Would it be possible to remind people of this more often?
I just opened a thread with numbers in the title that I thought referred to an episode when actually they referred to a date. Took me a moment to realise what had happened and by then I’d been spoiled for several major plot developments. Part of the reason is that American date formats are different to ours in the UK, so I don’t see 3/14 (for example) and immediately think of it as a date.
It also makes it really hard to find threads about specific episodes if they’re not the first page. Sometimes I get so into watching something that I want to read an old thread about it even if I don’t want to resurrect it with a new post, and, not knowing the date the episode aired, it can take ages finding the appropriate thread.
Numbers - like if the title were 4.3 or 4/3 are too short to search for anyway using VB search. Even if you use Google to search the boards, numbers like that are too common - they’ll throw up loads of results. That applies even to people who do remember exactly when the episode first aired - and I bet tons of people forget.
So could mods please occasionally remind people to word their titles in more helpful ways?
I run into this a lot at work. Which is why I always use the ISO date format:
YYYY-MM-DD, for example, “3rd of April 2002”, in this international format is written: 2002-04-03.
Or, in cases where I am sure that all the recipients understand english: 3-Apr-2002 or 3 April 2002.
That would help with searching if you know the date, but people not in the US might not know the date and people looking for older threads might not remember the date.
Episode numbers aren’t a panacea either – people don’t necessarily know what the episode number is*, so they can be even less meaningful than the “backwards” date problem between Brits and Yanks.
I’m not sure what the answer is – I wasn’t a mod when the “use the episode date” decree came down. Would people using written-out months help? Jan. 18 rather than 1/18?
Opinions are welcome on this from not only the OP but anyone who reads TV threads.
twickster, Cafe Society moderator
*I never do, for instance – where do you get them from?
The decree was not to use solely episode titles, I thought. Dates in the titles do make sense for lots of people - it’s having only dates in the titles that doesn’t make sense.
The ideal for me would be for the thread starter to put the air date and the episode number and/or name in the thread title, unless the whole lot makes the title too long. Usually it wouldn’t - like, say, ‘Dollhouse 01/15 (S2E12 The Hollow Men)’. That looks stilted, but thread titles for individual episodes aren’t usually very creative anyway because that would tend to be spoilerish.
I just know the episode numbers and titles, usually. You can also scan through IMDB for them. The IMDB nearly always does list the original air date, too, though it tends to have the intended air date rather than the actual one if the date got changed and you still end up with the problem of dates being difficult to search for.
The main principle is that the thread title should indicate which episode is being discussed, to make it easier for readers. Whether that’s original air date, title of episode, number of episode, etc. pretty much depends on the situation, doesn’t it? I certainly don’t want us to have rules that specify or require such; we don’t need more rules to patrol. I guess the best bet would be to ask people to kindly use a date format that’s not confusing based on language (Apr-1 or 1-Apr rather than the ambiguous 4/1).
My guess is that the air dates in different countries are usually far enough apart that the original thread is forgotten by the time the show opens in another country?
Isn’t there a little context here? It’s January. If I see a thread title referencing a 1/11 episode I’m not normally going to assume it was an episode broadcast last November.
Yeah, but if you’re doing a search later, that context is getting a little murky, though I guess you could also check the date of the last post … which might not help if someone comments a month later in a thread about a June 7th show.
Doesn’t seem to be a biggie to me to ask people to use a three-letter month abbreviation instead of a number for to indicate the month.
I’ve put it in the “Guidelines and Etiquette” for Cafe Society, about thread titles. We’re not going to require it – monitoring would just be too difficult – but it is certainly a courtesy to other readers to be clear.
I never use all numerals in dates - 1-9-10 - what is that? January, September, or October? My dates are always 9-Jan-2010. 14 years working in accounting departments has my tolerance for ambiguous dates waaaaaay low.
In addition to Dex’s update of the guidelines, I’ve made an announcement at the top of Cafe Society. (Let’s face it, most people don’t read the rules every time they visit the forum.)
Thanks. I wasn’t thinking of it as a new rule - too many rules are rarely a good thing. I just wanted people to occasionally be reminded that it’s good manners to give others the best chance of knowing which episode they’re talking about, and you’ve done that, so I’m happy.
@Little Nemo: Not if you’re used to the month coming after the date. Even though I Americans write 1/13 for 13th of January, it’s still kinda difficult to force my brain to see that as a date rather than a series + episode sequence, partly because there aren’t 13 months so it’d never work as a date in the UK or the other places that use day-first placement.
In my experience, US Americans are pretty good with using a standardized date. Canadians, however, are like herding cats when it comes to dates. Working with cheques with labelled boxes for DD MM YYYY, people here still manage to get it wrong.
I am an American, and that throws me sometimes. Unless I’m at a friend’s house, I watch all my TV online, where the original airdate is not as important as series and episode number.
BTW, what do y’all think of posting links to the official online version? I tend to want to do it, so that people who missed the episode can quickly watch it to know what we’re talking about. Do people like that, or is it just annoying?
Providing a link is nice – if someone isn’t interested, they don’t have to click on the link, so if the link is clearly labeled, I’m not seeing where “annoyance” would come into it.
Absolutely. Any system that leaves 132 dates a year ambiguous is inefficient. Is it really that harder to write Dec. 1st or the twelfth of Jan. rather than leave me wondering which numbering system you’d prefer?
