Main Images

Yep, this was updated today indeed. You win the price for the first one on the forums to notice :-)

As for how to change the main image now, check out the bottom of the edit page, e.g. https://www.tvmaze.com/show/update?id=26806

The process was changed completely. Now the images are managed at the very bottom of "Edit episode" page https://www.tvmaze.com/episode/update?id=1606265

Note the drop-down list at the bottom.

Very inconvenient IMO.

tnt wrote:
Very inconvenient IMO.

I agree.

One would expect to be able to handle images while being in the gallery.

david wrote:
Yep, this was updated today indeed. You win the price for the first one on the forums to notice :-)

As for how to change the main image now, check out the bottom of the edit page, e.g. https://www.tvmaze.com/show/update?id=26806

Am I allowed to ask, who decided that it's a good idea? Now to upload a new main image, instead of one simple "add/set main" operation you need to upload image, then go to show's main page, click "edit", scroll to the bottom, chose the image from the bunch of small thumbnails, click to set. One hell of an improvement :)

Needless to say, that having "Main image" drop-down at the "Create show" page is awkward. You can't upload images to the show before you create the show, can you?

Also image changes are not reflected properly in the edit log.

tnt wrote:
Am I allowed to ask, who decided that it's a good idea? Now to upload a new main image, instead of one simple "add/set main" operation you need to upload image, then go to shows main page, click "edit", scroll to the bottom, chose the image from the bunch of small thumbnails, click to set. One hell of an improvement :)

Needless to say, that having "Main image" drop-down at the "Create show" page is awkward. You can't upload images to the show before you create the show, can you?

I agree with your observation, so far I cannot make sense of this change.

Aidan wrote:
I agree.

One would expect to be able to handle images while being in the gallery.

+1

At least for characters, you add image(s) on the image gallery page. But you edit them from... the Character edit page? Except for deleting, which you do from the gallery page. That seems awfully non-intuitive.

Also, what purpose does the Edit button for an image now serve? Apparently just to add/change the description, but no one except me and my stepfather apparently use that field. He uses it because he asked Jan, and Jan told him it helps with SEO. I started doing it from that.

Regardless, first of all that answers my original questions. I think. Thanks!

Secondly, it might help to let people know about the changes. I;m not the smartest person in the world, and I sure as heck couldn't figure them out. You move stuff to different pages, I'd suggest letting at least the people whose job is to maintain and protect the data know. :) I probably would have figured it out given time... but that's time taken away from entering data. :(

I suggested elsewhere we have a liaison. That's be the kind of thing a liaison would do.

tnt wrote:
Very inconvenient IMO.

+1

I was adding actor images today, and while I did figure out the change relatively quickly, I found it quite fiddly and irksome, not to mention it took longer.

The change was made for various technical reasons. The most important one being the "edit conflict" prevention: in the old setup, that didn't work for main images (since the data was stored at each individual image's level instead of on a single level where it can be tracked), which ment every user could come in and change a show's main image back and forth without limits.

We've also suffered from a bunch of bugs which caused a show/blog/article to be stuck having no main image at all; which is now fixed once and for all.

FWIW, we do still - like before - automatically set an image as main image where possible. The first image you upload for an episode will automatically be set as main image, without having to go through the episode edit page. And if the current main image is deleted, it'll automatically search for an alternative and apply it.

Do you all really need to change a main image after the fact so frequently that it'll highly affect your workflow? For example, if you are uploading multiple images for an episode you could just remember to upload the image that you want as main image first; no extra work is involved then.

I do agree that we should be better at maintaining the changelog. Sorry :)

If you uploading a new poster to the show – would it be automatically set as main, or you have to go through all routine to set it main manually?

Can't say about everyone else, but I do prefer to add images to episode gallery chronologically, as the scenes go in the episode, and the first image not always intended to be main.

I understand the technical reasons, but fixing internal issues at the cost of the editing comfort and contributor's time – not cool.

I upload the images into the gallery in order. So loading images 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 are loaded chronologically. But if for example image #5 is IMO the image that I think is the "best" to represent the episode as the primary episode image. Then I'd select it as the main episode image. See last night's Supergirl for an example.
https://www.tvmaze.com/episodes/1606265/supergirl-4x13-whats-so-funny-about-truth-justice-and-the-american-way

https://www.tvmaze.com/episodes/1606265/supergirl-4x13-whats-so-funny-about-truth-justice-and-the-american-way/gallery

For characters who almost always have a single image, not so much. Actors, as I noted, it can depend.

As I noted, see the MacGyver gallery page for how a show has ten images. If I'm understanding the description correctly, the first image would be the show image unless folks knew (or figured out) how to make #9 the show image. The first image is... not a good look for representing the show.

https://www.tvmaze.com/shows/5511/macgyver/gallery

So in answer to your question, David: for episode galleries, yes, it affects my workflow. For characters it doesn't. For actors and shows, it depends based on what I've seen other users do.

tnt wrote:
If you uploading a new poster to the show – would it be automatically set as main, or you have to go through all routine to set it main manually?

Can't say about everyone else, but I do prefer to add images to episode gallery chronologically, as the scenes go in the episode, and the first image not always intended to be main.

I understand the technical reasons, but fixing internal issues at the cost of the editing comfort and contributor's time – not cool.

+1 on the chronologically.

From what David said above, my understanding is the first thing added will always be the "main". So updating would tequire you to have to go through all the routine. Did I get that right?

On the technical over contributors' comfort and time... I can understand it. And we didn't lose any functionality as far as I can tell or David has said. It may be a "get used to it" kind of thing. As I noted, it would have been good to have a head's up on it. Even with a changelog, a liaison would be... liaisony. :)

david wrote:
We've also suffered from a bunch of bugs which caused a show/blog/article to be stuck having no main image at all; which is now fixed once and for all.

Interestingly, I just added an episode image and it didn't appear. I worked around it by adding the same image to the gallery a second time. The second image appeared on the episode page and then I deleted the first one. That's the first time that's ever happened to me.

If you need more detail, PM me. But if what I'm describing is similar to the bug above, I'd say it's not fixed. Or it's new. Or something.

tnt wrote:
n't say about everyone else, but I do prefer to add images to episode gallery chronologically, as the scenes go in the episode, and the first image not always intended to be main.

I do this too, as I tend to take screenshots as I watch an episode and they'll be sorted by the timestamp.

david wrote:
Do you all really need to change a main image after the fact so frequently that it'll highly affect your workflow?

The main point is that something that used to be easy is now difficult.

Updates should make things easier, not extend our workload.

Whelp. So for all of you the problem is only with uploading new images, right?

I see that David updated the changelog. And... it's not helpful, at least to me.

https://www.tvmaze.com/threads/5/site-changelog?page=2#48828

"Improve edit conflict protection for main images."

That's the "why", but it doesn't tell me what the "what" is. Or how it relates to the issue of main-image selection.

Nothing else there talks about main images at all, so I'm assuming that's the relative line. And maybe it's a work in progress. But at least to me, it's not very helpful. Or maybe I'm just a dope. :)

david wrote:
Whelp. So for all of you the problem is only with uploading new images, right?

I would understand it this way, that this is the biggest problem with the change.

david wrote:
Whelp. So for all of you the problem is only with uploading new images, right?

The thing is – we don't really need to shuffle existing images. There's rarely a reason for it anyway. At least there was :)