The TV IV:Proposals/International Airtimes

On several pages, people have been adding show airtimes and networks for Canada, United Kingdom and even in somecases Brazil and other nations. In interests of keeping the templates simplified, where do we draw the line? Is there a better option?

Comments

1. As much as I want this to be an international wiki, I don't think that it makes a whole lot of sense to have international airtimes in the main page's template. That's what the At a Glance page has been for, because there's simply too much information there to be able to include it all in the template. But, if we only go with the airtime of when it first aired, what do we do about imported series that are being dubbed for the first time like Full Metal Alchemist? With more restrictions on international airtimes in the template suddenly turn a popular Adult Swim anime series that's still running as an English dub into an "OffAir" series? I'm honestly at a loss on this. --IndieRockLance 08:58, 21 July 2006 (EDT)
2. How about designated "primary" countries like the country of origin, the US, and the UK? Maybe Canada? Again, given how this is an English-language site, I don't see as much demand for listing the times for countries where English is not the primary language. Maybe we can amend the template to add a link to a page that lists all of the international airtimes, like "click here for more countries" or something. -- Lampbane 11:49, 21 July 2006 (EDT)
3. It's not a problem now. At most I've ever seen is 3 or 4 places listed. When/if it becomes a problem, we'll simply limit it to the country of origin only. No "primary countries", that's ethnocentric. --MateoP 16:09, 21 July 2006 (EDT)
4. It doesn't appear to be a problem becuase people have gone through and specifically removed the non US/UK/Canada airtimes to the At a Glance page. The Lost and Veronica Mars pages at one point were way overcrowded with airtimes. Another issue is if we include when stuff airs in syndication on cable networks (either once a week one season back for currently running shows like House on USA or nightly like That 70's Show on FX). I've seen it listed a few places and I'm not sure it really belongs at the top of the page like that. Maybe for finished shows we should just put syndicated like on the Alias page and major cable times can be listed in At a Glance (the word syndicated could even link to the list of air times).The-jam 16:50, 21 July 2006 (EDT)
5. The problem I have with limiting it to the country of origin is that this is primarily an English-based wiki, and there's no getting around it; it's not written in French, it's not written in German-- it's written in English. And for popular international shows like Doctor Who and Extras, it seems really counterproductive to the whole point of the wiki giving you "fast" information in the infoboxes by deciding to hide the USA airtime for a British show. Likewise with Lost and Desperate Housewives airing in Britain or Australia; let's not forget that in most countries, the biggest shows usually are the imported American shows. Our four biggest regions from what I can see of the referrals are, in a vague order, a huge obvious landslide in the Americas (Canada/USA), followed by England, the Scandanavian grouping, and then Australia. All English speaking countries or, in the case of Finland, et al., countries where English is a prominent language. I don't see a strong argument besides "fairness" as to why England and the USA should not be given priority over another country, since they do make up 99% of our viewing audience, Americans making up around 95% of it with a quick glance. Given the fact that, you know, it's hard to read an English website when you don't know the language. When there ever comes a point where we get different translations, then, yeah, we can focus on their needs, but I don't see the fact that we should be giving primarily English-speaking countries a higher priority "ethnocentric" at all. Maybe if this wiki was translated into every language and we still focused on USA/Canada/UK, then, yeah, definitely. But in its current state? Not at all. --Wizardryo\^talk 02:21, 22 July 2006 (EDT)

That's acceptable to me if we do two things. One, make access to all of the listings easy to find, such as is now done on the Lost page with a "More networks" link in the Program template. Two, is not discriminating between english speaking countries. That means if someone from Belize or Barbados, for example, adds their airtimes/networks, then those are acceptable. --MateoP 12:41, 8 August 2006 (EDT)

Belize and Barbados. Yeah, right, there's a realistic concern. Airtimes are short-lived information. They become outdated quickly and need to be maintained. I don't expect this to happen for smaller countries. Even Current Grid (UK) hasn't been updated in months. I would prefer if we did not encourage random drive-by additions of data that would just be obsolete crap after a short while. —Naddy 15:33, 8 August 2006 (EDT)

Realistically, how many people from Barbados do you think we'll get? If there comes a point where we get an influx of people from Barbados viewing a certain article, then, yeah, there's no reason not to include it, but, for now, I can't logically see there being a high demand of it. Again, the infobox is meant for fast information for specific things, and what I'm mainly concerned about is targeting the most amount of people with the most concise amount of information. The point is to reduce the amount of bloat, not to encourage it. Even if we do go with your proposal, there are a lot of countries that have English as an official language, and, to be fair to all of them we'll have to put all 100+ of them up. That doesn't exactly sound very concise, does it? --Wizardryo\^talk 20:06, 8 August 2006 (EDT)

No, it doesn't, which is why I suggested the country of origin only. Before you said that your reasoning was based on language. Now, as I suspected, you are changing your reasoning to be based on user base location. To me, this seems like a clear attempt to discriminate against everyone that is not US/UK/Canada/Australia. I don't think that because someone is a minority is an acceptable reason to discriminate against them. That's why I suggested having a country of origin only policy and then linking (from the same place) to the International Viewing section of At a Glance. Look at Lost as an example. --MateoP 20:15, 8 August 2006 (EDT)

Speaking as one of the people being discriminated against, I find it perfectly acceptable in this context to focus on the major English-speaking countries. "Country of origin only" is fine by me, too. What I certainly do not want is network information or airtimes for Sweden or Belize cluttering up the main info box. —Naddy 16:45, 10 August 2006 (EDT)