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Thank you so very much for wanting to help out with this effort! If you want you can say hi and introduce yourself. But feel free to just start transcribing new text or reading trough already transcribed text to check for errors whenever you want, without any introductions if you prefer!

Here are some things you should know about before you start:

How to start contributing
There are many different tasks to choose from:


 * 1) Proofread machine transcriptions
 * 2) Make a transcription easier to read and use
 * 3) Add a machine transcription
 * 4) Categorize talks/interviews/pages
 * 5) Add more talks/interviews/episodes to the lists
 * 6) Create a new page for a talk/interview/episode

Proofread machine transcriptions
This is the easiest thing to start with, but still perhaps the most crucial thing to do. So thank you! That's it. Thank you for your time!
 * 1) Go to the list of talks or interviews and find one marked as 'Started'.
 * 2) Download the audio file
 * 3) Click on the 'Edit' button on the top of the page
 * 4) Scroll down till you see the subheading 'Machine transcription – Start helping here'
 * 5) Start listening to the audio and fix any errors you come across in the text. You might find it helpful to set up some global keyboard shortcuts in VLC.
 * 6) * It will be very helpful if you could try to add some paragraphs to the text where you think that would be natural. Please also add a timestamp to the beginning of each paragraph. Also feel free to add descriptive subheadings from time to time, if you feel like it.
 * 7) Move the subheading 'Machine transcription – Start helping here' and the following explanatory message down to where ever you want to stop or take a break. Don't forget to add a timestamp above the subheading so that the next person will know where to pick up!

Make a transcription easier to read and use
Some talks/interviews might be 100% transcribed, but still not very easy to use. They might have too few paragraphs, very few timestamps throughout the text, few subheadings. Or they might just be full of typos or other problems. That's it. Thank you for your time!
 * 1) Go to the list of talks or interviews and find one you'd like to give a makeover.
 * 2) Download the audio file
 * 3) Click on the 'Edit' button on the top of the page
 * 4) Start listening to the audio and add some paragraphs to the text where you think that would be natural. Please also add a timestamp to the beginning of each paragraph, both the ones you make and the ones already there but with no timestamp. Also please add descriptive subheadings from time to time the text and links to relevant information. You might find it helpful to set up some global keyboard shortcuts in VLC.

Add a machine transcription
The ultimate proof that the future is here: You can get a machine to do almost all your work for you!
 * 1) Go to the list of talks or interviews and find one marked as 'Not started'.
 * 2) Download the audio file and follow the instructions here to get it machine transcribed.
 * 3) When it's all done click on the 'Edit' button on the top of the page of the talk or interview and open the Source Editor.
 * 4) Paste the text from the machine transcription bellow the 'Transcription' subheading.
 * 5) Add the following text between the 'Transcription' subheading and the text you just pasted in before you apply the changes in the Source Editor and then save the page:

=== Machine transcription – Start helping here === '''The following is a machine transcription. Please help out with fixing errors and adding paragraphs, subheadings and time stamps to make it easier to read and use! To do this download the audio file from the top of this page and listen to it while you edit this page. Do as much or little as you like, then please move the heading and this message to the place where you drop off. Thank you!''' That's it. Thank you for your time!

Categorize talks/interviews/pages
That's it. Thank you for your time!
 * 1) Go to the list of talks or interviews and take a look at some of them.
 * 2) Scroll to the very bottom of the talk/interview-page and check if there is a list of categories there.
 * 3) If there are not read trough the talk/interview to get a feeling of the main topics of the talk/interview and add it as a category at the bottom.

Add more talks/interviews/episodes to the list
This wiki mainly consists of three lists: One of Cory Doctorow's talks, one of his interviews and one of his podcast episodes. Probably most of the items in the first two lists should also be in the latter. None of these lists are complete at the moment, and even when the backlog has all been added, Doctorow will hopefully do more talks and interviews which will need to be added.
 * 1) Go to the official website of the podcast or find other talks or interviews that are not published there.
 * 2) Go to either the list of talks, interviews or podcasts and click on the 'Edit' button on the top of the page.
 * 3) Add the title of the talk/interview/podcast as a Sub-heading 1, a short description (copy it from the website), and the text '(Status: Not yet started, please do)'.
 * 4) Select the whole title, click on the link button and then on the 'Done' button before you save the page.
 * 5) If you added a talk or interview to one of those lists and it was published on the podcast, please also add the text to the podcast list.
 * 6) If you have the time please also create the page for the thing you just listed. This will only have to be done once. See bellow.

Create a new page for a talk/interview/episode
== Quote == == Metadata == === Published === === Website === craphound.com === Download === MP3 ( MB) === About === «» === License === === Summary === == Transcript ==
 * 1) Click on a red link in the list of talks, interviews or podcast episodes and choose 'Add a page' when prompted.
 * 2) Open the Source Editor and paste the following text:

Now apply the changes in the Source Editor and fill out the information: That's it. Thank you for your time!
 * 1) The one or two best quotes from the text. You'll probably want to leave this for later :)
 * 2) Find the publishing date in gray letters on the top of the page for the podcast episode on craphound.com, or where ever you found the content.
 * 3) Link to all official websites for the content (e.g. the page on craphound.com, the page on the website of the event or podcast that created the content in the first place, etc)
 * 4) Link the word 'MP3' to the MP3 file if available, and/or add other file formats for downloading the audio/video. If you can find the file size for each file that's a bonus. Doctorow usually publishes his podcast episodes on the Internet Archives, which offers downloads in many different file formats.
 * 5) Copy the text from the page on craphound.com and paste it under 'About '. You can also add your own text if you think he left out something important.
 * 6) Write or find a short summary of what the talk/interview is about. If you copy it remember to give credit and link to the original publication.

Pasting text from other text editor
You might want to write your transcripts in some other text editor before copypasting it into the wiki, for example to make sure that no work is lost if the program or computer crashes. If so, you will have to click "Edit source" and paste the text there. If you use the normal editor all paragraphs will disappear, and perhaps even the text itself if it's not plain text.

[timestamp]
Whenever you take a break from transcribing please add a timestamp, like [13:37], to make it easy for the next person to start where you stopped.

It would be helpful if you could add a timestamp to the start of each new paragraph too. This will make it easier for others to check for errors, etc.

[?]
Not sure about spelling or if it's the correct word.

Please remember to add a timestamp, like [? 12:01], so that others might go to the same place and try to fix it.

[DU] – Don't Understand.
The person transcribing the text doesn't understand what is said here, but thinks others might be able to. This might occur for example if the transcriber does not have English as their first language.

Feel free to use this whenever you're transcribing and don't want to use any more time trying to figure out what is being said.

Please remember to add a timestamp, like [DU 8:32] so that others might go to the same place and try to fix it. If you want you can add what you think it might be, like this: [DU 12:01 Apollo?].

If you come across a [DU] in a transcript you're reading, please feel free to try to fix it!

[Inaudible]
Use this tag whenever you come across a part of the audio that you think is impossible to hear for anyone, for example because of clapping or other noises.

Tools
These tools might make it easier for you to do the transcriptions. We are not affiliated with any of these tools or companies in any way. If you know of any other tools that should be listed, just add them!

Cielo24 – Automatic audio to text tool
No audio to text tools are perfect, but this one is pretty amazing. You will save a ton of time if you send the audio file trough this system first, copy the text it spits out into a text editor (or download the .rtf file), and then just listen to the audio to correct the errors in the text. Unfortunately you just get 120 free minutes.

Sign up for an account here or just copy one of the logins from BugMeNot and log in here.

This is how it looks after it's finished transcribing the audio file you uploaded. The machine transcription takes a little time, but you'll get an e-mail when it's ready (provided you created an account with your e-mail address).

VLC – Listen to (sped down) audio, pause and rewind easily
In the popular media player VLC you can set global keyboard shortcuts which lets you pause, play and rewind different lengths with a single key press while you are focused on an other program (like a text editing program or a web browser).

Go to Tools -> Preferences -> Hotkeys and double click on the area below the word "Global" to the right of the action you want to set a keyboard shortcut for. NB! You must restart VLC for the global shortcuts to work. Cory Doctorow is "one of natures fast talkers." It might be helpful to calm him down a bit. Go to Tools -> Customize interface, find the Speed selector almost at the end of the list. Drag and drop it anywhere on Line 2 and click Close. After that you can click on the speed selector and choose whatever speed you like.

My preferred VLC setup
Use this if you find it useful:
 * Play/Pause: Shift + Space
 * Short backward jump: Shift + Alt + Left arrow
 * Very short forward jump: Shift + Alt + Right arrow
 * Playback speed: Somewhere around 0.8
 * Then make the VLC window as small as possible and set it as "Always on top" in the upper right corner of the screen, to make it easier to create timestamps on new paragraphs.