few articles on books and it looks like they only ever use the ISBN link in infoboxes and in articles on authors they get listed in the bibliography. We could do something similar by creating a new field in the infobox (I'm not sure what we'd call it) and in articles on podcasters or podcast networks we could do something similar to the bibliographies. My issue is that books have an official ISBN code and are officially published, whereas a podcast is often very informal--sometimes to the point of it just being a person in a closet with a microphone who uploads themselves talking to any platform. Considering how informal it can be and based on the audio format I figured music might be more akin to podcasts (mixtapes seem to be noted on Wikipedia more often than non-published writing). So I looked into how the external links were done for music so I searched through a bunch of articles and found that they tend to not include any links to platforms where you can listen to the music (they do however seem inconsistent on whether they include a link to discogs or allmusic) and as far as I could tell they also don't have a special page for searching on each platform. Would it be ridiculous to just propose that we don't include any external links to any platforms as well? I'd be willing to put in the work of creating a special page, but I want to know if it's worth it first, and the special page for book sources includes everything from online databases and retailers to libraries around the world. Podcasts really only have a single platform type to search. For instance, they're all streaming platforms for podcasts. There are no podcast libraries, podcast retailers, or podcast databases (except for what is stored by the streaming platforms).

Let me know what you think and whether the idea for a special page should go forward or not. If you have other ideas as well then let me know Sdkb. TipsyElephant (talk) 13:46, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

TipsyElephant, hmm, the lack of a centralized identifier is a bit tricky. One possibility might be to use {{Authority control}}, which can give a bunch of links sourced from the centralized database at Wikidata. Looking at an example, 99% Invisible (Q16001236), it appears to have the podcast feed URL, as well as the Apple Podcasts ID. Reply Al (Q20022710) also has iHeartRadio and Spotify. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:35, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

This seems like a really good idea, but I've never used Authority Control and even after messing around with it I can't figure out how to implement it correctly. Would you be willing to do an example for me so I have something to go off of or could you point me in the right direction for learning how to use it? Sdkb TipsyElephant (talk) 23:32, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

TipsyElephant, sure, happy to help with this. So at the most basic level, Authority Control looks at the Wikidata item for a page, and if it has a value for certain properties, such as Library of Congress authority ID (P244), it displays that value.

We'd want to create something like {{Taxon bar}}, which uses a similar format to display taxonomic information, only instead of taxonomic information we'd display Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts, etc. It looks like Taxon bar is coded in a Lua module, which is beyond me, so if it ends up being that complex we'd need to request help. However, I think I'll be able to mock something up in wikicode; let me put that together and I'll share here. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:01, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

Okay, so I have Template:Podcast platform links, which you can test in the page preview of Reply All or another podcast that has Spotify/Apple IDs on Wikidata. If we refined that, we could then start adding it to pages. How does it look? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 00:26, 17 December 2020 (UTC)

I just added it to Reply All as a demo and it looks really good. Thanks for creating this it's really helpful. I don't need to add any fields or anything when I insert it with the visual editor? And if I add links to the Wikidata page they'll show up on the Wikipedia page? What do you think needs to be done to refine it? Sdkb TipsyElephant (talk) 02:38, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

TipsyElephant, yep and yep. To refine it, we need to add other podcasting platforms, and we need to make it so that an error link does not show up for platforms not recorded at Wikidata. There's also formatting tweaks like plainlinks. If some platforms don't have Wikidata properties, we'll have to have those created, which will be a challenge. I'll get to some of the tweaks right now.

One question we have: where should the link at the left go to? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 03:03, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

So basically it looks like the main issue is that there aren't Wikidata properties for most podcasting platforms. So I'd assume the main task would be creating those right? TipsyElephant (talk) 02:58, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

@TipsyElephant: Oops, I initially missed this. Yes, we're going to need to request the creation of those properties. I've added the main podcasting platforms I can find to {{Podcast platform links}}, added Wikidata information for those that have properties, and created one Wikidata property proposal at wikidata:Wikidata:Property proposal/Google Podcasts show ID. Could I ask for assistance in creating the others? Just go to wikidata:Wikidata:Property proposal/Authority control, create new proposals for the links not yet at {{Podcast platform links}}, and copy most of the proposal language from the Google Podcasts one. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 04:52, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd gladly do that. I recently found employment so I don't have as much time to spend on the wikiproject, but once Christmas break starts Thursday I'll definitely have time. I plan on continuing to contribute over the weekends as well. TipsyElephant (talk) 19:22, 19 December 2020 (UTC)

I created proposals for most of the ones that are already on the template, but I couldn't figure out how to make proposals for "Overcast" and "Parcast". Overcast does not appear to have publicly available podcasts without downloading the app or something, and Parcasts does not have any podcasts with pre-existing examples that could be used in place of "The Daily", "This American Life", and "99% Invisible". I'm going to add a few more relatively well known platforms as well over the next few days. Sdkb TipsyElephant (talk) 02:19, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Looks good; thanks! Next step is to wait for the properties to be created, it seems. Regarding "Overcast" and "Parcast", I think we'll be fine for now without them (although I'm sure if their developers found this discussion, they'd be very accommodating haha). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:36, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Hey folks! Coming over from Wikidata. I noticed all the good work with the property proposals − thanks! I’m glad to see Wikidata leveraged for that. Feel free to drop by d:Wikidata:WikiProject Podcasts if you need anything or want to discuss something. Cheers, Jean-Fred (talk) 22:27, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

• Okay, so most of the new properties were just created; I added them to the template, and I think we're ready to start deploying the template to a few live articles. One thing we might want to address is that, because the template relies on {{Navbox}}, it doesn't show up on mobile, which is where it'd be most useful. Is there any way to override the default suppression of navboxes on mobile? {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 02:43, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

I found a recent discussion on the template's talk page about using navboxes in mobile, but it looks like they didn't figure out any solutions. I also came across a couple of forum posts related to it ([1] and [2] or maybe this is a VCS for Wikipedia that I didn't know existed until now). I also came across something weird that looks like they were doing something similar ([3]). I don't know if any of these are helpful, but I don't know enough about Wikipedia yet to know what to do. I have some coding experience and wouldn't mind learning Lua (at a glance it looks like C++ mixed with Ruby, which I've used both before), but it'll probably be a while before I do anything serious with it. Is there anything I can do to help test or improve the template at this point Sdkb? TipsyElephant (talk) 02:34, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

@TipsyElephant: Phabricator tasks often get stuck due to a lack of developer resources. You could try commenting or pinging previous participants to see if that gets things rolling again. Figuring out how to deal with navboxes on mobile is a longstanding issue that I'm sure has been discussed previously. If you're able to successfully address it, that'll be huge, but it'll be a big haul (both in terms of working out technical issues and ascertaining consensus). {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 12:32, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

I found two more platforms, Anchor.fm and Podbay.fm, that host podcasts that we have articles on already, but it doesn't look like we have Wikidata on these podcasts. I'm not quite sure how to do the Wikidata stuff, but if you point me in the right direction I can do the majority of the work. The Anchor.fm podcasts I found are Dissect, Critical Role, and Another Round. The Podbay.fm podcasts I found are The Gist, The Robcast, 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back, and Alt.Latino. Let me know if you think it's even worth adding these platforms and what I should do to go about it. Sdkb TipsyElephant (talk) 21:37, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I was also curious what you thought about adding SoundCloud to the navbox considering so many podcasts are hosted on the platform. Similarly, I was curious what your thoughts are on YouTube because it's one of the only platforms that hosts video podcasts from what I understand. TipsyElephant (talk) 21:42, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

TipsyElephant, I think we should try to be fair and to not unreasonably discriminate for or against any platform, but that doesn't obligate us to include every platform. Our primary obligation is to be useful to readers, and that means not cluttering the template with very rarely used platforms (I'd need to look into things more to see how much the different platforms are actually used).

Regarding video podcasts, I'd expect that they'd include a normal YouTube external link to their channel, so I don't think it's necessary to add YouTube to {{Podcast platform links}}.

In terms of overall next steps, the fact that the template doesn't show up on mobile because it's a navbox is something to address, and it'd be good to get automatic imports of podcasts happening on Wikidata so that the template is filled out when someone adds it to a page. I'd focus more on those things than on making sure every platform anyone might conceivably want is listed. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 23:08, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Audioverse Awards

Thoughts on writing an article on the audioverse awards? Even though things like the Webby awards have categories for it, the audioverse awards are the only real awards for fiction podcasting. Many podcast websites use their awards to advertise. Finding secondary sources on them will be difficult, however. starsandwhales (talk) 23:33, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

There's enough coverage to demonstrate notability, eg 1, 2. With notability established, the audioverse site can be used to populate the details of awards and winners. Richard Nevell (talk) 00:09, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

I wouldn't be confident in those sources. Those aren't articles by Forbes; they're articles by a Forbes contributor, which are generally unreliable, per WP:FORBESCON Vahurzpu (talk) 06:41, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

@Richard Nevell and Vahurzpu: I hope either of these counts for reliable sources. [4], [5] I should mention there are several other podcast awards, however, they tend to have a narrow focus or are more general podcasting though I appreciate the compliment of them being the only real awards - we just cover fiction podcasts. Discover Pods would be my recommendation for general podcasting awards. -Radarforest (talk) 23:04, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

I was trying to get the Draft:IHeartRadio_Podcast_Awards published a while back, but a lot of the coverage is considered WP:ROUTINE, which I didn't realize was a problem until I created drafts for each year's award show and they got rejected for that reason (Draft:2019 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards, Draft:2020 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards, and Draft:2021 iHeartRadio Podcast Awards). One of the problems was also that I was using a Forbes article that got removed for the same reason (I had previously thought that Forbes was generally considered reliable). I'll add the Audioverse Awards to the collaboration of the month table. TipsyElephant (talk) 01:11, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Categories for files

I noticed that we have Category:Podcast logos, but I don't understand the instructions. Are we supposed to add the file to the category like we normally do for an article as well as the non-free logo tag?

I was also curious whether we should make any other categories for files. Perhaps one for images of podcasters or podcatchers?— Preceding unsigned comment added by TipsyElephant (talk • contribs) 16:56, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

@TipsyElephant: You should be able to add like any other category, or use the template, if it is present. I didn't even know about that parameter until you posted here. If you look at this diff Special:Diff/1010494860, I recently changed the categorization method. That file was in the category before and after the change, so it doesn't matter from a technical standpoint. As to whether there are other purposes to having it internal to the template, I don't know. Maybe someone at the Teahouse knows.
The file will have to have the proper template for that to work, though. If it has a different license template, it won't populate by simply adding the |Podcast logos parameter. That's not a problem; it will just need to have the category added in the traditional way (if you want the file to be categorized). As to whether more categories are needed, it's probably up to you if you think there is a good use for it. I've never really understood the categorization system of files, and I'm not very active in File space. That category is pretty small, and I'm sure there are a lot of podcast files out there. Trying to categorize them might be a pain. -2pou (talk) 20:43, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

I was originally planning on making a category for images of podcasters and then realized a lot of images of podcasters (i.e. Adam Curry) are free images and are thus on Wikimedia Commons not Wikipedia. Is it possible to add them to a Wikipedia category anyway? TipsyElephant (talk) 02:03, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't know for sure, but I don't believe so. -2pou (talk) 17:22, 1 April 2021 (UTC)