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Talk:The Daily Show/Archive

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This is an archive of past discussions. If you want to add a point, please do so on Talk:The Daily Show instead.

Contents

Episode Pages

I'm thinking of taking screencaps of most of the 2005/2004 episodes and creating episode pages for each; Those would not be fully fleshed out (see The Daily Show/2005-09-15 for an example), since I will not have the time to rewatch every episode from two years and scribble down notes on everything. Notably, The Notes/Trivia/Reviews section would be empty for most of them, and I wonder whether it makes sense at all to include them when they are empty (on the linked example I just copied the template from another episode, which was also half-empty). Any thoughts ? Eike 09:17, 28 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I think it could be useful to to have episode pages that at least list all the segments and correspondents on each show. Something akin to the Sept. 28 show. Would be a lot of work to do two years worth of episodes though :). It would be possible to autogenerate a lot of that from Krofinzki's list, which has nearly every episode and guest since Stewart took over (up to 2004). It has has some of the segments in 2003-2004. I could probably write a program that generates season and episode pages from that. I'll try to do that within the next couple weeks. - Indecision 14:46, 4 Oct 2005 (EDT)
Ideally, yeah, the global layout for each show would be present. Not quite sure I can do that for all episodes, but I will try. I should be able to take screencaps for all of 2004 and most of 2003 though, all in all a LOT of episodes -- and fishing that info out of each one of them is ... time consuming. :) One thing I always try to get right is why the guest was there (promoting movie/book/show XY, with external links to amazon/imdb/webpages). I am also thinking of creating new Category pages for the recurring segments like "This week in God" or "Back in Black" so that The Daily Show/This Week in God is not as hard to maintain as it is now. Eike 11:40, 5 Oct 2005 (EDT)
One thing to keep in mind, as long as you link to the pages for segments like This Week in God in each episode that has them you don't necessarily have to maintain them, since you can then go to that page's What links here page and see a list of all the episodes that link to it. - Indecision 13:39, 5 Oct 2005 (EDT)
True, I had not thought of that. So, what is more elegant ? Subcategories Daily Show/Segments/Segmentname, or a succinct link to "what links here" in the segment document ? Eike 23:11, 8 Oct 2005 (EDT)
Here's an idea: how about we create templates for each of the segments that automatically add the segment to the category? It would also make it easier to update each episode and ensure a consistant format in each episode. - Indecision 19:23, 11 Oct 2005 (EDT)
I am not completely sure Categories work inside templates. Either way, how would such a template look like ? I have started putting links to categories in all the episodes that contain recurring segments, with a sort key of *date (where date is in the sortable 2005-10-21 format). That should keep the category-pages sorted by date, as well. If you have a better way, please demonstrate it on a few episodes, we can always change the rest forward or backward after :) - Eike 20:45, 16 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Renaming episode URLs

Unless there's any objection, I'm going to start next week renaming the episodes based on the guest rather than the date. If a guest has been on the show more than once, the year will be added to the name. If they've been on more than once in the same year, the month and year will be added.

One consideration to take if you decide to move forward on this, I don't think the label of what affiliation the senator is is really relevant in the title information. It's something that should definitely go in the guest description, but I think that it's just superfluous in the title information which should be as simple as possible. Also, John Edwards isn't a senator anymore. --IndieRockLance 07:50, 7 Oct 2005 (EDT)
That will get ugly. Say today, George Bush gets on as guest. It will be titled "George Bush" ... Next years ep will then be called "George Bush (2006)" and then a month after "George Bush (September 2006)", unless you rename previous pages -- which is really not a nice thing to do, IMHO (especially since a later editor might not neccessarily know that prior pages exist).
How about renaming them instead to either Guestname (Date) or Date : Guestname consistently ? Alternatively, have them be the likes of The Daily Show/2005/September/Guestname (if that is even possible) ... In that case we could, in theory, have autogenerated category pages for episodes per month or per year.
Either way, there are some shows that do not have guests, and some shows that have more than one guest. The automagic alphabetized index will have artifacts any way we slice it.
Eike 23:07, 8 Oct 2005 (EDT)
Yeah, I'm not sure what to do about multiple guests. Would be nice if we could add to the category page twice, alphabetized under both names, but I tried and it didn't work. :( - Indecision 01:56, 9 Oct 2005 (EDT)
I kinda like "The Daily Show/Cameron Diaz (October 4, 2005)" as an example link. It's concise, has the guest and the date. We're trying to avoid nested directories as much as possible because it makes everything too unwieldly. --Wizardryo 23:32, 8 Oct 2005 (EDT)
I'm fine with Guestname (Date) - Indecision 00:47, 9 Oct 2005 (EDT)
That just seems superfluous. The date is going to be in the table and in the template anyway. Maybe it should just be a number. Like, let's say George Bush is on. Then he comes back next year and he'd be George Bush (2). Then George Bush (3) and so on. I definitely don't think that the guests should get put in nested directories though, that'll get even more confusing (although, I still think that the years should get separated into months). --IndieRockLance 02:01, 9 Oct 2005 (EDT)
(2) and (3) are hard to maintain, however. You do not immediately know what the last number was.
Eike 14:23, 11 Oct 2005 (EDT)
As far as years being separated to months... how would that work? The main page would list years, and link to a page that listed months, then you'd have to follow another link to get to the episodes? Not sure if I like that. I also like being able to see a years worth of guests at once, though I admit it's a bit annoying if you're only looking for the most recent. Another possibility is to have a months worth of episodes on a page that would act as a template that could be used to create both monthly and yearly (or even total) lists of episodes. - Indecision 02:23, 9 Oct 2005 (EDT)
Basically, yeah. It would be something like this:
Month #
January 16
February 11
March 15

Then in the months it would be basically how it is now:

# # Title/Guest Airdate
17 1 Paula Abdul February 1, 2005
18 2 Anderson Cooper February 2, 2005
19 3 Joe Klein February 3, 2005

It would just be to clean things up an you wouldn't have 200 episodes on one page to sift through. --IndieRockLance 02:37, 9 Oct 2005 (EDT)

I like this. The Date in the show title should stay, IMHO. While some people may think it superfluous, there /are/ episodes in which there is no guest at all (the one immediately after September 11, 2001 comes to mind), and in some cases, the date will help give context to the episode per se (i.e. it's probably a lot more interesting to have George Bush on the week after September 11, but a lot less interesting having Bush on the week after some tax breaks in an otherwise quiet period). IMHO, of course. Eike 14:23, 11 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Ambitious Edits

I'd just like to say that you guys working on the episode pages are pretty ambitious with the undertaking. They look really good. If you guys want to change around the episode pages to delete the unnecessary headers like Notes and such, feel free to do so. Also, it'd be nice if the URLs conformed to the suggest dating method on the Wiki, MMMM DD, YYYY. If you guys don't mind, I'd like to make a better and more efficient template for Talk Show episode pages over the weekend or sometime soon to facilitate a better output of information. Keep up the good work! --Wizardryo 01:51, 5 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Hmm, if the URL naming must be changed, it begs the question of whether we should even be using the date as the episode URL, or if we should be using the title/guest, and be more consistant with the other that use the title. I'm tending to think now that we should be using the guest name. One advantage of that would be that in the episodes category there would be a list of episodes alphebetized by guest. I think that's way to go. What do others think? - Indecision 20:47, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)
I think doing it by guest would be great because the episodes category page is bound to turn into a total mess. Also, doing the show's name as a date for past shows would get confusing for people trying to find the show based on who was on. I say go for it now before the idea of editing the episode pages gets totally out of hand. While we're considering how to better organize it for easy usage, maybe years should get broken down to months so it'd be like: The Daily Show/2005/October, where that has all of the episodes from that month in the episode list instead of all the episodes from one year being in one list. That way there's like 20 episodes in the list instead of 200. --IndieRockLance 21:51, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)
Careful with this ... There are several guests that have been on the show for up to 7 times. That can get confusing, fast ... Eike 23:00, 8 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Screenshots

Hey Eike,

Any reason for making the screenshots resize down to 240 width? 300 is pretty much the standard, and is what almost all shows use. - Indecision 17:59, 3 Oct 2005 (EDT)

  • No particular reason but for some of my caps having that width and me not knowing the consensus on size; 300px seems fine as well, the thing that I strive for is consistency on the episode pages (and non-reliance on the actual screencap-resolution). I'll keep 'em at 300px from now on (and shudder to think of all the captures yet to be done :) - Eike 03:44, 4 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Seasons

Any reason this show doesn't have season pages? Would be nice to create all the pages using Autogen. Jacoplane 13:28, 16 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Did TVtome really have much on this show? I recall it as just being a few 100 shows in that list. I do have an extremly big list right here. Anyone is welcome to use that list to get this page going, but if no one else does, I think I'm gonna get to it myself one day ;) --Krofinzki 17:23, 16 Sep 2005 (EDT)
One thing we talked about early on was how crazy that would be for daily talk shows. 1. The sheer number of episodes. 2. How do you know when a season starts or ends. Of course now that we have a bot to generate the pages automatically we can probably look into doing that. --Fezz(Ryvius) 01:16, 17 Sep 2005 (EDT)
@Krofinzki : That table lists episode numbers and seasons; are these based on actual production numbers, and are there any independently verifiable sources for those ? If so, it could make sense to make actual season pages instead of year pages; It would invalidate some production numbers on the current pages, but better to get it right /now/ than to fix it all years later :)

Why are Seasonal pages a bad idea, in your opinion ? If the data is available, "yearly" seasonal pages are just as arbitrary as "production" seasonal pages, and the latter closer reflect the notion of a season. Your example format would work for both, and seasons are roughly one year long it seems (July to July). Thoughts ? :) Eike 09:34, 28 Sep 2005 (EDT)

I don't know that data is available for the early years. Also, season 10 "officially" did start with the first episode this year, so that would make seasons 1-8 lasting July to July, season 9 from July to December, then presumably January to December in seasons 10+. Since it's all arbitrary anyway, and no one cares about seasons in a year round talk show, may as well keep it consistant. To me, it's not that big a deal either way though. - Indecision 13:42, 28 Sep 2005 (EDT)


I think there's no sense in listing this show by season. List it by years instead.
Here's my example:

Year Premiere Finale #
Comedy Central
2003 January 7 2003 December 18, 2003 157
2004 January 6 2004 December 16, 2004 162


# # Title/Guest Airdate
1200 170 Sacha Baron-Cohen July 15, 2004
1201 171 DNC Concention Special - Bill Richardson July 27, 2004

--Krofinzki 19:00, 17 Sep 2005 (EDT)


Sounds good to me. - Indecision 12:40, 18 Sep 2005 (EDT)