Talk:Wikisound

Great idea...Why not have Wikivideo listed as the eventual goal...Wouldn't it be great if people could see instructional (or how-to for the how-to section) videos at Wikipedia and then even add to or modify these videos? Brettz9 23:39, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I think that if handled properly, this could be a *very* valuable and welcome addition to most Wiki projects. Codernaut 23:01, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think, that at the rate wikipedia grows, this would be a impossible task to seek. And the very moment someone would record a sound it would be outdated. Wouldnt it better to invest all those time and resources in open text-to-speech research? Great results have been achieved by proprietary tools. --Avsa 21:48, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Avsa, this appears to be a solution looking for a problem. Wikis just aren't suited to this kind of idea it seems to me. —Christiaan - ☎ 23:53, 18 Jan 2005

I disagree! A wiki-radio would have enorm possibilities considering the infotainment-time we are living in; of course i agree that open text2speech should be improved, but not all of us can do that ;) --83.64.122.82 01:21, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Do any of you have a disability that makes it easier to take in audio rather than text? I think that you need to pin down who your audience is before anyone decides whether TTS or human voices are more appropriate. A few points: All current operating systems either come with built in TTS engines (mac, windows) or have open source software that can be installed (eg festival). Listening to TTS speech for more than a trivial time is boring as hell, and hard to concentrate on. Ricky 11:47, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

A better idea?

Someone on IRC claimed that the "best" text-to-speech software out there also happened to be free, and had the ability to act as a server. It's called Festival. Not only is the software free for any purpose, but so are the voices. See for example their demo page where you can enter your own text. Now, since it obviously won't be well-received if we just submit the current contents of the article to their server, the best thing to do might be to create a separate sister project which will host the Festival server, and on which you can create modified textual versions of the articles in question. One would have to manually listen to the articles and fine-tune the text (such as replacing rising with rye-zing), but this would be a much faster way of expanding the Spoken Wikipedia. We could still provide the option for individuals to submit their own recordings, but if this thing is going to take off, it seems like speech recognition, especially when it's free, is the better course of action. --brian0918™ 22:30, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Also, the clearest voice on that demo page seems to be bdl_arctic_hts.

This would also make it much easier to update spoken article content as the original article changes.

See also Wikipedia:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia#A better idea? where I am making the same proposal. --Brian0918 22:32, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I came here to propose this idea too. "Speech recognition" is speech-to-text; the proposal here is for text-to-speech. Brian Jason Drake 06:39, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

What to do with the cash

If the Foundation ends up obtaining funding for such projects, I (only speaking for myself) would like to see the money used to fund delivery rather than the making of recordings (e.g. performers or studio time). Through the Spoken Wikipedia projects I think we will converge on decent recording quality, so the things that money could go to fund would be things like making articles available via phone (with a touch-tone navigation interface) or published via CD in related groups or something. Demi 01:18, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I like the touchtone organization idea, sounds good Demi. -- user:zanimum

Allies and associations

Our IRC host, w:Freenode is host to several open source/open content sound-related projects that may provide some resources. I think it is the general concensus that tools and components developed over at www.xiph.org such as the w:Icecast web streaming suite, the w:Ogg Vorbis compression codec and other free and open goodies are appropriate. Also, I think it would be a nice gesture to support the w:Freematrix webradio project that has been up and running for some time, morphing from WOPN -the voice of Open Projects Network, to the experimental Freenode Radio project and on to its current form. If you want to interact with Freematrix, you can find them on #freematrix at irc.freenode.net and check out their site at www.freematrix.us to tune in.

Also, Wikipedia has a nice article - w:Web radio that, as most of you should know, is an excellent resource for web radio technologies, especially of the open source variety - very low cost; high quality; efficient and well aquainted with open content and licencing paradigms that are compatible with the Wikipedia way of getting the goods to the people.

I happen to be working on a mobile recording/streaming unit built into a Jayco SongBird camper that is being equipped for the challenges of catching and converting audio content using all open source server software and some old gear I've had around for a long time. The camper was given to me by some very nice folks and I'm in the process of developing the resource for Freematrix, Freestream and Wkiradio, if and when it comes about. The Unit is called Cloud9 and is part of the Ozonefarm project. Chat with me on irc.freenode.net/#ozonefarm or drop me a note on my talk page if you want to help out or learn more.

Thanks Quinobi 19:55, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

Librivox

I hate to be a cheerleader, because I volunteer for LV as well as several Wiki projects, but I thought you might be interested in Librivox. Librivox.org is a project dedicated to creating human read audiobooks of public domain materials. I am working on trying to get LV and WP to work together easier. Wikisource would benefit from these materials, and wikibooks would be well served by audiobooks. Jimbo has expressed interest in helping us, which you can see in his blog a few times. I would like to see a soundwiki or wikisound project, what can I and I though LV do to help? Sethwoodworth 21:15, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Audio Wikinews

I am now the new spearhead of the Audio Wikinews project. We (well I) am looking for people interested in including our news recordings in their podcasts or podcast radio stations. Please contact me. 75.72.162.175 06:26, 24 October 2007 (UTC) Oh great yeah I don't have an account on here. It's [1]

Name Change Proposal

I am the owner of WikiSound (not to be confused with this Wikisound). At the time of my creation of WikiSound MV (MV = my version, to differentiate from this wikisound) I only did a whois query to see if the domain was available, not thinking to do a google search for wikisound which would have caused me not to buy the domain. In light of this, I would like to suggest that Wikisound (here) change its name to soundwiki and I will be willing to donate the domains soundwiki.com/.net/.org which I own currently with one condition. The WikiMedia foundation link to wikisound from the domains I offered to donate in a manner similar to firefox.com does to firefox.co.uk. I'm a very negotiable person so I am sure an agreement can be reached. Feel free to e-mail me at ron@ronsnexus.com. Additionally this gives me trademark right which I would like to be able to use. Thanks....My name's Ron Williams

I have moved this request (made by IP address 162.83.46.2 in this edit) to the project's discussion page. Rob T Firefly 14:53, 10 May 2009 (UTC)