User talk:Thechuck2237

Welcome to Wikipedia, Thechuck2237. I get the impression that you have some connection to MacSpeech, based on your edit to iListen.

Wikipedia does not allow promotional material to be used as an article because of the neutral point of view policy. Feel free to correct factual errors in the article, and perhaps to work with other editors to create a balanced article, similar to the article on NaturallySpeaking. You will note, for example, that NaturallySpeaking's article compares the accuracy claimed by the company to the actual accuracy reported by the users. To include the accuracy of iListen in the article, we'll need to find objective reviews of it to cite.

 r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  23:00, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! The new paragraph about accuracy you added is better, but do you have a reference to a published review of iListen to back it up? Pointing to published sources is an important way that we back things up on Wikipedia.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  08:29, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

The comment about accuracy is typical of any speech recognition program, whether it is Dragon, ViaVoice, iListen, Microsoft, etc. With the current state of the technology, it is possible to achieve 99% accuracy no matter which system you use. I have a quote from an end user that was given us totally unsolicited I can post. BTW, is this how I respond to you? I can't seem to find instructions otherwise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Thechuck2237 (talk • contribs)

Yes, this is how you respond. It's useful to sign your response by adding four tildes ( ~ ) at the end, which will be replaced by your username and the time.

The quote from an end user won't work, because it's unverifiable. Published reviews are the way to go.

I'd like to point out that you should try to be as objective as possible, especially since you have a vested interest in one point of view. I know that MacSpeech thrives a lot based on the goodwill of its community of users; you wouldn't want those users to think that you're trying to astroturf on Wikipedia.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  18:13, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Fixed - with links to reviews. But I do protest. The entry for Nuance NaturallySpeaking has no reviews to substantiate its claims (I am happy to add "but such claims of almost perfect accuracy have never been substantiated independently" if that's all you need). In addition, all of my original entries, which were patterned 100% after the NaturallySpeaking entries regarding the program's feature set were also deleted. Why is there a bias towards MacSpeech that is not also being applied with equal vigor to NaturallySpeaking? (We don't even compete with them, since we are Mac only and they are PC only - all I tried to do was emulate what they had, but my entries keep getting deleted). Finally, there is a very biased comment in the NaturallySpeaking entry "iListen is the leading OS X speech recognition program, but it is generally regarded as inferior to NaturallySpeaking," which our end users would argue - and there is not one source cited to back up this claim!

I am just frustrated that I created entries that were no more "promotional" in nature than what already existed for NaturallySpeaking, yet their entry seems to remain unedited, while information we provide of a similar nature continues to be deleted.

Also, why does my entry for MacSpeech keep disappearing, yet an entry for Nuance still exists. I tried to enter an extensive history of MacSpeech (similar to what can be found for Nuance), and it was deleted and redirected to iListen. I then did an abbreviated history. It was also deleted. Thechuck2237 21:15, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I just reviewed the History for this article. I take very strong exception to your use of the word "ludicrous" and ask that you please point out where I specifically mentioned accuracy rates higher than NaturallySpeaking (you said 5 times - I could not find even one example). Not once do I EVER claim ANY speech recognition program has an advantage over any other. Specifically, I have repeatedly said that it can be substantiated by multiple sources that 99% is possible in ALL speech recognition applications currently on the market. Thechuck2237 22:22, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Dragon's article says 95% accuracy, when it comes to what users actually experience, not idealized conditions. It is inconceivable that iListen's speech engine would be so much better than Dragon's that most users would get 99% accuracy; if it were, you'd either port it to Windows and compete with them, or sell the engine to other developers for loads of money, wouldn't you?

I'm sorry that Dragon's article isn't very well cited either. I plan to bring that up as well. However, they do have a reasonably balanced article.

The MacSpeech article has existed in three versions:
 * A poorly-written stub that was going to be deleted out of pure neglect
 * A redirect to iListen (which I replaced the stub with, so it didn't get deleted)
 * An advertisement, posted by you

Isn't the redirect clearly the form it should take, given the options so far?

 r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  07:40, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

It is pretty clear that you favor Dragon NaturallySpeaking for some reason, so I would call your own neutrality on this issue in question. The original material I wrote was patterned after the Dragon material. Regarding accuracy, *I* have dictated every single comment to you, and *I* AM getting 98-99 percent accuracy, so the claims are not far-fetched, whether they come from Nuance or MacSpeech.

Regarding your comment about the MacSpeech article, again, I patterned this after information found in Wikipedia regarding other companies. It was not an advertisement, but a state of fact: here is how MacSpeech came to be and who is responsible for it.

I will admit to being a newbie as a contributor to Wikipedia, but I am NOT a newbie to contributing to publications or editing. I believe you are holding MacSpeech to a standard that is "ludicrous" compared to that of other companies. At this point, since I am a newbie at this, I would like to ask that you either restore the content I wrote and let the people decide (and re-edit), or please tell me how to formally enter a dispute.

It is not my intention to advertise, but to inform. You are keeping Wikipedia readers from reading established, verifiable facts (such as who founded MacSpeech, to name just one among dozens). Thechuck2237 23:38, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

If any company has posted something as self-promotional as what you are continuing to post at MacSpeech, I want to see it so I can remove it. I've replaced the article with a stub consisting of your first paragraph, so that way it does say who founded MacSpeech. My intent was not to remove that fact, it was to remove the lengthy advertisement that followed.

I have used both iListen and NaturallySpeaking. As a Mac user, I wholeheartedly support iListen's goal of bringing effective speech recognition to the Mac. However, I do not support them so much that I want them to break the neutral point of view policy by posting promotional material as Wikipedia articles.

Regarding iListen, I'm glad that you've cited some sources now. I don't understand how the first source backs up your statement: the review you linked to seems to say nothing about 90% accuracy. The iListen article is getting better, and all it needs is verifiable sources standing behind its statements.

I understand that you doubt my neutrality. The answer to this is to request a third opinion, so I'm doing so.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  02:03, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Here's the thing: you say you have used both. Great. If you aren't getting better than 90% accuracy with iListen, then you should contact the company's tech support department. The fact that it can do 99% accuracy (or that NaturallySpeaking can, too) is not a non-neutral statement. It is a fact. It is a verifiable fact.

The problem I have now is that the Dragon NaturallySpeaking entry is practically a quick-start guide for the product. I patterned my iListen entry after that entry. So I feel like MacSpeech - or at least iLIsten - is being singled out with the "watering down" of the article.

Third opinion on iListen
I've added both MacSpeech and iListen articles to my watchlist. The MacSpeech one has been edited to remove unverifiable information and point-of-view. I haven't gone through the iListen one yet, but reading through Wikipedia policies like WP:CORP and WP:NOT (Wikipedia is not an instruction manual). And remember that information you add has to be verifiable through published sources. Fagstein 05:40, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Bias Towards Dragon NaturallySpeaking vs. iListen?
Fagstein said "Wikipedia is not an instruction manual." I appreciate that. Please look at. My original entry was patterned after that entry. All I am asking here is that you do not propagate a double-standard by doing what amounts to censorship of my entries, while allowing statements such as these to remain:

- "Common user profiles" - seems no less advertising focused as my entry. Where is the verification that the people in these areas are actually the users? Why is NaturallySpeaking allowed to tout its target markets but MacSpeech can't.

- "An expert NaturallySpeaking user can expect 98-99% recognition accuracy according to Nuance Communications, but such claims of almost perfect accuracy have never been substantiated independently. " I offered to put exactly the same terminology in my post but told it would not be allowed because it was not independently verified in a published review. I don't see any review sources cited for the NS article.

- "Anecdotal evidence points to accuracy about 95% for most users." Again, where is the evidence, or why am I not allowed to post the same information?

- "Versions and editions: See the article List of Dragon NaturallySpeaking versions and editions for a partial timeline. NaturallySpeaking 8 is released in Standard, Preferred, Professional, Legal, and Medical editions. Standard is a subset of Preferred, Preferred is a subset of Professional, both containing a reduced set of capabilities. Legal and Medical are identical to Professional except they also have additional specialized vocabulary, and thus remain Professional series. Professional costs five times Preferred, containing the additional command abilities known as Text and Graphics, Macro Recorder, Step-by-Step, and Advanced Scripting. Preferred costs two times Standard, containing just the Text and Graphics capability. See the Feature Comparison Matrix for complete details."

Either this is advertising, or what I put in my post was not - you can't have it both ways and remain impartial and fair.

- The next section - down to "Ownership History" reads like an instruction manual or quickstart guide to me. I have no problem with this content being there. What I have a problem with is my entries being deleted when they are similar in nature.

Instead of embracing the spirit of wikipedia to allow its users to decide content, you seem willing to censor my entries while allowing those in the Naturally Speaking article to remain. There is even a [list of commands] that amounts to a Command Reference Guide, which seem to me to be very "instructional" in nature.

I am very frustrated by the inconsistency of your approach to this matter. I patterned my entry regarding iListen on the Dragon NaturallySpeaking article, using it as an outline. Wouldn't you agree it is unfair to censor my entry while allowing the Dragon article to remain unscathed?


 * Thanks for drawing my attention to those problems with the NaturallySpeaking article. The answer to this, however, isn't to allow you to write an equally poor article here. I've removed and rewritten some particularly objectionable parts of the NaturallySpeaking article. The burden isn't entirely on me, though; I wasn't even watching that article until I noticed the problem with the iListen article. In the future, you should bring up such problems on Talk:NaturallySpeaking so that those who edit that article will see it, or fix them yourself if you believe you can do so objectively.


 * I also agree that it would be nice to find a source for 95% accuracy in NaturallySpeaking. Both articles need more sources behind their accuracy. However, it's more urgent that you provide a source, because there is a conflict of interest in the accuracy statistics quoted on iListen that is not apparent on NaturallySpeaking. The accuracy there was clearly not reported by Nuance, because they themselves claim 99% accuracy just like you do. (And I believe that dedicated power users of the software could achieve it in either case, but that's not representative of users as a whole.) Anyway, I have marked the accuracy cited in NaturallySpeaking with the citeneeded template, showing that there is an unverified fact there.


 * The problem with saying "Users report accuracy as high as 90%" is that that statement is non-neutral. As high as 90% and as low as what? You probably wouldn't want to answer that, and the article shouldn't have to. Instead, you could cite one credible reviewer by name, and give the accuracy they mentioned. The review you linked to doesn't mention 90% accuracy at all, though, so I'm wondering what your intent was there. Maybe you intended to link to a different review? Exhortations to contact the company in the "highly unusual" circumstance of low accuracy is also non-neutral; you'll need to find an independent source saying that low accuracy is unusual.


 * I don't have the information to turn that paragraph into an acceptable version (such as by citing a review that is specific about accuracy), so I've removed the paragraph until a verifiable version exists.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  05:35, 3 April 2006 (UTC)