Eccentric Flower talk:201009/The Overrated Voice

Peebles:

So, ytalk?

-- 18:32, 14 September 2010 (BST)

ProfRobert:

Retaining your numbering:

2. I'm sure this is a stupid question for reasons unknown to me, but what about calling your sister? Isn't she still living in your mother's town, and wouldn't she know those details?

4. You have a really good voice (and Readers who have never spoken to C, I am telling you the truth, just like about he's a terrific conversationalist in person). You have just enough "southern" in it to make it a bit musical, but so much of it that makes you sound like Foghorn Leghorn or someone with three teeth and a banjo.

5. Is there a "mute" feature you could use? That is, keep the voice stuff on mute, but jam a finger on the off button to yell "look out"?

7. A picture's worth 1000 words.

-- 18:34, 14 September 2010 (BST)

Ysabel:

As someone who has audio processing issues and finds the phone and voice chat particularly horrible for understanding what people are saying, and who reads incredibly fast and types incredibly fast...

I still like voice chat in cooperative games, because if I am playing a game my fingers are busy controlling my character, dammit. If I take the three seconds it will take to type what I want to type to you when it's actually critical, not only is it likely that you may not notice it in time, but I will likely die because I took my fingers away from the controls for that long.

Otherwise, I'm pretty much with you. I vastly, vastly prefer written communication most of the time.

-- 18:51, 14 September 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

Robert: For reasons not germane here, we can work under the assumption that my sister is not a useful source of information at this time.

-- 19:45, 14 September 2010 (BST)

Jette:

Chip and I both volunteer for our neighborhood assn, and for both of us, the excessive phone time required is one of the biggest pains of the work. We have finally come up with a whole rant about how "It's insulting to assume that older people don't use the internet," because we are continually fighting with a few people (who would fight about anything really) that believe all our communications must be done by phone or in person or in actual print ... email and web sites are "useless." Drives me up the wall.

I know there are some things I have procrastinated on shamelessly because they involve picking up a telephone. We can't set a date to meet using email? Really? Well, I'll call you ... sometime.

I tried working with my sister directly on getting funeral info, etc. when my grandfather died but I think that even though my mom was busy and upset, she really wanted me to talk to her about it. On the phone. Not the most efficient thing, but at times like this, efficiency is not really on people's minds.

I hate my voice, which is why I fought doing podcasts for so long. These days I am merely resigned. I hardly ever listen to other people's podcasts, though. I do think I've done some interviews that would have been better on video than transcribed ... but that's because of the visual aspect ... like Jonah Hill sketching odd things the whole time.

-- 19:46, 14 September 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

Robert, also: Yes, most voice chat in games has a so-called "push to talk" feature, but it strikes me that getting a sudden "look out!" when there had been no prior conversation would just about give someone heart failure.

Peebles: Haven't heard of that.

-- 19:59, 14 September 2010 (BST)

ProfRobert:

And a screaming monster swinging a battle axe jumping out at you from behind a rock wouldn't? If one can handle the surprises video games throw out, I'd be surprised if one couldn't handle a sudden voice warning.

-- 20:16, 14 September 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

Strangely, no. Hard to explain if you don't play them, but an in-context surprise is less likely to be disruptive than an out-of-context different-part-of-the-universe surprise. It's not just the sudden occurrence, it's the jump from in-game events to real-world ones that would startle. Or at least it sure would startle ME.

(Shorter version: In-game you expect things to jump out at you with an axe.)

-- 21:15, 14 September 2010 (BST)

Mrissa:

1. I would find both equally obnoxious. No, this is not true. There is an outside chance I would read the tweets, mumbling and swearing the whole time, whereas if I follow a link to something someone has labeled an interview and then discover that it is a video or sound feed, I say, "Well, crap, that sounded interesting," and close the window.

One of the main functions of a journalist in an interview is to edit the subject's responses into *prose*. This is a *virtue*. A: Did you ___? B: Yes, in March. A: How so? B: Well, the blah blah blah. A: Did that work well? B: Sort of. It worked really well in the following ways x at length, y at more length, and z that is really interesting. But then q that we didn't think of went really badly, and here is the part you wanted to hear about in the first place, only I am not a professional interview subject, I am a professional something you're actually interested in, so I didn't say that first. A: Right. Interesting follow-up question here!

What should come out is: Did you _____? Yes, in March. The blah, blah, blah. It worked really well in the following ways x at length, y at more length, and z that is really interesting. But then q that we didn't think of went really badly, and here is the part you wanted to hear about in the first place, only I am not a professional interview subject, I am a professional something you're actually interested in, so I didn't say that first. Interesting follow-up question here!

That is how this works. Or how it's supposed to work. And in sound interviews and tweets, not so much. Because the other monkeys have no taste, apparently.

-- 21:34, 14 September 2010 (BST)

Jette:

Mrissa: One of the interesting side effects of widespread blogging by people who aren't trained in journalism has been the decline of the well-written interview. (Or so I think.) I will take all of the half-sentences that don't make sense out of an interview transcript, as well as the aural twitches and so forth. Sometimes this means I edit a sentence. Sometimes this means I move lines from the end of the interview to the beginning. And of course I cut it down to size.

I had an argument with a blogger who felt that this is LYING. If you don't reproduce a transcript faithfully, you are being unethical and wrong. And judging from the increasing number of overly wordy transcript-style interviews I read, he's not the only one.

I keep wanting to write up my interviews in a conversational style, not in transcript style, but certain editors disapprove. And admittedly so many of the conversational-style interviews I read put style above substance and seem to be often more about the interviewer than I'd like. Still, it's easier to read that way. I think.

[Damn, this is turning into Those Ignorant Kids Are Ruining The Art of Writing. I had better stop now.]

-- 21:48, 14 September 2010 (BST)

Mel:

Re 5: I feel compelled to state for the record that the problem is not that I don't read fast enough; the problem is that I don't constantly look at the chat box in the bottom corner, the way that Col seems to. I never have figured out the trick to looking everywhere at once, or at least it feels to me like that's what he's doing. I don't know if this is just because he's been playing these games a lot longer than I have, or what, but I can't do it. (Also, for some reason, things typed in the chat box in DDO take longer to register with me. I don't know what it is, and in fact we have had many long conversations about the fact that I find DDO a more difficult game to play in practically every way. We have never come to a conclusion about why.)

Re 4: I haven't heard you talk in several years now, but I don't recall that I found your voice at all unpleasant, Col. But I am the same way, really - when I hear my voice on tape, all I can hear is my flat Texas drawl. (Oddly, other people have told me I don't have much of an accent.)

-- 02:34, 15 September 2010 (BST)

Mel:

Grr, I hate that I can't edit my comment. (I know there are reasons for that, but still.)

-- 02:36, 15 September 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

You can absolutely edit your comment. Others here do it semi-often. You just have to make sure that first you are on the talk page and not the main entry page. Use the tab at the top that says "discussion." Then, when you're there ("discussion" will be in boldface), use the "edit" tab.

Two warnings:

1) Please edit just the text of your entry and not the surrounding div tags or other markup, and

2) Don't mess with anyone else's comments (not that you would). MediaWiki keeps a full history of all the edits to each page, so I see and know all. Muahahaha.

-- 03:00, 15 September 2010 (BST)

Jweader:

3. I suspect I know what the response will be, but I'm compelled (as a part of the Lab's club) to suggest something like Toastmasters. For most people, there really is no substitute for practice when it comes to group speaking, either prepared or extemporaneous.

5. Voice is very low bandwidth. It barely registers vs. the primary data requirements of the games.

-- 03:33, 15 September 2010 (BST)

Mel:

Voice may be very low bandwidth, but if Col ever agrees to try it I will fall over in shock. (I would have to buy a microphone, myself, so I'm not necessarily in a hurry to try it, either.)

Comment above duly edited. I had edited some before but I had (typically, for me) forgotten how I did it.

-- 04:20, 15 September 2010 (BST)

Ursula:

Printed interviews and recorded interviews both have their virtues. Interviews on This American Life have actually moved me to tears a number of times, and I have a hard time imagining a printed interview doing that. There's a lot of power in hearing the emotion in somebody's voice.

But while I'll gladly listen to an interview on the radio or watch one on TV, I'm much less likely to do so online. There's something about the online experience that makes me (and apparently many other people) very restless. I don't know this is so, but a 3-minute video clip can feel too long and a 4-page article feels like it goes on forever.

The streaming chat software you describe sounds a lot like certain chat rooms I visited in 2001 or so. I sure don't miss them.

-- 20:39, 15 September 2010 (BST)