Board Thread:Policies/@comment-25737724-20150608172657

This is open to the community, but I will probably ping a few specific people to get their feedback. The intent was to simplify media sections for the community (and I’ve tried to keep super geeky stuff separate). I’ve loosely flirted this idea with some of you before but this is the first foray into public review. I don’t typically get offended by feedback when people have concerns or other opportunities to bring up so please comment away. I also am self-taught so I probably using the wrong terminology on some of these elements. Feel free to comment and let me know what to call something if it helps with any confusion.

I recently started working on TV and Media pages for my own needs. I looked to see what all the major sites, and a few minor sites, where doing. When I saw everyone had different strategies I started to dissect what would make sense for me. I went with the Marvel approach at the core with elements of DC (affiliate pages, aired on dates, and wiki table).

However, I started looking at it more and realized we didn’t need to have different solutions between DC, Marvel and Image (and hopefully other TV media wikias will benefit as well? I don’t know as these aren’t my focus typically). As a result, I put together something that I thought was sly and would work for all sites. I’ve tested it on Image Comics, Marvel Data, and DC Data and have it working for all that I saw, but you guys will know your data better than I, hence the conversation (for Adour, I fixed being able to override URL name for Marvel/Image which isn’t in the live code you guys were reviewing earlier).

Problems: Marvel/Image, DC, and affiliates use different naming standards for episode URLs. We don't want to just change URLs on sites for episodes. This allowance in URL structure will grant sites the ability to use different SEO strategies. Also, external sites may already link to live links and I believe I would prefer to avoid redirects or massive strategy change for what could ultimately be achieved via some flexible coding. If you were vehement on standardizing URLs, I can make that happen of course but I assumed leave URL strategies flexible for this project.

On DC there are affiliate wikias for some items. So the ‘’Arrow.Wikia.com’’ affiliate is one and Tupka also mentioned in another thread the potential for an iZombie affiliate (though no one maintained it).

Another issue is DC pages have a lot of manual requirements for dates that is duplicative of the page data. The result is good in that some people want to see when an issue aired recently and having it in table format is easy to read.

''Note: This change was focused on Series but I will be looking at Episodes next. I have a requirement for multiple directors while it appears DC and Marvel haven’t, or haven’t codified for it.''

Goal: 1.	Codify one base template for all sites to use. Potentially centralize code base. 2.	Simplify affiliate links so people don’t need to know coding, html, wiki tables. Just have them enter an attribute like all other wikia templates 3.	Drive display with attributes and categories vs wiki tables 4.	Reduce duplication of data between pages. Use DPL to drive single source. 5.	Standardize UI for how people view episode series between all Wikia sites

Proposal: I created the Series List template. It currently lists the expected sub-modules that are needed though I’m sure some of you will yell at me that this isn’t the best documentation standard as these will change over time. I get it, just wanted to document for now and there’s no standard for strategy documentation that I'm aware of. Basically there are four attributes, three of which are optional, for media. The template uses these for each episode where X is the season, and Y is the episode. (Note: This is current state for Marvel/Image):

| SeasonX_Y       =

Another new attribute I put in this template was:

| AffSeasonX_Y  =

Since some sites were not always consistent with their URL name, this allows for different naming structures from home site vs affiliate site URLs. This will also allow affiliate sites to more easily maintain this info vs using the interwiki or table stuff. See example for how season 1 of Arrow will look now vs previously:

Proposed Method: •	| Season1_1            = Pilot •	| AffSeason1_1       = Pilot (Arrow) •	| Season1_2            = Honor Thy Father •	| AffSeason1_2       = Honor Thy Father

Previously:

{|border="1" width="67%" class="wikitable" !width="05%"|Ep# !width="49%"|Title !width="23%"|Airdate |- |01  | Pilot / Arrow Wikia |October 10, 2012 |- |02  | Honor Thy Father / Arrow Wikia |October 17, 2012 |-

This is entirely optional. You don’t have to put any affiliate option at all if you don’t want it. For the affiliate pages, the AffiliatePage attribute controls the target link. This will reduce having to maintain it for every episode to just one time. If you want an affiliate link system, you would put the target site here:

•	| AffiliatePage      = Arrow

This will automatically use  for the link builds.

The last attribute to know is I put PageNameOverride. This controls the issue with sites using different URL standards. Whether you’re passing in the Page URL directly, the DC methodology, or the default (I’m selfish making Marvel and Image default I know) it will format the link for the home site accordingly. I’ve used the options of DC, On, and  as the three options to control this attribute. Realistically instead of calling it DC, I should have called it Ep as it is really just  but that’s an easy enough change. More info is available in the template for how this works if you want to geek out.

•	| PageNameOverride   = DC

You can see what it looks like here:

Outcast on Image Comics

This series isn’t out yet, I just used it to play with different scenarios in regards to whether the episode exists, whether dates were filled out, etc to make sure I considered different use cases scenarios.

I know Roberto Alvarez kind of lifted a bunch of pages from all the major sites to create his crossgen wikia. I know some members didn’t care for this. However, it does provide a good opportunity for us to be able to test some of these templates in terms of cross site execution. So I asked him if I could maintain some templates and he gave me the greenlight and the necessary access for adding these templates on his site and test them. I put this on the Arrow (TV Series) and AoS shows for this demo. You’re welcome to review what it looks like at these links: (Note seasons shows up twice on Arrow on purpose. The first one is the code driven portion while the second is the previous wiki table stuff ByField. This gives you a before and after view):

Arrow on Crossgen

Marvels’ AOC on Crossgen

Concerns: Each site will have to make a decision for what’s right for them. I’m about 90% complete at this point. I really believe this would help each of the sites if we could get to one code base. I would like to put this out there to see if we could potentially collaborate and standardize this together. I can help code any requirements you may have, but I’m also aware that several of you are ‘’’far’’’ more advanced at this than I. I know there’s some movement already on standardizing, so hopefully this can either help to that end, or you guys can let me know where you guys are and I can understand if you had more advanced plans so I can make appropriate plans on my end. Either way, I just wanted to put this together to see if it could help.

Go-Live Plan Considerations: These aren’t finalized. This is more my thoughts from what I’ve seen and writing down things I know would need to happen. There’s clearly more conversations and testing to be had before moving forward on anything really.

1.	Marvel/Image: a.	Nothing, just copy templates over and it should be live 2.	DC: a.	AWB to replace HTML code on homelink/affiliate link b.	AWB to change Dates to Day on pages c.	Update Series list with DC switch d.	Update Series list with AffPage e.	Update episode template to use Day. I’ve done this if you want to use.

Still to Do: I haven't tackled how to handle cast members. I have little desire for this as I feel like IMDB is where that really belongs for sites I personally maintain. I haven’t touched much else besides episode stuff as that took a long time as is.

I’m not really a make-it-pretty type of dude, in the sense I’m not the guy to tinker to make things look nice. I extended the table to accommodate for affiliate links. Doing such encroaches on infobox and thus, it shoves it down the page for pages with long infoboxes, and short TOC. I can easily change this back to previous size, or make the Affiliate Page column dynamic, just didn’t think it would be necessary for Proof of Concept at this point.

I only made my Series List for 3 seasons, up to 30 episodes. It’s really easy to add more stuff with new approach and I will do S10E50 but I just wanted to call that out as a temporary limitation with what I’ve put together for this demo.

Having said that, what are your thoughts? I personally like the idea of standardizing code and UI experience. I like making it easier for affiliates to maintain and potentially helping out wikis with how they can template drive some of this. As I mentioned, you guys have more experience with your requirements, your data, and what you’d want. Would you be against this sort of a plan? Obviously much more discussion to happen about how to convert and further test, but wanted to put this out there as it takes a long time to figure these things out and figured you are welcome to benefit from the research I’ve put together thus far. 