Wikiquote talk:Templates/TV shows

Moved relevant discussion here. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 15:20, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Comments

 * Feel free to edit the draft. Leave comments here. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 09:04, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * First comment by me: This reflects the rough consensus as evidenced by a large number of pages. However, it is not necessarily optimal. Biggest thing I would change is using (quote break) for the hr, rather than making the visual decision explicit in the page. It's possible to transition gently from one to the other. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 09:07, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Each season can be dated with their premier? Like "Season 1 (19xx)". How do you think? --Aphaia 10:24, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
 * It is not a bad idea...but I tried to mostly standardize common practice, rather than invent new standards in the template above. I don't know of any show that does that. With American TV shows (the vast majority of pages), seasons are predictable in when they start, so the number can be calculated, which is possibly why the practice is rare. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 10:30, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Two reasons I'd prefer to avoid adding year numbers for seasons. First, I don't like needless long section headings, as it squeezes out Edit Summary space, and some of these ep titles can be long enough as it is. Second, American TV no longer follows predictable seasons. It used to be that one could expect a season to start in September and end in May or thereabouts, but both broadcast and cable networks are so erratic in their scheduling practices anymore that a season can start just about anytime (like January for "mid-season replacements" or even June for some shows). Furthermore, many shows have irregular numbers of episodes (6, 12, 13, and anything between 20 and 26), and these shows are frequently interrupted by sweeps, holidays, and other junk that makes it necessary to do some real research just to verify the actual telecast dates. This seems more appropriate for Wikipedia than Wikiquote. — Jeff Q (talk) 12:35, 12 July 2005 (UTC)


 * I made four changes to the template:
 * Changed the hyphen in the year span to an en-dash, per Wikipedia date practice, and compressed the year-span text to suggest the lack of spaces around the years, per common practice. (It's much easier to get folks to conform to this using this template.)
 * Changed "manual TOC" references to "custom TOC". As I understand it, a manual TOC is when you include the text " " to force a TOC; a custom one is when you reject the default TOC using "  " and make your own.
 * Changed episode-number punctuation to brackets, because some ep titles include parentheses. (I've never seen any that include brackets.)
 * Added IMDb template line.
 * — Jeff Q (talk) 12:33, 12 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Two personal biases I'd like to recommend that aren't in the current template but are in all the articles I monitor closely:
 * Context lines ("explanatory notes") should be in complete sentences whenever possible, and should be properly punctuated. IMDb, which many people lift (rather inaccurate) quotes from, tends to turn context lines into ungrammatical, unpunctuated text. I vociferously object to anything that encourages people to follow poor English practices without a compelling reason.
 * Character attributions fully capitalized (e.g., "Minor Character", "Balloon Man", etc.). This follows role-title capitalization in screenplays and credits without being as obtrusive as the all-uppercase attributions of screenplay style, and also fights the tendency of people to write everything in lowercase, as if they can't be bothered to use the shift key.
 * — Jeff Q (talk) 12:48, 12 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Added both to the template. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 17:15, 17 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Nobody has commented since my last change. Is the template OK? I would really like to move it into production soon, because inputbox will need it. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 12:56, 11 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I like it. I was wondering if there was such a template when I started working on some TV shows. I was a frequent user of the film template when I started there. I think it's important to maintain consistency on WQ's pages. This looks like a good template. UDScott 13:14, 11 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Inputbox with this template might be helpful. --Aphaia 14:03, 11 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Sorry for the delay in responding. Per my first concern in Help talk:Starting a new page, I've just created standalone template subpages for everything but TV shows and added links to them on the Templates page. I believe they should replace the current templates, since we need standalone templates for Inputbox and really don't want two versions to be separately edited. Before this draft template can be moved into place, it should be split into two parts: one for the standalone template (to be moved to Templates/TV shows), and a separate Talk page containing these comments (to be moved to Wikiquote talk:Templates/TV shows). (Not only is this best for Inputbox use, it follows the wiki practice of keeping talk material off article pages, where it doesn't belong.) Also, a "TV shows" section should be added to Templates, although I recommend not including the actual template, but just a link to the standalone template and some usage notes, since I suspect we're going to go this way soon anyhow (to avoid unsynchronized template copies). ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:10, 11 August 2005 (UTC)


 * We still need a prototype Help:Starting a new page, for which MosheZadka has sketched a description, but which has not been created yet. I take responsibility for this delay, as I'd hoped to copy over WP's version and edit it to suit our general needs (before MZ's new additions). I'll try to tackle that later today. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 15:10, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Dialog separation
I believe I've come up with a simple solution to the ongoing controversy of delimiting dialog segments in film and television show articles. I invite everyone who has found this a frequent irritation to participate in the discussion at Wikiquote talk:Templates. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:12, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
 * I believe you mean Wikiquote talk:Templates (maybe it's changed names since you linked to it). Note also the older, scant discussion (but voluminous examples) at Talk:Television shows/Dialog formatting. - dcljr 07:27, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Linking
Why are we supposed to link each character's first quote in each and every episode? Surely this goes against having only one link to each item per an article. Nikke10292 12:07, 31 December 2005 (UTC)


 * I'd say people can just use their own judgment as to whether this is overkill. Some pages are quite extensive (not to say ridiculously so...) and it's nice to have links in each episode. Shorter pages probably don't need this. - dcljr 07:22, 13 January 2006 (UTC)


 * It is overkill for short articles, but many TV episode quote articles turn into the longest articles that Wikiquote maintains, making a single link per article extremely impractical. There is precedent even on Wikipedia for multiple links for long articles, typically with one new link per substantial section. We had a choice between linking every instance of each character, one per episode, one per season, or one per article. We officially went with the last because of the rapid increase of long articles. However, one can probably use judgment to reduce the amount of linking for shorter articles. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:41, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

My changes
I've just expanded and rewrote some parts of the template, including more liberal use of HTML comments (with an explanation of same as the first line). The other changes I think should be self-explanatory if you just look at the diff. - dcljr 11:19, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Eliminating episode numbers
I think our current policy of mandating episode numbers in the episode headings is unnecessary for many articles, and causes problems in some situations. The main reason for having them in the first place is to keep the sections sorted in story order, which is important for shows that don't have a heading for each episode, but is redundant for those with complete listings (e.g., Buffy, MST3K, Veronica Mars, Gilmore Girls). The problems are: I propose that we maintain episode numbers in the titles only for those TV-show articles that have a partial list of episodes, unless and until they are completed. We can expect concerned editors to use appropriate sources (cited in the "References" section, I hope!) to maintain this order, just as we would expect WP editors to be able to present chronological information on a WP subject based on its references. If we feel compelled to, we can even create a topic on the article talk page (or in its "format" page, if we ever get around to formalizing that process) that maintains a complete list of numbered episode titles, so that other editors can add a missing ep in its appropriate place without having to truck over to the official website or TV.com. What do folks think about this? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:56, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
 * The episode numbers are just not very elegant.
 * They also crowd out space in the edit summary for section edits, which can be a serious disadvantage to long-titled eps.
 * Links from Wikipedia of the form  , used to provide direct links from an episode's WP article to its WQ quote section, don't work if the ep number is included. (See the various WP Buffy ep articles for how nicely this works without ep numbers.)
 * Some WQ internal links (like edit history section links) also don't work.


 * I agree, redundant tasks like numbering episodes are useless as long as the episodes have different names. I'm new here but think we should just follow the What Wikiquote is not article recommandations. Wikiquote is not an encyclopedia. --Goa103 02:39, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Unknown vs. unidentified episode
I've been bold and changed the "Unknown episode" heading that we've used for over a year to "Unidentified episode", which is a more accurate statement. After all, there are certainly people who know which episode any particular quote is from; it's just that these people haven't yet edited the article to move the quote into that episode (or to remove it as an invalid quote). I would expect the articles with "Unknown episode" to be gradually changed as people get around to it, just as we're doing with the switch from "Attributed" to "Unsourced" (which is effectively the non-TV equivalent of "Unidentified episode"). If anyone has a problem with this, please speak up here. Thanks. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:34, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Season?
American television shows have seasons. British ones do not. They have series. Fys. &#147;Ta fys aym&#148;. 22:45, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Good point. I've changed Red Dwarf's "seasons" to "series". We should probably have a usage note about this. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 20:41, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Using inputbox
I'm trying to understand: How exactly would I use inputbox on this?

Specifically, I'm looking to enter quotes for Xiaolin_Showdown, and I don't understand what / where / how to use inputbox. --Keybounce 01:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)


 * If you're referring to the TV-show inputbox at Help:Starting a new page, that is for creating articles, not editing existing ones like Xiaolin Showdown. However, if you enter the name of the existing article in the Television box, it will correctly start an edit on that article, so you could use it for general editing. Usually, though, it's better to go to the article directly (through a link or the Search box in the left margin) and edit the section you wish to change. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:52, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

What does [n.m] mean ?
In the template we can read « Episode Name [n.m] ». I'm not sure but I think the square brackets mean « optional info » and « n.m » probably stands for « number ». Am I right ? Where can I learn more about the template syntax ? Let's take an example to see if I correctly understood the syntax. Name a section for the first episode (Pilot) of a TV show named « Wikiquote TV ». « Pilot [1] » ? --Goa103 02:32, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid this really isn't adequately explained. The problem is that this page is used as boilerplate for new articles created using input boxes (see Help:Starting a new page), and we've found that explanatory notes on this page tend to get inappropriately left in the article when novice editors create articles from this pre-formatted example.


 * The "[n.m]" designation is not a wiki syntax. It's shorthand for "season n, episode m". Thus, your example would be "Pilot [1.01]". We adopted this convention because it was in use by a number of TV-show episode lists, including IMDb (with a slight difference in format). However, my quick scan of common ep-guide sites suggest this format has fallen out of favor over time.


 * Other formats I've seen include 101, 1-01 (or 1-1), and 1x01. The problem with the first is that it is potentially indistinguishable from production codes, which may not match the episode numbers (based on airing or other canonical orders). The brackets were used, rather than parentheses, because the latter occasionally show up in titles, while the former never have (that I've seen). This unfortunately can be confusing and sometimes problematic because of brackets' use in wiki syntax. Ultimately, it's a compromise between clarity, brevity, and utility. (The utility comes from needing an explicit sorting method for TV show articles that do not include every episode as a heading.) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:03, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Character link syntax
The syntax is Character but what should we do if the character doesn't have its own Wikipedia article ? Should we link to the actor article instead and name the link to the character name ? For example I'm writing a Wikiquote article for the Dexter TV show and Dexter, the main character, is played by Michael C. Hall. What would be the syntax to reference the character ? Dexter ? --Goa103 02:50, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * We use character links because it is the character that is quoted, not the actor. If there is no Wikipedia article on the character, there should be no link. To make the connection between character and actor, we include a "Cast" section at the end of articles. This doesn't adequately address all circumstances (e.g., should we include recurring characters in "Cast"; what about one-time guest stars?), but it allows the focus to remain on the fictional work quoted, not the actor playing the role. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:09, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Should we link to the actor if the character has no wikipedia page? --User:aerodynamicdeskset

What Wikiquote is not & redundant contents
Reading the What Wikiquote is not article I understood that Wikiquote is not an encyclopedia but that adding short introductions to the articles is encouraged. However I think some contents from the template is redundant with Wikipedia and could be removed to improve maintenance of the articles. The brief explanation is necessary, I have no doubt about it. We discuss episode numbering in the Eliminating episode numbers comment. What about the Cast section ? Even if a comment advices us to only list the main cast, I think maintaining both the Wikiquote and Wikipedia articles should be avoided. Why ? Because new characters are often added or removed each season. It happened many times in Smallville for example. It's not a big deal but is the Cast section really useful ? The Wikipedia article is only at a one-click to the user after all. Moreover the Cast section is not consistant as the cast can change between seasons. So one Cast section and multiple Season sections doesn't make sense. In general, I don't like updating lists in multiple articles. Using templates is one solution, linking or just removing the info are others. I think removing the Cast section could improve the project integrity. --Goa103 03:10, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I would also remove the link to the official website. --Goa103 03:16, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Goa103 raises some good points. The "Cast" section was a compromise between those who wanted actor links and those who wanted character or no links in the quotes. Having a "Cast" section provides Wikiquotians with some direct data on series regulars. As always happens with any human endeavor, since this compromise was worked out, cracks have appeared in this basic policy. Shows like ER and soap operas go through so many cast changes that it's a pain trying to maintain increasingly long "Cast" sections. More and more shows are adding recurring characters, giving a understandable motivation to adding them to the "Cast" list. One-time characters of note (e.g., Brooke Shields' appearance in Friends, to name an instance I just saw on DVD) have no reasonable means to be linked without confusion between character and actor links. One can argue that we might not want these links at all if they are so much trouble.


 * A little redundancy between the projects is not unreasonable, as it can improve the value of the Wikiquote article (as long as it's kept to essentials and is only a tiny fraction of non-stub articles). But these situations definitely complicate matters. I have no answers or recommendations for now, because changing Wikiquote policy is like turning a cargo ship — we have a very hard time getting anything resembling a community consensus on any issue because so few editors make more than a handful of edits on a regular basis. But I invite discussion on this issue. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Are IMDb quotes available for a TV-Series entry ?
There's a IMDb template to reference a TV-Series entry but I'm not sure quotes are available for a TV show there. Why would they be ? You can quote an episode but how could you possibly quote a TV show ? I see one special case, the credits but most of the time there's only a music and credits with a voice over are different from one episode to an other. The TV-Series entry is a good example, its "memorable quotes" section is disabled and the linked page is empty. So I've decided not to add the external link, a user visiting it wouldn't understand (or appreciate) that it's empty. However quotes are available for Six Feet Under so I suppose some users might find these uncontextual quotes useful. I guess I just like to know from what episode a quote is from. At TV.com only episodes have a "Trivia & Quotes" section for example. It makes reading quotes a living nightmare as you have to check episodes one by one, hopefully we don't have this problem as quotes are all listed and classified in an all-in-one article... « And this story shall also be told. » (Conan the Barbarian). Gosh, I can't believe this quote from the Wizard is missing. --Goa103 03:36, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't understand the relevance of the Conan quote, but I'll try to address the rest of your post. IMDb is in the middle of a major conversion of its TV-show data and presentation. As recently as a year or so ago, it did not present detailed information about episodes except through very specific links in the show's main article. (Two or so years ago, it couldn't even display episode information at all.) Now it has converted much of its presentation of TV-show data in all pages to per-episode information. Apparently, it has recently begun sifting through its monolithic TV-show quote pages to divide the quotes into episodes. Unless they've done some massive hiring to go with this initiative, I'd expect this conversion to take years. (Even though they allow anyone to suggest additions, deletions, or modifications of quotes and other data, each suggestion goes through an approval process vetted by humans to some extent, so it is far slower than wiki updating.)


 * We will obviously have to consider how to revise our links in light of this activity. We don't want to add an IMDb "episode quotes" link to every episode listed in an article. IMDb is but one source for quotes, and it isn't especially accurate, so I would recommend against making the connection too prominent. (Besides, we already have enough problems with editors simply copying and pasting IMDb quote pages, which is a copyright violation of IMDb's presentation that is easily detectable because of their formatting and frequent errors.) I suspect we will ultimately have to revisit the issue of what is appropriate in the "External links" section of Wikiquote TV-show articles. For now, we might not want to add IMDb links for shows like Dexter that no longer use the main quote page. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:27, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Formatting issue- episode headings for empty sections in TV show articles
Here's a problem I've encountered when editing Queer as Folk (US TV series),a page for a tv show that has numbered episodes instead of titled episodes and only a few episode sections have content yet.

Some quoted episodes had titles in a previous edit, but when I wanted to add more quotes and researched titles for episodes, I found that the titles weren't official episode titles, but rather titles given by TWOP. Both Showtime's official QAF site and IMDB list episodes by number, without any titles. So I removed the unofficial titles and changed the episode titles to numbered episodes I have of episodes. I haven't gotten around to adding many quotes to the article yet, but I found that when I left out headings for unquoted episodes, the TOC becomes ambiguous and opens up the possibility for quotes being inadvertently added to the wrong episode sections. For example, currently some season 1 episodes are quoted, but other episodes aren't quoted yet. When I remove the headings for unquoted episodes, wiki still automatically numbers headings in the TOC, and that results in a TOC for season 1 that looks something like this:


 * 1 Season 1
 * 1.1 "Pilot" [Episode 101]
 * 1.2 [Episode 102]
 * 1.3 [Episode 105]
 * 1.4 [Episode 106]:1.5 [Episode 108]
 * 1.6 [Episode 112]
 * 1.7 [Episode 114]
 * 1.8 [Episode 118]
 * 1.9 [Episode 122]

Granted, people should make sure they are adding a quote to the correct episode section. But I think people will tend to pay more attention to the numbers that appear first in each subheading rather than the number of the actual episode, and will inadvertently do something like click on "1.3" and place Episode 103 quotes in the Episode 105 section. This will result in misquoted episodes and editing frustration for anyone trying to verify and correct these errors. Scrolling through a lot of headings for quoteless numbered episodes is a bit annoying, but if I have to choose between the lesser of two annoyances, scrolling is the one I prefer.

Is there a better solution to this issue? d0minique 20:44, 16 December 2006 (UTC)d0minique


 * Also- Tivo can also be an inaccurate sourse for episode titles. Instead of using the official titles, episode numbers, for this show's episode titles, it used its own titles which summarize the episode.


 * Original airdates as titles might be a little more descriptive, but I'm not sure they would be especially helpful, particularly for shows that aren't currently in production and are now in syndication and/or on DVD.


 * Aside from making a fundamental formatting change to how wiki handles TOC or making a separate template for TV shows with numbered episode titles, perhaps using unnumbered lists, I haven't seen a way to get around the auto-numbering, either. Maybe I'm pessimistic, but I don't think making a new template would work very well- either new editors might be confused on which template to use or people will just ignore it and continue to use the standard TV show template. It would be nice if there was some sort of heading markup that could be used to turn off numbering in the TOC for cases like this, with heading remaining numbered in the TOC by default unless this additional markup was used. Maybe someone's already addressed this issue in a wiki markup talk page somewhere. At any rate, for now, although my solution isn't the nicest one to look at, since it involves scrolling through content-less space, it does at least promote accuracy and ease in editing. While I'd rather be able to fully satisfy all the goals of an article looking nice, being accurate, and easily edited, if I can't do that, I think accuracy is worth a little scrolling and cosmetic sacrifice. (crossposted from Jeffq's and my talk pages since it's relevant here) d0minique 21:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Italics versus quotation marks for episode titles
I am curious: why are episode titles in italics, rather than in quotation marks, as specified by, for example, Wikipedia? —DocWatson42 (talk) 08:34, 21 May 2017 (UTC)
 * Jeff Q: Pardon me—you are still active here. Do you have an opinion or explanation? —DocWatson42 (talk) 03:15, 25 May 2017 (UTC)


 * No reason other than aesthetics. ~ DanielTom (talk) 23:53, 1 July 2017 (UTC)