Talk:List of James Bond films/Archive 2

Edit warring
Mysterious Editor, Per BRD, STATUS QUO and a few others, rather than try and edit war your preferred version in place, please use this thread to DISCUSS your proposed changes. I personally do not think they are advantageous, but unless you describe fully your rationale then neither I nor any other editor will have a proper idea of your rationale. - SchroCat (talk) 10:13, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Do you look at that box office table and think it looks sufficient for a movie franchise as big as Bond? Let's take this one step at a time.
 * 1. Directors. Including the directors of their respective movies in a box office table is pointless and is not done anywhere else. This information can be found elsewhere, and the "box office" table is for box office figures only.
 * 2. Actors. Again, it's the box office table for the movies. The actors have no relevance to the numbers displayed. The actors info is also given elsewhere on these pages.
 * 3. Footnotes. The footnotes unquestionably need tidying up. The repetitive nature of "excluding profit participation" made me think it'd be better as a consistent footnote. There's also tonnes of random percentages thrown about elsewhere in the table which could do with clarification through means of footnotes.
 * 4. Additionally, the numbers themselves are not consistent with Wikipedia's standard. Numbers in box office tables shouldn't be decimalised, they should be full numbers like every other box office table for any other movie franchise on this site. For example, Quantum of Solace pulled a gross of "$586,090,727", as opposed to "576.0".
 * 5. "N/a". As per Template:N/a, the cells shouldn't simply have "n/a" written in them.
 * Hope this clears things up. TheMysteriousEditor (talk) 12:42, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm going to largely agree with Mysterious here. The chart is trying too hard to be both a summation of production aspects and budget numbers, and therefore is bloated and messy. I think that Mysterious was right above that readers would be better served by two charts, one for crew (including the bond actor) and one for budget and box office. Also, I have no problem with placing the figures in terms of millions (it is done elsewhere, and is common practice in reporting), but it's been almost a year and my concern that I brought up last January, that the figures are all in terms of 2005 dollars, which is now almost 14 years ago, is still an issue. I thought there was agreement that we should take the 2005 figures, which are sourced and already account for reissues from the days when those were common, and inflation-adjust those to current dollars. I still think that's a necessary step.oknazevad (talk) 13:04, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Your opinions are noted, but to answer your opening question of do I "think it looks sufficient for a movie franchise as big as Bond?" Yes, is the short version.
 * Points 1 and 2. See WP:OSE: just because something is or is not done elsewhere on WP, it does not mean it has to be slavishly copied on all articles. Having the information is useful to readers, which is why it was added in the first place.
 * "unquestionably"? As your "tidying" has been questioned, I'm not sure that's right. Some of the actors have profit participation, some don't: having it in the chart makes it clear, without the need to readers to dodge back and forth to the notes section
 * That's just not right (find me the policy or guideline that says we have to do this). Figures in tables (and IBs) are normally shortened
 * You need to actually read pages you link to, rather than make things up: the page says nothing of the sort. It says they are "commonly used", not that they have to.
 * In future, when your edit is reverted, please don't just edit war because you don't like something: go straight to the talk page to discuss things. - SchroCat (talk) 13:07, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * The gatekeeping going on on these pages is ridiculous. Unfortunately there only seems to be 3 self-declared moderators who all have the same mindset, making discussion rather difficult. Either way, the box office table needs a rethink. I thought my suggestions were a good step forward, but apparently not. Having the directors and actors AREN'T useful, because people look at the box office table for....box office statistics. The director and actors assigned to each movie can be found elsewhere on these pages, and there is zero reason for it being in the box office table too. I also agree with Oknazevad that the 2005 figures are unnecessary too and need a re-think. It was 14 years ago, and there's been 4 movies since then. TheMysteriousEditor (talk) 14:09, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * There is nothing “ridiculous” going on, and in future, comment on the content, not other contributors. The fact that several editors have disagreed with your suggestions should be indicative that those suggestions were not improvements. Just because one editor doesn’t like a long-standing version does not mean it has to be changed when they demand it. As to the box office numbers, if anyone can find an uber-reliable source that takes into account all the various factors of international historical conversion, along with the different factors regarding inflation on cinema prices over the same period, they are welcome to use these updated figures. - SchroCat (talk) 14:24, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Several editors? As far as I can see, it's only you... TheMysteriousEditor (talk) 17:48, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * You have tried to change this table a few times, and if it really was 'only me', then I'd have got no-where. Your proposed changes have been turned down by several editors on each occasion. - SchroCat (talk) 17:54, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

Just to weigh in here and this is just my personal opinion, due to the longevity of the Bond franchise and the different eras being represented by the actor who played the character of James Bond, said actor should be noted on the chart. It gives the reader a better understanding of the popularity and profitability of the franchise during each actor's tenure in the role. SonOfThornhill (talk) 16:42, 27 December 2018 (UTC)


 * I am receptive to some of the proposals but there are good reasons why things are done a certain way. I am just going to address each of the points raised and take them in turn:
 * N/A – TheMysteriousEditor seems to be correct on this point. I am not sure anybody objects to this edit, it's just getting caught up with everything else. Maybe we could convert the cells and just take this aspect out of the dispute?
 * Directors – I could honestly live with removing this column. The Bond franchise is not auteur driven, its primary identity comes from the producers and the lead actor. The directors are comprehensively covered at James Bond in film.
 * Inflation to current day levels – It is permissable to do this per WP:CALC, and this is currently done at List of highest-grossing films using the World Bank CPI. However I will point out that I don't actually believe it is necessary at this article, or even helpful. The purpose of adjusting the amounts is to provide a level playing field. It doesn't matter whether 2005, 2017 or even 1962 levels are used, because whichever index you use it serves its primary goal i.e. a measure for gauging comparative success across different eras. Personally I think the 2005 index is the best choice because it comes straight from the book so it keeps the original research to a minimum i.e. most of the figures match the source and we only have to provide adjustment for two films (incidentally the source was published in 2010 and just used a 2005 index). If we use the World Bank data to update to the 2017 figures then effectively the table becomes high maintenance and you have data for 20+ films which needs to be kept up to date on an annual basis. I favor retaining the 2005 index for simplicity, although it's not a huge deal for me. Betty Logan (talk) 18:04, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I normally dislike commenting in the middle of another comment, but this one point is like to make is that the inflation template does default to the current year, so would not need annual updating, as the template handles it automatically. Subsequently, if we use the 2005 figures from the boo source and just set them into the template with the start year as 2005 and leave off the output year, they'll automatically display the most recent figure without any further changes by us. oknazevad (talk) 18:09, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Actor – I would retain the column. SchroCat is entirely correct to point out that there is no obligation to deploy editorial choices at other articles on this article. For a start the "box-office table" is more than just a box-office table. It tabulates all the known financial data to provide a basis for comparison. One of the main criteria for comparison is the James Bond actor. It is often pointed out that Daniel Craig is the "most successful" Bond and Dalton the "worst performing", so the actor column is essential for that kind of analysis. This is unnecessary for something like the MCU or Indiana Jones because you only have one Iron Man, one Indy etc. If you look at something like Star Trek (film series) the tables there reflect each Enterprise "crew" to provide a similar basis for comparison. Ultimately the editorial decisions taken at this article reflect what we want this article to say.
 * Number format – While it is common for film financials to include the whole figure, this is not actually possible for the James Bond films prior to Dalton. Box Office Mojo only has full data for James Bond prior to Brosnan for Licence to Kill and Moonraker, so most of the data comes from the books which generally rounds to $1 million or $100,000 e.g. $59.5 million. If we had full data we would include it. However, the information available to some extent dictates how we present it. It is simply not possible to present full box-office data for the earlier films, and it would be poor form for the level of precision to change halfway through the table. If readers want the exact box-office total for Skyfall they can get it at the relevant article; the function of this table is to provide comparative analysis so the financial data should have the same level of precision, should be in the same format etc. If we started "blowing up" the numbers (i.e. writing 59.5 as 59,500,000) personally I think that would make the table even more unwieldy and bloated.
 * The main point here is that the Bond franchise is pretty unique so there are several unique ways of looking at it. Wikipedia is a collaborative project, not a conformist one, so while it is a good idea to establish good practices across all our articles (which we have a MOS for) we don't have to do everything exactly the same way. Betty Logan (talk) 18:04, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * So removing the directors and sorting the "n/a" has been decided for a start then? If that's ok with people? Let's get that out of the way to make the discussion more concise then I guess. Also the footnoting issue and brackets and extra info within that table need reviewing in my opinion. I tried making the "excluding profit participation" repletion into footnotes, but I genuinely don't know what "excluding profit participation" even means, so the average reader probably doesn't know either. Additionally, for You Only Live Twice, it has "+ 25% net merchandise royalty" on the salary section. What does that even mean? Same goes for the random percentages next to the salary for The Man with the Golden Gun and The Spy Who Loved Me. This is why I believe sufficient footnotes should be a necessity here. TheMysteriousEditor (talk) 20:49, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * FFS... No Mysterious Editor, you don't make changes until everyone has had a say, and particularly when there is still disagreement. I opened this thread less than 12 hours ago: what on earth is your rush? There are possibly people who have good arguments either way who won't have accessed WP yet, so put the brakes on and STOP trying to force the pace and the issue. STATUS QUO is still something you have to adhere to.
 * For what it is worth I am ambivalent about the n/a template, although the point I first made (that it is not a compulsory step, just something that people like doing) still holds true.
 * For the directors, I disagree, particularly for the early Bonds, where there was some longevity in the directors, and styles between the directors changed markedly (OHMSS is monumentally different to Diamonds are Forever, and that is so much less to do with the actors than it is to do with the different approaches taken by Hunt the purist and Hamilton who picked up on the laughs. Perhaps if the section were to be re-named to take the focus off the budget, it would stop the obsession of those trying to strip out any piece of information. - SchroCat (talk) 22:07, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * @Mysterious Editor – I advocated only adding back the "N/A" template, not pushing through all the other edits on the back of it. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the article so giving the discussion some time to formulate a consensus isn't going to hurt.
 * @SchroCat – I agree that there are stylistic differences between the earlier films (up to John Glen really) that are worth noting, but does that need to be highlighted in a table that solely exists for monetary comparison? The box-office table and the critical reception table are currently inconsistent in that regard. I have always been a minimalist when it comes to tables though, and I appreciate not everyone takes that view. Betty Logan (talk) 23:09, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
 * As far as including the Directors, while I don't think it is as essential as including the actors; SC does make a valid point that the styles of the early Directors are very different. The Terrence Young films are different than the Guy Hamilton films which are different than the Lewis Gilbert films. Thus, it might be a good idea to include them. SonOfThornhill (talk) 16:13, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not following with the point about them being "different". What's that got to do with a table that shows box office stats? I can buy the points about why the actors should be included (because of the salary), but not the directors. TheMysteriousEditor (talk) 20:58, 28 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Because the style of the director affected the style of the film which impacted the box office of the films. SonOfThornhill (talk) 15:44, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Really clutching at straws here.... TheMysteriousEditor (talk) 20:14, 29 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Please don't dismiss other people's comments like that. It was,the same point I made a little further above. The fact is that there arestylistic and other differences between the films and these are sometimes reflected in the money taken at the box office. You may disagree, but if you want to dismiss it, use logic, facts, stats and comments from outside sources to do it. If you can't find such facts, perhaps you ought to re-think your position? - SchroCat (talk) 20:23, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

Box Office Notes
What does "excluding profit participation" even mean? I feel like all the notes and info in brackets in the box office table need sorting out and explained properly in a proper notes/references section below the table. Or at least a key should be created- thanks. TheMysteriousEditor (talk) 20:02, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Reception Table Edit Warring 30 November 2019
This is utterly ridiculous. I'm opening this new thread to separate the warring from the actual discussion about the table. A reception table has existed on this article for many many years. One editor suddenly decides to delete it completely, so I add it back. Then they continue deleting and suddenly I'm the one who's edit warring and being threatened with being reported? What on earth is going on here? TheMysteriousEditor (talk) 14:16, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Overview Table
My recent addition of the below table keeps being reverted for reasons which have little justification. The table matches the overview tables shown on franchises such as X-Men, Harry Potter, MCU, The Fast and the Furious and many more. Why should Bond be the exception?

Apparently there's a "superior" (which is entirely subjective) table on a totally different article. What's the relevance of that? People come to a "List of James Bond films" page to look for a list of James Bond films (and not necessarily to scroll through loads of info - hence why overview tables are always at the top of an article). A table like the one I made below shows a condensed list of films, release dates and directors and is far more simplified and easier to understand than the messy box office table at the bottom (which doesn't even show release dates). This page looks very much 2010 Wikipedia. We need to make it a part of 2018 Wikipedia.

Hopefully people could give their thoughts and feedback and the table can be implemented. Thanks. TheMysteriousEditor (talk) 13:36, 25 June 2018 (UTC)


 * The Mysterious editor has twice now attempted to add what I consider a completely redundnant table. Aside from the fact it utilises problematic row spans, the table replicates much of the data already present in the two existing tables. It is also completely redundant next to the table at James Bond in film. Now, to be fair I can actually see same some value in importing the crew table into this article and housing all the Bond tables at this article. The other more extreme option would be to merge the two articles. Either way, we don't need two tables essentially covering the same data at two different articles. Betty Logan (talk) 13:36, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
 * The Mysterious editor has twice now attempted to add what I consider a completely redundnant table. Aside from the fact it utilises problematic row spans, the table replicates much of the data already present in the two existing tables. It is also completely redundant next to the table at James Bond in film. Now, to be fair I can actually see same some value in importing the crew table into this article and housing all the Bond tables at this article. The other more extreme option would be to merge the two articles. Either way, we don't need two tables essentially covering the same data at two different articles. Betty Logan (talk) 13:36, 25 June 2018 (UTC)


 * WP:OSE on what is on other pages is no basis to argue for changes. Having a table at the top (as per this version) is horrible and, to my eye, shocking poor practice. Tables need to be integrated into articles by introduction with text: they should not replace the need for all text, and you have to help the readers, but bludgeon them round the head with information but no context.
 * The formatting of this version is hideous: it's too easy to get lost trying to scan across a line to see who was involved in each film - and even worse on a mobile where the column and rowspans make it near impossible to read properly, with readers having to scan up and down and back and forth to try and get the information. Trying to claim it is "part of 2018 Wikipedia" is wrong: we are trying to make access to content for screen readers and smaller screens more beneficial, not less beneficial - let alone such a claim being entirely subjective.
 * I'm not convinced about adding one or two parts of the core crew to this table (why them, and not other, equally important individuals), and if we try and have them ALL in a table, it would just be too unwieldy. If we merge the two articles we'll end up with a long and unmanageable mush with no focus, with a series of tables dotted throughout. It will become less useful and unreadable because of that. - SchroCat (talk) 15:01, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
 * "Horrible" and "hideous". How very polite and diplomatic. Anyhow, a merge of the various articles about Bond films is needed. A major overhaul is necessary. At the moment it's like 3 different pages which are very confusing and involve masses of duplication and poorly formatted tables. I guess I'll leave it down to you guys - since all I was doing was introducing a format that is popular on literally every single other major film franchise table. TheMysteriousEditor (talk) 15:48, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Merging would be a poor idea. If I recall correctly this article was formed by splitting out content from James Bond in film. WP:SIZERULE advises that articles over 100kb in size should ideally be split (James Bond in film is 150kb and this one is 80k). It is ironic that your argument for duplicating a table from another article is that there is too much duplication across the three articles. When you have multiple articles covering a topic duplication is always a concern, and we should endeavor to keep it to a minimum (which incidentally is why I reverted you in the first place). The reason we have three articles is because the guidelines encourage articles to be a sensible size, so we have to find natural divisions within the topic. Also, we have discussed this before: the tables here are not "poorly formatted". You may not like them but to my knowledge they are all compliant with our obligation to accommodate screenreaders, which rowspans can cause problems for. If you have a problem with the design we can discuss that, but the goal is to impart pertinent information, not to achieve conformity with articles about a completely different topic. Betty Logan (talk) 16:34, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree. Bond is different from the examples given above as it's a series of 25 films over 50+ years, not 7 or 8. The MCU series is the closest in length, but that breaks the list of films into phases of 6 or 7 films, in which the main character changes. It would be counter-productive to try and break the Bond list into main actor (the only break I think would be logical), as the remaining cast and crew were much more long-running than the other examples given. – SchroCat (talk) 06:23, 26 June 2018 (UTC)
 * I think the table should include the artists performing the intro music. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.18.168.74 (talk) 07:56, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Why should you be against a table? On Wikipedia there is currently no 007 page which has a complete overview of James Bond Films. Lobo151 (talk) 18:00, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
 * It depends on what you call a "complete overview". There is no table anywhere in the world that claims to be a "complete overview": it would just be too massive. Instead we have fairly full tables here and on the Production article. - SchroCat (talk) 18:09, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Bond grosses
The financial data across the films is generally inconsistent, often varying by several million in some cases, even for the recent films. Anyway, several years ago I constructed a table to cross-reference the box-office data which I am shifting to this talk page so it can be referred back to, to help editors understand why the table uses different sources for different figures. The table in the article uses a system of corroboration (i.e. if one source is anomalous we use the corroborated figure) based on the table below. I hope this clears up any confusion. Betty Logan (talk)


 * The figures for this particular franchise are evidently inconsistent, however The Numbers has consistent figures for every single film. Would it therefore be best to use numbers from one single reliable source rather than various different sources? TheMysteriousEditor (talk) 20:52, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
 * No. You can't pick and choose one source just because you want to: there is nothing to mark that as more or less accurate than any of the others. - SchroCat (talk) 21:25, 21 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I really don't get this bizarre attitude. All I asked was a simple question. All films on wikipedia predominantly use Box Office Mojo or The Numbers, so why does Bond have to be special? The Numbers source is the only source that has a figure for every single film. It's reliable. TheMysteriousEditor (talk) 14:05, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
 * There is nothing bizarre about this, and there is no attitude. We cannot just pick one figure. You say "It's reliable", but so are all the others. The only reason Bond is different (not "special") is that because the series has been going on so long, many of the sources used for returns on the modern films did not exist for the earlier part of the series. If the sources say different things, we have to reflect the differences that they do. - SchroCat (talk) 14:09, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Ending the edit war
Ok. Now this is stupid. I mistakes were made a few days ago by me and sochrocat. We both agreed to disagree in a sense. This issue has not turned into a full on Editting War, and I want to put a stop to it. I do not care if there is other Editting issues over an edit (Adter the issue me and Sochrocat had.). Let us all agree to disagree. If the Editting war continues, Imwill get the Wikipedia administration team involved to end it. Let us be mature to agree to disagree. If you have a comment over a SINGLE edit, then we can calmly talk about it. But let us not be reverting and unreverting edits without first discussing them. That is what started this whole mess, and let us be calm about it in the future. Elijahandskip (talk) 14:46, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I entirely agree. Adding a large slab of uncited material to a Featured List without proper discussion is discourteous to the main editors and to the reviewers who have judged the page to be of FL quality.  Tim riley  talk   16:13, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
 * It is certainly getting out of hand. I was in agreement to some of the changes to the box-office table and I had no objections to separating the awards and reception. Some of the redundancy may be tackled by re-arranging the page per SchroCat's suggestion above. I will give a more comprehensive breakdown of my thoughts in due course. Betty Logan (talk) 20:37, 22 November 2019 (UTC)
 * A large additional table where the sorting doesn't work and that has no references, which is a BLP violation. Hopefully the proposed compromise above should overcome at least some of the problems. - SchroCat (talk) 21:39, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Per a request at WP:RFPP, I have fully protected this article for a week. Protection can be removed by any admin once consensus has been reached, or at least the participants agree to let it be while discussion continues. Hint: pointing out that the other side is edit warring is not an exemption from the edit warring policy. Johnuniq (talk) 02:34, 23 November 2019 (UTC)
 * As per the discussion above, I believe concessions have been made and some sort of agreement has been come to now. TheMysteriousEditor (talk) 11:54, 23 November 2019 (UTC)