Talk:Lost (TV series)/Episode guide

Episode Guide

Whoa, whoa, whoa here! When did we all agree to split the episode guide up into separate pages? One page for every episode?? I find it exhausting enough monitoring all the pages we already have... And now every episode will have its own page on Wikipedia? This is a recipe for dozens of poorly-written, crufty, vandalism-pron.e Lost pages. I was of the opinion that we needed to shorten the episode guide. We don't need a minute-by-minute description of every episode -- a simple one or two paragraph summary is totally acceptable. Who made this decision to create these episode sub-pages? I was extremely shocked when I logged onto WP today to see these massive changes. Danflave 16:26, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree. 24 episodes across 6 seasons means we'll have 144 pages of Lost episodes, plus probably a dozen or so special episodes. I think if we keep everything on one page and keep out fancruft it will be fine. After each season is done airing I think we can go through all the episodes and take out stuff that wasn't really important for that season. However, I'm not in favor of having an additional 150+ pages on my watchlist and going through all the extra work to keep an eye on every single one of those pages. Jtrost 17:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I didn't think there was a consensus yet, but I did make the point — having been through the individual synopses for grammar, typos and repetiton, etc. — that some of them were far too long. As a relative newcomer, I didn't want to barge in and start ripping out someone else's carefully honed content. Discordance made the point that there is an established format on Wikipedia for episodic series and gave some examples (see Talk:Episodes of Lost (season 1)#Clean-up). I merely commented that they seemed a sensible solution, and hoped that others would agree — nothing more. However, having now seen your viewpoint about the amount of extra pages to watch, etc., I'm beginning to have second thoughts... Chris 42 18:02, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

From some of Leflymans questions to me: From what I have seen in the talk pages there has been no consensus either way, yet many users still think the season articles are too long. In answer to your questions

• Why individual episode articles versus brief summaries?

It is standard practice to have episode articles. Just look in the Category:Lists of television series episodes the majority have list pages, with the major series like buffy, desperate housewives, south park, star trek etc... all have episode articles. Lost should not be an exception.

• How will quality be maintained on that many new pages? 25 pages would need to be created for Season 1 alone, which some editors feel would be a lot of work to monitor.

Many editors deal with far more pages, South Park has 140 episode pages, The Star Trek project looks after 100s of star trek episodes.

• How would such hypothetical new pages be named to prevent encyclopedic confusion?

there is currently a straw poll on disambiguating tv series underway, for now Star Trek and others set precendent. Episodes would be named Tabula Rasa (Lost episode)
From what I have read in previous talk pages there has been little progress in reaching a compromise and I cannot see another solution the series mentioned above have episode articles longer than your current summaries, someone has to do something and I am quite happy to do it. I will try to address some concerns before I do this but I do not intend to take a straw poll against the common standard: Wikipedia is not a democracy.
I have not made any changes yet, I have just created the list page in preparation. I do not think you need to shorten the summaries down, while it is more work separating the pages, I think this needs to be done, if not now at some point in the future. Discordance 18:46, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry for coming into this headlong, I was unaware of the large amount of previous discussion on this. I did not intend to start performing the splits without some discussion here, I had not yet got around to posting on this talk page about it and I hope I can reasonably convince you all to let me go through with this. Discordance 19:08, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I posted this to Discordance's Talk page, but some of my wording came across as somewhat strong (especially in light of his recent 19:08, 25 January 2006 addition). However, the gist is still the same.

I find it disconcerting that, as someone who has not contributed to the Lost page in the past, you have suddenly shown up to advocate a radical change to the article. In fact, you have not so much "advocated" as "forced a decision on everyone." I actually think you bring up some good points about splitting the episode guide up; however, your brusque manner and rude decision to go forward without discussing this with other Wikipedians is quite a turn-off. Also, will you be monitoring the possibly 150+ articles that will result from this change? We have had major, major problems with crufty, poorly-written material in the Lost pages and the dozen or so of us who regularly "patrol" the pages are genuinely concerned about the burden of keeping up with this new workload. I strongly suggest you Talk about this before proceeding. Danflave 19:12, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes I would be willing to add all the episode pages to my watch list, I doubt I could contribute much in the way of content but I will gladly help in formatting, infoboxs and patrolling Discordance 19:24, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Hmm I am slightly concerned now, Futurama seems to be operating both, It has an episode list along with individual episode articles and it has season break-downs like lost. Smallville and a few others also have season break-downs, while the majority still do seem to use episode articles the use of season break-downs seems fairly widespread. I think now a straw poll is probably appropiate to set up some guidelines as to which is more suitable, probably with the options:

• use both (see futurama lots of repeated information there though!)
• use a list and episode articles
• use season break-downs
• leave it to the regular editors to decide

Discordance 19:57, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

• I've come out against this in the past, and in fact think it is a crufty mistake in the instance of every TV show. There is not, nor will there ever be, sufficient useful information about a TV show episode to merit an encyclopedic article. I also believe that this "policy" developed because by the time the question was asked of the general community, editors for other shows, like "The Simpsons" and "Star Trek" had already begun making every episode a page. In other words, inertia has brought us this project policy. For example, the South Park episode for "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" was created before there was a Wikiproject on TV episodes, and I don't see any real discussion on this over at the Project page... just a lot of decrees that this is how it shall be. So, I think this is an issue that has never really been hashed out, and simply because other shows do it (not to mention the universally crufty nature of most of these shows' entries.... I mean look at what's cited: DH, Simpsons, Star Trek, Buffy, SP...), doesn't mean it's the right approach. If you wish to argue production info is important, it's my opinion that this is an example of the extremely specilaized minutiae we should be striving to avoid on Wikipedia. If you're thinking it's a good place for a long summary, that's what TWoP or any other number of sites is for. I could see including a link to the TWoP summary as part of a trimmed down season review, for example, but a page for each episode? Further, I disagree that you or any of us will really pay attention over the long haul once this is begun. Back when I joined, someone had just recently created articles for every single Babylon 5 episode out there. Today, unless it was a truly pivotal episode, like Sleeping in Light, it's basically empty (see Objects in Motion. Now, true, Lost is a bigger show than Babylon 5, but given the cruft war already being waged on the Lost pages, now is not the time to add another 40 pages to be policed (though, IMHO, there's never a time for it). Baryonyx 21:02, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Here's something to consider: adding a link at the end of every episode summary that brings the viewer back to the top of the page.--Kahlfin 21:19, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

How about as a compromise we get rid of a lot of the extra wording in the episode guides. Take this paragraph from the pilot for example:

A close-up of an opening eye shows the pupil contracting. The tops of trees in a bamboo grove are seen through the eyes of a man (who is later identified as Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox)) lying on his back in the jungle. A Golden Labrador Retriever dog trots past through the trees. Obviously confused to how he arrived there, the man gazes about at the idyllic surroundings when his memories rush back to him. With great effort, he sits upright, revealing blood on his shirt. He bolts upright and runs pell-mell through the jungle, emerging at a beach strewn with the wreckage of a jet airliner and almost 50 confused survivors of the crash. It is later revealed that the plane was torn apart in mid-air while travelling from New South Wales, Australia to California, United States. The fuselage of the jet is still burning and one of the engines is still in operation, though its speed waxes and wanes due to no apparent cause.

This is an example of brilliant prose, but is it really necessary? It sounds like someone was trying to write a novelization of the pilot. That entire paragraph can be shortened to something like this: "Jack Shephard wakes up in the middle of a jungle and sees a Golden Labrador Retriever run off. The fuselage from the plane he was in is burning on the beach with dozens of terrified and injured passengers crying out for help."

I think we can create a more synoptic guide without losing the overall quality of the article. Jtrost 21:23, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the solution is not expanding, but editing and tightening what we already have. It will certainly be a big project (and controversial, at that) to edit down the episode guide, but I think it makes sense. Wikipedia is not a fan page -- I can go to dozens (hundreds!) of fansites that have extremely detailed breakdowns of each episode. That's not our job here at Wikipedia. I think we can summarize every episode in 2-3 paragraphs at the most. I'd be willing to do this if we (the regular editors) are each assigned maybe 5 episodes to "trim." Thoughts? Danflave 22:03, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm willing to help. I'd be happy to tackle a couple (but only Season 1 — I'm in the UK and trying to stay spoiler-free). I know I'm relatively new to this site, but I'm already a sub-editor for http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2. I'm sure one of you guys would step in to correct any mistakes I made! I've done quite a bit of correcting so far on Season 1, but I'm not going to rush in and start trimming the major fat without the say-so of more established Wikipedians. Just let me know if you're happy to let me have a go, and if so, which episodes. Chris 42 22:43, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you on this now, I must admit I have not questioned previously the guidelines I had been following, while I do like individual episode pages for browsing they do make an awful lot of work and coupled with the dubious nature of the pages, I'm starting to go off them. I would like everyone to be following the same structure so the television section as a whole doesnt look a mess but I'm starting to doubt if that will ever happen. At the moment I'd suggest using the list page I created as a contents page to the full season breakdowns, I like there to be a full list somewhere of all the episodes. It gives a better general overview of the whole series Discordance 00:51, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

• Comment: I've already suggested to Discordence that a straw poll be taken on this matter. I'm staying neutral, as quite a while ago, I'd spoken in support of separate articles, but now I'd like to hear concrete discussions about specific options for improving the Episode sections. A more "formal" proposal about changes to the summaries should be made, as it's clear that there are those who would like to see them shortened significantly, and those who'd like to have long synopses.--LeFlyman 00:56, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

• Here are some guidelines that I threw together so we have something to work off of:

Episodes summaries...

• should be limited to 500 words.
• should not contain brilliant prose, fancruft, speculation, or original research.
• should only mention events important to the central character and his/her flashback, events that relate to the ongoing or future story lines, and events that emphasize the Story elements section in the main Lost article. Jtrost 04:16, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Everyone here seems agreed now to trim the brillant prose out of the summaries and I'm not convinced individual articles are a good idea anymore. When I said above you don't need to shorten the summaries, I was going on length alone, I hadn't read the summaries in depth by that point. I don't think shortening the lost summaries needs to be straw polled now theres no strong opposition to the idea unless theres editors not talking here. And if I do try to write a straw poll for the format of wiki episode guides my main focus is the list pages, I'd be happy to suggest people use a list page linking to season breakdowns or episode articles if they feel it necessary. Sorry I keep changing my mind, I hadn't thought this through before this discussion started! Discordance 02:03, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

• I like the guidelines Jtrost has put together. Those would do for the body of the episodes, especially since it clarifies that important future storylines should be included when possible (such as the discovery of the hatch or Michael deciding it's time to build a raft). As for other things I'd include, it looks like the episodes have all I'd ever include: Title, Original Airdate, Flashback, Writer, Director. If we have this and a 500 word summary (max... though I think we can get by on less, since some of them are already less than 500 words), and toss the trivia (which, TBH, I've never been a fan of, since they're pretty crufty, but deferred to concensus on), I think we can do a pretty good job cutting it down. It should be noted that it's not likely the size of the page will change drastically, but it'll sure look better. I also think we should drop every screen cap... I don't think they contribute much, if anything, to the episode summary, and the haphazardness with which they've been allocated makes the page look sloppy. Anywho, I'm thinking I'd like to do a practice run, the way we did the draft before the Great Lostcruft Excision of '05, so we can get a feel for the differences. I'll edit the Pilot, which weighs in at a hefty 1,300 words, down to 500 or less... where shall I place it? Talk:Episodes of Lost (season 1)/Pilot draft, perhaps? Baryonyx 06:16, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

• I'm not entirely sure where to put this, and I suspect I'll be busy at the office tomorrow, so I'll put what I've got here in NoWiki form for it to be moved wherever and mercilessly edited by you all in the morning. :) I realize it's a big clump o' text, but it should be easy to cut out of here and paste into wherever we'll place the draft without the NoWiki's. Note: as it stands, it's 519 words with 37 of those in Wikilinks, giving us 482 words. All 14 main characters and 2 minors have been linked to already, and there are line breaks and such... just they're not showing with the NoWiki tags in. The summary was removed after its test location was determined.Baryonyx 07:22, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I like the draft, Baryonyx. I put it in Talk:Episodes of Lost (season 1)/Pilot draft and did some minor copyediting to it. Most notably, I added a sentence where Charlie disappears into the airplane's bathroom. Jtrost 14:34, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Looks great, Baryonyx. Although, I'd like to have more input, especially from LeFlyman. LeFlyman - are you okay with this? Feel free to be opinionated instead of "neutral"! You are an important part of the Lost page, and I'd want to make sure you fine with all this. I agree with cutting out most of the screencaps (keeping maybe two or three just to give the page some variety). I actually think this will significantly shorten the page -- especially if you look at some of the unbelievably long Season 2 summaries! --Danflave 19:28, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Addendum A point was made on Talk:Episodes_of_Lost_(season_1)#Clean-up about the episode guide articles being rendered "useless" if the summaries were shortened, as Lost is too complex for this. While I disagree with this, I think it may be useful to include a link to a reputable episode guide page that includes more detailed summaries. --Danflave 21:03, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

So are there any objections to this, or can we start revamping the episode guide? Jtrost 04:25, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Jtrost - as far as I am concerned, yes. If you have time, you can start as soon as possible. If you would like to give me a few episodes to deal with, I'd be glad to help. However, you should begin doing this on a project page (i.e. the same way Baryonyx made his Pilot draft) and once we've completed the project, get some consensus and then transfer it to the main "Episodes of Lost" sections. --Danflave 20:59, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I've moved the Pilot draft page to: Talk:Episodes of Lost (season 1)/Drafts. We can put all the new episode guides there. I guess the easiest way to do this is just to have people volunteer for episodes. I'll do episodes 2-5. Anyone else who wants to help out, just post here beforehand so you don't end up doing the same episode as someone else. Jtrost 21:16, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm volunteering to work on "Deus Ex Machina", "Do No Harm", "The Greater Good", "Born to Run", and "Exodus" (all 3). It'll probably take me a few days to go through them... I'll start tomorrow. Baryonyx 06:23, 29 January 2006 (UTC) BTW, here's a list of all episodes, and who's working on them:

I moved the signup list to a subsection to keep it separate from the discussion. I've signed up for a couple more. Baryonyx, if you find that 500 words is too limiting for the Exodus episodes, I don't think it'd be a big deal if you went over as long as it's still a reasonable length. There's a lot that happens in those episodes, and it may be hard to limit it to 500 words. On another note, can we keep a link in this article to Episodes of Lost where it listed the table of contents for each season? Once there are many seasons this page can be an easy reference to every episode. While it may not seem that important now, I think it's something that we'll someday want. In order to keep it easy to maintain, we can simply call the templates from each season (we'd have to make a template for season 1, as the TOC on that page is still inline). Jtrost 19:19, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Someone just added Season 2 to the sign-up. Is this a mistake? This hasn't been discussed at all in this article or on the Season 2 discussion page, and a Season 2 draft page doesn't exist, so someone would have to create one before the summaries can begin. I wouldn't be opposed to the revamping of the Season 2 page (as the summary lenghts seem to be running completely rampant) but I think it should at least be discussed first. I am pre-emptively signing up to do The 23rd Psalm, but I think we should come to consensus on this first. --Kahlfin 19:27, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I added it because it has the same problems as season 1 with length and fancruft. I assumed that the same guidelines would apply. Is there something further that you think needs to be discussed? Jtrost 13:36, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you, I simply thought that something should be said on the talk page for Season 2. It doesn't matter that much, though. --Kahlfin 19:31, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I just sent messages to people who regularly contribute to the episode guides, but have not posted here. Hopefully that'll get more people in here. Jtrost 20:25, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree but disagree on some parts. What i think we should do is wait until the end of the 2 season before we shorten the details. Things that are needed are character development and major things that happen in the episode or over the course of the season.

I do have a question though. Are we making each episode a page or are we just shortening the summaries? --Heyer8472 16:33, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

For now, we're just creating a new page with shorter summaries --Kahlfin 19:24, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

All the episodes will remain on the same page, hence why we're shortening them. All the drafts should be put here (a page still needs to be made for season 2). Jtrost 19:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

has anyone made a season 2 page?, just asking--8472 19:36, 14 February 2006

No, when you finish an episode for season 2 put it here: Talk:Episodes of Lost (season_2)/Drafts Jtrost (^T | C | _#) 20:07, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

• I think we should get at least one image from each episode.- JustPhil 20:54, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

We can put a picture from each episode in the episode list. Having it in the guide would cause clutter and increase the page size, which is what we're trying to not do. Jtrost (^T | C | _#) 21:12, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Signup

Season 1 Pilot, Part 1: General Pilot, Part 2: Jtrost Tabula Rasa: Jtrost Walkabout: Jtrost White Rabbit: Jtrost House of the Rising Sun: Jtrost The Moth: Jtrost Confidence Man: Jtrost Solitary: Jtrost Raised by Another: Jtrost All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues: JustPhil Whatever the Case May Be: Jtrost Hearts and Minds: Jtrost Special: Baryonyx Homecoming: Kahlfin Outlaws: Baryonyx ...In Translation: Heyer8472 Numbers: Kahlfin Deus Ex Machina: Baryonyx Do No Harm: Baryonyx The Greater Good: Baryonyx Born to Run: Baryonyx Exodus, Part 1: Baryonyx Exodus, Part 2: Baryonyx Exodus, Part 3: Baryonyx

Season 2 Man of Science, Man of Faith: JustPhil Adrift: Heyer8472 Orientation: Baryonyx Everybody Hates Hugo: Baryonyx ...And Found: open Abandoned: open The Other 48 Days: open Collision: Danflave What Kate Did: Danflave The 23rd Psalm: Kahlfin The Hunting Party: Danflave Fire + Water: Danflave The Long Con: Kahlfin One of Them: Baryonyx Maternity Leave: Heyer8472 The Whole Truth: open Lockdown: open

• It's been a pretty busy week, so I've only gotten to some of these today. I'm working on TGG and BTR now, and just posted DNH. Hopefully, I'll get to tackle Exodus today too. Baryonyx 08:03, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

• I'm planning on working on Exodus today (hopefully get 'em all done, but we'll see). The way I'm going to do it is do Exodus, Part 1 in a similar fashion to general episodes, since, if I recall (having not watched it yet), the split between the groups occurs only at the end of the episode. For Exodus, Part 2 (I'm removing the "Part 3", since the DVD calls the 2 hours "Exodus, Part 2"), I'm planning on splitting it up into three distinct sections, "The Hatch", "The Raft" and "The Exodus", which deals with Jack's group, Sawyer's group, and Sayid's group respectively. Flashbacks are obviously outside of this, but every flashback but one (the last one as they all board), deals with what the characters did just before boarding. One sentence each and done, and they will be broken out the same as I've done with the other eps I've written. Also, since the "deleted scene" flashbacks are not actually re-inserted scenes, they are non-canonical, and I am not including them in these summaries. Baryonyx 22:56, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
  • OK, I've finished Exodus I and II. Exodus I, because of the many flashbacks, comes in at just about 600 words. Exodus II, because of its length and its diversity (there's really four major sections of this episode), comes in at about 1290. This is still pretty large, I agree, but keep in mind that before we started, the summaries were 800+ and 1900+ words (not including headers or trivia, either). Feel free to trim anything extra, since there's probably some room for trimming some out of these still. Also, if I don't see anymore taken next weekend, I'll probably take on three more to do next week. Baryonyx 01:44, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

• I finished Maternity Leave, but it may be a little long. I tried by best to shorten it. Heyer 16:55, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
• I finished Adrift and fixed Maternity Leave so it is now smaller. Heyer 22:10, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
• I finished .. In Translation and Baryonyx if you were going to do this episode, the discussion page on LOST Tv series page says that it was open, sorry if you wanted it. Heyer 00:19, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Mediation request

The mediation committee has accepted our request for a mediation about how to split up the episode page(s). Participants should set a watch on the new page: Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/Lost_episodes. --Elonka 01:56, 20 June 2006 (UTC)