Listing Guidelines

From Uktvschedules

Current revision as of 11:05, 5 August 2007

This page defines the requirements of all TV Schedule entries made on this site. It is important that every schedule on this Wiki follows a standard recognisable format. Please read this page fully before submitting information. If you can't find the information you're looking for on this page, please visit our FAQ page.

Information Sources

Creating New Entries

To create a new entry, simply browse to the relevant date using the sidebar on the left hand column and then selecting the date from the calendar. If no existing entry for the date is available, then you'll be given a blank page to edit. Otherwise, you can click on the "edit" tab at the top of an existing listing to edit it.

Enter vs. Import

If you're entering information for just one or two dates for just a single channel, typing in the information shouldn't take too long. If you hope to enter a larger volume of information, you may want to consider using an OCR program to scan pages you have available. Once in text format, the information can be reformatted using a macro process, and then pasted into the Wiki. I've created a guide on this here.

If you're going to type the listings, you may still want to scan the page(s) before you start. That way, you can arrange your windows on the screen so that you can see the image of the page alongside your web browser. It's then easier to type the information as you don't have to take your eyes off the screen (er, unless you have to look at the keyboard when you're typing!).

However you create the information, please follow the Schedule Format guidelines given below.

Schedule Format

The easiest way to see how entries should be properly formatted is to look at an existing one and then click "edit" or "view source" from the tab menu at the top of the page. The rest of this section describes the formatting in detail.

Table of Contents

A table of contents is required for every entry. This will take the form of a breakdown of TV channels for the given day. To create a table of contents, simply enter __TOC__ in the first line of your entry. Everything else is handled automatically. (table of contents will appear automatically even without this line, but only if there are a minimum of 4 sections (4 channels) on a page. This isn't always the case, so please enter this line to ensure it appears).

Sections/Headings

Each entry should be broken into sections, one section per TV channel. The heading of each section should be the name of the channel. The naming of the channel should be relevant to the date being entered (i.e. BBC1 or BBC One, ITV or ITV1). Channels should be listed in the following logical sequence- BBC1, BBC2, ITV, Channel 4, Five.

Create section headings using double equals surrounding the text like so ==BBC1==.

Subsections are required when entering regional information (see Regional Variations). In this case 3 equals symbols are used like so ===Granada===.

Citations/Sources

It is not possible to use the <ref> method of citation on this free Wiki.

Always quote the source of your information. Where listing a day's schedule for a given channel, list your source as the first line below each channel heading.
e.g.
==BBC1==
Source: Radio Times 7-13 November 1981.

If your source is a website, please quote the name of the website, followed by a link to that site (that site may also show their source as being, for example, the Radio Times. You may want to add this as well).

Repeat your citation for each channel listed, even if all the schedule information comes from a single source.

There may be occasions where you only have partial information for a given channel's schedule for a particular day. In these cases, please quote your source for each timeslot entered and enclose it in angled brackets
e.g.
;22.00 Nine O'Clock News : with John Simpson <source: Radio Times 7-13 November 1981>

Time Format

All programme times should be listed in 24 hour clock format, GMT (or BST implied). Therefore am/pm should not be used. Hours and minutes should be separated by a decimal point. e.g. "22.00".

Schedule Entries

Schedule entries themselves should be listed as a Wiki definition list. This is very straightforward.. begin a new line, enter a semi-colon followed by the start-time of the show and the name of the show. Follow this with a colon, and then a brief synopsis of the show (if any).
e.g.

;22.00 The News At Ten : with Sir Alastair Burnet

There are occasions where a particular timeslot is given a particular theme by a channel (programmes for schools and colleges would be an example) but is made up of any number of "sub-programmes". Take a look at the entry for BBC2 on 13 November 1999. Here you'll see "Asia 2" in the morning, and "Doctor Who Night" in the evening which are both made up in this way. The "sub-programmes" should be indented with a bullet-point. This is done by just including an asterisk symbol after the semi-colon. But you also need to start a new line before the colon character to ensure this displays correctly in both IE and Firefox (I haven't checked with other browsers). Also ensure that you leave a blank line after each "sub-programme" when you do this, otherwise, again it will not display correctly in all browsers.
e.g.

;20.55-00.50 Doctor Who Night : Tom Baker introduces an evening of programmes celebrating the time-travelling hero.

;*21.00 Doctor Who-Adventures in Space and Time
: Documentary tracing the history of Doctor Who

;*21.40 The Pitch of Fear
: Comedy starring Mark Gatiss from The League of Gentlemen

Listings magazines usually contain at least a small synopsis of each programme. It will obviously add to your typing, but if possible we would like to include that information here. On the other hand, we don't want TOO MUCH information. The synopsis should be no more than about 50 words (usually a lot less). If you're a fan of a particular show and want to enter a full breakdown of what happens in a particular episode, please DON'T. There are other websites around for that kind of information.

Regional Variations

Regionals variations for BBC channels tend to be quite minor, often just having differing news programmes, or having different programmes affecting just one or two timeslots. For these, show just the exceptions following the main listing as shown here.

Variations between ITV programming regions can be more drastic. Here, we really need to show a complete listing for each region. An example of this can be found here.

For both of the above, head the individual region name with a sub-heading using 3 equals symbols like so ===BBC Scotland===. The 'main' channel listing, and all region listings should be followed by a seperator line, which is produced using 4 dashes like so ----.

Information sources can vary between region (e.g. different editions of TV Times) and so should be cited seperately for each region. An outline of how to do this is here.

ITV regions should be listed in alpabetical order.

Category Information

At the very end of each page of information, a category tag needs to be added. This is to link the listing for a particular date back to the year's calendar page. To do this, enter the following:
[[category:yyyy| mmdd]]

where:

• yyyy = the listing's year e.g. 1984
• mm = the listing's 2 digit month e.g. 03
• dd = the listing's 2 digit day number e.g. 05

So for the 5 March 1984, this would be:
[[category:1984| 0305]]

Make sure that you enter the 'space' before the month and date as above. This is important to ensure that dates are listed in the correct order on the category page.

If ALL of the information for the available channels for a given date, including regional variations, has been entered, that page is considered complete and should be protected from further update. Please leave a message with the Admin of this site mentioning the dates of any complete pages so that this can be done.

Schedules vs. Actual Broadcast

Often, programmes or the timing of programmes can vary from the schedules originally printed. This can be for various reasons such as when a live programme or event overruns, or when a particular programme is cancelled or postponed.

We currently only plan to archive here the original schedule information. Where variations exist between the schedule and what was actually broadcast, currently this will not be shown. We may review this in the future and make a decision on how such information should be entered. Please enter your views on the Admin talk page.

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