Forum:Recaps

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The Dragon Demands beat me to the recap this week and has taken a different approach to structuring it - separating the storylines by location. I used to do something similar for The Wire but have tended towards replicating the scene order of the episode while writing recaps more recently. I think this provides utility for someone who missed a portion of the episode. I wonder if the other editors here have a preference?--Opark 77 12:10, April 24, 2012 (UTC)

I was trying to find a solution to the "wall of text" problem by breaking the summary down into sections: on wikis I've seen for cable TV shows they usually do this by Act break (commercial breaks) but because HBO doesn't have these its less easy to define. I'm also torn on which is better, I wanted to experiment around on this to see what everyone thought: breaking it up by location makes it easier to read, though this doesn't reflect the order it aired in. This might be an issue in episodes where characters actually travel between nearby regions - i.e. someone leaves King's Landing but arrives in the Riverlands that same episode. However, we could at least break it up between the three major story regions "At and Beyond the Wall", "In the Seven Kingdoms", and "Across the Narrow Sea"; though "In the Seven Kingdoms" would usually get split up between "At Dragonstone", "In the Stormlands", "In the Westerlands", etc. If a character travels from Dragonstone to King's Landing, or King's Landing to the Riverrlands within the same episode, we could just leave it as "In the South", while actions happening around Winterfell but not at the Wall would be "In the North". The regular wikipedia entries for the book series handle the plot the same way, with such subdivisions. -->If we *do* split it up by location, I'd advocate downgrading "Synopsis" from a second-level header, that is, equal to "Plot" - it uses up an entire header bar level, and as a result I'm doing to tier-four headers for the subsections within "Plot". That is, "Synopsis" isn't really separated from anything other than "Recap", and really, its all part of "Plot" -- so either make "Synopsis" co-equal with "Plot", or a subsection of "Plot". --The Dragon Demands 16:55, April 24, 2012 (UTC)

I don't like this:

Plot

In the North

Because synopsis is part of plot. I was fine with this:

Plot

Recap

In the North

Its not like there will be any need for lower level headers beyond this.--Opark 77 17:14, April 24, 2012 (UTC)

Well other major wikis like Memory Alpha don't even list the official synopsis separately: http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/In_the_Pale_Moonlight_%28episode%29

Putting Synopsis as its own higher-level category, on-par with the "Recap", just makes the headers in the recap smaller. My point is that *by definition*, the synopsis will never be more than a paragraph long, so this doesn't really merit a top-level header, particularly because it means making the other subheaders less prominent. Alternatively, the "synopsis" could be put at the top of the page, above the table of contents, and not given its own actual "header" bar at all. While we won't use headers below level-four (four equals signs), even the level-four headers are harder to distinguish in the middle of a lot of text, relative to a level-three. What specific reasons are being given for giving a top-level header to a paragraph-long synopsis?--The Dragon Demands 17:21, April 24, 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the Dragon, specially regarding the Wall of text.--Gonzalo84 17:48, April 24, 2012 (UTC)

Your solution was to move synopsis from a level 3 header to a level 2 header so your arguments about the validity of having a "higher level" header for synopsis make no sense to me. The size of the font in the headers is a non issue to me - headers are about organizing an article and I think that logical organization supersedes worries about the font size of the headers. In answer to your question "What specific reasons are being given for giving a top-level header to a paragraph-long synopsis?" I don't understand why you are asking me this. As far as I can see it was your suggestion to make synopsis a top level header. I am arguing that synopsis should remain a subheader of plot because the synopsis is a version of a plot summary just like the recap.--Opark 77 21:24, April 24, 2012 (UTC)

I haven't been clear: I'm suggesting three alternate things:

1 - Make Synopsis a level-2 header (what "Plot" is now), separate from "Recap".

Plot

In the Stormlands

2 - Make Synopsis a level-3 subsection of "Plot", *alongside* other subheaders of equal rank which discuss the actual plot.

Plot

In the Stormlands

3 - don't make Synopsis its own subsection, but stick it at the head of the article, above the table of contents.

"HBO's canned synopsis of the episode"

Table of contents box

Plot

In the Stormlands

Yes, the size of the font headers is the issue at stake here: a level-2 subheader even gets a line under it, though level 3 does not. Level 4 (the current situation) is so small that it is difficult to read and doesn't quite fulfill the job of breaking up the "Wall of Text".

The current situation of having "Plot" with two subsections "Synopsis" and "Recap" doesn't really make much sense: a Synopsis is not part of "the Plot", its a brief summary of what happens in the episode. Ultimately it means we're forcing an entire huge page to work with smaller headers, harming ease of reading, for the sake of a single paragraph. I'll do whatever you guys think, but I wanted to point this out. --The Dragon Demands 21:41, April 24, 2012 (UTC)

The current situation of having "Plot" with the main subsections "Synopsis" and "Recap" makes perfect sense. The synopsis is nothing but a brief summary of the plot of the episode. It makes no sense to separate it from the plot to my mind. I don't like any of the suggestions you have posited and prefer the structure as it stands. If the concern here is the length of the article necessitating too many subsections then perhaps we should have the recap as a subarticle so that you can use the highest level header (==) for each of your subsections by location. I strongly disagree that level 4 headers are difficult to read. Perhaps you need to adjust your browser settings? If you are having trouble reading those headers how are you coping with reading the body text of our articles? I also strongly disagree that lower level headers do not break up the text. They clearly do. Finally I would like to add that illustrating our recaps helps to break up the text and improves readability.--Opark 77 23:13, April 24, 2012 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I agree that adding pictures helps break up the text, I just still think its not enough.--The Dragon Demands 23:19, April 24, 2012 (UTC)

The wall of text problem can be reduced by not going into so much detail as I've seen on the Season 2 synopses. For Season 1 we had shorter summaries that still hit every single plot beat and action without having colossal paragraphs detailing things down to a level that is really not necessary. To be honest, I've strongly considered rewriting the S2 episode summaries to lose the unnecessary details, such as people exiting and entering rooms and getting up from tables, but didn't want to lose the hard work done by our editors. In addition, whilst it is tempting to break the action up by location (it aids conciseness), it may also become too restrictive. Look at this week where we had to move the entire Stormlands section around because of the episode's cliffhanger ending. If we do need to break up the summary and if the consensus is that we do need the current level of detail, it may simply be more worthwhile doing it by scene. GoT has longer and thus fewer scenes than most TV shows, so this may not be as impractical as it sounds. It also gives us a basis for providing screencaps (1 screencap per scene, as HBO prefer it if we keep the screencaps to a 'reasonable' level) and - possibly highly usefully - it allows us to provide links to specific scenes, which may be useful for other entries (so when someone mentions an event or does something important, we can link right to the exact scene rather than the episode in general). As for the synopsis issue, we can simply move the plot summary up to the 2nd or 3rd paragraph (so 1st paragraph: xxx is the 4th episode of etc; 2nd paragraph: written and directed by, aired on; 3rd paragraph: brief synopsis, Plot header).--Werthead 19:03, April 25, 2012 (UTC)

Very good then, ser. So this was "option 3" above? Put the synopsis above the table of contents? But no to the "locations" thing because this would be too restrictive, particularly with intersecting plots? What about at least a tripartite division between "At the Wall", "In the Seven Kingdoms", and "Across the Narrow Sea"? Yes the summaries in season 2 have been kind of long...though we do have a full year after season 2 ends to play around with making it more concise; I'm more worried that we won't catch up with all the work before the next week's episode. --The Dragon Demands 19:13, April 25, 2012 (UTC)

Yes, dividing it by 'At/Beyond the Wall', 'In the Seven Kingdoms' and 'Beyond the Narrow Sea' could work very well. The book wikis use a similar structure to that and it works excellently.--Werthead 02:45, April 26, 2012 (UTC)

I've tried rewriting the plot section of The North Remembers with these suggestions in mind. I have written a plot summary using geographical divisions for subsections and moved the recap to a subarticle (The North Remembers recap) where I have split it into scenes. I have moved the synopsis up to form a second paragraph of the lead. What do you think?--Opark 77 08:32, April 26, 2012 (UTC)

Excellent! That's a great solution which solves both issues (overlong articles versus the need for detail and depth) in one go. I like that (even if it does mean now having 3 articles per episode, but we have infinite space so why not?).--Werthead 12:25, April 26, 2012 (UTC)

Great. So the new plan is to 1 - put the "synopsis" in the header above the Table of Contents, 2 - use basic subdivisions of "At the Wall", "In the Seven Kingdoms", and "Beyond the Narrow Sea", and 3 - make a longer scene by scene recap as a sub-page.

Well, we'll get to playing around with the exact size of what should be in a dedicated hyper-detailed "recap" page in the yearlong furlough while waiting for season 3. Right now I'll be more concerned with just getting stuff onto the episode page -- we have time to figure out how to divide it up, make it more concise to push onto a subpage, etc. We'll worry about that later on, at this point I'm more concerned about keeping up on a weekly basis for the next 6 weeks.--The Dragon Demands 04:54, April 27, 2012 (UTC)

The first section of an article above the table of contents is called the lead. Yes lets move the synopsis into the lead. I'm happy to be flexible about the subdivisions we use based on the structure of individual episodes but will use these three headers where possible.--Opark 77 07:23, April 27, 2012 (UTC)