Template talk:Sidebar episode

From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference

I created this template to see how well it would work... I'm not planning to go through and do some crazy revisionist application to every episode, but I want to see what other people think.

The pros of using this (as I did in "Prototype") are that it makes it clear if some information has been omitted, it helps if - although I don't see it happening - we ever wanted to change the format of the sidebar, and it makes things simpler particularly on episodes where there's no image (I like the no_image_yet.jpg idea, but dunno how you guys feel). It also provides a simple way to add ep pages in the event of a new Trek series, and in general using templates is seen as a good sign on Wikis.

The cons are that all the ep pages have this sidebar, implemented manually, and from the number of variables you have to provide, one might argue that there's no point to using a template at all.

Please let me know what you think. --Schrei 21:27, 28 Aug 2005 (UTC)

I believe someone has argued that, I know I've read it here somewhere, but I can't think of where at the moment. This was brought up before, but voted down because of the variables as "illogical" i think. - AJHalliwell 19:57, 29 Aug 2005 (UTC)
- What exactly is illogical about it? They seem pretty constant across episodes to me - the only part that would possibly be bad is the episode number (overall, not in a particular season) since it's pretty close to the production number in most cases. --Schrei 20:01, 29 Aug 2005 (UTC)

I think that would help a lot in cleaning the markups of the episodes. However, I don't think that putting the [[ ]] in the template for the writer, director and story is a good idea as it will lead to some nonsense in the article itself (like story=Ira Steven Behr]] & [[Robert Hewitt Wolfe in the "Past Tense, Part I" episode). I would also recommend updating the documentation to

advertise the template (as I just did a dupplicate without knowing it)

or

say why we shouldn't use a template (the illogical stuff) to prevent future lost of time

Rcog 17:54, 10 Sep 2005 (UTC)

I would also recommend doing something about broadcast number (see episodes from TOS). Either make a special template for TOS or add something about it in this one.Rcog 17:56, 10 Sep 2005 (UTC)

For one thing, not all episodes will have "story by" and "teleplay by" credits; some will have "written by". In the former cases, if a writer worked on the story but not the teleplay or vice versa, it is so noted. In the latter case, any writers listed worked on both the story AND the teleplay. That's just one of the variables A.J. mentioned. --From Andoria with Love 18:20, 10 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's why i think both templates should be deleted, but we should probably do what Rcog mentioned about noting why not to create the template for this, especially when we have templates for the bottom half of the page he listed, the navigation templates. 1985 18:26, 10 Sep 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Infobox Episode or Template:Sidebar episode

Duplicates. do we need either? 1985 17:15, 10 Sep 2005 (UTC)

I suggest deleting the Template:Infobox Episode. I created it without knowing it had already been done. Rcog 18:00, 10 Sep 2005 (UTC)

I think your design is a little better but since the other one is on two episodes it might be best to just modify existing one. Also sorry about the deletion notice, i'm still new here. 1985 18:17, 10 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Comment I believe this was brought up on Ten Forward or somewhere recently, and that it had to many variables to be of much use. I've come to like our current tables, more adaptable. - AJHalliwell 19:44, 10 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Keep At least one of them. I know that it may not be perfect as it is (the variable arguments), but still think that it would be better than nothing. We could refine it later (with sub-templates, for example) and leave some blank fields for the moment. I think it still improves the clarity when we edit episodes articles and lower the chances for a newbie to make formatting mistakes. Rcog 20:12, 10 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Preferably Delete both, however, seeing that Template:Sidebar episode is being used on two pages, if anyone should be kept, it might as well be that one. --Alan del Beccio 08:01, 16 Sep 2005 (UTC)
Archived--Alan del Beccio 19:34, 18 Sep 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Further comments

Seeing that this had no consensus to delete, we should at least make sure that the definitions make sense. First, I think we don't need two images. Let's remove the bottom one from the template. If it is a short episode summary, one image should be enough - if it is a long one, more images should be placed in the text, not the sidebar. Second, let's combine "Year" and "Stardate" into a new field "Date". That way, we could use the same template for ENT episodes (which have no stardate) and all the other episodes (Example: "Date: Stardate 44001.1 (2366)"). Comments? -- Cid Highwind 13:06, 22 Dec 2005 (UTC)

Isn't there a way to have a template, only show fields that are filled in? So we could set up a template with all of the common fields we would usually want, but only the ones used would show on the page. —MJBurrage 02:34, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

There is (or better, there might be in the future), but we should still find out what information we always want to have on the sidebar (=mandatory), what information we sometimes want to have (=optional) and what information we don't want to have at all. See below for a first suggestion, and add/discuss more as necessary. -- Cid Highwind 09:23, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Does Memory Alpha support Parser Functions?

As for the fields below, I would suggest short names when possible to avoid two line boxes, so:

"Prod. #" instead of "Production Number:"
"Teleplay" instead of "Teleplay by:"

With Parser Functions, I could dust of my programming brain cells and make the template only show filled in fields (so we could use "Writer(s)", "Story", "Teleplay", "Based on", and only see the ones used for each episode. —MJBurrage 20:34, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

According to Memory_Alpha:Template_for_Episode, every episode seems to have a production number (mandatory then). From that same page, we already "agreed" on a date format. From the discussion below, teleplay, story and written should all be optional. The only problem I see for the moment is with TOS "season" and "broadcast number" fields. They could be combined into the episode field for that series, but that will differ from the "standard" of the other series. I think that is a good compromise if we are to avoid clashes with TOS zealots :-) --Rcog 04:34, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Better yet, a separate template for TOS episodes might be in order. I don't think I see the point in all this though, since the code is in place for all pages where the template would be used (barring a new series of course). --Vedek Dukat ^{Talk | Duty Roster} 05:17, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

As I see it, the point is standardization and clarity. I would be practical to be able to change the disposition of the informations in the sidebar without having to iterate through all the articles (even with a bot). It would also be a mean to enforce the standards. Also, it helps separating the container from the content (same reason we don't use html tags in articles) and put the article's focus on information instead of disposition. -- Rcog 16:20, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Exactly - all that, plus it helps avoid duplication by moving as much formatting/content as possible from several hundred individual pages to one central template. With "parser functions" (that's what I had in mind as well, MJBurrage, see MA:TF for a related discussion), it will be possible to even avoid having a separate template just for TOS episodes. According to the explanation by Shran below, I will move the various credits to the "optional" section. I agree that we should follow the official guidelines for crediting here, and not take any shortcuts. I also don't think we should abbreviate too much... BTW, thanks for the link to the Template_for_Episodes -- Cid Highwind 11:25, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mandatory

Image

One image, should depict an interesting/important scene of the episode

Series

Series this episode is from (Uses abbreviation: TOS, TNG, ...)

Episode

Link to the appropriate season article, shown as "1x02" (Uses variables Series, Season, Episode)

Production number

To appear in the "Episode" field. Apparently, all episodes have a "production number"

Original airdate

"YYYY-MM-DD" is the way to go, according to Memory_Alpha:Template_for_Episode.

For the airdate, note that many episodes are in the format DD MONTH YYYY, with the month and year bit a link, such as 2 June 1994. Several dates even have a week of at the start of the date. Perhaps the "policy" should be revisited for this. After all, with dates in numerical format, there is always the European vs US confusion possibility there. -- Sulfur 12:48, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I think YYYY-MM-DD is a standardized international format. If we want to change to a different one, why not - but in any case, one and the same format should be used throughout, and if we link, we should probably link the whole date and not just parts of it, even if that means using a pipe. -- Cid Highwind 15:04, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I checked some more of those "MONTH YYYY" links, and all of them seem to be redirects to "YYYY productions" anyway. With that in mind, it would be possible to avoid the redirect altogether and simply pipe the link to the real page title directly from inside the template. -- Cid Highwind 19:26, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Except that i was planning to possibly break down each "YEAR productions" article into twelve separate aticles based on the redirects leading to them. even if that is not done, i've still used the "MONTH YEAR" dating format in hundereds of articles and find it is preferable to the numerical version, for clarity over whether international or American dates should be used -- Captain M.K.B. 13:18, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I changed the template to reflect that - if there is consensus for that change, other pages should reflect that, though (for example the "Template for Episode"). -- Cid Highwind 13:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Date

For (optionally) both year and stardate. An alternative would be to have a mandatory "Year" and an optional "Stardate field". Preferences?

I like the Unknown Stardate listing on many episodes. The DVD releases all have a Stardate field listed, and this is contained in those that are not said during the episodes, and I think that's a good way to do it. -- Sulfur 12:48, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

"Past Tense, Part I", for example, lists one stardate and two years, because the episode contains time travel. This would not be possible with separate fields for stardate and year, so I think these should stay combined in one field "Date". One could then still add "Unknown" as a stardate instead of simply omitting it, although I'm not sure about possible reasons for that. -- Cid Highwind 09:55, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Director

Director... :)

[edit] Optional

Written by/Story by/Teleplay by: According to the explanation below, either the first one or the other two are given for any episode - so all of them have to be optional.
Broadcast number: Important for TOS episodes only(?), so should be optional (=hidden if not available).

[edit] Not included

Second image: In my opinion, any further images should be part of the main article, not part of the sidebar.

[edit] Unsure

[edit] How it works

Okay, I am extremely tired at the moment, so I'm gonna try to explain this as coherently as possible but it is asked that you please bear with me. In simplest form, there are two parts to writing an episode or film: the story process and the script-writing process. The story process comprises the layout of the overall concept and plot; the script expands on the story by including, among other things, dialogue. In film, the script is called a screenplay; in television, it's called a teleplay. For the sake of simplicity, let's say we have two writers working on a particular project. Now, if both writers worked on both the story AND the script, then the credit would be Written by. If one writer wrote the story and another writer wrote the script, then the former would receive a story by credit and the latter would receive a screenplay by (in film) or a teleplay by (in TV). For example, for Star Trek Nemesis, John Logan was the sole recipient of the Screenplay by credit for that film because he was the only one who worked on the script. However, he co-wrote the movie's initial story with Rick Berman and Brent Spiner, therefore Logan, Berman & Spiner all get a Story by credit. And, of course, if something being written is based off of something that came previously, then the previous project and the person(s) responsible for that project get a Based Upon or Based On credit. For example, all the live-action Trek spin-offs and all the films have the credit "Based Upon Star Trek Created by Gene Roddenberry.

Now, having said all that, I believe we should label the writers as they were credited in the episode or film. We can't simply say, for example, that Nemesis was "Written by John Logan, Rick Berman and Brent Spiner" because that would imply that all three worked on the story and the script. It would be best to inform users of the proper credits than to misguide them. So, the written by/teleplay by/story by/screenplay by credit is something we're just going to have to change manually to fit the subject. And I hope all of that made sense... --From Andoria with Love 18:37, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, a bit of trivia for ya... there are times when more than one writer will take shots at a story or script. When two or more writers work together on a story or script, the two names are seperated by an ampersand (&). If one writer worked on one or more versions of the story or script and another writer later revised it, then their credits would be seperated by the word and. For example, since Logan, Berman, and Spiner all worked on the story for Nemesis together, they received the credit: Story by John Logan, Rick Berman & Brent Spiner. If, for instance, John Logan had written the originally story and Berman and Spiner came back later and revised it, then the credit would have been Story by John Logan and Rick Berman & Brent Spiner; or, if Spiner had revised Logan and Berman's work, you'd see Story by John Logan & Rick Berman and Brent Spiner. Likewise, if all three had worked on different drafts of the story, then the credit would have been John Logan and Rick Berman and Brent Spiner. Isn't that great to know? :) --From Andoria with Love 18:47, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Made enough sense for me, thanks :) -- Cid Highwind 12:42, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I just checked the credits of a random episode ("Yesterday's Enterprise", in this case), and that one had the story credits as "From a Story By". Since minor differences seem to have a meaning here ("&" vs. "and"), is this different from just "Story By", can both be used, or should we change to that wording? -- Cid Highwind 12:12, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I now checked the credits of five episodes (TNG 3x11-15) - and had to correct five articles. When implementing this template, the actual credits definitely need to be checked... -- Cid Highwind 12:46, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why a template? / Layout suggestion

In the section above, this question came up. Another answer, besides all the technical reasons, is the fact that using a template allows us to easily tweak the layout. While the typical "left-side/right-side" layout of a sidebar might be "good enough" in many cases, it doesn't necessarily have to be the best possible layout to display that content. For example, I just changed the template from having several fields for "Title", "Series", "Episode" and "Production Number" to having just one field to display all this information in what I think is a more natural way. Similarly, we could decide to have all of our writing credits in another, single field...

This template can be seen "in action" on "Past Tense, Part I". What do you think of the change? -- Cid Highwind 20:20, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

The text is too small considering the importance of the information -- i usually surf to episode articles specifically to see the info in the box, so deaccentuating it seems a bad choice. Also, i'd prefer links to August 1995 be used (go to 1995 productions and click "what links here" to see why -- the redirects really help you to see which incoming links come from which articles). -- Captain M.K.B. 13:21, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with the Captain. The text is too small for my tastes. I find it a bit difficult to read, especially as compared to the text size on the current episodes. Also, as noted before, I prefer the date with the month name listed in it (to avoid any possibility of confusion with any visitors). Otherwise, the layout is pretty decent. -- Sulfur 13:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I can address that, although I'd have to do some changes in the CSS for that. Do you think all of the text is too small, or just the "more important" text in the first box? -- Cid Highwind 13:44, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I find all of the text a bit small to be honest. The bits that need to be larger though are the first box and the date box (for certain). The credits can possibly stand to stay the size that they are, especially since any larger and they may start wrapping awkwardly :) -- Sulfur 14:23, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Further followup, the larger text size is definitely legible now. One thing I did notice though... in the episode that you're testing this on, the 'Written By' credit is empty, but a 'Written By' still shows up. Should that not be hidden, since there's a Teleplay and Story credit filled in for the episode? Also, do we really need the episode title in the sidebar? It's in fairly large greenish/yellow text right above it afterall... -- Sulfur 14:43, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

We need a Mediawiki extension called "Parser functions" to be able to actually hide specific parts of the template. I already requested that feature to be implemented, but that apparently takes some time. Once it is available, and I changed the template code slightly, we will have either "Written by" or "Story" & "Teleplay", the newly added line regarding broadcast order will only show up if necessary etc. Meanwhile, you just have to ignore the empty parts. ;) I think the additional title is a nice thing to have. Perhaps not the most important thing, but it sort of "completes" the information available in the sidebar. Also, some episode articles are not located at the exact title because that one is a disambiguation page. -- Cid Highwind 15:00, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Nearly there... With parser functions now being active, I changed the template to work as discussed. If BroadcastOrder has no value (simply leave the blank after the "="), the line about broadcast order is omitted from the template. If WrittenBy is defined only that one is used, otherwise the values of TeleplayBy and StoryBy are shown. It doesn't work yet, but should do so soon. Last issues with these functions are being fixed now... -- Cid Highwind 14:58, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

IMHO, it would be a good thing to identify clearly the optionnal fields in Template:Sidebar episode. I find the layout a little cluttered at the top and do not see the point in having the title repeated in the sidebar. Besides that, it looks good. Rcog 00:58, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ordering problem in "The Killing Game"

Okay, DYKbot put "The Killing Game" and "The Killing Game, Part II" in reverse order in the sidebar browser fields. My attempt to exchange values and thereby rectify the order created even worse ordering. Would someone well versed in this template please correct the problem? Kojiro Vance | Talk 18:44, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I think User:Bp is the only living person left to understand this template after he was finished working on it - so let's just bug him until he fixes that and perhaps even updates the description here... ;) -- Cid Highwind 19:57, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Ha-ha, yes, maybe BP can tutor me and some others so we can fix it. I got the basic episode, number, and production values fine, it was the nNthProducedInSeries and nNthReleasedInSeries et al that just confused the hell out of me. We need documentation of these fields and how to correct them if a 'bot is going to be editing those. IMHO naturally. Kojiro Vance | Talk 15:21, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The prefixes are the type of data that is expected. n = number, s = string, ws = wiki-formatted string, a = article, etc. nNthReleasedInSeries = 9, then it is the 9th ep released in that series. ...InAll means among all episodes released. So it is pretty easy to understand really. Those two eps are in the wrong order beacuse they were ordered by airdate, and they were aired on the same day, but not a feature length ep. By coincidence they were miss ordered. I'll fix it sometime. --216.254.231.2 10:02, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] from Forum:Suggestion/Idea

Moved from Forum:Suggestion/Idea:

Sorry if this is not the appropriate place to post this...but I was not able to find a suggestions section.

In the episodes pages, viewing the code only we see in the sidebar episode template the following lines:

|     aNextReleasedInAll =
|     aPrevReleasedInAll =
|  aNextReleasedInSeries =
|  aPrevReleasedInSeries = 
|  aNextProducedInSeries =
|  aPrevProducedInSeries = 
|aNextInUniverseTimeline =
|aPrevInUniverseTimeline =

However the lines for the Universe Timeline do not appear...is there a reason for this? and yes, I realise this has become more of a question that a suggestion, but upon going into the episode code to explain my idea, I noticed that the template already included the Timeline idea I wanted to present. blipadouzi 17:10, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

It is currently commented out of the template code, exact reason unknown. The creator of the template - bp - made the change himself, so he's probably the only one who would know why.

On a separate, but similar note, I have discovered that the Remastered details coding is missing entirely, so I have added that. -- Michael Warren | Talk 17:26, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I saw the Remastered code...but it's generating an error message on the episode pages...specifically: Remastered version aired: [[{{{nAirdateDay_Remastered}}} {{{sAirdateMonth_Remastered}}}]] Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "{" blipadouzi 18:12, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

~~That's odd - I can't see that, and I went through every TOS episode to make sure things were working. What episode is it on?~~ Hang on, I see it now. Oh dear. I'll see if I can fix that. -- Michael Warren | Talk 18:14, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

"Time Squared", ~~"Eye of the Needle"~~ "Ex Post Facto" and several other TNG, DS9 and VOY episodes. For some odd reason "Eye of the Needle" doesn't show the error...but seeing as you know what the problem is...hopefully this will help you narrow it down. blipadouzi 18:20, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Because I've just fixed it :). Basically, it was every episode that didn't contain the relevant template lines - I've slotted in an #if statement, and that seems to have done the trick. It'll propagate through the episodes, and should be right again in a moment. -- Michael Warren | Talk 18:21, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

~~I've still found one or two episodes that still produce the error (like "The Royale"), but for the most part~~ It seems to have corrected itself. :D Tks for your help. blipadouzi 18:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

The timeline order data inconsistent. That is why it is removed. I was planning a timeline navigation similar to the arc slots, so that an episode that teks place in multiple times could be properly represented in the timeline. The problem is that so much timeline data is inconsistent or speculative. Even the dates that are in the sidebars now are not reliable. I left out the navigators for TOSR because the text was too long. They are still at the bottom of the page. Also I wish to go back to the "3d" button look that the sidebars had before, and a larger font, especially for the arrows that you can not even tell are arrows, but Cid ignores me. --Bp 03:30, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I, too, very much dislike the font size in the sidebars. You're not alone. ;) -- Renegade54 08:47, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I also agree with the font being as little too small. As for finding consistent data for creating a timeline, I found several years ago a Star Trek Annotated Timeline which might come in use to those efforts. blipadouzi 10:27, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] image width?

Can I suggest that the image width is a bit too large in this template? With wikia's google ads on the side, it ends up compressing the body of the article on the left to a very slim width. I don't think the image has to be almost 300 pixels, while most thumbnails are 250 or less. TheHYPO 07:41, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

The width, i'm pretty sure, is for the Monaco skin and it sounds like you have monobook. — Morder 07:48, 17 October 2008 (UTC)