Wikipedia Is Adding Voice Recordings of Notable Figures to Its Entries
(REUTERS/Phil McCarten)
Wikipedia announced Sunday that it will begin to include short recordings of notable figures’ speaking voices to biographical entries on the site.
The Wikipedia voice intro project, dubbed WikiVIP, is meant both to preserve another dimension of celebrities and noteworthy public figures on the reference site, and also — on a much more practical level — help readers learn how to correctly pronounce some of those figures’ names.
The project launched with the contribution of English comedian Stephen Fry (whose name is quite easy to pronounce). He offered a brief recording that is now embedded on his Wikipedia biography.
In the simple nine-second clip, Fry essentially reiterates the first line of his Wikipedia page in his endearing English accent:
“Hello, my name is Stephen Fry. I was born in London, and I’ve been in the entertainment business since, um, well, I suppose about 1981.”
A majority of the contributors added to the project thus far are British, including actor Benedict Cumberbatch and Baron Knight of Weymouth (my favorite baron!); other contributors include American author Alice Walker and author Art Spiegelman. You can view a full list of contributors, and listen to their contributions, here.
Wikipedia is working with the BBC to collect similar clips. The clips will begin to appear at the bottom of the biographical boxes that appear on the right rail of many Wikipedia biographies.
This is one small step for Wikipedia, and one giant leap for the majority of people on the Internet who don’t know how to pronounce Quvenzhané Wallis.
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