Forum:Episode titles

Forum: The Situation Room > Episode titles

Is there any specific reason why episode are not titled, for example, "Day 5 4:00p.m.-5:00p.m." as they are written on the introductory episode cards beyond the fact that, visually, it looks worse? --SignorSimon _{(talk/contribs/email)} 22:36, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

Anyone? --SignorSimon _{(talk/contribs/email)} 18:07, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Not a clue! Are you considering moving them so they all have the periods? Blue Rook  talk  contribs 20:18, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Haha, well no because I do actually prefer them as they are. It's just, we stick very specifically to things such as unnamed characters, aliases/codenames (your recent debate about Alpha 7 is a good example), yet the episode titles are, technically, all written incorrectly! --SignorSimon _{(talk/contribs/email)} 20:21, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

It's true :( To move them might not be difficult (read: bot edits), but it absolutely will be the most colossal series of moves imaginable. We'd need a clear consensus before moving forward. If we get one, my idea is we approach Staffer Uberfuzzy for help. He was the fellow that did all the bot edits for the Quotes namespace, and I'm wondering if there is a way to update the redirects wiki-wide after all those moves. If we don't, I'm quite happy just leaving them alone, too. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 20:45, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Revisiting this...I think it's acceptable to use "am" instead of "a.m." because that's how the episodes are listed on Fox.com's episode guides. However, another change that I think might be more ideal is adding a colon to each title so it's "Day 1: 12:00am-1:00am", etc. I know it seems trivial, but it's that way on IMDb, and it's always bugged me how we just throw the day and time together with no distinction at all. Also, we really should start using quotes around each title since they are, at the end of the day, television episodes. --Pyramidhead 00:30, November 2, 2009 (UTC)

There is no need to put the quotes there since it's already understood that these are television episodes. It would be extremely redundant, and also confusing because then people would or would not put novels and webisodes in quotes too.

As for adding the colon, this would be one of the biggest nomenclature changes in the wiki ever. Before undertaking this, I must insist we get a clear consensus and additionally some kind of bot assistance from Wikia or someone else who knows how to accurately mass edit with bots. Until then I strongly believe we should leave it at the discussion stage. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 02:44, November 3, 2009 (UTC)

Well, it's also understood that jack bauer is a character's proper name, but we still capitalize it. As for the novels and 24: Redemption, those should be in italics. It's just a matter of following grammatical convention for titles of different media - choosing to ignore one particular rule because it's "assumed" is really inconsistent and, at least in my view, inappropriate for a resource that aims to be the 24 encyclopedia. Not to be a broken record, but I think we might benefit from implementing something similar to Lostpedia's episode title system - they use one template, "ep," which drops in a complete episode title based on the given parameter - saving the trouble of having to type it out repeatedly with quotes and all. This would also help out new users who might not be sure what conventions to use when referring to episodes.

Just to clarify - I don't mean moving every episode page so it has quotes around it - just adding them outside of the links, like I've done on the season pages.

--Pyramidhead 06:02, November 3, 2009 (UTC)

Dude, seriously, there are about 1000 other things you could be working on rather than focusing on such a tiny and irrelevant thing. If we leave this or change it, it will not make a difference to the content that the Wiki has about 24, which is what we should be prioritising over colons. --SignorSimon _{(talk/contribs/email)} 12:54, November 3, 2009 (UTC)

Obviously I can't be "working" on it, other than discussing it in here. --Pyramidhead 18:11, November 3, 2009 (UTC)

I see people reverting the changes I made. I don't understand what the problem is with adding quotes around episode titles from now on. Hell, it can't be any harder than adding icons to each page, another arduous task that doesn't "make a difference" to the content but which has gotten done very nicely. --Pyramidhead 09:23, December 15, 2009 (UTC)

Revisiting this, again, I've been experimenting with they pywikipedia framework and it really would be simple to effect this change (adding colons) across the whole wiki. On my test page I can change all instances of episode titles based on the category that page was in, so it would certainly be possible to do the same for the each content page, one category at a time. There's also a function to move pages based on an input list of "to" and "from" files, which I couldn't test without sysop privileges. I'm somewhat confused about that part, since the bot itself appears to have move privileges, but I'm sure there's a way for the admins to let it perform that function too. Here's the bot: User:Movebot --Pyramidhead 20:11, December 15, 2009 (UTC)

In reply to Pyramidhead's 09:23, December 15 post: There was consensus for the icons though. It started as one user's idea, like everything does, but the community agreed on it.

I know you really are behind the idea of the quotes, but give me a moment explain why I don't support it. TV episode titles are quoted, like you say, in normal publications and sources. But for the purposes of this project, they simply aren't necessary. It goes without saying that these are episode titles since the wiki content revolves almost exclusively around them.

In an effort to explain the genesis of why the episodes aren't quoted, a useful comparison would be the similar phenomenon that has evolved with TV series titles as found in the selected filmographies in our actor articles: normally, in regular outside sources, TV series names are italicized just like movie titles, but in our actor pages they are quoted. I guess this developed to distinguish them from the movie titles. Now, I'm not saying that just because something evolved a certain way on a wiki means it's written in stone. In fact I'd be willing to support a bot-performed series of edits to change all those actor-page TV series names to be italicized, if such a bot exists. Similarly, no one thought that quotes were necessary for episode titles and therefore omitted them. My point is, as it stands for the project, there's no real need to add quotes to the episode titles. I can't imagine a situation where any editor, experienced or not, has ever been confused because they saw that there were no quotes.

In reply to Pyramidhead's 20:11, December 15 post: I'll support the use of the bot if you can do two things: (1) promise that the bot will edit every single instance of the episode guide links, in all namespaces, so that no redirects from the old page titles will be needed, and (2) provide brain-dead clear instructions if you need sysop access so I can use the bot and not blow up the wiki. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 20:22, December 15, 2009 (UTC)

Instructions are up. Do you have an email address I can send the bot password to? I really don't think it should be in the open with all the spammers lately. --Pyramidhead 22:16, December 15, 2009 (UTC)

Yup just use the Send Email feature here on Wikia. And yes definitely keep that bot pass between us and any other admin that might want to assist somehow. Thanks bro, I will check into this now. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 23:04, December 15, 2009 (UTC)

Wait man, I'm gonna try to get some help with this. I am not comfortable with this at all, so I'll try to find a Wikia wiz to assist. Also I'm on a Mac and I'm not sure if this will work on my machine. Still send me the password though so I can let the helper know. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 23:52, December 15, 2009 (UTC)

It should work pretty much the same on a Mac. But yeah, any help would be appreciated; I'm new at this myself. --Pyramidhead 00:02, December 16, 2009 (UTC)

On the quotes subject...I agree, it's not something that needs to be done - this is about as trivial as it gets. But there's no good reason not to do it, either, other than the fact that, for whatever reason, it hasn't been done until now. And, as I've found out, this is another job that would be a cinch to do across all pages with the help of a bot. I guess my position is: whether we use quotes or not is not something that's going to make or break this wiki for anybody, so why not choose the more correct option of the two? --Pyramidhead 08:42, December 18, 2009 (UTC)

Anything happening with that bot? If we're actually going to make any of these changes, it should probably be before Season 8 info starts coming in. --Pyramidhead 08:27, December 28, 2009 (UTC)

Just put in the request for the bot flag, and the guys at Wikia IRC guess it should be done soon. I looked into this and feel it really should be you at the helm of the bot Pyramidhead; they assured me that anyone can use it, no sysops privs are necessary. If you are halfway through and find that for some reason you definitely need one, just send a note and I can take over/do whatever you can't because of access. Don't forget the fool-proof instructions though!

When using the bot, please just write up a brief summary statement for each major change you make with it on the bot's user page, and test each one first. Leave redirects, as we can consider trashing leftover links and stuff later after it's all done. This all sounds good? Blue Rook  talk  contribs 12:43, December 28, 2009 (UTC)

Okay, sure. It's odd, though...the move commands definitely asked me for a SysOps password. Of course, it could just be because I tried it on a page in my own userspace. I'll try to figure out what's going on with that. --Pyramidhead 01:06, December 29, 2009 (UTC)

In case you didn't see, Wikia made the user a bot. Please keep us posted on how this goes. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 04:57, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

Great! I'll get started on this sometime after midnight tonight. --Pyramidhead 21:28, January 2, 2010 (UTC)

Discussion has since continued over on User talk:Movebot. For the record, most of the changes are complete! Thanks Pyramidhead! Blue Rook  talk  contribs 03:36, January 5, 2010 (UTC)