Television Template‑class

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Is there any way we can create an option for the American version of some terms like for instance host instead of presenter? We could put a line at the end of the infobox for American=true that would change some terms? Does anyone know how to do this? -- Grant.Alpaugh 15:41, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On the one hand, per WP:ENGVAR, this would possibly seem like a good idea. On the other hand, I personally favour all infoboxes being the same - after all, the entire point of infoboxes is to create uniformity in the display of important information, in this case TV programmes... _TalkIslander 16:15, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Right, but the terms are different, and that is important to keep in mind. The phrase "presented by" in American English has more of an advertising meaning, like "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is presented by Doritos." The football infoboxes do something similar, with different spellings of honors/honours and preferring head coach to manager. There's no reason to use a term that most viewers of certain shows have no familiarity with. -- Grant.Alpaugh 16:35, 1 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If you have suggestions for edits in mind, I can drum up fixes for this in a few minutes. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 01:20, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

For right now, the biggest thing is making presenter read host if the line American=true is inserted. -- Grant.Alpaugh 01:50, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If that's done, you might as well take out the 'num_series'/'num_season' thing, and have it read 'series' by default, or 'season' if American=true. _TalkIslander 09:36, 2 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Did we ever end up getting anywhere with this? We need "presented by" to read "hosted by" and "series" read "season" if the line "American = true" is inserted into the code. I think it is also worth asking why the American terms aren't default given the fact that the overwhelming majority of TV is produced in the U.S., but that is a question for another time I guess. -- Grant.Alpaugh 17:31, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I dispute that entirely - the overwhelming majority of TV is definitely not produced in the US, it's just that that is the TV you know of. The BBC, for instance, produce a huge amount of material, and then what about the hundreds of other networks in other countries? Per WP:ENGVAR, "If an article has evolved using predominantly one variety, the whole article should conform to that variety, unless there are reasons for changing it based on strong national ties to the topic". Although that is worded towards articles, the same would be relevant here. _TalkIslander 19:20, 8 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fine, but the fact remains that the changes we asked for have not been made yet. -- Grant.Alpaugh 05:12, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Recently, the film infobox and the actor infobox have removed the external links at the bottom of their boxes, mainly because they duplicate the links in the EL section, they're biased toward IMDb.com and AMG (in our case we would substitute AMG for TV.com), they theoretically violate the WP:EL guideline, and the official website link typically doesn't ever add any additional, useful information regardless (note: the actor box kept the official website link). It got me to thinking, should this infobox be updated to reflect a growing trend to keep all ELs in the EL section, and remove them from the box? The debate itself has already happened over there, so there isn't a reason to start it all over again here, as there really isn't a difference in how we use the ELs in the box and how the film community used them (I'm pretty sure we only added them based on what the film community had done...as most of this type of stuff originated in the film community). I'm looking more for opinion on whether we should follow suit as well.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 03:15, 3 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've always had a problem with the link to TV.com simply because, for new series, the site is crap (some older series have complete plot summaries, trivia, cast, etc, for every episode but most are just people's reviews and ratings). I think the problem with having the official website link in the film infobox was that those sites are little more than advertisements, with a trailer, cast list and brief production credits. Official sites for TV series are generally a lot better; they have detailed episode guides, IU character guides and generally things we try to avoid in WP articles. I'd prefer to keep the official site links simply because they're worth highlighting at the top of the page. As for IMDB, the same can be said for that as with TV.com; unless it is a major TV series, cast lists and production credits are often incomplete. In any case, if a link to the Internet Movie Database has been removed from the film i/box, there's little point in keeping it in the TV one. Bradley0110 (talk) 14:30, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd also agree with the removal of both of those links, for the same reason as they were removed from Film. They overly promote two external links over all others, provide no particularly extra/helpful information beyond what Wikipedia would in FL/FA level articles, and goes against the spirit, if not the letter, of WP:EL. Would also agree with the removal of the official site links. Initially, I thought they offered more, but as I started to type it out, I realized that they still rarely provide anything above/beyond our own FL/FA articles would: episode summaries, character summaries, credits, and DVD release info. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 14:38, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I never use(d) the ELs in the infoboxes, so I am neutral to supporting regarding their removal there. – sgeureka ^t•c 14:59, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to side on Collectonian's view of the "official website". In a general sense, they really don't provide things that we don't already provide (episode guide, character listings, etc). The only difference is that they usually contain advertisements on the website.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 15:10, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would tend to agree with all the above, but any removal would have to be done carefully. I don't believe that these links should be erradicated from the articles (neither, I think, does anyone here) - merely moved out of the infobox. We would therefore need to make sure that any links in the infobox were, if not already in the external links, moved there. I wouldn't support a straight removal of the fields without this proviso. Would this be something a bot could do? _TalkIslander 19:30, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Probably, though getting someone to code it up may be another issue. Films couldn't find anyone when they removed the links either, and finally decided that most articles have already duplicated the links and those that weren't would be fixed quick enough. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 19:33, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A bot could do it, if you knew someone that works with bots. The film community put in a request for a bot creation that would remove the instances from the box and put them in the EL section of all articles (assuming of course that the identifier was in the box to begin with). We could do the same, but the film community still has not heard back (as far as I know) about getting a bot to take care of that. I suspect that TV articles are just like the film articles in that there are probably very few that do not already have IMDb, TV.com and the official website already in the EL section.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 19:37, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As is evidenced by any series recently released on HD-DVD or Blu-ray, most if not all shows are now filmed in 1080p, and then broadcast in 1080i, 720p, 720i, or standard def, depending more on the local television station or cable system than the actual production itself.
So which format should be listed for current shows? I would suggest 1080p, since that is the native resolution before it is downgraded for local broadcast.
Regardless, the documentation should probably be updated to clarify that we want the format the show was filmed in, not whatever format an editor happens to watch it in. —MJBurrage^(T•C) 21:17, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I feel like it is a useless number to the average reader. Unless you understand what 1080i, p, etc means, you don't care really. Even so, it is hard to prove, verifiably (excusing what IMDb lists), exactly what the format for the show is. We cannot assume that all shows are 1080p, but not every single one is. Personally, I would like to move toward scrapping the section from the box completely. As I stated, it really does not add anything to understanding the show (which is what the box is for), and we cannot assume that the average reader is going to understand what those numbers actually mean.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 21:50, 9 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It does seem rather trivial. I don't suppose there are many instances where the picture format is actually discussed within the article. I'd be happy to see this field go. Flowerparty^☀ 09:23, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I take it the Composer(s) field is meant for if someone wrote the incidental music but not the theme tune, but this isn't at all clear. Where they both appear, like here, the two fields seem to contradict each other. Flowerparty^☀ 09:19, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's because one should read simple "Composer" and the other "Theme by".  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 12:33, 10 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That wouldn't really avoid the potential confusion, though. I'm wondering if it wouldn't be better to collapse the theme tune info into a single line and maybe remove the composer field - there's way too many fields in this box. Flowerparty^☀ 14:29, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there is a major difference between a "Composer" and the person that provides the "Theme music" (speaking of course that they aren't the same person doing both). In most cases, the "theme music", for live action shows, is often taken from a pop culture song, while there is a separate person providing the episode to episode music. I wouldn't be for merging these into one cat, as we had that before and we eventually separated them because the roles are typically distinctly different. Are you referring to "Composer" and "Theme music composer"? If so, then I would be for merging those two. They can easily identify each composer (one for the show and one for the theme) inside the box itself. But, I do agree that we have way too many fields in the box, and quite a few are irrelevant (I have renamed the header so that are discussion, which seems to be drifting to "which fields do we really need", will reflect the talk). We talked above about the picture format, you may recall. If I had to list the cats that I think could go, because they are really useless in helping the reader understand anything about the show, then I would say:
Picture format
audio format
Camera setup
Consulting, Associate, and Supervising producers (I think we only need Executive and regular producers, you rarely hear anything from the other three when it comes to who gets the privilege of discussing the show)
Story edit (seems to be the same job as "Editor")
Slogan (This looks like another name for "tagline", and we generally discourage taglines in the film community, as they don't provide any real information without context...something the infobox cannot provide)  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 15:03, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I meant the theme music composer field. I didn't make that clear, sorry. A merge would be better than having the two separate, I think.

As for the stuff you suggest removing, I'd agree on all counts. I'd go a lot further, in fact. The trouble with this template is people have just added piecemeal to it as they saw fit, resulting in a classic horse designed by committee. If it had been protected from the start I don't believe we'd have half the fields we have now. To me it seems like it would be more sensible to decide which ones are absolutely necessary and then eliminate everything else. What would Ockham do? Flowerparty^☀ 10:34, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why is there a "bgcolour" parameter?. —Mythdon (talk • contribs) 02:23, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm guessing it's because someone once decided the article about their favourite show wasn't colourful enough, and they figured they could introduce some colour by making the infobox look like the cover of their favourite show's dvd. My question is this: given that there is a bgcolor parameter, why do we also have {{television colour}}? It seems unnecessary - and indeed unwiki - to have the colours for these shows hardcoded into a protected template. Is there a technical reason for this or could we deprecate this colour template and just specify the colours at the individual articles? Flowerparty^☀ 14:29, 14 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]