The unknown future of TV.com

[Tommypezmaster]

For those that are familiar w/ the site but out of a loop, TV.com is officially offline & you are unable to get to the site (unless via Wayback Machine).

The site was originally a rebranded version of the now-forgotten TV Tome that was rebranded in 2005 and was originally owned by CBS.

Does anyone know if the site going to be rebranded as a new site or is it now gone forever?

 

[stephane dumas]

I'm afraid it might be gone forever just like the defunct "Jump the shark" website. :-( But thank goodness for the Wayback Machine to keep some memories of this site along with TV Tome/TV.com

Wayback Machine

web.archive.org

 

[PinkieLopBun]

Funny, I was just trying to check something on there this morning after not even thinking of it in quite some time and saw that it was down. I didn’t look far, so I could be missing something, but it didn’t seem they were really giving updates on the site’s status, as if they just abandoned it.

 

[Low Spark of Lyman]

First I've heard about TV.com closing down (and yes, I recall TV Tome from 2004-05). Reminds me somewhat of when the official Garfield website closed down last year.

 

[RoyalRubble]

It's disappointing to me the site could close down for good. I haven't used it regularly since around 2012-2013 I think, but I used to be pretty active on there as an editor for like 50 or so animated shows, contributing by adding info for shows and posting reviews, etc. I missed out on TVTome, it was already TV.com when I joined (in fact, this was the first site I ever made an account for, not counting Yahoo, back in late 2005).

 

[Dr.Pepper]

I haven’t used the site in probably 10 years, but I do have some fond memories of wasting time by reading trivia for shows I watched.

 

[RandomMe]

I remember using that site a lot in 2005~2006.

 

[Erased Paper]

Two years ago, I saved a lot of posts about the decline of the site. The only thing not mentioned is that it was around late last year when they deleted all the episode guides (the show pages were literally empty). The site was shut down around a month or two ago.

I removed all the dead links...

This is in parts, because of the character limit. (For context: before she left, Jessica used to write "TV.com isn't going anywhere" a lot, whenever people complained about the site.)

Spoiler

Farewell to the TV.com Commmunity!
By jessicakroeber staff
Jan 29, 2018
81 Comments

Don't worry - TV.com isn't going anywhere, but I am. I wanted to let you all know that Wednesday is my last day working for TV.com.

It's been a pleasure getting to know you all over the last many years. I know we haven't all seen eye to eye on everything, but I love that TV.com has such a passionate fan base and I'm confident we can address some of your concerns soon.

Nothing will change. Continue emailing support@tv.com with any questions, concerns, requests, etc and someone will handle in my absence. Things like mod queue submissions and processing flagged spam will transition to new hands, as well.

Best of luck to you all!


animallover21
Mar 12, 2018
Why are you leaving?

Gislef
Mar 05, 2018
Just as a note, after a round or two of phone tag, I did get the name and email address of the person who was Jessica's unnamed "superior" and presumably the person in charge of TVCom. More info after they respond to direct email, if they respond.

Just FYI, if you do try to call CBSInteractive, emphasize that's who you want. Otherwise they'll give you the New York switchboard, and they don't know anything since TVCom is/was run out of the West Coast.

Also, the receptionist at at least one of their main numbers doesn't know what TVcom is. And speaks heavily accented English, for what that's worth.

Gislef
Mar 07, 2018
Well, I chatted with Carley Briggs, the Assistant Marketing Manager of CBSInteractive.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carley-briggs-38055a95

The receptionist gave me her name when I tried to reach someone at CBSInteractive. Not sure if Ms. Briggs was playing dumb or not, but she sounded uninformed when she acted as if she had never heard of tvcom. Which is... an affiliate of CBSInteractive.

[snipped]

TV Guide / TV.com / Metacritic / Chowhound / MetroLyrics / Last.fm
So their associate marketing manager hasn't heard of a site that she's presumably market managing? But hey, she took my email address and said that she'd have someone contact me if she could. So we'll see...

Syrinx2
May 20, 2018
Yes? What happened? This is intriguing.

Gislef
May 21, 2018
Essentially you have associate marketing managers who don't know their own market. Communication staff who can't communicate intelligibly. And community managers who don't manage the community.

I should probably move to California and apply for a job with TVCom. My lack of qualifications seems to qualify me for any number of jobs with them.

Gislef
May 20, 2018
That was it.

If you mean did anyone get back to me, nope.

HelloStuart
Feb 19, 2018
Jessica, I know you were overwhelmed at times, and though it may have felt thankless, I appreciated your hard work. Happy trails.

Maybe someday, someone will answer the backlog of messages in that support email. I don't want 15 years of work (between TV Tome and this site) come to a bitter end.

layle1
Feb 15, 2018
I'd be happy if they'd just assign one of the anonymous someones to do the episodes and other guide corrections once a week, or even once every week-and-a-half. Better yet, give control of the guides with editors back to the editors!

It's been almost two weeks since I emailed the support address, and not only have the requested corrections not occurred, but the "source" has missed an episode that will air tomorrow.

AprilFox
Feb 09, 2018
There are still a few of us diehard fans left. I wish they would give us a name of someone to at least address episode corrections, deletions, duplicates and such too. Flying blind is no way to run a site.

maritimer00
Feb 09, 2018
Trouble is, the site owners don't want data...I'm not even sure they want new episodes added to ongoing show guides at times. You can try the support email address here Jessica pushed here incessantly before she fled. Who answers it...is unknown.

Very sad to see the abuse heaped on the hard work done by members here like yourself, AprilFox.

AprilFox
Feb 10, 2018
I agree with you maritimer, I still do alot of archiving in those old newspapers gathering info, details no one else has. I miss how our community used to blog and talk about all things TV. As for that support address, it does not work. I have tried and I always seem to go around in circles.

maritimer00
Feb 10, 2018
The sad truth is, the site was fed to the trainwreck that TV Guide is: a site that is tissue thin in substance, vapid in article publishing and seems to want no interactions whatsoever...just "clicks".

I still dog whoever answers to add eps to guides. Sadly, I don't think they care one whit about correcting guides unless said guides are of interest to teenage girls watching those shows.

maritimer00
Jan 31, 2018
There's an awful lot of long winded stuff here to justify Jessica's work here but one problem with it: we don't know what CBS ordered her to do or not do ultimately. There are several facts here that are undeniable though:

1) The number of active members here is way, way down here compared to what it was when she started.
2) The remaining editors here have been marginalized and reduced in terms of what they can do to add to the guides they oversee. Something simple, like the Episode Renumbering tool, was ripped away from editors and degrades the guides more every day thanks to...
3) The guides themselves have either been wrecked or crippled by a combination of a balky "source" and complete indifference by Jessica and the invisible staff remaining here. Imagine having to fight to get new episodes of a CBS show added to a guide here...and getting emails that have the substance of an automated answering machine.
All that said, things could have worked better here but Jessica chose not to do it whatsoever. The site is a pale shadow of what it was and I'll be darned if I praise anyone who supervised its decline in the manner she did.
I'm not going to make up imaginary reasons to justify her style here. She didn't want to be here. She didn't want to look at anything here. She spent a mandatory minimum time here, and not one second more if she could help it. She communicated more with what few developers/tech staff are left here than deigning to be invested here.
Good bye...and learn to relate to people at your next employment.

Gislef
Feb 02, 2018
So I'm now I'm getting a notification that you sent me a reply 3 hours here, but I'm not seeing it. About three hours ago I got the little red number indicating I had a notification, but I didn't have a new notification on the list. And the beat goes on. *sigh*

The number of active members at IMDB, Wikipedia, and other database sites are down as well. Is part of that Jessica and/or CBS's fault? Sure: I've said as much many times before. You wouldn't even know TVCom is a contribution-site based on its home page. Not to mention the links to TVGuide pages instead of TVCom pages, and the relatively primitive community pages. As you and I both agree, it's like TVCom doesn't want people (much less us) here.

But part of it is just that the bloom is off the rose, so to speak. A startup database always gets more people than it eventually keeps. You've got 50+ years of TV and movies to add "new" data to when the database site starts up. Once the data is in... why should a lot of the contributors hang around? You can only add so much information to Wizard of Oz or Yancy Derringer or whatever. Once a lot of contributors are done, they go away and active member numbers decrease.

Where we seem to differ is on how much of it is Jessica's fault, how much of it is CBS' fault, and how much of it is just TVCom being an Internet database site.

Gislef
Feb 02, 2018
"There's an awful lot of long winded stuff here to justify Jessica's work here"

Isn't that the kind of corporate-speak we were saying that we didn't like Jessica for using? Users are people, and have names, particularly if you're not Reply-ing to their post. Generic references and avoiding the use of names is part of what led to the current situation. Perhaps it's not as easy to avoid as you thought?

Anyhoo, Regardless, if it's company policy, it won't change with Jessica. If it isn't, it will. I hope it will, but we'll see. Anybody heard from the "new" support on Thursday, since that's the first day they took over?

maritimer00
Feb 02, 2018
Nothing yet...though I did have new eps added to a guide 2 weeks after they aired. Huzzah!

Gislef
Feb 01, 2018
Did you see my earlier post in response to your statement that she said/implied that she didn't want to be here? I was still hoping to seeing that.

As for me, I posted quite a bit about Jessica's style, or lack thereof. See the posts "One other thing is a certain lack of..." and "This one's long". The latter of which is by self-definition "long winded stuff". Was there someone else who was long winded? They're going to have to fight with me for the title.

At the end of the day, I'd still say what I said earlier to anyone who asked me because as you note, we don't know what CBS ordered her to do or not do I'd have to say what I thought of her tenure... and I already have below. Anything else, like below, would be speculation. Which I doubt a prospective employer would want.

Overall, I think there's things she could have done that she didn't, things that she had to do that she did, and things she did do that she didn't have to do. Like most of us, really.

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
To reiterate a few things, in my hamhanded way:

1) I have always tried not to make things "personal" with jessica. I may not typically agree with her. But I have always respected her, and hopefully because she respects me. I'm still here, after everything I've said, aren't I? I've tried to treat her respectfully because I like her, and because I'm not the personal-insult type of person. And have (hopefully!) avoided personal insults and demeaning comments, whether in public or private. I have always tried to couch my comments in constructive criticism, although sometimes they were harsh. Any personal insults I made were unintentional, and I apologize for any offense I gave.

2) Anyone who has attacked or insulted Jessica on a personal level, here or elsewhere, that behavior is totally unacceptable. That's garbage, and anyone who does it is garbage. Be nice, people. Jessica (and any staff member who we interact with) is a human being like most of us , something we tend to forget both on a personal level, and just because it's the Internet, Jake.

3) I have stated, and still believe, that the vast majority of the issues are tied to CBS and not any given staff member, including jessica. I've talked about how I understand how web sites and customer support works. I also understand that you do what your employer wants you to do, and what you're hired to do. At the end of the day, us contributors and editors ("Volunteer employees") are a relatively small part of the picture at CBS. I wish that wasn't the case, but there you go.

4) I think there's a lack of transparency about TVCom that is disturbing on many levels. But again, that is CBS's policy. I haven't found Jessica any more or less "secretive" than any other staff member given changes in CBS over the years.

That all being the case, I apologize again when my irritation with CBS has bled over onto Jessica, as I'm sure it did. I wish her well in future, and anytime she needs something from me, she knows how to contact me, both by PM and by email.

Good luck, Jessica.

TheOldBill
Feb 01, 2018
Up to a point, Lord Copper.
But a Jessica Kroeber claims on LinkedIn to have
•Led successful transition of content strategy from user generated data model to data provider model
•Manages TV.com and TVGuide.com partnerships with data provider [ ... ], monitoring data integrity and QA

I've heard that some people puff themselves up in their résumés, but that sounds like someone who played a leading role in the introduction of the current model of populating guides, with ongoing responsibility for the monitoring and management of the resultant data.

Whenever and at whatever level the decision was made to make the switch to the data provider model, it was at the transition stage that the decision was made to block user interface, changing input forms to prevent users from adding omitted data and correcting incorrect data. It was in the rollout / snagging phase that the relevant manager made the decision to double-list TV movies. It was during the management phase that the relevant manager failed to implement any code or mechanism to prevent the duplication of episodes. It was on this manager's watch that responsibility for monitoring the integrity of data was abrogated.

Now, notwithstanding the lived experience of contributors to the feedback community, who claim that there are one or two extant problems with the current arrangements for the provision of data, the Linkedin profile doesn't read like the job description of a corporate lackey reluctantly compelled to make the best of a situation she was presented with on her first day in the office and who was forced into the unfortunate position of selling an untenable situation to customers.

AprilFox
Feb 10, 2018
Successfully? I really question that, I have a current running series and the info is verbatim from tvguide.com. Alot of it is incorrect. Now they seem to be having a generic summary of each episode. Daily talk show with celebrity guests, health and fashion. OMG I might just puke even typing that. The errors are extensive, from spelling, to actual guest appearances. I can't even correct the headers! And duplicates are rampant. No definitely not successful

sounddude
Mar 05, 2018
April, I too have a current running series and much of the info provided by "the source" is incorrect. I've even sent links to the show's official site showing the errors, but Jessica said they had to go by the source's info. So I just gave up and let the error info flow. I've tried to get error on an old show corrected for five months...FIVE MONTHS now and her only response was "it's in the queue." That's it. So where we thought this site had degraded to a new low years ago, it now seems ready to take it's last breath.

Gislef
Feb 11, 2018
I don't doubt that you have horror stories. We all have horror stories, many of which are chronicled in this and other community threads.

But without TVCom taking an interest in resolving any of it, they're not going to go away. And as far as I can tell, none of them affect TVCom's bottom line. Someone who comes here and checks out an episode, and finds no information, generates about the same number of hits (1), as somebody who does. That's a "success" as far as TVcom's advertisers are concerned... and they're the ones who pay the bills.

Do I like it? Nope. But there's a difference between understanding something and liking it.

Gislef
Feb 10, 2018
I'm not suer who you're quoting with "successfully". The unfortunate part is that CBS' point of view, the launch was successful. The advertisers get hits. It's not successful from the point of view of people wanting accurate data, but that's who CBS is apparently concerned about.

I'm not sure which error you're talking about. You have guests actually being imported to your Casts? Or guest appearances described in the auto-summaries. But that doesn't sound like a generic summary if it has non-generic information on guest stars.

If by headers you mean titles, nope, editors can't change titles, either. I would think that if you're correcting the summaries, they won't match with the auto-titles.

AprilFox
Feb 11, 2018
This is one of the messages I sent and had no reply to, from January 6, 2018. I figured since the Holidays that I would wait for that to be over with.
Hi Jessica

I am unable to add info to 2 episodes of Live with Kelly and Ryan from December 21, 2017 and December 22, 2017. It won't let me add a full summary because it shows up as no episode title. It doesn't like the quotation marks in the titles of these two episodes and drops the title altogether in the edit mode. If you could get these corrected. Thanks.

[snipped]

This is what I tried to add to this episode.

LIVE's Holiday Sweather Party. Kelly and Ryan welcome guests Kate Winslet of "Wonder Wheel", Jonathan Groff of "Mindhunter" and the Radio City Rockettes.

and the other episode is,

[snipped]

Kelly and Ryan's Christmas Party with guests Hugh Jackman of "The Greatest Showman", food stylist Marie Haycox makes fondue and Brett Eldridge performs.

?

AprilFox
Feb 11, 2018
The guest data shows up in the header, not always, sometimes just a date which she told me last year was not accepted anymore. So I asked back in November why all of a sudden dates were now showing up in the headers. (Like I have done for 29 seasons of Live With Kelly and Ryan).

The generic summary, well all you have to do is look at tomorrow's entry. I change it as I watch the series (for over 29 years now). The Christmas episodes I cannot update nor change because it says, there is no header, there is but it doesn't like quotation marks in the title, making it impossible to update at all. I have episodes that I listed as duplicates and repeats to be deleted since November. Nothing has been done after over 20 messages were sent. So I ask you why bother anymore, they don't seem to care either.

Gislef
Feb 06, 2018
And..?

Thinking it over, I guess my thought is so what? I'm cheerfully concede that she might have lied (or "creatively embellished") her resume. None of that disproves what I said or what we've experienced. You'd have to take that up with Jessica. if you can reach her.

Or to put it another way, are you going to believe something you read on the Internet, or your (and my) lying eyes?

TesserT
Feb 02, 2018
Also more on her duties here https://angel.co/jessica-kroeber

Gislef
Feb 06, 2018
And all of them are technically "true". It just depends on things like what you consider the "community" is. As @syrinx2 noted, Jessica said that what we think of as a "community manager" is apparently not what he (and most of us) think.

The community system did launch successfully. It wasn't that great and hasn't gotten any better. But it's still here. So it's been "maintained". We don't get to see or know what the "community feature requests" are or who is requesting them. If you figure that the "community" is the advertisers, and they requested certain things... well, Jessica gave them to them. "You the advertiser want to remove quotes and trivia from the episode pages so we can have more advertising? And have them on a separate page so site users have to see your advertising twice? All-righty!"

Substitute "advertisers" for "community", figuring that the advertisers are the "real" community, and it all sounds perfectly correct. Not good for us the users, but other than saying that users can write articles (which they can), she never mentions "users".

TheOldBill
Feb 14, 2018
I like to think she is now teaching yoga on a full-time basis.

Yoga Teacher & Reiki Healer in Hollywood W. 200 Hr Training

TesserT
Feb 02, 2018
Wonder if this is her: Jessica Kroeber IMDB Jessica Kroeber - IMDb

sounddude
Mar 05, 2018
Yes, that's her. She said she moonlights on film sets occasionally and since I had a 29 year career in the film biz we'd "talk" about that. She is a certified yoga instructor and I think that's where her passion was. It's my opinion that her job here was just to pay the bills. I have noticed that she's made her Twitter account totally private now (it was public) and she's taken down or hid her Facebook account, leaving only one of her yoga pages up (her personal page is gone but available using Wayback). I find that interesting. I guess she doesn't want any of us to contact her after she's left us with subs dangling for months.

Gislef
Feb 06, 2018
She posted about being out of the office a year or two ago for her birthday, on the same day as the birthday indicated at IMDB. So it probably is her.

And that's what I meant earlier on how nothing on the Internet is ultimately a secret. Which is probably why we'll never hear from one of her would-be future employers asking for a job advertisement. Someone would have to filter through the information out there and assume that it was all about the Jessica Kroeber who is applying with them. Then they'd have to read the information. Then they'd have to check out tvcom and see threads like this one. Then they'd have to take the time to contact users here. What are the odds of all that happening?

Gislef
Feb 06, 2018
This comment has been removed.

Gislef
Feb 01, 2018
I'm not sure what a "lived experience" is. But there are a lot of problems with the current arrangements for the provision of data. Which I've gone on about for some length here and elsewhere

I don't see the contradiction between the Linkedin description and what went on here. I'm just not sure how many decisions were made by Jessica. Even when I talked to Development the few times it happened, Development seemed to think it was calling the shots.

I think it boils down to, was she the manager on paper (which is what her resume is going to say), or did she have actual management powers, or both, or neither? We know that she was the one who handled removing duplicates: the question is how much was what we brought to her attention, and how much was stuff we never saw appear and disappear?

I imagine the truth lies somewhere in-between the two versions. As most truths do.

sounddude
Mar 05, 2018
Having been a corporate executive prior to going back into the film industry, I can comment on the word "manager". It's deceptive. It can mean the boss or it can just mean the person overseeing a certain position or task. I think that's just what Jessica's place was. She was "promoted" to the place of Community Manager over data integration from us. A liaison. A buffer position. And probably no one else in her section. So she was called a manager because she had to manage all the stuff we and "the source" were sending her. I can't fault her for using that title on Linkedin. I would have too. But I think she was a low level cog in the giant CBS machine and really had no authority to make real decisions. Every time I may have asked her to do something "big" she'd always say she had to ask someone else. Now that's not my idea of a true manager. I never had an issue with Jessica. I got a little heated with her years ago over some stupid rule or whatnot and she handled it cool and collectively. I actually felt sorry for her having to deal with all of us oldtimers who in the beginning had such power and freedom and then in a day's time had it all yanked away from us and were pretty pissed about it!

TheOldBill
Feb 01, 2018
This comment has been removed.

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
Oh, and when I'm offensive, it's typically because I feel offended. When attacked, I defend. When bitten, I usually bite back.

Looking back (I do a lot of that ), the "he said she said" I mentioned earlier is a good example. I put a lot of work into gathering what evidence I could as a volunteer employee. To have it dismissed as "he said she said" is offensive to me. It demeans my work and comes across as kind of snarky.

It's a bad choice of words. I have no doubt I've done the same. And like I said, it's the Internet, Jake. Written material isn't the best at conveying emotions and feelings. And we say things we'd never say face-to-face, at least without losing a few teeth. But words hurt, and those hurt.

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
I apologize for the multiple posts, but a) that's how I think, and b) there's still no Edit button.

As another for instance, does anyone think that Jessica likes being the middleman when "the source" screws episodes up? I'm sure she has better things to do than fix their screwups. Or Development's screwups in importing the data. Or whoever the heck screws it up. She didn't choose the "source", she doesn't get to prioritize Development's work.

If CBS says, "This is the source we're going to use, and Development ten floors down is going to make an import feature and then move on and never come back to it", that's what she's got to work with.

Has anyone seen the Electric Dreams episode "Autofac"? I imagine Jessica is Alice: the company representative who has to be the face of a soulless automaton manufacturing plant Autofac. People take out their anger on Alice because Autofac doesn't care and doesn't respond, and has no addressable physical manifestation of its own.

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
This comment has been removed.

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
For instance, if CBS says "Never publicly apologize", then Jessica ain't going to publicly apologize. Not her fault, but CBS'. I think it's a dumb policy, but it's not Jessica who is "dumb" in this case.

If CBS says, "Never give out the names of your superiors and our episode 'source'", then Jessica (and any other staff member) ain't going to do it. Not staff's fault, but CBS'. Again, it strikes me as a dumb and ultimately self-defeating policy, but it isn't any staff member's fault.

And so on, and so on.

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
And no, that's not a farewell message from me. I don't plan on disappearing suddenly.

Rolamb
Jan 31, 2018
I just want to wish you well on your next endeavours.

I am sorry we lose the last 'face' to tv.com. For community contributors like me the contact with staff was a big part of the fun.
I guess all the open questions, bugs etc. will be transfered to support@tv.com.

dhaworth
Jan 31, 2018
Thanks for your help over the years, Jessica. And good luck with what you decide to do next.

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
"TVcom has such a passionate fan base..."

Just a minor note, but a lot of passionate fans make lousy editors. I understand that fans are the ones most likely to contribute and thus become editors. But... knowing a lot of trivia about the show doesn't mean that you're qualified to spell and use proper grammar and such.

I'd rather the fans stick to the communities and let editors edit pages. Except for those who are decent editors, of course.

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
And I think passionate fans typically make great contributors. Although they tend to be a bit too enthusiastic. Not every quote out of the main characters' mouths and every bit of minor information/trivia is unique and memorable.

And I might be biased because I'm a passionate fan and (hopefully) good editor. Although my passions run in strange directions. Not a lot of people who are "passionate" about Yancy Derringer, or Outer Limits, or Man in a Suitcase, or the 70s Invisible Man... It's easy to be passionate about Pokemon, or Spongebob, or Buffy, or The Flash, or Black Lightning. Try being regularly passionate about those other shows!

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
This comment has been removed.

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
But that's the situation, that the editor assignment process at TVCom is kinda goofy, too.

It's also another one of those things that no explanations are ever forthcoming. "How did someone get 70 CPs a month before the series aired or any episodes were listed." "Can't tell: it's a secret."

If it's legitimate, why is it a secret? If it's not... why is TVCom staff going along with it? But apparently it's so secret that it can't even be explained why it's a secret.

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
This comment has been removed.

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
This comment has been removed.

Gislef
Jan 30, 2018
One other thing is a certain lack of... enthusiasm on the part of jessica and other recent staff members to interacting with the community.

For instance, I'm not and still not a big fan of emailing support. But there are pluses to it, and ways to sell those pluses. For instance, "Using emails will allow us to efficiently and quickly categorize, prioritize, and respond to your requests." is a good start. But in the 30+ days since it was implemented, myself and other users haven't seen any benefit of that efficiency and quickness. The opposite, really.

If there isn't efficiency and quickness... us users are soon going to realize it. And we did. The statement above is a commitment, or it's false. And so far, the commitment has failed.

There are other advantages to emails, like attaching screencaps as a source for a title change. But no mention is made of that. There's no 25-character limit necessitating more work to put links in messages. No mention is made of that.

The message just gets tossed out there, and there's a short obligatory statement (which turned out to be false) that we would get efficiency and quickness. I hate to lecture, but it's not rocket science: almost anyone could have told you it was a bad approach. And it's not the first.

TVCom made a commitment that either they couldn't follow through on despite their best intentions, or knew was false when they made it. So yes, you have an unpleasant work environment, and surly and fractious volunteer employees as a result.

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
The sad thing is that "you"* could still pull it off. Just put up an announcement referring the original email support announcement, and say something to the effect of:

We apologize for the inconvenience, but we underestimated how long it would take us to get email customer support set up. We will have the system online by *sample date, possibly February 28, 2018*, and in the meantime will attempt to respond to you as quickly as can. On that date and beyond, we will return to our typical once/business-day responses and submission moderation.

It apologizes, it acknowledges your employees' and customers' feelings, it sets a deadline, and it admits you made a mistake but you'll do better. It's Customer Support 101, as least the way that I was trained and have seen it done at dozens of places. Pretending it didn't happen never works.

If people complain... well, you screwed up. That's what employees do when their employers screw up. If they complain about other stuff, contact them and say they're off-topic and delete their off-topic posts. Gently encourage them to email you, address their concerns, and respond in a timely manner.

And... you most likely won't do it. You seem to have an aversion to setting and meeting deadlines, and admitting mistakes.

-----

* "you" = "Jessica, her successor, and/or TVCom in general". It's easier to say "you" then all that.

Gislef
Jan 30, 2018
"I know we haven't all seen eye to eye on everything,"

There's not seeing eye-to-eye (i.e., disagreements), and there's flat-out contradictions and incoherent statements.

To give one example from personal experience, there was an editor who was engaged in what by most standards on the site is considered abusive moderating behavior. When I complained, I provided whatever "evidence" was available for me to present. Which isn't much, but I did what I could.

I was first asked to provide more evidence, as if I have access to staff resources. I don't. I was then told it was "he said she said", even though:

a) I'm not prone to making random and wild accusations.

b) I provided evidence.

c) Staff didn't say what evidence I could or should provide, or why the evidence I provided was insufficient.

d) I was not told what the editor in question said. It was at one point suggests that my behavior in contributing was inappropriate, but was never told what. If I'm doing something wrong, I'd certainly like to know about it.

After "he said she said" was said (and it's basically an accusation that I was making an unprovable claim), i was told that response was no longer permitted by Jessica because of her manager's orders. The manager wasn't identified, and no means was given to pursue the matter further. The behavior, not surprisingly, continues.

When a year later I described further behavior without identifying the editor, I was told by jessica that the behavior was not acceptable. Then when I said who was involved, it was back to "he said she said" and "I'm not allowed to talk about it".

That's not a matter of "we haven't seen eye to eye". It's flat-out unhelpfulness, contradiction, corporate speak, passive-aggressive accusation, and seemingly biased behavior. I'm sure jessica has her take on the story, but she's never told me about it. I didn't and would never ask jessica or anyone else to act on just my word. I provided evidence and described the situation, and jessica agreed that the editor's behavior was inappropriate... until she learned who the editor was.

Gislef
Jan 30, 2018
Or to put it another way:

You think gaming is one thing, I think it's another = not seeing eye to eye. Fair enough, end of the matter.

We both think it's gaming, then I say who is involved and you say, "Oh, then it's not gaming/there's nothing I can do" = something different, and not good. This is when I express concern, or complain, or whatever.

Gislef
Jan 30, 2018
"We generally hear complaints when we promote staff posts, so I try not to do that often."

My other two posts here are probably examples of Jessica's opinion above. But

a) There's nowhere else to post them.

b) There is apparently no one on staff who will respond on them, provide feedback, or otherwise instruct me on what I did wrong. Assuming I did do something wrong.

c) It would seem to be a public matter, insofar as TVCom apparently doesn't think that almost anything by users and/or volunteer employees is a public matter.

Given that, it's hardly surprising that when staff posts anything, it becomes a magnet for users and/or volunteer employees to post "complaints". Although I hope that I'm trying to keep my concerns related to the original topic by responding to jessica's statements in a relative manner.

Gislef
Jan 30, 2018
For a more recent example, I asked what I should tell users when they asked me why TV.com was taking so long to respond.

The eventual response I received was "It means 'We're working as fast as we can'."

First of all, in the email they were responding to, I didn't ask what it means. In the second, answering a question about a statement by repeating the statement is just... circular. At best, it means I didn't understand their initial response, so repeating the initial response is useless and makes the responder sound like a robot stuck in a loop.

That's what I mean elsewhere about an "adversarial relationship". Whatever they think I'm asking, I'm not asking to start a fight or an argument or whatever. I'm asking because I don't know what they mean.

Maybe it's just me. Does anybody else find "We're working as fast as we can" meaningful? Do you have bosses that regularly accept that as a reason for you not to get your work done? If you have an issue with a superior or customer support, do you just accept that response and do nothing further?

Syrinx2
Jan 30, 2018
Hmm. Jen Trollo, Tim Surette, Kaitlin Thomas, is anyone of those still on tv.com? Most seem to have left. Or am I wrong?

Rolamb
Jan 31, 2018
No.

Gislef
Jan 30, 2018
And yes, some of us TVCom volunteer employees are a surly and fractious bunch. We're probably a cowardly and superstitious lot, too. And a wretched hive of scum and villainy. But we're also among the site's most prolific volunteer employees. It kinda goes with the territory.

If you don't want us, tell us and most of us will probably leave. If you do care to have us here, show us that you care. Don't just say it, or assume it doesn't have to be shown. We volunteer employees are just like paid employees: we'd rather have a pleasant working environment than not. If it ain't pleasant... well, you get surly and fractious employees.

Gislef
Jan 30, 2018
This one's long. So brace yourself.

At least learn more about how the Internet can work. Websites can be your friends!

"I was responding to all comments here. I try to thank you guys all the time and as best I can."

Simply saying "Thanks!" is not enough when you can do more, no more than it is in real life. See the image earlier for the philosophy on that. Learning how to use a website to thank people and acknowledge contributions is very helpful.

Some suggestions/constructive criticisms/concerns for anyone in jessica's future position. I've tried to stick to things that they can do, rather than stuff that Development or corporate CBS types handle.

a) Acknowledge users and contributors, and promote the community.

b) Let users know what your position involves, so they don't have unreasonable expectations of what you can do.

c) Encourage users posting concerns and give users a chance to post them publicly. Reading and acting upon them is optional, as apparently has been at tvcom for many years.

The statement earlier, "We generally hear complaints when we promote staff posts, so I try not to do that often", is telling. a) Why do you hear complaints that are off-topic in public postings? b) When is a concern a complaint? and c) why are users posting off-topic and staff letting them?

d) Solicit more community input. If there's a reason, most users will understand than if they're treated like mushrooms: kept in the dark and left to grow on their own.

e) If you don't have a reason for doing something, or can't defend it, it's probably not a good thing to do.

f) Treat contributors as you would fellow employee at the cubicle next to you. treat them as you'd like your boss to treat you. Users are employees: they dedicate their time and effort to the site and get no recompense. This does not mean gifts and money.

g) Most users recognize the difference between meaningful statements, and corporate-ese like "We're going as fast as we can" and "We'll put it on the list". Many users have been around long enough to tell when these statements are meaningful, and when they're just corporate-speak. If you wouldn't accept it from your AC repairman or your car mechanic, then don't use it on users.

i) Do your job as if your underlings (and pretty much all "volunteer employees" are staff's underlings) are going to be interviewed about your job performance, and by future employees. The Golden Rule isn't just Biblical: it's good business practice.

j) Transparency. For over a decade, CBS has treated many of TVCom's workings like state secrets. That might have been warranted 10+ years ago, but the world has moved on. TVCom is a 2018 website: it's not that important. Nobody is asking what staff's salaries are, or who got promoted. Users just want to know stuff about the site. Plus... the Internet runs on information, and secrets get out anyway. Especially when we're talking changes to a public website.

-----

I use "users" as a general term. Maybe 90% don't care, and only 10% of those take the time to write. But why treat the ones who do as lowest-common-denominator?

How much of this is CBS' doing, and how much of it is staff's, isn't clear. You most likely have to do CBS' bidding: it's easy to say, "I wouldn't do something lousy, and would quit rather than get paid to do it". Harder when you're the one facing the choice of doing stuff you don't think is that great or going without food. But at the very least, if staff is going to toe the corporate line, they shouldn't be surprised if they're considered corporate lackeys and the like.

sroberts461
Jan 30, 2018
Goodbye.

TesserT
Jan 29, 2018
Ta! Good luck on your next job. Really hate that support at tv.com has no face now nor one point of contact.

jessicakroeber
Jan 30, 2018
Support can still be reached! Email support@tv.com any time you need help.

Gislef
Jan 30, 2018
"Really hate that support at tv.com has no face..."

support@tv.com doesn't have a face.

See my post about the Golden Rule. But a) how would paid employees feel about dealing with anonymous bosses, and b) at least with the customer service I deal with which is quite a bit, they do things like give names sign their emails, and wear nametags. i.e., a "face".

But whether TVCom volunteer employees are "customers" or "employees" or both or neither is one of those things...

Gislef
Jan 30, 2018
And that's what I talked about a bit earlier about "corporate-ese". Addressing half of a statement and ignoring the other half.

Or misreading the post. @TesserT didn't say anything about who he can or can't reach. Not to mention that support@tv,com has so far only been reachable after 20+ day waits.

Either address it all or ignore it all. I doubt there's a CBS policy that says, "Must respond to all community threads, fully or partially". If it is, it isn't in evidence.

Users appreciate responses, yes. But they appreciate responses that address their concerns. TesserT and others have made clear here and elsewhere that their concern isn't that there's a specific email address, but that a) it's generic, and b) it's non-responsive.

If TVCom doesn't comprehend the users' concerns, how can it address them?

Gislef
Jan 30, 2018
I'd be saisfied with two points of contact. Or three. Or four.

TesserT
Jan 31, 2018
Even corporate sites that sell products to consumers or answer questions via email sign those emails with a name - those with chat ability have a picture of a real life person and a name to go with. I have friends in those roles and companies realize when "support" has a name/photo for consumers - rather than just an endless bin to those questions into - the companies appear much more approachable and responsive. Not sure why tv.com has gone back to us throwing questions into a bin and not have a point of contact for those of use with questions. Another thing, do these tv.com support people coordinate so they give the same answer to the same question from different users?

TheOldBill
Jan 31, 2018
Well, no. Any given individual at TV.com support is capable of giving different answers to the same question from different users. A couple of them are able to give different answers to the same question from the same person while asserting that nothing has changed!

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
Heck, heaven forbid if they have to be consistent with what they said before.

Which is what OldBill and Tesser basically said. But again, "Every situation is different." Except for when TVCom staff tells you to do things a certain way, the same way every time. If every situation is different, then how can they tell you to send an email every time you run into a situation, no matter what the situation is?

Consistency is the hobgoblin of foolish minds.

TesserT
Jan 31, 2018
I was being rhetorical I too have gotten 2 different answers for the same question and they were opposite of each other - meaning either I got no answer or I can pick the answer I want. This all is enough to drive one mad.

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
That's primarily because staff typically only put things in writing when they have little choice. Heaven forbid they have to follow rules/guidelines that someone else set down on the site.

As I noted elsewhere, that leads to circular discussions like, "So what do I do if someone doesn't follow the guidelines." "The guidelines are different for everyone." "But I didn't ask about everyone, I asked about this one instance." "The guidelines are different for everyone." And around and around we go...

Gislef
Jan 31, 2018
Well, again, I suspect that we're not the "customers" since we're not paying anything. And even if you consider our services "payments", the vast majority of people here don't do much in the way of contributing.

You can bet that the advertising people know Jessica's name, how to get hold of her directly, and she doesn't wait 20+ days to get back to them.

And we're sure as heck not treated as employees. It's never been clear what TVCom considers contributors, other than disposable resources. Jessica et al can say "thanks" and "We appreciate you" all that they want, although that isn't much these days. When it comes to actual demonstrations of affection (I'm talking badges, announcements, talking to us like human beings, and such: not money, DVDs, and goodie bags), not so much.

maritimer00
Jan 29, 2018
"Nothing will change." True...Snide..Missribs...similar words were said then. Good luck on your next job...learn a bit about interaction with others before you start it.

Gislef
Jan 30, 2018
This comment has been removed.

TheOldBill
Jan 29, 2018
But we've had good ones too. danmod, emaldanali and Jaxiecracks.

maritimer00
Jan 30, 2018
True there. Brings up the axiom "When they were good, they were very good. When they were bad, they were.."...you can fill in the details.

Jessica falls to the bad. Even if mandated to spend less time at the site by CBS, she spent the vast majority of that time posting comments that reeked of hollow corporatese..."indifference" is the vibe I got, from beginning to end.

Gislef
Jan 29, 2018
"and I'm confident we can address some of your concerns soon."

As the great movie Megaforce put it:


Armed vehicles and headband optional.

TheOldBill
Jan 30, 2018
Or, as the late great Missribs said, when I said that a long-standing issue was a relatively easy fix but was not high on TV.com's list of priorities: "Wrong on both counts." We're still waiting, 10 years on.

Gislef
Jan 29, 2018
Is this important enough to put on the front page?

jessicakroeber
Jan 29, 2018
We generally hear complaints when we promote staff posts, so I try not to do that often.

TheOldBill
Jan 30, 2018
Really? When community editor Missribs left on 18 May 2007, at a time when there were hundreds of active users, the news was featured on The Scoop. And attracted no comments!

Gislef
Jan 30, 2018
Well, she did say "generally".

And I don't doubt that in general, and particularly since Jessica took over, they got more complaints on promoted staff posts. Where else can people "complain"/express their concerns and stand a chance of being heard? By staff, and by other users.

Gislef
Jan 29, 2018
Complaints or concerns? Also, that's not a matter of eliminating or reducing complaints or how valid they are. That's a matter of how visible they are. And if it's an invalid complaint, I'm among the first to flag it as off-topic and correct the complainer.

No company wants to "promote" how people are unhappy with them: I understand that. That's what I mean about how I have no complaints about you: it seems to be a CBS policy rather than your personal policy. My apologizes for any confusion over the years: it's not often clear where you end and CBS begins, so to speak.

Me personally, I'd remove the off-topic complaints... but also give people a chance to burn off steam here and respond to their concerns rather than somewhere else. It's easier to monitor one site than a dozen sites.

Gislef
Jan 29, 2018
Maybe if there was less to complain about...? My impression is that users and/or volunteer employees use those threads to complain publicly because there are few or no other public outlets, and little hope that staff reads them elsewhere.

But as I've noted on occasion and am glad to reiterate, I have no complaints about you personally.

Gislef
Jan 29, 2018
Ta!

Syrinx2
Jan 29, 2018
So, who´s carrying the torch, I was under the impression that you were the last woman standing?

Staff
jessicakroeber
Jan 29, 2018
There are still multiple people working on this site. I don't know who specifically at this time, though the support team (support@tv.com) will be your best contact from now on out.

Gislef
Jan 29, 2018
That would be customer (and volunteer employee) support information. Sheesh, you'd think you're entitled to know who your boss is.

This is the Internet, not real life.

Syrinx2
Jan 29, 2018
Have a great gig! And thanks for the years. Ta!

 

[Erased Paper]

Spoiler

“A History of the TVCom Verse” – Part 1 – What’s Happening!
By Gislef
Apr 24, 2018
9 Comments

As I’ve noted elsewhere, I wanted to do a “final article” and this is the first part. Please note that doesn’t mean I’m done with TVCom: I’d be screwing over a lot of people if I didn’t check my queue every few days. But if TVCom, “the most complete TV site anywhere”, won’t put up new episodes, then there’s not much editing I can do.

Even if they do put up new episodes in the short term, their current tendency to wait until the last moment, and beyond!, means that things are going to stay at the same lousy level at best, and get worse at worst. That’s not a roller coaster I want to ride, thank you anyway.

That’s barring someone from TVCom treating us like human beings, i.e., telling us what’s going on. I’ve always considered the heavy-duty contributors, including myself, employees. Unpaid, sure, but part of TVcom’s weird relationship with its users is that we seem to be essential to the site expanding and growing by adding the majority of the data, but these days they’ve rarely acknowledged that or apparently even considered it beyond a token “thank you” from time to time.

So this is one person’s view of what happened. I don’t claim to have a complete picture, and I’m still apparently under NDA restrictions on some points so I can’t/won’t speak on them. I’ve tried to avoid referencing other sites and sources to fill in the blanks. I’m sure other people have experienced different things, and they’re free to chip in. If they’re still around.

One clarification: this is not a defense of TVcom. I do think there are a lot of things that TVcom has done right on the microscale. It’s still one of the easiest cast- and crew-adding sites around that I’ve found. It’s on the macroscale that they’ve screwed the pooch. And I’d like to think I’m taking an even-handed approach. I understand the corporate mentality, even if I don’t agree with it. I can hopefully see what TVCom is done and why, even if I don’t agree with the outcome.

Note also that I refer to the site as “TVCom” without a period. This avoids the system auto-inserting links.

Some information skipped over or minimized for the sake of clarity, and brevity, and other ities.

On with the motley.

-----

The Beginning: “Life Goes On”


Once upon a time there was TVTome. And then around 2005 CNET acquired its volunteer-contributed data from the owner, John Nestoriak. Reputedly for $5 million, although I've never seen either side go public with the exact figure. CNET eventually ported the data into their new site, TVCom. To the best of my knowledge, John has never emerged on TVCom. No doubt he’s on a beach somewhere sipping mai-tais and glad to be rid of the whole mess.

According to several people I trust, at the time there CNET didn’t wish to give the users any input into the system. Imagine what TVCom would be like if users couldn’t contribute anything! Kinda like now, except even less contributions and a decade or so earlier.

When that decision was met with outrage, CNET apparently instigated the editor system. Previous editors on TVTome with enough contributions (“Contribution Points”, or CPs) were made editors of the new pages. Some contributions were lost or never ported over, so some TVTome editors found themselves editors no more.

Also, TVCom implemented a “moderator system”. A group of dedicated users, including myself, were appointed moderators and had access to a moderator lounge and to the “flag” system. There were forums, one per show whether there was any expressed interest or not. A new show was added, so was a forum. The moderatable “crimes” were the same you find at most sites. Us moderators fine-tuned them over the years, but always with the staff of the time having the final say.

Moderators could see reports from users and decide what to do with them. We could suspend users who made repeated violations or committed violations so foul (like huge streams of profanity, and advertising spammers). However, moderators never had any banning powers. We referred onto staff, and they were the only ones who could ban anyone.

The editing process went on pretty much unchanged during this time. People who were editors had a queue that they could handle subs to “their” shows. Staff got the subs to shows and actors who had no editors, and they processed them. Someone contributed enough (80 CPs for shows, 40 for actors) and they became the editor. There was supposedly a 3-day period for editors to moderate current shows, and a 7-day period for everything else. Those rules didn’t apply to staff, and they never said that they did. Still, staff was pretty good about following the same guidelines.

The staff was fairly active on the site, both on the general forum and with the moderators in private.

-----

The Middle- “Users in the Middle”


And then the initial staff got laid off. Or fired. Or moved onto different jobs inside and outside of the company. Somewhere around this time, CNET merged with CBS, or got bought out, or something. The result was that CBS now had two TV-related properties, TVCom and TVGuide. Sometimes in competition with each other. In part because of this, and in part because the bloom was off the rose as far as TV database sites, and in part because of the economy. TVCom was slow to replace the departing staff, or decided they didn’t need to replace them or could "replace" them with lesser numbers. One person can do the job of two, right?

Rather than merge TVCom’s database with TVGuide’s relative popularity, CBS kept the two properties separate. Whether it was because TVCom’s pgorammers (i.e., “Development”) couldn’t untangle the TVCom coding and port the data again, because the original programmers had moved on and done their work in haste, or CBS told the new programmers not to bother, or something else, is one of those “What happened?” kind of things that have never been revealed.

Moderators were let go with a token “thank you but your services are no longer required”. We, and the users, were told that staff would take over and that soon the site would go to a better user-conversation system. One of the reasons given was that moderator level had dropped. Which was odd, since a) staff had slowly reduced their interaction with moderators, and b) the moderator forum went public due to a bug that was never fixed. Hard to report people for banning when the reports were public knowledge.

The 3-day deadline for processing subs on current shows was changed to 7 days. This was “nicer” to editors, and made less work for staff. But it also meant TVCom was less competitive. Why contribute to a current show and wait 6.9 days for the editor to check your subs?

“Communities” were created and forums were removed. Editors could no longer communicate directly with their communities. Staff had a few token communication forums, but didn’t make much use of them. Communities were never “defined” as far as what was okay and what wasn’t to post on them. You could supposedly follow other people and see when they posted.

Communities had their upsides and their downsides. The editing tools were slightly better. The communities were a little more visible. A lot of it sounded good in theory. But… the followup notifications never really materialized: you could see when someone you followed made a new thread, but you couldn’t see when they posted on an existing thread unless it was one you created. Sometimes notifications came up, sometimes they didn't, sometimes they came and went and came again. Notifications didn't appear on the moderator page for some reason. And communities were dependent on staff creating them. If staff didn’t think they should be created or get around to it, they weren’t created. And no criteria was given for how a community would be considered for creation.

In fact, a lot of criteria was removed at this point. It may have made things easier for the reduced staff, because they didn’t have to worry about following pesky guidelines and being consistent with themselves and their predecessors. Or deal with users who didn’t follow the guidelines. It also left users floating in limbo. There’s always a fine line between too many guidelines and not enough. But the pendulum had clearly swung toward the latter.

Staff writers produced original articles for TVCom and were at least somewhat involved in the communities. The communities primarily promoted the original articles, so the writers had a stake in involving themselves.

-----

The End – “When Things Were Rotten”


Staff levels dropped even further. This and the flawed changes during the middle stage caused less revenue, which meant that TVCom undertook further “cost-saving measures”. The site got generic advertising and more of it, as “real” advertisers figured that TVCom was no longer a decent advertising investment.

Staff writers were “fired”, and transferred over to TVGuide if they weren’t already there. And then their articles there were ported over to TVCom. This saved money, yes, but didn’t give a lot of people reason to come to TVCom for the articles. Which were a strong basis for the communities. Which meant communities got less traffic. Which meant that revenue went down, which meant that TVCom undertook more cost-saving measures. Rinse and repeat.

To further save money, TVcom cut some kind of deal with a still-unidentified “Source”. The Source would provide data on new episodes, the data would be imported automatically, and editors would no longer be able to edit episode #s, titles, or add new episodes. Only staff could make changes. And the process was flawed, so there were a lot of changes and fixing of omissions that they had to do. It also meant any unpaid employee was working for the Source without any direct input, or even knowledge of what was considered valid to contradict the Source.

Also, the info from the Source was often screwed up. We got, and still get, bogus episodes that have an airdate decades after the show was cancelled. Sometimes they were removed, and then would pop up again.

Staff boiled down to one public figure, Jessicakroeber (JK). She was also the point person for fixing the errors caused by the episode-import system How much a part she played in all this has never been revealed. In her online resumes, JK takes a lot of the credit but none of the blame. Not surprisingly: who is going to take blame on their resumes? Given all this, it’s not clear what she implemented and what she was told to implement.

There was also some Development people. Their anonymity was always one of the sticking points of the site. Yes, it makes sense that they not take time out to answer dozen/hundreds/thousands of user queries because their identities were public. However, apparently no user had the means to contact them. This meant if there was a problem or the site went down, you either had to hope they noticed the problem, or try to relay the problem through JK if the site was up so you could do so. Going through a middleman to describe sometimes complicated technical issues was… problematic.

CPs levels were dropped from 80/40 to 70 /30, respectively. Staff also pretty much “rubber-stamped” submissions, using a mass-approval tool (judging from the timestamps) to process subs. This means that subs weren’t checked for accuracy and duplication, and anyone could submit practically anything and get it approved. When there were occasional rejections, they were often weird and/or inconsistent. This no doubt made time for JK to deal with the other problems like the importing system. But while she treated the symptoms, the diseases were never cured. It also meant a drop in site quality, which led to less visitors, which meant lowered revenues, and on and on.

The accelerated process also meant people became editors faster. Which meant less work for JK since then there would be more editors to process many of the subs.

Late in this period, JK stated that CPs levels were dropped entirely. Unless an editor was MIA or incompetent, they could never be replaced. This was a good idea in theory: it’s how TVTome used to operate. However, it requires an involved staff, and the remaining one-person staff was too busy with other stuff to be involved.

Finally someone--maybe JK, maybe her superiors with JK passing on the word--determined that they were dropping the whole in-site system of contacting her and TVCom in general and going with off-site email. Then JK left, and as of this writing no one has taken her place doing what she did. Someone occasionally moderates the general submissions, but it’s backward (newer submissions first), and no one responds to the emails. There’s a large backlog of submissions and emails.

Since JK left, the addition of new shows has been inconsistent and sometimes takes place weeks after the show premiere. When it happens at all. The auto-import system as of this writing has broken down to the point that almost no new episodes are being added.

Spammers, which were a problem since forums were around, proliferated for a while. Presumably JK dealt with the flagged messages. But there’s a backlog of reported spam that has never been dealt with. Fortunately, spammers seemed to have learned that it’s not worth it to waste their time on TVCom since it’s a “dying” site. Still, spam shows up regularly.

TVCom is supposedly part of CBSInteractive, according to the latter’s website. The email leads to a Google group that doesn’t allow you to send emails. When I tried to call, the LA office referred me to the NY office. The NY office had no idea what CBSInteractive was. After calling back the LA office and diving through a few levels of bureaucracy, the CBSInteractive receptionist said she didn’t know who handled TVCom and forward me to the Associate Business Manager. She said she didn’t know anything about TVcom, offered to contact someone and have them call me back, and wanted to know my business. Given her rather vague response, I don’t give her any details. As of a month later, no one has contacted me. So apparently CBSInteractive doesn’t have much interest in TVCom, even though it’s one of their brands.

And that’s where we’re at today. In Part 2, I ‘ll look more at the things that went wrong.


CactusThorn
Apr 25, 2018
Thanks for the interesting read. I too have been around since TVTome days (though never edited anything, just submitted corrections.)

I guess I'll stop sending corrections to the support@tvcom address, since they've been robo-acknowledged, but nothing I've sent has been responded to by a human or acted on since late January as far as I can tell.

I'll continue to drop in on the site from time to time to see if anything's changed, though from what you write it doesn't seem very likely to happen.

Gislef
Apr 24, 2018
That's what I mean, and will expound upon in future, about the staff not treating us users like human beings. An apology is probably too much for them, but nobody can be bothered to show up and explain what happened, or at least acknowledge it. Isn't that basic courtesy?

"Your new episodes like Ash vs. Evil Dead weren't in the system for over 24 hours. Too bad. Bwah hah hah!"

And yet, CBS probably wonders why user visits have dropped off. Hmm, that's a puzzler...

kyravon
Apr 25, 2018
I'm surprised they don't at least update their own CBS shows, I expected them to maybe let other shows slip but even CBS shows like Instinct don't have episodes and other CBS & Viacom shows are rife with errors.

Gislef
Apr 25, 2018
If I might wax philosophical...?

Broadly speaking, like most things, there's two sides to equality There's "Let's free the slaves" and there's "Let's make everyone slave." CBS has trended toward the latter with TVCom. CBS is equal to all of the other networks on TVCom, but it's a least-common-denominator kind of equality.

Gislef
Apr 25, 2018
Well, that's a good in a way. It indicates lack of bias/favoritism/whatever. In fact, I think that's part of why they do it.

I figure it's more that CBS doesn't think TVCom is a viable property. Why bother promoting on a sinking ship? Never mind that they're the ones who are sinking it.

If a site loses visitors, you can improve it or downsize it. I think at least initially, they tried to improve it. Communities and auto-episode adding were "improvements", at least in the short term. But CBS downsizing it is the bottom line, and they embraced the bottom line I'm sure it looks good on paper, if you look at it with a Trump-like view. As long as you ignore the cost to people, it's great!

kyravon
Apr 26, 2018
oh I agree. I'd actually find it annoying if they only kept up CBS shows, I'd rather the neglect be equally distributed. I was just suprised that they didn't even make the minimum effort to promote/update their own stuff. I thought they'd at least do some minimal self-serving stuff. Yes, I'm sure it's all about lines on someone's ledger and they don't consider it worth the effort, don't see any ROI (return on investment) for them to make money, so they don't care. And there's probably some self-fulfiling aspect to it..., they do things that short-terms seem like they'll save money and then lose users. Then they probably turn around and blame the drop off in users on the reasons why they shouldn't invest in the site!

Gislef
Apr 24, 2018
And at least some relatively high-profile shows have updated with new episodes. So on the site plods. It took a day or two after airing for some of the episodes to appear. Next time it'll be a little later, and a little later after that...

sounddude
Apr 24, 2018
Excellently written. As one of the "originals" from the Tome days, and one who has the same knowledge, it was sad to re-read this history of what started out as a small television (and eventually film) fan site that was ripped away from us and how it has rotted over the years to what is basically carrion about to be finished off and gone for good. I look forward to the next "tomes".

kyravon
Apr 24, 2018
wow, thanks for attempting to ferret out someone to talk to and making repeated attempts to actually try to track someone down who cares about the site. Too bad you weren't able to find anyone that cared, but I apprecaite the effort that took!
----
“A History of the TVCom Verse” – Part 2 – Where It All Went Wrong
By Gislef
Apr 25, 2018
44 Comments

And here’s part 2 of where I look at why TVCom is where it is today.

Please note that the following are all personal opinions, and only reflect the views of the author. I don’t speak for anyone else, and freely admit that I don’t have access to all of the information.

Whither TVCom?

When CNET purchased the TVTome database, they probably had the best intentions at heart. And the site staff was initially responsive to users. Not entirely, but I wouldn’t expect or want them to be 100% open. Also, there was a lot of rush-rush work to get the site up, and I suspect that was part of its eventual downfall.

But then CBS bought out CNET and handed it to CBSInteractive (CBSI), and for whatever reason they kept TVCom a separate property. They ended up competing with the long-established TVGuide property that they also owned. Arguably, they should have merged the TVCom database into TVGuide, which they owned at the time and still do. Adding data, forums and/or communities would have been a big improvement to TVGuide.

But they didn’t. Whether they could or not is one of those mysteries for the ages. Me, I think the initial rush to get the site up was done so poorly, and the people who did the coding left, that the current programmers can’t unravel the coding or port the data out. The site keeps breaking down, and part of it is that I suspect the programmers can’t fix the site without taking it down entirely for a few hours/days/weeks. That seems to be a trigger that CBS doesn’t want to pull.

TVcom needs design and coding from the ground up. But that would cost money, and CBSI doesn’t see TVcom as a money-making venture. “It takes money to make money” seems to be a philosophy that CBSI doesn’t share.

Whatchu Talking About?


The TVCom management in my view is either very heavily bureaucratized, or paranoid. Perhaps the two are synonymous. There’s always been a layer of secrecy for the contributors, who I like to call “unpaid employees”. I’ve worked with and in volunteer organizations over the years, and I’ve never seen volunteers treated as shabbily as CBSI treats TVCom users. There is little or no transparency, or meaningful communication, or acknowledgement that the users are human beings.



Since taking over, CBSI has made little or no effort to promote the site as user-friendly. Look at the front page: how many places does it say that TVCom wants user contributions?

I’m not sure what CBSI thinks that it’s protecting. The veil of secrecy might have been warranted 10+ years ago, but time and the Internet has moved on. Given the apparent political views of its writers, it's ironic that TVCom comes across as more Trump-like than progressive. You have crappy treatment of (unpaid) employees, paranoia, secrecy, arbitrary decisions, and money loss. Which does that sound more like? "Hope and Change", or "You're Fired!"

The treatment extends to communication in general. Users are treated like an annoyance, not employees. Would you work for a company that treated its employees that way? That’s when volunteers are treated at all. Currently TVcom staff doesn’t communicate with users or respond to emails.

As I’ve said before, contributors aren’t treated like customers. They’re not treated like employees. They’re treated as… nothing. The company’s attitude is best summed up by JK’s public statement shortly before she left. Which amounted to “I said ‘thank you’. What else can I do?”

Contributors have also been phased out of the contribution process, and the contribution process has been minimized. A couple of years ago, Trivia, Notes, Quotes, and Allusions were moved to a secondary page. Before that, the number of cast displayed on the main page was minimized. Most of the stuff that’s hidden doesn’t show up on SEO. What’s the point of contributing if your contributions aren’t easily visible?

Addendum: supposedly "page loading time" was cited for why the info was removed the main episode page. So... instead we got ads and videos. Yeah, those speeded up page loading times. Not.

The space made available yielded more advertising space. But what’s the point of advertising if no one comes to see it? Badges were removed, CP displays were removed or minimized, contributions were mostly moved to a second page, control of episode addition and editing wasn’t shared with editors. None of this encourages contributors, and in fact actively discourages them. There may have been short-term reasons for all of this… but the end result is that users have gone elsewhere. For what shall it profit a site, if it gains advertisers but loses the target audience?

Maybe I’m wrong… but then, why is the site in the shape it is?

Editors, We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Editors

Editors have slowly been phased out of the process. No more forums, so not as much editor interaction. No episode adding, deleting, and modifying: not as much that’s significant for editors to do.

Did TVCom have good reason to add an auto-adding episode system? Yes, although part of why they needed it was reduced contributions due to previous bad decisions. And maybe Development couldn’t rig a way to give editors some input given the patchwork nature of the coding. But it was “bad optics”, to quote a phrase. If Development couldn’t do it, that’s a red flag that something should be done to fix the problem. If the current programmers can’t do the job, hire programmers who can. If no programmers can fix it, start from the ground up. Yes, the site might have to go down for a week. But right now TVCom is going down for the third time. What was there to lose?

Look at publication. Every few weeks it breaks down. And it's been a lot of "few weeks". And yet the people who work at the site can't fix it.

Are some editors problematic? Sure. But communicate with them, or kick them out. Communication is mentioned above. And some of it is…


I’m Of Two Minds About This

TVcom has often seemed… schizophrenic. They come across as being nice to at least some users and to paid staff. They eased MIA deadlines, officially or unofficially. They went easier on gamers. They became more generous about approving subs. This all made things easier for staff and (some) contributors.

But in the long term, did it work? Look at the site now: does it seem like it’s working? When good contributors were treated the same (or worse) as mediocre contributors, most of the former took off. This led to more mediocre contributors, and more good contributors leaving, and so on, and so on.

You Gotta Spend Money to Make Money

I mentioned it earlier, but it’s a circular process. You got to spend money--on advertising, on staff, on writers, on the time to acknowledge your good contributors--to make money. TVCom didn’t, and people left, hits and advertising dropped, more people left, hits and advertising dropped some more, and on and on. CBSI didn’t try to fix or improve the site: they let it get worse, and the users realized it.

For whatever reason, CBSI doesn’t think that TVCom makes money. That may very well be true, but the question is why it doesn’t make money? Which brings us to…

No Responsibility, No Ownership of Problems

Who is to blame for all this? Who knows? Staff leaves for “personal reasons”. There’s no apology, no admitting that mistakes were made. If I was running the business, I’d want to know who screwed up and why. CBSI doesn’t have to say, “Such-n-such screwed up, and we’re giving them the old heave-ho.” But a simple “Yes, this was a mistake and we’ll do better in the future. Here’s how we’re going to change” would suffice.

Since CBSI doesn’t do that, they’re either so paranoid that they won’t. Or they don’t think mistakes were made. Either one of those are scary ideas.


Again, maybe there's some shakeups behind the scenes. I don't expect to be told what's going on there, and I don't want to be told. But if so... why doesn't anything change?

Back when staff used to talk at all, remember when they'd say, "Well a lot of users are asking for [something lamebrained]"? And not a user would speak up in defense of it? If it was such a great idea, why not take credit for it? TVCom occasionally talked about how great their community was, and how much they respected it. But they forgot or never listened to the core message of that movie classic, Megaforce:


Customer Service

But if us users aren’t unpaid employees, does that mean we’re customers? If so, customer service is lousy at TVCom. When something doesn’t get fixed, it’s “We’re working on it” and “We have no estimated time of repair” and "We'll add it to the list". Would you put up with your auto mechanic or your AC repairman saying that?


If site programmers aren’t working to a schedule and can’t work out an ETA… hire better programmers. Or concede that the site as-is can’t be fixed, shut it down, and rebuild it. Or if CBSI doesn’t want to spend the money, shut it down and call it a day.

Even if users aren’t “customers”, and admittedly the dynamics of a free website make that iffy, why not treat users like customers? Like the saying goes, You get more flies with honey that vinegar. Flattery is cheap.

And how rude is it when CBSI can't even bother with free flattery?

Volunteers Everywhere!

TVCom is supposedly a volunteer-based site. And yet CBSI doesn’t want to use the volunteer pool beyond the minimum possible. Why not have volunteers process non-editor subs? Resolve MIA issues? Deal with spam? Write community articles and treat them like staff writers rather than ambitious fanboys and fangirls?

But nope, no way, no how. Part of it is the stuff cited above: CBSI’s contempt for users. The patchwork coding. And the corporate paranoia. And the weird-ass third-party-only episode adding.

That’s why as I’ve said in the past, I don’t understand CBSI’s financial model. They have a volunteer site… but would rather pay staff than use unpaid volunteers. They could just get out of the way and let volunteers run most of the site. But they won’t. Because of concern for the sanctity of the site? Given the state of TVCom, does CBSI seem concerned about the site?


Also as noted, it seems schizophrenic. Sometimes it seems like CBSI wants to do what’s best for TVCom and they’re concerned. But then they undercut their own efforts repeatedly and they’re not concerned.

We’re Not Supposed to Make Money

Anyone seen the last episode of WKRP In Cincinnati? TVCom reminds me of WKRP, when Mama Carlson changes the station format when they start making money. And the staff realize that they were never supposed to make money: that the whole thing is basically a tax writeoff that wasn’t supposed to earn a profit.


That’s what TVCom seems like. CBSI has crushed every possibility that TVCom has had to make money. They pay staff to do the work that volunteers could do, and then let staff go. They keep the site going with bad coding rather than take it down to improve it. They minimize the volunteers’ efforts. They limit episode-adding and changed entirely to a third party. They keep making decisions that make the site less viable.

There may have been good reasons for all of this at the time. But the end result was a site predictably doomed to failure. Some of us predicted it, and we were right. And now... it’s failing.

Could CBSI fix these issues? Probably. But it won’t be free. They’d have to spend money for Development to code the site to let volunteers do more of the work. They’d need to pay at least one staff member to do what’s left for staff to do. Once those things are in place, teaching staff to treat volunteers like human beings is policy, not money. It wouldn’t address all of the issues I noted, but it would likely stop the hemorrhaging.

Will they do it? Probably not. CBSI seems to have written TVCom off as a loss. So on the site spirals until eventually CBSI pulls the plug.

But that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?


mrdivot
May 21, 2018
Here's another fine example TVcom's incompetence.. 107 episodes for season six of Green Acres, a show which ended 47 years ago with 80+ of them dated 2016.

[snipped]
Fkn nitwits.

Syrinx2
May 04, 2018
Wait, is this a wake?

Gislef
May 04, 2018
IMO, not when the person/site in question is still dying. Aren't wakes for afterward?

Syrinx2
May 05, 2018
Yes! It´s a pre.wake!

TheOldBill
May 03, 2018
I've got outstanding submissions dating from 18 March. Outstanding requests for the addition of new episode dating from 7 March. And outstanding requests for the deletion of source-inspired duplicate episode guides dating from 6 December 2017.

Gislef
May 02, 2018
Also, thinking about it, the editorial assignment system has never made much sense. So instead of staff assigning editorships from Day One, they moderate subs until someone gets 70 CPs and then the contribute automatically becomes editor. But... instead of clicking one button to approve someone, they have to approve 20-30-40 subs and click a button that many times (at least) to "choose" an editor.

Plus as I've noted before, what if the person who contributes the most doesn't want to be editor? Just because someone is a fan of the show doesn't mean they want to be editor. Or would make a good editor.

That's in part why I noted a while back that I don't mind TVCom removing the "competitive" bit where if someone overtakes you by 70 CPs, you lose editorship. Jobs in real life typically aren't like that: how many staff members at TVcom lose their jobs because another staff member processes more subs than them? But removing the overtaking bit only works effectively if decent editors are appointed in the first place. The system that has been with us since Day One never made much sense.

Gislef
May 02, 2018
Granted, the bottleneck would be staff if they didn't approve editorships.

But how would that be different than what is happening now? The bottleneck still exists: it just takes 5-10-20+ times as long to get an editor assigned.

Rolamb
May 03, 2018
As far as I can see they've removed the bottleneck by removing all staff .

TesserT
May 03, 2018
And it takes even longer when they don't add new shows to the site or episodes to new shows that are currently just shells

Rolamb
May 01, 2018
The Alexa Traffic Ranks are always a good indicator how well or not well a site does. At the moment the figures for both sister sites are

whereas in 2016 they were




TVCom is doing horrible and sunk from around the 2200th place when staff went over to TVGuide in May 2016 to around the 8300 place now. But TVGuide did not do well either. I suppose CBSI also has a job to do there and there's no time for TVCom left.

In the end, TVCOm was doing better before the moves then TVGuide is doing now.

Gislef
May 01, 2018
But how is the rest of the "industry" doing? IMDb, for instance? or Wikipedia?

From what I've seen, I don't think any TV database is doing well. If a rising tide raises all boats, than a lowering one drops all boats.

I don't doubt that TVCom is comparatively worse than it was next to other sites. But to some degree, I think the trend is that all sites are dropping.

Rolamb
May 03, 2018
I do agree with you. Businesswise the site should have taken a turn somwhere and should aim at other communities as well. That is what they started, but executed poorly (CBS-E ( = former TVGuide) management is to blame). TVGuide is not going in the right direction either so they missed the whole turningpoint as far as I can see.

Rolamb
May 01, 2018
It's always good to read something of the history and especially from the editors side.

As you know, I've written a few posts in 2016 about it myself, but more from the community writers point of view. If anybody is still interested, the can be found here:
Changes on TV.Com
Time for action
What happened to TV.Com in the last months
and one interesting loss of functionality:
Communities do not exist anymore for mobile and tablet users

As noticed before, almost only editors are commenting.

Gislef
May 01, 2018
In fairness, me and TesserT among others are contributors a well as editor. I use and write for the communities.

Part of the problem is that the site isn't particularly appealing to community writers and users. The communities might have been state-of-the-art when they were created (although they weren't). But time marches on.

Rolamb
May 03, 2018
You are correct Sir, I know, sorry. I commented as I did because these posts seemed to be written by an editor or at least from an editor's view.

Gislef
Apr 30, 2018
And then today, they moderated half of the subs that I made earlier today, within five minutes of each other, but not the other half in the same time period. I don't even think they moderated the earliest/latest ones.So they did the crew and cast, but not the summary or quotes. Uh, what?

So It's not like they did, say, the three earliest out of the six I made. Just three out of six at random. But even if they did take the first or last three out of six, why stop halfway through six?

Gislef
May 01, 2018
I also wonder if that's what us editors are supposed to do now with submissions. Do some, do some others a day or two or five later.

I understand that staff don't have to follow the same guidelines as volunteers But we don't know what the guidelines are these days.

Gislef
May 01, 2018
I often wonder if that's how CBSI works. "Well, Accounting paid me half of my check. Maybe they'll pay me the other half tomorrow. Or the day after. Or the day after."

But when it's all "a game", I suppose that's what you get. As opposed to any kind of relationship to reality.

Gislef
Apr 30, 2018
Another good example is 2-3 years ago, when I finished writing recaps of every episode of old-MacGyver. No unreasonably, I though that this would significantly boost TVCom on Google for anyone doing a search of "MacGyver". Because.. the name "MacGyver" gets a lot of mentions in any given recap. Multiply that times 7 seasons, and you'd get 700+ mentions on TVCom in the recaps.

But it didn't. I asked JK about this, and she said that Development had never figured out a way to tie in the SEO to the recap pages. The hell? It must be a nice job (or they've got a heck of a union) when their boss tells them to do something, they shrug and say it can't be done, and... they keep their jobs.

When TVCom moved allusions off of the episode page, guess what that meant? Less Google hits. So maybe taking Allusions off of the episode page helped the page-loading speeds. Although the addition of advertising to make up for the reduced hits seemed to take it right back to the same loading speed. But with less Google hits, you've got... less people to see your site and the advertising.

So essentially, Development being unable to do what would be considered part of their jobs cost TVCom a lot of Google his and the subsequent advertising. And yet their either kept their jobs, or the people that replaced them were just as incompetent So either TVCom didn't have a choice, or they were "nice" to Development in return for getting screwed.

Instead, TVcom worries about whether contributors are using parentheses or not. Their priorities don't follow what I and most people consider "common sense".

Either that, or the site has such poor coding that nobody can fix it. So no one can improve it, and it just keeps breaking down. But no one will pay to replace it. Go TVCom Competence!

Gislef
Apr 29, 2018
Another thing to keep in mind is what a staff member told me long ago about the volunteer data management system and the system of contributions and editors. "It's a game."

Nothing I've ever seen here convinces me otherwise.

Does anyone think that TVGuide treats its data management system like a game? IMDB? Wikipedia?

There's no problem in making a site and a contribution system "fun". But if the people running the site just think that it's a game... well, you get TVCom as it is today.

Gislef
May 02, 2018
And that's one of the reasons that TVCom has such a schizophrenic viewpoint of the site. Is it a game, or isn't it?

A game has rules, and unbiased referees who enforce the rules. TVCom has rarely had that.

Jessica used to be fond of saying that every situation is different. Every shot in a game of basketball is different, but there are still rules to the game of basketball and they are enforced consistently and (mostly) in an unbiased manner.

TesserT
Apr 28, 2018
What a sad state of affairs we have here at TVCom. Reminds me of the movie Major League only I don't think the players (us) will prevail here at TVCom. This site is a tax write off. Why else do they occasionally moderated a handful of submissions from the same day but ignore those from 2 months ago. They catch up with adding new episodes for current shows but ignore requests for those episodes and new shows they miss. They need to appear to be keeping the site going but only just.

Nice 2 part write up Gislef. But it's just sad. Things have only gotten worse since Rolamb's post in 2016. Hope keeping up my guides isn't a big joke on me in the end.

Gislef
Apr 29, 2018
I understand that. But even if that's the case, it takes, in any meaningful way, no time to process older subs first. That's not a matter of feigning effort: it's a matter of sheer mindlessness. The most inexperienced intern knows that from real-life experience.

Unless the staff moderation tool is substantially different from the unpaid employee moderation tool, there is no benefit to moderating newer subs first. And several obvious flaws. It might be okay if the moderator was going to process all subs. If you're going to do everything in 4 hours, it doesn't matter if first or last is done first. But that's not the case.

TesserT
Apr 29, 2018
Exactly. They processed my person subs from Thursday and Friday the same day but nothing from before. They also rejected 2 person subs with the explanation "Use of parenthesis is not permitted." One sub was adding DUPLICATE as in "Rich Harrison (I) - DUPLICATE" - the parentheses were already there after the last name ????

Gislef
Apr 30, 2018
Plus... if they can't tell you what to do in a rejection PM, why not send you a direct PM and explain what to do? Heck, do it before they reject it. Maybe you're correct.

But it's that obsession with secrecy again. If they sent you a direct PM, they'd know who you were working with. Can't have that.

Gislef
Apr 29, 2018
And if they don't want us to use parentheses, how do we indicate uncrediteds? Do we? Who knows?

The problem isn't that staff doesn't involve the community in decisions like this. As deplorable as it is. It's they don't tells us what their decision is.

Most businesses, it's "We won't implement a new policy until we have a way to communicate it." With TVCom, it's "We'll implement a new policy and not worry about communicating it." Go Team Customer Service!

Gislef
Apr 29, 2018
I's a good example of the corporate maneuver which boils down to "dick move disguised as a nice gesture".

Theoretically it means they're actual checking subs instead of mass-approving them. Which is good. "In theory". And embracing a better standard. which is good. "In theory". That's all good. "In theory".

But there's no public posting of the new policy, there's no accepting the subs that were made before the policy was made. If the policy was actually made. There's nothing of staff removing the parentheses on their own (presumably). Are there still multiple Rich Harrisons or whoever? There's no request for the volunteer contributors to remove the parenthesis, or how to indicate duplicates and multiples of the same name.

There's no public statement (or private one given) of how to indicate duplicates. It gives no guidance, it clarifies nothing, and since it's not written down anywhere on the site that I know of, it could change with the next unpaid intern, or the next staff change, or any of a dozen other things. In a day, a week, a month, a year.

Staff can't only stick the landing, they can't even manage the takeoff.

It's contempt (badly) disguised as concern. It's insulting enough that staff thinks someone would fall for it, it's even more insulting that they used it on you. It probably isn't intended as an insult: just a total failure of understanding reality and human nature. It's like Eskimos who have lived in an igloo since birth are in charge of the site. Heck, at least they'd know that "too cold" = bad, and snow is white. You don't get that impression from staff.

And that's the most insulting thing of all.

Gislef
Apr 29, 2018
And that's another example of that a) the person moderating doesn't know what they're doing, and b) what do they want us to do to mark, duplicates?

Presumably, they're not only supposed to explain why the sub is being rejected, but explain how to submit it to get it accepted. If they want to change the duplication system and use a different way to indicate duplicate, that's annoying but understandable All we can conclude from the rejection is that.. they don't want us to indicate duplicates.

Again, it's not a matter of valuing the site, i's of lacking basic communication skills.It takes no more time to submit "No longer taking Duplicates" as it does "Use of parentheses is not permitted". Not to mention that in publicly posted policy,, where does it say that parentheses is not permitted?

Gislef
Apr 28, 2018
I think it comes down to one very simple thing: do TVGuide articles appear on TVCom (and remain linked to TVGuide)?

Or do TVCom articles appear on TVGuide and remain linked to TVCom?

Answer that, and you'll know what site CBSi gives preference to.

Rolamb
May 01, 2018
I can answer that for you. After the move of the writers to TVGuide I had a conversation with one about something and the asnwer was that it was not possible anymore as they were writing the articles in the TVGuide system. So, they are TVguide articles that are ported to the TCCom site.

Gislef
May 01, 2018
And from that, we know which site CBSI gives preference to.

JasonMelvil
Apr 26, 2018
It's not just that they are mistreating editors, they are also mistreating visitors.

How many times have we complained about something as simple as not putting a freaking spoiler on the main page!

At first we got no answers, then we started to get absurd answers like they are "working on it".

What's to work? You don't put X killed Y on show Z in the title OR sub title. It's really not that hard.

While this site always had some spoilers issue, the merger with TVGuide made it 100 times worst.

That's just one more thing in the coffin of this ghost town. A lot people were turned off to come to a site that gives you a community to talk about one show when it spoils everything else you see.





But that's also what I don't get about this whole thing. If the site isn't profitable and doesn't serve any real purpose for them, why don't they just shut it down? Just put a 302 redirection to TVGuide and save yourself the trouble of operating 2 different sites.

dhaworth
Apr 26, 2018
My guess is that this was an interface problem, or at least whoever designed it didn't really understand the systems.
There was an extra line on the TVCom side, sort of a sub-heading. This doesn't exist on the TVGuide site.
So, my guess (based on nothing) is that there's an internal description in the TVGuide article management system, for writers to identify the article. And someone decided to populate the 2nd line on the TVCom side with this. That's why we got spoilers, in this second line.
Eventually, this second line was removed from TVCom screens.

Gislef
Apr 26, 2018
I suspect that TVCom is profitable, as an advertising platform. Thanks to SEO and such, it still brings in plenty of hits via Google. And then the Google advertising shows the visits as hits, which lets them show a profit. It's a tidy little arrangement.. as long as CBSI doesn't spend too much money on the site.

Given CBSI's demonstrated mercenary nature, I have no doubt that the site is turning a profit and that's why they keep it going. I think it's unwise to underestimate how much profit it's making, and how it does so. The site generates 'autoprofit" for CBSI, and at the end of the day it's the black.

Gislef
Apr 26, 2018
And as noted, it may be that TVCom isn't intended these days to make money. It's either tax write-off, an ongoing justification by someone for the money they spent to buy TVTome, or some of both. Or something else.

The fact that they phased out volunteers ("Because we'll have plenty of staff to handle the work!" Ha.) and have never brought them back suggests a lack of interest in making money. The staff who made such statements in the past was either lying, ordered to lie, or had no understanding of corporate mentality. Not to mention the lack of common sense: if you've got unpaid volunteers, why fire them and pay more people to do the work? Unless profit isn't an issue.

TheOldBill
Apr 25, 2018
I've always considered myself a customer rather than an unpaid employee. I'm here because, when I see an actor I recognise on a TV show, I want to know where I know him or her from. And I'm prepared to put an effort into helping build a comprehensive database that I can use.

As a customer, I have always found dealing with TV.com to be like dealing with monopoly public sector organisations. The organisation doesn't always do what it's supposed to do well. The staff wish they were working anywhere else, customer-facing employees are not in a position to provide tailored services or to resolve complaints, and some of them come to realise that the customer is the problem. Not that I am singling out jessicakroeber.
There have been several generations of development teams. I recall an admission around the time we went Web 2.0 that none of the original programming team was around any more, and that, astonishingly, there was no version control documentation. So we have had lots of bolt-on solutions. The sorting tool was invented twice. Each version of the person search tool has been invented from scratch. Whilst I have railed against many of the changes, and mourned the loss of functionality, with each upgrade, some changes have been brilliant. Some of these (the import tool, cast sorting) have managed to survive.
For me, the site tipped from utility to impediment when they first trialled the auto-generation of episodes to match the libraries of VoD services. Thousands of duplicates were created overnight, and while users were given the opportunity to identify them and request their deletion (gee, thanks!) someone at TV.com decided that duplicates generated as 'TV movies' would be allowed to stand. Every decision thereafter seemed to favour the corporate approach over the efforts of individual editors, with users being turned into supplicants and now, with no-one listening, madmen raving at the sky.

maritimer00
Apr 25, 2018
The "upgrades"...remember the upgrades? They would make announcements about them, shut down the site for several hours and re-open it. When opened, the contributors found several things didn't work, other things didn't display and so on. We were promised fixes...corrections..and other bs. What we did ultimately was work arounds...lots and lots of work around the mess made.

I'm a bit baffled why CBS didn't use this site as a way to promote its online presence. CBS rolled out their All Access site, a mix of current and retro shows. They could have pointed potential customers to the show guides built for many of these shows...the data they wanted at some point.
If they ever do hire any more staff, I hope he or she cares about this site and the remaining members...not another resume building, don't give a flying fig individual like JK.

Gislef
Apr 25, 2018
I don't remember the upgrades, sorry. Must have missed them somehow. But Developments either doesn't seem to understand the concept of beta testing on a separate server. Or the coding is such that they can't. Or they're not paid to do it.

At this point, I think the whole site is a workaround. Which is probably why Development can't fix the issues. And the Development we have now isn't the Development that created the site 10+ years ago. Probably they moved onto greener fields, and left some manual with their coding behind.

I suspect that JK was almost as frustrated as we are. If you're stuck in a job where the major issues aren't anything you have any control over or input, and you have to spend most of your work day fixing the problems that another department can't fix, you become... indifferent at best. Thinking she could do anything at our end might be giving her more credit than she deserves.

If there is another staff member, I suspect they'll be in much the same position. The problem lies much higher than a relatively lowly "community director".

kyravon
Apr 26, 2018
having had to function as "user support" for an internal company system that was not user friendly and that the system owners did't really care about, I have sympathy for JK. She was probably stuck between a rock and a hard place. She probably had no authority or ability to change the underlyign problems. So she was only able to help with piecemeal fixes to the symptoms, not the underlying problems. I don't know her situation, and maybe I'm over-reading based on my own experience. But I at least feel like she was actually willing to be the public face to us & tried to help where she could, so I give her credit for that. I don't feel like I can hold her responsible for all the crap decisions that were made.
For example, when they moved the Quotes/Trivia/Reviews etc. off the main page, I pointed out that would likely drop traffic because while I always scrolled down to read those, I don't necessarily click on all those links unless I'm curious about something or it's a show I like. I think she said it had to do with page loading times or something else, so I feel like at least she tried to explain and that maybe there was a legitimate reason to make the change (not just to annoy us). But it's this lack of transparency that is so frustrating.

Gislef
Apr 27, 2018
Another example was how she handled gaming. Or rather, how she didn't handle gaming.

I'd notice someone was gaming and point it out to her. She'd ask for "proof". I'd ask her what proof she would accept, and point out that the edit logs and such were (presumably) only visible to staff. Her response was basically that she wasn't going to look into gaming unless she had "proof", but she was the only one who could provide "proof".

I'd ask her what she considered gaming. She said it was different every time. But I didn't ask her what everyone else though was gaming. I asked her what _she_ considered gaming. "It's different every time." What?

Many conversations with JK had a certain Lewis Carroll flair to them.

sounddude
Apr 26, 2018
I think JK had little "authority" to do anything outside of what she was told she could and could not do. Her responses more often than not were that she'd have to check and see or she'd find out, etc. When I'd quiz her on why changes were made or why this or why that it was always a generic answer that didn't answer anything. And in the last year it was always "the source's" fault. We have to do it because that's what the source says.

She gave me the same "page loading" answer for the reason of moving other features to another page too. I personally think she was stuck in her job and finally left (or was fired). And she hasn't been replaced and may not ever be since it seems like CBSI just doesn't give a flip about TV*com.

Gislef
Apr 26, 2018
Oh, I'm sure she didn't have any authority, at least when it came to the site itself. I don't think any of her predecessors did, either.

The main problem is the "source". Even if it and the transfer coding was 100% accurate, its presence would be iffy. But even now, there's shows with no new episodes of new shows (Krypton). or missing episodes that have aired (Legion). As well as blatantly bogus duplicate episodes on newer shows (Black Lightning) and older ones alike.

What the line from Thinner about how no one's to blame, and all blame rolls off people's shoulders? There's probably a person in authority somewhere.. but if they don't know or care or do anything to resolve the problems, it's not much "authority".

Gislef
Apr 26, 2018
I certainly sympathize with JK's position, as I've noted here and elsewhere. But... I think many of her problems she brought on herself. Even if she didn't consider them problems.

For instance, her odd and contradictory approach to a single issue. Such as... guidelines. She was fond of saying that no two situations are alike and that there was no way of creating guidelines. Which, carries to its fullest, meant that no two situations no matter how identical could be treated equally.

But then, if you asked what went in what community, she cited... guidelines. Not that they were posed or cited anywhere.

I've noted elsewhere her robotic response to many questions. I'm not sure if she felt she had sufficiently answered them (she hadn't) and that it was okay to cut off the customer asking. Or if she just got tired of answering. Perhaps if she had answered sufficiently the first time, she wouldn't keep getting the same questions.

sounddude
Apr 25, 2018
Again, excellently put. I worked at a radio station that was a write-off station and when we started to make money, the station manager was fired and we were plunged back into the red.

The code on this site is so old that frankly I'm surprised that is still works with modern browsers. HTML 5.2 is the current version with 5.3 on the way. With TVcom's history of just trying to patch things rather than build anew from the ground up (which I too have suggested as well as use a test server for fixes) I expect that one day it will become incompatible with older browsers and they'll just pull the plug. Unless...they are using it as a write-off. If that were the case, it would explain their total ignoring of the user base including contributors and doing as little as possible to keep the site online.

 

[Erased Paper]

Spoiler

And TVCom Continues Spiraling Downward
By Gislef
Jul 02, 2018
33 Comments

So nothing new. Just observing that TVCom continues spiraling toward or past the point of no return.

Lots of shows, old and new, haven't updated with new episodes.

Publication of stuff that editors have added is stalled out. For instance, here. I added material last Sunday, and a week later it still hasn't published. And Preacher is only good through this week: next week it will probably join the ranks of shows with new episodes that just aren't appearing at TVCom.

There's no one to report issues to, as the TVCom contact email is dead as a doornail.

Articles continue to come in from TVGuide, but response is pretty minimal.

Basically, even if all of these issues and more were fixed tomorrow... would it do any good at this point? TVCom has created the reputation that it's error-ridden and non-responsive. Barring a massive publicity campaign, is anyone going to believe that it's changed and come to the site, even if it changes tomorrow?

What puzzles me is, as always, what the heck is the financial plan here? If CBS Interactive isn't going to put money into the site... why keep it up? Those servers still cost money, right? But very rarely, CBSI makes the pretense that it's still doing something. Like adding (and botching the adding) of the Fans of Reality TV site to TVCom. Why they did that... who knows? Even if they spent a dollar... that's a dollar they wasted.

Either CBSI is losing money keeping TVCom up. Or they don't want to spend the one-shot burst of money to shut it down (and does it cost much more than flipping a switch and reallocating some resources?), so they keep it going in severely castrated format. Or maybe both.

But count on CBSI to botch even botching up the site.


maritimer00
Aug 18, 2018
OMG...guides have updated to show data entered since July...huzzah!!! Ye gods, this site has slid if that gets me happy

Gislef
Aug 19, 2018
It even looks like the site is back to the "typical" 1-6 hour "add and it publishes" schedule.

But... so what? Eventually publication will crash again. For a day, a week, a month, two months plus. The problem has been happening for years, and since CBSI doesn't think it's important enough to fix (or can't), it doesn't get fixed.

Plus, without CBSi updating and adding new episodes--as well as new shows--TVCom will remain stuck in the past. If you can't submit anything to new shows either because they don't show up, or CBSI staff doesn't approve them when they do show up, it's pretty limited.

I've noted it before, but does anyone else find it ironic that the "new" episode auto-adding system was put in because not enough people were adding episodes. And now the auto-adding system doesn't add episodes of new shows, either. So overall we get less new episodes than we did when we could add episodes.

Gislef
Aug 18, 2018
Yup, Marvel's Luke Cage, for instance, finally updated. Since yesterday, when I checked and it hadn't. That was late June.

And shows with new episodes (like Wynonna Earp and Venture Brothers) finally showed new episodes.

But, a big chunk of it is still meaningless. Like non-editor shows Cloak & Dagger. Sure, the canned TIVO summaries appeared. But if staff doesn't approve anything, nothing gets updated. And shows that need "manual adjustment" to add new episodes (like Stan Lee's Lucky Man, Castle Rock, nu-Lost in Space,) have no new episodes.

Nor was there any "fixing" of stuff that didn't come in originally Like the missing S02E12 of Legion.

So as long as the auto system doesn't fully work, and publication takes 2+ months, and nobody fixes the screw-ups, it's still pretty much useless. You can add new stuff and... hope that eventually it shows up. If the site auto-adding will add the episodes, and they eventually show up, and staff eventually approves them for the shows without an editor. TVCom is basically an inferior version of TVGuide, with contribution being a miss-and-(eventual) hit affair.

maritimer00
Aug 13, 2018
So, do we say by end of September that this site is done? Do we hope CBS hires a new flunky to run things here? Or, do we look for this site to get replaced by end of year message thanking members for participating and a redirect link to the screwed up TV Guide site?

TesserT
Aug 13, 2018
If they ignore updating the fall season guides then I'd say this site it done. I hate to see all this data go to waste. And I doubt they even give us a heads up the site is gone - it will probably just not be here one day.

sounddude
Aug 14, 2018
That's probably the way it will happen. It's already mostly dead now. But will eventually just stop working. And then one day we'll try to sign in and it will be gone. And probably with no thanks and no warning.

CactusThorn
Aug 08, 2018
I see a few ads still here. They probably will keep the site up as long as the ad revenue offsets the costs of keeping the lights on.

I'm now using TheFutonCritic to find episodes, as tv.com is pretty useless now.

Gislef
Aug 09, 2018
The ads and articles are automatic: they require no staff and no money. Since the TVGuide writers are paid for what they do for TVGuide: CBSI then auto-ports the articles here.

TesserT
August 2
Well, I did have a few guides that were updating but even those guides have now stopped. Humans stopped 3 episodes short of the season finale, Quantico isn't listing the series final episode that airs this Friday, Reverie stopped with episode 6, The Affair stopped updating at episode 6 and Elementary has stopped updating as of episode 12. Other summer shows like Trial & Error and Swedish Dicks haven't seen episodes for their new seasons that started 2 weeks ago. And numerous new summer shows never had any episodes listed. Perhaps the downward spiral is nearing its end. I guess when the fall season starts, the updating of the guides will be the deciding factor as to whether TVcom is gone or still hanging by a thread. If the deciding factor were moderation of submissions, the site would be deemed dead and gone.

Gislef
Aug 03, 2018
My guess would be that the data is there, but it's not "publishing". Which is the same problem that has been going on since they switched to the auto-adding system and the new/modified publication "tool". It never got fixed, and here we are.

However, then we had JessicaKroeber to occasionally kick the development team, and a... development team. JK has left, and CBSI has slowly weaned the Development Team off of the site i the last six months. And here we sit.

There's no point in contributing, because the subs never go "live". Why should people contribute when, after their subs are approved, they never appear?


As I noted elsewhere, I imagine TVCom can go on for awhile: it's all automatic at this point. And CBSI can ignore the problems. Fixing them would cost money, and they've made sure TVCom won't make money.

TheOldBill
Jul 16, 2018
You guys are still here?

The only episodes to have been added to any UK shows I edit or follow since jessicakroeber left have been duplicates with incorrect airdates. I had been saving shows to my PVR to allow me to add details later but as tomorrow never comes I've stopped this futile practice. I'll keep checking in once a month or so until I see the website closed message.

spudchickalso
Jul 12, 2018
My primary account (spudchick) is locked out and password retrieval didn't work. I submitted a request first via DM to Jessica, then via email when I got the autoreply that support requests should be sent that way. Got an email that the request was received but nothing else for 5 days now. I think they're letting it die. This was once such a great site, and there's nothing else like it to fill the void.

Gislef
Jul 13, 2018
When was your account locked out?

The system was acting flaky tonight. Showing me as logged in on certain pages, but logged off on others and not letting me log in.

But yeah, the much-vaunted email response system has been non-functional even before Jessica left.

spudchick
Jul 15, 2018
It happened on the 7th. I just tried the password reset again and it worked! Thanks for mentioning the system flakiness. It's nice to be back

Gislef
Jul 15, 2018
No problem. There just isn't much for you to come back to.

Gislef
Jul 22, 2018
Case in point: the Luke Cage info I added last weekend still hasn't appeared this weekend.

[snipped]

You can see the summaries if you go into the edit pages. They just haven't "published". And who wants to go into the edit pages to read summaries?

maritimer00
Jul 06, 2018
The guides updated for data entered over last week or two.

kyravon
Jul 07, 2018
what's weird to me is it's not consistently updating, Only whatever was set up to automatically feed seems to occasionally come thru. I doubt anyone human that works for CBS ever does anything on this site anymore.. There's whole shows that aired an entire season with no episodes ever listed (Instinct, The Crossing, For the People, Take 2, The Break w/ MW etc.) - though if you click the "watch online" tab for Instinct (a CBS show), you can see clips from the aired shows. Other already existing shows aren't getting updated in a timely manner: Late Show with Colbert went over 2 weeks without adding already aired episodes. Other shows get some episodes sporadically (ep 19 of Blacklist never did get added), Full Frontal, Last Week tonight are off by 1-2 weeks. (and then even the way they title the episodes can vary depending on who entered it) Probably whoever at those networks whose job it is to type in episodes and 'push it' to TV.com is whata triggers these updates is my guess.

Gislef
Jul 08, 2018
I've given up on trying to figure out if there's any "pattern" to what does and doesn't update. Staff won't approve the subs regardless, which pretty much crashes the whole system. Game over.

As I've noted before, I suspect the data from Tivo is working at Tivo's end. It's showing up at the affiliated TVGuide.com okay. There's a flaw in how it is imported into TVCom, and it's a flaw that has been present--and growing--for the last year. When Jessica was here, she'd fix it. Now that she isn't, CBSI hasn't appointed anyone to fill her position, so no one does the manual whatever-they-do to fix it. And there the new episodes sit. For existing shows, maybe they come in (Luke Cage), maybe they don't (Lost in Space). if anyone doesn't create the new shows, then there's nowhere for them to go.

Gislef
Jul 07, 2018
And some new episodes filled in. All of season 2 of Luke Cage, the last two episodes of Westworld, the last few episodes of Cloak & Dagger.

Of course, the latter is pretty much meaningless if TVCom "staff" never approves anything.

Gislef
Jul 07, 2018
It's also a good example of the "spiraling" in the headline.

Why should most editors check their shows to see if there are new episode 1-2 weeks after they aired? So editors don't bother to come to the site, subs to their shows sit in the queue, people get discouraged and stop submitting, they spread the word, more people stop coming, editors become even less interested... and turtles all the way down.

(Eh, I like watching car wrecks, which is why I keep watching. But I'm not most people. )

sounddude
Jul 10, 2018
Your spiraling photo reminded me of this site going down the crapper. Very apropos.

Gislef
Jul 07, 2018
But not the new Lost in Space. Not that it would make much difference if it was on TVCom, since no one moderates non-editor submissions.

The irony (among many: take your pick) is that the original problem was supposedly that there weren't contributors to add new episodes to shows. So we got a system where eventually neither contributors or the system (i.e., non-contributors) can add shows. Yay, progress.

TesserT
Jul 06, 2018
Yes, they have and I'm sure it's not because of my numerous emails over the last 2 weeks

sounddude
Jul 03, 2018
It's only a matter of time until they pull life support. This week, I'm going to continue saving the unique recaps I've written just to have them. Maybe someday there will be a TvTome type site again that would want them. After I'm done...I'm done...

TesserT
Jul 02, 2018
And what are they thinking to buy up and add another database (fans of reality) to this site!!! They don't even maintain the shows that are already here. Are they thinking this will generate traffic since TVcom users are dropping out from this site right and left?

Gislef
Jul 03, 2018
I'll admit, I'm not familiar with FORT. I was under the impression it was more of a forum site than a database.

Buying a site just to do nothing with it and basically torpedo the fanbase there is another one of those weird non-financial financial decisions that I don't comprehend. What the heck did CBSI gain from the purchase and merger?

sroberts461
Jul 02, 2018
i didn't bother to read that post but have done so now. Seems like the new folk from the reality site are unimpressed by the state of TV.com. Can't say I really a noticed a change tbh.

Gislef
Jul 03, 2018
I got the impression that the FORT users who found their way here weren't primarily unhappy that their site was shut down and they were directed to TVCom.

I don't know anything about the FORT management: who ran it, who maintained it, who created it. My guess would be that it was similar to TVRage: it was started privately, and the owner(s) sold to CBSI when CBSI indicated an interest and made an interest. Why CBSI was interested in buying it, I have no idea and I suspect will be a mystery for the ages. They seem to have no interest in reaching out to the FORT community beyond the very minimum possible.

sounddude
Jul 05, 2018
Okay, I guess I don't know what FORT is or where it is or what the Reality Fans is. Please enlighten.

Gislef
Jul 06, 2018
It's kind of like saying Fox "absorbed" Lucifer. Or NBC "absorbed" Timeless.

Gislef
Jul 06, 2018
I wish them luck of it.

Although "absorption" isn't really the word. That implies that TVCom may some substantive effort to incorporate FORT into TVCom. All they did was shut down the original site, post a brief message on an existing TVCom community board, Feature it, and then... forget about it, to all indicators that I've seen.

sounddude
Jul 06, 2018
It seems that the absorption of FORT into TV@com didn't sit well with folks. They've recreated themselves online again: HERE

Gislef
Jul 06, 2018
I often find it amusing that CBSI pulls the same kind of garbage that Trump pulls, or pulled, or is accused of pulling, or whatever. And yet as a matter of general site policy (judging by the writers, at any rate, who presumably keep their jobs by having similar views to the owners), CBSI is opposed to Trump.

And they were doing his tactics before Trump ran for President. To quote the words of a great sage, irony can be pretty ironic sometime.

Gislef
Jul 05, 2018
FORT = Fans of Reality TV. Who had their own site until it was shut down, presumably because CBSI bought them out. Or owned it and decided to shut it down and merge it with TVCom.

Someone on TVCom tossed together a "heading out the door" welcome to the FORT members who were directed to TVCom.

You can read about it here, as far as their "welcome" to TVCom.

The first and main problem with it, from a TVCom perspective, is that it was posted as a community thread instead of a staff thread: TVCom General Announcement or whatever. Admittedly, posting it as a community thread and then Featuring it assured that it would appear on the site home page (which it still does: it was posted on 5/18). But that's a flaw in the system. So rather than fix the system, the staff is working within it.

Second is that to the best of my knowledge, TVCom staff has done nothing with the community or the FORT members since 5/18. And basically "gave" them a community that already existed. At least, judging from the 8/23/14 and 11/22/13 posts that precede it. Needless to say, the attitude of "Hey, let's shut down your site and give you an existing spot at another failing site that we own" didn't endear them to anyone.

sroberts461
Jul 05, 2018
Check out the Reality Fans post under Community section on front page.

sroberts461
Jul 03, 2018
I perused the comments in the Reality Fans post, so that's where I got my impression of them not being impressed with this site.

maritimer00
Jul 02, 2018
When they took away the ability of editors to add episodes to the guides in favor of a system that was broken from the start, it showed how little management/staff cared then.

Gislef
Jul 03, 2018
As I noted elsewhere, the problem wasn't just an automated system (provided by Tivo, according to JessicaKroeber's current resume). It was that it was a completely automated system. Limiting the changes to one person caused two problems: the fact it was flawed put an undue burden on Jessica. I'm sure she had better things to do then fix the problems that Development never could or bothered to fix.

It also meant that once that one person left, if TVCom didn't replace them then there's no one to make the corrections. Taking editors out of the equation was part of that flawed approach, sure. And since TVCom has long-since been notorious for having staff leave and failing to replace them, it was a disaster easily predicted. And it was.

maritimer00
Jul 03, 2018
If the updating was indeed turned over to Tivo, a scary thought has come to mind: could the lack of episodes being added come down to the owners not renewing/paying for the "service"?

Gislef
Jul 03, 2018
If you read Jessica's LinkedIn resume, it says that she set up the partnership for Tivo with TVCom and TVGuide. TVGuide seems to have accurate listings, albeit the two-week Tivo ones.

"Manages TV.com and TVGuide.com partnerships with data provider TiVo, monitoring data integrity and QA"

So my speculation would be that CBSI still pays for the service. It's just that they've told/pay Development to fix any issues with TVGuide, but not TVCom. They pay someone to monitor data integrity and QA at TVGuide, but not at TVCom.

It's possible CBSi has stopped paying for Tivo services to TVCom. More likely, IMO, they got it as a package deal with TVGuide and it's the bad coding at TVCom that keeps it from implementing correctly.

TesserT
Jul 02, 2018
I believe you have hit the nail on the head! My collection of data for the shows I edit that are devoid of new episodes continues to pile up!

 

[Erased Paper]

Spoiler

Publication and Notification Down, Sorta
By Gislef
Jan 05, 2019

In case you hadn't noticed, notification has been wacky since roughly Christmas. Or maybe it's just wacky for me. I keep getting notifications that people have posted on various threads that I've created, both on TVCom Feedback and elsewhere. But when I go there, there's nothing posted. So if I haven't responded to what you've said, that's why.
In other words, TVCom has a forum system where you get notifications that people have responded to you, but you can't see the responses.
And while some publication works (Cast, Crew, Recaps), the trivia-type stuff like Trivia and Quotes doesn't. For instance, the recap I posted the evening of 1/3 has shown up for Gotham:
[snipped]
But the trivia hasn't.
[snipped]
And yes, they're there when you do something funky with the reordering tool.
They just don't publish.
But on another page, something submitted 1/4/18 did publish.
[snipped]
If only TVCom has a Development staff that could develop fixes. Or you could contact to ask them to develop fixes.


Gislef
Jan 06, 2019
FYI, I created a Facebook group named "TVCom Editors". If anyone wants to join and have a relatively reliable means of communication with other users. Since TVCom doesn't seem to want to provide us users with even that.

Although it is theoretically the two-week holiday vacation that TVCom gives its staffers. So maybe everything will be back to "normal" after 1/7.

Gislef
Jan 06, 2019
Well, I can see TesserT's post when i come directly here. And I didn't get a notification, but then when I got here the notification showed up on my notification list. Four hours after TesserT posted.

TesserT
Jan 06, 2019
Cast and crew I entered from 2 days ago is still not published. And I've got the same wacky issues with notifications.

Gislef
Jan 07, 2019
And it looks like the stuff that didn't publish, in some cases since last Thursday but mostly since Saturday morning/evening, have published.

So it's "only" a weekend screwup. Or at least, another one.

Gislef
Jan 05, 2019
Not to mention, the first time i tried to publish this, I was told "Publishing Forbidden". I had to copy it, then start a new thread and cut--paste in the content.
Because trying to publish something and having it forbidden the first time isn't in any way discouraging to the vast variety of users.
------
And TVCom is unable to list... tv shows
By Gislef
Jan 10, 2019

So as of this writing, on 1/10, no 1/8 episode of The Gifted. Or no 1/15 episode, either. There is a 1/20 episode listed, if you want to watch The Gifted on Sunday. (Hint: There is no episode of The Gifted on 1/20.) "hoMe" is an episode, but it airs on 1/15 rather than 1/20 as TVCom claims.

And I'm sure there are other new episodes missing as well. For instance, next week's 1/15 episode of The Flash still isn't listed. Even though the 1/17 episode of Supernatural is listed. But Flash might still appear in the next five days. I'd illustrate with an incredibly witty and breathtaking image, but the image-importing for community threads still doesn't work.

So basically you can't find out when popular tv shows air episodes, on a TV database site. Which is "the most complete TV site anywhere". Really, that's what CBSI tells us. But enough of their comedy routine.
------
So Now What the Heck is Going on?
By Gislef
Jan 13, 2019
45 Comments
It appears that TVCom has regressed. A lot.

The front page "top 3" articles are new. Sorta. Except they're for season 1 of Supergirl, and Season 2 of Gotham, and Night Manager. So articles that were published 4/16.

The Featured Community threads have regressed to (mostly) July 2017.

The most recent article in the TVCom feedback forum is dated 10/17/17.

As far as I can tell, threads that I posted in here since 4/16 have disappeared. Or have 404 errors, or whatever you want to call it.

But imaging adding now works! At least you can add an image when you create an article. But you can't when you edit it.

The autoplay on the front page won't turn off, even when you have it set to Off.

One might think that the development team deliberately deleted all of my 2016+ threads, since they weren't too complimentary. But then why leave threads like, "Are We Being Lied To? Part 1: "The List"? That also assumes that anyone at CBSI what anyone on TVCom says about TVCom. What's the saying about never ascribing to malice what can be explained by incompetence? Probably everything will be back to "normal" come the next week.

Overall, who the heck knows what's going on. I'm sure TVCom will tell us. Bwah hah hah.
Gislef
Member Since Apr 22, 2005


Gislef
Jan 24, 2019
And the front page is back to "normal" again.

CBSI should charge tickets: this is more thrilling than most amusement park rides.


dhaworth
Jan 22, 2019
Could someone please do me a favour?
Please Go to the General TV Discussion Community and let me know what the first few posts are?

All I can see is one Midseason schedule that I posted, then the next is a Wyona Earp review by Gislef from April 2016.
But, another user can see 3 posts of the midseason schedule, which I thought had been deleted.

Also, does this link work for you?
[snipped]

For me it just gets truncated and I receive a page not found error. But, this apparently works for others.

I don't understand. I guess something in my browser could cause the url not to load, but it shouldn't result in posts not showing up in the community or on my profile.

Gislef
Jan 22, 2019
I also see what you see.

dhaworth
Jan 23, 2019
Thanks. This is very weird. Apparently @sroberts461 can also see the posts in my profile, whereas all I have are entries that say "Untitled".


dvcnerfherder
Jan 22, 2019
I see what you see, both in Chrome and Firefox.

dhaworth
Jan 22, 2019
Thanks


Syrinx2
Jan 20, 2019
It seems the images are stored at tv.tome, has that been the case all the time? And my posts dropped below 100. They just got cut at Oct2015...


Syrinx2
Jan 20, 2019
"This is not the TV site, yo´re looking for."

Gislef
Jan 20, 2019
And I received three notiifications about this one post.

sounddude
3 days ago
Maybe a dumb question but how do you receive "notifications" about a post here? I have always had to manually check to see if there were any new posts here. Sure would be nice to have a little icon or something to let me know someone has added a post.

Gislef
2 days ago
In the upper right corner, there should be a globe with a red number and a white number in it that "notifies" you when you have new posts. Either on a thread you created, or when someone responds to one of your posts. In theory, if you reply to this or post anywhere on this thread, I'd get at least one notification.

"In theory" being the operative words. For one thing, since I created this thread, I'd get two notifications: one for you posting on the thread, and one for you replying specifically to this post on the thread. If you delete a reply, then I'll get a notification with no link but your user name on it. And I might not get any notification at now, or might get notified days/weeks/months later because of the current system vagaries.

You won't see it on your editor moderation queue page: that's a bug that has been around for years and @JessicaKroeber always made it sound like it was something they couldn't fix. Typically it's up there with the envelope symbols (PMs), the pen-in-a-box symbol (moderator queue), and your user image,

I'd include an image showing you what I see, but of course image-inserting isn't working now, either.

At least that's what I think of as "notifications".

Gislef
Yesterday
I don't believe so.

sounddude
Yesterday
I get those. If I post something and someone "votes up" a comment or replies. I thought maybe there was a way of being notified of any new replies that don't fall into the above categories.


Syrinx2
Jan 20, 2019
Almost all posts in the "newest" community posts are staff posts. So, that´s probably what happened. They only let staff posts remain for posterity on the site, It looks like we never posted here,,,

Gislef
Jan 21, 2019
Staff posts?

Syrinx2
Jan 21, 2019
In my community feed, mostly posts by staff show up. Before there were users posts.

Gislef
Jan 21, 2019
Are you talking posts on a thread, or the thread themselves?

Granted, the terminology is pretty vague. But IMO it's mostly staff that creates threads: the basics. And entirely users who post on the threads. The staff threads are the auto-stuff posted over from TVGuide. The community threads are the stuff that someone actually creates for TVCom.

And yep, the user-created threads are gone. Again. About the time that the 2+ year-old threads on the top of the front page came back. You can click (or right-click) on the threads to the right under "Trending Stories" to see that the user-created threads under TVCom Feedback are gone/404'd. Again.


Gislef
Jan 19, 2019
And now the 2016 "main articles" are back on the homepage.

I'm not sure if it's incompetence, bad coding, or some weird effort to convince people that TVCom is updating its home page on a regular basis. It seems like it wouild be easier to actually assign new articles from the stuff being imported from TVGuide, then just hashing and rehashing existing articles from 2+ years ago.


dhaworth
Jan 19, 2019
I reposted a link to a mid-season schedule, as the first post vanished in the purge.
And now I see the re-posted one has been deleted in the last few hours, along with all of the posts in the General TV Community that were posted after April 2016.

dhaworth
Jan 20, 2019
I just got a notification that someone posted a comment on the article that as far as I can see no longer exists.???????

Syrinx2
Jan 20, 2019
They forgot to close their tabs?


Gislef
Jan 19, 2019
Maybe it's just me, and maybe it's just temporary (again). But now the Featured Community Posts have disappeared entirely from the front page. Although the top-of-page articles have updated again, since they updated the entire day.

The Trending and Most Popular Shows appear to be listed about where the Featured Community posts appeared. Although one questions the metrics used to determine what are "Most Popular": as of this writing, the most popular shows are... Front Line and Gold Rush ranking above Supernatural, Grey's Anatomy, and Friends.

Granted, the Featured Community Posts weren't serving any function since TVCom never bothered to feature any new posts. I'm pretty sure there were some new community posts since the last one was "featured", however. So if there aren't any featured community posts, it's because TVCom didn't bother to feature them. And if TVCom essentially abandoned the site other than TVGuide-ported articles, there's be no reason for most community writers to stick around and write stuff.

Gislef
Jan 19, 2019
Ah, the Featured Community posts have reappeared simply by me resetting the page. Although the most recent one is 5/13/16. But then the TVGuide-imported articles disappeared. Although they've disappeared and reappeared for me many times before.

Also, Heroes Reborn is listed as the fourth top-trending show. Yep, I'm sure that a show that ended in 1/16 is trending higher than (for instance) Supergirl, which is still on the air.

Hit Ctrl-R to reset yet again, and the TVGuide articles appear as well. And maybe the Trending/Most Popular stuff has always been on the left-hand side. The data metrics are so useless (see above) that I've never used them anyway.

So Ctrl-R and get a different view of the main page every time. Whee!

maritimer00
Jan 18, 2019
Looks like some kind of data purging of "old" data is being done. The Notifications on my Profile have rolled back to 2016. I'd say either there is tinkering going on or...something else.

Gislef
Jan 18, 2019
Currently I have notifications up to 11/02/16, and then none until 1/13/19. But notifications, at least for me, haven't worked correctly in... well, forever. They change from minute to minute: something I was notified about a screen ago disappears, the little red # listing the # of notifications remains the same no matter how many times I go into my list, and so on, and so on.

I say "currently" because give it another hour, and it could change to something else entirely.

Whee!


Gislef
Jan 17, 2019
And now the front page is back to "normal". We even have new "top page" articles.

And the stuff that was "deleted", like my award-winning two-part article, is back.

Whee!

Gislef
Jan 17, 2019
And of course no apology, or explanation, or acknowledgement. Almost as if CBSI doesn't consider the TVCom users human beings.

Gislef
Jan 17, 2019
This comment has been removed.


Gislef
Jan 16, 2019
It's also possible that, say, someone at CBSI glanced at the site a month ago, and glanced at it a week ago, and noticed the same three articles at the very top of the page. And told Development to fix it. So they did... by deleting two years' worth of articles, bringing new articles to the top of the page. It would probably be the easiest solution. "Hey, it's articles and photos I didn't see a week ago: they must be new!" As long as no one looks at the dates.


Gislef
Jan 13, 2019
What's odd is... what caused the new problem? Is the coding so bad that stuff just simultaneously got deleted and front page stuff reverted to 2+ years ago?

Or did someone in Development do something on Friday to try to add/fix/improve something, and it went to hell? And then they walked out the door without noticing anything wrong, shrugged their shoulders, and said, "I'll pick up on Monday." It took me 30 seconds to notice something was wrong, and another five minutes to check links and dates. Who makes a major change at 5 minutes to closing on Friday and leaves for the weekend?

Neither one seems very likely, yet presumably one of them must be true. And both beggar the imagination. The work environment at CBSI Development must be... very unique. Or maybe it's a California thing.

The other possibility is that TVCom is somehow tied to the coding at another CBSI site. And something got changed there successfully, which mucked up TVCom, and nobody checked the "related" site. Again, that seems like shoddy coding, but perhaps not the current "development team"'s fault.


sounddude
Jan 13, 2019
"So Now What the Heck is Going on?"

More TVcom strangeness. New episodes are finally showing up on my one current show, but episode numbers jumped from the teens to the 40's. Two bogus episodes were added and now a "new" episode has been added which is just a repeat of an episode from 16 seasons ago! Dates are screwed up, epi numbers are wrong, bogus and old epis added, sounds like it's just another TVcom SNAFU!


dhaworth
Jan 13, 2019
It does seem really weird.
Everything in the General TV community has been deleted after Sep 2017.
But, there are posts from May/June 2018 in other communities still there.

Gislef
Jan 13, 2019
"It does seem really weird."

And that's the fun thing: there's really no rhyme or reason to it. At least none visible to the not-so-casual user. Perfectly polite reviews and news, including but not limited to my own, were deleted. Criticism of TVCom is still in the system.

And of course, if it's some kind of "punishment", it's so indistinguishable from regular TVCom behavior for the last couple of years as to be meaningless.

But another day, another display of incompetence by TVCom developers. Que sera sera.


CactusThorn
Jan 13, 2019
I've got two "new" notifications showing in the top right. They're actually from 06/2016. Probably related, I would guess.

mrdivot
Jan 14, 2019
All of my recent notifications have disappeared.. The latest one showing is from Jessica dated March 2 2017.

 

[Erased Paper]

This is the last part.

Spoiler

What fresh hell is this?
By Gislef
Feb 19, 2019
18 Comments

So, can anyone edit summaries?

I'm using Firefox as a browser, and when I go in to edit summaries, the text appears briefly and then disappears and the submission field is lightly greyed out, Ditto for recaps. I edited a summary yesterday, so it was working then. Can't see the recap on that today, either.

The lifetime and production code fields are fine. So are the Season Name, Episode Type, and Episode Number (Display) fields. You can enter quotes, but not Notes, Trivia, and Allusions.

This seems to apply for old episodes, and the vanishingly few new ones that are in the system.

So... the TVCom submission site isn't allowing roughly 75% of the submissions anymore? Good times.

Anyone want to form a pool on how long this "temporary" problem lasts? And as most of us know, "temporary" problems at TVCom have a habit of eventually becoming permanent.

-----

And since submitting this created a duplicate (another "temporary" problem), I tried deleting one copy and they both disappeared.


Gislef
Feb 22, 2019
Oh, thinking about it, it's also possible that somehow Adblock briefly reverted and the problem was at their end. I can't see a scenario where that happens, but it is still slightly possible.

sounddude
Feb 23, 2019
So I've been gone for a few days and when I came back to check in, the only post showing on the Community Posts page was Jessica's goodbye. WTF? It was under both Recent and Trending and there was nothing else listed. So the thought came to me to look under the notifications globe in the upper right hand corner and those recent up votes were still there. So that's how I now have to find the more recent posts.

I've not experienced the same issues editing with FF but I did have issues with FF recently. In January, FF updated from 64.0 to 64.0.2 to fix a few bugs and it was stable and was working well for me. I like my tabs below the bookmark bar and with v64+ you can use a userChrome.css file in the FF chrome file to force them back down under. And that was working fine for a long time until February when only three weeks after the update, Mozilla kills 64+ with 65. FF65.0 is a totally rewritten version of FF and kills all the hacks and css that customized 64 and previous versions. Not only that, 65 was causing havoc with web sites not working. I, along with scores of others, hated it. So all that to say this. I don't know if you auto-updated to FF65 and I have no idea if it would fix your issue (I'm not experiencing the same things you were) but what I did was make a copy of my FF profile file and put it somewhere else (I put it in my Documents file) just to be safe and then reverted back to FF64.0.2 (you can find the download link at Mozilla). I have my doubts that would fix your problem but you never know. And yes, I'm still able to use AdBlock Plus with 64.0.2 like before. The only thing you'll have to do is turn off auto-update-and-install or you'd be in the same situation in a few hours. Since 64.0.2 was recently updated and secure it should last a while.

Gislef
Feb 21, 2019
One thing I'd note about the whole Adblocker/submission field blocking:

Was it fixed (and presumably broken in the first place) because of something deliberate? Or was it just "another" site breakdown? And was it fixed, or did it just fix itself? Or was it done because of something a developer did elsewhere, and the trickledown affected TVCom as well, and then people complained at that other site?

And if it was deliberate to TVcom, was it fixed because I complained? I mention and tag @lmwang1977 occasionally when his name comes up naturally in my rantings , but I don't put his (?) name in every post. Did the staff member (well, the closest we have to a staff member) actually see my complaint and pass it on? No one else seems to have complained publicly. (Apologies if you did and I missed it.) That gives me a lot of consumer power, relatively speaking.

But then, it's not like other stuff is fixed. Still no new Arrow and Black Lightning episodes from last week, among many others. Are those not fixed because they're harder to fix? Because they can't be fixed? Won't be fixed? Specific to TVCom while the adblocker things may have applied to multiple sites?

Questions, questions. Does anyone who frequents other CBSI sites know? Are there people who frequent other CBSI sites that also check out TVCom?

Gislef
Feb 21, 2019
And as I look over at the right, is it just me or does anyone else find it amusing that the Taboola ads gets updated more than new episodes of TV shows? At a site named... TVCom. As opposed to "dogbarking.com" or the equivalent. (What you see on the right may vary.)

I can literally get more updated and current information about dogs than TV shows at tvcom. Maybe CBSI should create a dogbarking site and run TV ads there.

Gislef
Feb 20, 2019
Then again, I'm still trying to figure out why the 4/28/2014 episode of CBS Evening News is so fascinating that it has to be on the front page week after week, as a "What to Watch Online" featured video.

Even if the site is CBS owned and CBS feels the need to feature a CBS Evening News video... why this one? Are tornadoes in the Midwest almost five years later really worth watching news coverage about?

Gislef
Feb 20, 2019
Thinking about it overnight, I suppose the question is this: is using Adblocker not supporting TVCom?

I literally can't use TVCom without Adblocker. That may be my technical ignorance, it may be a limitation of my browser and/or laptop, maybe it's some other firewall on my computer. Heck some computers I have used are corporate and don't let you turn off their firewall/adblocker. It's not like TVCom wants to talk to me about it, or has ever been open to me talking to them about it. They weren't open when TVCom used to occasionally communicate with its users: now that they've gone silent running, even less so.

There are possible ways I could get around the anti-Adblocker besides turning it off long enough to contribute. Turning off Javascript seems to be one possibility, but it may be a change in Javascript fields rather than a coding change to prevent adblocking. In which case, turning off Javascript for TVCom may not only fail to resolve the issue, but make it worse. As well as possibly doing something I can't undo.

Downloading more extensions, and further risking intrusion for something that may not work anyway, is another possibility.

*That is not an invitation for anyone to give me technical advice. PM me if you really want to, but at this point TVCom isn't worth the bother.*

The fact that TVCom "Development" decided to change their Javascript coding at this point in the game is absurd no matter what. Either they did it deliberately, in which case they're... worried about ad revenue at this point? And after all the things they've done to make TVCom less appealing to visitors? That's the kind of downward spiraling I've described elsewhere. "We get less visitors, so we need more ads. The visitors we get block our ads, so we need to make our ads more intrusive. Which means we get less visitors. So we need moire intrusive advertising." And so on, and so on.

Or they did it accidentally. That means that they're coding to change the submission process... to do what? Improve the experience for contributors? Has anyone seen any improvement? It also means that instead of looking at all the other issues, they're recoding submission fields.

If they offered some kind of quid pro quo--"You turn off your ad blocking, we'll fix the many many issues so you want to"--that's one thing. But they haven't so far, and I don't expect them to.

So to me, supporting TVCom is a two-way street. I'll support them if they support me... and they've spent the last 12+ months indicating that they're not interested in supporting me or any other visitors.

EJamison
Feb 20, 2019
Switching to a different browser is trivial, so, if that works, then I'd go with that.

I suppose we could hope that the fact that something is happening -- even though it's bad -- indicates that something is going on. So, maybe improvements are in the works.

Regardless, I would like to think that the management could post something to tell us what's going on.

It seems like they are severely wasting the value of a URL like "tv.com", although it's probably too late to get back what they could have had.

By the way, the day after I commented on one of your previous posts, I was unable to log in for 2 days.

Gislef
Feb 20, 2019
It's a moot point: as I noted elsewhere, the issue is adblocker, not the browser.

Why I would want to be inundated with more ads, for less and less value (scrambled old episode lists, missing episodes, no new episodes, episodes with incorrect dates, non-linking TV Listings, disappearing TVGuide articles, outdated and disappearing featured community posts), only CBSI knows for sure. I sure as heck don't.

As I've said before and will no doubt say again, CBSI has no understanding of customer service. If you were waiting in a car shop to get your car repaired, or waiting for the cable company guy to show up at your house and fix your Internet, having someone come in and do the equivalent of hold your head and make you watch ads is not successful customer service. Or any customer service.

Gislef
Feb 20, 2019
Another problem is that without Adblocker, tvcom runs so slowly that it is basically inoperable. At least for me. Your mileage may vary.

So Tvcom making me watch more ads, that make it impossible for me to use their site, is a no-go at the level of service it's had for at least the last year.

Gislef
Feb 20, 2019
Except switching to a different browser isn't trivial, at least for me. After years if experimentation, Firefox is about 2-3 times faster than Google Chrome for me, with TVCom. Your experience may vary, and apparently I need to get Adblocker working on Chrome. And IE is even further behind that.

However, as I noted it may be a moot point. No new episodes, no new summaries to correct. And the auto-add system mucks up dates: check out the two most recent episodes of The Gifted. So the only way to correct the dates is to put the correction in the summary.

And that's why something happening doesn't mean that it's an improvement. It just means the system is falling apart. Remember when the auto-adding system, and editors being unable to edit dates and episode numbers, was supposed to be an "improvement"? How'd that work out?

I have no doubt that as soon as CBSi considers TVCom a waste, they'll cut it loose and sell off the URL. Right now it only makes a profit for them because a) they pay their general development people the minimum (at most!) to keep it running, b) they can set a lot of it to auto-add (episodes, dates, episode listings, articles from TVGuide) so they don't have to pay for staff, and c) for some reason people like Taboola will pay them to post ads here. Although who comes here to see them, I have no idea.

I'm surprised that CBSI hasn't cut TVCom loose already. Their profit would have to be really really low.

As far as management posting something... that assumes there is management. @lmwang1977 is about it, and that CBSi staffer ain't talking.

EJamison
Feb 20, 2019
Well, I've never tried to use an ad blocker and I usually don't have much problem with speed on this site, but I haven't tried to edit anything recently.

Periodically, the ads on Yahoo Answers cause significant problems. It always takes them weeks to fix it, and then a few months go by and it happens again.

I DID notice the dates messed up on "The Gifted" and, a couple days ago I got around to watching the Feb 5 episode and missed seeing your recap. I found one at ew.com, but it's filled with lots of opinion and he or she likes to refer to the Frost triplets as "the Cukoos".

Gislef
Feb 20, 2019
Well the Frost Triplets are the "Stepford Cuckoos" in the comics. Sorta. So that's not surprising.

There wasn't a 2/5 episode, was there? Unless you mean the episode that TVCom says was 2/5, but was actually 2/12. Of course, the Fan Recap button doesn't show up on the 2/12 main episode page. But you can go to the edit page and read it. Because that's intuitive and simple.

It does look like they fixed the Adblocker thing, though. Or it spontaneously fixed itself after spontaneously breaking. It's TVCom, so who knows?

EJamison
Feb 21, 2019
You're right, I got the date confused. It was "calaMity".

I haven't read the comics so I didn't realize that.

maritimer00
Feb 19, 2019
Works in Chrome...at present.

Gislef
Feb 20, 2019
Ah, the problem (if CBSI considers it a problem) is that adblocker now block the submission fields. Earlier I didn't have the adblocker turned on Chrome. I turned it on and, hey presto, the sub fields are greyed out in Chrome, too. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that you don't use adblocker, maritimer.

Whether it's sloppy programming that someone thought that submission fields are ads or accidentally coded them to be considered ads, or it's an effort to get users to turn off their ad blocker when visiting TVCom, only CBSI can say for sure. I (and presumably anyone) can pause their adblocker long enough to enter such submissions.

Would I be willing to "whitelist" TVcom? Maybe if I was getting value for it. What I would have said ten years ago is a different story. Today? No. CBSI doesn't appear interested in adding value to the site, and in fact the value is steadily decreasing. All of which I've noted in loving detail.

If CBSI continues its pattern of waiting later and later to add "new" episodes, it may be a moot point anyway. Hard to contribute to new episodes, if there aren't any.

Gislef
Feb 19, 2019
That does seem to fix the problem. Whether it's worth opening up a new browser just to fix summaries, add summaries recaps, notes, and Trivia, and fix quotes, is another question.

(It seems to affect everything that uses a single field. Since quotes get entered in their own special submission fields but revisions are done in a single field, the former works but the latter doesn't.)

Given the dearth of new episodes and the current publication bug, at least for the shows I check (Supergirl, Arrow, Black Lightning, Flash, Supernatural) it may be a moot point. If you can't add/monitor/track new episodes and/or nothing shows up when you do, what's the point of editing old ones? I suppose it's possible that TVCom may "rally" once more and the missing episodes will get added eventually. It always seems to. But someday it probably won't.

Gislef
Feb 19, 2019
I'll try it there. Eventually. Although why it would in one but not other, one wonders...

For that matter, why would the system "break down" overnight? TVCom has been around 10+ years, and it still isn't stable? Or does Development keep "developing" stuff (not that we've ever seen it "develop" in any visible improvement sense) and breaking stuff?

Gislef
Feb 19, 2019
You can see existing recaps, if you click on the "Fan Recap" button. So the text is still there, you just can't edit it or add new recaps. Ditto for summaries, presumably. And Notes, and Trivia, and Allusions.

Someone submitted an Allusion last night, so presumably the system was working then. One wonders what TVCom staff is working on after hours that cause these kinds of breakdowns. Or if the breakdowns just happen spontaneously, and then Development eventually comes around and (usually) fixes them.
---------
And so the countdown begins... again
By Gislef
Feb 25, 2019
21 Comments

So the last episode of any show that I edit has appeared as of Friday, 2/22. MacGyver.

There are no new episodes of anything after that that I edit and/or watch. No Arrow, Black Lightning, Flash, The Gifted, Supernatural, Gotham, MacGyver. No episodes at all of a plethora of other shows. Inaccurate dates, titles, and duplicate episodes of old and new shows. Yes, I'm sure other editors are having the same problems: it's a site-wide issue. Publication is fubar yet again. Don't know if it's longer than usual or not: determining that would involve a level of caring that I find impossible to muster.

No staff moderations in at least six months. Even some of the long-timers are more than a week absent. And of course, since there's effectively no staff there's no MIA-reporting process.

Why editors don't retire if they're abandoning the site, I have no idea.

So anyone want to start a pool about if/when TVCom will start updating?


Gislef
Yesterday
And hey, at least for me, the Trending Shows is back on the main page. And has updated! Heroes Reborn is no longer a "trending show".

But... Gunsmoke is? Because I'm sure a show that was cancelled in 1975 is the 14th top trending show on TV (even if TVCom claims there were three episodes in 2018). And Tonight Show w/Jay Leno is at #13.

But then the same results also somehow determined that Gunsmoke is 13th popular shows. So maybe there's a secret contingent of Gunsmoke fans at TVCom.

But at least it's more popular than Heroes Reborn!

Supposedly. Meanwhile, take that you fans of black-ish. And any CW superhero show. And pretty much anything on CW that isn't called Supernatural. And any non-network show that isn't House Hunters International. And any non-American show.

Gislef
Yesterday
Oops, spoke too soon. Two minutes later, I re-drew the TVCom home page, and Heroes Reborn is back, baby! Although Gunsmoke is still #13 on the Most Popular shows, it's not longer among the Most Trending.

In fact, the "Most Trending" looks a lot like it did before it went off the main page.

So take that, Wild West suckers! Gunsmoke is now losing out to Heroes Reborn yet again!

Gislef
4 hours ago
And Gunsmoke is back baby!, Not only that, but it's now at #12 in trending. So it's more popular than it was yesterday. Except for when it isn't trending at all. It's also the 11th most popular show, which is an improvement over yesterday (sometimes).


But then it disappeared from Trending two minutes later. But hey, now Warehouse 13 (ending in 2014) is now the 13th most popular show. Although Gunsmoke still has it beat at #11. How either of them manage to be more popular than current shows is anyone's guess. Not to mention White Collar (also ended 2014) ended is a whopping #3 in popularity! Yes, 2014 USA Network show is more popular than current on-the-air CW show Supernatural: #5 in popularity, Take that, 2019 TV!

I might start up a separate "feedback" thread (is it feedback if there's no one to feed it back to?) on the ups and down of the Trending/Popular Shows. It's so fun to imagine the mind of the programmer(s) who wrote the algorithm, Meanwhile, hey, tune in and watch the popularity and trending ratings change the next time you check the page.

Gislef
23 hours ago
And then the image posting I made showing that Gunsmoke was back as #13 Trending is gone.

But here's the main page an hour later, showing that it's gone. Again. Maybe it will around. I'll keep the image saved just in case. FYI, what's the point of showing "trending" shows if they change every half hour?

Gislef
Yesterday
But it looks like the publication issues from the weekend were resolved.

When we're up we're up. And when we're down we're down. And when we're only halfway up, we're neither up nor down.

Gislef
2 days ago
Ooh, and look: the "Cloak nd Dagger stare longingly at each other" photo is back on the main articles list.

I suppose it beats the cowboy-hatted crooner. But how hard is it to put up a new article from TVGuide?

Gislef
Mar 04, 2019
Well, that didn't last long. Publication stopped working between Saturday morning and that evening.

Gislef
3 days ago
And still down 17 hours after the posting above.

TesserT
2 days ago
And just when hope was within our grasp...............

Gislef
2 days ago
Hope ain't been within our grasp for a long time.

TesserT
2 days ago
LOL

Gislef
Mar 01, 2019
And actors whose credits added to episode pages showed up. And the "Fan Recap" button. And quotes and such appearing. And so on.

Gislef
Mar 01, 2019
It looks like at least a few shows went "live" with new episodes earlier today. And future episodes.

Until the next time...

CactusThorn
3 days ago
What seems odd to me is that they seem to manage to create a page for every new show this year, but never manage to add those shows to the list (which must exist somewhere) for automated episode updating.

Gislef
3 days ago
My speculation would be that lmwang creates/created the shows (and he's no longer listed as a contributor for that creation: see Doom Patrol for a recent example) and doesn't "connect" them to the auto-episode adding . Or can't. Or the system is buggy and when he does, it doesn't work. Take your pick.

And probably someone else who remains anonymous does it now. Or the previous "staff member" still does it but had his name scrubbed.

maritimer00
Feb 28, 2019
I'm sure they have their TOP people looking into it. Probably the same folks who would thank you for your patience as they turn the site into...whatever hell this is now.

Gislef
Feb 26, 2019
Keep in mind also that a lot of the these problems (I hate to say "100%", but it sure seems that way) with new episodes and/or publishing came about after TVCom switched to "automated" episode adding. Which was designed to add episodes (and Tivo/network summaries) because contributors weren't doing it. Because contributors weren't coming to TVCom in sufficient qualities. Also probably because it took the work load off of TVCom to moderate such submissions.

And then we got a system where contributors couldn't add or edit some of the essential information (the episode itself, the date), or rearrange, or delete bogus additions. And there were so many errors that @jkroeber, the only remaining staff member, was apparently overwhelmed dealing with them when they were reported.

So now we have no staff member to moderate submissions, an automated system that doesn't add episodes (or it does but the publication errors keep them from appearing: essentially the same), and no way for non-staff members to correct the errors. Or add new episodes. So as I enjoy pointing out because the irony is so delicious, we have less new episodes and more errors Yep, the "problem solving" sure solved the problem.

Gislef
Feb 26, 2019
How could CBSI fix it? Revert to the old system. There may be some shows that don't get new episodes added. But right now no shows are getting new episodes added. And if/when they do get new episodes added, they're weeks behind.

But assuming that's even possible, it would cost money. It might make money (for starters, speculate on the # of hits from contributors fixing all of the errors), but that's long-term and apparently CBSI doesn't believe in long-term. Also, since some editors have abandoned the site, you'd need to have a staff member to moderate those subs. As well as moderate the year-long backlog of existing subs. But that would cost money, too. So oh well: anything that costs money is off the table. Thanks, CBSI!

Gislef
Feb 26, 2019
CBSI also probably has some kind of contract and/or sweetheart deal with TIvo to use their episodes and summaries. Even though (probably at the TVCom end of things since it works at TVGuide), the data that comes in from Tivo doesn't show up. So they can't stop not using the Tivo information. But to use it, they have to use a system that doesn't work and more often than not prevents the information from displaying.

What that deal is, if there is one, is one of those unanswered questions. It can't be because it promotes Tivo, since staff apparently isn't allowed to mention "the source" even though @jessicakroeber has since mentioned it on her online resume. And it was always pretty obvious anyway. And knowing that it's Tivo doesn't do much good: it isn't their fault the information fails to display at TVCom. It's CBSI's Development's fault. But it's probably not Development's fault, either: they're not paid to fix it and were probably transferred to somewhere else or quit.

The final responsibility is either with some exec high up who would shrug their shoulders and say, "It's the money!" if asked. Or is no longer with CBSI. Isn't corporate mentality grand? What's the quote in Thinner about guilt rolling off someone's shoulders because they claim it's not their fault and there's nothing they can do about it?

TesserT
Feb 25, 2019
None of the guides I edit/watch have new episodes either. Cast, crew, etc. submissions to my guides haven't published since Feb 9 for me. My 300+ submissions made requiring TVcom moderation go back to Feb 2018 - I have quit that nonsense. I've also noticed that the to-date nonpublished updates I made to my guides - only visible in the "edit" mode - do not show in my contributions queue. And to top it off, I have no idea why I'm still here!

Gislef
Feb 25, 2019
It's also possible that the current publication woes are preventing the episodes from appearing even though they're in the system. Although what it means for them to be "in the system" if they don't show up on the episode lists and the "Next episode" links, and anything else, who knows?

Why the publication system is still buggy 2+ years after it was implemented, is anyone's guess? But as long as it costs money, you can bet CBSI won't fix it. And Development may not be able to fix it, which means the system needs an overhaul. Which would cost money, and so on and so on.
-------
Whee! My TV Listings is the Next to Go
By Gislef
Apr 09, 2019

One of the few things I still find TVCom useful for, the day's My TV Listings is gone.

It could of course reappear. Heck, it might be up as you read this. But as most of us have learned by now, once something goes at TVCom, it may come back. But it keeps going and going until it's gone.


Gislef
Apr 10, 2019
So My TV Listings is back up today.

But publication is down. Again.

sounddude
May 01, 2019
Tried to use it years ago and it wasn't reliable. Plus, I only watch a couple of current shows on cable channels and I can get that info in other places.

EJamison
Apr 18, 2019
I never used My TV Listings feature. I probably tried it out years ago but maybe I didn't like it because, even though I watched first-run episodes of "The Simpsons" (for example), it would show all the reruns on cable.

I use thefutoncritic and zap2it, although neither of those are perfect.

zap2it took over a year to fix their "primetime" button to know that it starts at 7 in Central time zone.
----
Password shenanigans, and still no articles
By Gislef
Apr 17, 2019

First of all, is it just me or does the login/password system fail pretty regularly? These days about every 2-3 days i'll be in the middle of going to my editor moderation queue, or a show page, or the front page, and I'll be informed I'm no longer logged in. I try to log in with the "Remember me" button checked but it tells me it's an invalid password. When I do enter my password manually, my browser asks me if I want to update the password (I use Firefox). Which I do. But... since it's updated in Firefox, shouldn't it stop logging me out and/or remember what my password is? The next time it happens... repeat and rinse. That didn't used to happen once a year, much less once a week.

On the article front, the front page still hasn't updated. TVGuide does: Lindsay McDonald has a Flash article from last night for instance. Google it with "Nora West-Allen's Origins Story is...": I'm not going to provide a link to it. So CBSI isn't even bothering to pretend to import articles these days. Not that their comment system seems to work there. I suppose it makes too much sense to post the article where people can comment on it.

And of course, publication drags on. And on. And on...


dvcnerfherder
Jun 05, 2019
I have been unable to log into this site for a few days, as have the 6 of us still frequenting the "What to Watch" site referenced below by TesserT. I sent a message to the keepers of the CBS Interactive Facebook page asking if anyone was still breathing over here and now suddenly we can all log in again. Coincidence? Who knows?

Gislef
Jun 05, 2019
Essentially, we're seeing what happens to a site when the people owning it but the minimal and financial effort to keep it afloat. No moderation, technical assistance that is days late and only in response to issues after they've happened. As opposed to "preventative maintenance". No response to queries. No public or private engagement.

Gislef
Jun 05, 2019
Yep, I've had the same issue. Also, if you came onto the site and checked shows (when you could: sometimes I got 404 errors or the equivalent), it said there were no contributors.

My guess would be that someone noticed and kicked a server somewhere. So it's working until the next time it doesn't work. Maybe they're reading the Facebook page. If they didn't respond to you on FB, it seems unlikely they read it. But who knows?

dvcnerfherder
Jun 06, 2019
There was an automated note attached to the Messenger message I sent which reads "Seen at 5am" so it appears someone saw it. But as with all things here, no acknowledgement of any sort.

sounddude
May 01, 2019
I've not had the problem of being logged out and then not able to log in. I use FF64.0.2, an older version (from Jan. 2019) because of a hack that allows users to keep the tabs below the bookmark bar. FF65x and FF66x won't. My issue is just getting signed in, and that's been going on for a year or more. I'll get to the sign in page, then click the log in and nothing happens. So I have to refresh the page, try again, sometimes it only takes one refresh, sometimes two or three. But after I'm in I can stay in. Goofy site!

Gislef
Apr 25, 2019
And I'm logged out. Again. Although I suppose it's "only" eight days since the last time. Whether it logs me out and on again when I'm not looking, who knows?

TesserT
Apr 29, 2019
I got logged out tonight on Firefox and Chrome but got in via Microsoft Edge. My crew and cast submissions are giving me "Update Failed!" tonight. I guess I'll try again tomorrow or whenever.

TesserT
Apr 25, 2019
Today is the first day this article showed up for me to view - even though it's been posted for 9 days! I also use Firefox and even though the site twice told me I wasn't logged in anymore, it did let me log back in automatically without incident.
One article "What to Watch" - kept up for years by a few of us - will keep posts from appearing for weeks at a time. Sometimes I can only see my posts but, although it turns out, no one else can. And then bam all of the posts will show up! It may be tied to the times when the site freezes publications.
---
And Publishing is Publishing... Again
By Gislef
Apr 24, 2019

So it looks like someone kicked the server in the last few hours. "New" episodes (even though some are over a week old) have appeared.

Anyone else remember when we were supposed to consider ourselves fortunate when new episodes appeared two weeks before they aired? Good times. Now we have to consider ourselves lucky when they appear a week after they aired.

I apologize to anyone I didn't like or respond to in the current down period. But the publication error also apparently screwed up the posting of community thread responses. Because once a bug comes in and it doesn't get fixed, it spreads. And fixing bugs costs money, which CBSI doesn't have when it comes to TVCom.
---
And Publishing Ain't Publishing... Again
By Gislef
May 13, 2019

Yep, it's not exactly news. But it is feedback. And who knows? Maybe "Development" only notices when I point it out. Which isn't exactly good organizational planning. But it's TVCom, Jake.

So at least some shows don't have new episodes since at least 5/5/19. And edits aren't going live again, at least not within 24 hours.

Maybe it'll shake out again, maybe it won't. Who knows?


mdoz34
May 23, 2019
I just noticed a community page I check disappeared and the show it covers starts it's final season tonight, Elementary, I do enjoy nullnull's reviews of the show and now the page is completely missing. Stuff has disappeared before only to return later so hopefully this is just connected to the issues currently going on.

Gislef
May 26, 2019
It's also possible that "Development" fixed something somewhere else, and it just happened to tie into TVCom as well.

The odd thing is that several times, staff told me only to use TVCom links. As far as I can tell (since trying to use it gums up my system), the Class listings are for... other sites. Mostly spam sites, too, by the look of it. But it doiesn't work from the community threads when you use the Insert Link command. Just on the sub fields. I'm not going to bother trying it when I'm not there.

That's when there was a staff, and they'd talk to people.

Gislef
May 24, 2019
I commented elsewhere that the Feedback community disappeared. And it has reappeared. So hopefully Elementary will as well.

Taccado
May 19, 2019
Since this site has been a ghost town for the last few years, I've only used it to keep track of my shows and episodes and made a list of all the shows I've finished watching. Now suddenly all my lists are gone. So I guess the last reason to stick around is gone too. Luckily I created a new "already watched" list on another site and migrated all my TV.com info there just a month ago, so my work on this site didn't completely disappear along with the vanished lists.

Gislef
May 19, 2019
Oh, the front "news" is back. Although it's now about 3+ months old.

The My TV Listings" and "Follow Your Shows" is gone.

The "Feedback" forum still doesn't work. Which means that you can't post feedback. Not that CBSI seemed to be reading it (or at least responding) to it in any case.

Whee!

Gislef
May 18, 2019
It looks like new episodes published. Almost two weeks late in some cases, but hey, it's TVCom. It's not like TV shows are a priority.

It corresponds with the feature articles on the front page changing to "only" March 2019. Then again, the community feedback forum has disappeared as of this writing. Although the individual threads are still present. At least right now, this link doesn't work when I click on Feedback on the top.

[snipped]

But others forums like the general TV discussion forum still exist.
[snipped]
I'd say it's weird. But it's TVCom. Everything these days is weird. Maybe CBSI got tired of a feedback forum when all the feedback is a variant on "you suck". Then again, the best way to eliminate "you suck" feedback is to... not suck.

maritimer00
May 16, 2019
Remember the Raiders of the Lost Ark scene where Indiana is assured by gov't that "top men" were looking after the Ark? Well, this site has been stuck in a CBS warehouse, the members here are inside the crates and the flies buzzing around the crates are the spammers that post in the News section. All we need is a CBS flunky to turn the lights off...

Gislef
May 17, 2019
Dp we even have a News Section anymore? As I write this, they did update the "top 3" stories. Except the most recent is 3/1/19, so "update" might be a bit of a misnomer. But they're newer than that 2018 Cloak & Dagger "featured" piece, so there's that.

"My TV Listings" and "Follow Your Shows" has disappeared (again) as of this writing. So if you can't get TV news or TV listings or follow your favorite TV shows at TVCom... what's the point of coming here again?

pferreira86
Jun 23, 2019
When you guys tried to log in did you get a message that all profile data will be deleted by May 7th 2019 and that we should use Metacritic to review individual episodes of TV shows?

If so here's my problem: where on Metacritic can I review specific TV episodes? I rated an episode of TNG and it immediately asked if I wanted to review it. I clicked out but when I go back in I can't see a write a review section. Do you guys have any answers as to why TV.com hasn't been shut down yet and where on Metacritic can TV episodes be reviewed?

Gislef
Jun 24, 2019
I got the message on 6/20. New episodes for some shows continue filtering in. But no, I have no answers. My assumption is that CBS Interactive is botching the shut down just like it bothered the maintaining. The announcement I saw said that CBSI hopes to make Metacritic the most complete TV site anywhere. Given their track record on TVCom, I give it five years.

pferreira86
Jul 02, 2019
Have tried Metacritic again and it turns out you can still add reviews but you need to re-rate TV episode first. No big deal. My biggest concern is that Metacritic doesn't allow big reviews, only paragraph size reviews which is annoying for someone like me that does proper reviews.

It would however be nice to have an idea when TV.com clears its data for real.

Gislef
May 14, 2019
It looks like the stuff added over the weekend did publish. So there's that.

But "new" episodes (including some that aired a week or so ago) aren't showing up. So apparently their lack of appearance isn't a publication issue. And since contributors can't add new episodes, that means TVCom will slowly go dead as no new episodes for existing shows are added. Along with the new episodes of new shows that aren't added.

Or maybe someone will do the minimal amount necessary to get them to show up. Although adding new-new episodes seems to be a foregone no-no. Much less approving submissions for them.

TesserT
May 13, 2019
Your post keeps disappearing! When I try to view the post - the page doesn't exist. I can only see the "unplugged pic" and title. Am using Edge so will try in another browser.
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Hey, We Got an "Improvement"
By Gislef
May 25, 2019

Yes, TVCom "Development" added something. And it's an improvement! I think...

Or maybe it's just me. Has anyone else seen this when they try to add a link?


We can now select "Class". What the "Class" is, I have no idea. When you click on it, after a several-second wait, you get an interminable list of lots o'stuff. What any of the stuff is or does, I have no idea.

Of course, this is TVCom so it might disappear today. Or tomorrow. Or in a week, or a month, or a year.

It's good to know that "Development" is adding stuff that we (well, I) have no idea what it is, they can't be bothered to explain, and apparently serves no useful function. As opposed to moderating the ever-expanding list of subs to non-editor shows. Or adding episodes to newer shows with no episodes listed. Or removing all the bogus episodes the system adds. Or adding actual stuff that would help contributors. Or... well, any real development.



pferreira86
Jun 23, 2019
When you guys tried to log in did you get a message that all profile data will be deleted by May 7th 2019 and that we should use Metacritic to review individual episodes of TV shows?

If so here's my problem: where on Metacritic can I review specific TV episodes? I rated an episode of TNG and it immediately asked if I wanted to review it. I clicked out but when I go back in I can't see a write a review section. Do you guys have any answers as to why TV.com hasn't been shut down yet and where on Metacritic can TV episodes be reviewed?

mrdivot
Jun 24, 2019
I got that message too.. But why did it come seven weeks after it was supposed to happen?

pferreira86
Jun 24, 2019
Exactly. Have tried Metacritic again and it turns out you can still add reviews but you need to re-rate TV episode first. No big deal. My biggest concern is that Metacritic doesn't allow big reviews, only paragraph size reviews which is annoying.

It would however be nice to have an idea when TV.com clears its data for real.

maritimer00
Jun 05, 2019
Huh....checked in here on June 2 and got massive 404 messages everywhere..profiles, news, communities...these persisted into Monday. For fun, sent in an email that was very pointed about this degradation and seeming final gutting of the site. Just now, I managed to log back in. So, revert to normal but is the writing on the wall?

sounddude
Jun 06, 2019
I think the writing has been on the wall for some time...lol.

TrevPlatt
May 26, 2019
Hi Gislev,
Not sure if you'll remember me, I've not been around for a long time, obvioulsy because the site has fallen into utter disrepair. Anyway, I'm hoping there is someway of setting up a new community and I was hoping some dedicated folks such as yourself and dhaworth and I have an email address for edshrinker, would be up for helping me set up something new.
If you are interested in this please email me at trevorplatt [at] hotmail [dot] co [dot] uk
If you are in contact with any others who may be interested feel free to contact them about this too.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Trev.
ps. You deserve a medal for your continued contributions to this site!

Jantvm
Jun 06, 2019
Hey Trev,
You're more than welcome to join us as well. (At least if it's the community you had in mind.) We've been gradually growing and adding features based on everyone's feedback for some time now. Such an undertaking is successful by the virtue of motivated people like yourself and Gislef.

Syrinx2
Jun 06, 2019
Hi Trev! TV.Maze has lists of your watched shows, user content as well as super user Gislef!
TV-Maze

sounddude
Jun 06, 2019
Several of us are at TvMaze, Trev, though I've not been active there in a while due to health issues.

sounddude
May 25, 2019
I've not tried to add a link in many many months. I question why in the CBSI world would they focus any attention on something so seemingly useless as that, when there are so many broken things to fix or improve. If we could just touch base with someone who actually works there and start a conversation...

Gislef
May 25, 2019
Which was kind of my point.
I add links pretty regularly, for a variety of reasons. Adding links to other TV shows and movies when doing cultural allusions, for instance. Even though the movie side of TVCom is screwed up and has been pre-Jessica departure. For instance, did you know Harrison Ford wasn't Indiana Jones, according to his person page?

[snipped]

Although the movie page at TVCom lists him.

[snipped]

Linking to actors mentioned by name, also.

sounddude
May 28, 2019
I've used links a lot on my other profiles in the past. Just on my one currently running show is reality with no actors so I don't bother creating thousands of new profiles of real people who will have one listing.

Gislef
May 28, 2019
I don't understand. Creating links doesn't create profile pages.

Adding actors to episodes does create profile pages, yes. But I figure that if they appear one place, most of them will appear in another. Maybe another show I edit, maybe the same show, maybe a show someone else edits. Might as well create them. Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, probably, but it's pretty minimal work.

sounddude
May 29, 2019
Sorry, brain fart. Left the creation part out. So it should I been that I don't want to create thousands of new profiles of people who will only have one entry and then put their links in the summary. It's a time issue for me as well as a health thing. Going through radiation treatments for prostate cancer just saps all of my energy.

 

[stephane dumas]

I explored the Wayback Machine and I saw a copy of TV.com how it looked back in 2012.

TV.com - Free Full Episodes & Clips, Show Info and TV Listings Guide

TV.com is your reference guide to episodes, photos, videos, cast and crew information, forums, reviews and more.

web.archive.org

 

[Superfemg1rl]

Sorry for replying late. Yes. tv.com is officially dead:

TV.com - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org