Lack of interest Voice Posting

[StarArmy]

My suggestion is that if Xenforo wants to stay on the cutting edge, we should add a streamlined way for users to easily post with their voice instead of just typing text. As users scroll through the thread, they would hear other users speaking in their own voices (could be toggled on/off). Preferably this would have some way for the forum (maybe using an API to a third party transcription service) to produce transcripts and fill the post text with that. I know this is a bold suggestion but I feel like this could really build on the foruming experience and offer a feature no other platform provides.

 

[meetdilip]

Reminds me of auto play feature while using FB and Twitter apps. It works exactly the same when we scroll down.

 

[shimspedy]

My suggestion is that if Xenforo wants to stay on the cutting edge, we should add a streamlined way for users to easily post with their voice instead of just typing text. As users scroll through the thread, they would hear other users speaking in their own voices (could be toggled on/off). Preferably this would have some way for the forum (maybe using an API to a third party transcription service) to produce transcripts and fill the post text with that. I know this is a bold suggestion but I feel like this could really build on the foruming experience and offer a feature no other platform provides.

do you know how much it would cost to host a forum with audio ?

 

[Max Taxable]

do you know how much it would cost to host a forum with audio ?

About like what we do now, hosting video? If you limited the voice messages to 5 minutes each, that's about 5mb of space. Far less than a 5 minute video would be.

 

[shimspedy]

About like what we do now, hosting video? If you limited the voice messages to 5 minutes each, that's about 5mb of space. Far less than a 5 minute video would be.

well that would cost you still more as it uses a lot of bandwidth depending on how many audios a page has to load

 

[Miacommunity]

If you may be interested to know, I'm building an add-on of this type.

 

[Max Taxable]

well that would cost you still more as it uses a lot of bandwidth depending on how many audios a page has to load

Lots of sites have lots of images that represent large kb loads. Nobody worries about hosting those. Voice messages if the resolution is standard for audio, 128 kb/s, really isn't any different than hi-res images. And tons lower than video.

I mean, it's really pretty simple - if you can afford massive image files and monster video files, audio isn't going to bother you.

 

[shimspedy]

well, good luck with it but also it depends on your niche site ... and how you depend on the search engines for traffic.

 

[Max Taxable]

well, good luck with it but also it depends on your niche site ... and how you depend on the search engines for traffic.

No different than videos.

Except, the guy wants the voice messages transcribed by the addon as well - giving plenty of text content for spiders to index! Plus, helping out the hearing impaired! To the OP - to encourage use of the feature, you should also have option for the thread starter to make all replies have to be voice messages!

Back to the file size stuff - the messages don't have to be and won't all be the full 5 minutes allowed. Most will only be a minute or so. Two minutes is actually a better limit I should think. And if you format the addon to make them mp3 files with smaller bandwidth, say... 80kbs which is fine for voice, you have even smaller files resulting.

 

[shimspedy]

No different than videos.

Except, the guy wants the voice messages transcribed by the addon as well - giving plenty of text content for spiders to index! Plus, helping out the hearing impaired! To the OP - to encourage use of the feature, you should also have option for the thread starter to make all replies have to be voice messages!

Back to the file size stuff - the messages don't have to be and won't all be the full 5 minutes allowed. Most will only be a minute or so. Two minutes is actually a better limit I should think. And if you format the addon to make them mp3 files with smaller bandwidth, say... 80kbs which is fine for voice, you have even smaller files resulting.

well im always afraid of having to pay for unused content storage...

 

[Max Taxable]

well im always afraid of having to pay for unused content storage...

It would be a great problem to have, if you find you're needing more bandwidth and storage you're doing something right.

 

[AndrewSimm]

I think a better suggestion would be to make it easy for users to dictate what they would like to type. You could also add a button that allows readers to have a computer read the post.

I don't think the user experience would be good in having users record their own voice. Dialects and recording quality would be my biggest concern.

 

[Max Taxable]

I think a better job would be am easy to way for users to dictate what they would like to type.

I do that pretty regularly, standard stuff for Android phones. What I say is what gets typed.

 

[whynot]

I do that pretty regularly, standard stuff for Android phones.

Standard for iOS as well.

 

[shimspedy]

I think a better suggestion would be to make it easy for users to dictate what they would like to type. You could also add a button that allows readers to have a computer read the post.

I don't think the user experience would be good in having users record their own voice. Dialects and recording quality would be my biggest concern.

that's possible with google TensorFlow API but it's expensive!!