Purpose: The purpose of Wikipedia Weekly is to produce a weekly netcastorpodcast that provides an informative dose of audio information regarding Wikipedia and our fellow projects. Its unofficial off wiki homepage is www.wikipediaweekly.com (this is done due to RSS limitations in MediaWiki)
It's an irony, because we're all so unbelievably verbal and we write so much that we can't communicate with each other... So it becomes a challenge to find a way that we can streamline communication.
In fact I'm very excited about this podcast as one of those tools. If this podcast is entertaining and lots of people in the entire community, internationally and in many different projects listen to this, it gives us a central place to communicate news in an entertaining way. I think that's kind of cool."
Participants can keep in contact via the #wikipediaweekly channel on FreeNode. Please note that we also like people who are not named Andrew.... :)
You may also be invited into our large Skype text conversation, but please note that this is chat-logged and is mostly used for Wikipedia Weekly related chatter. Idle Chatter should go on IRC or elsewhere.
Those who signup will be added to the "pool" that we hope to have for each week. We will try to vary things up for diversity in viewpoint, expertise and geography.
In general, the podcast is created by a live online audio conversation using Skype, recorded by two folks for redundancy - User:Fuzheado and/or by Daveydweeb. To find out more, hang around in #wikipediaweekly on Freenode for updates on upcoming episodes.
Participant guidelines
Sound check - There is an automated sound check under the Skype username "echo123." Best way to check your microphone and headphones is to call that "robot" user, record a 10 second message, and have it played back to you. Make sure all's working.
Switch off cellphones - Of course ringing is distracting, but even muting is not good enough. Cell phone signal emissions when receiving a call can be audible on nearby speakers/microphones. Just turn it off or locate it in another room, far away.
Use mute - If you need to cough, type on the keyboard, or there's noise on your end, please hit the mute button in Skype (not the hold button). It should look like a microphone with a slash through it. If you know you will not be saying something for a while, please do mute as it saves bandwidth and gives better performance. But feel free to keep the mic open (unmuted) to keep the conversation lively and interactive, if you would like to comment on things.
Recording
Participants should try to use a good headset microphone, and a room without much echo (a rug, or a curtain helps). Another option is a dedicated microphone while using standard headphones.
For recording the podcast, there are different solutions for each platform.
For Mac, the Call Recorder plugin for Skype, from Ecamm Network, provides one button click recording within Skype. It results in a high quality file - Quicktime Movie file at 44.1 kHz, AAC format, 256 kbits/second.
For Windows, there are a few options, like PowerGramo & PrettyMay that also work as plugins for Skype.
Editing
There are lots of good digital audio editing applications, but perhaps the most ubiquitous is the open source Audacity audio editor, which runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. For Mac, Garageband is bundled with all new Macs.
In general, you're going to record lots of different levels from different folks. In Audacity, liberal use of the "Leveler" and "Compressor" are needed to balance out the volumes.
Some good resources on mastering your podcast:
GarageBand - Only for Mac OS X, has a number of features for podcasters.
The podcast will be available in Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and AAC format. The files will be hosted either on commons or on bandwidth that Tawker supplies (within limits) and Ourmedia as soon as we can get it to work. All RSS is done on the external site and all project members can receive access to control the RSS feed.
Please place story ideas for the topics that are not "current news" here:
Special Report
This is an interview or in-depth discussion of an issue/topic that is, though not "news", is still interesting and important to the WP community.
WikiLegal w/ Brad Patrick. Interview. Who is he, What does he do, what are the challenges...
Cultural Moment
An audio file that is used at Wikipedia that is interesting/artistic/cultural...
*Media:Jabberwocky.ogg - A pseudo-Eglish poem by Lewis Carroll.
- The only existing song by a trobairitz which survives with music.
Also, Bender recently appearedonRadio Open Source (mp3). Worth listening to if there is ever a show about this for preparation. JACOPLANE • 2007-03-4 13:54
At the beginning, there was the English Wikipedia, and it was good. But following that, there were many Wikipedias, and many Wikimedia projects. And it was better. - overview and insider views of Wikimedia projects and insiders' views into other languages wikipedias. notafish }<';>09:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What people think of the 'power pyramid' on Wikipedia eg admins, bureaucrats etc. Everyone's supposed to be equal, but do people see it that way?
The relationship between Wikipedia and academia: professors' attitudes about Wikipedia; allowed uses of Wikipedia; barriers to increased expert involvement; Wikipedia course assignments. ragesoss03:18, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Media files: why we use OGG files; what the prospects are for increased usability in the future; what kinds of user-created videos and audio recordings would be useful and encyclopedic?; out-of-copyright films? ragesoss03:18, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What has been the result of the "Foundation email" about purchasing copyrighted works? Have any particularly good/popular ideas emerged? ragesoss03:18, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What will the board do to facilitate better interproject coordination from sister projects?
When will WitkionaryZ be part of the WMF cluster? Will it be an official sister project too?
What is the current development staff for WitkionaryZ?
What are the latest projects they are focusing on?
There was talk of automated language inflection relation mapping - any progress?
Is there a development roadmap (e.g. when will all other language relations be mapped) for WitkionaryZ?
What growth statistics do you have for WitkionaryZ?
What is the board's view of license compatibility of WitkionaryZ vs. WMF? (CC-by vs. GFDL)
Are there plans to collect sister-project enhancements (e.g. preferences, Wiktionary's spell checker, etc.) into Wikipedia, Meta, Commons and the other sister projects?
Feedback
You can leave comments at the unofficial off wiki homepage. It's located at: www.wikipediaweekly.com.
I think Wikimania needs better webcasting, in general, regardless of where it happens. I know folks in the northeastern US who couldn't make it to the one in Boston. I was there participating and I feel like I missed a lot of it, simply because there were five talks in the same hour and five hundred interesting contributors to meet. —Dvortygirl17:29, 29 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
It's source mic issues, we encoded it @ 128 and there's no difference.... most podcasts are @ 64.. 128 really kills the server when we get popular -- Tawker18:27, 29 October 2006 (UTC)`[reply]
Are you uploading the OGGs to Commons? If not, why not? (They might have to be broken into parts, is all. I think there's still a 20mb upload limit.) nice work --pfctdayelise (translate?)
Is there any reason not to dual-license the content with the GFDL so the transcripts can be placed on Wikipedia without the warning box and without the likelihood that someone's going to speedy delete them on copyright grounds? Angela.11:11, 15 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I was like, 'why doesn't WW have a subscription template'? Then, I realized I was on a wiki, and made one. Credit to JWSchmidt for the wider logo for this. Mostly copied from the Signpost subscription style. Template:WikipediaWeekly-subscription. Edit it as you see fit. The only maintenance for this goes to changing the text to Template:WikipediaWeekly-textonly each episode to update everyone's userpages or whereever they place this. Enjoy. JoeSmackTalk21:02, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, if you decide to use this template, it'd be worth it to keep all the transcriptions on one page, or have a current transcriptions page. Otherwise, the template needs to be changed on the bottom each episode as well. JoeSmackTalk21:04, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Please try to get someone from the Board to talk if you're going to discuss so much Foundation stuff. It was kind of painful to hear so much guesswork about what's going on when any member of the Board could have set the record straight on a lot of what you were discussing in episode 6. Angela.13:55, 21 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Since the New Year, I haven't been able to play the thing in Amarok. For example, it thinks the latest show is at [1]. I try to wget that link, and it redirects to [2]. Gets weirder and weirder all the time =) --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 00:40, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
...following the Download link on the main web page, I get [3]. If I put that in a .m3u file, and drag it in Amarok, it still can't play it - can't handle redirects properly, it seems! Soooo... I stick the redirect target, [4], to an .m3u file and it plays fine this time. Seems this new system is a bit funny... --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 00:55, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Download counters? Ever heard of log analysis software? =) Seriously, though, it's a bit weird that a) it appears that the RSS points to something that completely confuses Amarok and b) appears Amarok has some unexplained problems with redirects. Though, I don't have the most recent version because it's not in Debian yet. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 19:26, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is our get listener campaign. The best podcast in the world is useless unless people download and listen to it. The role of this subproject is to get listeners by promoting the hell out of it.
We're listed on iTunes and I've submitted to directories but we need publicity... badly.
The WikiPodcast MediaWiki extension was apparently only made for .mp3 files. Could it be easily modified for other file formats such as .m4a?
The WikiPodcast MediaWiki extension was apparently only made to produce one RSS feed that would podcast every uploaded .mp3 file. Could this be modified to support multiple podcasts (for example, a podcast for each Wikimedia Foundation project that wants one?).
The Wikimania media files are also a mess. Can anyone explain the limited set of file types allowed at Commons and why even media files from Wikimania that are of accepted types are not hosted by Commons? Is the problem that nobody associated with the Wikimedia Foundation wants to deal with paying for the bandwidth costs or serving multimedia?
Personally I don't see this as being something we do in the MediaWiki software itself. I think a limited set of users having access to the RSS feed is probally a good thing, we wouldn't want a vandal screwing up something that can easily get downloaded en masse and that is harder to revert than an edit on Wikipedia. The WikipediaWeekly RSS feed is open to established users here, there's a reason we protect the main page you know... it's a visiblity thing. What we really need is a flat out file serving box that can pump the files out good and fast, that's really the best bet. -- Tawker23:25, 18 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
"I think a limited set of users having access to the RSS feed is probally a good thing" <-- I agree. I was thinking of a dedicated podcasting wiki that would have restricted access just like the Foundation wiki. I thought maybe use of the WikiPodcast MediaWiki extension would result in minimal work for Wikimedia Foundation developers to set up a podcasting system. It might be just as easy for them to set up some kind of FTP access to a server. --JWSchmidt04:26, 19 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If the Wikimedia Foundation hosts it, they should insist on a more appropriate URL than the current ".com" one, which implies that it's a commercial entity. *Dan T.*14:41, 16 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, the truth is I got the .com because there was a sale on .com names when I bought it and the fact that 99% of browsers go to .com if no domain is entered. -- Tawker09:02, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
My browser (Mozilla SeaMonkey) goes to a Google search if I omit the TLD. Some browsers can be configured to do various different things in such cases. Anyway, as long as the .org version remains unregistered, it's at risk of having a cybersquatter grab it and do something annoying with it, so somebody really ought to get it for the project (and then make it the primary address, with the .com redirecting to it). On a slightly related issue, the .com version has a WHOIS record that says it's owned by the hosting provider BlueHost.com; is that who actually owns it? *Dan T.*01:34, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So, is somebody connected with the project gonna register the .org version, before a cybersquatter gets it and puts porn there or something? *Dan T.*13:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
