7 ms·

Roger Ebert's Wikipedia

79 points by robbiet480 12y ago

dobbsbob 12y ago
Ebert after he lost his voice wondered if there was a way to use his own voice for speech software. He offered a bounty for this on his blog if I remember.
- MBCook 12y ago
  A company actually took all the recordings that have been made of Ebert speaking over the years thanks to his TV shows and other appearances and synthesized a copy of his voice that he could use for his text-to-speech software. It actually sounded a fair bit like him (this was shown in a TV show) but in the end I believe he chose not to use it.
  - jkhulme 12y ago
    https://www.cereproc.com/ https://www.cereproc.com/ was the company. Their text to speech capability is pretty awesome
danso 12y ago
A. I really like that Ebert stories occasionally pop up on HN, before and after his death. I don't think there is a newspaper writer whose words I've paid more attention to, and I still reflexively visit rogerbert.com on Fridays to see the latest reviews (some of his replacements are pretty good, but they aren't Roger yet). B. I've always thought it'd be a great thing for university classes to have, as a weekly assignment or final project, for each student to choose a Wiki page and actively edit it, whether it's to add actual content, improve the writing quality, or to restructure and reorganize the page and its priorities. Hopefully, in practice, once a student starts putting work into a page, they will face resistance from the page's traditional editors. And that's when the fun begins: the students would learn from the give-and-take of the collaborative editing process, as well as getting a great deal of editing experience, period...and if the student is halfway-apt, the debates over significance/sourcing/structure would compel the student to do even more research on the topic...in fact, that's why I stay away from Wikipedia editing, because I end up spending hours doing research and fact-finding, even for trivial things...it's character building, but bad for the work schedule :). The whole thing is also a lesson about the Internet community and dynamic...which, sure, you could learn by spending a semester on Reddit...on the other hand, at the end of the Wikipedia assignment, both the student and the world more directly benefits from the product of the student's labor: a better Wikipedia page.
- ivanca 12y ago
  Yeah, this needs to happen. It need to start somewhere so if someone here works at a college it should start the movement. WaS = Wikipedia as Assignment.
  - rspeer 12y ago
    This exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university... And it definitely helps to coordinate them through that page. Otherwise, active editors tend to just say "GAAAH why are all these new users suddenly editing on similar topics and not following the style guide at all," and sometimes they conclude it's some sort of coordinated manipulation and start reverting en masse, which is never a good thing to happen to a school assignment.
- pXMzR2A 12y ago
  > as a weekly assignment or final project, for each student to choose a Wiki page and actively edit it http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/using-wikipedia-in-the-classroom-a-cautionary-tale/ http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/using-wikiped... and http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/05/10/follow-up-to-my-cautionary-tale-regarding-using-wikipedia-in-the-classroom/ http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/05/10/follow-up-to-...
- CJefferson 12y ago
  What happens when the existing editors decide to block the student's changes, even when they are well referenced and fix existing errors? Would be hard in practice to mark. Perhaps the student could submit what they would like the page to look like, and the lecturer could just mark that. Putting even part of a student's mark in the hands of often irrational Wikipedia editors seems unreasonable.
  - dspillett 12y ago
    Unless they really take exception to the changes and properly expunge them, the student's updated version will still be visible in the history (with a diff between it and the previous versions easy to view) - so overly territorial editors wouldn't be that much of a problem unless they were completely fruit-loop. And as a precautionary measure, there is always "File, Save Page As".
morgante 12y ago
This led me down a rabbit hole of various Wikipedia pages, including obscure discussions of Ebert's edits & uploads (like this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:O%27TooleEbertPatric_by_Roger_Ebert.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/...). Reading through these, I was yet again impressed with how much Wikipedia manages to maintain decorum and sanity on the internet despite millions of users.
- _delirium 12y ago
  That linked discussion is a pretty common copyright pitfall, and not only on Wikipedia: people often assume that they own the copyright on photographs they paid a photographer to take of themselves, but this is often not the case. It depends on the jurisdiction and the agreed to license (if any), but often they aren't automatically considered a work-for-hire. A very common arrangement is that the photographer retains copyright, and the subject gets only a right to use the photographs, not copyright ownership. Therefore the subject can't release the photograph under a CC license, because they aren't the copyright holder. In some cases the subject/purchaser has bought only noncommercial rights, not commercial-use rights (as in this case, where the photographer retained commercial-use rights, which he subsequently sold to Getty Images). In very traditional arrangements the subject doesn't even have reproduction rights: they have to order more prints from the photographer if they want more copies. All they own in that case is the physical copies they've bought from the photographer! The short of it is: if you want to own the copyright on photos you pay someone to take, make sure you get a copyright assignment in writing. It is getting more common for photographers to agree to do that. Incidentally this is good practice for software contract work as well: the contract should clearly specify who owns the copyright on any software produced.
ribs 12y ago
I still miss Ebert and his work.

79 points by robbiet480 12y ago

Ebert after he lost his voice wondered if there was a way to use his own voice for speech software. He offered a bounty for this on his blog if I remember.

MBCook 12y ago
A company actually took all the recordings that have been made of Ebert speaking over the years thanks to his TV shows and other appearances and synthesized a copy of his voice that he could use for his text-to-speech software. It actually sounded a fair bit like him (this was shown in a TV show) but in the end I believe he chose not to use it.
- jkhulme 12y ago
  https://www.cereproc.com/ https://www.cereproc.com/ was the company. Their text to speech capability is pretty awesome

danso 12y ago

A. I really like that Ebert stories occasionally pop up on HN, before and after his death. I don't think there is a newspaper writer whose words I've paid more attention to, and I still reflexively visit rogerbert.com on Fridays to see the latest reviews (some of his replacements are pretty good, but they aren't Roger yet). B. I've always thought it'd be a great thing for university classes to have, as a weekly assignment or final project, for each student to choose a Wiki page and actively edit it, whether it's to add actual content, improve the writing quality, or to restructure and reorganize the page and its priorities. Hopefully, in practice, once a student starts putting work into a page, they will face resistance from the page's traditional editors. And that's when the fun begins: the students would learn from the give-and-take of the collaborative editing process, as well as getting a great deal of editing experience, period...and if the student is halfway-apt, the debates over significance/sourcing/structure would compel the student to do even more research on the topic...in fact, that's why I stay away from Wikipedia editing, because I end up spending hours doing research and fact-finding, even for trivial things...it's character building, but bad for the work schedule :). The whole thing is also a lesson about the Internet community and dynamic...which, sure, you could learn by spending a semester on Reddit...on the other hand, at the end of the Wikipedia assignment, both the student and the world more directly benefits from the product of the student's labor: a better Wikipedia page.

ivanca 12y ago
Yeah, this needs to happen. It need to start somewhere so if someone here works at a college it should start the movement. WaS = Wikipedia as Assignment.
- rspeer 12y ago
  This exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:School_and_university... And it definitely helps to coordinate them through that page. Otherwise, active editors tend to just say "GAAAH why are all these new users suddenly editing on similar topics and not following the style guide at all," and sometimes they conclude it's some sort of coordinated manipulation and start reverting en masse, which is never a good thing to happen to a school assignment.
pXMzR2A 12y ago
> as a weekly assignment or final project, for each student to choose a Wiki page and actively edit it http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/using-wikipedia-in-the-classroom-a-cautionary-tale/ http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/using-wikiped... and http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/05/10/follow-up-to-my-cautionary-tale-regarding-using-wikipedia-in-the-classroom/ http://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2014/05/10/follow-up-to-...
CJefferson 12y ago
What happens when the existing editors decide to block the student's changes, even when they are well referenced and fix existing errors? Would be hard in practice to mark. Perhaps the student could submit what they would like the page to look like, and the lecturer could just mark that. Putting even part of a student's mark in the hands of often irrational Wikipedia editors seems unreasonable.
- dspillett 12y ago
  Unless they really take exception to the changes and properly expunge them, the student's updated version will still be visible in the history (with a diff between it and the previous versions easy to view) - so overly territorial editors wouldn't be that much of a problem unless they were completely fruit-loop. And as a precautionary measure, there is always "File, Save Page As".

morgante 12y ago

This led me down a rabbit hole of various Wikipedia pages, including obscure discussions of Ebert's edits & uploads (like this: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:O%27TooleEbertPatric_by_Roger_Ebert.jpg http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/...). Reading through these, I was yet again impressed with how much Wikipedia manages to maintain decorum and sanity on the internet despite millions of users.

_delirium 12y ago
That linked discussion is a pretty common copyright pitfall, and not only on Wikipedia: people often assume that they own the copyright on photographs they paid a photographer to take of themselves, but this is often not the case. It depends on the jurisdiction and the agreed to license (if any), but often they aren't automatically considered a work-for-hire. A very common arrangement is that the photographer retains copyright, and the subject gets only a right to use the photographs, not copyright ownership. Therefore the subject can't release the photograph under a CC license, because they aren't the copyright holder. In some cases the subject/purchaser has bought only noncommercial rights, not commercial-use rights (as in this case, where the photographer retained commercial-use rights, which he subsequently sold to Getty Images). In very traditional arrangements the subject doesn't even have reproduction rights: they have to order more prints from the photographer if they want more copies. All they own in that case is the physical copies they've bought from the photographer! The short of it is: if you want to own the copyright on photos you pay someone to take, make sure you get a copyright assignment in writing. It is getting more common for photographers to agree to do that. Incidentally this is good practice for software contract work as well: the contract should clearly specify who owns the copyright on any software produced.

ribs 12y ago

I still miss Ebert and his work.