Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Podcasting

Project-independent quality assessments

Quality assessments by Wikipedia editors rate articles in terms of completeness, organization, prose quality, sourcing, etc. Most wikiprojects follow the general guidelines at Wikipedia:Content assessment, but some have specialized assessment guidelines. A recent Village pump proposal was approved and has been implemented to add a |class= parameter to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, which can display a general quality assessment for an article, and to let project banner templates "inherit" this assessment.

No action is required if your wikiproject follows the standard assessment approach. Over time, quality assessments will be migrated up to {{WikiProject banner shell}}, and your project banner will automatically "inherit" any changes to the general assessments for the purpose of assigning categories.

However, if your project has decided to "opt out" and follow a non-standard quality assessment approach, all you have to do is modify your wikiproject banner template to pass {{WPBannerMeta}} a new |QUALITY_CRITERIA=custom parameter. If this is done, changes to the general quality assessment will be ignored, and your project-level assessment will be displayed and used to create categories, as at present. Aymatth2 (talk) 20:47, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Categories

There are a few categories that I think could use renaming, deleting, or just clarifying. I've always been a little unsure why Category:Crime podcasts isn't "True crime podcasts" considering the phrase is used so often in reliable sources. Is it because some crime podcasts are fictional? I've also wondered why Category:Comedy and humor podcasts aren't just "comedy podcasts". I don't know if I've ever seen sources call a podcast a "humor podcast". Is Category:Audio podcasts even necessary? Aren't all podcasts audio podcasts? What about Category:Video podcasts? Aren't these just VLogs or YouTube channels? We also still need to clarify what counts as an Category:Improvisational podcasts. I noticed the recent addition of Category:Mystery podcasts, which could also use a description. I think there are also some additions that could be made to Category:Podcasting companies. TipsyElephant (talk) 03:01, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

@Rhododendrites: it looks like you created the category Category:Crime podcasts. Do you have any input on whether it should stay "Crime podcasts" or be renamed to "True crime podcasts"? TipsyElephant (talk) 00:20, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Nope! :) Both make sense to me. Happy to defer to others. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 01:31, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

@2pou: you created Category:Improvisational podcasts. If I remember correctly you created it around the time we were discussing what counted as Category:Scripted podcasts and it was kind of supposed to act as the opposite of that category. However, it doesn't really look like reliable sources use the fully written out "Improvisational podcasts". I've come across "Improvised podcast" occasionally, but that isn't common either. I have, however, come across sources that use the phrase "Improv podcasts" or occasionally "Improv comedy podcasts". For instance, I found these: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. What are your thoughts on renaming the category to "Improv podcasts" and adding it to the parent category Category:Comedy podcasts. TipsyElephant (talk) 01:00, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

@TipsyElephant, so category naming sometimes follows some slightly different convention in order to follow the main article title (WP:C2D) and the category tree norms (WP:C2C). I think that I used "Improvisational" based off of Improvisational theatre, which is the main article overall (i.e. an Improv comedy link will end up taking you there). I think I was inconsistent with the category tree, though, because I didn't nest it within Category:Improvisational theatre, like Category:Improvisational television series is. I think I just felt like nesting TV under theatre was already odd, and then doubling down with podcasts was just adding to that? When I look at Category:Improvisation now, though, perhaps that was a bad choice... Anyways, that was my original thinking... That's not to say it's the best title, though. As for adding it to Comedy podcasts, by all means, do so. The Improvisation theatre category is nested within Comedy theatre, so that would be consistent. I think I figured you could have an improvisational drama, but it's almost always comedy. 2pou (talk) 19:25, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

@2pou: that makes sense. I'm not as familiar with the guidelines surrounding categories, but based on what you've linked to I think keeping the fully written out "improvisational" makes the most sense. The only category I found with just "improv" was Category:Improv Theatre companies in New York City, which is practically empty. There are some variations on the word such as Category:Improvised films, Category:Musical improvisation, Category:Organ improvisers, or Category:Improvised armoured fighting vehicles. However, none of these categories seem to be referring to the same type of improvising and there don't appear to be many other categories with the same naming scheme. Whereas "improvisational" has been used for multiple categories about improvisational comedy and acting. TipsyElephant (talk) 00:35, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

We should create a category called "indie podcasts" or at least "indie scripted podcasts". something along those lines. I'll look into what phrases reliable sources use and whether the phrase is used for scripted podcasts only or for podcasts in general. TipsyElephant (talk) 13:01, 12 August 2023 (UTC)

It looks like both "indie podcasts" and "independent podcasts" are used, but the shorter "indie" seems to be used the most. Here are some sources I've found that use the phrases: [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]. TipsyElephant (talk) 01:24, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Couple things: What is the criteria to make a podcast independent? Category:Independent films uses the major film studios defined in the parent article as the line (I think), but it's not a very well-used category from what I can tell. Theoretically, any foreign film would then fall in this category, which I don't think is the intent (definitely not the practice). That indie film line also gets fuzzy for smaller, yet still large, studios (e.g. A24 is independent, but it has some serious money behind it). Is there a good way to define the podcast inclusion criteria to avoid WP:ARBITRARYCAT? Also, while indie may be more common, consider if it's satisfies our encyclopedic WP:TONE recommendations vice slang. 2pou (talk) 19:47, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

So I took a look through the sources I've listed. It looks like a lot of the podcasts have absolutely no connection to a podcast network or studio. I think we can safely say that any podcast created without any connection to a network or studio is definitely indie. Some of the podcasts are connected to really small networks or studios (some of which I think are just made up by the creator of the podcast). So the line starts to get a little blurrier here. And then there are a couple that are connected to more notable companies like Realm Media or even Spotify Studios. I'll have to think on this further. TipsyElephant (talk) 00:49, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

WikiProject Invitations

We should create a Template:WikiProject Podcasting invite so we can attract more members to the project. The activity level of the project tends to be pretty low and we typically only have one or two new members every year. TipsyElephant (talk) 15:30, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

It looks like there are a ton of examples at Category:WikiProject invitation templates. A few that are for mediums of entertainment include Template:WPTelevision-invite, Template:WPComics-invitation, and Template:BBC invite. TipsyElephant (talk) 00:56, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Podcast covers

We should do an informal drive to add podcast covers. TipsyElephant (talk) 11:56, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

Move/rename discussion for Critical Role campaign articles

A series of articles which may be of interest to members of this project—Critical Role (campaign one), Critical Role (campaign two), and Critical Role (campaign three)—has been proposed for renaming. If you are interested, please participate in the move discussion. Thank you. Sariel Xilo (talk) 19:09, 14 December 2023 (UTC)