I ran a quick experiment like this few years ago, where people could
upload audio reports to my external scripts, and my system would
stitch them together into one file for streaming/downloading. I still
think the idea is worth trying, though the technical and policy
changes aren't to be discounted. Some examples of policy issues are:
- who is allowed to upload files?
- how does one deal with bias in the audio report? do new versions
replace old versions of reports?
- how do we prevent abuse of the system?
- who are the consumers of the output of such a system, and what would
they want to get out of it? this will guide the format of the audio
snippets that people upload.
I think all of these are definitely possible to answer, and develop.
However, they would be much harder if the work happens outside of
Wikinews. I recommend that we build the system as an extension on top
of MediaWiki that will take [[Media:MyAudioHeadline.ogg]] files and
sequence them into a single file, at query time. So for example,
there may be a page to "stitch together" a day's newscast. The page
includes something like:
<audio>
Media:Introduction-2008-06-01.ogg
Media:PersonShootsDog.ogg
Media:BarackObamaWinsPrimary.ogg
Media:InterviewWithFamousWikiUser.ogg
</audio>
Then the page, if retrieved with a query string like, say, ?fmt=ogg,
will return these ogg files sequenced into one file.
The reason I recommend this approach is that it retains all the
on-wiki tools for abuse management; allows for replacement of files
(just upload a new version of the audio report with the same filename
-- or use a different filename and resequence the content of the
<audio> tag). The management of streams is still text-based, allowing
people to easily resequence the current stream. They're archivable,
since we can just have different pages with these tags per day. And
the tag is based on <gallery> which people already kind of know how to
use.
Thoughts? Anyone interested in making this happen?
-ilya
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 6:06 AM, Brian McNeil
<brian.mcneil(a)wikinewsie.org> wrote:
Mirko is suggesting we have a segment of headlines
somewhere on the
newsroom. See below email.
Thoughts?
Brian McNeil
-----Original Message-----
From: Mirko Lindner [mailto:mirko@creativecommons.se]
Sent: 04 June 2008 11:42
To: Brian.McNeil(a)Wikinewsie.org
Subject: Wikinews and JustFM
Hi again,
I did some thinking...well that sounds to great a message ;) I had an
idea, how about creating a "tool" that allows people to upload one
headline at a time, so the same way the wikinews usually work. Okay
that's not quite clear yet...
Let's say someone writes a Headline in the Newsroom (if that is actually
the place) and he could also record just this one headline and store it
somewhere either in the newsroom or somewhere else. The radio would then
pick the last 5 or 6 headlines recorded and build adhoc news. We would
have to come up with a mechanism of keeping more important stuff longer
in the loop of course, but I figured it would bring down the threshold
for someone to record a part of the news, as it is 20 seconds rather
than several minutes one has to record...
What do you think?
/mirko
PS: I haven't thought about the technical side yet, but I am sure we can
find a way to do all this ;)
PPS: As I am preparing for a semi-official announcement of JustFM I
wanted to ask if we should include wikinews as part of the radio and
explain a bit how the newsroom works or sth. Say that the news lie with
the wikimedia and that we would be more than happy about anyone who
wants to get involved, please click here to get to the wikinews site ...
Well I would work on the text a bit, but as a general idea ;)
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