Category talk:Sesame Street Episode Guide

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Episodes

What episode are you about to do?

Okay, I may do Episode 3792 if nobody does it in one day and Episode 3793 today. Webkinz Mania 18:10, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Did Episode 3792, Episode 3862, Episode 3866, and Episode 3871. Webkinz Mania 01:05, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Doing Episode 3874 now. Webkinz Mania 13:41, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Doing Episode 3872 now. Webkinz Mania 16:54, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Doing Episode 3885 and Episode 3895 now. Webkinz Mania 10:46, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Doing Episode 3907 now. Webkinz Mania 13:36, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Doing the final Episode 3909 now! Webkinz Mania 11:50, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

Doing Episode 3855 but if any more pages tomorrow, will do in afternoon. Webkinz Mania 23:54, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

Doing Episode 3882, Episode 3883, Episode 3886, and Episode 3888. Webkinz Mania 11:04, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Tips

Since I've been working on a lot of the guides here, I've developed a few tricks for searching for sketches and things. I know how difficult it can be to do these, but with certain ways we can bypass a lot of frustration.

• You can essentially limit a search to the Episodes pages by including a word unique to the Sesameepisode template. I use "sponsors." For example, search sponsors cows returns 21 results, all from Sesame episodes, while cows alone returns 89 results.
• If you're looking for a number or letter segment that isn't on a series page like Growing Numbers, try going to the letter or number page and use the toolbar link "Whatlinkshere." Then you can usually eliminate a whole lot of episodes by era and check the ones that are relevant. For example: Special:Whatlinkshere/W. This makes having the sponsors in the template very important.
• Going to an image page lists all the properly formatted episodes a sketch appears in. If you update an EKA, the links will point you to most (but not all) additional episodes that should be updated.
• Use Photoshop's Actions and Batch features to automate cropping and compressing. You will probably need different crop settings for Noggin versus PBS recordings, depending on your videos.
• One drawback to the Wiki search feature is that it ignores words less that four characters long in returning results. (However, it will highlight them.) Some sketches are just not searchable. For example, the other day I was having trouble finding the sketch where a man in the snow on skis makes the word "ME." See? "Ski," "ME," and "man" are all too short, "skier" wasn't in the description for it, and "snow" is too general. Luckily, Guillermo recognized it was Episode 2124, which he created. Thanks.
• I always do table coding in a text editor. If a sketch is in another episode and has more than one image or formatting, it's almost always easier to go to Edit the page it's in and just copy/paste.
• For converting a episode in bullet form to tables, using find/replace to add the code will speed things up. Realize that conversion with capturing takes about the same amount of time as doing the episode from scratch.
• If you don't feel like doing a whole episode, browse enough and you can usually find some EKA tag or duplicate image that needs to be updated. I'm taking it slow with the new/current episode pages, but there are lots of duplicates there. But beware of minor differences! For example, I realized, thanks to the help of Web Video Player, that sometimes the Kid Interview segments from Season 32/33 have Muppet intros and sometimes they don't. Now I'm gonna have to go back and make those entries clear. And remember the days before we realized there were at least four different Geometry of Circles segments?

Okay, there are some ideas to start with. Good luck to everyone interested in helping out. --Hilleyb 16:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

• To execute a phrase search, use Google. Searching site:muppet.wikia.com sponsors "prairie dog" on Google makes one hopeless query possible. --Hilleyb 04:32, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your tips, Brian! Here are some of my own:

• When I summarize episodes, I usually tape the show and then watch it, taking notes and screenshots along the way at my own pace. I then prepare the coding, crop and resize images, and upload it all.
• When making screenshots, I usually save them under names like "3976a," "3976b," "3976c," and so on, turning to "za" through "zz" after reaching "z." It may not seem logical, but this way it's fast and the files will sort alphabetically on my computer (which helps when going through them to upload).
• For cross-references and the like, I sometimes find it handy to keep a list of sponsor letters and numbers for late-season episodes: When summarizing a season 38 episode sponsored by A and 11, chances are that some segments will be shared with a season 37 episode sponsored by A and 13 or a season 33 show sponsored by L and 11.
• Also, image links can sometimes be a handy shortcut as well: Clicking on a screencap brings up a list of pages it's linked to, which sometimes helps in tracking down the earliest known appearance.
• Episode-guide work can be tough when you're not in the mood, and I've decided that my least favorite things to do are taking screencaps and summarizing post-2001 street scenes presented in one big chunk. For this reason, I'll occasionally fill out an episode page with a guide grid and segment notes only, and let someone else finish it off later.
• Good point about the minor differences. On that note, I only lately realized that the "Party Line" segments repeated in season 37 have slightly different lyrics each time. I'm trying not to stress out about that... --Andrew T. 21:38, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

To assist future editors (including myself), and to avoid the uploading of multiple images of the same segments, I've created directories for the recurring letter and number segments which are so hard to find usually. I hope this helps! --MuppetVJ 00:12, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Guillermo. I'm glad there is an easier way to find these images rather than looking at each episode for that certain image. It saves me from having a headache and to prevent me from taking duplicate images. --Rocket Stevo 03:27, 18 March 2008 (UTC)