Hello all,
Spurred by some brief experiments with recording pronunciations on Commons, I am interested (at least conceptually) in making free audio recordings (licence GFDL, format .ogg) of various important historical texts or literary works which are now free (public domain or otherwise).
I suspect there is appetite among volunteers for such a project, and so I'm wondering whether there is a place for such things in the Wikimedia world. (I wouldn't be surprised if this had been discussed before, though I can't find a reference to it.)
Some natural choices are:
Wikisource: Pro: Focus is on free-content versions of important historical texts or literary works. Con: Mandate seems to be only for text, and there is apparently a 5 MB limit per file.
Wikibooks: Pro: No prohibition against sound files (that I can see). Con: Seems to be intended for collaborative original creations, not uploaded recordings of a fixed work. And there is apparently a 5 MB limit per file.
Commons: Pro: Many sound files, and file size limit is larger (20 MB). Con: Unsure if it's appropriate for this. Commons is intended for shared media resources across Wikimedia projects, and I can't see how (for example) the Catalan Wiktionary would need an audio version of Chapter 7 of Wuthering Heights. Existing sound files on the Commons are all quite short.
Right now I'm leaning towards using the Commons. Any comments about this, either about the Commons as a proposed place, or about the idea in general?
Lastly, would anyone happen to know of any existing archives of free (as in free-libre) audio recordings available online?
Regards,
Steve
Hello Stephen,
your project sounds very interesting, I hope to see (hear) some results soon!
The Wikimedia Commons is indeed the correct place, and your "Con" for it is not a Con at all:
Con: Unsure if it's appropriate for this. Commons is intended for shared media resources across Wikimedia projects, and I can't see how (for example) the Catalan Wiktionary would need an audio version of Chapter 7 of Wuthering Heights.
A file on the Commons currently needs to be *potentially* useful in at least *one* Wikimedia context. Your files could be linked from Wikisource, but also from Wikibooks and Wikipedia.
Generally, if it's a file, and it's free content, it belongs in the Wikimedia Commons so it can be easily used everywhere.
However, your case underscores my standing argument that Wikisource and Wikimedia Commons should be merged, since they both serve very similar purposes (repositories of free content), and transformations like yours would be natural in a single repository.
Regards,
Erik
I'd agree. Just merge the commons into wikisource (or vice versa), and have the en. or de. or la.wikisource.org (or wikicommons.org) for the interface, but have files across the entire source/commons. It'd make it easier for a speaker of one language to access files across the commons/source in his own language, but still have access to all the data available (I heard it was somewhere around 4 to 5 GB now).
The biggest problem then with the language domains would be duplication of efforts, which should no doubt be avoided.
If you'd like help, Stephen, I can help with some audio recordings (at least in wav for conversion by someone) of some texts, and perhaps text entry.
James -----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Erik Moeller Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 10:56 AM To: Stephen Forrest; wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] A place for audio recordings of books/texts?
Hello Stephen,
your project sounds very interesting, I hope to see (hear) some results soon!
The Wikimedia Commons is indeed the correct place, and your "Con" for it is not a Con at all:
Con: Unsure if it's appropriate for this. Commons is intended for shared media resources across Wikimedia projects, and I can't see how (for example) the Catalan Wiktionary would need an audio version of Chapter 7 of Wuthering Heights.
A file on the Commons currently needs to be *potentially* useful in at least *one* Wikimedia context. Your files could be linked from Wikisource, but also from Wikibooks and Wikipedia.
Generally, if it's a file, and it's free content, it belongs in the Wikimedia Commons so it can be easily used everywhere.
However, your case underscores my standing argument that Wikisource and Wikimedia Commons should be merged, since they both serve very similar purposes (repositories of free content), and transformations like yours would be natural in a single repository.
Regards,
Erik _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
On Tue, Apr 26, 2005 at 03:22:01AM -0400, Stephen Forrest wrote:
Lastly, would anyone happen to know of any existing archives of free (as in free-libre) audio recordings available online?
http://www.geocities.com/resistancemp3/ (no licensing info?) http://www.freedomarchives.org (don't know how free this really is) http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/audio/audio.html (free)
Licensing WP incompatible?: http://commoncontent.org/catalog/audio/speech/ http://www.legaltorrents.com (perhaps more than music at some point) http://www.magnatune.com/info/openmusic http://bt.etree.org http://www.archive.org/audio/
More links at: http://debianlinux.net/multimedia.html#multimedia_data http://debianlinux.net/freedom.html
Jama Poulsen http://debianlinux.net http://wikicompany.org
Stephen Forrest wrote:
Hello all,
Spurred by some brief experiments with recording pronunciations on Commons, I am interested (at least conceptually) in making free audio recordings (licence GFDL, format .ogg) of various important historical texts or literary works which are now free (public domain or otherwise).
I suspect there is appetite among volunteers for such a project, and so I'm wondering whether there is a place for such things in the Wikimedia world. (I wouldn't be surprised if this had been discussed before, though I can't find a reference to it.)
Some natural choices are:
Wikisource: Pro: Focus is on free-content versions of important historical texts or literary works. Con: Mandate seems to be only for text, and there is apparently a 5 MB limit per file.
We haven't really had any discussion about hosting this type of file on Wikisource, although I don't really forsee anyone having objections. I do support the file size limit because slow browsers have difficulty downloading the files, and editing them can be nearly impossible.
I did a quick look at some OTR (Old Time Radio) files of the "Boston Blackie" show, and these do run at about 5 Mb for a half-hour show in mp3 format. How do .ogg files compare for file size?
Commons: Pro: Many sound files, and file size limit is larger (20 MB). Con: Unsure if it's appropriate for this. Commons is intended for shared media resources across Wikimedia projects, and I can't see how (for example) the Catalan Wiktionary would need an audio version of Chapter 7 of Wuthering Heights. Existing sound files on the Commons are all quite short.
Right now I'm leaning towards using the Commons. Any comments about this, either about the Commons as a proposed place, or about the idea in general?
Lastly, would anyone happen to know of any existing archives of free (as in free-libre) audio recordings available online?
It would take a bit of research to find out what's available. Speaking only for OTR files, many thousands of these are available cheap on CD. The claim is that the copyrights have expired on these, although I have not yet taken steps to verify this. I have nevertheless wondered in the context of wikisource whether there was any easy way to transcribe these so that the scripts could be made available through Wikisource.
Ec
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