SGUTranscripts:Community portal

Hi guys like others I've often thought about this as a project but put off by the amount of time that it would have taken one person, the main reason I thought about doing this was to be able to search the transcripts when needed, example: if someone asked me a question on Homoeopathy I would be able to use my smartphone to give an answer based on what the SGU have talked about in the past, as I generally take what the guys say as fact.

Do you think that what I'm taking about would be possible using this WIKI project??

Looking forward to starting and completing my first SGU Transcript :-)

--Manontop 09:31, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi Manontop.

Sure, I think that would be one of the most important uses of these transcripts. My ideas for having transcripts of the SGU episodes are to facilitate linking, searching and accessibility:

• Linking. We have headings throughout the podcasts so that it's possible to link directly to a specific segment, for example Aristolochia Nephropathy (internal wiki link) or Aristolochia Nephropathy (external link).
• Searching. Currently there are (at least) two ways to search. Either using Google or the built-in search box in the top right. If you want to use Google to search only this site, you can do so by using the "site:" term in your query. E.g. your Google query would be "site:sgutranscripts.org titanic disaster". Google is the king of them all, so I have installed proper semantic web (SEO) support. When a transcript is completed I go through and insert tags to important concepts that are covered in the podcast. This helps Google (and other search engines) know what is important about that page. You can see these by opening a transcript and viewing the source of the page. Then look for the <meta name="keywords" content="..."> tag. There are two components to this, tags that are site-wide such as "skeptics, sceptics, scepticism" etc. followed by tags that are local to a particular page such as "titanic, tragedy, ss, californian, space, junk" etc. Of course, Google also uses the page content when indexing.
• Accessibility. Quite simple really; people who can't listen to the podcast for any reason (deafness etc.) can now read the transcripts instead.

Great to have you on board! :)

--Rwh86 11:13, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi guys,

I'm guessing this is the best place to put project discussions, let me know if there's another way - I'm new to Wiki editing.

Regarding time stamps for the sections, I've entered them into the headings of SGU_Episode_348 using < small > tags. This shows them smaller in the actual headings, but the same size in the contents list. What do you guys think?

I've also been thinking of ways to make these transcript pages as useful as poss without causing ourselves too much extra work. One way might be to include a kind of bullet-point list of facts from the episode, as they often have throw-away comments that are interesting. E.g. in ep.348, they talk about nut allergies, and that cashew nuts contain the same allergy-inducing resin as poison-ivy. We could lift these from the main text as we go and build a list at the end. It wouldn't make much difference if someone's reading the whole transcript, but it might make a nice feature for flicking through them. Just a thought, I figured it would be better said earlier than later. What do you think?
Cheers,

--Teleuteskitty 04:14, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

I like the idea of compiling a fact list at the end of the transcription for each episode. It's just up to the individual transcriber I suppose. Regarding the < small > tags, I definitely think it would help to have the timestamps in these transcriptions, and having it in the section title makes it visible in the table of contents. The other option is to use the wikibox on your user page, which I think is very nice, containing the image, quote, times and links in one place. It just depends on whether or not other people like it too.

--Jay One 20:11, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I have no experience making wikibox templates, so if someone else knows more about these, mb they'd like to build one? (although I'm happy to try) we should probably come to some agreement about whether we want them and what they should contain.

--Teleuteskitty 20:31, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Regarding a template, I've put up what I was working from for full episodes at Episode_templateTK for now, but this isn't a proper wiki template - I'm not entirely sure how to use those. I don't presume to dictate the format, this is just what I had already.
Feedback welcomed.
--Teleuteskitty 00:17, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Has anyone explored the idea of hiring a professional transcriptionist to do the work? This could be much faster, but there would be a cost involved. Perhaps a donation fund could be set up for SGU listeners to pay for it. Another podcast that goes this route is the "Security Now" podcast from Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte.
-- 128.200.139.53 (talk) 17:08, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm a professional trascriber and I would love to contribute towards this project. VLC is good but not optimized for transcription purpose. I would suggest NCH's ExpressScribe software and it's free. Also if you are spending a lot of time on this project, I would recommend investing on a foot pedal. It shouldn't cost you more than $25. With these two things, I am sure you can double your productivity.

--Eupraxsophic (talk) 02:16, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to help, but I cannot tell Jay and Bob's voices apart. Am I useless?
--Jenpohl 20:54, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I often find this difficult, and it's quite likely I've already made mistakes based on this, but mb you'll get better as you're listening closely. I find Bob more nasal. Another good indicator is whether they're referencing nanotechnology or porn. :)

--Teleuteskitty 21:00, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

That may be a problem, but all it took for me to tell their voices apart was a little time.

--Jay One 21:02, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Just a thought: if you want to put up a transcription page including timestamps in comments (using "< !--" and "-->" without spaces in them) for the points you're unsure about, you could flag the pages up here for me (or whoever) to see if we can help out. This way we can easily search for problem points.

--Teleuteskitty 06:23, 19 April 2012 (UTC) [edited:16:16, 19 April 2012 (UTC)]

You're definitely not useless! The most important thing is to get a first pass of the transcription done, corrections are then much quicker/easier. How about you put a question mark after the letter if you can't work out who's speaking? So like:

B?: Stuff that Bob or Jay said

Then someone else can go fix them later, should be pretty quick to do.

--Rwh86 09:13, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I've inserted a rough draft of a fact list at the bottom of SGU_Episode_348. What do you guys think? It was easy to put together, but I didn't know what to call it.
--Teleuteskitty 05:54, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I originally thought it was a bad idea until I went and looked at your example. Now I think it's awesome, I love it! :) Currently you've called it "Today I Learned..." which I think is good, but can anyone think of a title that's better? Like maybe "Interesting ideas from the podcast" except not that as it sounds terrible. ;)

--Rwh86 09:13, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

Yay! Thanks. For the name, the only thing I thought, was I wanted to be careful not to assert them as hard facts. Also, we should mb point out that they are not part of the transcript, but taken from it after.
--Teleuteskitty 16:16, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I've moved the wikibox draft to its own page (Draft_wikiBox) so you can all go play with it and comment if you like.
--Teleuteskitty 20:23, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

I've set up a template for the rough draft of the wikibox and updated Draft_wikiBox, so it's clearer and easier to add info on each page
--Teleuteskitty 23:28, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I've added a template for the episode outro voiceover, including the links. This covers episodes 301 to present. You can reference it using {{Outro1}}.
--Teleuteskitty 04:14, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi all, I'm trying to put together a basic help page, and collecting together the 'Skeptical quote of the week' entries onto a single page. Could you let me know what you think, please? Thanks
--Teleuteskitty 12:26, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi guys, and thanks for starting this project! I don't have a lot of time to devote to doing whole transcripts, but I'd like to start categorizing the wiki pages, like "SGU Transcripts", "Live Episodes", etc. I think it would also be helpful to have next/previous episode links on each page, either at the bottom or in the infobox. Any opinions?
--Av8rmike (talk) 15:30, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi Av8rmike, thanks for your interest, any help is always appreciated, big or small. We were thinking of using the categories from the Rogues gallery, plus others more specific to the podcast, e.g. guests. I think adding a category for live episodes is a great idea. We're also considering using redirect pages for categorizing podcast sections separately.

I agree, previous/next buttons would be good (in fact I was just playing with some graphics for them). However, I'm not sure how to get a wiki template to recognise the episode number and add/subtract automatically, do you have any ideas about that? Otherwise we can just input them manually.
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 16:18, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

I took a stab at adding some categories to SGU_Episode_354 to give an idea of how that would work. I don't know offhand how to do the auto-numbering in wiki templates, but from looking at the help pages for templates, you can do almost anything with them. I could probably do some experimenting and see how far I get.

Av8rmike (talk) 18:17, 3 May 2012 (UTC)

Hi guys, I've noticed we've used 2 different time-stamp formats. When it gets past the hour mark, I use the h:mm:ss format, but some pages use mm:ss, e.g. 78:12. As the time-stamps form the links for sections, I figure this is pretty important. My argument for using h:mm:ss is that, in my experience, that's what the majority of audio software and mp3 players use, plus I think it's more natural for us to think of time this way. What do you guys think?
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 17:50, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Kitty, the only reason I was using mm:ss was because that's what was already in use on the existing pages. =P I agree that h:mm:ss makes more intuitive sense and is used in more places, so I'm all in favor of switching over.
-- Av8rmike (talk) 13:04, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. Rwh86's away this week, so I'm gonna be cheeky, assume he's cool with it and change them over. We can always change them back if anyone comes up with a good argument for the mm:ss format.
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 19:00, 12 June 2012 (UTC)