Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Archive 11

Uploading Difficulties
Hi. My internet connection is really horrible and unable to upload my spoken articles, which are around 90 MB. I record within my browser using Vocaroo which stores them and they're available for easy download in .wav format. I was wondering if someone could upload and add them to articles for me? If it's an inconvenience, never mind and sorry. :) This is an example and early draft I plan to revise. Sesiotrot (talk) 19:03, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Spoken Wikipedia icon browser-dependent?
Hello, I took a stab at recording an audio version of Mantra-Rock Dance with a friend of mine. After I uploaded the file File:Mantra_Rock_Dance.ogg and plugged it into the article, it turned out that the tiny loudspeaker icon linked to the audio file is displayed if the article is opened in Opera or Chrome, but disappears under Safari, Firefox, or IE, regardless of whether I am logged in or not. Has anybody else observed this abnormality? Is there an explanation and, hopefully, a fix for it? Regards, Cinosaur (talk) 13:12, 15 January 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
. 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:

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!   A rbitrarily 0   ( 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!   A rbitrarily 0    ( talk ) 21:48, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Netflix
This article could use its 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.  CRRays Head90  | Another way... 05:45, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Has anyone made any headway on Netflix? Given the length of the article it may be profitable to split into chapters both to keep listening experience interesting and keep the reading quality good. I'd be interested in approaching this article to contribute. Chris W. (talk) 18:12, 17 January 2013 (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 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 · &#32;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)


 * I prefer the variant, when we can hear (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)

Video Wikipedia
Hey, we should create versions of articles in the video format, possibly under the Video: namespace. (The actual video would be stored on YouTube.) Discussions for the video would obviously go under the Video talk: namespace. Is this feasible? 68.173.113.106 (talk) 03:18, 12 February 2012 (UTC)


 * You can discuss it at the page Commons:Video. -- Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 13:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I love that idea, Andrew!! Marmenta (talk) 05:17, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Took a stab at creating an automated podcast feed
You can view the proxy'd version of the podcast here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/SpokenWikipediaPodcast

I created it using Yahoo! Pipes, you can see the pipe here: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=d0aa629e370e6719b16454b892b811ab

It currently does not include articles with recorded versions that are split up in to multiple files (e.g. History of the Earth). It's also restricted by the 30 second time limit Yahoo! Pipes imposes on processing data, so it only gets audio files from the most recently updated articles. -- Scarpy (talk) 23:04, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Scarpy. Hi. I'm marmenta, the reader of "History of The Earth". Is there some way, do you think, that the uncut recording might be posted on the same page as the multiple part one? That might work? I'd be absolutely happy to do that. Marmenta (talk) 05:16, 16 September 2012 ( (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Summit India
Wikipedia Summit India, an event scheduled for January 12 and 13, 2013, involves WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia. —Wavelength (talk) 19:46, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Any userboxes?
I've just signed up and contributed my first article, and I'd like to advertise the project by way of a userbox (I have a... thing... for userboxes.) Anybody designed one yet? Chris W. (talk) 00:15, 18 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Hey Chris, you can check out some of the userbox options for this project by clicking here. Hope that helps you! Welcome to the project! Cognate247 (talk) 00:39, 18 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Cheers! Chris W. (talk) 01:59, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

HI is there any video to learn how to make audio for wiki pages. I have ediited one page and also tried to edit some others. I am learner.

Spoken Wikivoyage
There is a discussion going on at the Wikivoyage sister site about spoken articles at voy:Wikivoyage_talk:Image_policy, if anyone would care to share their experiences from WP --Inas (talk) 22:32, 7 March 2013 (UTC)

better categorization of attributes of the speaker (e.g. age, gender, native language, accent/dialect)
If articles could be filtered by those attributes, it would greatly improve the importance of spoken Wikipedia. Plainly listing the articles is insufficient for the majority of people (i.e. people who don't have dyslexia and/or are blind) because whether or not the text version is preferable over the spoken version depends on the subjective experience, which is influenced only by attributes of the speaker. E.g. simply due to my sexuality, I can pay better attention to female speakers and less attention to male speakers compared to reading text, which is very important to me because I have attention issues. In my native language (German), there are several dialects and I cannot (properly) understand all of them. For example Bavarian, Swiss or Austrian dialects are as understandable to me as Dutch, although it is considered to be the same language, often even if the speaker tries to not let their local dialect influence their speech. Even if not for those major problems, to be able to filter by those attributes would in any case generally improve how easy and/or pleasant it is to listen to the article, hence improve the experience and attract more people towards it. 77.181.213.56 (talk) 08:37, 25 April 2013 (UTC) Btw. here is some improvised bash script to detect sex by the first minute or so. It has issues with noise and microphone hums and speed is slow (2-5 seconds per file on i5-2500), but it works quite well. I tested it on 100 files. 77.181.243.178 (talk) 11:58, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Could someone improve my recording, please?
Hello! I recorded myself reading the article Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771, and I've been editing it. However, I discovered some words that I said weren't really pronounced -- I think -- in a way one could understand them. So I re-recorded, a few days later, the sentences on which those words were included. I've already removed the background noise, but the two recordings overposed sound differently. I mean, there's a sudden change in terms of sound. Do you get me? Well, even if you don't, if you hear it, you'll get me. I didn't want to publish this file, because it's quite uncomfortable to hear... Can anyone recommend someone I could talk to, in order to see if they can uniformise my recording? If it's really unrecoverable, I have another version, but some words are mispronounced... I could also read the whole article again, and then edit everything again, in only one recording, and try to pronounce the words correctly. But it would take another several hours of my time, and I don't really want to do it... And there's the risk that I'll mispronounce some words again, without noticing at the time. So, I'd prefer to ask someone to improve this recording, which is well pronounced, but uncomfortable to hear. Whom can I contact to ask the favour of doing so? Thanks in advance for any reply! -- Sim(ã)o(n)  * Wanna talk? See my  efforts?  10:39, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Possible donation of professional narrator time by audiobook producer
Hi everyone -- I'm posting as a volunteer here, not in my role as a WMF staffer. This is unrelated to any WMF business.

I had a conversation with some people who work at a large provider of audiobooks. They are interested in recording Wikipedia articles with their professional narrators. I'm an audiobook addict myself, and thought this would be great. They need volunteers to help them figure out the details though -- where to put files, license issues, etc... I told them about how some institutions, like the British Museum, have hired "Fellows" from the Wikimedia community to advice and help with that kind of thing.

If anyone is interested in helping them, please let me know. Please email me at [my name]@gmail.com

They weren't ready to announce this publicly yet, so I'm not putting their name here. But I think they'll be happy to announce as soon as they can find someone from the community to be their guide in this unfamiliar space. Zackexley (talk) 19:58, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Albert Bridge
Someone has expressed an interest in speaking and recording the Albert Bridge, London article. Please see Talk:Albert Bridge, London. Simply south...... fighting ovens for just 7 years 09:31, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Use Speech Synthesis To Read All Pages Aloud Automatically
Now that Chrome and Safari (Firefox is on its way, I heard) support the Speech Synthesis part of Web Speech, perhaps a addon/plugin or a simple box can be added to all of the English pages that plays back the text. I am willing to investigate it (starting with attempt to implement in JavaScript in a regular web page), if the project thinks it might play well. PhistucK (talk) 11:28, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Just completed my first recording
It isn't perfect by any means and I'm unfamiliar with audio editing software at the moment, but I'd appreciate any feedback on my recording of our British Empire article. Sorry about my voice, it kind of drones. Here it is. --Andrew 13:19, 7 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I think your recording is just fine, also the sound level is inconsistent. Make sure you never change any settings while recording and manipulate the files only AFTER you have cut together everything. I edited your recording and uploaded it. I did the following:
 * aligned the sound levels (still not perfect, a lot of clipping, I’m also little experienced)
 * removed a ugly „fiep“ at min 44
 * changed from stereo to mono
 * reduced the bitrate (130 kbit/s is far too much for a voice recording in ogg-format)


 * If you have any questions, feel free to ask. --LordOider (talk) 14:11, 12 March 2014 (UTC)  Normal  0      21      false  false  false    DE  X-NONE  X-NONE

Could someone help and/or advise with Jaeger (clothing)?
I may have a go at recording but probably need to do more reading as I am struggling a bit with IPA and how it works. Would somebody be able to take a look at Jaeger and possibly contribute an opinion/recording. I'm British, like the brand, and have always known and heard it pronounced as 'yayger' – I'm not sure if the phonetic rendition as stands matches this so would really welcome help (the article was marked as having multiple issues and I'm working through them). If appropriate, I'd be really grateful to have a speech version on here as it is a tricky one for anyone unfamiliar with the brand. Many thanks for any support you can offer. Also sorry if I've posted request in wrong place, but I couldn't find the right place for IPA general help. Libby norman (talk) 12:55, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

External website that might help this project.
Hi. I just wanted to share something with you that I found this evening while recording a piece of audio in Maltese. It's a website called CuePrompter. Basically, you take your text, load it into the website, and it opens a second window on your browser, fully controllable for speed, forwards, backwards and pause. There is also no character limit on how much text you can load.

This second screen acts as a teleprompter, meaning you don't have to concentrate on using your mouse to scroll through text while reading an article. I thought I'd bring it to your attention in case it's useful to you. The site says it can be used for either commercial or non-commercial purposes, in which case, I think Wikipedia should be ok with it. Have a look and throw some thoughts at me :) Many thanks, CharlieTheCabbie (talk) 22:47, 14 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks Charlie - this is a good resource.   A rbitrarily 0    ( talk ) 01:57, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Ogg vorbis, or not?
Hi there, i was just having a look at doing some recording. WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia says Ogg vorbis "is neither very well supported nor lossless", but then at WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Recording guidelines it says to use Ogg vorbis. So...anyone able to explain what I should be using? hamiltonstone (talk) 01:00, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Ogg Vorbis is the preferred format, see also Audio. Lossless recording produces huge files, which makes streaming impossible for people with a slow internet connection. Also uploading would take very long and the upload limit of currently 100 MB would limit the length of recordings to about 20 minutes. Also spoken articles are typically not edited, so if at all the narrator itself should save lossless versions of it's recordings. Furthermore IMHO the average recording quality is that low, that using a lossless format is absurd. Only the compatibility is still a problem, especially in Apples iWorld AFAIK.
 * Thanks for your note, I'll edit this section on the project page. --LordOider (talk) 11:24, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Lord. hamiltonstone (talk) 11:40, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Mechanical reading of articles.
Hi, Has the mechanical reading of articles been previously discussed? And if not do people think this is worth pursuing? AbhiSuryawanshi (talk) 12:50, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I have tried to search the archives but was unable to find any discussion. There are a lot of archives here which are not sorted. For the automation issue, I think that eventually someone should manually check the archives to see what past discussion exists.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  14:33, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what advantage would be gained by creating audio files of mechanically-read articles. I would guess the more useful things to do would be more on the developer side, such as implementing tools that can generate new audio versions on the fly and optimizing the pages so that screenreader software can easily parse it. I haven't been impressed with the speech synthesis engines I've seen before, though, so there's probably still a good deal of utility to be had by having humans read the articles. 0x0077BE [talk/contrib] 14:47, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes agree human read is best but machine read is better than nothing. I have actually listened to a great deal of machine read text and enjoy it. It would be nice to have the option to have it read on the fly or to download it for those with an intermitent connection Doc James  (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:02, 26 September 2014 (UTC)
 * What my point was was that mechanical text and human-read text should be two separate endeavors, for the most part. One person could feasibly write a program that adds the ability to listen to or download any Wikipedia article you want and accepts various screenreader voice pack formats, etc, and that would cover all of Wikipedia at once in a versatile way. I don't think that should be mixed in with the spoken / audio versions of articles, because it's a different solution to the same problem with its own advantages and disadvantages.


 * If we were to just use existing screenreader software to manually generate the audio versions packaged with articles, that would be the worst of all possible solutions, because it takes everything that's bad about human-read audio files - you can't choose the accent / gender / quality / speed of the voice for yourself, has to be manually updated whenever the article is updated, only operates on a curated set of articles - and everything that's bad about machine-read articles - primarily just that the emphasis and pronunciation are likely to be off, especially with regards to names and non-native sounds.


 * Even as a temporary measure I think it's a bad idea, because there's no way to tell, with the current interface, whether something is a machine-reading of the article or not, and someone generating a lot of low-quality machine-read articles and uploading them could make it very hard to tell which articles still need spoken versions of them. 0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] 19:33, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Have a look at Pediaphon. This service is linked on the German project page of the spoken Wikipedia, might be worth being linked here as well. --LordOider (talk) 19:19, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal
Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:48, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Request for feedback
Hello! I decided I wanted to try my hand at recording an article, and I would like to know what I could do to improve future recordings. I apologize if this is not the correct place to do this, as I am relatively uninitiated, and Wikipedia's somewhat labyrinthine guidelines can be overwhelming. Please let me know if I'm overlooking anything. Sspungy (talk) 02:53, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Listened to it. I think you did a great job. Really high sound quality, very clearly read. Here are my notes:
 * I don't think you needed to read the table of contents, that seems like extraneous information, though I don't think it's particularly bad, either.
 * At 8m18s, the recording volume temporarily increases drastically, for some reason. You may want to re-record that section or just make it consistent with the rest of the recording.
 * It's possible that this could use dynamic range compression. I tried running it on Audacity to see if it sounds better, but I was having some problems with that. Other than the glitch at 8:18, the sound seemed pretty consistent to me, I also listened to it in isolation, so you may want to download a few other articles or some high-quality podcasts and just make sure that it's mastered at approximately the "industry standard" level (i.e. it doesn't sound "too quiet"). 0x0077BE [talk/contrib] 15:05, 2 October 2014 (UTC)


 * You have very good voice. It's pleasant to listen this audio article. Thank you!
 * If someday you will make an audio article for the article Raoul Wallenberg, or any other "Good article", then it will be great! :) -- Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 14:44, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Breakdown by section
I was thinking of taking on the NASA article, per a request on that page, and I notice it's incredibly long. Likely what I'm going to do is read it one section at a time, then stitch those together in the final version. I think I can probably include some sort of chapter-break metadata in the final output file to delineate it by section, but it seems like it would almost be better in general to break up articles by section and have separate files for each section, which are automatically stitched together in software. Even the most stable articles are probably going to see some change here and there over time, and I imagine it would make it easier to update the spoken version of articles if you didn't have to re-record the entire thing every time you make a change.

Of course, the downside is that you could very easily end up with a sort of "voice fragmentation" where an article is read by 10 different people as it gets updated piecemeal, but we could always address that in the review process - i.e. if the change in voice is too disruptive reject the update. 0x0077BE [talk/contrib] 17:56, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
 * As there are hundreds of thousands of interesting articles and only a view hundred of them has been read aloud, I think re-recording isn't a issue. Also the spoken Wikipedia doesn't and can't claim being up to date. However splitting long recordings is recommendable for several reasons.
 * Chapters would be great, but as far as I know neither common media players nor the Wikimedia software could handle/display this. --LordOider (talk) 22:15, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Mom & Me & Mom
Hello, thanks to User:Sspungy for recording this article; it was a very cool thing to do. However, I need to bring to your attention that you've mispronounced Maya Angelou's name. Please refer to the first sentence in her bio article; it demonstrates the correct way, along with references supporting it. I have no idea how you'd go about fixing it, but I thought you'd like to know. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 00:12, 6 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Agh, I was worried I would end up doing something silly like that. I'll go back and re-record the whole thing, it's honestly not a problem for me. I'm pretty embarassed about mispronunciations of proper nouns in general, so I prefer someone tell me if I did something like that rather than letting it slide.


 * Also, I recently tried to provide a spoken word version of another recently featured article, Meerkat Manor, and I'm once again deathly worried about mispronunciations (despite having to pause the recording to open a new tab to consult Merriam-Webster every 30 seconds). If anyone happens to have the time and patience, I'd appreciate feedback there as well, as I have no issue with doing a full re-recording. I know it's not exactly a perfect solution, as the featured article status has already come and gone.


 * I'll be sure to keep all of this in mind when I try recording another article.
 * Sspungy (talk) 04:12, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I think it's absolutely exaggerated and needless to re-record a whole article, just because of the wrong pronunciation of a name mention two times. If at all, re-record the two sentences containing the name and cut them in your existing recording. If they sound slightly different because your setting has changed, that would be bearable.
 * You are neither a professional speaker, nor there is any review process here, so mistakes are most likely to be more rule than exception. --LordOider (talk) 22:51, 7 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I was hoping, when I brought it to your attention, that there was some way to slice the correct pronunciation into the recording. Angelou's name is mentioned more than two times in this article; it's mentioned several times.  The name of a book's author and the central figure in it (since it's an autobiography) is important to pronounce correctly.  Perhaps what you can do next time is get feedback, if possible, from an article's main editor.  If I knew of your intention to record the article, I probably would've warned you about it, since it's a mistake many people make--even President Obama when he presented Angelou the Presidential Medal of Freedom! ;) Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 06:06, 8 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Oh sorry, I searched the article for her full name. Her last name appears so often, it might be less work re-recording the whole article. --LordOider (talk) 11:41, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Infoboxes, units
I took a crack at File:En-Deepwater_Horizon-article.ogg, and while I was doing so, I noticed that while in the article all units are given first in imperial units, then, parenthetically, in metric units; it may be just because I am, admittedly, not particularly good at this (one reason I'm doing it is to get better at this sort of thing), but I found that when speaking the article, giving both sets of units really disturbed the flow of the article, so I just left out all the metric ones. What do people think about this unit situation? In the future, should I keep in the secondary units even at the cost of the flow of the article?

Another issue I have is with infoboxes and other tabular information. I included the infobox on Deepwater Horizon, but I don't know that it's adding anything to the spoken version of the article. I'm planning on re-mastering it anyway (the speech volume leveling I used added more distortion than I originally thought), and I'm considering either clipping out the infobox entirely or at least moving it to the end of the article. For small infoboxes with sort of useful information (like infoboxes on person articles), I can see a case for inclusion, but for things that are essentially long tables of numbers, I think it might be worthwhile to advise against their inclusion. 0x0077BE [talk/contrib] 14:19, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
 * IMHO infoboxes, same as tables and diagrams, are more a visual thing, where you can quickly find information. Nothing which makes sense to be read aloud. --LordOider (talk) 22:12, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

Request for feedback
I've already gotten some preliminary feedback from on my first read article, Deepwater Horizon (File:En-Deepwater Horizon-article.ogg), and I agree that in that one I read too fast. I've tried out another one Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties (File:En-Fuck Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties-article.oga) and tried to read slower this time. I'm trying to get better at producing spoken content, so any feedback on how I could improve would be helpful. Note: As should be obvious, the word "Fuck" is used many times in the second article, so presumably don't listen to it if that bothers you. Thanks. 0x0077BE [talk/contrib] 19:22, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I should note, I'm especially interested in feedback about the speed issue. I listen to podcasts and audiobooks usually at 3x speed, and when I try to listen to professionally produced content at 1x speed it all seems intolerably slow to me, so after LordOider's comment that I was speaking very fast, I just shot for "intolerably slow". Given that my subjective experience with this sort of thing is all thrown off, that's probably where I'm least able to judge myself. 0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] 14:16, 3 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Don't set a high value on my feedback, as I'm not a native speaker. But listening at 3x speed surely isn't normal (my pod catcher only supports 1.5x and 2x playback, what is very fast). I think your brain works to fast, you should underclock it (also saves energy) ;-). --LordOider (talk) 22:27, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

RfC on Template:Infobox person
This message is to notify you that there is an RfC ongoing on whether to add pronunciation info to, a discussion which may be relevant to this WikiProject, particularly the Pronunciation Task force. Your comments on the matter are appreciated. The discussion can be found here. Thanks! 0x0077BE ( talk ·  contrib ) 17:31, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

Feedback on recording of lead section of Lynching of Jesse Washington
See. I know about the required prefixes and suffixes for a 'true', licensed recording; I just wanted some feedback on the speech and quality thereof before I jump in and do the whole article (or maybe a different one). ⁓ Hello  71  22:35, 14 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't know what you mean by the required prefixes and suffixes. There's a distracting high-frequency ringing in the recording. You may want to try to filter that out if possible. I also tend to remove all breathing and mouth sounds in my own recordings, but I don't know that that's a requirement for a high-quality recording, per se. There are also a few little sounds here and there that sound like you've bumped the mic, so I'd recommend cutting those out as well. 0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 17:35, 16 November 2014 (UTC)

an evening of recording at the Science Museum (London)
Wikimedia UK is organising an event at which members of the public can record themselves reading Wikipedia articles. Our volunteers will help them prepare on the evening itself; we anticipate uploading the files over the following days. The event is part of our participation in the Science Museum's monthly Late, when the building is full of thousands of young adults (mostly 22-35) "drinking and thinking" and participating in a range of activities from serious to playful. November 26 is about the Information Age, tied into the museum's new gallery of that name, and WMUK will be running several events around that theme.

Does anyone know of a previous event like this, when members of the public were shown how to record themselves for Wikipedia? We'd appreciate any advice. And is anyone reading this going to be in London at the end of November? We'd love your help. We're having a briefing session at our office on the previous Wednesday, November 19, from 6-7pm; participation on the day itself will be from 6-10pm. Please sign up here if you can help. More information about the Science Museum's Late events in general is on their website here. Many thanks. Roberta Wedge (WMUK) (talk) 11:09, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Hello, Wikimedia NYC organized an event like this at a library. was the lead organizer and he asked people in the library who were not Wikipedians to make recordings for Wikipedia. This particular library served people speaking many languages, and they read many language articles.
 * Some problems which we faced were as follows:
 * We had an excellent recording studio but even though the equipment seemed easy to use, everything was troublesome in practice. We had problems physically manipulating the microphone, making people comfortable either standing or sitting, putting the text in front of their eyes to read, and making a welcoming space. We did not anticipate this being a problem at all, but to read, people need to be comfortable and making people comfortable is not easy and cannot be rushed.
 * Wikipedia articles are very long and it can take 20-40 minutes to read one. We just had people read article introductions rather than entire articles. The current audio system encourages people to make one long recording of one entire article, and this is not practical to make or to use.
 * We were confused about copyright and uploading. We thought that the person speaking should own the copyright, but had trouble also having these people create Wikimedia accounts then upload their files. We were not prepared to coach them on copyright, ownership, and the meaning of having a Wikipedia account.
 * We were not prepared to follow up with good participants who wanted follow up because we treated this as a casual event where people could have a quick impact.
 * Abhishek has thought through this a lot. Consider contacting him.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  16:39, 6 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you so much for that! We are looking for a lead volunteer, and I will ask that person to liaise with . We'll learn from your experience.
 * More comments from other people very welcome too. Roberta Wedge (WMUK) (talk) 17:01, 6 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Regarding the copyright issue, I thought this through a while back when I had a friend from Australia record the pronunciation of a town he used to live in. He didn't want to associate his voice with his online identity and didn't want any online connection to his real name. I think if you have the participants release the recordings under the proper license verbally as part of the recording, that would probably pass muster with OTRS, so you could upload the files centrally. Something like, "This recording by  is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 3.0 License." You can probably prepare a little blurb for multi-licensing as well, in the event that they don't want to say their names. Also, you can cut the permissions section out of the file (and I'd recommend doing that, since it's boring to listen to) and send that to OTRS along with the link to the file. They can verify that the voice is the same and that it's a valid release.


 * Also, I have to echo 's sentiments about the difficulty of such a thing. Generally you want to pick articles that are going to be stable for a while, which means the best choices are Good Article and Featured Article-class articles, but for most subjects, anything C-class or better is going to be long, sometimes upwards of an hour after editing. Even for relatively short articles, as someone not very experienced with recording, I find that it takes 2-3x as long to read the articles than the final version, before editing. I'm not sure how good of throughput you are going to get or how fun this would be for people. You'll probably want to go through the list of good and featured articles and find some short and medium length ones.


 * Another thing to consider is that one really short, easy thing to record is spoken pronunciations. See the Pronunciation Task force. Unfortunately, Category:Requests_for_audio_pronunciation (English) is woefully under-populated (I started populating it by hand, but I think that integrating it into is a better way to go), but you can usually find a LOT of stuff that needs audio pronunciation by seeing what's transcluding IPAc-en, IPA-en or respell. You could probably generate long lists of these and print them out for volunteers, who could just read words and names individually until they decided to stop - which you can't really do when reading an article, since half an article isn't much better than no article.  0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] 19:03, 6 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Really helpful, thank you. We were imagining selecting articles according to various priorities: FA or GAs; science or London subjects. And we were thinking of asking participants to read only the lede, so I'm concerned at the statement that anything less than the full article is not of much use. We have only one recording space, and we want to give as many people as possible the chance to experience what contributing can mean. So it's fair to say that the emphasis of the evening is on the process rather than the product, hoping that it will stimulate interest in at least some of the participants to come to one of our follow-on events or to get involved with Wiki projects on their own. But we don't want to set out to create recordings that are unusable (or in that lovely Japanese back-translation, unuseful). Is a stand-alone lede an unwelcome addition to the project? Roberta Wedge (WMUK) (talk) 14:35, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
 * If the software were able to distinguish between partial and complete article readings, reading just the lead wouldn't be half as bad, but as it is now I think you end up with people thinking they're going to hear the entire article and shocked at the length. I think that if you do just have them read the lead, the best thing to do would be to tag the talk page with . That way people looking to record articles won't see that a given FA or GA has already been recorded and move on. I always worry about this because it's very hard to actually quickly assess the quality of a spoken article. If you tag it with the request, then at least people know that it needs to be replaced. Of course, this is another problem with this process, which is that I imagine that people get discouraged when their contributions are replaced or removed, and by recording just the lead, you're putting up something inherently ephemeral. Unfortunately/luckily, this isn't a hugely active project, so I would be surprised if the recordings were replaced with full versions quickly, but it's something to consider.


 * Again, I will come back to the idea of having them read single-word or single-name pronunciations - that's a contribution that's likely to last and it's easy to do a bunch of them very quickly and have a high turnover on the equipment. From a cursory look, I see that Alan Turing, Bletchley Park, Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction, Isaac Newton and Paul Dirac all don't have pronunciations on their articles. You can compile a list yourself or have some laptops set up to have people learn the whole process - navigating categories to find things that need pronunciation, making the list themselves, recording it and, depending on your setup, uploading. I imagine it would be exciting for someone to know that their voice is the exemplary pronunciation of Alan Turing's name, for example. 0x0077BE  [talk/contrib] 17:54, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I like the idea of this event, here is what I'd like to add:
 * What's about letting one article been read by several readers? E.g. with one section per person.
 * Intros only have been read before, see File:Bird (Intro).ogg. As proper file names I'd suggest: En-Sample_lemma_(Intro)-article.ogg
 * Read articles could also be uploaded in multiple parts. So if someone likes to record the rest of a article, he could leave the intro and add the rest as an additional part.
 * Before you start producing and uploading possibly many recordings, please make sure you're familiar with the guidelines (ogg quality, filename, uploading template etc.)
 * I hope this event will be a great experience for many visitors, LordOider (talk) 18:43, 7 November 2014 (UTC).


 * Thank you for everyone's comments, there is a lot to think about here. I will be the lead volunteer for this part of the event.


 * After some discussion about the above, we are currently thinking that it would be best not to be uploading recordings on the evening itself. Although this has significant disadvantages, in that it would be nice for potential new contributors to see the entire process and see that they can do it themselves... unfortunately it is likely that we will have relatively limited time per visitor and therefore it seems unlikely to be possible to sort out the encoding into ogg format, doing any necessary audio editing, uploading and arranging licensing and so on. We are also in the position where none of us have any experience in this process at all ... Roberta please correct me if I'm wrong ... the only experience people have is in using the sound recorder to create an initial sound file. Which of course is only the first step.


 * So what I envisage for now is that the event will focus on doing that one step only, we will ask each event visitor to start their reading using the verbal license declaration suggested above by 0x0077BE, we will make a note of the event visitor's email address and which item they read. Then at the end of the night we go away with a big set of recordings and then someone will do the work of cleaning them up with regard to audio, converting them to an appropriate format, giving appropriate filenames, uploading them, cutting out the licensing declaration and sending it to OTRS. And then email the event visitor telling them their contribution is "live" and providing any other encouragement and followup we need to do. (For example, encouraging them to create Wikipedia accounts, which is not something we will be talking them through in this particular part of the event.)


 * User:0x0077BE, please could you clarify what you mean by "a little blurb for multi-licensing as well, in the event that they don't want to say their names" and how this could work? Arthur goes shopping (talk) 18:15, 21 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Sure thing . The text is going to be under CC-BY-SA 3.0, but presumably if you don't want your name or even a fake name given, it would be hard to fulfill the BY requirement - though, of course, I am not a lawyer. Either way, I was thinking you could do like I frequently hear at the end of audiobooks, "Text is licensed under creative commons sharealike attribution 3.0, audio is released under insert license here" where insert license here would be something like CC-SA, CC-0, CC-BY, etc - whatever the author wants. My understanding per WP:DUAL is that this would allow you to release your own contribution to the project under a license other than CC-BY-SA, though I am not a lawyer so I don't really know how the share-alike terms of CC-BY-SA would interact with releasing the audio contributions under a license that does not include SA, so to be on the safe side you may want to just offer them CC-SA and CC-BY-SA.


 * Best of luck with the event, I hope everything goes well. I'm in the US but if you need any help with the audio software setup or the editing I don't mind helping out. Depending on how the timing works out, I can also try and be available to help out over TeamViewer or some other screen-sharing software as a technology support backstop - though if you're using software I'm not familiar with, I may not have any significant advantage there. Either way, feel free to send me an e-mail and I can give you my proper contact info off-wiki if you think that would be helpful. 0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 18:47, 21 November 2014 (UTC)

New taskforce: Voice introductions / voice samples?
I recently learned of the Wiki Voice Introduction Project, and was interested to participate, but it's not clear to me at all how to go about that, and it seems like the whole thing is a bit disorganized. I brought this up to the project's originator on his talk page, but he does not seem interested in engaging on it. As it is, I'd been thinking of doing something similar for a while - asking people to pronounce their own voice or give a small voice sample for their articles - but I'm kinda hampered by a number of factors tied in with the somewhat informal nature of this project (and the fact that it seems to be the sole domain of its creator).

Apparently is not amenable to merging WP:WikiVIP into a taskforce of this project, or into a WikiProject of its own, but I think that we should have a voice introduction taskforce here on Spoken Wikipedia - it dovetails nicely with the mission of the Pronunciation taskforce and it would certainly be spoken content. While I'd obviously prefer a merge since the new taskforce would serve substantially the same function, there's no rule against having overlapping scope (as is evident by the fact that articles aren't uniquely the domain of exactly one WikiProject). What do people think of adding a new taskforce? Would it be the Voice Introduction Taskforce or the Voice Sample Taskforce? 0x0077BE ( talk ·  contrib ) 14:28, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * As I've noted in reply to you on my talk page, you've made a number of false assumptions about how WikiVIP works; some repeated here. You've also made no attempt to correct that. You go about participating by recording the voices of people who have Wikipedia articles about them, and uploading them to Commons. If that's not as clear to you from what's written at WP:WikiVIP to you, as it has been to the various other people who have contributed, please feel free to make or propose changes to that page. Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:39, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * You've only specified one "false assumption", which is that I believe the project is moribund. I've made multiple, specific requests for information from you, and your response has been, essentially, "Here's a quarter, try and buy yourself a clue, kiddo." Please take a look at this WikiProject - see how it's organized, has people participating, how the instructions for participation are on-wiki? See how it utilizes the infrastructure of WikiProjects? See how there are clear guidelines about nomenclature, quality, etc? As it is, one thing I'd like to do is start to help build all this infrastructure, which is why I reached out to you in the first place, and why I'm proposing here that a task force be added here, with or without your support.
 * My opinion is that this is best handled as a WikiProject or as part of a larger one, and frankly I think it's such a niche area that fits entirely within the scope of this WikiProject that a taskforce makes perfect sense. If you had almost any infrastructure supporting this, I'd be pushing harder over there, but at the moment there's really not much at all that would need to be merged. There's an off-wiki blog post explaining the concept (why?), a dead link to a non-existent commons page, and an incomplete list of people with WikiVIP intros. Feel free to try to enumerate these false assumptions, or make a case for why slapping up a half-assed page in the Wikipedia namespace gives you an unlimited future interest in the concept of voice introductions. As it is, I don't think there'd be a huge duplication of effort if we forked, though I'd obviously be happier with a merge. 0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 15:01, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The phrase I used was "You're making many assumptions which are false; not least that...". Your assumption that the project is "moribund" is a further example. If you found a dead link, why didn't you fix, or report it, before now? Andy Mabbett ( Pigsonthewing ); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:16, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Frankly, because I think the whole project is extremely poorly executed. Either way, the question here is whether or not we should start a Voice Sample or Voice Introduction task force here on WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia, I can't imagine that the idea will be controversial. If you'd like to merge WikiVIP into that task force, I'd be happy to do so. 0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 16:26, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I think this discussion likely should have taken place on your talk page, since it is not relevant to this proposal and is not of general interest. I'm going to collapse it so that discussion about the actual proposal is not sidetracked by a personal conversation between us. 0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 16:43, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Just passing by and I have to say to User:0x0077BE that you start out by biting an experienced wikipedian on a project page, then when he explains himself you go off in a huff and hat the conversation, you are not impressing anyone here.  If you can't read directions and you can't ask questions nicely without attacking someone, you have a lot to learn.  Just saying...  Montanabw (talk)  17:33, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I first brought this to Andy on his talk page both nicely and excited to participate in the project and was given an extremely vague response to my specific questions. I followed up and was ignored, then followed up again, given the same brush-off, and when I asked again for specifics, I was ignored. I brought it here because I think this is the right place for a voice introduction task force, irrespective of what happens at WP:WikiVIP. I hatted the conversation because it's effectively a back-and-forth between Andy and I about, apparently, our conduct, and will serve as a wall of text to prevent anyone new from getting involved in the discussion of a voice sample project here.
 * It's also absurdly patronizing and disingenuous to say that I "can't read directions". Obviously I know how to create voice introductions - I've already requested and added one. Andy is unfairly conflating participation with blindly submitting his form of voice introduction. I'd like to participate in other ways, such as organizing a better template so that when I request audio files, I'm not pointing people at an increasingly out-of-date blog entry. I'd like to suggest utilizing existing WikiProject infrastructure for these sorts of things. I'm not interested in doing a lot of work that will result in low-quality submissions or submissions that will eventually have to be re-done. This was not some attempt to lure Andy into responding to me, that is inviting unnecessary conflict. This suggestion need have no bearing on his project if he doesn't want it to. 0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 17:46, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Whatev. I've found Andy is perfectly reasonable when asked with respect.  I didn't care for your "not amenable" comment above.  Focus on the issue.   Montanabw (talk)  18:03, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I have also mostly found him reasonable, which is why I find his reactions to me deeply puzzling. I'm not sure how it's so horrible to say he's not amenable. He has explicitly said he doesn't want the content merged, and I personally don't care about merging it. I only mentioned it because it's relevant to the issue at hand. Some people may feel that a merge is better than a fork, I'm just making the point that a merge may be met with resistance from the only person I've seen as an editor on that page, and that a fork should not be a problem. 0x0077BE ( talk ·  contrib ) 12:17 pm, Today (UTC−6)

WikiProject X is live!


Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Accents
I'm a little concerned about spoken articles being removed because the accent used is a little difficult to understand to American and British ears. Recently a file was removed after a lengthy discussion. While many problems with the file were brought up, the issue with the accent was a recurring theme. Which accents are acceptable and who gets to decide? It concerns me as this decision may set a precedent and increases Wikipedia's systemic bias.

A related but lesser issue is that some of the complaints were around the use of auto-tune and other effects on the voice. I've noticed a number of South Asian audio productions using these effects to make boring speeches and advertising more interesting. If this is seriously a problem for listeners then perhaps that should be explicitly spelt out on the project page so editors don't waste time making files that will then be deleted. Haminoon (talk) 05:58, 31 January 2015 (UTC)
 * The file is still online: File:Bhutanese Passport-1.ogg. I think this is a very special and unique example and there is no need for a general discussion. --LordOider (talk) 13:32, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * The file has been removed from the article. You don't think other files will be removed because of the accent now? Haminoon (talk) 18:29, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * No, I neither think nor hope so. In that case it's a combination of a very strong accent and a strange synthetic distortion of the narrators voice. And I'm pretty sure, if there hadn't been that little YouTube/4chan affair, nobody would ever had complaint. E.g. my oddly pronounced reading of Oktoberfest had not been removed jet.
 * If you really think it's necessary, you've my support adding two points to the guidelines:
 * 1) Everyone is welcome who wishes to honour a work. But the readings will not be judged. - inspired by the Librivox mentality (see FAQ)
 * 2) No sound modification, except of noise reduction.
 * --LordOider (talk) 23:05, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Main_Page Podcast
Does anyone know of any projects to make an audio version of the English Wikipedia Main_Page?

I'm thinking of a short podcast that read the various sections (Featured articles, In the news, etc.). It would be a timely and interesting look into a constantly rotating slice of Wikipedia. Something like a "Today in Wikipedia" news-ish type broadcast.

Ckoerner (talk) 14:46, 18 February 2015 (UTC)
 * Nice idea, but I can't image, something like that would be attractive. Neither to listen, nor to speak. The Main Page has a compact structured form and lives from it's links to further information. --LordOider (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 21:17, 21 February 2015 (UTC)


 * It could be nice to have one or two examples of what the Main Page sounds like, but as mentioned above, it would require some intense involvement to even come close to having them all. – Philosopher Let us reason together. 02:37, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

A wikipedia page in no longer going to be read aloud and recorded for this project. Should your notice be removed from the page?
I am working on editing a wikipedia page, LibriVox, which has a banner showing it a part of this Spoken Wikipedia project. Years ago someone was going to record a reading of the page, but that person seems to be gone. Currently I don't think anyone is intending to read and submit a recording for this page. Does this mean the notification label on the LibriVox page, notification of your project, should be removed? If so, how? Thanks for your help, newbie TimoleonWash (talk) 12:56, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
 * Looks to me like there's already a spoken wikipedia article on the topic, though it may need updating. Either way, I'll remove the "in progress" notification. 0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 12:34, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Unsure how to proceed with a semi-protected article
I just finished a recording of Elizabeth I of England, but her article has semi-protected status. This is my first time actually trying to do anything on Wikipedia, and I just want to make sure I'm going about this the right way. I went ahead and posted a request for an edit on the talk page for someone to add my stuff to the external links. So hopefully that will happen. [Edit: Amazingly, that's already happened! Hoorray!] But where, specifically, do I paste the template for the top of the talk page? At the very top? And what if I have a multi-part recording?

Another thing-- should I remove the in-progress notification I posted on the talk page? (Also... how do I do that?) I may have been a little over-zealous, I did the whole thing today!

I'd appreciate any help you can give! Thanks!

Lily5lace (talk) 22:15, 20 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I've added it to the article. You don't have to worry much about semi-protection, it only prevents IP editors and accounts that are less than 4 days old and have less than 10 edits from editing, and you are well on your way over that hurdle. I'm not sure about the rest of the spoken word stuff, I'll leave that for someone else to answer. Cannolis (talk) 23:12, 20 June 2015 (UTC)

___________________

Hi - Batwoodman here. I'm having a similar problem. I've uploaded the three parts of my recording on The Beatles and can't seem to get it on either the External Links or the Talk page, as the "Add" instructions suggest. The whole uploading system is VERY confusing. I just want it to be available on a "listen to this article" icon at the top of the page... https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Beatles,_Part_1.ogg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Beatles,_Part_2.ogg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Beatles_-_Part_3.ogg Batwoodman (talk) 00:50, 4 July 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Batwoodman (talk • contribs) 21:18, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

Hindi listed at Requested moves
A requested move discussion has been initiated for Hindi to be moved to Modern Standard Hindi. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 02:29, 16 September 2015 (UTC)
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WP:SPEAK talk page banners nominated for deletion
Several WP:SPEAK talk page banners have been nominated for deletion here and here. Alakzi (talk) 00:48, 15 September 2015 (UTC)
 * This discussion has been relisted, your input is requested [|here]. Primefac (talk) 19:41, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

90377 Sedna listed at Requested moves
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Because you are listed as one of minor planet Sedna's wikiprojects
Minor planet 90377 Sedna > Sedna (minor planet) discussion taking place at Talk:90377_Sedna. Please join in if it catches your fancy. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:36, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Mercury (planet) listed at Requested moves
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Totteridge and Whetstone
I don't know why it took eight years to notice but I have removed the Spoken Wikipedia from Totteridge and Whetstone tube station because I noticed Whetstone was pronounced wrong. It should be pronounced as "wet stone", not "way stone". Can someone please come up with a more correct recording? Difficultly north (talk) Simply south alt. 11:22, 2 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Further to this, I have nominated said sound file for deletion. Please see Files_for_deletion/2015_August_2. Simply south ...... time, deparment skies for just 9 years 17:07, 2 August 2015 (UTC)
 * And it has now been deleted. Simply south ...... time, deparment skies for just 9 years 18:39, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
 * It's not listed yet as a recording-in-progress, because I technically haven't started it, but this seems like a simple enough short first project. I'll try to record it some time within the week, since it's been waiting a while to be corrected. Exit Pursued by Bear (talk) 16:25, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Alex Harris listed at Requested moves
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Satoru Iwata
I recently uploaded. I know it's not great. I don't really have time to clean it up, but I figured that it's better up in a crappy version than left on my computer to rot until I never get around to fixing it. I'd love if someone else could do some cleanup, but I'll also be doing more of these, what other things can I do in the future to make these better? Also, if you could reply on my talk page, that would be helpful. McKay (talk) 06:26, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Upload link changed
The commons upload page has changed. I eventually figured out how to upload it, but perhaps the upload instructions should be amended? McKay (talk) 04:36, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Choosing an article
Is there any list of requested spoken articles, or any way of prioritizing which should be recorded? I would love to be a part of this project and was considering starting with the Music Therapy article simply because it's a special interest of mine, but other than that I don't really know how articles should be chosen for this project. By request, by significance, by simply choosing something we know we'll get done? Exit Pursued by Bear (talk) 04:09, 28 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm also curious about prioritizing. Of the mountain of unrecorded articles, I'd prefer to record those that are most likely to be listened to.  That wouldn't necessarily track the number of page views of the written article.  Is there a way to determine which existing recordings have been downloaded (and therefore presumably listened to) most often?  That would give some idea about the type of article that's most in demand in this regard. JamesMLane t c 22:39, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

Mercury (planet) listed at Requested moves
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Wikispeech
I wanted to give notice of an experimental Wikispeech project which is in development as described on its page.

The project aims to provide text to voice service for any wiki with the installed MediaWiki extension. If it becomes operational, and if English Wikipedia accepts its installation, then that could mean live generation of audio readings for every Wikipedia article.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  18:05, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

Project in Portuguese
Hello all! Greetings from Brazil. Let me just start saying I am very impressed by the incredible work around Spoken Wikipedia in English and very sad by such an initiative not being launched yet in Portuguese yet. I am a professor, and I have been approached by students with visual impairments who have said to encounter real difficulties to understand mathematical and statistical formulas in readings I request. Apparently, screen readers do a poor job with formulas. I am considering audiodescription, and I thought instead of doing it exclusively with the formula of interest I could actually work on the entire Wikipedia entry. This relates to an ongoing initiative I am part of that intends to improve content on mathematics and statistics on Wikipedia in Portuguese. Yet, I have some questions, so I am writing to ask for help: I really look forward to hearing from you. Thanks a lot! Joalpe (talk) 17:53, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
 * 1) Would such an initiative be worthwhile for students with visual impairments?
 * 2) Do you know any guideline I could use to audiodescribe properly mathematical equations? I am considering working on some entries that have relatively convoluted formulas (i.e, Mean field theory, but in Portuguese).

Wikipedia ads #181 for Spoken Wikipedia
Greetings, Recently I found this "ad" and thought it might be helpful to place onto the Spoken WP project page.

Perhaps it would fit into the "Advertising" under "Recognition" section? Regards, — JoeHebda • (talk) 14:43, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Killing of Harambe
— Preceding unsigned comment added by (blanket) (talk • contribs) 03:38, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

United States Declaration of Independence listed at Requested moves
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God listed at Requested moves
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Hurricane Grace (1991) listed at Requested moves
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Wikipedia Audio
I have discovered Wikipedia Audio at http://wikipediaaudio.com. Please see User talk:Jimbo Wales. —Wavelength (talk) 04:31, 20 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Because why bother having this project, when this service is available, right? ThatGirlTayler (talk) 23:31, 21 March 2017 (UTC)


 * ThatGirlTayler, both can coexist, and readers can choose what they prefer. Please see User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 217 (February 2017).
 * —Wavelength (talk) 23:41, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Ridiuculous that other forms of recordings are not allowed
Just got done recording a long reading of an article on my phone, only to find out that you can only use and upload recordings from certain recording programs. This is ridiculous and needs to be fixed, so that more people can contribute. It is easier for me and I'm sure other people to record on our phones and it is a waste of my time to record a long reading on my phone only to find out that Wikipedia lacks support for mobile phone recorders. There needs to be a way people can upload recordings from their phones. Really disappointed that all of my work will go to waste and that I cannot contribute to this neat idea and project. ThatGirlTayler (talk) 02:41, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * It isn't that any particular recording program is prohibited, but rather than the final recording format is limited to free and open file formats. You can record in whatever format and on whatever platform you wish. So your recording is not wasted! All that is required is that it be converted to ogg, wav, or flac format. What format is it in at the moment? Sam Wilson 04:27, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * m4a ThatGirlTayler (talk) 05:41, 20 March 2017 (UTC)


 * I think you can upload to the Internet Archive, and it'll convert your files to ogg, and then you can download the ogg from there and upload it to Commons. (There might be a better workflow; I'm not sure.) Sam Wilson 05:14, 20 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Sweet. Thank you so much :) ThatGirlTayler (talk) 05:41, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

If anyone here needs help converting a recording to a free format, I'm experienced with ffmpeg and would be happy to run it through a conversion if needed. Seraphimblade Talk to me 20:23, 25 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you so much for offering to volunteer converting files, that would be really great. ThatGirlTayler (talk) 21:09, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Old recordings
Has anyone undertaken to look at how up to date existing recordings are? I decided to have a look at Sheerness for which an audio version was recorded on 10 Feb 2008. There appears to be 266 revisions since then which cover virtually the entire article. Can we have a bot flag recordings when a threshold percentage of characters in the article change to ensure we are creating up to date recordings for new content? Donama (talk) 03:49, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
 * It would be great to have a bot that could do that seeing as how there are hundreds of recordings and checking each one would be a lot of work, do you have one? Sparkling Pessimist   Scream at me!  04:14, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
 * No. I'm not diligent enough an editor to get involved in writing bots, but I'd love for someone to take up the challenge. There are bots to help with all kinds of problems like this in other wikiprojects. Donama (talk) 06:13, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
 * That's probably true, but this project isn't very active at the moment and I do not know of a current WikiProject member who knows how to do that. I definitely couldn't, it took me forever to figure out how to just reconfigure the auto archiving since it was so outdated. This project was pretty much inactive up until a month ago when I discovered it. Sparkling Pessimist  Scream at me!  06:19, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Ip addresses
Can an IP join? I noticed this and thought its really cool. 68.233.214.74 (talk) 17:21, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, absolutely and please do as we are always looking for more great volunteers and if you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask. Tell yoir friends.ThatGirlTayler (talk) 02:51, 24 March 2017 (UTC)


 * IP address has g*{DJS} — Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.77.91.200 (talk) 16:45, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Video game crash of 1983 listed at Requested moves
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Uma Thurman stalking case
Hi, all. Opinions are needed on the following matter: Talk:Uma Thurman. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:46, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Collaboration with a radio station
I may have the opportunity to work together with a radio station from Moldova, Eco FM in order to narrate several dozens of articles of Romanian Wikipedia. They would like to run a weekly audio show in which they narrate Wikipedia articles of interest to their ecological theme, such as species of birds (ro:Condor andin) or protected areas of Moldova (ro:Parcul din satul Pavlovca). Of course, CC-BY-SA license would apply. The recorded files would be uploaded to commons, and attached to articles (ro:Categorie:Articole vorbite).

I recorded several articles in the past, and I am excited about this idea, as my experience with recording showed that editing is a hassle when you're not professional; and they have the equipment and expertise to dramatically ease the recording.

Before I think of details, and the right questions to ask, I would appreciate to know whether someone had had this kind of collaboration in the past. Thank you. Gikü (talk) 14:12, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Questions
How do I link to this page within Wikipedia?: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/Article_choice_guidelines — Preceding unsigned comment added by ApostateAbe (talk • contribs) 21:12, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Like this: WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Article choice guidelines –Surachit (talk) 05:51, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Alleyway listed at Requested moves
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Lady Louise Windsor listed at Requested moves
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The template for articles is broken!
It's messing up the formatting of articles in which it appears, someone with the power to do so, please fix it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.2.180.110 (talk) 00:04, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
 * 129.2.180.110You need to provide a bit more information than this. I went to Voynich manuscript which seems to be the only edit you have made and I don't see a problem. What problem are you having?

Anybody Home?
Howdy Hello! I just stumbled across this project, and I'm interested in joining. Is anybody still around? The project seems rather lonely. Captain Eek Edits Ho Cap'n! 06:08, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I am still around but I am a nobody. I record every now and again though not as much as I did many years ago. I think that as long as you follow the rules to record (maybe listen to a few examples first) you will be fine. I will help in any way I can. I am not an expert. Popular Outcast  talk2me 20:59, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I also just came across this project and I'm interested in contributing. I'm pretty new to editing Wikipedia pages so I don't really want to work in a vacuum. Maybe we could revive this project a bit and help each other? --Theayeaye (talk) 05:07, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
 * What kind of help are you looking for? A lot of Wikipedia editing/contributing is done in a bit of a vacuum. I don't like it but it's the nature of the beast. I will help in any way I can but since you are new, I want you to understand that most of the time you do stuff with very little input from others. At least that has been my experience. I am around if you need help (today I won't be back until later in my day). Also, do you know you can record stuff for wikisource? Tends to be less encyclopaedic if you prefer reading stories or things that require a different inflection. PopularOutcasttalk2me! 12:48, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info. It's good to know it's mostly working in a vacuum. I was feeling weird about diving in and creating a spoken version of an article without having done much on Wikipedia in general. But I suppose that is the nature of Wikipedia - just do it and then other people will edit it if they see fit. I think I'll probably try one out soon and post it here to hopefully get some feedback. --Theayeaye (talk) 15:12, 23 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I would be happy to give some feedback. I follow the guidelines in the project. Intro, read article with pauses, outtro. I used to read the infobox but decided that was useless. Image captions are read as you pass them and there's also a structure for that. Not everyone does it this way. I've heard ones that only read the lead of the article and ones that have music or sounds. I don't know what the consensus is on that. I don't like the sounds and when I press play I intend to listen to the whole article. Anyhow, I'm not sure why this project died down. It could be that computerized readers have gotten much better at reading. I don't have Siri or Alexa to try. Maybe they do a good job of reading back a page. Dunno. Good luck! PopularOutcasttalk2me! 20:26, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

How to upload a spoken article recorded on a ipad
If you record from a iPad how to upload the recording to use for a article if you have a account 71.161.214.1 (talk) 15:08, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't use an iPad so I am not sure if I can help. Are you asking because you don't get an upload link on Commons? Or is it because you don't know how to save to ogg format? Popular<b style="color:#8A2BE2">Outcast</b>talk2me! 15:46, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

I do not know how to save to ogg format on a iPad is there a app that can convert file to ogg or do I need to upload file to a computer to change to ogg in order to upload to Wikipedia for a article — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.161.214.1 (talk) 16:02, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
 * You need something that converts your audio to ogg format. I don't know enough about iPad to know if there is something available to do that for free. A quick search says that there is an app called The Audio Converter in the Apple app store. You might want to check that out. I've never used it though. <b style="color:#008080">Popular</b><b style="color:#8A2BE2">Outcast</b>talk2me! 16:15, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

So, before I go charging off in the wrong direction...
Any advice for somebody new at this? I've been around Wikipedia as a casual editor, but I've been told that I'm good at reading things, so I figured I'd see how I can help with this project. I'm just wondering about some of the more technical details, and I don't want to go through a good amount of fuss and bother and find out at the end that what I've produced doesn't fit the requirements or is otherwise unsuitable. Also, what is the method for selecting an article to narrate? Do I just pick whatever catches my fancy from the list of requests?

Hopefully somebody is still around here. For now, I'll listen to a few articles and hope that I'm following good examples. Kalmbach (talk) 23:35, 23 November 2018 (UTC)


 * , WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Reading Guidelines should be somewhat helpful. You can select any article to narrate. I believe the instructions on the project page nudge the reader toward recording articles that are more stable or ones that have been featured. You don't have to choose one from the requests. After you read through the guidelines linked earlier, take a look a couple of sections above this one where user Theayeaye asked for some feedback. Listen to the article and see what your feedback would be. You may have something to add to what I heard or perhaps you disagree with my assessment. Good luck. I am around if you have any question. <b style="color:#008080">Popular</b><b style="color:#8A2BE2">Outcast</b>talk2me! 23:50, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

New spoken article for the Bone Wars article
Hiya, I just uploaded a spoken article for the Wikipedia page the Bone Wars - would love to get some feedback :) --Theayeaye (talk) 01:06, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * , You have a wonderful speaking voice. Thank you so much for contributing to the project! These are a few points of feedback.
 * I noticed that you either changed words or left them out while reading. I don't have a problem with this as long as the meaning is not changed; however, I have been told in the past that this is a no, no. If the reason you changed things is because the article was not written well, then you should go back and edit the article. Aside: I remember an editor who heard my recording of his/her article and remarked that s/he then understood why parentheticals were bad. I believe that editor ended up editing the article to read more smoothly. In any case, we always have the option to edit the article to make it better.
 * It sounds like you are reading. That's fine because you are reading but it seems you are concentrating on the reading more so than the content. What that results in is awkward pausing or inflection. It doesn't happen all the time and that's great (I believe it took me 10 articles before I stopped doing that).
 * My understanding is that you need to read the captions of images in the sections. "An image accompanies this section of the article with the caption ..."
 * I was confused about the section number and maybe it shows up different for different people? For instance you said Section 4 for what I would consider Section 1.4.
 * Great job on pronouncing dinosaur names!
 * The ending of the article should discuss the license and the references. This is what I usually read at the end: "There are references available in the written form of this article - please be sure to verify information found on Wikipedia using the references provided or cross-referencing the information yourself. This sound file and all text in the article are licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, available at www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html."
 * I think you did awesome. My notes are "shoulds" because this is how I learned to do it from the guidelines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/Reading_Guidelines). They are guidelines and this is Wikipedia so in the end it's up to you.
 * Again, thank you!
 * <b style="color:#008080">Popular</b><b style="color:#8A2BE2">Outcast</b>talk2me! 02:24, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the great feedback!
 * I didn't find the Guidelines page when I was looking through the Project Wiki earlier - it would have been really helpful to look at before I started. doh... I will probably have some time this weekend to go back in and fix up the Bone Wars recording as per the guidelines and with the licensing info.
 * My feeling is that I don't really like the idea of reading the photo captions unless the photo is integral to understanding the text, so I might forgo that particular suggestion.
 * Thanks for taking the time to listen! I am going to work on another one soon. Is this the best spot to post it for feedback, etc.?
 * --Theayeaye (talk) 14:55, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * , There is a section on the page that this talk page goes to that is for reviews. You can post there. I will see it and hopefully some others. If there's anything you have a question about during your recording, just post a message on my talk page. I check in often. <b style="color:#008080">Popular</b><b style="color:#8A2BE2">Outcast</b>talk2me! 18:51, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * , thanks for all your patience and guidance.
 * No problem. When I can help I will. There's a page for guidelines on reviewing WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Review but it says to put the template on the talk page. I am not sure that they meant the Commons talk page when they wrote that. When I first started recording, we uploaded the files to Wikipedia and not Commons. The template will maybe not work correctly on Commons. I don't know. <b style="color:#008080">Popular</b><b style="color:#8A2BE2">Outcast</b>talk2me! 22:38, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Finally got a chance to update the file for the Bone Wars article - I rerecorded some bits and rejigged it to fit with the project's Reading Guidelines s you pointed out . I reuploaded it to the Wikimedia Commons file with some revision notes. If anyone is interested in listening, it is available at the same link as before. [[File:Bone_Wars_spoken_Wikipedia_article_(English).ogg]] I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out in the end. Back in October I posted it to the Project's Review section but since I think it was pretty thoroughly reviewed here, maybe I'll remove it now. Cheers, Theayeaye (talk) 03:14, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * , Awesome! I have not had much time to record but maybe in the new year. And since the project is semi-active, chances are you won't get a review over in the Project Review section so it's fine to delete it. Have a great new year! <b style="color:#008080">Popular</b><b style="color:#8A2BE2">Outcast</b>talk2me! 03:38, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * No problem. When I can help I will. There's a page for guidelines on reviewing WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Review but it says to put the template on the talk page. I am not sure that they meant the Commons talk page when they wrote that. When I first started recording, we uploaded the files to Wikipedia and not Commons. The template will maybe not work correctly on Commons. I don't know. <b style="color:#008080">Popular</b><b style="color:#8A2BE2">Outcast</b>talk2me! 22:38, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Finally got a chance to update the file for the Bone Wars article - I rerecorded some bits and rejigged it to fit with the project's Reading Guidelines s you pointed out . I reuploaded it to the Wikimedia Commons file with some revision notes. If anyone is interested in listening, it is available at the same link as before. [[File:Bone_Wars_spoken_Wikipedia_article_(English).ogg]] I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out in the end. Back in October I posted it to the Project's Review section but since I think it was pretty thoroughly reviewed here, maybe I'll remove it now. Cheers, Theayeaye (talk) 03:14, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * , Awesome! I have not had much time to record but maybe in the new year. And since the project is semi-active, chances are you won't get a review over in the Project Review section so it's fine to delete it. Have a great new year! <b style="color:#008080">Popular</b><b style="color:#8A2BE2">Outcast</b>talk2me! 03:38, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

New language for Spoken Wiki
I am a Lithuanian and would like to start narrating some Lithuanian articles for this project. However, currently there is no active Lithuanian Spoken Wiki so my upload of a narration does not register. Any way to set it up so I could upload narrations and have them appear as the player at the bottom of the page? Thank you! WyckinaZ 17:37, 03 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Hello, @WyckinaZ!


 * 1) You can record and upload your audio file to Wikimedia Commons. There is a category at Commons: c:Category:Spoken Wikipedia. It is not difficult to create one more category: "Spoken Wikipedia - Lithuanian" at Commons.
 * 2) Then you can ask users of Lithuanian Wikipedia to create the project like WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia or ru:Проект:Аудиостатьи in the Lithuanian Wikipedia. --Andrew Krizhanovsky (talk) 17:58, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!
A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.
 * – Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

United States Constitution listed at Requested moves
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Where can I find the link to the guidelines for preparing the script ?
Where can I find the link to the guidelines for preparing the script and how to speak out Spoken Wikipedia articles. AshLin (talk) 04:41, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I found them :


 * WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Reading guidelines


 * WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Recording guidelines

AshLin (talk) 04:44, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Disputed Edit About Placement of Two Important Links for Beginners to this Project
There has been an edit that I made, which involved placing two links in a prominent position on the WikiProject Main Page itself. These links are important to new editors seeking to get involved in the wikiproject.

These are :


 * WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Reading guidelines
 * WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Recording guidelines

However another editor, User:Wow is of the opinion that this edit should not be made due to MOS:OVERLINK and is of the opinion that the current location of these links in Template:Spoken Wikipedia process is adequate. The revision history of the WikiProject Main Page tells of this dispute.

Despite being an editor for quite some time, and having been in the project some years ago, I found these guidelines hard to locate. A new person instinctively looks for these links explicitly stated on the main page itself, rather than more discreetly and transcluded in a template box.

My argument for this edit of mine is to place them prominently for easy access, especially since the WikiProject is semi-active and new editors are needed. I feel this placement will make it easy for them to get started.

My response against the overlinking argument is that a single case of duplication hardly constitutes overlinking especially since its not in article space, but on a WikiProject page meant for convenience of editors. I also cite WP:COMMON and WP:IAR to support this edit.

I request community input and consensus on this.

AshLin (talk) 00:56, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Since when does the MOS apply to project pages? AFAIK it's only for articles. Also, you aren't the first person to have trouble locating these pages; not so long ago a new reader came along and made a recording "incorrectly" because they never saw the reading guidelines. The pages have been updated since then so I can't say what would have happened if they came along now.
 * The links for the two you added are directly above where you placed them so I can see the problem that Wow is having. I wonder if a better solution is to expand the sentence above to something like "The process is easy! Just follow these five steps. Each link provides all the details that you need to start recording". I'm not married to that phrasing but something to indicate to new users that they really need to read through that information before they start. <b style="color:#008080">Popular</b><b style="color:#8A2BE2">Outcast</b>talk2me! 02:26, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * The links for the two you added are directly above where you placed them so I can see the problem that Wow is having. I wonder if a better solution is to expand the sentence above to something like "The process is easy! Just follow these five steps. Each link provides all the details that you need to start recording". I'm not married to that phrasing but something to indicate to new users that they really need to read through that information before they start. <b style="color:#008080">Popular</b><b style="color:#8A2BE2">Outcast</b>talk2me! 02:26, 28 June 2019 (UTC)

Use of Template:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia
I don't participate in this WikiProject but here are a few observations from investigating Teahouse ([//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Teahouse&oldid=913167335#%22This_article_is_of_interest_to_these_Wikiprojects...%22 permanent link]). WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia is not mentioned in WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia and hard to find. WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia says "Add" which links WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Template guidelines where the template is mentioned. That page says to add unnamed parameters for file name and optionally oldid. Those parameters are not mentioned in the doocumentation of WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia and they are ignored by the template code. Spoken Wikipedia automatically adds the article itself to Category:Spoken articles. The category currently has 1425 pages while a search [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?sort=relevance&search=hastemplate%3A%22WikiProject+Spoken+Wikipedia%22&title=Special%3ASearch&profile=advanced&fulltext=1&advancedSearch-current=%7B%7D&ns1=1] only finds 843 talk pages with WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:46, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Where/how to be sure am proceeding correctly...
To have someone listen to a sample few paragraphs of a requested article to be sure I am doing it correctly 2600:6C54:4400:C76:CC5C:9065:FB98:7B58 (talk) 08:33, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Anyone available?
I am running a project that will involve creating audio Wikipedia articles and I want to speak to users with experience. Please let me know if you can help. sandioosesTextMe 09:57, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
 * what do you need help with? - Scarpy (talk) 16:19, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Depreciating old audio files
Are there any guidelines on when to remove the audio file template from a narrated article? For instance, the narration of William Shakespeare is over a decade old (though, in this case, at least the intro is close to the same). Blue whale's linked narration is from 2006 and is incredibly divergent from the current state of the article. The list goes on.

When do we retire links to narrations? Surely it does not help our visually-impaired readers to provide them with wildly different content from what they would hear if they had a screen reader. Is the argument just "something is better than nothing," or has no one ever set guidance about this? In 2010 that seemed to be the opinion, but that was also nearly a decade ago.  anthologetes  ( talk • contribs ) 15:50, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
 * We can always record a new version. - Scarpy (talk) 16:18, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
 * The Shakespeare narration was already ~50 minutes long in 2008; if we can't get people to read shorter articles now, I doubt we could turn around a new version within even a year. Is it really preferable to leave significantly out-of-date material up in the hopes that it will be replaced in a reasonable time period? I would argue we are doing a greater disservice to our visually-impaired readers by presenting them with largely non-representative information than if we would take the link down.  anthologetes  ( talk • contribs ) 16:33, 7 October 2019 (UTC)
 * This may sound sarcasitc, but I don't mean it too. Is there anything in the 2008 version that's now incorrect or has change substaintially? Like new information on Shakespeare that has corrected what was in the 2008 article? - Scarpy (talk) 22:05, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Are weird accents okay?
Hey, I have a funny accent - it's a mixture between Irish and Australian. I don't think my speech is difficult to understand, but I just think it might be a little confusing to English learners, because it'll sound inconsistent to them. Like, generally when you're learning a language you'll stick to one version/dialect of it, you know? Thanks. Watermelon-lemon (talk) 03:59, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
 * , If you can speak fluent English, it doesn't matter! Spoken Wikipedia isn't just for language learners, its also for the visually impaired, and many other folks who prefer to hear things. Accents don't matter to them, so we're glad to have ya recording! And plus for learners, good to hear from a range of accents, as in the real world you don't just hear one accent. Captain Eek  Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 04:01, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response! Watermelon-lemon (talk) 04:04, 29 October 2019 (UTC)
 * - but do let us know when you've recorded something, I feel like I want to hear your interesting (definitely not weird!) accent now! :) 09:10, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

Voice-overs on videos
Of interest to this WikiProject may be the relatively new WP:WikiProject Videowiki. Videos can be edited together on-wiki (example script) and will be automatically converted to a video. By default, the speech is machine-generated, but can be replaced by human voice-over. Such voice-overs might be something that members of this project are pretty experienced at! Relevant discussion is usually at WT:WikiProject Videowiki and WT:WikiProject Medicine. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 03:54, 29 January 2020 (UTC)


 * Agreed, but a human would then have to edit the video with the humans recording, unless I understand VideoWiki wrong. JAZHAZHANDZWIKI (talk) 15:30, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

History of the world listed at Requested moves
A requested move discussion has been initiated for History of the world to be moved to History of humanity. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 22:15, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
 * To opt out of RM notifications on this page, transclude, or set up Article alerts for this WikiProject.

Category:Articles containing audio clips has been nominated for deletion
Category:Articles containing audio clips has been nominated for deletion. You are encouraged to join the discussion on the Categories for discussion page.—⁠andrybak (talk) 11:24, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Need to confirm Im doing things correctly... where to begin?
I wish to upload just one sample paragraph, from a requested article, that Ive recorded. Can I do this? Is someone willing to listen? *shrug* Do I follow same upload instructions? How & where do I give note that Ive uploaded for whomever is willing and qualified to let me know if Im on the right track? Yes I need some hand holding but I am confident I can do this, that I have all that is needed to do very, very good spoken articles; but need some hand holding to get through the technincal/etc stuff the first time. If I have done anything incorrectly here just let me know and I will fix it in future. Thanks for your time, whoever reads this! :) Thistle0Sifter (talk) 00:16, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm a newbie and not entirely sure about script editing etiquette, how much should I change?
Okay well I'll preface this by saying my first foray into recording a spoken article is not a modest undertaking; I've chosen to narrate the article English language. I've begun preparing a script and made a few tweaks to improve the flow of certain sentences, but I am unsure about a few things.

1. Should I include tables? If not (which seems sensible) how can I convey the example provided?

2. Should I read the text under Images?

3. Can/Should I incorporate the sound files in the article into the recording (They are examples of dialects)?

Any advice is much appreciated.

TheTomorrow (talk) 03:01, 1 May 2020 (UTC)


 * WP:Be bold [1] Mention that the table follows (with caption or short description of what it contains). [2] Yes. If no caption then alt text. [3] Yes. If for some reason things should have been included, you can record that clip it and insert it later. Hope that helps. 183.87.39.222 (talk) 05:04, 3 May 2020 (UTC) (AshLin (talk) 05:34, 3 May 2020 (UTC))

Two Items
Hi All,


 * 1) Who is the lead coordinator on this project? If there is none, I would be happy to take over.
 * 2) I am thinking archiving can be adjusted to less than 90 days, maybe 30 days or sooner?

I am happy to take input on both of these, but please identify which question you are referencing?

Thanks, Galendalia CVU Member \ Chat Me Up 21:25, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Scripts
I am in the process of working with the scripting people to develop a script we can use that will purge the article and format everything for us so all you have to do is click the button and bam your script is there. I will provide more information as I get it, in the meantime, please feel free to share your ideas in this discussion.

Galendalia CVU Member \ Chat Me Up 04:16, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Tables
Hey, I just stumbled on this project and it looks like something that will be right up my alley in terms of what I can contribute (if my mic doesn't betray me). I did have one question though. Longer articles tend to contain information in tables to the right, and sometimes full sentences. Firstly, if I should incorporate these into recordings, how would I do that? and secondly, if I don't need to, would I just be reading the plain text of the article? Thanks in advance. The Average Gamer (talk) 18:20, 8 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Hi - Thank you for your interest. First, please make sure you are on the participant's list (and add remain next to the right of your signature please).


 * 1) Tables - You can say in the appropriate section you are reading "This section contains a table titled ."
 * 2) As far as what you need to read, there are some things that must be said. I refer you to WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/Reading_guidelines which explains what you need to say.

I am working with other editors to see if we can come up with a script that will take the article and convert it into a 'script' for this project. If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to ask and I look forward to your participation. Galendalia CVU Member \ Chat Me Up 18:28, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

NASA listed at Requested moves
A requested move discussion has been initiated for NASA to be moved to Aeronautics and Space Administration. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 01:02, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * To opt out of RM notifications on this page, transclude, or set up Article alerts for this WikiProject.

Guidelines
To ensure that spoken articles are rather consistent, a link to Reading guidelines should be posted somewhere on the main page. I'll leave the decision to to decide where it should go. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 )  20:21, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Hey - The link you provided is just the talk page, not really guidelines per say. Is that what you meant to link to or something else? Thanks Galendalia CVU Member \ Chat Me Up 22:05, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , that's really strange; I was trying to link to this page, though I'm not sure why it redirected. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 )  22:23, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * because you are a special contributor? SMirC-laugh.svg. I added it to the top left of the big yellow box. How does that look? Galendalia CVU Member \ Chat Me Up 22:37, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , text could probably be formatted to make it more eye-catching, but the link being there is really all that matters. I might give a go at a spoken article in the days to come. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 )  22:40, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * That would be great. I am trying to keep the text in line with the rest as far as fonts and boldness go for now. Eventually it will get a full makeover, I am just not up to that part yet. I am open to all suggestions if you wanted to create a sandbox and play around with ideas and get input from others. While I am the coordinator, I am not one to dictate. I see all projects as an open project and accept all ideas (as long as they are not far fetched or get us a bad rap!). Thanks! Galendalia CVU Member \ Chat Me Up 22:43, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Removing references
Hi, is there any tool to mass remove references and all that sort of stuff? I'm making a transcript and am getting tired of doing it manually. — Yours, Berrely  • Talk∕Contribs 12:48, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Hey Thar is an awesome question. I do not know of any program that would do that for you. Let me dive into something and get back to you. I may be able to find a solution after a deep dive. GalendaliaChat Me Up 08:21, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , thanks! — Yours, Berrely  • Talk∕Contribs 08:52, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

I've been using http://wikipedia.thetimetube.com/ but it gets a little weird if there's a gallery in the article. So I have to review it but it works most of the time. Peppage (talk) 20:37, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , thanks! — Yours, Berrely  • Talk∕Contribs 10:27, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

OgerioOfficial
Hey ,

welcome to Wikipedia, and enjoy your stay. This project is currently being revived, and you would be a very welcome addition to it. Looking forward to more of your very helpful participation, whenever you like to.

Best regards, ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:10, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

Suggestions
Hi and everyone else at WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia! I think the revival is a great idea as this is a WikiProject brings benefits to the community, and I just wanted to make a few suggestions: ✅* Replace the giant Ambox on all the Wikiproject pages with a smaller, more subtle box. While it is important to inform people about the revival, the current box is drawing more attention than the text itself. I propose this for the main page:

✅
 * And this for other subpages:
 * This would help tell users what is happening, but doesn't overly draw attention to the box.


 * Make a subpage detailing what is planned for the WikiProject. This could be in the form of a to-do list, using template todo or tasks. This would help clarify the goals of what is planned to happen, and help those goals be achieved more quickly.
 * Make a tabbed interface. Most WikiProjects follow the scheme of using tabs (templates Start tab, Tab and End tab) to make navigation easier. This could mean you could easily access other pages.
 * Add an importance parameter in WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia. As well as add a few extra parameters detailing the quality of the recording, if it's outdated etc. This would help better categorise page so participants know what to help out with. Edit: maybe something like this?


 * Rewrite some of the pages. While most of the pages are fine, some pages are outdated or downright confusing and could do with a rewrite to clarify what they mean. It might also be helpful to add some new pages such as a page for help with buying equipment, how to edit recordings, and what to put on file description pages.

The suggestions below are from the revival section of the WikiProject Council, and there are many other great suggestions there.
 * Set up article alerts. This is a message delivery system for WikiProjects that let's you control what messages you get and don't get.
 * Provide clear suggestions on what participants can do, using to-do lists, tasks and cleanup listings, and perhaps linking to relevant pages elsewhere. You can use the WikiProject help template, either directly or as inspiration.
 * Create any missing userbox, project banner, or user invite templates. See whether the assessment system for the project banner works, and fix it if not.
 * Use automation (see WikiProject guide) to ensure most if not all appropriate pages are tagged with the project banner, thus promoting the project to those who may be interested. (Don't go overboard with this... in general, don't tag a page not within the project's main category unless you could justify making it the project's Collaboration of the Month.)
 * Seek out collaboration with related projects. Tell them that the project is active, invite them to help, and ask whether there is an article of mutual interest that both groups could collaborate on.

There are also many other suggestions in WP:WikiProject Council/Guide/WikiProject. Hope this helps! — Yours, Berrely  • Talk∕Contribs 12:38, 16 May 2020 (UTC)


 * I just got the notification. This will be great for me to do this weekend. Thanks for the advice and pointers! Galendalia CVU Member \ Chat Me Up 08:02, 21 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , no problem! And these are just suggestions, you can amend, change or remove them as you wish! — Yours, Berrely  • Talk∕Contribs 08:10, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Prototype Feedback
Hello User:Madqueencabbage & User:Berrely and anyone else interest. I have started building out the new project prototype. I encourage any of you to help out with recommendations. Please feel free to use the talk page on the prototype to show recommendations and if you could link to the coding, file, etc. That would be helpful.

Prototype: User:Galendalia/sandbox/PSW_layout_test Talk: User_talk:Galendalia/sandbox/PSW_layout_test <BR> Thanks, Galendalia Talk to me CVU Graduate 15:42, 25 May 2020 (UTC) Spoken Wikipedia Project Coordinator
 * , here are my opinions, majorly tone down the rounded corners, partly keep them, but at this point, they just look like circles, change the colour scheme? Also, it might be a good idea to consider using breadcrumb2 like WP:WikiProject Accessibility. BTW I've replied here as generally with these topics it is good to get community consensus on the project's talk page, not that of an individual user. — Yours, Berrely  • Talk∕Contribs 19:31, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I also see you've taken the layout I for the template and put it on your page? It might be a better idea to simply transclude it with WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/sandbox — Yours, Berrely  • Talk∕Contribs 19:35, 28 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your input that is why I posted here to get that feedback. It’s a work in progress! Any feedback is welcome and will be implemented;) Galendalia Talk to me CVU Graduate 19:33, 28 May 2020 (UTC)


 * - So you have probably noticed I applied the template header, however, on this page and WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/Participants it users the border color for the whole page. It does not do that for the other pages. Are you able to determine what happened, please? Thanks, Galendalia Talk to me CVU Graduate 00:13, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * , Template:Spoken Wikipedia Header Template uses Start tab and a custom opening . Both of which will encompass the whole page, unless closed earlier. Here's a possible fix for the project's page: Special:Diff/959486107. —⁠andrybak (talk) 06:57, 29 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I’ll take a look later today. I think I copied it from Village Pump. It will obviously need tweaking and once I have my tabs set I’ll send it to your team for final and what’s needed for it. Galendalia Talk to me CVU Graduate 07:37, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * I think I fixed it by removing that code at the top. Thanks again! Galendalia Talk to me CVU Graduate 18:53, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

User Script Comment
Hello team! I was able to find a script that will help you tremendously in getting your article into a written format so you don't have to do the hard part. This only does the actual article, it does not do the disclaimers required at the beginning or the bottom but I can work with the script writing team on that. It also does not include any pictures on the page.

Here you go Toggle_VF.js - Just click on install if you have automatic scripts installed. Any questions, please let me know.

Galendalia Talk to me CVU Graduate 16:40, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This is great, thanks! It may be useful to add this to the “how to record” page. — Yours, Berrely  • Talk∕Contribs 19:25, 28 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Hey that is the plan with the revamp of the project pages. Galendalia Talk to me CVU Graduate 19:26, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
 * you can find it on WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/Article_choice_guidelines. Thanks Galendalia Talk to me CVU Graduate 18:54, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Where to put for Review?
Hello again. I recorded the Samuel Mulledy article but I don't know where to mark it for review. Ovinus (talk) 17:37, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * just post it here for now. I’m spring cleaning at the moment and forgot to add the review section back. I’ll move it when I create the page. Thanks Galendalia Talk to me CVU Graduate 17:42, 29 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Thanks . Hold off on any more until I have gone through the review process please. Thanks, Galendalia Talk to me CVU Graduate 18:07, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The page is up now. WikiProject_Spoken_Wikipedia/Review. Go ahead and place your files there per the instructions when in edit mode with the comment text. No need to ping anyone on the page is it is on my watch page. Thanks, Galendalia Talk to me CVU Graduate 18:52, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
 * = Hey same with this. You missed quite a few words in the first sentence. Thanks Galendalia Talk to me CVU Graduate 03:22, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Again, I'm not sure what you mean. I said "Samuel A. Mulledy, born March 27 1811, died January 8 1866, was an American Catholic priest and Jesuit who served as president of Georgetown College in 1845. I don't know what of these I missed Ovinus (talk) 03:50, 30 May 2020 (UTC)
 * See above. Galendalia Talk to me CVU Graduate 13:50, 30 May 2020 (UTC)