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Category:My Sesame Street Friends Episodes is a bit weirdly sorted. The episodes are simply listed as their "episode numbers" (e.g. [[Category:My Sesame Street Friends Episodes|101]], |1001]]), though because of this, "seasons" 1 and 10-14 are all listed under "1", which kinda asks the question "why are they even sorted in the first place?". Obviously a simple fix would be to just add zeroes before three-digit "episode numbers", though does it even make sense to sort them by number? These aren't really "seasons" in the traditional sense, so maybe it'd be better to list them by name (maybe [[|Abby: Lorem ipsum]]? [[|Elmo (number)]]? just leave as is?). – Noah | (talk|activity|contribs) 01:57, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
- Noah started this thread to spin off from our conversation here. I like his idea. I suggested opening up the topic to the community to bring up the question of what to call each set of these episodes. We're currently using "seasons," but that doesn't feel accurate. Open for thoughts from other editors. —Scott
(talk) 16:16, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
- IMO, we shouldn't have made individual pages for these anyway; there's only one new bit of filler framing material in each one, and presenting them as a list might have been better. But if we need to organize them, the "seasons" defined by Max is probably the only way, so I'm okay with it. - Shane (talk) 18:00, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
- IMO, we shouldn't have made individual pages for these anyway; there's only one new bit of filler framing material in each one, and presenting them as a list might have been better. But if we need to organize them, the "seasons" defined by Max is probably the only way, so I'm okay with it. - Shane
- There'd been some off-line admin discussion of this issue some months ago. I think it just plain doesn't work on a category page and should be moved to the article page, which tries to explain the weird "seasons" thing (while there's no way to go into it as a category gallery). Plus it pushed way down finding actual episodes. Plus if they add another batch and likely will, the category gallery will just keep getting longer, more confusing, and harder to navigate or find anything the way it's set up now. Galleries on episode category pages should be convenient navigation tools, and this isn't doing that. (It's why we don't even try to do that with Category:Sesame Street Episodes and other complex or incomplete episode counts).
- So basically, there's been four batches, one per year (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023) to date. "14 seasons" in info box suggests 14 years to an average reader, not batches dropped with all episodes of each subseries on the same day. Streamers have done weird groupings before (Max added Mecha Builders episodes later but still considers it all one season so far, all the services which had "Sesame Street Season 1" or something when it was just the first of the group of seasons that service had). I'd suggest move the whole gallery to the My Sesame Street Friends page, rather than trying to have an anchored section on a category to link to *from* that page (which looking at it, seems to have been the goal). I'd also recommend honestly grouping subheadings by character type and then by year, so at a glance someone can find all the Cookie, Abby stuff, etc. without having to figure out which season number HBO Max chose for that batch (we can note that if we want in italic text below the header). I'll try to whip up something temp in sandbox later (not a stand alone sandbox page) to show what I'm thinking. -- Andrew
19:36, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
- So basically, there's been four batches, one per year (2020, 2021, 2022, 2023) to date. "14 seasons" in info box suggests 14 years to an average reader, not batches dropped with all episodes of each subseries on the same day. Streamers have done weird groupings before (Max added Mecha Builders episodes later but still considers it all one season so far, all the services which had "Sesame Street Season 1" or something when it was just the first of the group of seasons that service had). I'd suggest move the whole gallery to the My Sesame Street Friends page, rather than trying to have an anchored section on a category to link to *from* that page (which looking at it, seems to have been the goal). I'd also recommend honestly grouping subheadings by character type and then by year, so at a glance someone can find all the Cookie, Abby stuff, etc. without having to figure out which season number HBO Max chose for that batch (we can note that if we want in italic text below the header). I'll try to whip up something temp in sandbox later (not a stand alone sandbox page) to show what I'm thinking. -- Andrew
- PS: Checking the category history, the original organization approach was by character/subseries anyway, however the heck HBO Max may or may not have labeled them at that time. It then changed and just got longer and more confusing. -- Andrew
19:42, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
- PS: Checking the category history, the original organization approach was by character/subseries anyway, however the heck HBO Max may or may not have labeled them at that time. It then changed and just got longer and more confusing. -- Andrew
- Mostly I'm not sure how helpful it is to casual readers to have to go through 14 distinct gallery columns, which could soon be 17 or 18 if they do 3 or 4 in 2024 and eventually 50 and whatever, on the category page. But it would be the same thing on the article, just it feels like articles are designed for that, and categories for an easier way to find just a list of episode titles (however the category does it, you can find "Cookie Monster" more easily or just type the name without having to scroll all the time). But whether we have it on the show page or article, this is what I think would loosely make more sense. If we keep it on category, definitely just not bother to indicate "season" or explain how Max chose to label it at all. Leave that to the article, just use years, and grouping by character would make it easiest wherever we do it. I didn't remove all the "numberxnumber" stuff, and just did it for Elmo and My Sesame Street Music/My Music to show how it would look, here. -- Andrew 20:02, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
- Mostly I'm not sure how helpful it is to casual readers to have to go through 14 distinct gallery columns, which could soon be 17 or 18 if they do 3 or 4 in 2024 and eventually 50 and whatever, on the category page. But it would be the same thing on the article, just it feels like articles are designed for that, and categories for an easier way to find just a list of episode titles (however the category does it, you can find "Cookie Monster" more easily or just type the name without having to scroll all the time). But whether we have it on the show page or article, this is what I think would loosely make more sense. If we keep it on category, definitely just not bother to indicate "season" or explain how Max chose to label it at all. Leave that to the article, just use years, and grouping by character would make it easiest wherever we do it. I didn't remove all the "numberxnumber" stuff, and just did it for Elmo and My Sesame Street Music/My Music to show how it would look, here. -- Andrew
- The other option which honestly might be easiest at this point: just *create* an episode subcat for each subseries (My Abby, My Elmo, My Cookie, My Sesame Street Music/My Music), whether there's a gallery there or not. Have them all in the master category, and let the show article page explain however HBO Max is choosing to display them. We've never tried to synch our episode guides/orders with streaming display orders anyway, and readers who do come to us are probably just wondering how many Abby segments there are or what the themes were, rather than "I need to know exactly where Max grouped the Fruits and Vegetables one." You're right that at present, whether gallery or not, there's no convenient way to find all of the subseries together. -- Andrew 20:02, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
- The other option which honestly might be easiest at this point: just *create* an episode subcat for each subseries (My Abby, My Elmo, My Cookie, My Sesame Street Music/My Music), whether there's a gallery there or not. Have them all in the master category, and let the show article page explain however HBO Max is choosing to display them. We've never tried to synch our episode guides/orders with streaming display orders anyway, and readers who do come to us are probably just wondering how many Abby segments there are or what the themes were, rather than "I need to know exactly where Max grouped the Fruits and Vegetables one." You're right that at present, whether gallery or not, there's no convenient way to find all of the subseries together. -- Andrew
- Ditto on that. So it alphabetically shows the topic and groups all the subsets together is the best approach whatever we do in terms of categories and gallery mess, though it's still harder for readers to get to them (dropping the "episode number" text entirely in the gallery will save at least a little scroll via one less line space, and make it closer to Category:Elmo's World Episodes which is the nearest equivalent). -- Andrew 01:09, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
- Ditto on that. So it alphabetically shows the topic and groups all the subsets together is the best approach whatever we do in terms of categories and gallery mess, though it's still harder for readers to get to them (dropping the "episode number" text entirely in the gallery will save at least a little scroll via one less line space, and make it closer to Category:Elmo's World Episodes which is the nearest equivalent). -- Andrew