Wikinews:Wikimedia Radio

THIS PROPOSAL HAS BEEN PORTED TO META

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WN:RADIO

This page is for the planning stage of a Wikimedia Radio project. Please discuss on the talk page. For an earlier, similar, proposal refer to Wiki Campus Radio on Wikiversity.

Overview

It is proposed that Wikimedia Radio be a streaming audio service employing the Real Time Streaming Protocol to deliver content. Due to the small contributor base of Wikinews, content from sister projects would be integrated with the service, hence Wikimedia Radio.

Proposed Content

Below the content which each project may be able to provide is listed. Items are annotated to indicate which already exist. Material that is about a project rather than content from a project (eg Podcasts) should be listed in the Meta section and if originating with a specific project labelled as such. Content which does not yet exist, or is not actively being created should be noted where appropriate.

Commons

• Free music. A cursory inspection of Commons' audio categories reveals there is a great deal of this.

Requires catalogued with duration, artist, composer details arranged for use in the 'ticker' the player runs.

Wikibooks

• Audio books split into "chapter-a-day" segments. (not yet available)
• Recipes from the Cookbook? "It's A Cook-book!" ;)

Wikinews

• Top of the hour news bulletin/brief. (Available, not currently regularly recorded)
• Weather (for North America) - from NOAA/NWS data sources?
• "On this day", roundup of what made the news on today's date in previous years

Wikipedia

• Spoken articles. (Available, library of at least 1,000)

715 categorised on Commons

• Today's featured article / related articles
• On The Day - Historical dates/stats and figures...
• 'Elemental' - Describe an element , and some of it uses?

Wikiquote

• "Quote of the day"
  • In multiple languages
  • Background information on the quote
    • Author
    • Location
    • Context

Wikisource

• Audiobooks (currently available, per-chapter intro/outro material required - minimal work)

• Related: Ask Project Gutenburg/Archive.org?

Wikiversity

• A selection of content from the "Featured Project" of the day.
• 'RoundTable' - Following on from the open channel Skype tests done by WikiCampusRadio
• 'Making the most of Wikipedia' A how-to on using the World's biggest reference work without getting failed by your professor.

Wiktionary

• Word of the day
  • Multi-lingual versions - learn a new word in 10 languages every day!
  • History of the word (perhaps from Wikipedia)

Wikimania

• Live feed of keynote speakers?
• 'Today at the Wikimania' - Summary programme for the evening, Sort of WM specfic signpost?

Meta

• Weekly discussion of the projects - latest news from Meta. Perhaps a "talk show" segment.
• Wikipedia Weekly
• Signpost ( Some previous attempts on Commons)
• Wikizine?
• 'Netural Zone' - Disscusion on Wikimedia Radio - Sort of Right to Reply show
• "Engineering Bulletin for Interested Listners" -Possible topics include Vorbis, etc...

Non WMF

Content from non-WMF sites should be discouraged, but an option for feeding the initial schedule.

• OpenStreetMap - StateOfTheMap2008 Conference?
• 'A Walk In - Again possibly one for OpenStreetMap, take an 'intresting' place and do an audio

walk around it...

• Anything from these projects (Assuming compatible licenses) - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Sites_using_MediaWiki/en

Continuity Content

Introductions will be required to add a personalised touch to the various pieces broadcast. This is already available for the Wikinews 'news brief' and the recorder is required to edit their brief to include this. Where possible, standard messages should be created which can be reused. A significant portion of the existing prerecorded material will need specific introductions and lead-outs recorded. Continuity content need not all be spoken; music and particular sound effects can be included in this category.

• Timesignal. Commonly referred to as 'the pips'.

Audio Wikinews

Greenwich Time Signal

Audio Wikinews - Problems listening to the file? See media help.

Technical Considerations

Software

• The software package Icecast meets the requirements for maintaining and running the stream (and the WMF requirements to use Free Software). As these diagrams illustrate, this offers a scalable solution with Icecast relays which are analogous to the Squid caches employed by the Foundation to improve response times.
• As shown in the Icecast diagrams, a source client must provide the stream. Liquidsoap was suggested when a query was raised in the #icecast IRC channel on Freenode.
• Interface software to drive Liquidsoap from a Wiki. Liquidsoap must be given a list of material to play, and this should be constructed with a MediaWiki interface to ensure users are familiar with it and not required to learn a new, complex command set and drive the streaming process with Telnet. There are two key aspects:

• Master schedule. The main fixed schedule for broadcast
• Liquidsoap callouts. Liquidsoap has no facilities to access a database, it must be able to call an external agent to pick random tracks.

Hardware

• Running Icecast
  • CPU load: undefined
  • Memory footprint: undefined
• Storage requirements: undefined
• Running Liquidsoap
  • CPU load: minimal
  • Memory footprint: max 100Mb/channel

Eg, 7979 vincent 15 0 71736 24212 4100 S 0.0 2.3 0:00.00 /usr/local/bin/liquidsoap -v ./transcode-dfs.liq

• • Storage requirements: undefined

Networking

• Bandwidth per supported relay: undefined
• Bandwidth per 1,000 listeners: undefined

User Requirements

Software/Equipment for Contributors

Recording

• Audacity

Editing

• Audacity

Software for Listeners

Any number of clients can be used to access a stream, and all major platforms are supported. The service would be provided via a mms:// URL. A number of freely available options are listed below:

• MPlayer
• VLC media player