Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television

Guiding Light

Moved to Talk:Guiding Light § Episode count

 – Topic seems more appropriate at the article Talk page.

Repacking

I saw on a web site that a TV station is moving its digital channel. This is happening a lot, according to that site. I was watching a TV station which announced that today is the day to rescan. The process is (sort of) explained at Spectrum reallocation#Repacking (someone did improve that article, which I contributed a lot of content to, but it might need further improvement). There should probably be a standard way of adding these changes to TV stations' articles. What I did on WCSC-TV could probably be improved on.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:12, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

MOS:US

MOS:US states that the abbreviation style of U.S. is deprecated, and that we should be using US (no full stops). It does also says to "retain U.S. in American or Canadian English articles in which it is already established, unless there is a good reason to change it". Should we change it to US in {{Episode table}} for the viewers parameter? Thoughts? It would match up with UK. -- Alex^TW 14:41, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

No – "U.S." is correct usage in North America. There's a background to that MOS:U.S. change which I won't bore people with, but it was made after an RfC was held in which there was "no consensus" to deprecate "U.S." IOW, the change basically ignored the RfC result. The MOS should not be used to "force" conventions for which there is not truly widespread consensus among all editors. Bottom line – WP:ENGVAR exists for a reason, and trying to impose "US" over "U.S." is just one of those things that promotes needless conflict among editors. Best to leave it be... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:48, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Consistency would be nice, and periods nowadays are pretty much phased out of abbreviations and acronyms. Amaury (talk | contribs) 16:19, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm of the same view. Plus my reading of the MoS is that consistency within articles is the objective, so where other international abbreviations (UK, EU, UN etc.) are present, US is the desired format. It's a short step from there to using US consistently in any event. MapReader (talk) 16:28, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Cautious oppose: As long as the MOS states "retain U.S. in American or Canadian English articles in which it is already established, unless there is a good reason to change it" I suggest we retain U.S. in American or Canadian English articles in which it is already established, unless there is a good reason to change it. CapnZapp (talk) 16:50, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Comment: IJBall's arguments doesn't persuade me, however. Either "U.S." is correct usage in North America, in which case I expect our MOS to reflect that. Or the opinion is irrelevant to Wikipedia. Furthermore, we can't have "backgrounds" to MOS edits influence our reading of said MOS. The MOS is exactly there to force conventions, it's its whole purpose... Regards CapnZapp (talk) 16:50, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Actually, in IJBall's defense, WP:MOS is a guideline. That means it's a general best practice to follow, but it's not something that should be followed 100% of the time. Common sense comes into play in these cases. Amaury (talk | contribs) 16:54, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

The LA 2028 Olympic Games site carries all the documents for the Los Angeles bid, which were pitched at an international audience. These seem quite happy to use US throughout. As does CNN, on the international website that I can access. So for international sites at least, US appears reasonably common. MapReader (talk) 17:06, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, Amaury, but then the originator of this proposal shouldn't base his proposal on it either. Either it is more or less merely an opinion piece, and any change proposal should stand on its own without it, or it presents a significant argument in favor of the proposal, in which case I believe we should follow what it says. Feel free to withdraw my cautious oppose if you do agree on the former. Regards CapnZapp (talk) 17:11, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

I didn't make any solid proposal, I just wanted to see what other opinions were. However, my opinion is that guidelines should match up, so if one states that US is the preferred version, then others should as well. Consistency is definitely appreciated in articles - what harm does using US do? -- Alex^TW 05:53, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I think it should be changed. MOS:US also says "use US in an article with other country abbreviations, and especially avoid constructions like the U.S. and the UK" which would be a fairly common occurance in television articles, such as "...airs on NBC in the U.S. and BBC in the UK." I think consistency is best here, both across Wikipedia articles and between US, UK, UAE, etc. in television-related articles -- Whats new?^(talk) 06:02, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I'm heartily in favour of "US", for a variety of reasons: consistency with other country abbreviations, consistency with MOS in general (I really don't understand how a disputed change on such a highly trafficked guideline could stand for months if it didn't reflect some kind of consensus), consistency with MOS:ABBR, etc. Language evolves: maybe "U.S." used to predominate, but if, as per MOS:US, the form with periods is deprecated (and has been for years) in multiple American style guides (and that does seem to reflect a trend with dumping periods in acronyms more generally) including some big ones like the Chicago Manual of Style, then I don't see what the objection is to us following that trend. —Joeyconnick (talk) 07:48, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

With a few opposing voices, I'd say that there's a pretty solid agreement from the contributing editors to change usages to US, especially for consistency with similar usages (UK, EU, UN, etc.), as well as consistency with outside Methods of Style. I would, of course, be interested in hearing any further opinions. -- Alex^TW 12:13, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Would/should this change affect Wikipedia:NCTV? The disambiguation is currently using (U.S. TV series). --Gonnym (talk) 17:13, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of that, I was more thinking of usage inside the articles, but yes, that would definitely be something that needs to be considered if the guidelines were updated. -- Alex^TW 09:03, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

I really have no horse in this race but if MOS:US states that the abbreviation style of U.S. is deprecated and to make the naming consistent with other usages (EU, UK, etc.) I see no reason not to support this change. Gonnym (talk) 00:25, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

In that case, I'll run AWB on usages of {{Episode table}}, write up a new sentence for the MoS, and ask whereabouts we would request a large list of article renames. -- Alex^TW 02:59, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Featured Article review

I have nominated KaDee Strickland for a Wikipedia:Featured article review/KaDee Strickland/archive1 as the article has not been properly updated since its promotion as a featured article back in 2005. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Aoba47 (talk) 22:04, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

List of Highlander: The Raven episodes

Single-season TV series are not supposed to have stand-alone "List of episodes" articles. Yet this one is a WP:FL. (It probably shouldn't be, but that's a separate issue...) So, merge the LoE back to Highlander: The Raven anyway? Or leave it be?... Thoughts? --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:20, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Need help finding sources for Portable hole

I've been working on Portable hole. When I started, it was almost entirely unsourced WP:OR. I've made some progress finding sources, but not as much as I'd like. Many entries remain unsourced, and many of the sources I've added are, admittedly, not reliable. There's no doubt that this is a notable concept, having been used in film, cartoons, and literature by many authors. But, good sources are hard to find. I'd appreciate any help. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:39, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

NCIS (season 15)

Could I get some other editors watching NCIS (season 15), please? I adjusted the colours[1] using my script, per the whole COLOR discussion, and had an editor (Jp113040) revert me[2] with the summary of "What do you think am I, stupid or something, you're not the boss of the colors, I AM, you understand me?! I told you, do not mess with my previous color!". This editor's been warned for non-compliant colours and OWN behaviour before, per their talk page. Cheers. -- Alex^TW 03:52, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee episode list

Would appreciate some input on an issue over at Talk:Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee#Netflix episode order. Quick summary: I was looking at this show on Netflix and went to check the article over here. While looking at the episode list I noticed that its not even close to what Netflix has. The previous 9 seasons were rearranged into 4 seasons (called "collections") and the episodes from the seasons have also been rearranged between those (and not in order). I'm trying to figure out if there is any technical solution to have two lists, as both lists cannot share the same tables, as there is no reader-friendly way of moving from entry to entry by order. --Gonnym (talk) 22:43, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Listing all the syndicated shows a station has carried, in each TV station article

Please see Talk:WUPV#RfC about content in the Programming section. This is probably something that should have a standardized approach rather than be argued article-by-article.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:42, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

When should the list of episodes be split off into a separate article?

Greetings and felicitations. If an American show on broadcast television reaches a second season (which generally means a count of more than 13 episodes, if not 22), is that the time to split off the episodes into a separate article? If this question has already been addressed, where can I find that answer—in the MOS? Or somewhere else?

(I originally asked the question here.) —DocWatson42 (talk) 06:14, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Standard procedure is to split when there are known, reliably sourced season two episodes, yes. Amaury (talk | contribs) 06:15, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. ^_^ Is there someplace that that is written down? —DocWatson42 (talk) 06:19, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Incorrect. There have been multiple discussions upon this recently, and the "two seasons" "standard procedure" was disagreed upon. I'll see if I can find the discussions and the resultant summary of it. -- Alex^TW 06:20, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

The summation can be found at User:Bignole/Episode page. Two seasons is no longer the standard procedure; to answer your question, there was no place that it was written down. Cheers. -- Alex^TW 06:21, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

A split should happen based on size (WP:SIZESPLIT) – which would likely correspond to number of episodes & size of episodes summaries (i.e. prose length) – not "number of seasons". IOW, for example, a show that has 8-episode seasons should not have a LoE "split" after a second season begins to air. On the other hand, a hypothetical TV series that has 80-episode seasons (e.g. Violetta (TV series)) might actually qualify for a split before season #1 ends!... Bottom line: There's no hard and fast "rule" here, because different TV series have TV seasons (and episodes summaries) of different lengths, so the best guideline/benchmark is to go off WP:SIZESPLIT and editor consensus... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 12:49, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

A completely different angle: while there is a point to split on size (for example, The Walking Dead (TV series) without any episode descriptions is long enough because of the attention to the show, so season splits are needed), when the size is not a concern, the split should only happen if there is more than just primary information about that season, specifically, that can be broken out from the overall show without either article suffering for it. This information should be related to production and reception (and more than just Neilsen ratings). The production section should be information that is wholly about that season and would feel like a reasonably complete section; if the only production note to be added was "so-and-so was added to the cast", that's not sufficient. --Masem (t) 13:58, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I think this was more related to a separate list-of-episodes page, but for the topic of season pages, I completely agree with you. There's too many season articles that contain just the lead/infobox, cast and episode table, and there's editors that believe this is sufficient. It's not. -- Alex^TW 14:01, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

I would suggest that flagrant examples of this get the {{Merge}} tag. FWIW. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:10, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Yes, but that's all good advice on when to split off a separate "season" article – the original question was about when to split off the LoE article... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:03, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Per the discussion, ALL splitting was to be dictated based on the size of the article being split and not the number of seasons that were airing. That's what is on my sandbox that we never drafted a streamline version for. Thus, we are supposed to look at readable prose (all pages have a spot to check that) and separate when they reach the limit where that is suggested. That means, you could inevitably have some pages that are split early (because there's lots of coverage on the overall series and thus the main page has reached that size requirement) or some pages that have lots of seasons because they are more obscure and don't have a lot of coverage. The difference is that we're not a substitute for watching a show and historically people have separated out pages based on the "length" (mean that literally, not based on actual size) because of episode tables. This was a justification to have pages devoted mostly to episode summaries, which we cannot have as we're not a TV Guide either.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 15:05, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

If the contributors of this discussion are interested, there is a very similar discussion going on at Talk:List of Raven's Home episodes#Should this article have been split? about the validity of splitting very early, and whether they should be merged again, or left as-is. -- Alex^TW 05:43, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Aired episodes template

Hey, all. I've added to the usage of {{Aired episodes}} with a new template I've made, {{Template parameter value}}. The latter template pulls the value of a specific parameter in a specific template in a specific article, which, for television articles, removes the requirement of the "onlyinclude" tags in the parent article and the |num={{:Showname}} in the "aired episodes" template.

For example, here and here show the updated usages. You can remove the "onlyinclude" tags and the |num= parameter, and just add |showpage= instead. Not to worry though, the regular |num= still works! It's only an addition. Just an update I thought I'd share, might make life easier for television editors. -- Alex^TW 16:07, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Template:Television ratings graph - Request for help from the project's template editors

In January 2018, i submitted some suggestions in the template's talk page. They concern the format of the data table, the citation style and the appearance of the graph (a fixed distance between the bars). Five months later, no changes have been made, so i would like to once again draw your attention to it. -- Radiphus 09:51, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:List of Raven's Home episodes#Should this article have been split?

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:List of Raven's Home episodes#Should this article have been split?. -- Alex^TW 05:42, 25 June 2018 (UTC)Template:Z48

FLRC notification

I have nominated List of Doctor Who episodes (2005–present) for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks; editors may declare to "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Giants2008 (Talk) 00:36, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Precedent for List of longest-running Indian television series of Colors TV

Hi all, is there any article precedent for the existence of List of longest-running Indian television series of Colors TV? I have kind of a problem with the user who created it--they've fabricated a lot of citation titles so that they say things like "Sasural Simar Ka' completes 2,000 episodes, thus, becoming second longest-running Indian television series of Colors TV till date" when in fact the reference titles say something much different, ex: "'Sasural Simar Ka' Completes 2,000 Episodes".

The user is also adding this content to articles, ostensibly to make these series sound more important (?). Arbitrary and very specific records/milestones like "seventh longest-running Indian television series of Colors TV and second longest-running Indian television series of Colors TV which is on air" just reads as a form of WP:PUFFERY to me. I mean, there are a lot of qualifiers there, like are there other series that aren't Indian that have run longer on Colors TV? Anyway, I appreciate a contrary opinion if anybody has one. Regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 15:40, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Content should be merged into List of longest-running Indian television series, if applicable. (And, FTR, I don't particularly care for the format of List of longest-running Indian television series either – those should be organized by either years or seasons airing, not by "number of episodes"...) There is indeed no precedent for "longest-running TV series, by network" as separate articles – that kind of detail should either be covered at the Colors TV itself, or as List of television programs broadcast by Colors TV (which doesn't exist). --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:42, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

I agree with IJBall. Merge to longest-running Indian series -- Whats new?^(talk) 00:00, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments, guys. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 06:17, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Series and season articles using non MOS "infobox" templates

I came across an issue with several pseudo infoboxs templates and a sidebar template.

The pseudo infoboxs are Template:Infobox reality show candidates, Template:Big Brother housemates and Template:Big Brother endgame which are used in The Apprentice UK articles (example: The Apprentice (UK series ten)), Big Brother articles (example: Big Brother 7 (U.S.)) and probably others. These templates auto-hide the reality participants, their entry/exit date and color-coded and their end result. A few issues with this.

1. Is this not against MOS:DONTHIDE?
2. Having these infoboxes means that following MOS:TV#Infobox and using Template:Infobox television season will make the page look bad.
3. In addition, consistency is also an issue here. While the The Apprentice (UK series ten) uses Template:Infobox reality show candidates, The Apprentice (U.S. season 10) uses Template:Infobox television season/custom.

For Template:Big Brother sidebar which is used in Big Brother (U.S. TV series), Big Brother (UK TV series) and other articles there are other issues.

1. Sidebars are not viewable on mobile screens - this template included.
2. A lot of the information in the sidebar is duplicated in the navigation bar at the bottom (seasons, season houseguest list, winner links, other participants links, other related shows).
3. For some reason, it has the information for the whole franchise listed there.
4. Similar to the previous templates, is this not against MOS:DONTHIDE?
5. Similar to the previous templates, having this sidebar also means that following MOS:TV#Infobox and using Template:Infobox television will make the page look bad.
6. Similar to the previous templates, consistency is also an issue here. While Big Brother (U.S. TV series) uses Template:Big Brother sidebar, Big Brother México uses Template:Infobox television and Big Brother (Dutch TV series) uses custom code inside the article itself.

In addition, I remember a discussion (which I couldn't find) about pairs of param names and values. These templates don't use that coding style. Does this matter?

So in summary I'm asking. A. Is this even an issue? and B. If it is, how do we handle this? --Gonnym (talk) 12:11, 1 July 2018 (UTC)