New Wikipedia project seeks to preserve celebrity voices

Himanshu Arora

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Wikipedia has announced a new project which seeks to add celebrity voices to wiki pages. Dubbed WikiVIP (Wikipedia Voice Intro Project), the project aims to create a free and publicly accessible record of what celebrities and other notable people sound like for “current and future generations”. The project is the brainchild of Wikipedia editors Andy Mabbett and Andrew Gray.

The project asks prominent people like famous scientists, artists, and more, to make a short recording of their voice, lasting around ten seconds. The recordings are then uploaded to their respective Wikipedia pages so that readers know "what they sound like and how to correctly pronounce their names".

Stephen Fry, who was approached by Wikipedia editor Andy Mabbett, is one of the first celebrities to lend his voice to the project. The folks behing this new push hope that other notable people will also come forward and contribute to the Wikipedia Voice Intro Project.

Andy is also working with BBC to extract audio clips of notable people talking, from some of their radio programs. The broadcaster has identified over 300 clips that are being uploaded to Wikimedia commons after being reviewed. Wikimedia staff is inserting these audio snippets into relevant Wikipedia pages.

Those who are aware of the project, and have Wikipedia pages about them can contact the WikiVIP team with their voice recordings. You can also contribute by asking people you know who are the subject of Wikipedia articles to record their voices in any language of their choice.

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As if I or any future person should care how justin biber or lady gaga sound like
 
Perhaps not, but the wonderfully eloquent and erudite Christopher Hitchens would be an excellent example of why this is definitely a good thing. Thankfully the world is more than the Beibers and Gagas out there.
 
Top three I can think of: Christopher Walken, Clint Eastwood, Samuel Jackson however I could think of more, this will do for now.

Although their voice should already be preserved in form of movies I would think, what we really need to do is preserve talking heads in jars.

The thought of preserving anything bieber or gaga actually makes me want to be sick, so if you'll excuse me...
 
Aren't their voices already preserved in their music / movies / tv shows / paparazzi media / etc?
 
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