Talk:Main Page/Archive 1

From The TV IV

This is the Talk Page for the Main Page of the TV IV Wiki. Please use this to discuss ideas and changes to the main page, including Featured Shows, Special Features, Shows of Interest, and What's On designations.

[edit] Featured Show

Discuss at The TV IV:Proposals/Featured Show (March 2006)

[edit] TV IV?

Consider me uneducated if you want, but what exactly is the "IV" in the wiki's name? I have a feeling it has something to do with the SA forums... And, is it pronounced "aye vee"? Or "eve"? or "four"?

Ok, I get that "TV IV" is a forum on SA. But, what is the "IV"? Does it stand for something? Is it the roman numeral for four? Something else?

IV as in "intravenous" as in we need our TV "fix". --CygnusTM 19:56, 29 Aug 2005 (PDT)

Maybe you should reflect that in the logo. Put an IV drip on there instead of the hand grenade whichdoesn't appear to have anything to do with anything. Dori 09:12, 13 Sep 2005 (EDT)

[edit] What's On

Rather then having the "What's on" format for the front page, I highly recommend we do a TV Guide grid format for the front page. For example http://epguides.com/grid/ check that out. --Randall 09:33, 23 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Here is my proposal. My Main Page Idea. --Randall 11:05, 23 Sep 2005 (EDT)
- That doesn't really jibe with our aim to be an international site. --CygnusTM 09:37, 27 Sep 2005 (EDT)
- Yeah, I'm not too keen on that look either. Especially since the Whats On isn't network based, it's Show based. I'd like to see it have a link to the previous days listings. I use the What's On to remember what shows I need to download off BitTorrent. After midnight I have to manually input the URL to get to the previous day. A link would be a lot handier. --ChiperSoft 03:04, 1 Oct 2005 (EDT)

[edit] Front Page Update

Can we update the front page, it's out of date. --Fezz(Ryvius) 21:39, 29 Aug 2005 (PDT)

I'll need some help with it. If anyone has anything to contribute, feel free to mention it here. --Wizardryo 22:59, 29 Aug 2005 (PDT)

How about a list of all the premiere episodes for the fall 2005 season? That's information that is often asked for in forums. If all that information was on the TV IV Wiki's front page, a link to this wiki could potentially be put a bunch of places as a resource for getting premiere information. --Hoonster 03:14, 30 Aug 2005 (PDT)

Since September is going to be a big month for premiere, I say we have no "Featured Show" this month and fill that column with premiere dates. --CygnusTM 20:09, 30 Aug 2005 (PDT)

I'll vote "yes" to that. --Hoonster 22:06, 30 Aug 2005 (PDT)

I made up a premiere calendar, but its huge so I don't think we should put it directly on the front page. Maybe we do it a week at a time. --CygnusTM 06:30, 31 Aug 2005 (PDT)

How about for the monthly schedule, we put up the big series that the tv iv crowd is waiting for, Lost, Arrested Development, House, etc. And disregard syndicated and rerun premieres. --Fezz(Ryvius) 15:06, 31 Aug 2005 (PDT)

I'll see what I can whip up. Tell me if you like it or not. --Wizardryo 21:41, 31 Aug 2005 (PDT)

It's good, but you're missing Arrested Development's September 19th premiere. In fact a lot of shows are premiering that day. --Fezz(Ryvius) 14:33, 1 Sep 2005 (PDT)

In fact the featured shows column features an inaccurate date for the return of AD, it says October when it returns on September 19. --Fezz(Ryvius) 23:17, 2 Sep 2005 (PDT)

Just thought I'd point out that the new episode of Weeds is missing from What's On for September 19. Is there a better method for me to make that kind of addition? --ChiperSoft 00:41, 19 Sept 2005 (PDT)

I was wondering if there might be a way to drop in helpful information sets for someone to use as frontpage fodder. As an example, Alias started syndication on TNT recently, but started at season 4 for some reason. However, they're lapping themselves and will start from Season 1, Episode 1 on Oct 26th, 2005. This would be very helpful to know, especially for Alias neophytes like myself (I only figured it out after poking around when I saw they weren't starting at square one). Perhaps some kind of user staging are might help keep the main page from being stagnant and catch those notable TV moments. -- Ape Agitator

Put it on a proposal or start the calendar page for that day and put the info there. Whoever updates that page when we come to it, may use that. --Ryvius 01:25, 2 Oct 2005 (EDT)

How does the What's On piece get updated? I added Nip/Tuck to Main Page/Calendar/20 Dec 2005 but it does not show up on the homepage. Does someone monitor the calendar pages?--MrCalifornia 15:14, 20 Dec 2005 (EST)

The information is cached. It will eventually update. DCEdwards1966 | Talk 17:05, 20 Dec 2005 (EST)

So I don't know if anyone else noticed, but in the "Shows of Interest" listing Battlestar Galactica is sitting at the top with no description. I would add a little blurb but the main page is for higher ups only; could someone out there do that? --offput 20:35, 6 Jan 2006 (EST)

Feel free to write up a short blurb on it and I'll be more than happy to add it onto the main page. --Wizardryo | ✎ 20:41, 6 Jan 2006 (EST)

Can someone change the Scrubs logo link to link to the Scrubs article and not just to the image please? Matt 09:21, 16 January 2006 (EST)

[edit] Actors link?

I was thinking that maybe we should also put a big link for actors, as people will also want quick access to tv show actors as well as the shows. Although we haven't done a lot of actors at the moment. --Kash

We have an Actor category. We can also probably have show-specific Actor subcategories for the shows. --Wizardryo 21:41, 31 Aug 2005 (PDT)

I know that, what I meant was that maybe a link to the actor category should be on the front page for easy access, as right now it's not so easy to get to as programs are --Kash

I agree. Maybe make the genre say "Genres:" and add another line for people such as: Director, Actor, Voice Actor, etc. -- Sigma 12:39, 1 Sep 2005 (PDT)

[edit] Dreamhost referral

Can someone explain what this dreamhost referral link is supposed to do? How are we supposed to add this link to the page? Was this discussed somewhere? Jacoplane 18:23, 20 Sep 2005 (EDT)

You don't have to add it to anything. At the bottom of every page here on the wiki, you should see a "Dreamhost Web Hosting" icon. If you or anyone else clicks it and signs up for web hosting, I will receive a referral fee that I can apply to the bill for hosting this site. --CygnusTM 19:00, 20 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Ohh ok, I see. I thought I had to add the link to the pages myself. silly me :) Jacoplane 08:26, 21 Sep 2005 (EDT)

[edit] Referral

The tviv.com domain actually includes this site as a frame, FYI. --LoganK 08:22, 22 Sep 2005 (EDT)

[edit] Automatic Updates

Would it be possible to have pages automatically updated when other pages change. For example when an actor is linked from appearing on a particular episode of a show, that episode should be automatically added to the actor's list of appearances. If not there will be a huge number of inconcistancies. This would be most easily done if pages are edited by editting just the individual pieces of information in the page, not the whole structure, but this would result in a large recoding of the whole site. --Grahaml109 10:11, 22 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I'm not exactly clear on what you're asking, but it is possible to share information accross different articles using templates. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Template_namespace . Jacoplane 10:22, 22 Sep 2005 (EDT)

To give another example to add a quote it would be easier to click on an add quote button and have a box to enter the quote, rather than having to Edit the quotes section. Basically this site would be better as a customized wiki, rather than just wikipedia, but about tv. --Grahaml109 13:27, 22 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I might have missed it, but I don't think templates are sufficient, for what we want to do: I recently updated the Cold Case series. One episode was aired before another. This small change required changes on 5! pages. The main-page obviously, the 2 exchanged episode pages, and the previous/next pages. What I/we want: change it on the main-page, and let the other pages get the information from there. (Or let the main-page get its information from the episode-pages. Probably even better!). Same is true for air-dates... And btw. is there a way of correcting spelling errors in episode-titles? (again: would be nice, if this was in one place only). --Ageforce 04:25, 14 Nov 2005 (EST)

[edit] Content

(merged from The TV IV Wiki:Proposals/Main_Page)

From my experience I can say that I would not pay much attention to the main page when I am out look for info on a show. I am just looking for the search field and go. Something I'd find interesting though are featured shows or (if that's not too much) a list of shows and air-times that air in the next 24h (next 12h + past 12h?) complete with ep-title and network, which airs the show.... maybe even country since I assume TV IV will not be restricted to US shows exclusively.
In addition to pointing people to the Digg entry, why not also point them to the del.icio.us entry? Jacoplane 10:13, 13 Sep 2005 (EDT)
Where is the time zone? I sure wonder which time zone the show is on. As I viewed it, I thought it might be in the Eastern Time Zone (EDT), but on the West Coast (and Mountain Time Zone) shows are given in Central/Mountain time. Maybe detailing the time zone would make it more clear. Herlo 20:17, 13 Sep 2005 (EDT)
One thing that might help with show dates, listings and displays on the main page (what's on & what's next) is an extension I am using for krass.com. You can find it on meta mediawiki. It is very young and untested though. --Christof Damian 11:35, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)
1. Looks interesting. I've installed it so we can play with it. --CygnusTM 14:16, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)
2. Any way to make the week start with Sunday? I'd also like to be able to use the month name or abbreviation instead of number in the article titles. --CygnusTM 14:35, 15 Sep 2005 (EDT)
3. you can now use php date() strings in the "format" parameter. Just prefix them with a '%' like this: '%j %F %Y'. There also is an option "formattitle" to do the same for the titles in the today/days/week view. I haven't changed the start day of the week yet. --Christof Damian 03:15, 16 Sep 2005 (EDT)
4. Thanks! I think we'll be using this. --CygnusTM 14:01, 16 Sep 2005 (EDT)
Just a random thought, I've always thought it'd be cool to have an RSS feed for what's on TV tonight, but I've never been able to find one. Is there any way the "What's on/What's Next" could be put into a feed of some kind? (an added side benefit would be promoting the site by pointing people to the feed)
1. I don't believe that the MediaWiki software currently supports output of RSS feeds. But I could be wrong, because, hey - you learn something new every day! --LoganK 22:04, 18 Sep 2005 (EDT)

[edit] New Main Page Format

Check it out. User:Ryvius/Main Page Thought I'd let you look it over. --Fezz(Ryvius) 01:58, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)
1. This looks really good. Making this the new main page until someone else makes something better. If you want to make simple edits to the main page, please use this template. I'm thinking that there needs to be something coupled with "Featured Show" so that it doesn't stretch across the whole page. Maybe a Featured Article/User? --Wizardryo 02:07, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)
  1. Now the NCIS and Veronica Mars guys can fight it out for the featured show bit. --Fezz(Ryvius) 02:18, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)
It looks great, but it still requires that one of us edit it everyday. Check out User:CygnusTM/Calendar for a way we can automate it. We can just populate the calendar ahead of time, and the modifications will be made automatically. --CygnusTM 09:10, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)
1. See User:CygnusTM/Main Page for how the main page would look like using this calendar system. --CygnusTM 10:10, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)
  1. I think adding the time is somewhat important. And episode number could go either way, it is nice to be able to click the link to go straight to the episode that's airing tonight. --Fezz(Ryvius) 13:13, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)
  2. What Ryvius said. --Hawkman 13:37, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)
  3. Look at it now. --CygnusTM 14:12, 19 Sep 2005 (EDT)

[edit] Veronica Mars Isn't Wealthy

Correction on the Veronica Mars article on the front page. Veronica isn't wealthy but hangs out with a lot of wealthy friends. She's a working class girl.

[edit] More shows picked up

You can add the CBS shows How I Met Your Mother, Ghost Whisperer and Criminal Minds to the Sticking Around section. They have all been picked up for a full season. DCEdwards1966 12:50, 14 Oct 2005 (EDT)

The Office also got picked up for a full season of 22. Don't know where this "sticking around" section is though. --aenematron 19:13, 3 Nov 2005 (EST)

[edit] del.icio.us link

The link on the main page is for the del.icio.us bookmark for the old domain. Should probably be changed to the new one. Jacoplane 13:34, 17 Oct 2005 (EDT)

[edit] Featured Show for November?

Where is the page for this...? Why aren't we voting on it?

Right here: The TV IV:Proposals/Featured Show (November 2005) --Ryvius 19:13, 23 Oct 2005 (EDT)
1. Ok, thanks. There should be a link to this on the main page or in the left navigation box so people can find it easier. --MateoP 19:23, 23 Oct 2005 (EDT)

[edit] TV on DVD releases

How about adding a section for TV show DVDs that are being released in the week ahead? DCEdwards1966 14:04, 24 Oct 2005 (EDT)

[edit] Sweeps

The CSI: NY episode is on the 9th. DCEdwards1966 10:57, 1 Nov 2005 (EST)

[edit] Nielson Ratings?

How about we display the weekly Nielson rankings on the main page? Here is the list for the week ending November 6.

Nielson Top 20 for the week ending November 6, 2005

- I would love it if we were to have a special page for nielson ratings that is updated every week, but i think that might be a lot of work.

[edit] Most visited shows/pages?

Perhaps we could have a list of the most visited shows or the most visited pages somewhere on the front page? That would make it easier for people to get to the most popular shows. --Semifamous 22:26, 9 Nov 2005 (EST)

[edit] Traffic details

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3m&size=large&y=r&url=tviv.org/&u=tviv.info

included the old domain to show the slashdotting. Traffic rank isn't very high though. Jacoplane 04:52, 22 Nov 2005 (EST)

There was a spike yesterday, I wonder if it's a sign of things to come. In any case, we've got a long way to go ;) Jacoplane 18:47, 24 Nov 2005 (EST)

[edit] Logo contest

On the logo contest page, it says to start a topic in the talk page if you think the voting should be reopened... but the talk page is locked from editing. Fix? --MateoP 18:46, 22 Nov 2005 (EST)

[edit] Great!/Television idents/Village pump

First: At last, a dedicated television wiki! Really looking forward to see how it develops.

Second: I'm not sure where I should go to ask for help or policy questions on this wiki. I only found this page and some proposal pages, but a general discussion forum (like the Village pump on Wikipedia) would be very good, especially for newcomers.

Third: It would be very nice to have a wiki which concerns about television idents (graphics between programmes etcetera). In Great Britain this seems to be very popular, but I haven't seen anything from the rest of the world. Uploading video clips would perhaps be too much (both legally and for your servers), but would just still images work? Väsk 12:01, 30 Nov 2005 (EST)

Thanks for your contributions! We're working on setting up some foundation of the Village Pump right now. The Wiki is still obviously in its infancy having been founded only a mere few months ago, and we're still going through some policy and community decisions in terms of where exactly we want this Wiki to go. IE, how much we should of Wikipedia's policies we should mimic, etc. Feel free to participate in any of the Proposals, as these early months are obviously crucial in setting a foundation

By "indents," are you referring to graphics leading out of and into a commercial break, or between programs themselves? Still images would be fine since they fall under Fair Use, but you're right that video files are not efficient from a bandwidth perspective.

Please feel free to ask the sysops for now of any questions you may have. I believe Kash is our resident European and is probably more up to date with European television than many of the other sysops, but don't feel limited. --Wizardryo|✎ 01:49, 1 Dec 2005 (EST)

I see and agree that you perhaps shouldn't duplicate all the Wikipedia policies/conventions (although I would like to promote a "Village pump" and adopting the Wikipedia "Be bold in updating pages" guide line).

By "idents" I think I mean both the things you mentioned. In Britain they have sites like http://www.thetvroom.com/ and http://www.tv-ark.org.uk/ set up by volunteers providing an enormous amount of information (and pointless nostalgia), but I haven't seen much like it for the rest of the world and nothing done "the wiki way". I can set up a trial page here on TV IV to better show what I mean. Väsk 11:42, 1 Dec 2005 (EST)

[edit] adsense question

Great wikI! I have one question however. Could you post instructions as to where you put the adsense code in the mediawiki software? I have a wiki with adsense but the implementation isn't as elegant as yours. Simple instructions would help a lot! Alexplank 16:12, 4 February 2006 (EST)

I basically used these instructions. --CygnusTM <talk> 20:46, 4 February 2006 (EST)

[edit] Navigation sidebar?

I noticed that MediaWiki:Sidebar is protected. So would it be a good idea to add a link to the Main Page/Calendar there, so people can add/edit things on the calendar? --MateoP 16:23, 4 February 2006 (EST)

We'll have to think about that. I'm not sure it's a good idea to make it too easy to edit something on the Main Page. --CygnusTM <talk> 20:46, 4 February 2006 (EST)
- Ever think about protecting the calendar pages and having users add stuff to the talk pages and then admins can put them on the article pages?

[edit] Good job on the move

Ever since the move to dedicated servers, the speed has been instant whereas before it was a bit of a concern. Very nice, hope it isn't killing you in the pocketbooks. --MateoP 19:05, 14 February 2006 (EST)

[edit] Wikipedia attention

Hello everyone, Since a couple of days Wikipedia now has a Television Portal. However as all Television subjects in Wikipedia it is in need of some people working on it. I was wondering if some people here would be interested in upping some of the standards in the TV related pages of Wikipedia? I simply love TV IV, but wikipedia is simply pathetic at the moment, even at the Series level (i'm not even thinking about episodes yet). Please join discussion in WikiProject Television, to see if we can get Wikipedia Television up to the same level as Wikipedia Film.

Perhaps a formal request could be made on the Main Page ? - TheDJ 17:53, 21 March 2006 (EST)

Why on earth do you think anyone here would want to help out a rival webpage? Wikipedia is bureacratic. People arbitrarily decide that certain subjects (like, for example, episodes) are "unworthy" of their own articles. That's what's good about a wiki made especially for TV, by people who want lots of articles on TV. No, we most certainly will not be helping wikipedia have a better TV section. --MateoP 20:04, 23 March 2006 (EST)

I'm going to have to agree with MateoP on this one. Personally, I'm going to concentrate on upping the standards of pages on this site before I start on some other. And Wikipedi is not only bureacratic but wildly inconsistent in their treatment of tv shows. Some shows have pages for every episode, others only have text listings. Why not stay and make our site better? --Ryvius 20:10, 26 March 2006 (EST)

Agreed. I think it's important to realize that The TV IV is not Wikipedia, or else we would have all 60,000+ of our articles over there in the first place. Perhaps we should turn to the fact that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and what information the TV IV houses is not fit for one. I think that, for an encyclopedia, Wikipedia has very well-done articles on many television shows. --Wizardryo\^talk 22:26, 26 March 2006 (EST)

[edit] Press Releases/News Feeds

In order for us to get access to press releases and the types of high-res pictures we'rea all salivating over at LostMedia I propose we have a news section where we post press releases either in separate pages or as capsues on a daily page? Thoughts? --Ryvius 20:15, 26 March 2006 (EST)

I think summarizing the important information in the press releases would be more useful than just posting them. They can be rather cryptic and extremely biased. A dynamic news section would much more legitamize the site. I think maybe a main news page linked off the main page that links to pages for each seperate story would be best. Each news story could be categorized with Category:Show/News for each show it's relevant to and that category page could be linked to on the show pages. Making the site more dynamic with news would also cause much more repeat visitation and repeat visitors will probably start to contribute. --The-jam 22:58, 26 March 2006 (EST)

I think this is a good idea, but something to think about down the line. Probably don't have a big enough community yet. --MateoP 15:28, 20 April 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Suggest adding flush to main page

Maybe at the bottom of the page you should add a purge/flush link to make it easier to update the What's On section. This should do it: [{{SERVER}}{{localurl:Main Page}}&action=purge purge]

See if it works here: purge

Also you can use <small></small> to make it discreet.

[edit] New Shows and Renewals

The sections are little out of date. The following new shows The Nine, In Case of Emergency, Help Me Help You, Day Break, Greg Behrendt's Wake-Up Call, Just for Laughs, Notes from the Underbelly, Set for the Rest of Your Life and Six Degrees are all missing. Let's Rob... is misnamed Let's Rob Mick Jagger, Betty the Ugly is misnamed Ugly Betty, Big Day is misnamed A Day in the Life and Traveler is misnamed Travelers

According to Jim, George Lopez and American Inventor should probably be added to the renewed shows on the bubble section.

And for the cancelled series section it might be better to just link to Cancelled 2005-2006 Season (USA) but if you want to keep the list the following shows need to be added, Surface, Less Than Perfect, Rodney, Commander in Chief, E-Ring, In Justice, The Evidence, Fear Factor and Joey --The-jam 16:42, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

Is there a particular reason these sections are not ordered alphabetically? —Naddy 19:01, 16 May 2006 (EDT)

Couple more changes that should be made, on the pilot list American Crime needs to be changed to Justice. Standoff and The Wedding Album need to be added.

For renewed on the bubble shows The New Adventures of Old Christine, The King of Queens, Close to Home and Veronica Mars should be added. —The-jam 00:09, 17 May 2006 (EDT)

Another two for renewed, Smallville and Supernatural as announced on SciFi Wire.~Kevin Pratt, host of alienEthOS: The Ethics of Sci-fi 06:13, 17 May 2006 (EDT)

Reba needs to be moved from cancelled shows to renewed shows. Stacked, Free Ride and The Bernie Mac Show should be added to cancelled shows. Runaway, Hidden Palms and On the Lot should be added to pick-ups. --The-jam 12:39, 18 May 2006 (EDT)

[edit] NonCommercial License?

Hey, WTF is going on? When did the licensing change from CC Attribution to CC NonCommercial? Why wasn't there any discussion at The TV IV:Proposals/License? And I also can't remember seeing an announcement on the main page. Is this here a Wiki or a dictatorship? --KAMiKAZOW 09:25, 17 June 2006 (EDT)

The license was changed after the tviv.com incident to give us a better standing to fight things like that in the future. The change was made after a discussion among sysops. --CygnusTM^talk 11:43, 19 June 2006 (EDT)

[edit] Random Show Box

I created a proposal about adding a Random Show Box to the front page that would just list random shows from the program category. I figured that if someone saw the title of a show they recognized on the front page, they'd be more inclined to edit the page, even if just a little. This is based on the observation that in the past, users have jumped all over pages that appear in "Recent Changes", making small, incremental edits that might not add a lot of info, but do increase the overall quality of the article. -- Lampbane 11:44, 17 July 2006 (EDT)

Retrieved from "http://tviv.org/Talk:Main_Page/Archive_1"

Category: Proposals