Organizing Guest Cast by Category

I thought the guest star system works on appearances, the more someone appeared, the higher he will be shown in the list, however I am not entirely sure, I will ask David for you.

I thought the guest star system works on appearances, the more someone appeared, the higher he will be shown in the list, however I am not entirely sure, I will ask David for you.

Well, I'm adding a lot of first-time guest stars and actors in the last few days, and they're still showing in some kind of random order. When an entire episode consists of one-and-only appearers, one wonders how the system sorts them.

But if # of appearances is how it sorts them... I wouldn't recommend it. :) Joe Blow as Security Guard #3 on Star Trek may appear a dozen times, but he doesn't deserve to be listed over Ricardo Montalban or Joan Colllins!

I appreciate you asking. You might also ask David the second question above: why do we categorize guest stars into three categories, when the categories don't seem to do anything? "For future use" would seem to be the answer, but, hey, as somebody or another once said, the future is now! :)

I thought the guest star system works on appearances, the more someone appeared, the higher he will be shown in the list, however I am not entirely sure, I will ask David for you.

Well, I'm adding a lot of first-time guest stars and actors in the last few days, and they're still showing in some kind of random order. When an entire episode consists of one-and-only appearers, one wonders how the system sorts them.
But if # of appearances is how it sorts them... I wouldn't recommend it. :) Joe Blow as Security Guard #3 on Star Trek may appear a dozen times, but he doesn't deserve to be listed over Ricardo Montalban or Joan Colllins!
I appreciate you asking. You might also ask David the second question above: why do we categorize guest stars into three categories, when the categories don't seem to do anything? "For future use" would seem to be the answer, but, hey, as somebody or another once said, the future is now! :)

Well I will point him to this thread, so he could answer it by himself, that would be much better :)

Thomas is right, guest- as well as main cast entries are currently sorted based on the amount of appearances for their character.

And you're pretty much right in terms of the categorization. We added the feature in the backend so it can be specified, but we didn't get around to actually using the data in the front-end.. before now noone had asked about it :-)

I still like having the sorting based on the amount of character appearances, since it's a lot better than nothing (random ordering) when there was no ordering specified.

If we'd add support for the three Guest Star categories in the front-end and make sure the most everyone in the most important category is listed on top of the page; would it be OK in your eyes to base the ordering within that category on the appearance count?

Well, whatever you want to do is okay with me. :)

But sure, your idea in the last paragraph sounds fine.

I suppose the other issue is organizing show cast. They also seem to be randomly sorted, at least when initially added to a show. This leaves the order sometimes... less than optimal. For example, here, Scott Bakula is listed third.

Or here, William Shatner is listed after Leonard Nimoy. Shatner would never stand for that!

Or here, the uncredited Bob Johnson is listed first.

Some are relatively minor. Maybe they all are. :) But I could see someone arriving at a page and wondering, "Wait, why is LInda Park listed higher than Scott Bakula?"

And some pages, the order seems to be exactly how the SAG listed them onscreen.

Yep, I second what gadfly said, special guest star, then guest star, then co-star..... how it is sorted within those categories is debatable, either how it was added, alphabetically or I do not know :)

cheers
Juan

While we're on the topic... perhaps a way to Manage multiple cast at one time?

If I understand the available process correctly, if you want to edit, say, 10 cast members (say, changing them from Guest Star to Co-Star), you have to go to the Cast List, scroll to the bottom, and click Manage. Then you have to find the person you want to edit. Then you make the change. Then you click on Update.

That takes you back to the cast list. Then you have to scroll to the bottom, click Manage again, find the person you want to edit, make the change, and click on Update. Repeat eight more times.

Doing them one at a time seems... kind of cumbersome.

While we're on the topic... perhaps a way to Manage multiple cast at one time?
If I understand the available process correctly, if you want to edit, say, 10 cast members (say, changing them from Guest Star to Co-Star), you have to go to the Cast List, scroll to the bottom, and click Manage. Then you have to find the person you want to edit. Then you make the change. Then you click on Update.
That takes you back to the cast list. Then you have to scroll to the bottom, click Manage again, find the person you want to edit, make the change, and click on Update. Repeat eight more times.
Doing them one at a time seems... kind of cumbersome.

Yes i agree gadfly, this bugged me several times too already, this should be an easy fix for david, I will address this to him or I guess he will just reply here tonight :)

cheers
Juan

For that matter, putting the Edit/Manage buttons at the top of the screen (perhaps off to the side?) would be helpful. i understand that having them at the top might interfere with a casual visitor viewing the page. But for people doing editing and managing, having it out of the way at the bottom means that... it's out of the way and relatively difficult to reach.

I'm down with whatever you choose, though i'm a credits person and I would go with credit order and not amount of appeareances because that is not faithful to the show.

You may have a problem if you don't use a system of ranking ? I think ranking would work also as well.

Gadfly and i work exactly the same way in that instance. I add while the episode is running, in order of credit order.

And i agree with gadfly's last statement as well.

One thing I have noticed is that not only is there no system of ranking. But that the edit order (and maybe the display order on the episode pages) changes from edit to edit.

So if I'm managing 10 cast members, Person A will be at the top of the list.

But then, if I change Person A (say, fix a typo in the name), when I go back to the Manage page, Person A is now second. Or third. Or tenth.

Or the guest stars will be listed one way. But then if I add an image, they're listed a different way.

It's kinda confusing.

Gadfly wrote:
One thing I have noticed is that not only is there no system of ranking. But that the edit order (and maybe the display order on the episode pages) changes from edit to edit.
So if I'm managing 10 cast members, Person A will be at the top of the list.
But then, if I change Person A (say, fix a typo in the name), when I go back to the Manage page, Person A is now second. Or third. Or tenth.
Or the guest stars will be listed one way. But then if I add an image, they're listed a different way.
It's kinda confusing.

Guest stars with images are always "prioritized" , but I am all with you, david and jan should display them in order of entering, because I also usually enter them from on screen credits.

cheers
Juan

Ah. Well, it's an incentive to add images.

Then again, it's not an incentive if you don't know it's an incentive. :)

Gadfly wrote:
Ah. Well, it's an incentive to add images.
Then again, it's not an incentive if you don't know it's an incentive. :)

At least I think it is an incentive , not entirely sure :)

I disagree here.

We shouldn't order cast members based on the order they were entered to TVmaze. That's completely arbitrary and not maintainable; imagine you added 20 guest stars and then realise you forgot the very first one. You'd have to delete all the entries and start over before you could get the first one to appear on top.

Ordering the guest stars manually could be done, with a system where you could specify an order for each entry. But that's a huge amount of work on top of entering the entries in the first place and thus most people would probably never do it (correctly). And in all those cases the ordering would end up undefined.

Ordering them based on their importance (the amount of appearances for that character) throughout the show is a great compromise. In 95% of the cases this properly reflects the characters' importance, and.. it's completely automatic!

I'll definitely still be adding the grouping on Special Guest Star / etc.

JuanArango wrote:
At least I think it is an incentive , not entirely sure :)

It's not :-)

david wrote:
Ordering the guest stars manually could be done, with a system where you could specify an order for each entry. But that's a huge amount of work on top of entering the entries in the first place and thus most people would probably never do it (correctly). And in all those cases the ordering would end up undefined.
Ordering them based on their importance (the amount of appearances for that character) throughout the show is a great compromise. In 95% of the cases this properly reflects the characters' importance, and.. it's completely automatic!
I'll definitely still be adding the grouping on Special Guest Star / etc.

The solution would be to say how it should be ordered, if you want to go that route. Or make it intuitive. And for the love of god, don't do it ass-backwards like TVRage did!

I'm not sure if you mean it's a huge amount of work for the people making the contributions. But... it isn't really. First person they put in, they add a 1. Second person, they add a 2. If it's a simple intuitive system, people are more likely to use it. It's when you do the ass-backwards thing that it becomes a problem. First person is... 95? 90? 10? What?

If it's a huge amount of work for you to set it up, sure, don't do it.

Importance based on appearances doesn't always work. A lot of the times, you have somebody like a recurring Guard #3, or Redshirt #1, ending up in more appearances than a single guest star. Having at least three GS categories (GS, Co-star, SGS), would help that to some degree.

david wrote:
It's not :-)

It is for me. :) I want the person to show up near the top, it gives me an incentive to find an image and submit it. Otherwise, I might not bother.

Gadfly wrote:
It is for me. :) I want the person to show up near the top, it gives me an incentive to find an image and submit it. Otherwise, I might not bother.

Sorry, I ment: having a picture doesn't currently influence the position of a cast member in the list.

Regarding the topic - I'll first implement the sorting based on Guest Type in the near future. We'll see how that works out, and after a while we can talk about whether we still need/want additional sorting.