Episode: 3348
Title: HPR3348: Feedback on the Article by hedorah about HPR
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3348/hpr3348.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 21:18:50

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3348 for Wednesday, the 2nd of June 2021.
Today's show is entitled, Feedback on the Article by Heather about HPR it is hosted by Ken
Felon and is about 74 minutes long and carries an explicit flag. The summary is,
Join the policy discussions on the mail list.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by an honesthost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
That's HPR15. Better web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Felon and you're listening to another episode of Hacker Public Radio.
This is not the community news for April 2021 part due, although I suppose technically you could say
it is Dave, what do you think? Well it feels a bit like it, especially since we said we're
going to do this on the community news. So what we're doing here is there was a lot of comments
on the mailing list so we're just going to go through the mobile one and release it as a separate
show following my old mantra of like, why waste, why waste a show and you can have two shows.
It all started on a cold winter's night.
It all started by a blog post by a headron, is it? I read that as headdora.
That will be it because you read stuff and I don't.
Anyway, headdora, I came across this article on the mastodons and I posted a nice article on HPR
with a valid question at the end and I got permission from him or her to read out this article.
So shall we do that? Yeah, you know, May 2nd.
There'll be a rough reading of the articles in this just in the morning.
And was that a cue to me? Are you going to manage it?
I don't know, I could, let's, I'll do it soon as I posted the person.
Okay, right. Okay. So this was posted on the 24th of the 4th 2021.
High above the radio is a wonderful project. Anyone ambitious can submit,
you see, this is how it's going to be the whole show. Let's start again.
And no, I'm not editing this out. Hacker Public Radio is a wonderful project.
Anyone can submit a show and get it published into the virtual eater.
This is a beautiful thing. You end up with some absolute gems but also some weird ones
about belt buckles, historical political rants and people fixing garage doors.
But I enjoy it and it's easy to filter out the episodes you don't want to listen to.
When I first found out about HGR, I thought it would be a hacker podcast in the other
sense of the world, breaking into systems and such. But it's really more about general
Linux and Unix like topics, free open source software, tinkering, maker stuff, learning and
free culture, even though it occasionally drops an episode about security related topics.
The project aims to without five shows a week. That's a lot if you're counting on volunteers
producing content in their spare time. I've never done it myself but I understand that recording,
researching, recording and editing and writing show notes is a lot of work. Every year,
there are inevitably periods where there are calls for shows, often resulting in some of the
usual suspects, aka long standing time, long time contributors quickly putting something together
and submitting. I think the quality of the episodes greatly decline during these periods.
You sometimes get episodes where the intro and outro together is longer than
in duration than the actual content. It's not my place to criticize the project since I'm just
a non-contributing listener but I can't help but wonder if the goal of five shows per week
is too ambitious. I think it would be nicer if some slots were kept empty if somebody submitted
a show for that that day. If a show drops, it drops. I suspect that the quality of the shows
generally would improve and fewer episodes would be produced in a rush. I can imagine that this would
also take some stress off the regular contributors. On the other hand, these call for shows might
give contributors a kick in the butt to finish and submit their current work in progress. I feel like
an asshole from bringing this up. I love HBO and I've gotten so much knowledge, value and good
last out of it over the many years in a listener. This is updated after I posted the link. I regret
writing this post after Kevin Fallon linked to it on the hacker public radio mailing list which
is where their policy decisions are proposed and discussed. I leave this post up as a reminder to
myself to think things through before publishing. Quality was a subduptimal choice of words
how most of the music I listen to is poor quality than any given HDR episode. I have nothing but
respect towards the contributors of HDR. That was the main thing. To be honest, I'll give you my
first impression of this was it was an excellent piece. Pretty much they should be doing our
editing a lot of our pages on HDR because it pretty much describes what HDR is. Very good there.
It's a valid question and it's so long since that question was brought up. That's why I posted
to the to the HDR mailing list and this is why we've got an extra show. We've got an extra show
out of this day. So the first response was from Jason Dodd. Do you want to take that one?
Okay. Do you have any comments on the original article?
I certainly liked the original article. I thought it the compliments were very very welcome
and it was great to get that particular viewpoint of HBR which you know it's seeing through
somebody else's eyes is usually different from seeing things through your own eyes and it's
always a very valuable thing to take a different viewpoint. The question of the
leaving of gaps is also a valid one but without preempting some of the discussion we're going to
have in a minute. It feels like something which has been hashed out in the past and has been
concluded upon and somebody coming to it without seeing that those previous discussions and the
previous history of HBR maybe wouldn't appreciate these things until they were pointed out. So
entirely valid from that stance. Exactly. That was my feeling as a junitor.
Even though I don't agree with it as you'll see later in the discussions. As a junitor I felt
it was important that we discussed these things because HBR as a community changes over time.
So we see that in the we've seen that recently in some of the policies that I thought
well this will go this way and it wouldn't completely different way because people all time
long time listeners drop off and new contributors come in and new people come and new people go
so it refreshes over time so that's why it is always good to occasionally go back and re-evaluate
the decisions that you made in the past and that's what we're doing here. So good opportunity
for that. So Jason Dodd replied and he said this is the same question I asked myself when you
said we do one every day and if we ran out of shows HBR was over. That's what you said according
to my memory. I didn't go back to check. I had my doubts but now I'm convinced that this way is
better. In my honest opinion anyone put off by the quality of HBR shows doesn't get it.
Some of the best episodes are ones which are most un-listenable. If HBR were to turn into a
polished deal I'd call it a step backwards. Yeah and I think in my comments I refer to what
he's on about there so the original paragraph, props I did, props I didn't. Let's make a note
there just to remember to discuss that. I did want to say that in the original episode
important to us what didn't come clear is the quality is one point that I didn't point out
anywhere was that just because the queue comes out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
and there are short shows in there. Those short shows may not be the ones that are submitted as a
result of call for shows. So that gave and I we would have seen that because we see the order of
which the shows come in and the order of which we post them. So for example that show that I did
on the text-to-speech thing. Are they not the text-to-speech thing? The scanning documents which one
was it? Let me just check. Yeah HBR 315 which was scheduled for the which was released on the 21st
of the 4th 2016. That was in the queue for the best part of a month I think before it came out
and it was two minutes long. So there really is no way of knowing if you're just following the HBR
queue as to whether the show is a response to a call for shows or not. That one definitely
wasn't but it came within the period of call for shows and yes that was a crappy short episode
but it happened to know that at least one person went back and used that show for
pre-tuss. I went back and listened to that show to remember how I did it.
So there we go. Yes that's the next point I hadn't quite I mean I know how it works but I
tend to forget that the call shows comes out because the number that's sitting in the queue
has got to the point where there are gaps coming up in the near future and we want them to be filled
but but the actual relationship between the release date and the submission date is entirely up to
the host who's submitting it so yeah it doesn't correlate as you would expect.
Yeah so for example if you look at the queue now as of today we've got week 19, week 20 and we
21 all filled for that but what actually tends to happen is the Friday is get filled in first because
Ahuka usually has a show scheduled for the Friday then Linux inels are usually running two months
a month or two months ahead and they fill in the Thursdays every every second Thursday and then
yeah then you have the Monday choose your Wednesdays to be filled in last and this is all
intentional because if you look at the the way we do the queue and for long reasons so first of all
you need to have an audio recording ready before you pick a slot because but back in the day we used
to people were allocated days so there was 30 podcasters who had each being given a day and then
that kind of slipped and then people were posting shows and then the show will get posted
alphabetically but not in the order in which it came in so then all that got scrapped and now
hosts themselves are the ones who post the shows and it's entirely up to them to pick
a date in a time so sometimes I've had shows where we have gaps in and I've asked a host can we
can we switch it to put it earlier or I will ask a host occasionally can we take your show and spread
it out of it because we want to spread these things out but the decision to do that is entirely
based on what the host wants to do unless it starts becoming an issue with something that we
agreed in which case it'll go to the main list just you have some background history yeah we're
never going to get to the show Dave at this rate but anyway no it's some half and hour in already
so the following comment on the original on Jason's comment Brian you know Hio says I love the
HBR episodes I like that I can sit at my desk with my phone and do all the producing I need to do
to get a show out if I want a polished episode I'd listen to it but the content there is terrible
so I don't especially the spin right guy okay the views of Brian and Ohio do not necessarily reflect
those of HBR while he does have a point I would come back to this again yes the greatest
astronomy of HBR despite what Taj is going to say is perfect audio quality and while Taj is correct
in saying we should have good audio quality I am I have seen down to the ages and Dave you probably
saw this as well where people have submitted to the admin you know contacted the admin mail
or admin account and which goes to myself and Dave and the troops I think in a few other people
and they're yeah I'm kind of brilliant idea for a show I'm going to do a series and about this
mic and I've got this setup and I got that ready to rock and I'm going to go and then you know
radio silence or somebody who is going to come on and do those few shows and then you know
disappears because you set the bar so high that you can't produce good quality shows but
Taj has different opinions and we'll come across those in a while and he's right both of us are
right it's just yes do you want to do the next one okay hold on a second I need to move to
so this one is from Dawesman who says it's a double-edged sword once you fall off the wagon that's
nice mix from the first day there's less incentive to jump back on less urgency in the calls
or the queue is low but quality of quantity is very worth considering too yep but then again you have
to define what we're talking about quality there if you're talking about quantity so we know what the
quantity is one show a week every one show a day Monday to Friday so what's quality and I've
all this said quality is where somebody derives value from that where one of interest to hackers
that means you because one other person which could also be you in a future time zone yeah it's
some it absolutely the quality thing is often interpreted as oh look at all those professional
broadcasters doing their stuff or we should be like them whereas I think I'm guessing but I would
guess that a lot of people who listen to HBO would disagree with that because the professionals
tend to make very highly polished turds in many cases you know the content is poor the design
of how it's done I hate what's the one so the one where they say we're gonna we're gonna talk to
Blair about this and they say hello and then while the guy's answering they put some some audio
over the top of it in this point he said blah blah blah and you think that is disgusting how would
you ever have a conversation it's face-to-face where a third person was blabbing over the top of
the answer you know and that's professional that's professional what have you not noticed that
well what's the what's the popular America something America podcast I can't remember what it's
called it's I think it's probably a radio show that turns into a podcast but that seems to be a very
common thing in in many professional podcasts where they they talk over they they fade down the guy
who is answering the question and do a summary over the top of them which I switch off straight away
I cannot stand yeah that's so insulting so yeah anyway it's a few things I feel strongly about here
actually I should probably shut up okay is it me it is yes Brian in Ohio says in response to
the double-edged sword by dustman funny why does the blog writer not do a show give an example
of quality or if there are shy use e-speak or volunteer to read I read it out I'd be willing
to help with either and do run do you want to do the next one reply to that yeah forgot about that
hello I'm the author of the post says hidora I regret writing this post in hindsight quality was
a bad choice of words I also enjoyed the DIY rawness of hb and I certainly don't want it to be more
polished in the professional sense in some professional sense I should have replaced quality
with to my subjective interest or something along those lines the main point was to bring up the
question of perhaps keeping empty slots empty as a non-contributing listener it's not my place to
try to impose my ideas on the project therefore I choose to post I chose I choose to post it to
sure I think I chose to post it on a personal blog rather than for example in this mailing list
as for the reason I'm not submitting a shining example of a quality show I've been listening
to since at least hpr 980 broad ban for rural north oh that's going back a bit and I considered
this many times and attempted it a few but I'm terrible at podcasting and after this I don't want
to be known as the asshole complained about hpr quality but still submits shows it was not my
intent to offend anyone and I regret my choice of words I have huge respect for all of the
contributors I want to apologize to all of you I'm sorry all the best no need to be I mean
it's valid and in my original post I never intended to put them on the spot like that
right yeah yeah yeah and yes quality is to my subjective interest just we'll be doing a
rejection let us yeah yeah it's it's it's the quality thing is it's it's pretty subjective I think
I think it's it's it's a word that has multiple meanings and it depends who's saying in some case
in the context etc etc and plateau replied to that saying I don't think an apology is necessary
your post generate is healthy introspection and was itself both respectful and kind I think it's
great that you're a listener and now by way of constructive criticism you're also a contributor
keep spreading the word plateau is able to write stuff well yes indeed he has a skill and it comes
to actually dealing with people with certain certain of us don't and I remember myself I'm like
those you do your own I am doing yes your own says I had exactly the same feeling
that was struggling with the wording I think you both said it spot on yes in response to
tattoo so in response to hedon Jason Dodd reply saying apology is not necessary in fact I'd like
to thank you for the post and it goes I've considered many times and attempted it a few but
I'm terrible at podcasting this is the one of the reasons we don't have a minimum quality bar I hope
you reconsider and put out a show I've read some of your posts and your content is of interest to
hackers to the question of leaving slots open another reason I like the current mode of operation
is that it forces us to reduce I like it a bit to like a writer committed to so many words a day
regardless that being said I'm more of a listener as well and go with the flow assuming quality
refers to the quality of content versus production quality I'd also conscience against more of a
minimum bar than of interest to hackers because there are some shows I got value from I think would
not have made if the if the quality was higher for example we may not have gotten the one that
suggested using toothpicks to help when threads are stripped or the one untying enough to identify
which ear headphones go in I don't use this but I gave me some inspiration to mark them another way
to me HBR is kind of like hanging out in a hackerspace you hear things from across the room
or in the next room and some of it is useless to you but it's nice to be in the environment nonetheless
some of the things you hear fall into the too much information category but I listen
but I listened to the snoring episode all the way to the end anyway I understand that someone's
catcher is already overflowing and there's a need to curl or curl or skip podcasts that aren't
pulling their way but I'm fully on board with YAS on how to cook as well known dish from someone
in the community because we need a show it might sound strange but there's is almost always
a new to me take on something that I hear a hacker discuss something that's a normal topic
here don't get me wrong I love HBR back when shows were few and far between so yes
Brian in Ohio I'm just trying to work out who he's replying to he's replying to Jason God
thank you for the apology now get out and fill an empty slot in the HPR calendar
was that to Jason or was it to well it was a reply to Jason because it uh I'm using
underburden and the threads uh that it draws shows it linking and also he uh quotes Jason
in there but I don't think he meant it to be to be a reply to he hadn't submitted the show in a
while himself so okay okay I missed that yeah okay well good point okay I replied speaking as a
janitor here for a moment as tattoo quite rightly pointed out some years ago our shows are released
under a creative commons license there is nothing in that license that requires any listener to submit
a show there are many ways to contribute to HBR and many have done so but have not as yet submitted a
show I had a look at your site and there's loads of topics of interest tackers there we can always
get someone to narrate the content for you uh by the just as a by the by uh some of these show
some of these posts may be repeating commons that you read in other posts but they kind of come in
more or less at the same time and in this case I had written this before I refreshed my reader
and here speaking as a fellow HBR community member I'm so glad you submitted this blog post it's
important that we revisit discussions on topics to see if the community now still agrees with what
the community then decided back in 20 uh 2010 shows were getting released on an ad help basis
some days there were as many as two or even three shows released per day more often than not though
there was no show at all as time and on the period between no shows increased and after a time
it wasn't clear if HBR was still alive this was reflected in a steady deadline in subscribers
one of the policies I suggested straight away was that one show a day builds every day builds trust
and retains listeners this has turned out to be true based on the steadily increasing subscriber
this of course is my personal opinion and should be challenged so um Taj replies to to that
well I love for my two cents since I feel as though I'm going to somewhat represent the voice of
dissent I think the issues raised in the article are very valid as uh some of the issues raised
in these responses I'm glad we have a space to hash through them like the mailing list
going back to the original article I would in no way be opposed to changing to a less than
five days a week schedule we seem to have issues filling slots for a while and the article
is 100 percent accurate in saying that a lot of the old-timers are the superheroes filling those
slots if the stress being created by the policy of five days a week is primarily affecting the
most consistent contributors maybe their voices on the matter should have the most weight
that being said I'm less than regular contribute to these days so maybe my opinion shouldn't matter
on this front the concern raised in the responses that I do have a strong opinion on is the question
of audio quality I've never agreed with the sentiment that audio quality doesn't matter
anyone who listens to either a podcast that I produce can attest despite my background in pro audio
I'm not looking for perfection simple things like consistent audio levels normalising the audio
standard levels matching the intro and outro levels to the levels of the rest of the show and
awareness of how to properly use a microphone whether that be on a phone or a standalone one
we're all simple five minute fixes with cross platform free software that can drastically
improve audio quality of course I have a benefit of knowing this and can't complain
unless there's a component of this that is educating others I started a series first one
recorded and should be uploaded today other being scripted to talk through these things while
those that prefer the convenience of just being able to do everything from their phone will have
little use for the information maybe it'll help someone I'd echo the sentiment that I don't
want eight pound to become a polished production I definitely appreciate the re-advive of the place
but having some intentionality about the quality would create a demonstraably better product
can mention the purpose of the five days a week rule was to create subscribers I'd argue that
it only takes one person's first episode of HBR being barely intelligible to turn them off
from the whole project which is a damn shame scroll I'll finish by saying that over the course
of the last couple of years I find myself listening to fewer and fewer episodes of HBR for various
reasons audio quality, disinterest in the topic bait and switch episode where the topic is
barely discussed and turns into a bizarre political rant etc of course the solution is being more
engaged and contributing more myself which I plan on doing as always big props to the janitorial
stuff you'll do much more the most know and it's very appreciated at least by this guy and that's
okay how can somebody be so run while still being 100% right that's the annoying part of it
let's see I agree with the article is valid yes yeah they're filling in the slots if you look at
the number of slots that are contributed by regular hosts that changes over time
when the call for shows comes there's always been call for shows though always we've never
cracked this note this is this is the thing how to keep shows coming in new hosts how do we get
new hosts but every time we have this discussion about the leaky bucket thing Dave what happens on
the mailing list well if it comes up yeah yeah it's true it's so it's the the feast and famine
thing is that is precipitated by just some extent by us saying oh my god it's getting very low
extended some shows and then there's a flood and then it all goes very quiet for a while because
everybody presumably has other things to do etc yeah now I've actually seen the patterns this
year has been a bit odd because let's face it this year has been a bit odd but you tend to see
patterns during the year when when the when the feast and famine occurs and it's you know in the
autumn of the spring is when we tend to get the most shows because people are in the regular routine
and they're doing the hgr shows over the beginning of the winter late year then that's where the
problems start arising then we get more shows coming in towards the end of the year because of the
new year show generates a bit of publicity and people are aware of hgr again and then if it
starts to fade off during the summer although we can tend to tide over the summer because then the
new year show has kind of bumped out the queue a bit so that's the normal thing because generally
a call for shows and I find the call for shows is a good thing if it's not done too often because
it encourages people to submit a show it gives you a little bit of urgency for that and I don't
think it puts I'm not sure puts that much stress on the old timers I'm a bit worried about
Mr X and the last few years for the yeah I don't know I'd yeah I think that there's a number of
people who contribute to hbr who's who were able to generate a show with amazing speed it's often
it doesn't have to be any specialist you would have
some of them you I think gosh this has been in the pipeline for a while
yeah but some people just seem to be able to I think it depends on whether you're the sort of
person who can just do stuff off the cuff or whether you want to prepare I'm a preparer because
I hate the thought that I've screwed up some way so I go over it minutely in order to to to make
sure and to make a mistake which is you know a mindset not necessarily a healthy one but it is
the one I'm landed with but other people seem to be able to just do it and you know there is
often other people who step up and just bang out a show and the quality I don't think the
quality is poorer as a consequence you know it's it many cases they they're excellent things
but down off the cuff which is which are mine honestly yeah and as I said the only way you
would know is the fact that they said this is a this is a a show I'm posting because we're short
to shows yeah don't yeah for example touching posts quite a lot of shows and you wouldn't know
that there were emergency shows at all no no no he I think his his model of producing shows is
one where he has an idea he knows stuff about it and then he just wings it and produces excellent
stuff as a consequence yeah I find amazing okay I want to comment on the drastically improves
audio quality there's two things about that one is excellent that he has submitted his
he's already done the series introducing a series on audio quality and it's very good it's
very good and we'll be linked there once he's finished I want the upload a show thing
to have a link to that series so that will help people out yeah but I just want to come back to
the all the simplest five minutes fixes on the cross platform so if we take five minutes
and we multiply it by 260 that gives us 1,360 minutes yeah and that works out to 21 hours and 40
minutes so that's basically I don't know 21 divided by it's five in a quarter it's about two and a
half two and a half for this just dedicated to fixing the audio and then you would need to be aware
of this you would need to be doing that so say we hired somebody that person would need to be
available when we're posting the shows and sometimes it's last minute then the show needs to get
edited that's why we don't edit the shows that way that said the processing script that we're
using is actually terrible and could be improved so if there's somebody who would like to help us
out with that that would be most excellent so what we do in the script is we take whatever audio
get and we convert it to a raw PWM file and then assuming the intro and outro sometimes the intro
and outro are there sometimes they're not if they're not they're added the summary and stuff is
added then the question is how to get the levels of all of the things matching up automatically
in a script and there is a service that does that they were on twists on the
philosophically at one point but they don't actually submit any of their stuff as
free software the use all free software but in a strip mining sort of approach they've taken
the code and basically not contributed back we can't see what they've done but if somebody is able
to work with us on how to how to get audio fixed would be a good thing so the audio quality
something else of course the benefit so they've no the five-day link rule isn't to get subscribers
the five-day-a-week rule has given us subscribers so I'm using subscribers as a measurement of
whether it has built trust or not our goal at HPR is to get contributors not subscribers
subscribers are a side effect of that in fact I know of two or three hosts who don't listen to HPR
at all hand contribute chills to HPR and there's nothing nothing in the license that says that
that should not be the case but there are definitely quick wins we can do to improve the audio
quality sometimes I've if you go to the internet archive Dave and you know that they have the web
the frequency spectrum not the frequency the waveform of their and sometimes they into a
notch are like just massive on either side so we do have all the raw files as well the people sent us
so we can if somebody has audio that they think this is totally crud all the raw files are available
on internet archive more recently last few years than previously and those files you can take them
and we will repost if you have better versions of them so yeah yeah it's not a problem for us
but yeah yeah we did fiddle around with the internet through many years ago now when I first joined
I think because they were very loud and we reduced the volume of those it was easier to
stitch them into audio but the issue is that the levels that you produce versus the ones that you
are that's getting stuck on it is something that causes this problem and we need some means of
leveling all out don't we automatically yeah yeah yeah it would be good to actually have a
little workgroup on that because there's there are some shows where where the hosts add the intro
and outro and add it badly that it that no matter what we do that's what it is it comes in as a
fake complete so that's a that's a topic that we could spin off as a thing so Taj is already
busy doing his episodes which are good and interesting but I will point out that I know for a fact
that audio quality is important with relation to feedback from the general okay I can't really
tell you this feedback or yeah audio quality is important but at a particular point it is
undesirable for a lot of people and the younger generation especially do not
who are used to of mobile phones and the like don't put as much emphasis into it as the older
generation may have who have come up with high-fi and stuff may have done in their time yes and
those of us who get a bit deaf just just want to be able to hear it and that's all okay so we go
to the next one I feel like I've uh Taj I didn't mean to take your um tiny part I agree with
everything you're saying just in summary I agree with everything you're saying um but it's also
important that people don't sit too high a barrier because there's nothing worse than ah there's
a new host but now the procrastination because the levels of their audio and they've gone out and
spent the other thing is buying expensive microphones not everybody can afford it you have if you've
got a mobile phone then that's good that should be good enough always getting better is a thing but
not at the expense of not submitting shows okay anyway Claudio says hi NSTR which was
head drawn headdora handle since I follow you and master done I noticed the article when someone
boosted it and decided to give it a read I also join in with the others in saying that the apology
is not necessary and I also believe that you made some great points personally I don't mind if
this shows art and polished as far as recording is concerned in the circumstances maybe the volume
is a bit uh too low and I just can't be bothered but if someone records something from their phone
on the way to work which I have done as well as some others that have contributions then that's
okay for me it doesn't have to be polished as those a podcast too but it also can be if that's
what the country usually wants so long as the content is of interest to hackers to slogan of HBR
in the first place there have been some episodes I've heard that were a bit raw but provided some
amazing info and others that were a little more polished but personally saw no value in them
it is on a rare occasion that I skip an episode even if I think it won't be interesting
but it happens and even that's fine because not everything will appeal to everybody as far as the
schedule is concerned it hasn't been something that's affected me directly that being said I know
I need to contribute to show because I want HBR to continue for a long time life just gets in
the way sometimes all things considered you've given everybody a lot to think about
given all the mailing list response from your blog post so that's a win in my book welcome to the
community from Claudio that's a very positive isn't it yes that's great so we have
underbirds thickest one might be a scam this is a very dodgy guy that guy
I hold on a second I can't get it all in the screen anyway so reading the message asked in
isolation if your equality of annual recording is important my answer is an unequivocal yes
ask your isolation if go here in an eloquent speech it's important my answer is again yes
despite this I feel there are circumstances where the message is more important than the quality
of its delivery and HBR is one of them in the case of just about every podcast outside of HBR the
presenters are willingly put themselves forward because they have sufficient confidence in their
ideas and their ability to deliver them verbally that's neither daunting nor difficult for them
HBR is different we have of course more than our rightful share of great speakers who are also
very adept at producing high quality audio recordings however I'm like other podcasts many of
our contributors might best be characterized as the kid sitting at the back of the class who has
something to say that's important to him but it's where his ideas may be criticized or even ridiculed
his natural inclination therefore is to say nothing at all for a lot of contributors that first
show may be a frustrating or even harrowing experience to produce with sections being re-recorded
to perhaps over and over again in the hope of getting it right however some of the best shows in
terms of interesting content come from contributors who are clearly not at ease in front of the
microphone a high quality audio to be deemed a key attribute of what constitutes a good show
is perhaps one extra burden on the nervous or reluctant contributor that might just prevent them
from submitting one at all the stats demonstrate that it's considerably easier to attract a new HBR
listener than a new HBR contributor so it surely follows that it matters less if occasional sub
optimal audio quality deters a listener than the drive the drive for audio excellence deters
a potential contributor my own view is that part of the charm of HBR is precisely that you never
quite know what you're going to get especially when it's the first show of a new contributor it's
very rare for me not to listen to every show as it's released I've come to realize that subjects
on face value have very little interest have little interest to me often turn out to be quite
the opposite the technical expertise of many contributors is both inspiring and instructive
but I've enjoyed non-technical show shows every bit as much such as Dave Morris's pen collection
oops sorry clatos urban camping or chris for mhobs lunch breaks being particular highlights for me
the classics so I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing with that Claudio at the same time
best possible audio quality hmm absolutely but in the case of HBR in particular not at those
expense of content quality yes our content quality that was but that's what it was talking about
not necessarily the audio quality he was talking about content quality but this is good
this is our motto flag is best but we accept the rest yeah yeah strive for perfection but don't
let it at a point we still need the show okay next next one clatu says in response to in response to
a head or a secret yep adora's comment we're back the question raised by the blog post field ballot
I think the things to consider are how do we encourage increase quality without also excluding
those for who good audio quality is difficult to achieve the proposed answer maybe we have
volunteers to help produce shows rather than to generate content in other words if we aim for one
show a week and instead of janitor feeling the best way for janitor to contribute is by pumping out
three shows to fill slots and volunteer would instead foster in a new host with consultation and
how to achieve good audio quality etc so next point how do we reduce the free how do we reduce
the frequency of shows without also making a new host wait for months before their show goes live
an excellent demotivator proposed answer commit one show a week but allow for spontaneous
impatient bonus episodes next point fewer episodes per week doesn't guarantee that the dollar listener
is going to suddenly become more interested in each episode or even that dollar listener will
feel the audio quality is good enough the worldwide audience is huge and each person has their own
requirements for what they put in their ears and those requirements can change with mood whether
or whatever else just my thoughts I personally enjoyed the daily release schedule but I wouldn't
be surprised if I enjoyed a weekly release one two so how many shows did Latu release on HPR last
year Dave but no the close to 52 would have been single engine in my head if this is not
able to answer yeah so there's a one show a week is 52 podcasts five show a week says 260
podcasts there's a huge difference in the numbers there and when the show when the queue is
fall and we get more contributors coming in then invariably we will have the request to
pull out shows and hers in on such an end someday as well so yeah I think we are capable of
producing five shows a week due to the fact that we haven't missed a slot in the last 10 years
and prior to that the five years we did miss lots so I really convinced that we can we can
keep that number of episodes up however the sponsor thing is a good idea but we have to be very
careful there helping somebody out because you take everything as criticism when you're when
you posted a new show everything comes across as criticism so I was thinking that perhaps we could
you know the way when we have this is the first show by a new horse blah blah blah that we could
up until somebody's fifth show we could put in this is the fifth show by this host and that would
give people an idea of where that person is in their journey whereby say for example I release a
crappy show on crappy audio Taj could immediately come and say right you know can here's how you can
improve your audio blah blah where as with a new show you'll be more tech more delicate in how you
approach a new host there's a balance there maybe that's something that we could do but again it's
the dollar volunteer thing how do you get somebody to volunteer for this is there interest in that
I would be interested in hearing that yeah it's potentially a commitment that you know people
have lives and they're not always available at the the requisite time I guess there is that
can I take a five-minute break there if I just need to check something sure sure I have to
oh yeah I've got an hour at least to to go so I just want all right the magical truncate silence
yep yep yep okay okay back okay okay let's move you through these times of ticking apparently
and I have a list that I know I had stuff that needs to do it so we've reached Joe Fennel and it's my turn
so Joe Fennel says hi that's a short time listener February this year you spent a month and a half
digging through the back catalog I have to say the show itself has kept me constantly enthralled yes
some of the audio could be better out of the but out of the hundred plus shows I've listened to maybe
two were totally unlistenable and for content I like how it varies some topics need an hour others
can be taken care of in three minutes that's always been the beauty of hack spaces yeah there are
some mobile shows that some might not think are necessarily of interest hackers the hack culture
is not a monolith or better put the car maintenance episode has just as much value as the bare metal
programming on the RPI episodes as someone who tries to listen daily or or at minimum be caught up
with the previous week by the time the next week's episodes drop I look forward to every show
and as someone who wants to contribute the shorter episodes give me a springboard when I sit down
to try and draft a show so yeah can I owe you a show you said it's nothing so long ramble short
I feel that the daily show no matter what is healthy for the ecosystem of HBR and folks like myself
who open a text editor and stare at a flashing cursor to draft pre-show notes just need to hit record
and do the thing yeah you know what might be handy as well um is uh i want to be a podcaster
and they they i'm more than happy just one second to get us into a mumble chat and just talk
basically why who are you what are you doing um what's your you know the the first show my
suggest you do if somebody is sitting down the first show should be who am I what I'm doing
how I got here my interest in tech how I listen to listen to HBR that's your first show it's a
fact can somebody do a template all questions that you can sit down and act that's a brilliant idea
template of questions that you can do as your first show um who are you okay yes let's do that
another thing to take away from this one i made the notes of the stuff that i uh said we should do
fix all the equality split template for the first show uh modify the introduction so it says
the up to five shows that they're new to HBR basically uh okay next one from honking
in response to tattoos um comment about uh encourage audio quality and stuff like that
just a quick note i may be wrong but i thought the comment about the quality of shows had more to do
with the shows that felt more like they were put out just to put something out those shows are
about three minutes long on a side note i have no problem with those shows i didn't think you did
anything to do with the audio quality or maybe i need to reread the article i have no problem with
the audio quality we get on HBR the content just what matters any audio is better than no audio
that's interesting yeah yeah i think that's i think honky's quite right actually with what he's
saying there it's uh it's it was more uh that uh something to fill the gap was uh you know today
i shot my pencil this particular way that's good show i'm just do that you know it was just
something rushed off of very very quickly and maybe a little bit sparse in terms of
of of quality content as opposed to quality audio but but uh even then i personally don't agree
that these things are a low quality sometimes it makes you stop and think hang on
well i never thought of that you know or i've never seen it that way in my mind so you know it's
valuable from that point of view i find however it's a valid discussion about the audio quality um
oh no it's what i've just come up before and we'll come up again no doubt and we should definitely
do something about the audio quality oh yeah i remember what i was put a link to tajas script
link to tajas uh so i'm not gonna have to go back and listen to this show uh so that i can hear
all the stuff that i have to do for myself why i like it for myself i know i know i know so um
jason dodd replied to uh honkitts um email to clatu yeah that's clatu right uh okay
yeah you see the the thread got broken that confuses the life at me because the
um underbird thread thingy does not know how to do that anyway um i'm of the opinion he says that
if we switch to committing to one episode per week we'd still get calls for shows because
people would be even more concerned about putting out shows they don't feel are worthy of the now
one slot per week i wonder how the algorithm would go to decide which gets the weekly slot
versus get put in the slush pile versus what was released as extra shows as i tried to remember
emergency episodes i don't recall that any that i skipped coincidentally i listened to one just
today i feel i might i might not have been submitted if we were a s what if we were a sense we only
needed to fill one slot per week episode three oh three one host specifically said was it was
in response to a call for shows but i'm not against experimenting with one slot per week
okay and then in response to the original polls that i met taj said in response to
uncle mugu it is true that the original article did not mention the audio quality issue that came
up from the discussion here and since it's my personal crusade i jumped on it i agree that
considering audio quality does create a barrier to entry for some but my hope is that providing some
information about the ways to fix things will help people who do care about it to do more while
i appreciate taj used response i don't know that adding more to the post upload workflow
would really work that being said i am always available for those who want to talk to someone
about improving the audio quality and or trying to fix a recording that's already made the
biggest caveat to the last part is audio is very much garbage in garbage out you can only fix
things so much if the initial recording is not great that's a good one actually if i had a list
of people who would volunteer to help out then we can also offer that as a mentorship program
for people recording their first show and that would also get over the barrier that that would
be quite good actually because if they or i would post a show except i'm working with my audio
quality then okay here's taj but taj will also make sure that you do actually submit a show
you know this is the kit that you got this is the best you're going to sound now we'll do the
show and the show gets posted so i don't know if we should volunteer taj but did you or did you
not volunteer himself yes well for people who care about the audio quality let's get them as mentors
and that that i have no objection to improving the audio quality in the HBR absolutely none
what i do have an objection to is raising the barrier to entry and those two things do not
necessarily need to be the word i'm looking for Dave opposed uh yeah i don't know everybody
screams i can't speak i was i was really reading that email so you didn't get my full attention
i was right yeah i was just saying that the barrier to entry to HBR doesn't necessarily need to
be audio quality we don't want to to increase the barrier to entry but audio quality doesn't have
to be a stumbling block on that road if we have mentors we can actually have them push somebody over
to that barrier to entry to get their first show out there no that sounds great sounds great
anybody's up for doing that that would be that would be brilliant so the next next message was
from mike ray who's responding to taj's message i don't really understand the audio quality issue
he says it's so easy to produce audio which is of reasonable quality i don't see why anyone should
be submitting shows where it's not of a basic standard the only possible issue as i see it is when
somebody is recorded on the move in their car or on foot but even then it's relatively easy to
make sure your voice is at a level which overrides in the environmental sounds i stop doing shows
because whatever subject i think of i'm conscious that there are bound to be plenty of people
listening you know more than i do about that subject oh mike mike mike mike what i want to do
is put your hand out and slap yourself about the face because i'm not there to do it for you i
i've stopped doing shows on whatever subject unconscious about because people who listen to it
know more than about it than i do yes there will be people listening who will know more about the
subject than you do but there will be hundreds who have heard nothing about the subject and then
will be interested in it because of the show you're doing have you this is the whole premise of
tattoos the new world order thing sits down in front of the man page what's this command i'll
type the command i'll read the man page out to you i will try the what it says in the command i
can figure this command out and if anybody wants to tell me more about this command please do so
follow a week to somebody sending him replies that's what's HBR is all about
mike sometimes really but the even if there are loads of people out there who know the thing backwards
and upside down they're not they're talking about it they're they're sat there in their
huge knowledge having a wonderful time no doubt not knowing that anybody would be interested in
the topic and then they have a show right there's two ways it can go you can annoy somebody so much
that they go or you can put on the show and you can say well i don't know enough about this topic
maybe there's somebody out there and if somebody out there comes in and does a show more you
annoy somebody so much about your lack of knowledge that somebody comes on to do a response show
and to put to set the record straight on that particular topic either way we get a show
it's a weird situation yeah yeah yeah i mean the the whole business of groups of people where
somebody's a bit more able to speak versus those who know um who maybe don't feel that well that
good at speaking about things you know it between between the extremes there you hopefully
get something that that is valuable you know absolutely and i don't know if it comes up in the
comments but a show asking for comments asking for topics on HBR is a valid show your here's a list
of topics that i would like the HBR community to uh to talk about and we can if you don't want to
put them on the show send us an email or contact us the master done and we'll add that at the end
of the community new show in the any other business section near your problem and uh mic seriously
the next one yes Jason Dodd the way people are always apologizing for perfectly fine audio quality
i suspect perfectionism trying to creep in this is the line i fear more than anything in this topic
sometimes hearing something or this is what i've stopped uh doing shows because i think blah blah blah
this is the line that i fear more than anything on this topic sometimes hearing something from
those who are just getting into something is most useful for those thinking about getting into it
that was uh in relation to my grades line no excellent point excellent very disturbing
so platoon yeah yep um H uh platoon is responding to tages directly to tages message i should
clarify my off-the-cuff idea was that a volunteer would consult with a prospective host to help
and prepare good audio input do you have a microphone is it powered or unpowered what are you
where are you recording etc and then to assist with post-production
liberal box a web project that records and releases public domain books as audio productions
has a really interesting volunteer on boarding process that very least is worth looking at
you have to introduce yourself in there forum and announce your intention to record a book
then you must submit an audio clip of a standard phrase or a specific bitrate and in a specific
format which is critiqued by their moderators this process is repeated until the moderators are happy
and then you get to read your chapter or book or whatever i'm not saying hb i should necessarily
go this route but i'm just brainstorming yes i'm just doing that down into like having a group
from mentors a group of mentors for in any event for getting people into uh recording and hb
that might be a very good thing yeah yeah it's quite interesting yeah i've listened to liberal box
and never i didn't know quite what their what their process was that's good to know and i can
understand why liberal box are trying to set a minimum one barrier to entry uh there because
you know the public domain books and there are people listening to them um but yes again
keeping the barrier to entry low on hb are but increasing the audio quality as much as we can
so that the two are not mutually exclusive that's what it was looking for before okay next one
lost and bronx to me the biggest issue for hb r is and always has been attracting
contributors lost and bronx nailing it on the head again i'll go back to the thing it stands
to reason then that lowering the barrier to entry matters more than anything else including
raising the audio quality while many long time podcasters find the process of recording audio quality
audio to be trivial at this point i'm not one of them it's precisely why the audio quality of
number of my own contributions has been so bad because if i didn't compromise the quality
i couldn't contribute at all granted i all can and the community as show right there now
but my point is stand which is not i who said it did
honey how many thousands of downloads does hb r get per episode on average and the answer to that
is around three uh three and a half thousand episodes so we've got about three thirty five thousand
um people subscribing um get about three and a half thousand episodes so one and ten people
listen to the shows and we have three hundred and fifty-ish hosts in the fifteen years so
per year that's probably about fifteen hosts so there's a i know several order of
magnitude between the number of hosts we have to the number of shows and we're back to the thing
and many thousands of downloads to those hb r get per episode on average i don't have the stats handy
but others do and it's not small now compare that to the number of actual contributors
whatever that statistic is i'm willing to bet it is small we need more hosts and first time hosts
that rightfully are rightfully intimidated by the process while we do run the risk of getting
some shows that are either unlistenable audio quality wise or express the not of interest to hackers
some of my stuff i can arguing with that i personally believe emphasizing audio quality
at least outwardly to prevent hosts not subscribing to this list would be counterproductive
to attracting new contributors i've no doubt we'd lose some listeners due to the audio
of a few shows that's unfortunate but i've also little doubt we lose potential hosts who find the
process of contributing to be insurmountable that's flat-out tragic so many people listening feel
that they don't even have anything worthwhile to say let alone the knowledge to put it out there
until we can make headway against that sort of thing i can't see throwing up more barriers to entry
hb r is a hungry beast it's not at all picky about what it eats but it needs constant feeding
oh yes all the image always yeah need a cartoonist to do that let me yeah
and bob says i've just finished off most excellent bob courting hb r is a hungry beast it's not
picky about what it eats but it needs constant feeding yes very much there are two notes i wanted
to say about this one is he is so right and i disagree with him i found he shows up all to be
most interesting particularly old soldiers the reason i'm right here right now date is because of
lost and bronx so that's another story which will be covered in the mother post shortly
but what can you do the key elephant in the room that nobody talks about is filling
they just getting new hosts getting new hosts is the key getting i'm going to frame that
post by lost and bronx you watch the essential craftsman don't you i do yes yes and you know he
has this thing where he says people ask him how do you get an ample he's into black smithing and
he's currently building a house but he's into a black smithing he says lots of people talk to him
about how do you get my first ample and he says make sure you introduce the concept or you
you you make sure that you have the word anvil in every conversation you have with somebody
and it'll come up and people do you wouldn't happen to have an ample do you know if anyone around
here has got an ample in the same way as a hbr listener i'm not talking about contributors now
i'm not talking about people who who have contributors like um head from here i'm talking about
listeners those who have subscribed to the field and their listeners this show you come
contribute to hbr by getting hosts by mentioning hbr to people by saying hey that's a really nice
topic you know you did a blog post and that would you be interested in recording it for hbr
would you mind if somebody recorded that for hbr get hbr into the mindset of people and then we
give more hosts as simple as that okay that was it Dave do we guess anything yep i don't think we
did now now we covered some ground there good stuff so all in all absolutely excellent the takeaway
for everybody on this is mention recording audio to people if the word podcast comes up
mention it if somebody's if you're in a hacker space mention it it's a good way to improve your
project mention hbr constantly then we have links to taj's series anybody who wants to volunteer to
look at the anybody who does processing of audio will come online tools if the words like socks
and ffmpeg resonates with you see what i did there but um then talk to us about getting a better
script or if you know of other podcasters in freely built in source world who have methods of
processing script using freely built in source tools then contact us uh we need to do a template
for your first show uh somebody needs to write that we need to modify the script to um to add this
is the first second third fourth fifth show of somebody so that we know where they are on the stage
and then uh we're looking for volunteers to mentor uh people for audio quality or in general
just mentor people getting the first show in that's that's the key uh and i'm also open for that
although my audio quality is terrible but i like it that way see taj it's it's good to strive for
these things but uh it is it shouldn't it shouldn't be too upset if you don't quite achieve them i
find yes well we can coexist there's absolutely if it makes somebody come back and do more shows
because they feel like hey that's something i can be proud of as they're all the better
and if uh somebody's mentoring somebody to do a show then that person will feel
less likely to procrastinate because procrastination is the is the enemy here if HPR is the warrior
procrastination is the violent that's the word for violent enemy nemesis nemesis uh-huh yeah okay
tune in tomorrow for another exciting episode of hacker public radio point is more recording
not stopped do okay i'll uh don't delete your recording of this please i have to go do stuff now
bye yep okay thanks can bye i see you're rusty bye
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