Commons:BBC voice project/what to do

Example: Former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson, on Desert Island Discs on 28 July 2013. One of the first files uploaded as part of the project.

This page contains guidance for people attending the "Speakerthon" event at the BBC's New Broadcasting House on 18 January 2014.

Identifying material for upload

• Select items broadcast in or after 2007, from the list of programmes in the BBC blog post
• Clips ideally 30-40 seconds in length, absolute minimum 20 secs
• Only subjects speaking, not interruptions (not even interviewers' "er"s), no background noise, no music
• Preferably speaking about their field of endeavour
• Nothing controversial; critical of opponents, etc.
• Not reading copyright material (books, plays, poems, etc.), even their own
• Not doing impressions, funny voices, etc.
• Balance of gender, races, politics, dead & living, overseas & UK, etc.

Select the audio

You will be provided with a password to access the BBC's "Snippets" tool. Snippets is a prototype R&D tool, that will be temporarily available to attendees of the Speakerthon, for the duration of the event. It is not normally available to the public.

Follow this guide to using Snippets to identify suitable audio clips.

Uploading files to Commons

Please do not upload any BBC material to Commons, unless you have confirmed that it has been approved by the BBC and that they are releasing it under a suitable licence!

Once approved by the BBC, a file containing the audio clip you identified will be emailed to you. You may then upload it under the CC-BY-3.0 licence as follows.

Metadata

• Source should be the BBC URL including PID, for example http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b037gm1f
• Author should be [[:en:BBC|BBC]]
• Name the file with the person's name, the programme, and the broadcast date. For example File:Mary Robinson - Desert Island Discs - 28 July 2013.flac
• Enter a description in the form The speaking voice of [[:en:Mary Robinson|Mary Robinson]], former President of Ireland, from the BBC programme ''[[:en:Desert Island Discs|Desert Island Discs]]''.
• Date is first date of broadcast (or of recording if known)

Templates

Under "other information", include:

• {{BBC voice project |pid= XXXXXX }}
  • (That's {{BBC voice project}}, with a |pid= parameter e.g. {{BBC voice project |pid= b037gm1f }})

Categories

Add the file to:

• Category:BBC voice samples
• One of Category:Audio files of females speaking or Category:Audio files of males speaking
• A category for the year of broadcast (or year of recording if known), e.g. Category:Audio files of 2013 (N.B. Hidden category; will not display)
• A programme category if one exists (otherwise, consider creating one) e.g.
  • Category:Desert Island Discs
  • Category:Front Row
  • Category:The Film Programme
  • Category:Today programme
• A category for the person, if one exists (otherwise, consider creating one)
• A category for the subject(s) discussed, if relevant.

Add any categories you create to the project page.

Example

See File:Mary Robinson - Desert Island Discs - 28 July 2013.flac for an example.

After upload

Add files to Wikipedia articles

• Use en:Template:Listen (copyable example below; with citation)
  • Embed that in an infobox if possible. See an example of embedding

You may copy:

{{Listen| filename = XXXXX |title = XXXXX's voice |type = speech |description = from the BBC programme [[XXXXX]], XXDATEXX<ref name="BBC-XXPIDXX">{{Cite episode |title= XXXX |series= XXXXX |serieslink= XXXXX |url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/XXPIDXX |accessdate= 2014-01-18 |station= BBC Radio 4 |date= XXDATEXX |season= |seriesno= |number= |transcript= |transcripturl= }}</ref> }}

or, for embedding:

| module = {{Listen| embed=yes |filename = XXXXX |title = XXXXX's voice |type = speech |description = from the BBC programme [[XXXXX]], XXDATEXX<ref name="BBC-XXPIDXX">{{Cite episode |title= XXXX |series= XXXXX |serieslink= XXXXX |url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/XXPIDXX |accessdate= 2014-01-18 |station= BBC Radio 4 |date= XXDATEXX |season= |seriesno= |number= |transcript= |transcripturl= }}</ref> }}

Link from Wikidata

• Use property "voice recording", P990; see https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P990
• Ensure the item has a description

Share

Tweet about your upload (or ask a Twitter user to do so, if you're not one), using the hashtag #Speakerthon

Transcribe

• Consider transcribing the content of the audio as text. As this may be time-consuming, you might prefer to do this later, at home.
• Once that's done, add the text as Timed Text (captions), with time cues.

Other stuff

There may be a need to write articles about subjects, where none exists. You could also create articles about some of the programmes from which we're extracting audio. Please add links to any articles you create to the project page.

Afterwards

Please join us in the Yorkshire Grey, 46 Langham Street, London, W1W 7AX for refreshments and chat.

If you have any later questions or concerns, feel free to make them on this page's talk page, which is watched by the event's organisers, or contact User:Pigsonthewing.