Podcast transcripts

August 30, 2012 9:48 PM

We've been using Fanscribed to make transcripts of the Metafilter Podcast, and it's been working out well! We've just finished the most recent three - #69,^* #70, and #71! Episode #68 is now ready to go. now. Join in!

^*I'll copy the contents over to the wiki soon.

posted by Pronoiac to MetaFilter-Related at 9:48 PM (43 comments total)

A disadvantage of starting in the middle is that I can tell everyone apart but don't know which name to assign to which voice.
posted by ceribus peribus at 11:38 PM on August 30, 2012

So, about editing. Here's how I do it:
Go to the "Transcribe" tab, then log in with your name & email. Go back to the "Read" tab, and click "edit" for the next unfinished segment. You can read what came before, and this helps you deal with the overlap between segments. Segments overlap by five seconds - so if a segment starts or stops mid-word, don't worry about it. You have some leeway on where to stop.

If you haven't listened to the podcast before (!), and can't tell who's who: cortex sings the theme song, and many, many other songs; I like Sgt. Pepper 2.0, for example.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:07 AM on August 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have never listened to the podcast. Does this mean I get an exclamation mark (!) after my name?
posted by item at 5:13 AM on August 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

I love this. I can hear the canned audience laughter in the background as I read it.

Such great characters too!
posted by urbanwhaleshark at 6:16 AM on August 31, 2012

We need the mods to announce who they are with radio handles. Breaker, breaker, rubber duck.
posted by arcticseal at 7:51 AM on August 31, 2012

I've been enjoying getting to go back and read these.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:18 AM on August 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

It's a pretty pleasant surprise for someone to pick up the podcast just so they can help with the transcript. That's a generous thing to do.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:00 PM on August 31, 2012

It's fun! I've already done two. Really nice interface and set-up, well done everyone involved!
posted by adrianhon at 1:50 PM on August 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

Whenever the gang references a specific post, I feel like I should be adding a hyperlink to the post in question. Or a link to the user's page when they mention someone by name. This would also work for when they're talking about say, someone's twitter feed, or other off site places that they were reminded of, or a specific link in a post.

On the other hand, though, it's a slippery slope because it invites linking intentionally vague phrases like "remember that one time" to a particularly nasty thread, or "there was that one user" to someone's banned account page. Or just linking random words and phrases to only vaguely related stuff, Wikipedia style.

I realize someone could always wait until the transcript is up on the wiki, and then edit links into that, but since motivation is a limited resource maybe enabling it during transcription is something worth considering.
posted by ceribus peribus at 4:10 PM on August 31, 2012 [1 favorite]

I have to pull this moment out from 15:00 in ep 68 (just transcribed) as a perfect, perfect summation of not only the podcast but the characters of our esteemed mods:

jessamyn: It's just a page and

mathowie: Oh my god

jessamyn: you listen to

mathowie: the cats

jessamyn: the ocean, by Burhanistan. It is great.

cortex: That is very nice.

jessamyn: It is great. It was totally underappreciated, it was one of those great nine comment

mathowie: But this isn't single! We're in single!

jessamyn: Yeah, it fucking is! I mean

mathowie: It's two links! There's a via.

cortex: Yeah, it's, it's, you know, then we have a real taxonomical problem, because there's like a question of what really counts as a single link in spirit versus literally having one link, because this, like, does a via link really count as it's not a single link

posted by adrianhon at 4:22 PM on August 31, 2012 [2 favorites]

Whenever the gang references a specific post, I feel like I should be adding a hyperlink to the post in question. Or a link to the user's page when they mention someone by name. This would also work for when they're talking about say, someone's twitter feed, or other off site places that they were reminded of, or a specific link in a post. ..

Yes ceribus peribus! As a fellow transcriber, I agree hyperlinks within the transcription would be great. Keep in mind though, there is always a link to the official podcast page at the top for reference (everything is linked there in the notes) so I see it as a work around until I can breach the subject with the fanscribed creator.

WHY IT MAKES SENSE TO TRANSCRIBE METAFILTER PODCAST
- It's a text-based site. The hearing-impaired have full access to the content, except this one aspect. We are dusting off the archives thanks to Pronoiac for taking the reins with hosting/setup
posted by TangerineGurl at 9:26 PM on August 31, 2012

Heh, it's entertaining the degree to which I fail to pitch in when i'm ostensibly joining the podcast. I don't usually re-listen to the ones I do, but when I can scroll down and see the utter lack of my name, it occurs to me that perhaps I should prepare more material.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 10:18 PM on August 31, 2012

mathowie: It's two links! There's a via.

cortex: Yeah, it's, it's, you know, then we have a real taxonomical problem, because there's like a question of what really counts as a single link in spirit versus literally having one link, because this, like, does a via link really count as it's not a single link

And than later on:

mathowie: Yeah, it kinda, well in retrospect you know there's two...links. So it somehow got on my singl-

cortex: This is where I would bend the rules; it's in a, it's in a, parenthesis? The second-

jessamyn: *Now* he's bending the rules.

posted by ceribus peribus at 12:12 AM on September 1, 2012

This makes me so excited for the Best Post Wrap-up Podcast. I love them all, but the podcasts really shine when there's a specific focus and debate.
posted by gilrain at 7:22 AM on September 1, 2012

A disadvantage of starting in the middle is that I can tell everyone apart but don't know which name to assign to which voice.

If it's a me/Jess/Matt podcast, I'm the guy panned a little to the left and Matt is the guy panned a little to the right.

Heh, it's entertaining the degree to which I fail to pitch in when i'm ostensibly joining the podcast. I don't usually re-listen to the ones I do, but when I can scroll down and see the utter lack of my name, it occurs to me that perhaps I should prepare more material.

I think you just have to embrace my interjectional "that's nice and all but I will now start talking about a thing" style, get yourself in there edgewise. You're too polite and accommodating! You gotta opine with reckless abandon.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:29 AM on September 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Wow, I didn't expect so much interest! We might finish #68 soon.

I copied the episode 69 transcript to the wiki. Note the credits - beryllium was amazing, & deserves a shoutout!

TangerineGurl, can I swipe your "why to transcribe" reason?

About formatting & HTML:
* Linking up discussions is kinda nice, but hunting down the links takes me out of the flow of transcribing, so it seems like a slow hassle. Ditto for "hey, which song is playing here?"
* I've used *asterisks* for emphasis, occasionally. I can turn those into italics on the wiki page.
posted by Pronoiac at 12:19 PM on September 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

It is done! Unbelieveable! When I went out to see the Paralympics, it was at 66%, then when I came back, it was something like 85%. Doing all the easy music bit at the end bumped it up to 90%, and then beryllium and I got to work on the end bit and met in the middle.

Awesome. I think I might listen to the next podcast (hint, hint) by transcribing it.
posted by adrianhon at 3:53 PM on September 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

I switched some of the names around in my segments as they joined up with other transcriber's efforts so that cortex didn't suddenly become Matt in the middle of a sentence, but I don't think it's 100% consistent yet. Hoping that reviewers will catch any remaining issues.
posted by ceribus peribus at 4:16 PM on September 1, 2012

Wow! I'm glad I set up episode 67 already. :)
posted by Pronoiac at 5:00 PM on September 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

"TangerineGurl, can I swipe your 'why to transcribe' reason?"
Of course, Pronoiac!

Thanks for setting up #67! I about screamed when I saw that 68 was 100% complete.
Thank you, everyone who is transcribing for the greater good!
posted by TangerineGurl at 6:25 PM on September 1, 2012

A disadvantage of starting in the middle is that I can tell everyone apart but don't know which name to assign to which voice.

If you go to the read tab of the fanscribed page, you can press play from there and listen and read along for a few minutes to figure out who is who.
posted by TangerineGurl at 6:30 PM on September 1, 2012

So, there are some really interesting analytics one could do on these transcripts. For example, you could look at:

- Word clouds
- Graphs of words/person over time
- Who speaks the fastest?
- Who causes the most laughs?
- What is the speaking 'grade level' of each mod?

It also occurs to me that transcribing the podcast is an education in itself. There's a lot of words that wouldn't necessarily be obvious how to spell, like 'ngrams' or people's names, or such.
posted by adrianhon at 8:29 AM on September 2, 2012

I can't concentrate for a short time listening to voices (part of my ADD, I think) so I thank you all for making it possible for me to finally enjoy the podcasts. Thank you. Really.
posted by b33j at 3:49 AM on September 3, 2012

for even a short time listening to voices
posted by b33j at 4:07 AM on September 3, 2012

Sweet! We just wrapped up episode 67.

The wiki now has episode 68 and episode 67.

The Fanscribed page for episode 66 is live.
posted by Pronoiac at 10:02 PM on September 5, 2012

I'm not sure if our style guide endorses explicitly labeling crosstalk all over the place, but astute readers who notice a screenful of dialog taking place in a few seconds should just assume it's all happening at the same time.

It adds to the fun of playing out my Menwith Hill fantasies, though.
posted by ceribus peribus at 12:28 AM on September 7, 2012

I'll note a recent success here - episode 72 went up on Thursday, and it was transcribed by Friday night!
posted by Pronoiac at 8:03 PM on September 9, 2012

This is a really great thing you've helped us all do Pronoiac.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 5:45 AM on September 10, 2012 [2 favorites]

Thanks, jessamyn! I'm honestly pretty stunned at how well it's working so far.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:36 PM on September 10, 2012

The comment thread for 66 is closed, so I'll mention here that the "Hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of sheer terror" phrase originated in the Apollo space program, describing what it's like to be an astronaut during a mission. I'm surprised that's not more well known.

(I had to write something somewhere because it's inappropriate for me to start adding editorial comments to the transcript)
posted by ceribus peribus at 8:22 AM on September 11, 2012

Heh. I'm not sure anyone would be too bothered by the occasional inline annotation.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:34 AM on September 11, 2012

No, that's okay. If I wanted to be part of the discussion I could have been listening to the podcast last September.
posted by ceribus peribus at 10:25 AM on September 11, 2012

This is a really great thing you've helped us all do Pronoiac.
posted by jessamyn (staff)

Thanks, jessamyn! I'm honestly pretty stunned at how well it's working so far.
posted by Pronoiac

We just need the right tool! Fanscribed is quite lovely for this project!
posted by TangerineGurl at 10:00 PM on September 12, 2012 [1 favorite]

ceribus peribus just polished off episode 66, which surprised me; I thought maybe I'd broken something, but it turns out there's 15 minutes of silence at the end of it.

There are a few partial transcripts on the wiki, & I want to clean them up. (Except #10, which someone else is working on.) So, episode 64 is live!
posted by Pronoiac at 7:42 PM on September 14, 2012

I've just downloaded the transcripts to read on the bus. Great work guys!
posted by arcticseal at 8:36 PM on September 14, 2012

Wow, that was quick! beryllium's putting the finishing touches on episode 64, by transcribing lyrics, which is both overkill and charming. There was a start on that, but for the most part, that got finished in under 24 hours, which, !!!. I'm kinda gobsmacked. o_O

I've set up Fanscribed for episode 56.

I'm totally not above editorial commentary as I transcribe.

I'm running a little behind on copying the transcripts to the wiki. How's the formatting?
posted by Pronoiac at 4:22 PM on September 15, 2012

I just really liked that song! (And also the Boron Rod song, because boron! my friend!) But yes, it was overkill, and you're welcome to remove it.

And transcribing does go really quickly with only cortex and restless_nomad and musical interludes. (I love having mathowie and jessamyn too, but listening to the same snippet repeatedly just to figure out what cortex is saying under jessamyn (in case it turns out to be the meaning of life) slows things down.)

And yay, 56! Let's do this!
posted by beryllium at 6:46 PM on September 15, 2012

Episode 56 is a wrap! I've set up some more:
* episode 47 lacks only the last ten minutes.
* episode 46 lacks the last fifteen minutes.
* episode 42 is missing half an hour or so.
I don't think we need to copy the partial wiki transcripts in - just do what's missing, on Fanscribed, & I'll copy it to the wiki later.
posted by Pronoiac at 9:55 AM on September 19, 2012

All righty, I think that wraps up all of the old incomplete transcripts. Episode 65 is ready!
posted by Pronoiac at 7:47 PM on September 20, 2012

I think this thread closes in the next day or two. Here's the current status.

What we accomplished is pretty amazing:
* We've knocked out nine episodes since I made this post.
* we've transcribed over 11 hours of audio.
* I have some individual totals, but I realized that maybe people don't want to be on a scoreboard? My totals - after I corrected some issues, and updated the wiki pages: 79 segments, or 39.5 minutes - and I'm #4 on the list.

This effort could continue after this post closes to new comments; check the Podcast page on the Mefi Wiki or the Projects portion of my server for the latest.

You all deserve applause! Also a break, if you want one. :)
posted by Pronoiac at 3:15 PM on September 29, 2012

Fuckin' A!
posted by cortex (staff) at 4:57 PM on September 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Somehow, a scoreboard without numbers seems okay to me. So, the top 5: beryllium, ceribus peribus, Adrian Hon, Pronoiac, & tangerinegurl.

Thanks everybody!
posted by Pronoiac at 9:51 PM on September 29, 2012

Thanks everybody, that is wonderful.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:29 AM on September 30, 2012 [1 favorite]