Talk:Grassroots media training/KKFI/Audacity

What do you recommend regarding embedding little stills of parts of what one sees when using Audacity and similar apps?

With a word processor like MS Word, Google Docs, or LibreOffice, I could create a mini-screen shot with -4 on my Mac, then select the part of the screen I want, then Insert > Image > [select the image file]. If I want to add arrows or text to such an image, I can do that in software like graphics editor.

My current process in a Wikimedia project like Wikiversity is to save it in an open format and create each image as a separate named item in Wikimedia Commons, then embed that in the Wikimedia page where I want it.

This works OK for images whose placement relative to the text is not critical. It does not work that well for something like math to be embedded inline or anything else for which the placement should be more carefully controlled. (With the software, I could put text and images in a table.  I probably need to do that:  MediaWiki has a much more difficult problem to solve than a word processor, because it has to work on many different devices with infinite possibilities for size of the display.)

You can probably see my problem in this "Grassroots media training/KKFI/Audacity" article: It includes many opportunities to include such images. I have not included any such images for three reasons:


 * 1) It's substantially more work to upload the image to Wikimedia Commons and create a complete name and description for each small image of that nature that I might otherwise include in a standard word processing document.
 * 2) It seems harder to control the placement with what I know of the MediaWiki software.
 * 3) Then there's the copyright question:  Audacity is  (FOSS), which sounds to me like I should be able to do anything like this I want.  I would think that should be ensured, because it's FOSS.  However, their web site, "audacityteam.org" says, "Copyright © 2019 by Audacity - All rights reserved."  The latter seems to apply to their web site, so I'd have to think more about whether I could use screen shots of their web site.  However, it seems like I should be able to legally use screen shots of their software itself.[1]

What do you suggest?

FYI, I'm scheduled to talk about what I've created under "Grassroots media training" at the Grassroot Radio Conference next Saturday, 2019-10-05, under the title of "Creating training to attract volunteers and audience". Outside of my Wikimedia work, I'm the Secretary of the Board of, a listener-sponsored radio station in Kansas City. I'm hoping to involve people in similar grassroots radio stations in collaborating in creating training materials that people at many different stations will use to recruit more volunteers and improve their programming in ways that will increase their audience in a virtuous cycle. In so doing, I also hope the result will help better inform the public, thereby reducing political corruption and improving the quality of life for all, as suggested in my Wikiversity piece on media and corruption.

Thanks, DavidMCEddy (discuss • contribs) 05:47, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

p.s. What needs to happen so one could use  here like it can be used on Wikipedia?

[1] Apart from the legality, I'd be astonished if they'd complain of any use like this that might appear in the Wikimedia system of any of their imagery, since it helps promote their software. I'm probably fine doing this, especially with Audacity. However, Wikimedia Commons is justifiably super paranoid about copyright law, much more than any other organization I know. Horacio Verbitsky famously wrote, "Journalism is disseminating information that someone does not want known; the rest is propaganda. Its function is to expose what is hidden, give testimony and, therefore, to disturb." The entire Wikimedia system is so hard to dismiss, because it pushes its contributors to write from a neutral point of view citing credible sources and open what is written to anyone with a credible claim to a relevant alternative perspective. That's why it's banned in Turkey and has been banned in China.


 * With respect to using any of Audacity from their website, the easiest thing to do is ask them by contacting them. If Commons gives you a problem and Audacity okays what you want to do then you can upload it here directly to Wikiversity under the appropriate cc-license. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 04:27, 1 October 2019 (UTC)


 * Sure. Thanks.  DavidMCEddy (discuss • contribs) 05:24, 1 October 2019 (UTC)