Volunteering Portal/Featured project/1

The Wikipedia voice intro project is a project by Wikipedia editor Andy Mabbett to make audio recordings in which Wikipedia subjects - whether they are celebrities like Stephen Fry, or those notable for other activities like scientists or artists - say their name and introduce themselves in a short segment lasting around ten seconds or so. The recordings are then uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and shown on the subject's Wikipedia article, so that readers know what the person sounds like and how to correctly pronounce their names.

Aside from Stephen Fry, contributors to the project so far include lunar astronaut Charlie Duke and British peer Jim Knight. You can find all of the voice recording made for the project so far on Wikimedia Commons.

A related project that Andy has been working on is the BBC voice project where the corporation is releasing hundreds of audio snippets of notable people talking recorded on some of their radio programmes over the years. At an event at New Broadcasting House on 18 January 2014, over three hundred suitable clips were identified by volunteers, which the BBC are in the process of reviewing, processing, and uploading to Wikimedia Commons. Examples of clips that have been uploaded and used on the English Wikipedia include that of World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.