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Re-using recordings / catalog search

Posted: April 18th, 2019, 12:23 pm
by msfry
Availle wrote: April 16th, 2019, 6:09 am Just to make this clear: We do not allow the same recording to be used in more than one project.
I've always wondered about that. It seems to me that one piece could fit in someplace else just as well. Like for example when a collection of O'Henry or Dunsany short stories is posted, none of those stories can be found by title no matter how famous they might be, unless they are re-recorded. It would add to our catalog's breadth if some of them could be "cross referenced" with minimal effort, brought to the foreground so to speak, if the reader could change up the Intro and Outro, then post them in a Short Story Collection.

Same could go for other Collections -- poems, essays, etc. We have a whole lot of buried material that can't be found unless you know just where to look.

What's the rationale against it?

Re: FULL: Short Nonfiction Collection, Vol. 064 - jo

Posted: April 18th, 2019, 3:13 pm
by Availle
Then you have to entirely re-record the piece.

The rationale is something like: Say, you find a certain poem that you love and it's in the catalog 5 times. You want to listen to all of them to see the different interpretations - and then you find out that 4 times, it's EXACTLY the same recording. Somewhat disappointing, no?

This rule has been around for a very long time, it may not be known to newer members, so I mentioned it again.

Re: FULL: Short Nonfiction Collection, Vol. 064 - jo

Posted: April 18th, 2019, 8:09 pm
by williamjones
Availle wrote: April 18th, 2019, 3:13 pm Then you have to entirely re-record the piece.

The rationale is something like: Say, you find a certain poem that you love and it's in the catalog 5 times. You want to listen to all of them to see the different interpretations - and then you find out that 4 times, it's EXACTLY the same recording. Somewhat disappointing, no?

This rule has been around for a very long time, it may not be known to newer members, so I mentioned it again.

The concern about cross-posting a recorded selection "disappointing" a mythical searcher is a phantom, negative concern and not worthy of being mentioned in intelligent discourse. A positive aspect of cross-posting is that users would be more likely to happen upon the recording -- this is prime example of Benign Redundancy in Information Theory. If this really is a "rule", as opposed to a habit-of-use, then it is a rule without benefit to anyone and those who see fit to complain on this basis should let the "rule" die in obscurity.

Re: FULL: Short Nonfiction Collection, Vol. 064 - jo

Posted: April 19th, 2019, 5:40 am
by Availle
Just to make sure we're on the same page here, do you mind if I paraphrase / summarise your argument? It comes in two parts, doesn't it:
williamjones (almost) wrote: 1. I really do not think we need to be concerned about people who SEARCH stuff in our database.
2. On the contrary, I believe it is paramount to make sure that people FIND stuff in our database.
I see.

If it helps, you're not the first one on here who believes that searching and finding stuff (in a database) have nothing whatsoever to do with each other...

Re: FULL: Short Nonfiction Collection, Vol. 064 - jo

Posted: April 19th, 2019, 6:58 am
by williamjones
Availle wrote: April 19th, 2019, 5:40 am Just to make sure we're on the same page here, do you mind if I paraphrase / summarise your argument? It comes in two parts, doesn't it:
williamjones (almost) wrote: 1. I really do not think we need to be concerned about people who SEARCH stuff in our database.
2. On the contrary, I believe it is paramount to make sure that people FIND stuff in our database.
I see.

If it helps, you're not the first one on here who believes that searching and finding stuff (in a database) have nothing whatsoever to do with each other...
Thank you for you comments.
However, item #1 of your paraphrase is wildly off course as you stated it.
I *do* care about people who search for stuff in the LV database - I am often one of them.

The thrust of my original comments was that cross-posting of the same recording is NOT a bad thing.
I was an independent database developer and consultant for 40 years before retirement. One of the things I learned was that either (a) people who make inquiries of your database need to be smart about their search arguments; or (b) your programming needs to be smart enough to intelligently expand the borders of the search arguments. The reason being the a useful search function SHOULD be able return more hits than strictly adhering to the search arguments -- policy: return SOMETHING rather than nothing because the actual item sought by the user might be included in the generalized returned hits. This redundancy is found everywhere in the modern web searches -- YouTube, Bing, Chrome, etc. Were I to search YouTube for "Saraband by Bach" I would receive a large number of hits - redundancies. And I would not be "disappointed" at all.

Your #2 paraphrase is right on. Which brings up an associated complaint: When I do a general LV search for Balaam's Ass -- I get nothing, no hits are are returned and yet I KNOW that there are sections of projects whose titles include that biblical character's name. I can see no reason under the sun why the LV search engine is not enabled to include section titles as well as project titles. It appears that SOME projects DO allow section titles to be scanned by the search engine. To a logical person's thinking, this should be universal across LV's entire catalog. There must be a "toggle" which identifies a project as allowing section titles to be included in a search. It would be a straightforward matter (by someone familiar with the LV internals) to make a tiny modification to the search engine code to ignore that "toggle" and automatically include all section titles in searches.

Re: Re-using recordings in more than one project

Posted: April 19th, 2019, 7:48 am
by Availle
I have split this off the non-fiction thread because you actually know what you're talking about! :thumbs:

Okay, let's have intelligent discourse about this topic. :D

I don't have time right now to address all of the issues you have raised, so just very quickly:

1) Our search function is... not optimal, to put it mildly. :roll: We know that.
2) I hear you when you say: "You should find SOMETHING rather than nothing" and I agree with you.
3) I don't believe that plastering the exact same recording in various projects just in case the search MIGHT find it then is a valid solution to 2), in fact I don't believe it is any solution to 2) at all.

4) The search function has problems with apostrophes, that's why Balaam's Ass is not working, no matter in which collection it is. Try searching for Balaam instead - and let me know what happens. :wink:

I will be back to be more precise about what I believe you want to say and what I believe is the underlying issue. But now, I have to back to work and finish something I'd like to have done "today", which leaves me literally... 12 minutes. *ilovemyjobevenfridaysjustbeforemidnight :roll: *

Re: Re-using recordings in more than one project

Posted: April 19th, 2019, 8:46 am
by ej400
If we could use the same recordings in the same projects... then I can have 52 solo versions of Ivanhoe! Right? :mrgreen: <mrgreen>

Re: Re-using recordings in more than one project

Posted: April 19th, 2019, 9:40 am
by williamjones
ej400 wrote: April 19th, 2019, 8:46 am If we could use the same recordings in the same projects... then I can have 52 solo versions of Ivanhoe! Right? :mrgreen: <mrgreen>
My little pea brain is crying out for some clarification (paraphrasing?) of your comment "use the same recordings in the same projects".

Re: Re-using recordings in more than one project

Posted: April 19th, 2019, 9:57 am
by Availle
I think Elijah means "same recordings in different projects". :wink: And thank you Elijah, for making my point so eloquently! :wink:

I'm sorry William, I just finished work, it's 2 am now and I'm too tired to answer you coherently... I'm not trying to get out of this, as I said you raise some interesting and valid points. Tomorrow, promised!

Nightynight! :9:

Re: Re-using recordings in more than one project

Posted: April 19th, 2019, 10:01 am
by williamjones
Availle wrote: April 19th, 2019, 9:57 am I think Elijah means "same recordings in different projects". :wink: And thank you Elijah, for making my point so eloquently! :wink:

I'm sorry William, I just finished work, it's 2 am now and I'm too tired to answer you coherently... I'm not trying to get out of this, as I said you raise some interesting and valid points. Tomorrow, promised!

Nightynight! :9:
!
Schlaf wohl !

Re: Re-using recordings in more than one project

Posted: April 19th, 2019, 10:24 am
by TriciaG
Reusing the same recording in multiple projects is a totally different thing than optimizing search results. As was said, the search function here is sub-par, and we know it. It's on the list of things to fix/improve someday. :)

Regarding reusing recordings, top-of-the-head questions/comments:

- How does that advance our prime directive, which is to make all PD books into audiobooks? These sections are already acoustically liberated, and they don't have the "choice of voice" aspect that could be considered an exception to the prime directive.

- Allowing it could cause disappointment in listeners, as mentioned.

- Allowing it makes readers' numbers meaningless. Right now I've recorded (put in the work on) 3347 sections. If we were to chop up my projects and reuse them in a bunch of other projects, this number would become inflated, and would mean very little anymore. As an extreme example, if I submitted my recording of some poem to a bunch of poetry collections and anthologies, I could really bump that number up with no additional recording needed, and only the effort of renaming the file and uploading it. Not cool, IMHO.

Those are my gut thoughts on the topic. I am heartily against reusing files.

Re: Re-using recordings in more than one project

Posted: April 19th, 2019, 11:03 am
by msfry
I see two issues here:
#1 Re-using recordings in more than one project, which has merit if not carried to the point of absurdity.

#2 Making more of our titles searchable than is currently being done, not a re-using issue, and not requiring additional programming.

Let me focus on #2 for now. We already know we can toggle a project to FIND any title OR author in any LV collection of independent stories, essays, or poems. Why can't we also toggle all the chapters of a book which is equally a collection of independent stories, essays or poems?

Take for instance my recent solo Voices Of The Night, a collection of poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, many of them famous.

https://librivox.org/voices-of-the-night-and-other-poems-by-henry-wadsworth-longfellow/

It's a collection just the same as any other LV collection, each section being a separate poem with a title. These stand-alone sections could be searchable by title with little to no additional effort, no additional cost, nor tying up additional server space? They are an LV asset individually. Why must be re-recorded and re-submitted into a separate LV collection to be searchable by title. When someone does a google search for The Luck of Edenhall, for example, the LV audio version should be served up right up along with print versions by poemhunter, poetrynook, etc.

This is another great way to liberate our literature into the PD. If there is good reason why this CAN'T or SHOULDN'T be done, I'd like to hear what it is. "That's how its done and everyone who has been around long enough knows it", I don't consider an intelligible answer.

Re: Re-using recordings in more than one project

Posted: April 19th, 2019, 11:17 am
by DACSoft
TriciaG wrote: April 19th, 2019, 10:24 am Regarding reusing recordings...

... I am heartily against reusing files.
I wholeheartedly agree! My justification was along the lines of your last bullet point, although my example was a book of short stories. Suppose I solo such a book with 20 stories. Then I decide I want to extract the 20 stories and apply them as 20 contributions to various short story collections. I've done almost no additional work, but now have contributed to 21 projects (the equivalent of 40 "chapters" with only 20 recordings)!

To me this feels like "cheating," and diminishes the time and value of the work that others spend in recording 40 "chapters" for 21 projects. I fully support the restrictions of not reusing recording files at LV. :thumbs:

Don

Re: Re-using recordings in more than one project

Posted: April 19th, 2019, 11:23 am
by TriciaG
One reason we don't make every poetry anthology a "collection" that is individually searchable is because it really complicates the LV catalog.

Go to Edgar Allan Poe's catalog page, for example: https://librivox.org/author/21

Browsing through, there are already pages of poems and short stories in collections (short poetry, short story, ghost & horror, etc.). If the projects that are anthologies with a single source were also marked as collections, the list would be so much longer and more cumbersome to browse through. It's already mind-numbing. :lol:
It's a collection just the same as any other LV collection, each section being a separate poem with a title. These stand-alone sections could be searchable by title with little to no additional effort, no additional cost, nor tying up additional server space? They are an LV asset individually. Why must be re-recorded and re-submitted into a separate LV collection to be searchable by title. When someone does a google search for The Luck of Edenhall, for example, the LV audio version should be served up right up along with print versions by poemhunter, poetrynook, etc.
A LV "collection" is one with (sometimes) separate authors, and (definitely) separate text sources. So it's a slightly different animal than an anthology of poems or stories, all from the same source.

That's a side point. ;) Back to why I quoted this:

Regarding your Google search, that's not quite accurate. Even if something is in a LV collection and individually searchable in the catalog, it may not (won't? I don't know the probability) show up in a web search anyway. I tried "Ulalume Poe" - the poem by Poe which is in a collection here and individually searchable. It did not come up in the first 6 pages of my Google search. So it's very possible that someone doing a search for, say, The Luck of Edenhall, would not find LV either.

Re: Re-using recordings in more than one project

Posted: April 19th, 2019, 11:25 am
by TriciaG
I just noticed that https://librivox.org/henry-wadsworth-longfellow-collection-001/ should be a LV collection, since its sections all came from different text sources. Changing that now. So those will be searchable in the LV catalog. ;) (Although it looks dumb to have Longfellow listed as the author on every section, since it's a Longfellow collection!)