The TV IV:Proposals/Show Pages

Standardizing "Next" and "Last" links

Right now, there is no standardized way to add "next" and "last" show information to the main page for a show. I think that this is information that would be very useful to the average user.

Of course, it would be great if this information could somehow or another be automagically pulled in from the episode pages. However, that might be a little tough without some MediaWiki and/or PHP programming.

Anyone more familar with MediaWiki have any idea what the best way to do this would be?

Comments

• Oh yeah - and I added this to the more important proposal section as the Fall 2005 is about to start and this is a good time to get people interested in TVIV. --Captbunzo 17:20, 14 Sep 2005 (EDT)
• It would be very nice to have some sort of method to determine whether a show sucks or not. It could be simple as quotes from published reviews, similar to Rotten Tomato's consensus, or as complex as a review page with a rating system. It would just be something nice to have. --Pottedmeat 18:57, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)
  • Taste is relative, a show that someone likes won't be the same as one that someone doesn't like. I don't think the point of this wiki is to review shows and such, that's more the area of TV.com where you rate literally everything. I'd rather keep this as an informative source rather than a critical one like Rotten Tomatoes is. --IndieRockLance 00:18, 16 Sep 2005 (EDT)
  • Completely not the point. Information exists as to what people think of the show, this site serves to aggregate information about the show. I'm speaking about having this information at hand, on each of the site's pages. The fact that shows like Arrested Development have had critical acclaim (subjective) yet bad Nielson ratings (objective) showcases why I think it's important. Saying stuff like that is important for anyone looking to find aggregated information, because it's exactly that. Wikipedia's Arrested Development article says: "The show is a hit with critics but has not yet gained a sizeable audience. Despite its low ratings, the series has been renewed by Fox and will return for a third season during 2005-06." Stuff like that. --Pottedmeat 10:31, 16 Sep 2005 (EDT)
  • The Proposal for the Episode Pages includes reviews for each episode. The show review can just be the aggregation of all episode reviews. --Pottedmeat
  • But odds are that only fans of the show will bother to review episodes anyway. So it's would just be an avarage score from people who like the show, even if it sucks. I'm also of the opinion that it's up to the person to decide whether the show sucks or not. We're providing information, not opinions. --Kash 08:34, 18 Sep 2005 (EDT)
  • Yeah, I now understand that the Episode reviews won't provide much relevant to the overall review. It still doesn't get rid of the point that there ARE people who, for a living (or, people who are just well-known for it), say "This show is well-written and engaging." Providing links, quotes, information related to television show reviews IS information, but it's also information directed to an opinion. Many shows link to Television Without Pity, a site I know and love, but one which provides opinions. This is useful, because it tells us where to find further information and discussion. Is it too much to ask that we aggregate opinions on the quality of a show? Using stupid buzzwords like "objective" and "information site" is useful only to a point. Once you make it into a steadfast rule, instead of understanding the intent of the rule, you'll end up with a bunch of people yelling at each other over stuff that, in the end, really just detracts from the people that want to GET something out of this site. I am telling you that I want to know what people think about any given show. I'm sure there are other people that would like to find a place that aggregates this information as well. Can we find a way to achieve this without bastardizing the site? That's all I'm asking --Pottedmeat 19:42, 18 Sep 2005 (EDT)
  • I originally put up a "Reviews" section on the website because, while I understand that the Wiki is meant to maintain a NPOV, there will also be some people coming here who want to see how a particular episode is. This will prevent the potential flamewars that erupt in episode talk pages about NPOV when people can just be deferred to make a review about it. It's actually better that only fans of the show end up being the only people reviewing, since those are the people I want to hear opinions from. If I was going into a show like Buffy without any prior knowledge, I'd like to think that this bad review of an episode was made by a fan of the show who graded accordingly, and not some random Buffy hater. There are a lot of people who put up with crap television, including myself, so if I have to put up a bad grade for an episode, I will. As a fan of Big Brother, it pained me to see this season turn into such crap, and I responded accordingly by giving the episodes Cs and Ds. However, in the same vein, I also didn't want to turn every page into some cacophony of pie charts and line graphs like TV.com. I'm usually disappointed in the fact that, if I wanted to gauge how well or poorly an episode did, that I would either have to refrain from doing so or read long, drawn-out individual reviews from multiple sites. I think short-and-sweet reviews maintain a decent balance between opinion and fact. --Wizardryo 23:01, 20 Sep 2005 (EDT)
  • Obviously a poll you have to find on your own isn't scientific. But maybe we could institute some kind of "recommend" feature, sort of related to a hit count just to see how popular a show is. It would be a gauge of interest in a show, a vague gauge but at least it's something. If no one's watching a show, no one's going to be looking it up, etc. But to ask you to click or whatever to recommend, we eliminate the people just checking out something they haven't seen or don't like. -aenematron 23:11, 20 Sep 2005 (EDT)
    • I don't understand what you're trying to say. Are you just talking about the counters on the pages? If you go to "Special Pages," then "Popular Pages," you get a listing of the most-visited pages on the Wiki, category, talk, and user pages excluded. --Wizardryo 02:00, 21 Sep 2005 (EDT)
      • I mean adding a box to click to recommend a show, so it eliminates redundant hits and non-fans wh go to the page anyway -aenematron 11:45, 21 Sep 2005 (EDT)
    • This is even worse than a subjective rating system. Recommending a show would do nothing quantifiable, other than saying a lot of people like a show. Look at a show like Wonderfalls that people might not even know exists, much less recommend. Nevertheless, it's a well done show. It's stuff like that that I want to find out about, the stuff that I might otherwise miss. This method of "rating" wouldn't help me a single bit --Pottedmeat 22:49, 21 Sep 2005 (EDT)
• for the show template do you think we can have a status box? for thinks such as canceled, finished, continuing
  • Cancelled/finished shows will have a finale date. Continuing and hiatus shows should be marked accordingly in the main description of the show. We used to have a Status box in the original template, but felt that the information was redundant. --Wizardryo 23:01, 20 Sep 2005 (EDT)
• Would it be possible to be able to watch a particular show, including all of its contents (seasons, episodes, etc)?

Character tables

I've noticed that some people have been listing characters who have become credited later in the series or have become recurring stars twice in the cast table, and making their duration the duration that they are credited or not. I personally think it looks a bit weird to have a character twice in the table, and it might confuse people as to when people were in the show. However if they're just listed in the billed section there's no easy way of showing when they were billed and when they weren't. For example looking at buffy, you wouldn't know that Angel was in the first season at all, as it just lists when he's billed. Any suggestions? --Kash 08:40, 18 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Comments

I've been looking for a way to get around this, too. My original (and only) suggestion was to use parentheses to mark off seasons where the Billed cast member was on the show, but not in the credits. --Wizardryo 23:02, 20 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Maybe just asterisks, whatever, the point is you'd want to add an addendum to the character template. -aenematron 23:11, 20 Sep 2005 (EDT)

How do the parentheses look? --Wizardryo 01:58, 21 Sep 2005 (EDT)

They look good, but if we're going to do that we need to specify somewhere on or near the table what the parentheses mean. And try to make it look unobtrusive --Kash 12:02, 21 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Adding "Status" to Program Template

There doesn't seem to be a consistent way to indicate whether a show is Returning, Ended, or Cancelled. I'd like to add another row and variable to the Program Template above "Premiere" called "Status" for this purpose. --Newbs 17:09, 3 February 2006 (EST)

Comments

• That was actually suggested previously in the discussion above on this page and handled by an admin.

for the show template do you think we can have a status box? for thinks such as canceled, finished, continuing
 * Cancelled/finished shows will have a finale date. Continuing and hiatus shows should be marked accordingly in the main description
 of the show. We used to have a Status box in the original template, but felt that the information was redundant. --Wizardryo 23:01,           
 20 Sep 2005

--Hawkman | talk 19:12, 3 February 2006 (EST)

• I think the issue is worth a second look -- there is a difference between a cancelled show and a finished show, after all, and simply listing a finale date does not make that distinction. --Newbs 08:47, 4 February 2006 (EST)
  • What is the difference, and is it important? If you are talking about the difference between who decided the show was over (show producers or network), I don't think that is important. --CygnusTM <talk> 10:29, 4 February 2006 (EST)
  • Whether the show ended through the wishes of the network or the through the wishes of the show should be indicated within the show article. Information in the infobox, I feel, should be exclusive to important, noteworthy information, and having another variable to include how the show was cancelled seems to be, again, redundant, especially since if it's noteworthy, it'll be mentioned within the context of the article. Much as we remember ill-fated cancelled shows like Firefly and Futurama and Angel, we also don't remember shows like girls club or Line of Fire or Karen Sisco, and the list of cancelled shows that are prominent enough to even warrant such a cancellation statement are few and far between, urged on by fan input from online websites. This season, The West Wing, Alias, and 7th Heaven have all been cancelled by their respective networks, and, in the end, does it really matter whether or not they ended forcibly? Buffy isn't remembered for getting cancelled, after all. --Wizardryo | ✎ 14:17, 4 February 2006 (EST)
  • I think just saying Ended for shows like Babylon 5 that were planned out to end in a certain season, and Cancelled for shows that could have gone longer (if the network let them) in the "Airs" box is just fine. I don't think a new template is needed. --Stabbey 15:25, 4 February 2006 (EST)
  • Well, I think it is an important aspect to classify, but I also concede Wizardryo's point. Though, I do remember Karen Sisco quite fondly. :) Anyway, it certainly matters whether or not a show was forcibly cancelled, even if only from the fan's perspective, and indicating such in the show's description is an adequate way to do it -- so no argument here. As I said above, it just seemed worth a second look. I'm satisfied. --Newbs 02:03, 5 February 2006 (EST)

Adding Current News to Program Template

With the RSS extension available on the wiki, the ability exists to add a lot of live, low maintenance content to show pages in the form of an included RSS feed showing current news articles about the show in question. MSN Search allows you to create an RSS feed for a news search, like can be seen in the example on my user page. The feed can be included without the article summary too, like seen on CygnusTM's user page. This would probably only make sense for current shows, though, as I can't imagine there'd be a lot of current news about older shows that are no longer on the air. --Biznatchio 00:57, 15 February 2006 (EST)

Comments

• A splendid plan. I didn't realize you could include RSS. Not sure how I feel about adding RSS feed to the Current template, it seems like it would fit better as part of the article. Good thinking, though! --Newbs 03:57, 15 February 2006 (EST)
• Has there been any movement forward on this excellent idea? I've been wondering about the "News" section myself, which is currently hardly being used (if it's even on the pages at all) and is manual. For the most part, it's really just being done for "This show will have a new season," or, "This show has been nominated for an award." The problem is that this type of information becomes outdated really fast, and by manually adding news the way we are now, that raises the question of archiving it, which would theoretically mean that we'd have somewhere, archived, the fact that a series now in its seventh season was once picked up for a second season. (Thanks a lot for that helpful tip!) If we can just dump the manual news altogether and go with an auto feed, it would save those of us filling it in manually a lot of time, and it would make a lot more sense and be more up-to-date and useful. JCaesar 07:19, 10 August 2006 (EDT)
• Put feeds in a news section towards the bottom of the page (use spoiler tags), maybe below In Depth, not in the program template. i think that looks tacky. --MateoP 08:02, 10 August 2006 (EDT)
  • I haven't been putting the manual News in the program template. But right now, I'm less worried about formatting and more worried about how to get the RSS feeds to be show specific. Once I figure out what's possible, I'll worry about making it look right. -- JCaesar 21:37, 10 August 2006 (EDT)

Miniseries

He haven't really standardized the page format for miniseries yet. Should the episodes be listed on the show page or do we create a "Season One" page? Can miniseries have multiple seasons or are these different miniseries by definition (e.g. North and South and sequels)? Should we bother with the distinction between series and miniseries at all? Are short-run British series (e.g. NY-LON) miniseries? —Naddy 22:46, 10 November 2006 (EST)

Pilot Placement

(Originally in reference to edits of Strange. Beginning copied here from User talk:Joltman].)

I disagree with listing pilot episodes/movies as part of the first season if they aired separately. We need to decide on a convention for this. —Naddy 11:09, 17 September 2007 (EDT)

My thought is that it doesn't really look right having one episode listed under Seasons. Besides that, I have always seen it like that, and I thought that was the way it was supposed to be handled. For the record, I meant to make the season number of episodes '6 + pilot' but forgot, if that makes a difference. -Joltman 11:11, 17 September 2007 (EDT)

I don't think it makes sense to include a pilot as part of a season when it aired months or even a year earlier. I've used the same scheme for a number of shows (e.g. Intelligence, Red Cap, The Sarah Jane Adventures). I'm open to listing pilots under a separate heading such as "Telefilms" (cf. Babylon 5) or "Specials". I also think existing show pages that shove an earlier pilot into season one (e.g. Starsky & Hutch) should be changed, but I didn't press that point before. —Naddy 17:15, 17 September 2007 (EDT)

I think it's just a little awkward to have a link to one episode under 'Seasons', but then having a season page just for one pilot wouldn't work either. But, I do see where you are coming from. Maybe if we came up with some kind of heading within the Seasons table for a pilot? I dunno. Either way, this is something that just me and you should talk about, we should move it somewhere that we'll get more people involved. -Joltman 20:00, 17 September 2007 (EDT)

So, do we agree to put separate pilots into the season table with a {{seasontableTVM-lt}} line? —Naddy 11:38, 20 September 2007 (EDT)

I think if a heading were used, it'd be better to just name that heading "Pilot" instead of assuming all pilots are TV movies or specials. Many of the Adult Swim pilots (see: Lucy, the Daughter of the Devil or Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law) are broadcast a year or more in advance, but they're no different from an average episode. --IndieRockLance 17:54, 20 September 2007 (EDT)

Comedy vs. Drama

I'm under the impression that American networks classify shows as comedies or dramas based on the runtime: If it's a half-hour show, it's a "comedy", if it takes a full hour slot, it's a "drama"—regardless of the actual style. The question is whether we go along with this categorization or whether we make up our own mind. (A contentious example is Californication.) —Naddy 18:34, 16 October 2007 (EDT)

We've generally taken the philosophy that a show can be both at the same time. Networks don't classify shows based on length they classify them based on what awards they think they can win. Hence why Ugly Betty and Desperate Housewives get comedy awards while Boston Legal gets drama awards. All three shows have large amounts of broad comedy and some intense drama and all are an hour long. See JCaesar's excellent definition of dramedy for a good description of what constitutes one or the other or both. Californication certainly has a lot of comedic elements and has plot lines structured much like a standard comedy, but it does have some intense drama too and the deep character development that is generally seen more in drams. It's similar to Weeds which has been categorized as both. --The-jam 20:43, 16 October 2007 (EDT)

Creator

I don't pretend to understand how credits are assigned in the TV industry, but I'm gaining the impression that in the UK a creator is only explicitly credited if there are different screenwriters for a show. If there is just one writer, which is not uncommon for short eight-episode seasons/miniseries, it's simply "written by name" and presumably that name should go into the creator field of the {{Program}} template. Insights, opinions? —Naddy 20:56, 10 November 2007 (EST)

Linking to the Competition

What sites do we or don't we want to link to in the "External Sites" section? Official sites, fan sites, specialist sites, okay. But do we really want links to our primary competitors (Wikipedia, IMDb)? —Naddy 09:56, 28 January 2008 (EST)

Disambiguation

How do we disambiguate different shows with the same name and from the same year, e.g. TNT's Heartland and CBC's Heartland, both from 2007? Do we copy IMDb's "Show (Year/Roman Numeral)" format? —Naddy 07:38, 8 March 2008 (EST)