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Forum: The Situation Room > Adding "Day X" before episode appearance"


Today I noticed on a character page that their episode appearance did not have the day before it i.e. "10:00pm-11:00pm" instead of "Day 6: 10:00pm-11:00pm". So I changed it however Acer4666 mailed me to say that it should be debated as to what the format should be.At the moment the official format is not to put the "Day" before it, but I believe it should be changed to include the "Day". So what do you think:

 "1:00PM-2:PM" Or "Day 2: 1:00PM-2:00PM"?

Different pages use different formats, which should be used for every page?

Scott.mck 18:57, January 7, 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for starting up the forum for this! I think at the moment, the majority of the sidebars have just the times shown, when the character/location appears in only one season. I think this is because the season in which they appear is shown in the "season" field above the episode field, as well as the icon at the top of the page. Given that there are 1,846 characters and 694 locations, it would be a bit of an undertaking to go round changing them all! I think the rule is atm - don't have the day for characters/locations that only appear in one season, but specify it when the two episode are from different seasons. I think that makes sense to me--Acer4666 (talk) 19:58, January 7, 2012 (UTC)

Now I disagree with that why should there be two different formats for those that only appear in one season that that of those in more, I think one format would be more consistent. And there are many characters already that only appear in one season that have the "Day" before their episode.

-Scott.mck 20:34, January 7, 2012 (UTC)

My apologies for undoing most of your changes, Scott, but I hadn't noticed this discussion. Anyway, I agree with what has been the practice until now. Putting "Day X" again before the episodes make the sidebar look a bit repetitive with two fields stating the season. Thief12 03:57, January 8, 2012 (UTC)

At the moment there is no rule about this. However, "do whatever you want" doesn't seem sufficient anymore, maybe we should establish some kind of standard about this.

My two cents: although it is a bit repetitive, overall I prefer to keep the DAY in there. The primary reasons are these: first, we're hiding information with those pipes. I don't think new users are simpletons, but it might genuinely not be clear to new person that they have to look up at the Season datum to understand what they're looking at. (In other words, one info line shouldn't be dependent on another, each info line should be standalone, concrete datum.) Second, there are lots of occasions when I want to copy and paste an episode title from a character's sidebar for various reasons. But you can't do that when someone pipes the link, all you can copy is just the hour which is useless. Call me lazy but I don't feel I should have to actually click the link to copy the darn episode title.

Another concern is: it simply takes more work to pipe those links. I am not referring to the task of going back and piping pre-existing pages—which will of course be extremely tedious—but to future pages: I really don't want to have to sit there and pipe every sidebar link for a new page from now on, if that topic is just for one season. A fourth: it is actually more consistent when we do not pipe them. The pages will all look the same, which sounds like the picture of consistency to me. New users aren't going to have a clue if we decide otherwise, and correcting them about adding pipes will be just another silly thing we'll have to point out and come off sounding like anal didacts about.

Hm looking back at that, it might seem I feel really strongly about this. I don't, really, but it is best to consider those points against piping in contrast with the reasons for pipes. At the moment, all I'm seeing is for is that if you don't pipe the link, it "looks repetitive". Granted, this is true if you're looking at the sidebar as a whole, but most new people just want self-standing bits of info. The repetitiveness gets thoroughly overwhelmed in my mind by these other four points against the idea. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 07:19, January 8, 2012 (UTC)

Reasoning sounds good - I have no strong views one way or the other. I'd say the other reason (not just repetitiveness) for the current way is because the only official titles the episodes are ever given by the show makers is "2:00am-3:00am" etc., and our "Day x:" prefix is essentially a disambiguation tag of sorts. But we use it in some places, so no reason not to use it in the sidebar field.
The only other thing is that at the moment, I believe the majority of pages have the Day X excluded, so it would be a lot of effort to make this consistent, especially as it doesn't seem that important to us. --Acer4666 (talk) 18:36, January 9, 2012 (UTC)
If the decision is to go with the full titles without the pipes, we wouldn't have to go through and change them all back in some kind of emergency effort. It would just be the kind of thing we'd change at our leisure when the opportunity comes along. Also, I'm pretty sure those sidebars originally always had no pipes in those links, and if I recall correctly, it was 1 person who started implementing that without discussion. It may have been Pyramidhead, possibly with his bot, but I might be wrong about this. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 06:08, January 10, 2012 (UTC)
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