Talk:The White Shadow (TV series)

Show title
Okay, what am I missing here? Is the show called "The White Shadow" or "The Black Shadow"? The article and all of the references say "white" but the title of the wiki article is "The Black Shadow." I don't get it. Andrewdoane 20:57, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

The show is called The White Shadow. I know caused I'd watched it back in the 1970s. For some unknown reason someone changed it to The Black Shadow. Could an editor change it back to the correct title? Leoni2 22:11, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

It's changed back. Problem solved. Thanks, whoever fixed it. Andrewdoane 15:50, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Possible copyvio?
See. I think the tone of the article makes it likely that the tv.com page is the original source, but I can't find a way to date that page and prove it. --61.214.155.14 03:04, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

rm copyvio
Tone an obvious copyvio. Probably from originally. Removing the following content:

When a professional athlete busts his knee, there are a few vocational routes to take. There's sports commentary, the autobiography business, personal appearances at used car lot grand openings, and the lecture circuit—all careers that A.E. Housman may have been thinking of when he wrote his poem "To An Athlete Dying Young." But more than all of those other post-athletic activities, there's coaching, shaping young talent with the wisdom accrued in years of experience.

Fictional Chicago Bulls forward Ken Reeves was talked into the latter career by his old friend and teammate Jim Willis, and that was the premise behind TV's White Shadow. Jim was a principal at Los Angeles' Carver High School, located in an inner-city, working-class neighborhood. Although Reeves was new to the world of clipboards and de facto paternal responsibilities, coaching soon appeared to be his true calling.

The White Shadow was created by TV producer (and big basketball fan) Bruce Paltrow, later of St. Elsewhere and father of Gwenyth Paltrow. It was about the sport, of course, but it was also about a growing up in a tough neighborhood at a tough time. The kids on the team had to face drugs, gangs, race hostility, learning disabilities, financial hardship, and more—so it wasn't all towel rattail fights in the locker room. Whatever the dilemma, Coach Reeves figured into the solution, be it through good advice or hands-on intervention. His players trusted him, which was significant given the general mistrust they had for people older than them.

In the 1979-80 season, one of Reeves' players, Curtis Jackson, was shot while standing in a liquor store that was being held up. That was also the year that a large number of players "graduated" from high school and moved on, and a new batch of actors came in to take their place. In its third season, the show lightened up—there were more laughs and decidedly more singing in the shower, which some would argue the Carver players did as well as they played hoops.

On the court or off, the young men on the Carver High basketball team were a funny and eclectic group, and their coach, their "white shadow," was always there to assist.

Raggaga 19:30, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Air dates?
A user known as AarHan3 keeps changing the last air date of the show from March 16 to August 12. He also adds the comment "for 54 episodes" after the last air date. I'm starting to get mad at this user, will someone just make him stop?! Gabrielkat 11:21, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Looking for help writing an article about the spin-offs and crossovers of this series
I am writing an article about all of the series which are in the same shared reality as this one through spin-offs and crossovers. I could use a little help expanding the article since it is currently extremely dense and a bit jumbled with some sentence structures being extremely repetitive. I would like to be able to put this article into article space soon. Any and all help in writing the article would be appreciated, even a comment or two on the talk page would help. Please give it a read through, also please do not comment here since I do not have all of the series on my watch list. - LA @ 17:53, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Early newspaper article(s) about the show.
from 1978: http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=GbssAAAAIBAJ&sjid=LxMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4520,6374742&dq=white-shadow&hl=en

I tend to think some of this would be good as far as adding contemporaneous sources. FriendlyRiverOtter (talk) 18:08, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Season 0???
Where did you hear about those episodes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.133.161.125 (talk) 01:36, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Requested move 27 July 2015

 * The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was moved. The oppose voters made a good point, but so did DrKiernan (I note SMALLDETAILS, but also that its application is very inconsistent across various titles). The fact that this article is already at a base title may prejudice that, however. Let's all remain open to having this reversed after a few months if the TV series still shows signs of primacy. --BDD (talk) 15:36, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

The White Shadow → The White Shadow (TV series) – Not more primary than The White Shadow (film) or any other topics without "The". Also, not precise enough. Must redirect to "White Shadow" disambiguation page. George Ho (talk) 05:35, 27 July 2015 (UTC) --Relisted. Alakzi (talk) 19:59, 10 August 2015 (UTC) --Relisted. sovereign°sentinel (contribs) 16:11, 29 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Support per nom In ictu oculi (talk) 03:40, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Support (but I generally prefer more disambig. than less, so...). Also, the time when this was the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC has long since passed. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 06:28, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Support the current title should point to the White Shadow disambiguation page -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 07:44, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Support per nomination. Fortdj33 (talk) 02:37, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Page views reveal that a wide margin of users are seeking the TV series (14,407) over the film (1723). Even factoring things that don't use "The", which we shouldn't do per WP:SMALLDETAILS, there's nothing else that comes close to the TV show: White Shadow (film): 9725; White Shadow (band): 36; and 730 for White Shadow (the dab page).--Cúchullain t/ c 21:11, 3 August 2015 (UTC)
 * These page view statistics are distortive and misleading: of course the TV series' current location "The White Shadow" is going to have far more page views, because even users looking for other meanings of the phrase are going to be draw to the TV series first when they type in "The White Shadow", since users are going to type in the phrase without a disambiguation clause. —Lowellian (reply) 11:42, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
 * As said below, the numbers are such that even if every reader looking for the other (potentially) ambiguous articles got there by coming to The White Shadow first, the latter would still win out by thousands of views. Only 700 hits on the dab page suggests not a large number of readers are getting confused by the setup.--Cúchullain t/ c  04:59, 16 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose. Comprehensive primary topic, as shown by Cuchullain's stats. Also none of the other topics have a serious long-term significance claim over the TV show. Jenks24 (talk) 13:36, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Support. The White Shadow should point to the DAB at White Shadow. It's a credible search term for any of the six items there. Andrewa (talk) 22:39, 5 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Eight times more likely to be viewed is "Not more primary"?  If you disagree with community consensus about primary topics, then just say so.  Don't pretend the motivation here is lack of a primary topic.  There clearly is one.  As to other uses without "The"... meh.  WP:SMALLDETAILS.  That's what hatnotes are for...  --В²C ☎ 20:24, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose per the page view statistics. 14,000 vs 1,700 is more than enough to make this the primary topic. kennethaw88 • talk 22:28, 10 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Support. Speaking of which, I now have a random desire to watch Turbo. Steel1943  (talk) 21:13, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Support. No clear primary topic, and the page view statistics cited above to oppose this move are distortive and misleading: of course the TV series' current location "The White Shadow" is going to have far more page views, because even users looking for other meanings of the phrase are going to be draw to the TV series first when they type in "The White Shadow", since users are going to type in the phrase without a disambiguation clause. —Lowellian (reply) 11:40, 15 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Even if all page views for the film also come from viewing this page first, there are still 12,000 more just at this page. It's not even a close comparison between the two pages. kennethaw88 • talk 01:13, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The vast majority arrive on WP after searching in Google, not in our search box. And Google provides enough info for them to select the correct link the first time, so only a tiny fraction searching for any other use are going to get to the TV series first because it is at the name. --В²C ☎ 01:22, 18 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Support. No primary topic.  Page views stats showing very small numbers supports this. Redirect this title to White Shadow (dismabiguation page).  Per WP:THE, the "The" can not to be expected to important in Wikipedia titling, the nuances can't be expected to be understood by readers, and "the" is a useless search term.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:49, 23 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose I couldn't in good conscience close this as "Support" when the arguments seem flawed, despite the raw number of supports. None of the supports have explained why an 8× number of views for the TV show over any of the other "The White Shadows" justifies it not being the primary topic. Lots of people say "not primary" without convincingly rebutting the statistics. Also if "valid search term" were an acceptable argument, we'd never have primary topics. For lack of convincing arguments to change, stick with status quo.—Bagumba (talk) 08:30, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Support. The oppose votes are based on article stats demonstrating primary topic, but the Tanzanian film gets 9,725 views as opposed to 14,407 for the TV series, which is not a convincing margin for things so similarly titled. DrKiernan (talk) 18:54, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The TV series is The White Shadow, while the film you referred to is at White Shadow (film).  WP:SMALLDETAILS says to treat the title with The  as a disambiguator, and not to lump it with the generic White Shadow.  For example, the policy recommends treating Red meat and Red Meat, which only differ by the capitalization of its m, as separate topics. It follows that The should be treated distinctly here as well. Thanks.—Bagumba (talk) 19:38, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * What's important is not the fine details of policy as written, but whether readers looking for one article misrecognize another due to ambiguity. Due to WP:THE (which is good), readers are prone to not understanding whether "The" is of any significance.  Wikipedia drops or includes them with reason, but not immediately obvious reason.  Further, thee gramatical articles are well known to be absolutely useless in most searches, and so readers are not clued into them.  The presence or absence of a grammatical article is actually far less meaningful than an unexpected diacritic.  In any case, you have misrepresented the fine details of policy as written.  WP:SMALLDETAILS does not in fact say to treat The  as a disambiguator, but is silent on articles.  Grammatical articles are not spelling variations or non-standard capitalization.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:40, 8 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I am not following you. WP:THE says to include a leading The "[i]f the definite or indefinite article would be capitalized in running text", and clearly lists the example The Old Man and the Sea as an acceptable article title. Likewise, being a TV show, The White Shadow also has the capitalized.—Bagumba (talk) 02:52, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * That's correct. But The Old Man and the Sea would be ambiguous Old Man and the Sea (if they were different) because for readers, the presence of absence of a leading grammatical article is a matter of complexity/subtlety.  A leading article is effectively meaningless.  "The White Shadow" is readable as "White Shadow" and vice versa.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:18, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I guess we'll agree to disagree here. Since WP:SMALLDETAILS was specifically written with disambiguation in mind, it makes sense to me to follow it and avoid another click for most readers that want to find the more popular The White Shadow that is a TV series.  I see nothing specific in WP:THE that says to drop the when there are ambiguous cases.—Bagumba (talk) 08:08, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I'll also admit that I don't feel terribly strongly about this. It's not as if the status quo is a problem. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:56, 9 September 2015 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.