Template talk:Spoken Wikipedia

Date format
I'm realizing that this template does not comply with use mdy dates, but I'm not sure how to make it do so. Anyone know? &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 23:40, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Just plopping here for the record, there was additional discussion about this at Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_187. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 05:12, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Problem with Template:start date within this template
I don't know what's going on with all of the reverts to this template, but I just had to perform this edit to fix a problem with start date being used within this template. You can see a similar error at Bidet. I recommend reverting and continuing to test in the sandbox, along with test cases. Pinging and. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:06, 1 December 2020 (UTC)


 * See cmts in holding. says there were 11 usages of start date and those were replaced. Bug is not with the module but with bad article code - intent is to remove any usages of start date in the date parameter. I presume this one was the 19th? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 06:07, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't know what "See cmts in holding" means, but take a look at the test cases and at Bidet. The articles were working (or at least not generating script errors) before the recent changes, I suspect, and now they have big red script errors in them. I think the changes should be reverted until the script errors can be avoided, or all of the affected transclusions can be cleaned up. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:50, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Another option is to make a list of pages in that transclude this template, using Petscan, and then clean up those articles. But please do it quickly; putting big red error messages into article space is a Bad Thing. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:56, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I've added some sanitisation checks to fix the "script error" but that's not the end of the world. The real issue there is " ", which is pure garbage. I didn't write the module (Andrybak did), so I'll let him comment on if he finds this a "bug" worth reverting for, but I personally do not; I have updated the module to suppress the script errors, by adding a sanitisation check to make sure a file object actually exists. So now it'll just show a regular error as expected. If you come across these in the category, you can just cleanup with, for example, Special:Diff/990972071/991673092. It should be a plaintext date, no templates. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 06:57, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * You can say it's garbage, but if it was working before and now it's broken because of something that you have changed, it is your responsibility to fix it, one way or another. That's just basic template editor responsibility. Editors will do dumb and surprising things; you either have to work around that or fix it. We have all been where you are, hit by unexpected GIGO, and we've had to clean up plenty of messes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 07:01, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes, I told you above, I've edited the module to suppress the error by adding a sanitisation check, so they won't appear in the lua script errors cat anymore. If you still come across these let us know, and if you come across articles with the GIGO feel free to fix, but there's nothing the module can do about it to somehow interpret start date. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 07:03, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
 * For the record: after looking into Start date more, I've realized that it generates microformat tags. The documentation for the template Spoken Wikipedia used to recommend using . So I have brought back into the new module. Since it is now on the side of the module, users of the template  don't need to do it manually. —⁠andrybak (talk) 00:40, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * All errors reported in Category:Spoken Wikipedia without date have been fixed. —⁠andrybak (talk) 09:48, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Thank you! I saw that someone had created that tracking category and was hoping it would get tidied up. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:43, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Adding length
Following up from Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_182, the associated phab task has now been resolved, so (I think?) it may now be possible to fetch the duration and make it a part of this template. Courtesy pinging prior participants. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 10:47, 23 December 2020 (UTC)


 * Seems like it isn't deployed yet. We're on 1.36.0-wmf.22, it's due to be deployed in (1.36.0-wmf.25; 2021-01-05), when that hits enwiki I'm not sure. Once it is deployed, I think it's probably a decent idea to replace file size with file length instead, as it's a more useful metric. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:13, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * , the file size is communicated to readers due to possible traffic concerns. —⁠andrybak (talk) 14:20, 23 December 2020 (UTC)
 * But it's not necessarily the size of the file the browser is going to download when playing it. MediaWiki transcodes any supported audio format to Ogg Vorbis and MP3, so e.g. the size of a WAV or FLAC would be very misleading because it's not going to be the size of the file likely to be downloaded when one presses play. Nardog (talk) 21:10, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * wmf.25 is due to be deployed at 7th of January. I suppose the file size of the original file and the file extension could be used with information about how supported the filetype is (caniuse.com) to make an educated guess on the transcode. I think the main issue there is an developer issue, as mobile should not be getting WAV files (due to size).--Snaevar (talk) 01:58, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * And it won't, so long as the device supports playing MP3 or Ogg Vorbis. And the sizes of transcoded variants cannot be accessed via Lua AFAIK. I still think showing the file size is misleading. Nardog (talk) 13:21, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

See testcases. Shall we give it a go? Nardog (talk) 13:21, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Looks good; thanks for implementing! If we run into space concerns, we might want to shorten "1 hour and 47 minutes" to just "1hr 47min" or the like. &#123;{u&#124; Sdkb  }&#125;  talk 23:00, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

New parameter: Link to a Diff
I would expect the template’s text subsequent edits to be a  diff link. Could we implement this? Unfortunately, Module: Spoken Wikipedia is too complicated for me, especially without any source code comments. ‑‑ K (🗪&#8239; | &#8239;✍) 19:54, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

Recommended position within the article
I'd like to raise the question of where we recommend that this template is used in terms of its position within the recorded article. While on desktop the user benefits from the sound icon that appear at the top right of the article (indicating the availability of a spoken/recorded version of same), on mobile there is no such indication or control which allows the recording to play. Furthermore, since the current recommendation is to place the template at the top of the last section of the article (frequently references, external resources, etc.), on mobile the template often located in a collapsible section which is not expanded by default.

I would think that if such a recording is available, it should be made obvious to the user on all platforms, and allow them to use the media control in a way that is embedded/alongside with the text of the article (in reference to the fact that the desktop icon that appears at the top-right of the article goes to the media page rather than the embedded player control). ZNQriGo0GUGMAibZXgBV (talk) 18:00, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Thumbnails clipping outside the box if more than one file is entered
Noticed this problem on African Union using Firefox (unsure if it's broken like this on other browsers). –Vipz (talk) 06:26, 14 May 2023 (UTC)


 * i've made some slight improvements. Its not ideal, but that is because the container for these is always 20em (font relative size) and the players width is defined at a fixed amount of pixels. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:22, 14 May 2023 (UTC)