Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia

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Podcast / RSS Feed

It appears Spoken Wikipedia, as a whole, does not exist as a podcast, or RSS feed. I see and talk history that there have been several people who have started to do that, but none of them seem to be live and I don't see anything searching for podcasts that includes all of the recordings. Is there anything that anyone is aware of that is currently live where one can use a podcast app to listen to these? Is there an RSS feed even for the oggs (or other feed of updates, other than the automatically generated ones Wikimedia makes for all page changes)? Again seeing some stop-start efforts ten years or more ago, but nothing current. Before I start looking into it, I want to see what currently exists, if anything, to build on. Thanks -- Joe ETA: this feed Special:Export/Wikipedia:Spoken_articles seems like it would work as a starting point. But again the question is to see if, in making such a podcast, I am reinventing any existing wheels. morrisjm (talk) 17:04, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

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Okay so back a week later, I wrote a script that does the thing, at least in its most basic form. Here is an RSS feed that you can load, at least into AntennaPod, that gives you the Spoken Wikipedia files as a podcast feed.

https://wcast.me/sw/

It links to the native ogg files on Wikipedia, so you'd only expect it to work on platforms that support ogg, like Android. I've tested it only with Antennapod. You can search (in Antennapod) by category or Wikipedia username to only see those subsets since those are in the shownotes. Licensing info is also included in the shownotes.

To open the feed in AntennaPod: download and open AntennaPod on an android device. Tap the three-line menu in the top left, "Add Podcast", look down under "Advanced" and tap on "Add Podcast by RSS address". It's a big podcast -- 1600+ "episodes" as of Feb 2023 -- so it will take a few seconds to open up. Click "subscribe" and you should be all set. MIT-licensed source code here. Also the best place to submit issues.

I don't think there is any way this is going to work on Apple devices in this form -- searching for ogg-supporting podcast iOS apps I get nothing. It probably will work on other Android podcast apps where you can just give an RSS feed. If you try other Android pocast apps, let me know if it works or not.

At some point, hopefully soon, I'm going to work on making a script that locally generates a mp3-based RSS feed (as in, it downloads the ogg/wavs locally and converts them, as well generating a RSS feed for that points to them), and put it up on some CDN (probably Cloudflare, free) and that way these will be available for download via iTunes and other normal podcast channels. morrisjm (talk) 07:00, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

@Morrisjm: Aren't all oggs on Commons transcoded to MP3s these days? e.g. File:Green_and_Golden_Bell_Frog.ogg has this MP3 version: https:/upwiki/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/d/d2/Green_and_Golden_Bell_Frog.ogg/Green_and_Golden_Bell_Frog.ogg.mp3 Sam Wilson 07:33, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

That'd be great if universally true. I have no particular interest in content hosting or writing more conversion code. I'll look into it. Thank you! morrisjm (talk) 07:47, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

OK, so I did an mp3-based version, at the updated URL https://wcast.me/sw/. I'm going to kick the tires on it a bit more and then will paste it into external links on this page. I might even submit it to a podcast feed index eventually; I'll have to do better explicit-content tagging (e.g., the entire "Human Sexuality" section, probably others) and/or put those in a separate feed for that.

Transcoding turns out to be almost universal. A few files seem to have had mp3 transcoding not happen, I list them below. They have a transcoding status of "not ready". Not sure if there is a place to report those so another attempt can be made? Probably some server error, there's so few of them, 5 out of 1600.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:En-Gordon-Ramsay-Plane-Food-article.ogg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indigenous_people_of_the_Everglades_region.ogg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:En-Guzman_y_Gomez-article.ogg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LibriVox.oga

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Spoken_Wikipedia_-_English_-_chiptune.oga morrisjm (talk) 07:54, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Not sure if there is a place to report those so another attempt can be made? no need to report, just clicking "Reset transcode" on the Commons page of the files in section "Transcode status" is enough. Which I did and all five files now have mp3 transcoding now. —⁠andrybak (talk) 08:41, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

excellent thank you they seem to be picked up into the feed now morrisjm (talk) 02:21, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

A Surprise

I want Pre-flight safety demonstration to be spoken. It will be so great if this happens. Colby DC (talk) 18:43, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Is the list automatically updated? If not, should adding the article to the list be included as a step in the "Creating Recordings" instructions?

I recorded a couple of files last weekend (for Pont du Gard and Disruptive Eye Mask) and dutifully uploaded them, following the instructions here. They show up linked in the articles. I was sort of imagining that it would automatically show up on the Wikipedia:Spoken Article list page, which looks somewhat machine-generated. A week later it hasn't. So . . . is that something I should manually add in? If the recording volunteer is in fact supposed to be the one manually adding it there, should that then be added as a step in the instructions? morrisjm (talk) 05:55, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Answering my own question a week later, seems pretty clear it is manually updated. I added a line to the instructions to ensure people don't forget. morrisjm (talk) 02:29, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

FAR for But I'm a Cheerleader

I have nominated But I'm a Cheerleader for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Z1720 (talk) 02:08, 2 April 2023 (UTC)