Talk:Main Page

Welcome to the main page talk.

Editing contestants

One thing when categorising contestants, if a certain 'heriarchy' could be maintained, e.g.-

series winners/ coc winners/ finalists/ octochamps/ contestants of series xx/ contestants of coc xx

remove all those that don't apply. Love and peace y'all. User:Nebagram 1707 25 July 2007 amended 1718 same day.

My first impressions

A good start; however, the structure leaves much to be desired. We could have done with a chance to discuss things before giving it this level of unstructured content.

Firstly, what's with such categories as Episodes presented by Richard Whiteley and 9-round games? It makes more sense to categorise series than individual episodes in this way. Of course, that leaves specials, which it might make sense to categorise individually.

Moreover, was it one person's decision or the consensus of a small group of people to title episodes by the overall serial number as opposed to, for example, the series and episode-within-series number or the original broadcast date. That said, I'm not sure what I think is the ideal naming strategy here. -- Smjg 18:13, 31 July 2007 (BST)

1. Categorising by series is different to categorising by format because the finals used 14 rounds in the 9 round era. "Episodes presented by Richard Whiteley" is useful because there's no particular reason that presenters should change over at the end of a series (it was only a coincidence that Whiteley did so) although currently it could be done that way.
2. The naming of the episodes is by number because that seemed convenient, gives concise titles, and provides a useful sorting order for categories. Numbering by series and episode doesn't have any advantages over that. Original broadcast date might be useful, but it's problematic when multiple episodes are broadcast on the same day. We could create redirects manually, but that probably isn't fun. Soo 18:45, 31 July 2007 (BST)

And don't think multiple episodes on the same day won't happen - the series 53 quarterfinals 3 and 4 are proof of that. GJM 20:58, 31 July 2007 (BST)

Indeed. However, what is the practical use of categorising episodes by format? Especially considering that, as these categories grow, few people are going to browse them with any real aim. Moreover, the current system creates an inconsistency: we have a category of finals of the 9-round era, but no corresponding category of finals of the 15-round era. (Except that the very first grand final is categorised as a 9-round - is this correct?) -- Smjg 21:32, 1 August 2007 (BST)

I'm sure adding a category for finals or 15-round finals is no problem, should it prove to be needed. Which it probably is. And the -era categories are very handy as a check, to make sure no games are miscategorised, misentered or similar. GJM 21:44, 1 August 2007 (BST)

I take your point, I don't think categorising by format is fabulously useful. However, having the categories is harmless at worst, and if they do turn out to be useful adding them later would be a ton of work. They might be useful for some kind of automatic processing, even if they serve no purpose for human readers. Also, we do have Category:Grand finals, from which inferring the 15-round finals is not difficult if it were ever necessary. Soo 18:12, 4 August 2007 (BST)

Server compromise

What was the nature of the server compromise? Without any further information, it might look like the message on the home page was written by a scammer who has compr(om)ised the Reams account.

I've not been told exactly, but it's plausible that the database on which this wiki is run was stolen, including all the passwords. Of course the passwords are stored in encrypted form, but if you have a weak password or a hacker with a lot of time then it's certainly possible to break that. Soo 07:12, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Where I can find good quality films online

Where I can find good quality films? Can anyone help me?

You can use Channel 4's 4oD service, although that can consume a lot of bandwidth. I don't know of anywhere else that redistributes Countdown. Soo 10:05, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

People with the same name

Has anyone else noticed that a few contestants have had the same name. Look at Mike Brown and John Clarke for example, not to mention Linda Smith who was both a guest (indeed while I was on the show) and a contestant earlier on. Mglovesfun 16:22, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I have a hitlist of contestants with the same name, although it needs to be reviewed by hand. I'll post that when I get full Internet back (maybe tomorrow?) The guest/contestant clash issue hadn't occured to me though, I will have to check that out. I imagine it's fairly rare. Soo 21:47, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't believe they had two different Mike Browns only six days apart! Is it the later one that runs The Countdown Page? I'd imagine so - I remember the website being mentioned when he was on, and would certainly have noticed if the same name had cropped up again six days later.

We might need to start having disambiguation pages, or at least disambiguation links at the beginnings of pages. But what titles should we use? John Clarke (Series 11)/John Clarke (Series 49)? And when there are two in the same series - Mike Brown (first in Series 48)/Mike Brown (second in Series 48)? Mike Brown (Episode 3324)/Mike Brown (Episode 3328 et seq.)? -- Smjg 03:02, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

There are a few disambiguation pages already, which are named with the IMDB convention: Mike Brown, Mike Brown (I) etc. But I think I prefer the by-series convention, although the Mike Brown situation is a bit clumsier. Soo 11:07, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not with you. Mike Brown is, at the moment, an ambiguation page, i.e. it covers up the distinction between the three Mike Browns by treating them as one and the same. A disambiguation page, OTOH, is a page whose sole purpose is to list and link to different entities with the same name. And Mike Brown (I) doesn't exist at the moment. So what are you on about? -- Smjg 14:15, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I can't remember any actual pages like that, I was just illustrating the existing convention (which I think was set by Ben.) Most other pages are indeed ambiguous. I will post the list of potential problem pages today. Soo 17:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Don't drag me into this. Nebagram 18:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Episode titles

It's been suggested before that we title the episodes by date rather than by Mike Brown's fairly arbitrary numbering system (which long since desynched from the production team's numbering.) This would be:

• Easier to search.
• Easier to maintain.

I could rename the existing articles automatically so it's no big deal. Any thoughts? Soo 21:21, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I would certainly find indexing by date more useful, and would welcome it. However, how would you cope with (a) the semi finals of series 53 (I think that's the correct series), which were shown on the same day as each other, just after RW's death? (b) Coundown masters programmes, shown on the same day as a regular programme? I imagine (b) is no problem, as such programmes would be referenced from a different page, if indeed they appear here at all. Drawoh 22:26, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

The 53SFs could still be titled by date, but with some suffix, e.g. "First semi-final". This shouldn't be too hard. Soo 00:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

I personally prefer going series/heat number/qf, e.g. 57/GF for the most recent grand final, or 37/67 for a completely random heat. Maybe have the dates as redirects, and have MB's numbering also as redirect? Nebagram 22:57, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

That has all the problems of maintainence and searching as the existing system. Although I do like the idea of, say, "Series 53 final" redirecting to the relevant game. And yes, there'll be redirects all over the place. Soo 00:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Also I don't know where you got the desynching from given that the production team actually use Mike Brown's site whenever they need an archive. Nebagram 22:57, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

For example, the special 1000th episode was actually 1003. They also got numerous other anniversaries wrong (e.g. Susie's 1000 episode) so if they do use Mike's site, they don't do it very successfully. Soo 00:00, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Solution to the Mike Brown problem

See Mike Brown for my solution to the problem, if anyone has a better idea, change it, otherwise, shuddup! Mglovesfun 00:24, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Although I can't be bothered doing all of the ambiguous ones by hand, any chance of getting dumper to do it? Mglovesfun 14:29, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Serious wiki or not?

What's with articles like Jade Goody and everyone? At some point we're gonna have to decide if this is a serious projet or not, no? Mglovesfun 14:31, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I think we can have serious pages and frivolous pages, as long as the two don't interfere. We have pages about the DC guests for completeness, but I doubt anyone uses this wiki as a serious information source for them, and I don't mind them being a bit silly. The episode, contestant and series pages are held to much higher standards. You're right about everyone though. It is now an ex-article. Soo 18:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I still think Gevin and Zef deserve some sort of page, after all gevincountdown and Zef's Countdown summaries have pages on here, I think? I might have a crack at the Zef article when I'm drunk (no seriously I will). Mglovesfun 20:22, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not against them having pages if anyone can be bothered to write them. Soo 23:58, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Request an article

Also taken from the Wiktionary, how about a Countdown:Request an article page, people might come up with some articles that are missing. Mglovesfun 20:22, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Special:Wantedpages is a pretty good starting point. Soo 23:58, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Categories

I thought I would create Category:Countdown just as a way of keeping all the categories together, so something like Category:People could go in that category, just to make sure every is accessible via at least one category. Mglovesfun 20:16, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't seem like a bad idea. It also makes this more compact. Soo 23:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

OED

I think the Oxford dictionary pages are the ones most needed now. I'd do them myself but I'm not as well informed as other people such as Ben, so I'd prefer to leave it. PS I've finished my lists for now. Mglovesfun 19:44, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

St. John Daly

I was trying to access the above link from Series 4 but it doesn't work, I think it's directly linked to the URL because the URL is http://www.countdownwiki.com/St._John_Daly where as I think on the real Wikipedia it would code the . as something else. Mglovesfun 21:52, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

It's actually a rather subtle bug with the URL rewriter that allows us to have such pretty URLs. You can access the page via the long url until such time as I can devise a fix. Soo 01:36, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

That works alright but when I try and edit it, I can't. Mglovesfun 17:21, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure? The edit link works fine for me. Soo 18:15, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Even clicking on 'article' on the edit link brings up those 3 little numbers: 404. Nebagram 20:29, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Wiki addict?

Why do I try and sign my emails with four tildes? I should get out more. Mglovesfun 17:21, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I often try to do four tildes at the end of real-life conversations. Soo 23:00, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Lists of lists

Being a mathematical type, I always like lists. Something like List of guests by number of appearances would be quite interesting, admittedly not very interesting. I suppose the priority right now is to update the site so the end of Series 57 and the start of Series 58. Anyone interested? Mglovesfun 00:22, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I would definitely work on stuff like the Series tables which I can't build automatically. Most lists can be autogenerated at some point when I have more time. Soo 08:58, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice work on the new front page

That's about it, really. Mglovesfun 12:38, 2 April 2008 (BST)

Dictionary Corner guests

Almost all DC guests now have images, but one fiendish GotD has eluded me: Merrill Thomas. -Jturner 18:42, 2 April 2008 (BST)

9000th page

Richard James has the honour of having the 9000th page in his name. Hooray! The 10000th page should be along in about 2 or 3 years time, so that's one for the diary. This seems like a good time to say well done and thank you to everyone who's worked on the first 9000 pages, especially Ben Wilson, Howard Somerset and Martin Gardner who've put in a quite unreasonable number of hours. Thank you all. Soo 16:24, 11 April 2008 (BST)

What's in a name?

I think we should standardise on referring to people (especially contestants) by their surname. It reads much more professionally. Calling them by their first name makes it sound like we're chatting about our friends, which may often be true but is not really in the spirit of an encyclopaedia. Charlie 16:05, 27 April 2008 (BST)

I'm certainly not against it, but if you say Holden and Wills it makes it sound like your an American sports broadcaster, which is why I sometimes thing first names is a bit more British. Mglovesfun 16:33, 27 April 2008 (BST)

Useful new feature

If you head to this page, you can see the wikitext versions of all recaps written with the Recap Writer in the last week (starting from today at least.) This should make it much easier for us to grab the latest episodes and post them here, rather than waiting to the end of each series to do a huge dump of all the episodes. I've also fixed a number of outstanding bugs with the wikitext generation, although it's still not perfect. Charlie 10:22, 30 April 2008 (BST)

Only just found this comment. And used it yesterday to put one of my recaps on the Wiki. Any reason why it's limited to just the last week? One month might be more useful. I tend to work in batches, and I notice a lot of other people here do too. Drawoh 11:48, 2 June 2008 (BST)

No particular reason for the limit, I just didn't want the page to get huge. Everything is available in the database so I might make it browsable at some point. Charlie 10:35, 10 June 2008 (BST)

Doesn't help when someone puts a recap in five times, does it. Sorry about that. Got finger trouble last Thursday. Drawoh 12:49, 10 June 2008 (BST)

Since the Corral has been replaced by the Coundown DataBase, is there an equivalent place from which we can pick up Wiki formatted recaps for inserting here? As a rough estimate, I think this facility meant that I was able to put about six recaps onto the Wiki in the time it would otherwise take to do one. drawoh 11:00, 9 September 2008 (BST)

link changed from Corral to Countdown database drawoh 00:01, 18 September 2008 (BST)

Another decent idea

Just out of interest I'd like to see a List of number one seeds and so on... obviously I don't think a computer would find this difficult to work out. As far as I know you can't put a # in an article title. Mglovesfun 16:39, 11 June 2008 (BST)

Associated with that list could be an indication of how far they progressed. Drawoh 16:44, 11 June 2008 (BST)

Another good idea would be to talk about the behind the scenes element, such as the Yorkshire TV studios or the Green room for example, but I personally don't have enough information to write those articles. Mglovesfun 17:37, 19 June 2008 (BST)

1st of August

Can I trust someone to update the 'article of the month' featured on the 1st of August as I will be in the middle of rural France with no computer. Mglovesfun 14:03, 17 July 2008 (BST)

If nobody else has done it within a few hours of the start of August, then I'll have a go. I've located the August article. I think August is one of the few months this year when I won't be in France at all. Have fun. Drawoh 14:10, 17 July 2008 (BST)

I've made a couple of type corrections to the August article, but chickened out of activating it as Article of the Month, for fear of wrecking the Main Page. Can you have a look at it, Charlie? Drawoh 08:33, 1 August 2008 (BST)

Finally worked out how to do it. Drawoh 21:55, 8 August 2008 (BST)

Sorting surnames beginning O'

When setting up the page for today's winner Dan O'Hara, I gave him a default sort key of "Ohara, Dan". This would enable him to be sorted after a person such as John Ogden. This conforms to the British indexing standard, which decrees that punctuations are disregarded when determining indexing sequence. I see, however, that other similar names, e.g. David O'Donnell have been given a default sort key which includes the apostrophe, thus putting them all in front of someone like Annie Oakley. I believe the default sort keys for all O' people should be changed. Does anyone object? If not, I'll get on with it. drawoh 16:43, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

While you're at it, another standard that doesn't seem to be being followed at the moment: Mc should be sorted as Mac. -- Smjg 20:50, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd looked at Mc/Mac. But the British standard says that Mc should be sorted after the last of the names beginning Ma, and not merged with the Mac names. BT telephone directories specifically do not follow the British standard in this respect. I think we have the Mc names correct. I've just noticed that there are one or two others wrong though, and I'll fix them. drawoh 21:31, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Zero at front of dates

Someone seems to be randomly going through contestants' pages and removing leading zeros from dates of episodes. Looking back, I see that many series have dates shown without leading zeros, e.g. 1/04/2008, and others have leading zeros, e.g. 01/04/2008. Do we have a standard? The random removal seems to be very haphazard, it's as if someone once or twice a day is using the Random page facility, and then modifying the dates if necessary. If we do have a standard, and if I've not been following it, I'm happy to go through, in a more systematic manner than just picking random pages, and remove leading zeros. drawoh 08:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

My personal preference is to have a leading zero; I think the date column in the series episodes tables looks neater when all dates are the same length, but I'm quite happy to have them either way. However, I'll continue to put leading zeros in unless someone rules otherwise. drawoh 11:55, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

"Des the Pansy"

http://www.countdownwiki.com/index.php?title=Des_the_Pansy

Plus this redirect page, "Des the pansy":

http://www.countdownwiki.com/index.php?title=Des_the_pansy

Thoughts? (unsigned message)

I think Des the Pansy and Jade Goody should be deleted. Very unfunny both of them. Mglovesfun 20:17, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Episode and Series sort keys

Not an urgent problem, and one that I probably will have no interest in, as I'm likely to die before it gets important. Episodes have default sort keys of four digits, 0000 to 4732 (today's). Series have sort keys of two digits, 00 to 59 (the one that finished today). When we get to series 100 or episode 10000, the whole system of sorting episodes, sometimes by series number and sometimes by episode number, is going to break down. The first of these milestones will probably occur in 2029, so there's plenty of time to think about it. drawoh 04:52, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

QF, SF and Final episode sort keys

Up to now, these categories have had sort keys equal to the series number. I've just changed the relevant episodes for series 1 to 9 qf, sf and finals matches to give them two digits, so that they appear before before the series 10 episodes, but for the QF and SF categories, they still sometimes appear in random order within a series. One way to sort those correctly is to change the QF and SF sort key to ss,n for the nth qf or sf of series ss. However, all we're trying to do is to sort them into episode order, and the default key will do this just as well. I therefore suggest removing the cat key from the QF, SF categories (and for consistency from the final category), and use the default instead. Doing this would also delay the problem mentioned in the previous paragraph for a further 10 years. drawoh 08:47, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Countdown:Articles for deletion

I'd like people to have a look at this, I (we) won't delete the articles unless someone else posts a note of agreement. Mglovesfun 13:04, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I've added a couple more. Mglovesfun 23:12, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Appearances by lexicographers and guests

There are many discrepancies between the number of appearances shown on the wiki and on the countdown page. Sometime these should be checked and corrected. Probably the worst is Susie Dent's page, which shows her last episode as one midway through her maternity leave. drawoh 20:11, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Celebrity Countdown - missing links

The eight games played in the Celebrity Countdown series have little coverage. Five of the contestants don't have pages, neither do seven of the guests. These should all be easy to create. Also, only one of the eight games is recapped. We might need access to Mike Brown's notes to remedy this. drawoh 19:47, 8 May 2009 (BST)

Well done! They're looking good. I've just had a look at the one game that does have a recap page, and see that it's a summary only, and doesn't have episode details. There should be no difficulty in doing the same for the other seven. drawoh 11:34, 9 May 2009 (BST)

I'm pretty certain John Cole was the weather man, and yes, you've got the correct Andy Gray. drawoh 11:37, 9 May 2009 (BST)

Is the summary OK? I'm not too sure. But thanks for letting me do this, it's great fun, and I'm learning a lot about the wiki.

C2 summary looks good. Yes, probably "second episode" should be bold, to match "first episode". And the red link at the bottom needs attention. Have a look at what's done for that link in C1. Best way to learn about wiki is to try it. I've heard rumours that wiki handling may be brought into the national curriculum. You're doing well. drawoh 12:41, 9 May 2009 (BST)

Just one small thing- CC games were 7 rounders (LLNLLNC) rather than 9-rounders. Other than that it's good, and something that's long overdue. 86.157.20.244 14:12, 9 May 2009 (BST)

Oh for Christs's sake it be nice it I could stay logged in once in a while. Nebagram 14:13, 9 May 2009 (BST)

The Bamber Gascoigne cat looks good, so does C2, except that, as Ben mentioned, they're all 7-round games, and that itself will probably need another new category. drawoh 23:13, 9 May 2009 (BST)

Okey doke, I'll try and get that done. I think I've done skeletons correctly for the C-episodes, but there maybe a couple of mistakes for you to (if you'd be nice enough) rectify. :-) Countdown Kid 23:17, 9 May 2009 (BST)