Template talk:Episode list/Archive 1

Initial Template Discussions
This is a direct copy of Template:Digimon episode. I hope to have this turned into a generalized template for ALL episodes. Likely this will include a HUGE list of variables in the template which will account for any specifics for episode lists. Anyway, I hope to make a few adjustments to this template sometime soon so we can begin using it for any episode list. Contributions are welcome and encouraged. --Will2k 03:11, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Depending on how many variables and if we can group some together it might be easier to make a few templates. No real example comes to mind currently, but I can image that those variables could get rather complex.. -- Ned Scott 07:19, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I was thinking about just making some optional fields like just "Variable1", "Variable2", "Variable3" which can be used for whatever is appropriate for the episode (eg. Stardates, Japanese title, etc.). The syntax of the template looks complicated to me so I'm not entirely sure how to add this on. By the way, thanks for joining the project. I'm trying to put some wheels under this thing again and would gladly welcome some help. --Will2k 05:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Test entry
Here's some ideas I've thrown together, the parameters are:

Example:

Works great so far. Also note that I fixed some of the extra space found in the originals (List of South Park episodes) o.O -- Ned Scott 07:29, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Generic variables
Here's an initial list of items I think can be applied to all episode lists: Am I missing any?--Will2k 05:51, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
 * # (as in chronologically - which number is it)
 * Directed by
 * Episode Number (as in according to the show's convention - which number is it)
 * Original airdate
 * Screenshot
 * Summary
 * Title (or name?)
 * Written by

I kinda like the list as proposed above. I think that adding more info to it is just gonna clutter it up (esp. directed/written by). For most lists this info isn't really important. You might as well look it up in another directory (which probably will provide more relevant information), by using the info of the list. Or in case the show has TV episode articles, in the article itself. I'm still pondering about the airdate issues. I mean we can't go adding airdates for all english speaking coutries of course. Personally i think definetly "original airdate" (in coutry of original broadcast) should be there. However how to go from there, i'm not really sure. Aditionally I'm thinking we might link to tv.com entries for eps or something simpler. I'm just a little afraid because I don't want ppl getting into an argument over "which review site is better/should be used". - The DJ 19:10, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The second airdate would only be listed once, for example, only the first time the episode aired in English, not every time it aired in an English speaking country. -- Ned Scott 19:21, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Looking at this template, i just realise that even though a summery is optional, an image is not. I propose the following layout, which would allow this, in it's most expanded and shortest mode. - The DJ 21:11, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The only problem with this, and with all optional feilds, is that if one entry displays an image, and the second does not, the table will look like this:

This is also my current dilemma for the "Aux" and "AltDate" fields as well. I've been reading the Help:Advanced templates help pages to see what options there are. But yeah, if I can figure something out then image will also be an optional field. -- Ned Scott 22:05, 14 May 2006 (UTC)


 * hmmm, good point :D. The easiest for Image is to simply add UseImage, i have seen that in several other templates. However for Aux, etc it becomes more difficult of course. - The DJ 23:05, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Can we just make a default image for unspecified screenshots: for example [[Image:Television Icon.gif | 50px]]. I don't think it should be the concern of this template if a field is different from the other ones in the same list. It should be up to the one building the list to ensure that all the right fields are filled in with a ? or some other kind of filler until all the right data is entered (ala Comparison of web browsers). Maybe we can build a corresponding template which says something to the effect of "Some fields in this list are incomplete. You can help complete the list by filling in the missing data."--Will2k 22:17, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * mm, i don't like the picture idea much either. I propose a (or whatever it's called) in which case you would insert the "tabular" markup, in case  truly is empty, then we remove the column. Same procedure can be used for the other optional rows.
 * a third idea is to introduce a "layout" paramater which we can #switch in order to provide the right layout (simple|complex) and a columns option to provide extra columns (1 ==extra date, 2 == aux1, 4 == aux2) values can be added up to provide multiple extra columns. so 7 gives you all three additional columns. - The DJ 14:49, 16 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking forget the simple vs. complex. It should be assumed that, as a wiki, we put the complex version in for all episode lists and they will eventually get filled. The template could use a default ? for all unspecified values.--Will2k 22:24, 21 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I really feel that images should be optional. I mean lets be serious, we are talking about 6000 TV shows and counting. Who's gonna make screenshots of all that stuff ? Hell some tv episodes don't even EXIST anymore physically. I feel stronger about this then about an optional "ShortSummary" field. - The DJ 22:28, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. How about this: no image parameter==image column gone&&episode number=1 row, blank image parameter==exactly two rows for a default image && episode number=2 rows, image parameter provided==exactly two rows for the specified image && episode number=2 rows. Also, I do not believe Short summary should be optional. If the episode actually exists, someone should be able to provide a summary for the episode.--Will2k 04:39, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes i think this is a proper construct. Do you know how to do that? It goes just a tad beyond my Advanced Template knowledge. - TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:12, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I found how to do it - TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 13:33, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I think our best bet is not to make a single template, but rather lets look at why we have the template. The template's most useful not necessarily for existing lists as much as it is for helping build new lists.  Being able to lable the fields instead of having the user guess or count the row spaces, or perhaps not understanding what one column represents. I think we could make a couple of basic templates with variables and such, and then allow other users to request assistance in any further customization (basically, making the template for them if they don't know how to do it, or providing a guideline for others to make a similar "easy data entry" template. Template substitution (although I don't think we'd need to subst our these templates) brings up some good reasons not to have a unified template for a large number of articles, such as them being targets for vandalism.  In any case, the goal is to make it easier, and maybe for us as well.  I don't think a mass of templates should be made, rather when a "custom" situation comes up we could easily also adapt that template with similar custom requests. Also, I notice that a lot of these pages also include DVD and video release lists, we could also provide templates for these as well. -- Ned Scott 19:13, 24 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Am I correct in concluding that my "optional image column"-system allowing for optional images while still being able to retain the column in case a single entry in a list does not have an image See this is no longer in place ?
 * If you have a list with images, and one episode does not have an image, it will have a blank cell-space for the image, and things will still line up correctly. -- Ned Scott 06:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
 * But it is no longer possible to completly remove the column, as with my change I think. You can see it in action here: User:TheDJ/Sandbox - TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 07:19, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Correct, but I have been playing with an alternative template that uses all the same variables and pretty much works the same, but has no image column and the episode number is on the left hand side. Template:No image episode list. Since it uses the same variables, one can easily switch between the two without having to re-write all the information, just the name of the template. -- Ned Scott 07:45, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The idea being that one would use the Episode list template to encourage eventual screenshots, and the No image episode list template for lists that want to display just the text info. -- Ned Scott 07:48, 9 June 2006 (UTC)


 * I think TheDJ's was right on the episode number row span thing.
 * {| class="wikitable" style="width:50%;"

! # !! width="200"|Title !! Original airdate !! width="50"|Production code


 * }
 * Shouldn't the episode number span to the begining of the short summary row? His TheDJ/Sandbox does exactly that... also I'm working on The Colbert Report LOE and quite frankly it's close to impossible to screencap every episode. --Samic 05:49, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Can we get a couple more auxiliary fields added? Or better yet, can we get "writer" and "director" added as standard (but possibly optional) fields, leaving "Aux" for truly auxiliary, series-specific information? I'm thinking of "mytharc" episodes for The X-Files, character flashbacks for Lost, or celebrity cameos for The Simpsons -- Soren.harward 15:36, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Towards a working version
I have done some editing and cleaned things up a bit. I have managed to get the entire first season of South Park working with this template. It can be found in my sandbox here. I can't figure out why the South Park table doesn't have all the lines there. Anyone? --Will2k 01:57, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I think I got it working completely now. Check my Sandbox. - TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 14:19, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Works for me. I'm comfortable making this live. --Will2k 18:20, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Oh and we should update the example at the top as well--Will2k 18:22, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

template name change
I know we still have some lose ends to tie up on the template and such, but I was thinking that maybe we should change the name of the template to Template:Episode list or something like that. -- Ned Scott 21:40, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
 * sounds fair to me.--Will2k 15:33, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

episode number
I moved the episode number to be listed at the other end of the listing, as it's done in some of the featured lists. I think I can add a thing to make it so one can select either side, but I figured this should be the default. -- Ned Scott 13:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I moved it to the left because I liked it better there. It feels more like an ordered list. I am not passionate about this though--Will2k 18:17, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * In addition to making which side the episode number will be on optional, I'm also playing around with a second template with no image and optional airdate, so only episode number and title are required. This template would have the episode fixed at the left. The idea being that this could be an alternative template (like a starter template, or just for use with very little info episode lists), with all the variables the same so if one wants to "upgrade" to this template they could do so by just replacing the top part of the template text. -- Ned Scott 01:35, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Now that I think about it, even though I haven't seen it done this way, it would probably make more sence to have the number on the left and the image then put on the right... hmm, just a thought. -- Ned Scott 13:59, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think image on the right would look right.--Will2k 14:53, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Colour
I don't believe english colour codes are working (eg. white instead of FFFFFF). Can someone confirm or deny?--Will2k 18:24, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * For some reason putting # in one of the template's if statements causes it to freak out, so I made it so the # is outside of the problem area. But the side effect is when it tries "white" it does "#white", so it works with hex but not english. I'll see if there's a way around this, there probably is and I'm just not seeing it. -- Ned Scott 23:48, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Can't we just test for the existance of #. If it's there, assume hex, else English.--Will2k 04:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
 * That's what I'm having problems with. Putting # inside any of those #if functions seems to break it, etc. -- Ned Scott 04:03, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Row Colors

 * It would be nice if we could also set the primary and secondary row colors so we don't have to be stuck with drab grey. If there already is an easy way to do this feel free to smack me upside the head and point me in the right direction. --Argash 06:16, 10 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, the "inspiration" for this was from lists such as The Simpsons (season 2), and it was intended to make color choice an option, but I must have gotten side tracked.. I'll throw something together as a test in a bit, since right now my mind is mush and can't seem to think of whatever it was I was supposed to do just now... or .. something.. But yeah, it's a good idea and hopefully whatever optional parameter it will become won't be too confusing or whatever. -- Ned Scott 06:23, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

ImageSize
I noticed that List of Stargate SG-1 episodes used a format of 150px for their images, so I made an ImageSize parameter. Still defaults to 125px when none is defined. -- Ned Scott 09:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't work very well at all
Although a good idea in itself, I find this template unnecessary. The table markup was actually simpler and easier to read! By trying to standardise, you've introduced a hundred variables to account for the fact that episode lists aren't standardised. You should start a discussion for a Wikipedia policy on standards for episode lists, and then cut down the variables. Alternatively, this template can be used on some episode lists but not all.

However, even on the pages it is being used, it is quite a nightmare. It seems to introduce empty rows and ugly lines, disrupts the column headers, breaks apart the whole style of the article. This kind of template-ification is just not needed and is actually a step in a worse direction. The table markup was clean, simple and short.

With List of Stargate SG-1 episodes in mind, I would not like to use this template. Furthermore, I think that WikiProject Television really needs to look into making this template work better, or otherwise scrapping it and just generating a non-template-ified policy for episode list standards. --  Alfakim  --  talk   14:32, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * You seem to be confused. Also, what web browser are you using?  This template was made by WikiProject Television's Daughter project, WikiProject List of Television Episodes.  Our WikiProject already is the discussions about standardizing episode lists.  List of South Park episodes was one of the lists to follow the project's suggestions. Aside from the division line, the template applied to the Stargate list was identical to it's previous version.  No other articles are having any problems with this template. Could you take a screen shot for us of how it looks on your computer?  Although, I don't see how it could be any different on your computer, since it should be generating almost the same HTML code when the article renders.


 * The template's own complexity was put in place since so it would be compatible with in-progress lists. I'm not sure what your understanding is of Wikipedia's templates, but it's actually fairly simple compared to many other infoboxes, character boxes, and other templates used on Wikipedia. And how complex the template is doesn't really matter, all that code is not injected into the article, rather, when you visit a page on wikipedia, the templates then render the parameters that are used, and the same HTML code is generated.


 * Like I said before, the best part of the template is helping with new and in-progress lists. It has been well received at over 20 articles via it's "Japanese" version at Template:Japanese episode list (see Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Japanese episode list). Within days of the template being applied, it has encouraged editors to upload tons of screen caps and write episode summaries.


 * The template looks fine, works great, but I understand if you don't wish to use it for a list that's already generated or doesn't plan on making any changes. But I don't understand your experience with it. Breaks table headers? Introduces empty rows? I really want to know more about this. -- Ned Scott 15:22, 13 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Any issues with the template or formatting style of any episode list including Stargate SG-1 need to be taken up here. . Be sure to check out the Wikiproject to ensure your questions haven't been covered already.
 * Also, the claim that

|- is easier to read than is utter nonsense to me. Any problems with header widths are usually the fault of an improperly formatted table header. If it looks funny to you, as suggested, post a screenshot and point out the issues. The template is purposely flexible enough to account for nearly any issues. --Will2k 20:11, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * rowspan="2"| [[Image:Children of the Gods 1.jpg|150px]] || Children of the Gods (Part 1) || July 27, 1997 || 101A
 * colspan="6"| The Stargate programme is brought back into action when the alien Apophis attacks Earth through the gate. He is of the same race as the dead Ra. Jack O'Neill, with new recruit Samantha Carter, are sent to locate Daniel Jackson.
 * colspan="6"| The Stargate programme is brought back into action when the alien Apophis attacks Earth through the gate. He is of the same race as the dead Ra. Jack O'Neill, with new recruit Samantha Carter, are sent to locate Daniel Jackson.
 * While I agree the objections to the template are.. well, silly, our WikiProject isn't to enforce how people generate the table. Rather, the template is just a tool. -- Ned Scott 05:41, 14 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Well said. It should be used for new lists, not arbitrarily applied to ones that are already perfectly ok. I am a bit of a self-proclaimed master of templates as it happens. I didn't mean this one was complicated relatively, nevertheless the code isn't readable straight off. I was aware of all your points above. I'll condense my own too. When this template was used, column-widths changed unexpectedly, and column headers misaligned and broke. I am using IE7 so that may be the reason.--  Alfakim  --  talk   03:25, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
 * That sounds like more of an issue of the table headers not being formatted correctly, and / or the fact that some of the parameters are optional and change the number of columns in reach row depending on if the parameter is defined or not. I've been trying to find ways to better handle the whole optional parameter / column thing, so hopefully something will work out better for this in the near future. -- Ned Scott 03:57, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Image
For template calls without an image, the template should default to this image: Image:No_Screenshot.svg. Nothing else is neutral enough for fair use, without being obtrusive. Having a default image helps to keep cells the right size, and stops the table from looking plain shoddy and incomplete. --  Alfakim  --  talk   14:45, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Nothing else is neutral enough for fair use? What? Also, the table header can be used to keep the cells the right size.. Having a default image is no problem, we experimented with it before. But I don't think it's necessary. The template is attempting to be flexible, if one wishes to use that image as "default" then they can simply use that image when the parameter calls for an image. -- Ned Scott 15:26, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Kk. I'm just going for consistency here. It would be a little nasty to have multiple "no screenshot" images all around wikipedia. Please mention this image at your wikiproject to be used as a standard one for empty cells (if at all). what i meant about fair use was that some lists are in the habit of using a title picture to fill space, which isnt fair use. --  Alfakim  --  talk   03:27, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Template usage feedback
I used the template to make the List of Dirty Jobs episodes and found a few issues with the template: On an unrelated note, might I suggest using a fake episode instead of a Southpark episode for the Example? While I'm sure it's a funny episode, the episode title might distract from your goal of widescale usage. -- Gogo Dodo 09:07, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The WikiTable example in the Using the template doesn't work for the no image template.
 * ProdCode doesn't appear to be "optional" as if the ProdCode isn't known, EpisodeNumber is used in the Production Code column.
 * Updated the talk page to more clearly show how you need to adapt the wikitable header. - TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 11:15, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Doh! I just remembered that I meant to make it so that EpisodeNumber is optional if ProdCode is used, and vise versa. -- Ned Scott 03:58, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you for fixing the WikiTable example. Having an example of the WikiTable header for use with the no image template would be a good idea, too. If you have one, I'll probably flip the List of Dirty Jobs episodes over to the no image template. I can't do screen shots and screen shots wouldn't quite do Dirty Jobs justice. -- Gogo Dodo 05:45, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Line Color not working in IE
While this template was being used for List of Xiaolin Showdown episodes, we figured out that the LineColor parameter does not yield any effects in Internet Explorer. Is there any way to ameliorate this? Ryulong 00:33, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I believe it's an error in how IE renders HTML tables all together. I recall hearing that the line separator didn't render a while back, but I would have thought MS would have fixed such an issue by now.. I'm a Mac user and MS stopped updating IE for Mac, so I don't have any real way to test things right now, but I'll see what I can find out. -- Ned Scott 01:14, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Empty Cells
This doens't seem to work with empty cells. I'm trying to make a page for Third Watch here but I don't want to have to fill in every single entry at one time. How do I fix this? Is seems like this is worse than a simple table with rowspan ="2" and colspan="5" although I agree the || || || || isn't as nice. For example If that's the only way to have empty cells then we should switch. I must be missing something. - Peregrinefisher 04:51, 12 August 2006 (UTC)


 * For the short term the only thing I could think up of was to just put something in there to trigger the cell, like a blank space via . The optional cell thing has been bothering me, and there should be a better way to handle it, but I'm not really sure how yet. I'll post on some talk pages, maybe leave a message at the village pump, and see if anyone has any good suggestions. -- Ned Scott 05:25, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Page anchors
While on the topic of improving the template, I keep forgetting to note the page anchors via "id" thing that Farix and I were playing around with a few nights ago. I can't remember the proper terminology for it, but I think it's "page anchor". Like the Table of Contents, it would allow us to jump to a specific point in an article, such as a specific episode on a list. For example List of The X-Files episodes. Right now it's set up to use either the EpisodeNumber or ProdCode parameters as the last value, (ep or pc)(number). Here's a copy of the discussion Farix and I were having:


 * {| style="background-color: #F2F2F2;"

Basically I figured one would use one or the other, but not both. I've seen lists where the ep number resets for each season, so I figured another alternative might be good for those lists. But yeah, there's probably a better way of doing that.. Any ideas? -- Ned Scott 22:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Including the season number may be a way to go about it, but that means adding an extra field to the templates. But perhaps the best way would be to use the episode title instead. --TheFarix (Talk) 22:42, 8 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, after switching List of Ōban Star-Racers episodes to the Episode list template, I realized that won't work either because episode articles are linked to the title. Hmmm, maybe having the episode link and the episode title as separate fields, like what is done with some of the cite templates, may work. That will free up the episode name to be used as an ID. --TheFarix (Talk) 01:42, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


 * While the titles are more likely to not over-lap, using the numbers makes for a smaller URL/wikilink. It might be easier to just suggest a standard numbering method for the EpisodeNumber parameter. I'm just pleased to see that the basic concept of it works, so it'd probably be a good idea to work out the finer details on WT:LOE. -- Ned Scott 02:35, 9 August 2006 (UTC)


 * }

So that's basically where we're at. Suggestions? Comments? -- Ned Scott 05:42, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

New template code being tested
'''New template code being tested. See WT:LOE''' -- Ned Scott 09:48, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Problem
Curly braces are showing up in the color bar, at least on my monitor. - Peregrinefisher 01:24, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
 * oops, fixed. -- Ned Scott 03:55, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Color bar
How can I change yhe color of the color bar? Can I do it once per table or does it have to be done for each row? - Peregrinefisher 04:06, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * For the bottom line color, value in hex web colors without pound sign (#)
 * For the "title" row, value in hex web colors without pound sign (#)
 * for each episode row. I haven't figured out a way to make it so that you can set a value once and just use that, yet. -- Ned Scott 04:57, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Is there a way to put the color bar below the title bar, above the first entry? - Peregrinefisher 05:12, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I probably should have had it do that by default, but I don't want to change it now without knowing how it might effect some articles. I've just been putting in the extra line manually by putting it in right after the table headers. For example:

{|class="wikitable plainrowheaders" ! Screenshot !! Title !! Original air date !! E# {{Episode list
 * colspan="3" bgcolor="#FFA040" |
 * colspan="3" bgcolor="#FFA040" |


 * Make colspan however number of Columns you have (add up title, episode number, prod, etc) and the bgcolor= whatever value you used for LineColor. -- Ned Scott 05:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Is there a way to make the thickness match the others? I'm still not familiar with some of these formatting commands.Andyross 14:58, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
 * There's no option to change the thickness, but I'm guessing you're talking about the very first color bar that is below the table headers. The very first line is "manually" coded on the page itself, and is left over from when we changed how the line was drawn. This edit should make them all uniform. -- Ned Scott 03:22, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

More Aux fields?
What should I do if I want to include more than 2 fields that don't have a special parameter? I want to include the episodes number overall and within a season. Writer and Director are allready taking up Aux1 and Aux2. I could use prod num or alternate date, but that doesn't seem right. - Peregrinefisher 22:27, 3 September 2006 (UTC)


 * There's actually  I Just forgot to add it to the instructions :D -- Ned Scott 00:51, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

References in the table header
What's the best way to put references in table header? Say for tv.com and production code. I did this, but it doesn't look right. - Peregrinefisher 23:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Limit?
I've been standardising the list of Yu-Gi-Oh! episodes and there's something that I can't really seem to work out. It's at my Work Area. It can only go up to 210 boxes and then it goes screwy. I've tried removing some and it only goes up to 210 boxes. Maybe you could take a look, I'm not good at this coding stuff. (please don't point me to Template:Japanese episode list, I've worked on this for 6 hours and I just found out about that template, and I don't want to do it all over again. Template:nihongo works better for me.) - Zero1328 Talk? 09:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)


 * That's strange as hell, I've never seen it do that before. I'll see what I can find out, if this is a limit to the templates or to the tables (probably a limit on the template, from the looks of it.) -- Ned Scott 10:56, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
 * Have you been able to work anything out? I can't really think of any way to overcome this. digimon episode doesn't seem to have any problems, maybe there's a difference somewhere. - Zero1328 Talk? 08:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)


 * This is very strange, I seemed to have fixed it, but I don't really understand why what I did fixed it. I basically took out the and self-translcuding example of Template:Episode list and... that seemed to fix the problem. -- Ned Scott 08:11, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
 * That is definitely very wierd. Well, thanks for "fixing" the problem, I guess. - Zero1328 Talk? 08:52, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
 * It didn't seem to fix the problem when I put it in the actual article. I have a little theory, maybe the size of the template code is too long and you "fixed" it by reducing the size. digimon episode is much smaller. That's all I can think of. - Zero1328 Talk? 01:28, 17 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry it's taken my so long to respond. Yeah, it does seem that the size of the template code might be the problem. I have some ideas to make the template more efficient, and that should hopefully push the limit back further. Or a special split template could be made for really high use TV shows. -- Ned Scott 07:03, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

 See also: 

Matching code?
If I want to create a matching table, how would I go about doing that? I really love the layout of this table and while I get most of the wiki table code, I see two problems. First is the separator line between each episode entry, then the photo and caption. I'm sure I can figure out the rest, but could someone give me a code hint on how to accomplish those two things?

I worked on an episode list for Rome which is located here. I suggested it on the talk page, but someone rightly pointed out that if we implement it, then the other tables in the Rome article should match.

I'm willing to work on those tables, but I'm having trouble finding a way to put in that separator line (without text) and the photo thing. Any help is much appreciated. MagnoliaSouth | Talk 04:50, 17 September 2006 (UTC)


 * I think I have it! I'll share the code here for those who might have the same problem I have had.




 * It will look like this:


 * The only thing I changed was cells A and E. I added an extra box below A to add a caption, but if anyone prefers to follow the format exactly, then it would be like this...




 * and will look like this (note that 'E/e' is missing):


 * I've no idea if this will help anyone, but thought I'd share it in any case. MagnoliaSouth | Talk 08:27, 17 September 2006 (UTC)


 * You seem to have the basic idea down. List of Excel Saga media is also a good example of what you are trying to do, in that it uses an episode list template and then matches the style manually with the other tables on that page. -- Ned Scott 08:50, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Line color
The colored seperator line isn't showing up in my IE. Is there anything we can do? Ned? - Peregrinefisher 08:49, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I can confirm this issue for IE7. The template was built before IE7 really came out. We need to review this issue.--Will2k 17:35, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I knew I forgot to do something.. There is an alternative that will show up in IE, but I didn't include it right away because it looked really ugly with some lighter colors. I'll throw up some examples in a bit here, so you can see what I mean. It'll probably be fine, just some lists should change the color they use on some of the lines. -- Ned Scott 08:34, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Broken column span
Check out List of South Park episodes. There are some extra columns without data showing up there.... Is this the result of a recent template change?--GunnarRene 16:52, 17 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not seeing it in Safari (web browser) or the Mac version of Mozilla Firefox. What browser are you using? -- Ned Scott 17:13, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Image Size
Is there a way of entering the image size just at the top, instead of entering it for each episode imageGman124 21:18, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No there is not. You can leave the option empty, and then it will default to 125px --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 00:26, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * As DJ said, there currently is not a way, but I would love to find one. This would also help out for those who choose to use custom colors for the line dividers and cell shading. -- Ned Scott 02:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * ThanksGman124 05:41, 6 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Maybe we should make a template for the table header part of the LOE? Is there any way a header can control these types of things? - Peregrine Fisher 06:09, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Not without an overall template, I'm afraid. Maybe A bug could be filled for a Magic wordthat would allow a given variable to beset fro severables templates on a page à la  ? I somehow doubt it's workable, though.Circeus 22:00, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Limits part 2
 See also: 

I'm having the same problem right now on List of One Piece episodes. I'm trying to add episode 297, but it goes all screwy, like Zero said. Also, Template:One Piece general at the bottom of the page hasn't been working for a while either, and I think it's related. The Splendiferous Gegiford 18:35, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

There appears to be the same problem in List of ER episodes, the template doesn't work correctly for the last episodes. This is not caused by the large number of transclusions, but by the article size: if your shorten some of the episode descriptions (and look at the preview) the problem goes away; if you insert some text somewhere, it happens earlier in the list. -- memset 16:25, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
 * it seems we really need to revisit this issue. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 17:14, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * We just started making the entries by hand on List of One Piece episodes after the point where the template doesn't work. If we can fix the template that would be best, but it's a workaround that works pretty well. - Peregrine Fisher 18:48, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, but that still kinda sucks of course. We should get a wikimedia coder to explain exactly what's going on here. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 19:12, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * We could ask at Help talk:Table. I should say that everytime someone from there helps me with something difficult, its User:EncMstr.  He seems to know a lot about tables. - Peregrine Fisher 19:16, 10 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I asked at Wikipedia:Requested templates. -- memset 21:28, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Everyone's having the same problem because of Template limits. If you view the source for one of the impacted pages (e.g. List of One Piece episodes), you'll see this: Pre-expand include size: 2042426 bytes Post-expand include size: 474690 bytes Template argument size: 593060 bytes Maximum: 2048000 bytes Every time a template is used, regardless of whether or not all or some of the parameters being used, it stacks up and creates a large pre-expand include size. Once that pre-expand include size hits the maximum (currently 2048000 bytes), template transclusion begins to fail. The same problem was seen in Template:Length conversion when someone tried to combine every type of length conversion into a giant template using #switch's. One patch/temporary fix is to move all documentation to a separate page, doing what is called Template doc page pattern. That can help alleviate some of the issue. With this template, it's using something I've never seen and don't understand: ParaCheck123. If that is truly necessary, then one option is shortening it to PC123. Any time a template is transcluded hundreds of times, there's exponential growth with something that seemingly simple. If ParaCheck123 isn't necessary, removing it would free up a lot of pre-expand size, and the problem would probably be fixed. Cheers. --MZMcBride 01:04, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, so we need to seriously cut down on the bytes in the template itself. That definetly can be done. For instance i'm pretty sure: + can also be written as +. It won't be as readable, but it'll work. We can also save a ton of whitespace, and indeed move the doc to somewhere else. Request to temporarily make this page semi protected in order to do some serious weeding. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 02:54, 14 March 2007 (UTC)


 * If the template is updated, it should be done in one try, so there should probably be a temporary template page first. This template is transcluded thousands of times, and it's going to quickly cause a large spike in the job queue once the template is changed. Three ways to make it smaller are: remove whitespace, use { {/doc}}, and change "ParaCheck123" to "PC". Cheers. --MZMcBride 03:23, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, Template:!! is used just once in this template, but that requires listing it at the bottom of every edit page that uses this template. That should be switched from to || in order to stop that from happening. Or use a line break and it will only require one | . --MZMcBride 03:27, 14 March 2007 (UTC)


 * It's related to the over-all article size? Ah, this whole time I thought it was because the template had too many variables, but I guess that bit of info changes things. The "paracheck" however, is required or else all lists of episodes will display all possible columns, with or without them being listed in the article itself. This allows editors to keep optional table cells open without having to place a dash or something for that variable. -- Ned Scott 04:41, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, just thought of something we could cut out easily. TopColor, I've never seen it used (no one will miss it) and it can be safely cut. Not much, but it's something for now. Please replace template page contents with this. -- Ned Scott 04:49, 14 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Can "ParaCheck123" be shortened to "PC"? Doing so would free up 200000 bytes on a page with 200 episodes. Also per my comments above, this template should be updated as few times as possible and it should implement other byte-reducing measures when it is updated. Cheers. --MZMcBride 05:01, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I put my proposed code here. --MZMcBride 05:07, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I wanted to use something that would not likely be used in the template itself. It could be anything, really, just something uncommon. I guess some zany unicode character could work. -- Ned Scott 05:13, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * new and improved, ParaCheck123 is now replaced with "ʁ". There is also this second version which excludes centering the text in some columns, a minor formatting change, but gets rid a bunch of "align="center"" -- Ned Scott 05:22, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

We should make a test version of a "standard" page however to test if everything still works. But these chagnes will surely help --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 05:40, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * also, I forgot to do the /doc thing (thanks DJ), which is now shown at User:Ned Scott/sandbox. -- Ned Scott 05:53, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The spaces in lines like  should be removed as well. See my sandbox for the code. --MZMcBride 05:57, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * this idea I had a while back would save a lot of data and solve the color bar problem in IE. Makes it look funny for articles that use a light color value, but that's a minor problem. I'll try to work this into my current sandbox copy. -- Ned Scott 06:13, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Test of "average" (sort of) extreme episode list: User:Ned Scott/sandbox2, using User:Ned Scott/sandbox. -- Ned Scott 06:37, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

This not only uses less data, but the line colors there will now work in Internet Explorer. -- Ned Scott 07:06, 14 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The template in the sandbox seems to be a vast improvement. The current Template:Episode list stops at about 252 transclusions, while the newer User:Ned Scott/sandbox "template" stops at about 456 transclusions. Great work everyone! Now it just needs to be implemented.... --MZMcBride 23:25, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

If anyone's interested, I got the code down to exactly 2000 characters (coincidence!) here, and the results for sundry formats are here. The character count could be brought lower if a couple dozen spaces here and there were removed. My version uses wikitext tables, and not tr/td/th stuff. If the latter were implemented it could probably go well under 1000 characters. Of course, no need in being so efficient if makes the code unreadable. Grace notes T § 03:59, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Without the "ParaCheck" (changed to "ʁ" in my sandbox version) then the template will break on most, if not all, of the articles that currently use it. It's used as a way to switch between images and no images formats, as well as triggering table columns without having to force a space or dash for that parameter in the article (some articles don't use Aux1 or Aux2, some only use Aux1, etc). -- Ned Scott 04:06, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Then I am quite surprised why every item in User:Gracenotes/Sandbox works. Is it a coincidence, that I picked examples from articles for which my version will not break? Grace notes T  § 04:27, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * If all parts are filled out then it's not a problem. The idea is that if a list is in-progress then table columns will still open up and maintain proper formatting. -- Ned Scott 04:36, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * See my example on User:Ned Scott/sandbox4. Also, there are three different formats (almost forgot about the 3rd) the template can make. One is screenshot and summary, two is summary only, and three is no image or summary (basic list, one line per episode, and no color line). -- Ned Scott 04:38, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, that works, although it might be best just to have separate templates (eg, Episode list, Episode list image). By the way, using "ʁ" isn't that bad of an idea, besides the fact that it takes up two bytes, while another character make take up only one. Grace notes T  § 04:46, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, we did have a separate no images template originally, but I did not know about the added limits merging the two would have made at the time. Splitting them shouldn't be too hard, as a bot could be used to update only the articles that need to be. A bit more than just looking at whatlinkshere, since that won't tell you if it's image or no image, but still shouldn't be hard for a bot. -- Ned Scott 05:05, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
 * My version works, of course -- it just has a bug different set of features. Well, all that matters is that the size is down, and that all articles for which the new version will break are fixed beforehand. Grace notes T  § 20:15, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and then there's also Template:Japanese episode list. At the time I was fiddling around with the templates, I wanted to do something to make them more attractive for their adoption. I edit a lot of anime articles, and I knew that naming the parameters specifically (although only a few) can often be of a big help. This template also adds an additional title element for the Japanese character set. Other than that, it is the same as this template. -- Ned Scott 05:05, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I think we're ready
Just as about as stripped down as we can without breaking any articles, this version of my sandbox page is ready to replace the contents of this template. I have tested the sandbox template at User:Ned Scott/sandbox2, User:Ned Scott/sandbox4, and tested a few randomly picked articles (see this history for March 14th for different articles being tested with the sandbox template). All tests worked without any problems, except that some articles will need to change from using lighter colors in their color bars to look better. (This is something pretty much inevitable, since it's also the only way to fix the linecolor for Internet Explorer.) All we need now is an admin to copy this into the template. -- Ned Scott 05:57, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Granted there is still room for improvement, but further work will likely take a bit longer and might require updating many of the articles that transclude the template. -- Ned Scott 05:58, 15 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Dag nabit, I came across an error that is in this version when I was changing Template:Japanese episode list to have the same updates. In a list that uses no images and uses both EpisodeNumber and EpisodeNumber2, EpisodeNumber2 breaks. Looking more into this.. -- Ned Scott 02:54, 16 March 2007 (UTC)


 * See this example (assuming when you click this the template has not been fixed). -- Ned Scott 02:59, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't happen with ep1 and ep2 being both used when images are being used, so it has something to do when the template is triggered to flip the numbers from the right side (image format) to the left side (no image format). So far I haven't figured it out yet. -- Ned Scott 09:21, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
 * *smacks forehead* I had a | when I should have had a . It's fixed now, but I might test it a bit more before making making the edit request again. -- Ned Scott 09:57, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

updated template is ready to go. -- Ned Scott 09:34, 17 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Please revert today's edits, the updated version looks very silly in firefox, also very screwy in IE6. Matthew 11:38, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Explain silly? Are you talking about the color bars? -- Ned Scott 11:49, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * There was borders, now there isn't, I do not see any discussion to remove them from this highly used template, also screws up in IE6, as stated, silly. Matthew
 * If you want us to revert code that was discussed and tested then you'll have to give a little more information. There's no reason the borders should not be displaying in Firefox. and "screws up" IE? Explain. -- Ned Scott


 * Ned you're not sysop so you cannot revert. There was no discussion to implement these changes, just you leaving a few messages (PS: Do not remove my request, a sysop will accept or deny it). Matthew
 * There's nothing wrong at all. The border might be thinner, but that's because this is the first time the hight has had to be defined. Before this change IE didn't show the color line at all because IE doesn't handle tables correctly. -- Ned Scott 12:09, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Can you show me a consensus to implement these borky changes? If not I see no reason why they should be kept at present, clearly a better way without messing the table needs to be found, it's quite apparent they should not look like that. Matthew 12:12, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * That's not how things work here, Matthew. We needed to cut down on the template's size, and correctly rendering a color line with proper code was one of the ways we did it. If for some wild ass reason we go back to the old line code that's one thing, but we sure as hell are not going to do a complete revert. It's slightly thinner in Firefox, and still needs some tweaking in IE to get it to work, if that is even possible. Again, IE never correctly rendered the lines in the first place. -- Ned Scott 12:18, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * That's because IE is a piece of junk, and yes that is exactly the way things work Ned, you get consensus to implement disputed edits. Matthew 12:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * And the changes were discussed on this very talk page... Don't tell me your browser can't even show you that much. -- Ned Scott 12:20, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Show me the discussion stating lines should be frakked with? Matthew 12:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Discussion is only needed if one can reasonably foresee a dispute. Even now.. I'm at a loss of words why you feel this is a dispute. What we know is this, the lines are about 2 pix shorter and IE still doesn't work. We can make the lines thicker, that's not a problem, but we cannot revert back to a version that completely breaks on high usage lists. -- Ned Scott 12:29, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * There was nothing broken about it before, it should either show or it shouldn't which was perfectly fine before, trying to make it show properly in all browsers is more then likely not possible. Matthew 12:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The old way used a lot of code (considering our limit problem), which is a very good reason to use the new way. Firefox and Safari display it completely fine, and most sane people stay away from IE (IE screws up a lot of things...). -- Ned Scott 12:40, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I use Firefox 2.0, it's not showing properly for me (example #2), the border has gone and the colouring shade has vanished, which causes the design to no longer blend, it may seem a minor change but it's quite large to me as you're altering the designs of multiple LOEs, which will now probably require colour updates.. Matthew 12:45, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, we already knew that there would be some required color adjustments, but like I said, it's more important that the code be smaller. This should only be a problem with lighter colors anyways. It seems a minor change fixes it for IE now, see how User:Ned Scott/sandbox5 looks. The only thing different now is that the line is thinner and there is no border around it (again, an issue with light colors only). -- Ned Scott 12:54, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Could we not get the devs. to increase the size or have they said "no"? Matthew
 * (Yay for ever-growing indents!) Increasing the size may fix the problem, but that doesn't make the code more simpler or efficient. Doing that will probably also increase page load time. - Zero1328 Talk? 13:43, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Update for IE
I hate to request another edit so fast, when we were trying to keep the edit count for the template low, but this edit will fix the IE problem. -- Ned Scott 13:11, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought we previously decided that !! could be replaced with an alternative. Using it only once seems goofy, and it requires that the template is listed every time Episode list is. --MZMcBride 17:14, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * When I tried to replace some with manual HTML table code it got screwy. I'll throw some examples up on my sandbox if I have time before work. -- Ned Scott 19:26, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * User:Ned Scott/sandbox4. This uses User:Ned Scott/sandbox3. -- Ned Scott 19:38, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I don't see why || can't be used... can you explain ? --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 19:55, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm a bit confused at this question. !! does the same thing as !!. -- Ned Scott 23:41, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes it does. Which was the whole point. why include another template a million times if we can just use the one. It's easier for the wikipedia servers to just have to include one of them. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 00:00, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Captions
The image captions aren't working for me right now. It may have something to do with the recent changes, I don't know. - Peregrine Fisher 18:56, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I had taken out ImageCaption and TopColor because they didn't seem to be used very much and were "less vital", but I guess they could be added back in.. -- Ned Scott 19:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I would like to have the caption part, I feel it helps meet FU requirements. It allows the image to be discussed specifically without messing up the formatting.  It's true other people don't use it much, but I've included it with the 1000+ images I've inserted into LOEs.  TopColor I don't really care about, since you can simulate it with the table header, I believe. - Peregrine Fisher 19:52, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Can you point us at some articles that use this option btw? might be handy. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 19:53, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm using it now in List of Man vs. Wild episodes. There's lots more at User:Peregrine Fisher/Contributions. - Peregrine Fisher 20:17, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

editprotected Ok, ImageCaption back in, IE fix, and come further code optimization (by User:MZMcBride): replace template with this. -- Ned Scott 00:04, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * ✅ Cbrown1023 talk 02:07, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much. -- Ned Scott 06:55, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Centering the date
Not centering the date doesn't look right. It's probably the same with some other fields that I don't use. - Peregrine Fisher 04:26, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree. The date should be centered. I don't think this change was even brought up in the recent change discussion. Would like to see it added back. :: ZJH (T C E) 22:01, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Again, this was something taken out to help the template's limitation problem. It was a low priority option and helped to remove a good amount of code. I’ve got some ideas on how we could add it back without increasing size, but it would likely involve renaming parameters and having to update all lists via bot. -- Ned Scott 22:39, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Is there a zilla # for this limitation problem? :: ZJH (T C E) 19:05, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if there has been a request to increase the template limit size, but the developers were the ones who implemented it. It's a restriction that they placed on the articles to avoid server load and page-usage issues. For more information, see here. --MZMcBride 19:08, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Edit protected
Hi, please change:   to. This well centralise the date. Thanks. Matthew 22:42, 26 March 2007 (UTC)


 * There are several dates - do they all need to be centered? Is there a working example somewhere I can use to make sure the edit is effective? CMummert · talk 22:49, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure if the other date fields are used, I know the OriginalAirDate is used on basically all transclusions and thus is priority to fix. I've set up a sandbox, here, for you to view an example. Cheers, Matthew 22:54, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The original air date is centered when I look at that, in opera and in firefox. Is is not centered for you? CMummert · talk 22:57, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * That's because the version in my sandbox is a locally stored copy with the centre fix applied, for a non-central example see List of Jericho episodes (using this template). Matthew 23:02, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * editprotected done. CMummert · talk 23:05, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Much appreciated, thanks. Matthew 23:08, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Wow, thanks guys for completely ignoring the discussion right above this one, but whatever. I can understand adding it back in for OriginalAirDate, I guess, but remember that we are trying to make this template smaller because of the template limitation issue. -- Ned Scott 01:28, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry about that - the thought of template size didn't enter my mind; I was just handling what seemed to be a reasonable and easily revertable editprotected request. I'll remember to scan the talk page higher up in the future.
 * Can I suggest adding a large disclaimer to the template page warning editors that it runs into size issues? I look for such warnings before making edits, and wouldn't have made this one if I had been warned not to. CMummert · talk 02:05, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry if I was a bit harsh, it is pretty easy to miss these things. Although, in regards to the template's limitations, we only lost three transclusions when you compare my sandbox test before and after, so it really wasn't a big deal. -- Ned Scott 04:04, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * If anyone is wondering, the first link is using User:Ned Scott/sandbox, which contains the template contents from before, the second link is using the current version of the template. -- Ned Scott 05:31, 28 March 2007 (UTC)


 * According to Template limits, text inside a noinclude section is not counted against the preexpand size. If that is true, the best place to put a warning is inside a noinclude section in the template itself.  Am I reading the specs wrong? CMummert · talk 11:52, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Wrong, and so is the page in that case. I recently fixed a project from the Council that they use in creating their listings of WikiProjects. I simply moved all the documentation in the noinclude to a /doc subpage, and the template worked again. It might not be counted, but it sure seems to matter. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 13:01, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Page is correct. It says that templates in are not taken into account on the preexpand size, but actual raw text, still counts. Also by reading this page I learned that if you put the documentation on a subpage, and then edit the doc, this will only cause a queuejob for the actual inclusion, and not for all the template transclusions. Kinda logical I guess, but a nice trick. Should definetly be used on all high volume templates. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 13:08, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I was mentally adding the word "not" to the sentence in the docs. I'll rephrase it. CMummert · talk 14:13, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Sortable episode format
Sortable version in testing, see Talk:List of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya episodes. -- Ned Scott 19:20, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Uh. I don't like that, looks too much for me. Wouldn't it also add to the transclusion size? :-\? I personally believe it works better using the style already used at that LOE. Matthew 19:24, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I take it that it is not possible to keep the LOE looking the same and still be sortable? Also, there are ways to specify a sort key using  . - Peregrine Fisher 20:50, 31 March 2007 (UTC)


 * With more tweaking they'll look exactly the same except for the episode number cells will have to be the full length. The sortable version will also be it's own template, separate from this one, due to the style change. Basically, people can use it on lists where the value of being sortable outweighs the minor style change. -- Ned Scott 00:16, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

ShortSummary and colspan
I assume that the cell containing ShortSummary is to stretch the length of the columns it's under. Currently, there seems to be code to calculate the number of defined columns that aren't the image column, and use that for the colspan; couldn't you simply use colspan="0"? From the HTML 4.01 spec, section 11.2.6: "The value zero ("0") means that the cell spans all columns from the current column to the last column of the column group (COLGROUP) in which the cell is defined." —TangentCube, Dialogues 11:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Cool, I never knew this. That certainly should simplify the code. We'll experiment with it. Thx for the tip. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 12:18, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately: "None of Opera 9.02, Firefox 2.0, IE7 and Safari 2.0.4 implement colspan="0" as specified in HTML 4.01. Trident, Presto and WebKit at least agree on what to do with it: they treat it like colspan="1".I suggest that only positive integers be conforming and that non-conforming values be treated as 1." --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 12:47, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Point taken. Sometimes I forget there are other browsers out there.  I find the bit about Firefox odd though, as it did display correctly under both Firefox 1.5(.0.11) and 2.0(.0.1) in the test example I made. —TangentCube, Dialogues 21:18, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll try to do some more diggin on this. I have a feeling that possibly only the "colgroup" part of this spec. isn't correctly implemented by the browsers. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 22:47, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Image field removed
After the extended discussion yesterday at Administrators' noticeboard/List of Family Guy episodes, where it was determined that episode list pages should not routinely contain nonfree images for each episode, I've removed the relevant field from this template (again). Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:59, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I trust you tested your edit, like the banners on both the talk/doc/template pages instruct ? --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 23:31, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Seems to be ok, though i didn't test all paramater configurations yet. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 23:37, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I still consider this to be an admin decision against concensus of the community. But, I realized a while ago that Wikipedia is not Free nor free-content, just Wikipedia. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 23:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

It might help others to know that an image marker will be added that will allow downstream users (such as Wikia) to place images in the correct place, while maintaining an exact copy of the list as on Wikipedia. I know it's not much, but at least somewhere the effort of selecting those screen shots won't be wasted. -- Ned Scott 00:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Do you have some links to the actual development of this? I'm interested from the technical perspective --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 00:44, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Interesting idea - although I'm far from certain if these images would even be legal in another environment. To my mind, this is not just an issue of our free content ideals, but actually one where anybody would be on very shaky grounds in real-life fair use terms. But of course that will then be somebody else's problem. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:40, 3 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Right now I'm just trying to make contact with a community on Wikia to see if an existing Wikia is an option. If that fails, then we'd form a proposal for a new Wikia. If it turns out that Wikia won't be able to host the mirror at all then it's off to find anther site with MediaWiki software that might be able to host. As for how this would technically be done, giving it more thought it should be possible even without an "image marker" on our (Wikipedia) side. The template on the mirror side would display an image file with the title of " .png ", or something like that, which would eliminate the requirement of having to put in the file name. -- Ned Scott 20:09, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, and it would be updated by bot or by making live data requests to Wikipedia, but filtered with the forked template. To change the text a user would have to update on Wikipedia and have the changes roll down the line. -- Ned Scott 20:12, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

This change breaks a lot of pages and it was made without consensus. That isn't right. --MZMcBride 00:37, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Matthew 00:38, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry if I should have broken anything - but I think I didn't. The pages are just displaying an empty column now. I first tried to eliminate that too in a clean way, but it would conflict with the coding of the table headers on the pages. The pages now need to be edited individually to remove that column. Fut.Perf. ☼ 05:40, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * An empty column would be 'broken'. The full line to be removed should be : || rowspan="2" width="" valign="middle" style="border-bottom:3px solid #;" |}}
 * Essentially, that should be the line for that particular column. Once it's gone, the column should vanish from the pages, saving us fugly pages for 510 pages that are pointing to it. That said, we have to edit the table header for all the pages to remove the call to the images column. I agree this was a well intended idea, but we're making more problems than it's worth, trying to 'fix' it. -- Ipstenu ( talk | contribs ) 15:02, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Man, I bet this'll lead to a lot of image deletions, how many bots are going to try and do this? Sorry, just trying to lighten up the mood. :) — May the Edit be with you, always. (T-borg)  (drop me a line) 09:26, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * You could always create episode pages to de-orphan the images. Matthew 09:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * You do realize that sometimes, the list of episodes exists to avoid episode articles? Talk about a no-win situation! Circeus 14:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Indeed. I've created good strong LOEs with the purpose of not ever needing to create episode pages... without the screen captures the LOE seems less useful and (in my opinion) has degraded. Matthew 14:50, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Removing this parameter is going to cause chaos. Just because not all LOE can use the images, there are still some where fair-use still applies. Now, any LOE that fair-use images can be used on can't use the parameter and can't use the template for their list and instead have to code it manually. Now, all the LOE that use the image have blank cells in their article. --Malevious Userpage •Talk Page• Contributions 01:42, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Originally I envisioned screen shots being contained within the same cell as short summary, and people can certainly do that now if they are using the template where Non-free content's exceptions can apply. It's no longer going to be common enough to warrant a whole parameter for it. -- Ned Scott 01:45, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Space
Well, with the removal of the images I believe this may bring some benefits... for example: we could now re-centre columns that need to be central, right? Matthew 14:28, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Deletion of Image Field is causing problems
ONLY if you don't have Image in your template. I was trying to swap a page to the template, and I left out the image tag cause ... well, we don't need it anymore. But when I left '|Image=No Screenshot.svg' out, the layout broke. See below. Look at the 'title' field.

Sorry about the difficulties. But isn't that just a mismatch between the header fields and the body? The template seems to assume the serial number goes to the left. Why don't you just say:

Fut.Perf. ☼ 17:46, 4 May 2007 (UTC)


 * No, it's not. If it was, it wouldn't be solved by adding |Image=No Screenshot.svg back in. Watch this... if I put ' |Image=No Screenshot.svg' into your altered set up I get this:


 * It should be totally skipping that field and it's not. -- Ipstenu ( talk | contribs ) 18:02, 4 May 2007 (UTC)


 * As far as I understand, the people who devised this template reckoned that if a table was to have any images at all, all lines would have the serial number on the right; if it had no images then the numbers would be on the left. I didn't touch that code. You simply need to manually adjust the order of fields in the header. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:08, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Right, so the change to remove images broke the conditional. :) The directions on this page need to be corrected. If we're going to leave this as-is, then the doc here needs to address 'if you remove the IMAGE field, you must change your header.  Frankly, it seems like more work to alter all the pages using this template than to fix the template. Then again, there are probably sites that are using the no-image correctly, and they're going to be hurt if we fix it. Ugh. No-win :P -- Ipstenu ( talk | contribs ) 18:19, 4 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, there are four cases:
 * Pages which up to now had images. They now have an empty column but no problem apart from that.
 * Pages which had images and now want to get rid of the extra column. They need to manually remove the "|image=" fields and change the headers.
 * Pages which never had images to begin with. There's no change for them and no need to do anything (but if we had changed the conditionals here, they would have been broken.)
 * Newly created pages like yours. They should just leave out the "|image=" field from the start and put the "#" column to the left in the header. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:29, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Once all pages have been adjusted, you can go and get rid of the whole conditional machinery here. Fut.Perf. ☼ 18:29, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

New template code
Once it's safe to completely remove the Image options in the template (when all the lists are updated correctly, etc) this should become the new table code. I've tested it at User:Ned Scott/sandbox4 and everything seems to work fine (minus those that still try to use a screen shot column). It also re-centers all the cells except for Title and ShortSummary, as it was before. -- Ned Scott 21:07, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Broken template
edit protected Someone needs to revert Ed's edits to the template, as they have broken the template on many pages. -- Ned Scott 18:23, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm unsure as to why he's changed the background colour? Matthew 18:32, 5 May 2007 (UTC)


 * and note this test: User:Ned Scott/sandbox7 -- Ned Scott 18:33, 5 May 2007 (UTC)


 * What's the point of protection and putting all those warning tags up, if someone is just going to go and ignore them and the talk page? I'm sorry, but this pisses me off. -- Ned Scott 19:09, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Just so everyone knows, reverting Eg's edits will not put images back in. There are some formatting triggers that are caused by the Image parameter, but that is all, and the image tags themselves have already been removed. Code for the template once reformatting is done is noted in the above talk section,. -- Ned Scott 19:23, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Should be all fixed, missed the #ifeq undefined variable hack, /sandbox7 test works including the episode numbering bug that was there before. Re-centered all fields per suggestion above, and removed hard coded (white) background. Wikitables already define the background colour in the stylesheet, which shouldn't be overridden without good reason. Also reformatted code for legibility. ed g2s &bull; talk 20:44, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * They're not central though (in fact airdate/ep. # have become de-central), :-\. Matthew 20:47, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Just saw that, typo. ed g2s &bull; talk 20:51, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah, okay :-). Matthew 20:55, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

still needs changes
LineColor needs to be  to default correctly if undefined, but still listed in the template on the list. -- Ned Scott 00:33, 6 May 2007 (UTC)


 * The template also needs to have &amp;nbsp; after it (as in &amp;nbsp; ) to force open the summary cell when not filled out. -- Ned Scott 05:32, 6 May 2007 (UTC)


 * This copy of my sandbox has both updates, removed the forced white background (noted above), and has removed spaces for the template limitation problem. It's been tested, etc etc. Just literally copy the entire contents of the sandbox from that link to this template and it will work. -- Ned Scott 05:41, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Ned does this fix this problem I see on the first example of this page (right under the table with the doc) ? See this image (Safari):

--TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 19:20, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Seems it was a problem with the example itself and not the template? It was a bit odd, adding an extra fixed it, but it shouldn't have actually needed it. All the articles using the template seem fine. -- Ned Scott 03:10, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Given the size of this template (~1k) do we really need to worry about the 2MB total template limit. A few extra linebreaks won't hurt... ed g2s • talk 09:56, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Perhaps less then before, but with series stretching for over 10 years, I think it still won't hurt. --TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) 12:43, 6 May 2007 (UTC)


 * is why we started doing it. But thinking about it now, I guess since we now have removed a lot of stuff for the images we can afford line breaks again. -- Ned Scott 03:01, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

possible reordering?
im new to this whole template thing but wondering but was checking to see if its possible to rearrange some of the categories... an example would be the List of Family Guy episodes family guy episode list. It was working fine before the images were removed, but after the columns have changed order. It would look a lot better if the total eps column was after the production code as opposed to after the season episode number... Is there any way to fix this now or does something have to been done to the template to get the desired effects? Grande13 17:54, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I actually believe it's more logical for episode number to be first. Addendum: Those productions code don't cite a source, I intend to remove them once the page is unprotected unless a verifiable source is given. Matthew 18:04, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually the production codes can be found at the end of every episode and on the copyright database. Current the current season episode numder is first, followed by the total series episode number, but that just looks awkward.  which is why it should go episode number, title, airdate, production code, then total ep number. Grande13 18:18, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I guess we have differing opinions. "Actually the production codes can be found at the end of every episode and on the copyright database", so cite it... don't just say, let us be fair here: I'm not a mind reader. Without a citation for all we know information could be false. Matthew 18:28, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Basically Im wondering if there is any way to get the category episodenumber2 to appear after prod.code as opposed to right after the first episode number... Grande13 03:52, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, an interesting situation. If a lot of lists are doing this same thing then it might be something to consider. It would look a lot better if listed after the prod code. I gotta think about this one.., I'm not really sure what the best thing would be to do. -- Ned Scott 04:05, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
 * yeah im not sure if its a simple coding fix that would allow the categories to be interchangable or if it is something that would require a more complex solution. All i know is that it looks a bit odd having two lists of numbers next to each other, and past templates or styles had the overall episode count as the last column and that seemed to work and look just fine Grande13 04:15, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Temporary hack
provides us with a list of pages using the Image parameter:
 * Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:Episode_list/withimages. ed g2s &bull; talk 01:00, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Nice! -- Ned Scott 03:05, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeesh, someone needs to go through here fixing them. A lot of them are messed up pretty badly. Apparently when you remove the images the number of columns is reduced by one and the ones that do remain are shuffled around, so it stops aligning with the table header. It's ugly. -- Cyde Weys 05:45, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Each page has to be not just edited, but carefully edited, as not everyone used the template exactly the same way. I'm picking them off one at a time, and it looks like we're under 500 pages needed editing. We should be able to 'fix' the ones with images in a couple days, or less, but basically we're going to have to look at every page calling this template and see what it's like. -- <b style="color:green;">Ipstenu</b> ( talk | contribs ) 19:58, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. No, seriously.  Done.  There are two false positives, because MartinBot rolled me back: List of Only Fools and Horses episodes and List of King of the Hill episodes. Everything else is talk and user pages.  We're good to go. I don't even wanna THINK about how many pages I edited. -- <b style="color:green;">Ipstenu</b> ( talk | contribs ) 21:09, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Whoa, you are a machine. Thank you very much for the clean up. -- Ned Scott 03:04, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

A bit of a freak case.
List of The Sarah Jane Adventures stories. The page itself uses episode list, but the series itself will consist of "five two-part stories". In that case, the stories would be in serial format and would need to be in italics: see also Black Orchid, The King's Demons, The Sontaran Experiment. Will (talk) 21:29, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Subparts of an episode
For a short that contains multiple shorts per show (see List of Pinky of the Brain episodes, which I am working on converting over to this template; other shows like Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures), is there a way to combine the subparts with this template such that, for a two sub-part episode, the "episode number" row-spans over 4 lines (1 line for 1st subpart title, date, etc, 2nd line for description, and then repeat for the second subpart). The way I started on the example page works if there's no other way around it, but I'm curious if there's any tricks I'm missing here. --Masem 18:25, 25 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Currently it's not an option, but it's been something I've been thinking about. There's a good number of shows set up like this, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to set up another template with that formatting. -- Ned Scott 05:05, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

This template needs revising
A season number column needs to be added to this template —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pascale989 (talk • contribs).

You should create one table using this template for each season (not one single table inclusive of all seasons), making the season number unnecessary. See List of South Park episodes for an example. --Masem 23:49, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Another option is using ProdCode or EpisodeNumber2 for the season number. -- Ned Scott 05:03, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Bullets in ShortSummary
Did not see this discussed elsewhere, so forgive me if I bring up a known issue.

List of Camp Lazlo episodes was using the template for only one season, but the other seasons were generic tables. So I went thru and updated everything to use the template and noticed that the tables break when you use a bullet (*) in the ShortSummary. The best example I can give you is to edit Season 3, and on episode #37, put a bullet (*) in front of the word "Valentine", and you'll see what I mean.

Thanks - Yngvarr 12:40, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Try using a definition list format instead:


 * Parasitic Pal : When Lazlo goes swimming in Leaky Lake, a bloodsucking sea lamprey attaches itself onto his head.
 * It's No Picnic : What was supposed to be a friendly picnic has the residents of Camp Kidney and Acorn Flats facing each other in a pine-cone sit-down showdown.
 * End credits : Lazlo swims with Lamar in the lake, only for Lamar to leave Lazlo for Raj.
 * Circeus 23:54, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Never mind that. It seems impossible: adding a hard line break destroys the table. I think the problem might be on the software level. Circeus 23:58, 27 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Two linebreaks in the template make this possible:

<tr style="text-align: center; "> <td style="text-align: left;">


 * -- Ned Scott 04:12, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Yes check.svg|20px]] Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride 22:19, 31 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Yngvarr 23:03, 31 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Oops, there's supposed to be an &amp;nbsp; after, in other words:
 * Technically speaking, it was there, but it rendered as a space in my example. I guess I thought the pre tag would have properly displayed it. -- Ned Scott 06:13, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Yes check.svg|20px]] Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride 13:09, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Yes check.svg|20px]] Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride 13:09, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Same-line description/summary
I think a description/summary on the same line/row as the other columns is necessary, particularly for sortable tables where another row will mess up the sorting. —Remag Kee 04:50, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * A sortable version has been made. Just use S-Episode list. For an example, see List of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya episodes. You can also use an Aux parameter as an alternative summary field, like "Aux1=Short summary of what happened goes here". -- Ned Scott 05:29, 7 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, that isn't the same style as this episode list (a single line)--and it has forced white backgrounds (when it should be using overridable class/IDs instead)... I tried "aux1" on this template but it didn't do anything. —Remag Kee 07:38, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Quote marks
Can I propose that we remove the automatic quote marks from the episode title section. The reason for this is, when you are going to provide verification of an episode title, it puts the citation inside the quote marks, instead on on the outside. It really isn't that much of a hassle to manually put in "", and this why we can follow policy and verify the title without having to put excessive, and extraneous information elsewhere just so we can mention it (i.e. Having to write 22 separate sentences below, mentioning the titles, just so you can source them).  BIGNOLE     (Contact me)  14:03, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * How often is it necessary to source one specific episode title? Usually, general references do the trick just fine.Circeus 17:39, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, if you are talking about future episodes that have not aired yet, you are less likely to have one source that takes care of all the episode titles. Take Smallville for instance. The official site only lists episodes after they air, but we know the titles for the episodes up to episode 9--although, we only have reliable sources for episodes two and three. Now, TV Guide takes care of the episode titles when they get the write-ups from the networks, but if you have reliable sources for just the titles--which, TV Guide doesn't list anything until the write-ups are released to them--then you cannot put them next to the episode titles because they interfere with the quotation mark.   BIGNOLE     (Contact me)  17:43, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * I believe there have been other issues with the automatic quotation marks. Having to manually put in quotation marks isn't a big deal, and removing the automatic ones will probably make for a smaller template. We still do have the size concern. Jay32183 20:49, 29 September 2007 (UTC)
 * This probably would be fine, but I might suggest running a bot to "subst" the quotes for the current lists. I can preform the task if necessary. -- Ned Scott 05:27, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
 * That would be nice. This way, no one's sitting in the dark about the change (kind of like how they did when they changed the coding to the quotebox and didn't tell anyone).   BIGNOLE     (Contact me)  12:16, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

three new named parameters
Since Writer, Director, and to a lesser extent, Ratings, are used so often by the Aux parameters, I think these should be given actual named parameters (which was the whole point of making named parameters, it just makes it easier to tell what you are editing). Thoughts? -- Ned Scott 23:50, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
 * Good idea, but would all existing lists using aux fields have to be changed manually, or could a bot do it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Matthewedwards (talk • contribs) 01:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * They would have to be changed, but in theory this wouldn't break the formatting for all those waiting to be changed. -- Ned Scott 08:11, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

The title= field
editprotected Can the title= field be made optional?

When trying to add references the titles of some episodes the tag is rendered inside the double-quoted around the episode title. I found one way around it, by placing the title in the Aux1= field and manually bolding and double-quoting, but becuase the title field is required, the list has an empty box. Thankyou -- Matthew Edwards | talk | Contribs 00:07, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The actual solution to this problem is to remove the automatic quotes and bolding from titles. Jay32183 (talk) 07:12, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Not really. Every single episode title on every single episode list would have to be manually changed. It's much simpler to do it the way I suggested, especially given the yet-to-be-created episode lists that wouldn't include a title under the "title=" field. -- Matthew Edwards | talk | Contribs 07:51, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Actually, it was already planned to remove the automatic quotes, but "subst" them via a bot. We could still make the title field optional, and there even are some rare cases where that could be desired (lists when there are no title, but where dates are used instead). -- Ned Scott 08:10, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Well I'm for both making it optional, and removing the quotes and bold.
 * Until that time, is there a way around it? For right now I'm referring to Degrassi: The Next Generation (season 1), I'd like to remove the Aux1 field (titular reference), and actually cite the title. The one thing I can think of iis just a straight forward, plain wikitable. But to change everything now, then change it back if my suggestion is applied would be a real ball-ache. -- Matthew Edwards | talk | Contribs 08:23, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * You can use Episode list/Degrassi as a temp fix. Also, since you're using season pages and an episode page, we can make this sub-template work like Episode list/Lost later on, and allow for season page transclusion like on List of Lost episodes, if it is desired. -- Ned Scott 08:42, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * How does that work, are the fields rendered in the same order as the main episode list template? Will I have to bold and double quote the title now? Would it be possible for you to put an example on the page, like there is at Lost's? Thanks -- Matthew Edwards | talk | Contribs 20:43, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Everything works exactly the same except that title no longer quotes automatically. In the next few days, we'll apply the change to the greater template (with bot assistance so that there will still be manual quotes.) Unsure on if bolding should still be automatic or not, but at least the quotes is an easy one. In any case, the temporary template will soon be in-sync with the main template, and we can either delete the temp-template or explore a new method found on List of Lost episodes (which I'll explain in a bit). In either case, this will allow you to make minimal changes, since the only thing that will need to be changed is the title of the template, which can easily be done via hide/replace in an editing program. -- Ned Scott 00:46, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks. I think I get a little of it now! With the changes to the original template, if an editor leaves off the quotes, a bot will put them in, unless they're put in manually? So, for example if I type «Title» it will put them in, if I type «"Title"» it won't, but if I do «"Title"[1]» is that how it's rendered, or will the bot put extra ones in, like «""Title"[1]"»?
 * As for exploring a new method, you'll definitely have to explain, sorry.
 * I'm actually undecided what to do with List of Degrassi: The Next Generation episodes after I fix up each season page. Either turn it into a list like List of The Simpsons episodes or like List of Lost episodes, all three being Featured status right now. A consensus discussion on the list's talk page wouldn't do too much - there's not enough editors! -- Matthew Edwards | talk | Contribs 03:11, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The bot will only make the first edit, so that when we change the template we don't suddenly lose the appearance of the quotes. After that, editors will have to include quotes manually. -- Ned Scott 03:15, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * A-ha! I get it :) -- Matthew Edwards | talk | Contribs 03:42, 19 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I've usually just dealt with the problem by putting the reference on the column header, since usually one reference is used for all the titles :P I can see the desire to change, it though it will increase the work load in using it. One reason I like this one now is it does take care of that auto formatting.  Don't suppose there is anyway to put in some kind of flag for "auto format" yes or no? AnmaFinotera (talk) 05:33, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The other thing I mentioned, the season page transclusion from List of Lost episodes is pretty easy. Basically, each season page becomes a template (but only the episode table shows up) and is included on the list of episodes page. That way editors only have to update one episode box, and the changes are seen on both season and list page. For longer shows there's also the option of hiding the summary on the List of episodes page, but changes to title, air date, and other fields are still updated. -- Ned Scott 04:15, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Ok, so that's what is happening at the List of Lost eps, but how do they do it at The Simpsons ep list? -- Matthew Edwards | talk | Contribs 04:38, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * The Simpsons page does it manually right now. The trick we used for the Lost list was a somewhat recent idea, and is currently only being used on two shows (the other being List of The Wire episodes). I'm also trying to figure out a way to preserve the alternate coloring of the rows. -- Ned Scott 05:13, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Hate to be a bug, but can you un-bold the title at Episode list/Degrassi? (Probably not best to do it to the parent template, though.) Thanks -- Matthew Edwards | talk | Contribs 05:22, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Not sure whether this relates to the current discussion: I don't think the quotation marks should be bolded for the same reason they aren't bolded in article leads. –Pomte 22:35, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
 * My original thinking behind bolding the title was just to make it stand out more, so that people's eyes are drawn to it first, so what is done in article leads really isn't related. I don't feel strongly about this, though, but I thought I would point out why it was bolded in the first place. -- Ned Scott 05:42, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Hi. I've been away a while, so sorry for the lateness of this reply. The only reason I wanted the title un-bolded in the template is so that the [ref] tag wouldn't be bolded. It can be done manually now. Anyway, all my issues have now been resolved, so thanks for your help and fixing the Degrassi template. Matthew Edwards | talk | Contribs 05:34, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Support for "LineColour"
I've noticed that a significant number of people type this template out manually, and those to whom "colour" is the native spelling often use that instead of "color", which causes the wrong colour to be displayed. So, an easy fix:
 * Change:
 * to
 * to

-- Huntster  <sup style="font-size:9px;">T • @ • C 17:15, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Not done. Increasing the size of this template may break articles due to template limits. Educating users to use this correctly is probably a much better solution. --- RockMFR 05:01, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * We saved a lot of space back when we took the image option out. It's been a while since I've tested the limits of the template, so I'm not sure how much of a concern this still is. Although, given how minor it is, it would likely just be easier to tell other users how to fix the problem. We could even have a bot occasionally check and make corrections, if it really is a big problem. -- Ned Scott 05:40, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * That's fine, though I'm not certain how much value would be in "educating users" when native tongues have a habit of unconsciously overriding such considerations. Was just a thought; however, on List of Charmed episodes, where this template is fully utilized across eight seasons, it appears to have very little impact:


 * This is a very nicely designed template...always a pleasure to see one such as this. I have to admit, though, I'm confused as to exactly what these "ʁ" symbols are...I've never encountered them before. --  Huntster  <sup style="font-size:9px;">T • @ • C 17:59, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It's part of a trick to keep a table cell open if a field is listed, but not filled out. We needed a value that could be used as a trigger, but would not be a likely use of any of the fields. So unless someone names an episode ʁ, we should be ok :) -- Ned Scott 05:34, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

TopColor
Editprotected Please edit the very first line of the template and replace it with:

This brings back TopColor, which was originally removed to make the template smaller and because no one used it. Since then we've removed the code for images and other tricks, there is more "room", and there are a few new situations where TopColor can now be used. Basically, it will be used to add alternating coloring for lists such as List of Lost episodes, and used to highlight special episodes within the list. I've tested this in my sandbox before hand (at User:Ned Scott/sandbox5 and User:Ned Scott/sandbox8. (userfied template at User:Ned Scott/sandbox4) This will have no effect on any list unless someone defines TopColor= for an entry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ned Scott (talk • contribs) 08:15, 12 January 2008
 * Done. AmiDaniel (talk) 08:22, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

updates to the template itself
Here's what I'd like to do:

Add two new parameters/fields: "Director" and "Writer" (maybe "Ratings", but definitely director and writer)

They're used a lot, and probably more than things like AltTitle or AltAirDate. This would not replace any of the Aux fields (though guidelines suggesting that people shouldn't use a ton of fields would be good), but make a named field an option. The logic behind this is similar to the template's core goal, to make common fields easy to label, and to encourage their addition. Though, in lists where director(s) or writer(s) don't change often or at all, guidelines might suggest not needing them. People would have to start adopting this manually for it to catch on, but the find/replace functions of most text editors makes this an easy task.

and

One of the following: Remove automatic quotes or make another field for refs.

The logic behind this is that the template ideally is just like a database entry, and everything in "Title" should just be the title. Even if the formatting was changed so that ref links looked better, having the ref link in there could theoretically confuse things in the future. However, I might be thinking too much about it. KISS?

If the automatic quotes are removed, a bot will need to go through all the templates and add them in "manually", since most lists call for them.

Since the bot will basically be touching every single template, it would be the ideal time to do any other adjustments, such as naming of parameters. This is really a minor concern, but if anyone felt strongly about it, we could place underscores in the parameters. Basically "OriginalAirDate" vs "Original_air_date". Another minor thing, might not be worth worrying about, but I thought I would throw it out there.

And of course, making sure that the new size of the episode template doesn't break on large lists. Although, it might just be easier to make a second "light" version for those very large uses, since they are in the minority.

Thoughts? -- Ned Scott 06:12, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm inclined to agree on Director/Writer as it is often called for and it would free up the Alt slots for other uses. For the quotes, make a field for refs.  Without auto quotes, I suspect we'd have a lot of new lists without them because editors wouldn't remember to put them in (I honestly know I wouldn't :P).  Episode titles don't usually need referencing anyway, so I'd rather have a field to deal with the unique situations than mess up the majority. I don't think there is any need to mess with the parameter names by adding underscores or the like. Of possible, it would be nice if the bot could check date formats. I've seen a few lists with improperly formatted dates, or dates that are not properly wikified. Would the bot be able to look for existing Director/Writer Aux fields and automatically replace with these new fields?AnmaFinotera (talk) 06:46, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Depends on how consistent Aux1=Director, Aux2=Writer, etc would be. It might be possible to evaluate this from the table header, but for that we'd need someone who's pretty good with scripts/bots. We could also easily group up ones we know for sure are consistent and do those in batches, with could get a lot of the work done. -- Ned Scott 06:51, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Additional, would oppose a named ratings field. A few lists may have them, but for the vast majority, such information is unnecessary and unavailable. It would just clutter, especially if this transcends down to the Japanese episode list. AnmaFinotera (talk) 15:47, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * An existing field doesn't have to be in wide use to be useful. AltTitle, AltDate and ProdCode are rarely to never used in non-anime shows, and are still included in the template. Just as a side note. – sgeureka t•c 16:09, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I would like HTML anchors. That way when people redirect the episodes to the lists, they can still go directly to information about a particular episode. (→ Zachary ) 07:08, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * There already are anchors; the anchor name is "ep" followed by EpisodeNumber. ProdCode, when defined, also produces an anchor ("pc").
 * On that note: how about a non-printing parameter to disambiguate multiple lists on the same page where the episode count resets? I've done such a thing at List of Sayonara Zetsubō Sensei episodes (transcluding a customized version of Japanese episode list).  —TangentCube, Dialogues 07:25, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I think the anchors would be more useful without the prefixes, per below. Superm401 - Talk 22:45, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Definite support for writer and director. Since the episode lists I edit (will) also list the ratings, I am also in favor of a ratings column (for which I previously misused ProdC because Aux1-3 were already in use). – sgeureka t•c 09:25, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Added: IMO, get rid of the quotes. Whenever there are TV movies for a series, you have the choice to misapply MOS:T, or mimick Episode list with hard code (see List_of_Stargate_SG-1_episodes). Also, at least in the case of Stargate, the producers reveal episode titles months before the official channels make note of them, putting the references within the quotes (see List_of_Stargate_Atlantis_episodes), which is ugly. – sgeureka t•c 11:04, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that the quotes should be left in. If we're using a template, we should make it do as much of the formatting as possible.  —TangentCube, Dialogues 10:54, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Keep the quotes, but allow a "title_ref" field (so it would look like  and allow people to change the quotes to italics if they need to, e.g. List of The Sarah Jane Adventures stories (so it would be:  . Also support the use of writer and director fields. Will (talk) 12:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Support the writer/director fields since I tend to use those. I don't mind the quotes, but I would also like the option to use Italics as per Will if it can be done without too much hassle. Hewinsj (talk) 14:30, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

New system/method for season and LOE articles
See List of Lost episodes and Template:Episode list/Lost. Individual season LOEs are transcluded onto the main LOE. There's a few things this system does..


 * Some lists, such as List of The Simpsons episodes, are so long that they can't practically list the summaries with the episodes themselves. Instead, individual season pages are used, with the main list only having titles and basic data. This is basically what inspired this new system.


 * Even if both LOE and season pages retain their summaries, you have two identical versions to update for each episode entry. For LOEs without summaries, you still have much of the same top row data to maintain (title, air date, etc).


 * This is simple enough to work on more than one LOE, making it useful for groups of shows, like Stargate or Degrassi.

I really wanted to avoid using a separate template to make this work, but so far this seems to be the easiest and most practical way to make the trick work. The main reason for requiring the sub-tempalte is two things: one is that it needs to be defined what specific article will exclude either summaries and/or any other fields/paramaters, and two, actually configuring the displayed fields. All of these sub-templates are still using the main episode template, and any updates to the main template are carried over to them, decreasing maintenance. Making them a sub-page will make them easier to track. For many shows that's one template being used for five or even ten articles.

Another possible benefit is that people could define LineColor once, instead of for every entry. By default it would look the same for each season table, but there might be tricks to allow further customization (I have some stuff in mind, but haven't tried them out).

One cool thing feature of season/LOE trick is that it can make the every other line a varying color (like what's seen on List of The Simpsons episodes). This is done on the sub-tempalte level (as see on Template:Episode list/Lost) and works automatically based on odd and even numbers from EpisodeNumber. The two colors are definable, or that variation of two BG colors can be taken out completely.

A few other lists have tried this out as well, as seen on List of The Wire episodes and List of Stargate SG-1 episodes, so I thought it would be a good time to get some feedback on it, as well as any suggestions about this method. I'm not sure what strain this does on the servers, or if that even is a concern. If everything is okay, then we should be good with writing up some instructions and trying this on a larger scale. -- Ned Scott 06:12, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmmm...this might be good for some really big shows, but it also seems extremely cumbersome and overly complicated, particularly for editors who are not well versed in template code. I'm decent with templates and I couldn't quite figure it all out from looking at the code and I'm still kinda scratching me head over it. AnmaFinotera (talk) 06:51, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * True, but basic entry would pretty much be the same. When you go to make an episode entry for Lost you use Episode list/Lost and all the same parameters. It does still make things more complicated, and I'd really like to simplify this even more, if possible. -- Ned Scott 06:56, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * My template editing/programming skills are still poor, so I can only use what others have already tried (like the Lost-specific ep template, which I used as the basis of the SG-1 ep template). My feedback: SG-1, as you already stated, is on the move to go with season articles with longer episode summaries (work in progress), and although I originally wanted the real LoE to not use any episode summaries, someone stated his concerns that the ep summaries are needed in the LoE. So I was thinking to add a second parameter, LongSummary, and transclude a one-line ShortSummary in the LoE, and a 4-to-6-line LongSummary in the season article. I haven't done any tests yet, but this should be possible even now ( |ShortSummary= needs to be tweaked into |ShortSummary= in Template:Episode list/Stargate, I think). – sgeureka t•c 09:35, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I was thinking something similar, but thought it might be too messy, but the way you put it I think it could really work. I was originally thinking of taking the same "summary" but only transcluding part of it. Making two summary fields is a much better idea. I gotta hit the sack right now (I should have a few hours ago), but I think it would be great just to go ahead and try that idea out for the Stargate list as a test. -- Ned Scott 10:07, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Would it be possible to include [show] and [hide] tags to each episode on the episode list? That way, each episode list would look like List of The Simpsons episodes (which I think looks far neater than something like List of Stargate SG-1 episodes), but clicking on [show] would reveal the episode summary?
 * Ned, after making template:Episode list/Degrassi and carrying out all my requests, you know I'm working on the Degrassi episodes and I'm going through the individual season pages right now. My plan is to get the episode summaries top-notch on the individual season pages, thus removing the need for them at the main List of D:TNG episodes article and editing it to look like The Simpsons episode list, but for those users who still would like to see summaries on the main list page they could click [show] for the episode(s) they want. If it's not something that can be done template-wide, could it be done on an individual basis (ie. for me :D)? -- Matthew Edwards | talk | Contribs 05:41, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it would be reasonable. While we do try to standardize things in general, making forks like this is beneficial because it allows us to consider different options and approaches. Plus I like the idea, and think it would be cool to try out :) -- Ned Scott 06:59, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Style concerns
Another thought for this method is simply what may or may not be preferred, from a stylistic approach. Not all shows use season pages, and even some that do, people often still like seeing a summary on the main LOE. Season pages are good because, from a size perspective, you can have a little more summary without it looking weird, for those lists without individual episode articles. As many of you know, individual episodes (WP:EPISODE) is its own debate right now. I hope to approach this from a neutral position for the template's sake, so regardless of episode notability, we have some discussion on how this template might work in either situation. -- Ned Scott 06:12, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

other stuff
Several lists are still using light color line separators, which used to look fine with an older version of the template, but are kind of an eyesore now. Another minor issue, but we might want to throw together simple little "pallets" of colors that look good, and place those suggestions on the doc page (or something). As well as fixing the ones already being used.

Another change from an older version is that backgrounds for tables are no longer white (this was done a while ago). The idea is that by not forcing white, people can be more flexible with the template, and it makes more sense to define that value for the whole table at the table header. However, most lists still look better with the white contrast, so another possible to-do (in addition to the adjustment of light-color LineColor) is to insert these into articles as well.

Not asking anyone to do these things, necessarily, but just making people aware of them. I plan to do as much as I can myself for these little updates. -- Ned Scott 06:12, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed on the need for some "standard" pallets. I know it was frustrating for me to find set of colors when I first started working, so now I just reuse them over and over.  Also updating the instructions to have it standard to have color coded headers for seasons would be nice. AnmaFinotera (talk) 06:49, 1 February 2008 (UTC)


 * No opinion, as I choose a linecolor that works best for each specific LoE/season article. But a basic pallette would certainly help newbies. – sgeureka t•c 09:37, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Template draft
I did some testing in my sandbox, and as far as I can tell Template:Episode list/draft won't break anything, and should work with new DirectedBy and WrittenBy fields. In addition, I had a clever idea for what to do about the refs in titles, as well as any other options one might want for a title: RTitle. When trying to think of a name for a parameter, I kept thinking of "RawTitle", which, as it sounds, would be a title without any formatting. But at the same time many people would want something like "ReferenceTitle", because they don't want to loose the formatting, they just want an additional option for references. The result was "RTitle". If you don't define "Title", you can use "RTitle" instead to replace the title, or you can use "RTitle" with "Title" for references after the formatting.

Also, right now I have the order DirectedBy then WrittenBy. I'm not sure what order is used more, or if it matters or not.

If there are no objections/comments/whatever then we should be clear to make an edit request. -- Ned Scott 07:00, 13 February 2008 (UTC)


 * No objection from me. The order of the writer and director doesn't really matter to me; the LoEs at WP:FL give a slight preference (60 percent?) to list the director first. – sgeureka t•c 17:38, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

editprotected Please replace the entire contents of Template:Episode list with this. -- Ned Scott 04:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Holding again. Nothing is broken, but I had an idea when working with Template:Japanese episode list. -- Ned Scott 05:11, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

Aux order
Ok, something I didn't think about, besides the order of DirectedBy and WrittenBy, there is the order with the Aux. For example:

or

or.. we can split them, to give an option

I bring this up because I did find one page that would need to use an Aux before a WrittenBy, List of RahXephon media. Granted it's probably out of the ordinary, it made me think if there are any other concerns regarding if Aux should go in front or behind. Thoughts? -- Ned Scott 05:30, 14 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I prefer the third option (split, A1-D-W-A2-A3, but not A1-A2-D-W-A3). Sometimes, an extra column is required right behind the ep title (e.g. List of Carnivàle episodes), sometimes after the director/writer or it doesn't matter (e.g. List of Lost episodes), so giving the editor the the choice would allow that. – sgeureka t•c 08:35, 14 February 2008 (UTC)


 * On that note, while understanding we are trying to keep the template code and complexity to a minimal (though that recent prep processor upgrade apparently has made this less of an issue now), we could also make an Aux4 after ProdCode, for similar reasons of placement. It would be easier than making another parameter that defines placement of each one. Hmm. -- Ned Scott 02:36, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Please replace the entire contents of Template:Episode list with this.

Retested, and it doesn't break anything. I think at most we'll just need to advice people to never use all 12 possible cells at once, but I doubt that will ever be a problem. -- Ned Scott 03:03, 15 February 2008 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Yes check.svg|18px]]<SPAN STYLE="display:none">Y</SPAN> Done

Minor update
Please replace the entire contents of Template:Episode list with this. This is a minor update to fix some extra padding in the ShortSummary cell, and to also add Documentation. -- Ned Scott 08:45, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Plus, it will correctly place Pp-template on the main template (since size isn't a major concern right now, thanks to the prep-processor update). -- Ned Scott 12:21, 17 February 2008 (UTC)


 * ✅ Done DMacks (talk) 01:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Order of DirectedBy and WrittenBy
Not sure how widespread the use of these new parameters are yet, but Matthewedwards left this note on my talk page that might be worth considering:


 * Hi Ned. I think that the "Written by" field should appear before the "directed by" field, because that is how they are usually billed on the TV shows, whether it's during the action after the opening credits, or on the scrolling end credits. -- Matthew | talk | Contribs 06:52, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

So far it's just been a toss up on the order, so I can go either way myself. If this is a good indication on a better order, and it wouldn't cause too much clean up, then I'd be fine with making another change, but I thought I would see what others thought first. -- Ned Scott 05:16, 29 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't know how I missed this on my talk page! Yeah, it just made sense to me. The only problem is with any episode lists that now include real director or writer fields. It would mean finding them and correcting the table headers. -- Matthew | talk | Contribs 14:06, 4 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I have already used DirectedBy and WrittenBy in List of Carnivàle episodes, List of Stargate Atlantis episodes, and Stargate SG-1 (season 1) through Stargate SG-1 (season 10). It's not a big deal to change the headers, but if we want to swap these two parameters, we should be doing it really soon or never. As I said in another thread, wikipedia has so far not shown any preference, and I can live with either order. – sgeureka t•c 14:37, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

AltTitle reference
I think there needs to be a field to reference the AltTitle outside of the quotes. -- Jamie jca (talk) 19:44, 29 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Not a bad idea. -- <small style="background:#fff;border:#090 1px solid;color:#000;padding:0px 3px 1px 4px;white-space:nowrap">ṃ<big style="color:#090">• α<big style="color:#090">• Ł<big style="color:#090">• ṭ<big style="color:#090">• ʰ<big style="color:#090">• Ə<big style="color:#090">• Щ<big style="color:#090">•   @  14:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Simpler HTML anchors
Currently, the template has HTML anchors of form ep and pc. I think these would be more likely to be used without the prefix, like and. Superm401 - Talk 19:59, 28 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The reason we put in the prefix was to avoid a situation where both EpisodeNumber and ProdCode could be the same number. While it's rare, it has happened on a few lists. -- Ned Scott 05:13, 7 May 2008 (UTC)