User talk:Jacob J. Walker

Grant Adult Education
A "" template has been added to the article Grant Adult Education, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but the article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice explains why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may contest the proposed deletion by removing the  notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached.

as a minimum, it must have 3rd party sources discussing it in a substantial way DGG 18:27, 24 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I appreciate your feedback, and that you placed this in my talk page. I had another page deleted at one time, without ever realizing it was up for deletion.  In that case, I think it was more legitimate.  In this case, as I have added to the discussion page, I just hadn't had a chance to add the references yet.  I only had the page up for a single day.  I think it is fair to wait at least a week from a page creation till marking it for deletion, to give the original author(s) a chance to fill it in.  --Pordaria 20:36, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Idiocracy
I looked again at your Brawndo edit that I had reverted, and considered reverting my edit. I now understand the purpose of your edit, but as it is phrased currently it still looks to me like advertizing rather than describing a tie-in to the movie. I considered trying to re-cast your wording, but I don't know the subject well enough to do that. If you could re-phrase it in a way that makes it clear you are describing a product that was either derived from something in the movie (or possibly introduced at the same time, using the movie as advertizing) I think it would be a useful contribution to the overall article. Loren.wilton (talk) 09:56, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Message regarding your Spoken Wikipedia contributions
Hi there, Pordaria! Hassocks5489 and I would like to thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia in the form of Spoken Articles; we notice that you have uploaded at least 11 recordings, all related to the Near and Middle East. Hassocks5489 and I are part of the Spoken Wikipedia Project and sometimes undertake reviews of recordings that have been added to the project's listing of unreviewed spoken contributions, and it was in this capacity that we became familiar with your recordings.

Unfortunately, we have some serious concerns with the quality of the recordings and wish to inform you that we propose to remove the recordings from the articles. The articles in question are high-traffic and on sensitive and sometimes controversial topics, and we feel it is crucial that, if there are recordings of these articles, they should be of a higher standard.

On a technical note, the audio level of the recordings needs to be increased; you can analyse this yourself by selecting a portion of the audio in Audacity and choosing "Plot Spectrum" from the "Analyze" menu (other audio editor software will have similar commands). Using this, you can see that the audio level is generally low. Some articles are louder, such as Islamic feminism and History of the Middle East. Generally, all of the recordings suffer from heavy plosives, which you should try to minimise with the use of a pop filter–you can buy one relatively inexpensively or make one yourself. Some of the recordings, such as Ottoman empire (Part 2) and Middle East, exhibit a lot of breath noise, which should ideally be avoided. You may be holding the microphone too close, perhaps you could turn up the input gain instead? Speaking across or to one side of the microphone also helps to minimise plosives and breath noises.

The most concerning elements which contribute to the poor quality are four-fold: Inaccuracy, hesitant reading, lack of GFDL licence statements, and inappropriate introductions. I think it would be very unfair to inform you of this without providing examples, so I will endeavour to highlight just a few examples from various recordings where these issues make themselves evident. I hope you don't mind and I encourage you to view it as a good opportunity to improve, for future recordings, :-)

Inaccuracy:
 * History of Lebanon: 0:34–0:49. Two mis-pronunciations.
 * History of Syria: 1:59–2:03. Pronunciation of Arameans still incorrect after these 4 seconds.
 * History of Jordan: 1:55–2:10. There are several issues with this section, but it includes "uninhabitable" read as "uninhabited".
 * History of the Middle East: 1:51. "Sabaeans" read as "Sabaceans".
 * History of Saudi Arabia: 1:17–1:18. "Contemporaneous" read as "contemporous".  1:28. "Oases" read as "oasisis".

Hesitation: Generally, it sounded like you were recording your first spoken readings of the articles. Even the most experienced reader would have several practice sessions before recording the final result, to reduce hesitation and inaccuracies. A few examples where the unfamiliarity with the articles is more noticeable follows.
 * History of Saudi Arabia: 0:42–0:46. This articles starts with a long pause, a mistake, heavy breathing, and the mis-pronunciation of "subsequent"—all signs of a very first read, unfortunately.
 * History of Jordan: 1:07–1:13. This is a serious error which should not be present in a recording for an encyclopaedia.  1:16–1:19.  A long pause here, with an "uh".  1:36–1:38.  More pauses.  1:55–2:10.  Several pauses, "stopping-and-starting", and an "um".
 * Islamic feminism: In this recording you stop several times to "decipher": 0:26–0:30, 1:28–1:31, 1:34–1:36, 2:03–2:10, 3:01–3:04. Those are just the more obvious examples from the first 3 minutes.
 * History of Lebanon: 0:34–0:49. A lot of stopping and starting here.
 * History of Syria: 1:10–1:14.  More stopping and starting.

Licence statements: As derivatives of the articles being read, it is crucial that the recordings include a GFDL licence statement at the end of the recording. This is not present on any of yours. It's also quite important that the listener is informed of where the article and the recording resides. There is an example of the appropriate introduction at the recording guidelines page of the Project. This has the added benefit of providing consistency in the way that articles are introduced.

Inappropriate introductions: Most of your recordings begin with a "disclaimer," saying that you have little familiarity with some of the languages which feature in pretty much all of the articles you have provided recordings for, and that, on account of this, your pronunciations may be incorrect. We find this unsuitable for an encyclopaedia and would like to suggest that, even without being familiar with the languages, you could research words which appear in the articles or contact native speakers for assistance with pronunciations. In addition to this:
 * History of the Middle East: This begins with "Testing".
 * History of Jordan: Before starting the article and after the introduction, you say "ok".

All of these issues, and some which I haven't mentioned here, are things which are easily fixable and also things which Hassocks and I would both be more than willing to help you with. If you will allow me to simplify, it would seem that each recording simply needs more time: more time spent rehearsing, researching, and recording. The recordings were all uploaded within the same few days; at the risk of sounding trite, the best piece of advice is probably: quality over quantity.

Having said all of that, there is a lack of good Spoken Articles and we need good contributors: we'd be thrilled for you to make more recordings, either re-doing the ones you have already completed or trying other articles, perhaps ones without so many foreign words, :-) You have a nice voice and, like I said, we feel that you just need to spend a little more time on each article, and then you will be uploading good quality that many Wikipedians can enjoy.

We'd like to make sure that we have interpreted this correctly and look forward to your response. If you concur with our reasoning, we would like to remove the recordings from the articles, pending more suitable uploads. Again, thank you for your contributions and hope to see more from you! Cheers, Maedin \talk and  Hassocks  5489 (tickets please!)  16:50, 5 September 2008 (UTC).


 * Hello, I appreciate your feedback, although for the amount of time you spent critiquing my recording, you could have simply fixed many of the issues that you stated. I apologize for not putting the GNU statement in the recording, I must have missed that when I read the instructions. As for the other parts, I made the recording primarily for my own studying of the material, and was gracious to put them on the site.  If others wish to fix the other perceived issues you mentioned, then they are welcome to.  If you do not feel these are worthy of contribution, I will simply stop contributing recordings.  But, I am of the opinion, that a poor quality recording is better than no recording, and that the point of Wikipedia is to have a community that improves upon each others work. --Pordaria (talk) 17:48, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!
MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:30, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Citation Templates






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 * Hi Jacob J. Walker! We're so happy you wanted to play to learn, as a friendly and fun way to get into our community and mission.  I think these links might be helpful to you as you get started.
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