Wikipedia has announced a new project – Wikipedia Voice Intro Project (WikiVIP), under which it will add voice recordings on the biography pages of celebrities and other famous people on the online encyclopedia.
Wikipedia editors Andy Mabbett and Andrew Gray, brains behind the new project, believe the online encyclopedia could a lot of things with sound files. Moreover, Wikipedia has already started contacting celebrities for their short audio clip of their voices.
“The project asks people who are the subject of Wikipedia articles – whether they are celebrities like Stephen Fry, or those notable for other activities like scientists or artists – to make short recordings of their voice, lasting around ten seconds or so. The recordings are then uploaded to the article so that Wikipedia’s readers know what they sound like and how to correctly pronounce their names,” says Wikipedia in a blog post.
Users can check out all of the voice recording made so far for the project on Wikmedia Commons or on the relevant Wikipedia articles.
Wikipedia editors are also working BBC on a project to extract similar clips from certain BBC programmes. “Significantly, this is the first time that the BBC have openly licensed content from their broadcast programmes,” adds Wikipedia on the blog post.