Television Template‑class

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Are several articles using these parameters? These have been abused lately, and if it's not that being used that much, we can get rid of this. –HTD 08:51, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how many articles use them but I've seen quite a few. Eliminating parameters is not the resolution to stopping incorrect usage. If we did that we may as well get rid of infoboxes altogether. --AussieLegend (✉) 14:15, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I know but I'm sick and tired of reverting (LOL). The parameter isn't that important and if it's very few we can just get rid of it.

Also, the documentation doesn't really spell out its proper use. –HTD 19:53, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it's not much use. The relationships between different TV series are rarely as simple as "preceding" and "succeeding". Some shows have direct sequels or prequels, some shows are revived under the same name, some shows have spin-offs that air simultaneously with them, some shows have spin-offs that air after their own run has ended, some shows start separately but cross over with other shows at a later date, some shows have combinations of more than one of the above scenarios... it's too complex for an infobox, which should stick to simple, hard, basic facts. This information is best left to the article body and (where suitable) navbox. —Flax5 20:54, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. This isn't as straightforward as most movie (Star Wars) or book series (Harry Potter) for example. Is the successor of Late Night with Conan O'Brien The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien or Late Night with Jimmy Fallon? Or none? Or both? There have to be clear guidelines on when these should be used. What would be our basis? Canon? By my experience, people use this as successors in that time slot (WTF). –HTD 22:57, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• To help figure this out, I've taken it upon myself to create two administrative categories (Category:Infobox television preceded by pages (0 pages) & Category:Infobox television followed by pages (0 pages)) to see how much usage there is. Depending on popularity of these pages, these categories should take a few days to a couple weeks to populate. Now we just need to be patient and see... Technical 13 (talk) 22:13, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Do articles immediately show up when the parameters are used? If it does, this will be handy in my dealing with people who'd use these parameters wrongly. –HTD 22:57, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
• Heh. Looking at the articles there, some, like the Biggest Loser and Survivor ones, should not have been using this infobox but the TV season infobox. –HTD 23:50, 15 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• To answer your question, no, it takes days, sometimes weeks, or even months for pages using templates to show up in categories. Depending on the popularity of the pages and how loaded the job queue is.  :) Technical 13 (talk) 01:55, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• As of now there are 117 articles in the two categories. It is possible to force the categories to populate by making a null edit to each article that uses the infobox using AWB, but that's going to take a while. Note that the Survivor articles don't use this infobox directly, they use {{Infobox television Survivor}} which is a wrapper for this infobox and do so because {{Infobox television season}} doesn't have the right parameters. --AussieLegend (✉) 05:34, 16 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The categories now have over a thousand articles; I've skimmed through the list and I've removed some which are not chronological, but left some which are in the "gray area". We really need a guideline on this one. These are the gray areas:

• Some networks have a program of miniseries that end in a week/month, and a new one starts the next week which isn't connected to the previous miniseries. These surely don't fit the "chronological order"?
  • A similar question: Do individual miniseries merit a separate article a la separate seasons?
• How about news programs? Let's say a late night news program ended and was replaced the next week by a new one. How's that?
• Similar to above: Sports coverages. Is NBA on NBC followed by NBA on ABC? I'd say yes.
• How about cases such as iCarly and Sam and Cat? How about Beverly Hills, 90210 and 90210 (TV series)?
• How about the next "episode" is a movie? Like the Veronica Mars and 24 TV shows?
• And the reality shows that are using this template?

–HTD 13:00, 19 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Quick question! Should it be input as HDTV (1080i) or 1080i (HDTV)? I'm referring to what goes in the parentheses. – Recollected • 03:55, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, HDTV (1080i). Definition first, then pixel resolution. — Wyliepedia 09:09, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• In my opinion 1080i (HDTV). Specific resolution first then generalized definition (layman's term). Technical 13 (talk) 12:57, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Have none of you looked at the documentation? It's actually neither - it's "HDTV 1080i", and that doesn't change unless you can get consensus on it. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 16:55, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• DE, you scold us for not looking at some supposed documentation, but you offer no links to said documentation. I would say that without that, this is a consensus building mission in of itself and that even with the existing consensus you claim exists, CCC, so this discussion is still a worthwhile venture. Technical 13 (talk) 17:19, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User:Technical 13, in case you are actually being serious, here's the link, but I find it strange that you apparently don't know how to access template documentation - especially since you're a template editor: Template:Infobox television/doc#Attributes Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 17:24, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Seems that the resolution should be in parens for consistency with the other documented resolutions. Might have been an oversight or a typo. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:35, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User:Cyphoidbomb, notice that the other HDTV resolution isn't written with parentheses either - in my view, it's clearly because HDTV is the only item on the list that has multiple variants listed and so providing the actual resolution is not merely a matter of convenience. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 17:43, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• Okay, so the documentation is very inconsistent. It states The video or film format in which the show is or was originally recorded or broadcast. (Black-and-white, Film, 405-line, NTSC (480i), PAL (576i), SECAM (576i), HDTV 720p, HDTV 1080i. Do not use "SDTV" as it is ambiguous.)

Apparently some of them have resolution in parenthesis, and others don't. I can see it is very possible, based on this inconsistence to either use or omit the parenthesis based on personal judgment. They all seem to have definition first, then pixel resolution second as CAWylie prefers. Also, so far, Recollected, CAWylie, myself and Cyphoidbomb all seem to agree that parens are reasonable, and only DE has seemed to be against it based on a strict interpretation of the existing (but not apparently consensually gained) documentation. I propose that we update the documentation to The video or film format in which the show is or was originally recorded or broadcast. (Black-and-white, Film, 405-line, NTSC (480i), PAL (576i), SECAM (576i), HDTV (720p), HDTV (1080i), HDTV (1080p). Do not use "SDTV" as it is ambiguous.) to make it consistent. I think we can agree on this without making a big MOS RfC out of it, don't you all? Technical 13 (talk) 18:03, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User:Technical 13, did you read my explanation above? If so, please address it. (Also, please note that WP:TPO explicitly permits formatting changes.) Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 18:12, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• DE, I had not read it (must have been the edit conflict and I forgot to go back and read it). I see two different 576i resolutions there, and I see no justifiable reason to not put the multiple HDTV resolutions in parens. Also, that policy you just quoted as giving you permission to change the formatting of my posts which are acceptable per Wikipedia:Tutorial (Talk pages)#Indenting starts out by saying It is not necessary to bring talk pages to publishing standards, so there is no need to correct typing/spelling errors, grammar, etc. It tends to irritate the users whose comments you are correcting. Anyways, back on-topic, do you agree that standardizing all of the resolutions by wrapping them all in parens is acceptable and agreeable? Technical 13 (talk) 18:24, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You bring up a good point regarding PAL and SECAM, but there's a significant difference - the ambiguous term is the one in parentheses in those cases, while in the HDTV cases the ambiguous term is outside of them. (I was not correcting mere typos or spelling/grammar mistakes - if indentation is left uncorrected it can and often does affect the layout of other posts, and indentation is specifically listed as an exception below the statement you quoted.) Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 18:32, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• I did read down through that, and my understanding was it was acceptable if there was no indentation to add it or to correct the number of levels, not to change from bullet points to unmarked indentation and strip whitespace that makes reading the post easier in the edit window. Your changes actually rendered material more difficult to read. and was against the spirit of that section of the guideline. Now, back on topic, unless you are already highly knowledgable in the field of televisions or screen resolutions, there is no significant difference, both terms are actually ambiguous. Also, if you're claiming that HDTV is an ambiguous term, then perhaps it should be disallowed just like SDTV is for the same reason. No? Technical 13 (talk) 18:50, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

SDTV is indeed disallowed but NTSC, PAL, and SECAM are used instead. I don't think there are any viable alternative terms for HDTV. (If you mix bullet points and unmarked indentation it can easily break formatting.) Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 19:07, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pro-parens. I don't understand DogmaticEclectic's explanation. I tried to find the edit that brought the current version to the page, to see if there were related discussions, but I was not successful. Maybe I wasn't looking in the right place. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:30, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• I suspect the reason for parentheses use is that these are essentially compatibility resolutions. 1080p, 1080i and 720p are all "native" digital HDTV formats so "HDTV 1080i" is an appropriate method of reference. On the other hand, "PAL 576i" is not a format. NTSC, PAL and SECAM are all analogue formats while 480i and 576i are digitised equivalents. Back when I did my colour TV course in 1979, 480i and 576i didn't exist because we didn't have digital TV. Something filmed in PAL back in 1980 would be converted to 576i today to allow for broadcast. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia articles on the digital formats are sadly lacking historical and comparison information, so this is not obvious. --AussieLegend (✉) 03:29, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What is the difference between House and Banshee, that the House infobox has grey headers and Banshee has the normal purple ones? I can't see any hidden code in there, but the grey is much more presentable than the purple. DWB (talk) / Comment on Dishonored's FA nom! 14:56, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• The color is determined by the show name which is retrieved from Template:Infobox television/colour. Not sure why that template is set up as it is, as it could be much smaller, but whatever works. Technical 13 (talk) 15:07, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the quick answer. DWB (talk) / Comment on Dishonored's FA nom! 15:14, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Just to clarify, Template:Infobox television/colour only provides custom colouring for a few series. The complete list is:

• Angel
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Chuck
• Entourage
• Firefly
• Futurama
• House
• Mad Men
• The 4400
• The O.C.
• The Simpsons
• The Sopranos
• Veronica Mars
• Sex and the City
• The X-Files

--AussieLegend (✉) 17:28, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

• AussieLegend, you would possibly be able to expand on why they are colored via that sub template rather than using a |style=color: #RRGGBB parameter in the main template, could you? I'd like to understand this. I'm guessing there was a color dispute over which colors those series should have and /colour is more highly protected to prevent changing those colors, is this correct? Technical 13 (talk) 18:22, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Custom colouring of individual series is generally discouraged, which is why the colour parameters are not documented. Other than that, all I know is what is detailed at Template talk:Infobox television/colour#Colour eligibility. --AussieLegend (✉) 18:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There's a slow edit war at Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey over the episode count in the infobox. Per the instructions here and reviewing the page discussions, "num_episodes" seems to be mention to only indicate for a running series how many episodes have aired, but here's a case that we know there are 13 completed episodes, it's a miniseries with a fixed end. It does not make sense to say, as of its premiere episode that "num_episodes" is just "1". People have been trying to use "13 (1 aired)" an approach I've seen elsewhere on less-significant TV series where there is a source for the number of episodes that are planned or have been produced, which seems a fair balance for this, but this keeps getting reverted by people citing this page. I think we need more consideration on this field as the "number of aired episodes" is not really a useful detail on its own. --MASEM (t) 14:50, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Episodes aired has always seemed odd to me. In Britain, unlike America, most series are completed before broadcast. Also some countries might not air every episode due to poor ratings, censorship, or local sensitivities if a real life incident clashes with a episode story (This often happens in Britain when an episode is postponed to a later date). As this is English Wikipedia and not British or American Wikipedia I would prefer episodes made. REVUpminster (talk) 15:06, 11 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]