Discuss Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
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Reported Problem for Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
posted by FleshWoundSTAFFMOD on October 22, 2022 at 11:12 PM
Item: Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
Language: en-US
Type of Problem: Incorrect_content
Extra Details: Hello, I'm writing because there are some significant changes needed, which I'd be happy to make myself, but which I think I need a mod's assistance to make. Before I get into it, I'll cite my sources: I contacted Fred Rogers Productions asking for season/episode metadata for all of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. In response, they referred me to neighborhoodarchive.com, which has done a very impressive job of tracking every single episode and special in the series, including air dates, descriptions, and additional information. All indications are that it is the most accurate and comprehensive source for Mister Rogers' Neighborhood metadata available anywhere.
The biggest problem on TMDB currently is that there are only 31 seasons represented, while Mister Rogers actually aired across 32 different years. The root of the problem appears to be in season 10 where years 1979 (ep 1461-1465) and 1980 (ep 1466-1475) are incorrectly grouped into one season, and I think I know exactly how this happened: There are downloadable sources for Mister Rogers content on the internet that have 31 "seasons" you can download, and sure enough, those downloadable sources incorrectly combine 1979 and 1980 into a "season 10" when they should've been split into two seasons. As a result, all seasons that follow are also off by one.
If you're able to somehow give me the reigns I'm happy to slog through all of this personally, but if not, then here's how I'd recommend systematically correcting the problem:
1) Rename seasons 11-31 to be one digit higher (12-32).
2) Create a new entry for season 11 and move any 1980s episodes from season 10 into the newly-created season 11.
3) Shift all of the poster images for what are now seasons 12-32 down a season so the images match new the season numbers.
4) Create a new poster image for season 32. I think the easiest way would be to use the image from season 15 (season 14 prior to completing step 1) and just alter the season number at the bottom since its color would follow the rainbow pattern currently established. I could make quick work of this in photoshop if that would help.
5) Ensure the initial air dates for each season align with the initial air dates on the episode list of neighborhoodarchive.com
6) Methodically go through each season and the specials, and create or correct episode metadata as necessary.
...and that's it! It'll be a very large effort, but I'm excited to do what I can to get this show's metadata in tip-top shape. If this isn't something the current mod team is up to and your security model doesn't allow you to grant permissions on a show-by-show basis, then by all means, make me a mod and I'll not touch anything but Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, after which you could to demote me back to a standard user.
Thanks for reading!
Reply by Rebecca
on November 26, 2022 at 3:27 PM
I don't have much time to start working on this one right now, but I just wanted to respond to acknowledge I've read it. Thank you for contacting Fred Rogers Productions; if they've pointed you to neighborhoodarchive.com, then I guess its our best bet for a source. I'll start moving the seasons around soon-ish.
Reply by FleshWound
on November 26, 2022 at 6:17 PM
Thanks for taking a look, Rebecca! I think that steps 1-5 require mod privileges, but once we're ready for step 6 I'll dive in and do all I can to help.
Reply by Rebecca
on January 15, 2023 at 2:49 PM
Apologies for the wait, I will get to this soon-ish.
Reply by scrappyJedi
on February 14, 2023 at 6:27 PM
I just wanted to chime in and say that I’d be happy to help with episode title/metadata transfer! I can start with seasons 1-9 if the issue with seasons 10 and up has not been corrected yet.
One question I have is that Mister Rogers is like Sesame Street in that it has episode numbers that are more significant than titles (if the episode even has a title). What is the best way to go about including those numbers? For Sesame Street I’ve been entering “Episode Title (Episode Number)” in the title box so that both show up in my Plex server. I don’t want to step on any toes here if there is another preferred format.
Reply by CouchTater
on February 20, 2023 at 11:09 AM
Please stop. episode numbers don't belong in title unless official. titles should be official. read rule: https://www.themoviedb.org/bible/tv
Reply by FleshWound
on February 20, 2023 at 11:33 AM
Very few Mister Rogers episodes actually have titles, so folks entering metadata would have to rely on titles created by others (which isn't official and still doesn't cover most episodes). For the vast majority of the episodes, the title will probably have to be the episode number simply because that is the only official, unique identifier for that episode. Season 1 doesn't even have official episode numbers, so neighborhoodarchive.com had to contrive some to distinguish them. All that said, the solution for this one probably won't be as simple as adhering to a generic rule set.
Reply by scrappyJedi
on February 20, 2023 at 1:15 PM
@FleshWound - This was the gist of the reply that I was typing earlier, but had to stop because my toddler was losing his mind. 😂 I never got the chance to finish it.
Sesame Street is the same way- the episode numbers are the official titles and are shown before/during/after the opening credits depending on the season. There are unofficial text titles created by others, but the numbers seem to be the official name. I'm not sure the earliest episodes even have that. Before I started updating the Sesame Street guide, it was already a mix of episode numbers as titles for earlier seasons and text titles for the most recent seasons when HBO took over and actually gave them titles in their streaming interface. But even the newest ones only show the episode number in the credits. And in the guide here some of the seasons were obviously victims of copy/paste issues- going from an episode in the 4000s to one in the 100s during the same season, wrong number of episodes per season (I've reported this), etc.
I don't intend to make this a discussion about Sesame Street, but it and Mister Rogers share some common issues when it comes to naming/numbering and season splits. Like I said in my original post, I don't want to step on toes, so whatever the consensus is for how to move forward is what I'll adhere to.
And @CouchTater - I did read the bible/rules before beginning, and these two shows seem to exist in a gray or uncommon area for shows. For most regular TV series, I completely agree about not including episode numbers.
Reply by FleshWound
on January 23, 2024 at 11:30 AM
Hey Rebecca, I try not to bug folks on here too much, but since it's been over a year since this one was opened, I wanted to check in with you and see how you're doing before I pursue alternatives. I'd love to apply my efforts in a way that would benefit the entire community here on TMDB, but if we think this one's a few more years out from changing, I think I'm going to have to manually handle the metadata on my personal media server. I've made an enormous spreadsheet that contains the metadata from Neighborhood Archive if that would help you (that one took a nontrivial amount of time!). Thanks for your time!