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)

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)

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)

Hi guys...First time transcriber here! I was inspired by Tim Farley's presentation at TAM 2012 to see where I could help out - and figured I could at least try this. I just transcribed and posted 5X5_Episode_4, but I'm not familiar enough with the Rogues to distinguish voice identities. The only voice IDs I'm somewhat sure of are Steve's and Rebecca's (the others I guessed at). If anyone can help with voice IDs in Ep. 4, that would be great. (Maybe I'll get better at the voices in the future -grin-) Skepticat (talk) 03:47, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi Skepticat, and (as Av8rmike said) welcome to the team! I proof-read 5X5 Episode 4 and added the speakers. The page is great, took me no time to add them. In future, if there's a lot of lines you can't attribute, don't worry about adding times to each, just the first in a cluster. Hopefully that will save you a bit of time too :)
I often find Bob and Jay hard to distinguish, but I think Bob's just a little more nasal, and it sounds like Jay might use a desktop mic instead of one close by his mouth. I don't know if that's any help.
Thanks for your help, I'm very jealous you got to go to Tam, if you have any feedback for the site, do let us know.
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 18:58, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the proof-read! Care to take a whack at 5X5 Episode 5, which I just posted? I don't think I'm going to have much luck with voice IDs (other than S & R) unless someone specifically says who's who, so I'll leave that to much more experienced folks, such as yourself, for now. Heck, I ended up riding down in the same elevator with the SGU crew at TAM (I think it was the first morning?) and I didn't fully realize who they were until later. As I was a "first TAMMER", that happened to me a few times with other skeptic notables there. :) Skepticat (talk) 04:23, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Done! And just for the record, I definitely don't get the voices right all the time. That's just one of the reasons to have subsequent contributors as proof-readers :)
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 12:56, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Skepticat: Some things that may help you get more familiar with the voices:

• Listen to an episode and follow along with the transcript (assuming it's been verified), paying attention to who's speaking when.
• Transcribe some of the earlier episodes. Perry is easy to distinguish, and Jay (and sometimes Bob) aren't in all the early ones because of software limitations.
  -- Av8rmike (talk) 14:24, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Hi guys, there's a few things I could do with getting some feedback on:

1. Using this page for the main page. (Av8rmike, I know you're pro)
2. Adding explanatory footnotes with the Template:Link needed (I explain this in more detail on the talk page)
3. Help:How to Contribute page. Does this make sense to everyone?

Could you please leave any feedback (positive/constructively critical/short/long) on the talk pages for these?
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 12:57, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

The 5X5 Episode 6 transcript has just gone up and is begging for a proof-read and voice check. Any takers? :) Skepticat (talk) 04:21, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

I got it covered. Thanks, Skepticat!
-- Av8rmike (talk) 02:40, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

You may have noticed a few changes in the site layout, including restriction of the Main Page editing to admin only. To add/amend transcript page links on the new main page and the dedicated SGU Episodes and 5X5 Episodes pages, use Template:SGU episode list and Template:5X5 episode list. Links to these templates and the skeleton pages are on the Help:Contents page, and instructions on Help:Getting Started have been updated accordingly.
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 10:15, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi all. I think it would be a good idea to pick an episode that is the canonical one. One where whatever the current agreed upon standard is implemented that can be pointed to or referenced whenever needed. Just a thought. Oo... also, we should be careful about links. We need to use nofollow when appropriate so quacks don't get any google juice from our work.
--Geneocide (talk) 03:59, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

Good idea on the example episode, we're trying to figure out which one would be best. Suggestions welcome!
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 18:38, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

It might be that we'll have to splice together a few episodes to get all the various elements in one place.
--Geneocide (talk) 19:00, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Geneocide! I think that the transcripts from episodes 350-365 (even the unverified ones) are probably as close to canonical as we're going to get. Those were done in the time when TK, RWH, and I had a little bit more time to devote to the pages and before we started to fall behind. (I'm particular to 365, since that's one I did almost entirely myself. =)
--Av8rmike (talk) 02:42, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I've posted the transcript for 5X5 Episode 30 so it's ready for a proof. Any takers? Tried my best to keep to US spelling. Mostly wiki links but some external, any preference? tnewsome (talk) 23:19, 18 October 2012 (EST)

We've mostly used wiki links, as it keeps a general standard of reference, they're often updated and they reference out to other sites. It's also very handy when you've got lots of linkable points, and it would take forever to find the best website for each. If readers are interested, it's generally a good place for them to start. Thanks for your help!
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 18:38, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Had an idea for a project we could work on in conjunction with the transcription. We should keep track of places where the rogues explain a core concept in detail (a lot of 5x5 episodes I imagine) and link to that explanation from other places in the transcription. Paradolia, Occam's razor, selection bias, things like that. We could centralize them into a single page, as well. Within the canonical rogue explanation we can link out to wikipedia or other sources.
--Geneocide (talk) 19:06, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea, somewhat compatible with the TIL (Today I Learned) sections. I think centralising them into a single page would make them much easier to find... I know that when I'm transcribing and I hear someone say "we discussed that on a previous podcast" it'd be nice to have a place to go to find that, though perhaps searching would be sufficient.
--Rwh86 (talk) 19:43, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Is it possible to have certain text automatically become a link? Like 'Skeptic's Guide to the Universe' or 'New England Skeptic's Society' or the rogues' names for example?
--Geneocide (talk) 00:39, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Not that I know of, other than perhaps using a template
--Rwh86 (talk) 19:43, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Question regarding interviews. When an interview is incorporated into a segment, such as Dr Rachie's interview in SGU 366, does that make her a guest? It doesn't seem like a black and white distinction. Zambuck (talk) 22:09, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Zambuck, we use the 'Guest' section in the infobox as a key for non-Rogue speakers, so you're right to add her in there. Thanks for your help!--Teleuteskitty (talk) 10:30, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Is there a way to get <blockquote> formatted a little bit. Maybe a light background color and/or some automatic large quote marks? Right now it's not necessarily worth using, imho.
--Geneocide (talk) 19:43, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Yep, we could probably change the CSS. I'll see what I can do. Do you have a site in mind that I could use as a basis (i.e. to steal the css from)?--Rwh86 (talk) 19:43, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

It looks like something has changed to add a light beige background, which achieves the goal. Personally I think it could be a little more distinct, by my aesthetic tastes are poorly defined and not widely popular. I didn't have any examples in mind, but the first one on this site looks good to me. It shows an example of what I meant by the "large quote marks". I am okay with having issues I bring up be un-addressed. I just write down things I think of. I leave the risk/reward analysis to those with better information on the subject. Still, I think the better looking the site is the more likely people are to use it.
--Geneocide (talk) 21:17, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Hey, guys! I'm new here (heard about the project on the recent episode) and today added two sections in episode 349: Nuclear Clock and NDE and Lucid Dreaming. Let me know how they look! It's my first time transcribing anything on this scale, and I think I'm getting the hang of it, but I have to admit that I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I feel strange not having more direction as far as formatting (I realize it would probably be very difficult/time-consuming to enforce super-specific standards at this stage). I looked at some of the completed transcripts to get an idea of what others were doing and tried to use my best judgment from there. I think I'm ready to attack a full episode, but it might take me a while to get through it. There are still some things I'm not entirely clear on, including exactly how the categories/redirects work, so I'm sure I'll ask for some help once I've finished transcribing a full episode (and probably while I'm in the middle of it). Also, I wanted to say that I usually don't have any trouble distinguishing voices (including Jay's and Bob's), so if there are any episodes/sections that need a second pair of ears for that specifically, I can definitely help out. Going forward, is this page the best way to communicate with other members? Thanks! --Jacquie o (talk) 11:16, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Hi Jacquie! Those transcripts you've done look absolutely fantastic! In terms of direction, we're just feeling our way though here. :) I suppose the most important thing is to get as much of the content done, and so long as the meaning is accurate, that's the most important thing. I also try to think "what if someone was running this through google translate?", i.e. would it translate well? That's leading me to leave out "you know" and "um" and those types of things to make the transcript flow better.

Great to hear you can tell Jay and Bob apart, if you have time and want some lighter work, doing some proof reading might be right up your alley then. Some people do transcripts and leave, say B?: or J?: if they're not sure, so you could possibly go through and fix those.

Going forward, we're trying to work on a place to help members communicate. The best I've got so far is this: Special:WikiForum, but it's a bit bare bones, so when I get some time I'm going to try to integrate something a little more sophisticated.

--Rwh86 (talk) 19:53, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Hello everyone! I heard Rob on the SGU and it sounded like a fantastic idea to contribute here. I transcribed a 5x5 episode to start (#39), and I'll probably do a few more before I go whole hog and tackle a full SGU episode. If anyone wants to proof-read that episode I did, that would be fantastic. I know the punctuation is way off there. Thanks in advance, and If you need my help specifically, don't be afraid to message me. Have fun! Thevipermike (talk) 05:29, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Great, thanks! I'll take a look when I get a chance. :)
--Rwh86 (talk) 19:54, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Hey everyone. Was thinking we should maybe try to do something in honor of Mike Lacelle. The only thing I came up with was marking episodes in which he appears as priority and getting them transcribed as soon as we can. If someone found the episodes and marked them I know I personally would work on them before other episodes. Any other ideas?
--Geneocide (talk) 07:14, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. How about I put a highlight on the front page to replace the t-shirt competition, seeing as that's been won now ;)
--Rwh86 (talk) 17:08, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, he was mostly on around the year-in-review episodes, so I went through them:

• 2011 in review: 337 - Dec 31 2011 - Mike is on this.
• 2010 in review: 285 - Dec 29 2010 - Mike is on this.
• 2009 in review: 232 - Jan 1 2010 - Mike is on this.
• 2008 in review: 180 - Dec 30 2008 - Mike is NOT on this.
• 2007 in review: 127 - Dec 26 2007 - Mike is on this.
• 2006 in review: 75 - Dec 27 2006 - Mike is NOT on this.

Hiya, I've started listing the episodes Mike was on here: Mike Lacelle - In memoriam‎. I don't think that's all of them though. I've also created pages for some of the episodes, I agree it would be good to prioritise these.
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 19:54, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello all. I just joined. Jumped in and proofread SGU Episode 3, some very minor copy edits, added a fair number of links, and subdivided a particularly long interview. I also added some "dead links" to pages I was figuring we should have locally: NESS and JREF. Or should I go back and change them to external links to THE Wikipedia?

--Bshirley (talk) 03:34, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Hi Bshirley. Thanks for the proof reading, it's very appreciated. It's always fun to add links during the proof reading process, I find I do that a lot too. I really like the subdivisions within the interview breaking it into its topics, that's something I might try to do in future; it would really help with deep linking to a particular subject of discussion. As for the dead links, I'm not so sure. I guess I see our site as not so much providing pages on particular topics à la Wikipedia, and am more inclined to link off to Wikipedia for those kinds of things. We can always improve them on Wikipedia if need be. Just my opinion tho.
--Rwh86 (talk) 15:10, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Did the way the diffs display change? They look good.
--Geneocide (talk) 02:00, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

They do look good. :) I didn't intentionally change them, but perhaps they changed with the new 1.20 mediawiki version (along with user registration briefly being broken).
--Rwh86 (talk) 13:14, 20 December 2012 (UTC)

Call for volunteers: I've posted a framework for episode 49 and did the first segments, then marked it as "open" to try to attract some more help. This one is The Steve Novella Show, as in the one he did all by himself, including Science or Fiction and Name That Logical Fallacy. It should be very easy to do, especially for someone who has trouble telling different voices apart. Sorry I can't offer any T-shirts. =)

What exactly needs doing on this episode? I don't want to listen to everything if I don't have to. --Geneocide (talk) 19:54, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Oops, I just now noticed I never signed my comment. D= You don't have to transcribe the entire thing if you don't want to; you can do just a segment here or there.
-- Av8rmike (talk) 22:11, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, maybe it's more trouble than it's worth but if you know that there's nothing missing up until some point, what that point is would be nice. It's a little unclear just looking at the transcript so far... at least to me.
--Geneocide (talk) 00:24, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

It's been transcribed up to the Agnosticism e-mail. The rest has just been copied over from the show notes page. I haven't even formatted the text to break it into paragraphs, which may be what made it unclear to you.
-- Av8rmike (talk) 16:15, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Quoted from Talk:SGU_Episode_127 for general discussion:

If we just put in dead links to episodes that don't exist, wouldn't that create a list of the most referenced yet to be made episode pages? Wouldn't that possibly be good?
--Geneocide (talk) 02:01, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

True, it would add them to Special:WantedPages, although the numbers there are bumped up by having consecutive episodes transcribed with automatic navigation links etc. . I like the idea of noting the most needed episodes, but I personally think it's best to avoid dead links in text where possible, even though these would automatically update when the page becomes available. I proposed a slightly different way on Template talk:Link needed a while back - we could use that method to add a reference with the dead link, bumping them up the 'Wanted' list, whilst keeping an eye on Category:Needs internal links. Which isn't perfect. Alternatively, we could:

1. create the referenced pages and add a 'priority pages'category
2. make a page listing all episodes to be transcribed, marking which are referenced

What do you think?
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 02:47, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm a big fan of whatever is easiest. Am I right in thinking that this would be the broken (red) link approach?
--Rwh86 (talk) 16:35, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I think so, yep. And just for the record, if that's what you guys think is best, I'm more than happy to go back through pages switching 'link needed' templates to dead links – I'm more motivated to take a uniform approach than to get any of my over-complicated ideas in place :)
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 22:08, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll offer my reasoning on the "Link needed" template, since I'm the one that created it. My idea for it was just as a "placeholder" for when I was transcribing/proof-reading and one of the rogues makes reference to something from a previous episode, but I didn't know which episode it is, indicating for someone to find it at a subsequent date. If you know what episode is being referenced and there isn't a page created already, I'd say by all means go ahead and put in the dead link to save another person the trouble of figuring out which episode it should be.
-- Av8rmike (talk) 04:50, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Ah, I see! That makes sense. Looks like that's the probably the consensus, so I'll start switching them over tonight
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 07:50, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello everyone,
HNY and thanks for all the great work you're doing here. I'm new to transcribing and to this whole Wiki editing stuff but hope I won't make too much of a mess.
I posted a 5x5 Episode 37 for a start so I guess it's ready for proof-reading. I didn't go through the whole Help section yet, just copied the formatting from another verified episode. So if anyone can take a look and check what I got wrong, I'd appreciate it. 
I'm not an English native speaker, so: (a) Though I tried to stick to the American spelling, there may be some impurities; (b) I'm never sure about punctuation. Guess I tend to abuse/misuse/misplace it. 
One more thing: I wasn't sure what to do with all the "likes", "you knows"' etc. so I left them in. Don't know what the best practice is. Oh, and I didn't have too much trouble telling Jay and Bob apart. Beginner's luck? ;) 
Keep up the good work! 
--Lvovo (talk) 00:10, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Great stuff! Welcome on board. I've proof read 5x5 #37 for you and I must say, I take my hat off to you. As someone who has some familiarity with a foreign language (having lived in France for a year), I must say you did an amazingly good job. I'd say your error rate is pretty much the same as transcripts done by native speakers. :)

• Re: American/British spelling: I don't really care, but I'm a bit more laissez faire than most other people on here. :)
• Re: likes/you knows: I tend to leave them out unless they modify the meaning of the sentence.
• Re: Bob/Jay: I'm beginning to suspect that this is a talent, as well as a skill.

One thing that might help is the skeleton pages. These are blank templates you can use when starting a new transcript. Cheers for your help!
--Rwh86 (talk) 12:56, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Wow! Appreciate the thumbs up. That's very encouraging. And thanks for the proof read. Apart from obvious misspellings, you corrected the very bits I was least sure of and that's a good sign, I guess :) Care to look at 5x5 #41? Hope it's not worse than the first one. Cheers!
--Lvovo (talk) 13:28, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Yep, done. That was even better than the first one, just one change really: practise vs practice. I'm a native speaker and I still get those mixed up. :)
--Rwh86 (talk) 15:57, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks :) And now #42 is up for grabs. This is fun ;)
--Lvovo (talk) 18:35, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Hey. I've seen the Statistics page, but I've also noticed that when I search, it tells me the word count of pages. Is it possible to get some sort of Total word/character count? I personally would like to see.
--Geneocide (talk) 01:13, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

There's also Special:ContributionScores but I think it has a tendency to massively overvalue small changes over larger ones, so people who do a lot of small corrections get higher scores than those who have transcribed a lot of text which is obviously not what we want. I haven't been able to find an extension that gives a total word count, but a while back I did do it manually by dumping all of the pages to text using some bodgy scripts on my linux box, then doing a word count on those text pages. It was on 2012-11-28 and we had transcribed 910,050 words, 5,128,984 characters, and we had completed 57 of 384 (15%) full SGU episodes and 78 of 113 (69%) 5x5 episodes. I'll do a refresh of these stats when I get a chance, but it's quite laborious.
--Rwh86 (talk) 10:00, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Just casting my eye down the episode lists, I get 65 SGU (17%) and 83 5x5 (73%) episodes complete right now.
--Rwh86 (talk) 10:06, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, I just did another run: 1,055,851 words, 5,937,159 characters.
--Rwh86 (talk) 12:30, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Design request: make the left pane logo and links float down the page when scrolling. Just another idea I'm throwing out there.
--Geneocide (talk) 21:56, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Hello everyone. I have an idea that is not completely relevant to SGU Transcripts, but I thought this would be the best place to ask this question. For a while now I have been wanting to have a little more fun with the results of Science or Fiction, beyond the simple annual tabulation of scores. Most importantly, I would like to measure the GWB Effect! Specifically, I would like to begin tabulating data on each Science or Fiction, and making it available to anyone who wants to perform an analysis on it. Things we could measure are: result for each player (right/wrong), order of answers given, number of "science" options, existence of theme, etc. There are other things as well. I think it would be a fun project for SGU fans who are also stats geeks. Anyone else interested?
--Manyou07 (talk) 08:52, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Sounds great! I know that User:Teleuteskitty has done some stuff. Would it be possible to do something cool with google docs? It'd be nice to do some graphs too.
--Rwh86 (talk) 14:29, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! I opened a thread at the SGU Forums for further discussion: http://sguforums.com/index.php/topic,44888.0.html[1]
--Manyou07 (talk) 06:41, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Could we use the YouTube API and auto captions to get a rough draft?
--Geneocide (talk) 23:17, 24 January 2013 (UTC)

I'd love to see the results. From what I've read the accuracy is low enough as to not be useful but it'd certainly be interesting to see.
--Rwh86 (talk) 08:47, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Ooh, it looks like there are some interesting things going on with Google speech recognition. There's a demo app that lets you talk for as long as you like. The first thing I'm going to have to do is to work out how to get chunks of the SGU podcast into it. I'm sure there's a way to couple the audio out and audio in on my linux machine, and if not, a simple cable from the headphone to the mic jack aught to do the trick.
--Rwh86 (talk) 09:03, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

So, after doing two episodes this way, what's your assessment of the process? I looked at episode 402, and it looks like it'll be almost as much work to decipher that wall o' text as it would have been to just type it in from scratch. Is it easy to set up, technically?
-- Av8rmike (talk) 13:28, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I'll have to go through and do the proof reading process before I know. Technically speaking, it's super easy. All I have is my headphones right next to the mic on my laptop, then I go to that google page, click the button and press play in vlc. So I imagine that it woudl be possible to get better results by either using a dedicated cable from the headphone jack into the mic jack, or by using some kind of software solution to pipe the sound into this web app. As far as I can see the quality varies. When one rogue is speaking clearly it does really well. When they talk over each other it's basically useless. Also, foreign accents completely confuse it.
--Rwh86 (talk) 15:36, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I tried it, but for whatever reason, the Google speech test page just didn't work for me; It kept asking for permission to use the microphone but wouldn't start recording. It doesn't matter; there's still stuff like categorization and formatting that has to be done manually anyway.
-- Av8rmike (talk) 14:42, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

There's also a chrome extension for transcription that allows you to speed up, slow down, pause etc the audio all from the same window as your text editor.
--Rwh86 (talk) 08:46, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

Help! I'm totally green and have a question: what am I supposed to do about "Quickies with Bob"? The one in Episode 414 comes in the middle of the news segments... and maybe this issue should be addressed in a Help section somewhere (sorry if I missed it)?
-- Fallible (talk) 16:47, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi Fallible, thanks for helping out on the site. It's a good question, and we don't yet have a set format for that. I searched through what's already been done, and I like the format in SGU Episode 387 and SGU Episode 400. In these, it's treated as a new, 2nd level segment, followed by a 2nd level header "News items continued", and 3rd level headers for the remaining news items. If people agree this format works, I'll go back and change the other transcripts, and add a note in the help section.
--Teleuteskitty (talk) 18:32, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick reply! I like it (the formatting proposal). The only comment I have is, are "Quickies with Bob" always in the news items section of the podcast? Because if not, we should agree on a format for how to interrupt a second level item with no sub-items (I suppose the same "X continued (time-stamp)" would work).
-- Fallible (talk) 22:31, 18 August 2013 (UTC)