Talk:The Office (American TV series)/Archive 2

message: Why was the old picture from season one put back instead of a season three picture.--72.146.210.253 22:08, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Old Picture 

message: Just cut it out, see the argument in the "Stop Vandalizing Product Placement" discussion article. Looking at re-formatting the non-main character section, as it is a mess.  (Jerciuss 23:57, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Merely agreeing to be used in an episode doesn't reach the level of product placement. -- Raymondc0 19:50, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Product Placement

message: The company Apple uses clips from the office to premote the iPod video and even now the new iPhone at http://www.apple.com/iphone/ipod/ 
I think we should also include that Steve Jobs said that he is a fan of the show 04:14, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: ehhh, i disagree. Just because there is a business deal between Apple and NBC, we dont know for sure if Steve Jobs is a fan of the office. He may or may not be. YaanchSpeak! 00:51, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Apple's use

message: Starting from July 13 this summer there will be short (2-4 minute) episodes of the Office availible to watch on NBC.com. This will continue for ten weeks with a "webisode" appearing every week on Thursdays. I would add this info to the article but I am not familiar with it and am not sure where to put it. If someone familiar with this article could update it with this information it would be great. 132.203.54.60 15:17, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Webisodes

message: I would like to do a synopsis like the one for Two and a Half Men.  Any thoughts? I'll do it later today or tomorrow, unless someone has anything to say about it or does it first. --Eric Jack Nash 16:39, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Synopsis 

message: Much of the trivia material has been lifted directly from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386676/trivia .  It should be rephrased or deleted.  I replaced one comment about the set with information from Videography. --Jeremy Butler 16:08, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It should be noted that this has been corrected. Mrtea (talk) 15:50, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's true. There are still a couple that refer to the same travia as IMDb does, but the wording is different. --Jeremy Butler 17:32, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Copyright Violations in the Trivia Section 

message: I'm sure many of us have seen the recent featured article on The West Wing (TV series). I think The Office page looks great, but I would really like to try to organize it more. Tables and whatnot seem to be starting to clutter this fine page. Would anyone object to an attempt to reorganize this page more to the format of The West Wing (ie. history, plot, critical response) so it can start being a serious contender for a featured page? Williamnilly 22:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reorganize? 

message: Is it "Dunder Mifflin" (as appears in this article) or "Dunder-Mifflin" (as appears in many of the episode articles)? There's no hyphen in the logo, and NBC.com uses both but appears to go with "Dunder Mifflin" more often (for example, on the About and Newsletter pages). References to the company on the Season 1 DVD's cover and a couple menus are sans hyphen. — Hedgey42 21:19, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was under the impression it was named after two people named "Dunder" and "Mifflin", like "Wernham-Hogg" is in the UK version, hence requiring the hyphen. But maybe, like even I've been guilty of, people have just gotten lazy with it? Or I'm mistaken? Williamnilly 23:31, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think you're mistaken. Dunder Mifflin should have a hyphen but even on the show itself the company name has appeared without a hyphen. That's an error on the show's part. Throw 16:18, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Hyphen or not?

message: Okay, just so everyone's prepared, I'm planning to give the page a mild makeover starting this week by starting to include critical response, show history, season summaries, history, etc. a la the Arrested Development page. That page is apparently the format Wikipedia is shooting for with television comedies, hence the featured article status. I'd like to see The Office join those ranks. One plan is to reduce trivia (I know I'm responsible for a lot of it, but many of them can be put into a paragraph about the show's history) and removing neat but ultimately useless tables (I think we can probably just simply link to the episode lists and character pages. Why feature the same info on two different pages?) Anyway, that's all. I plan to start as soon as tomorrow! Thanks! Williamnilly 09:18, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good work on the makeover, you must have had to dig to find some of those references. I've done a once over on the new page and made a few changes that I think improve the page. As always, other opinions welcome. Qutezuce 23:17, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Operation Makeover

message: Surely we oughtn't to have an edit war over this, so perhaps we might ascertain what the preferred or consensus usage might be.  In sum, the dispute in several reverts today has been between the two versions in this diff, scilicet, that which, for the Novak quotation, employs the same formatting as in the article whence it comes (viz., 20%, 10%, 100%), and that which employs the preferred Wikipedia formatting (at least inasmuch as "per cent" or "percent" is spelled out; surely the numbers needn't to be written out, per the MoS).  Were we quoting the Television without Pity article, the Novak quotation would, of course, appear in single quotation marks as a nested quotation (probably even were no other info from the TwP article, but surely if we were to include language from the article in precedence to certain quotations), and we would then be ill-advised to alter the quotation as given on the site.  We, though, are giving here the quotations as provided by Novak in the interview, with only a cite to TwP; it seems appropriate, then, that we edit the quotation in order that it should be consistent with the MoS.  To put the discussion differently, if the TwP article had what was clearly a typo--e.g., the insertion of a semi-colon into the middle of a word--we would, if quoting the article, do best to leave the semi-colon in and attach a [sic], but, if we were, as we are here, simply providing the quotations, we would do best to remove the semi-colon, inasmuch as it was not, we would surmise, part of the oral quotations given by Novak.  That said, I will surely defer to those who edit this page more frequently than I, and I don't think this is an issue about which a great deal needs to be said.  Joe 03:48, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Why should the Wikipedia style guide apply to the words that someone else has said? Qutezuce 04:30, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Because we're quoting the words, not the article quoting the words.  Surely Novak didn't say "20 percentage sign", he said "20 "percent.  A less-than-encyclopedic online publication might think it appropriate to use the percentage sign, but surely in formal or encyclopedic writing, we do not; the question is not so much whether the TwP substitution was alright as a matter of preserving the quotation (surely it was), but whether the format is encyclopedic.  Joe 04:38, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, we are quoting the article. It is the article that is putting forth the assertion that Novak has said these words, not Novak. The reliability of the quote lies entirely with the publication; if the publication later on is revealed to have made up the entire interview the quote goes out the window, but Novak's reputation would be untarnished. Qutezuce 04:45, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For the reasons I explain above, we are absolutely not quoting the article; we are giving the Novak quote as though we witnessed his saying it to TwP.  That may be what we mean to do, and you may be correct to suggest that we ought simply to quote the article; if we are to do the latter, we need to nest the quotation and format accordingly.  (Edit, after some consideration: Not having previously looked at the TwP page--tsk, tsk--I find now that the page is simply an interview, not, as I'd imagined, an article within which quotations from an interview appear.  Even as I think that a nested quotation is still required if we are to quote the interview itself, I surely do not think such a formulation to be undesirable and wonder if others might express an opinion relative to the implementation of such a solution.) Joe 05:25, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Actually, I just checked the Wikipedia Manual of Style on the subject of percentages, and the only thing it has to say on the matter is "The format of the numeric and percentage terms should match. Thus pair 7 with % and seven with percent." So it appears that Wikipedia does not have a preference of how to write percentages, unless there is another Wikipedia policy page that I missed. So based on this there doesn't seem to be any reason to change someone's quote to conform to the Manual of Style because the manual of style does not express a preference on that matter. Qutezuce 04:45, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: On this point, Qutezuce is entirely correct; having followed the percentage edits to the article, I assumed that the writing out of "percent" was occurring consistent with the MoS.  I see that our Manual of Style differs on this point from, for example, the Chicago Manual of Style, which urges that, in humanistic copy (such as this), the number be given as a numeral but "percent" be written.  Even as I still think it's good for us to have this discussion here, given that there was a bit of a revert war going on, I'm sorry for having made an incorrect assumption apropos of our MoS (why we'd permit the inelegant "%" in non-scientific articles is beyond me, but...) and for having taken so many words to argue the point (I still believe that, if our MoS prescribed that "percent" be written out in humanistic copy, we would be correct to change it, but that discussion is surely moot).  If BabuBhatt, who made the first two edits of "%" to "percent" is in accord, I think we can safely return the Novak interview section (since our MoS expresses no preference, we're surely best to leave things as they were) and continue our work on making an FA.  Joe 05:43, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Percentages in quotation

message: This section seems to be very long.  I think it could be shortened to about half of its current length.  It should give an overview of the second season, not cite specific occurances in specific episodes (that is what the episode guide is for).  Any other thoughts on this? Jtrost (T | C | #) 12:21, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps. It was written as the season progressed and we didn't know what storylines would affect other things. Now that the season is over, minor events that have nothing to do with the plot could probably be removed. Williamnilly 15:43, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

text: It got quite bloated as the season progressed. Cutting it down would be good, we have individual episode pages for longer synopses. Which reminds me, some of the summaries on the List of episodes page have gotten a bit long for that page too. Qutezuce 18:43, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I couldn't agree more!! Williamnilly 22:38, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

text: I likes it. :) Williamnilly 01:10, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Season 2 synopsis 

message: This entire section seems to contain numerous subjective opinions.  It was created in its entirety by 24.60.17.123 on 12 May 2006, and has only been edited with minor spelling/grammar changes since then.  I think it should be removed entirely, or pared down to a bare NPOV minimum. CalebNoble 23:26, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. It sounds like someone was answering an essay question in a high school english class about the themes of The Office. It doesn't seem to add anything to the page. Qutezuce 00:06, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You know, it seemed like a high school essay to me, too! I agree to remove. Williamnilly 00:17, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Agree to delete are pare down.  Here's an example of POV that should go: "Dwight and Angela are in a bizarre relationship". --Jeremy Butler 11:57, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Themes section 

message: I'm not so sure about the value of the "Myspace.com Cast Blogs". E.g., Craig Robinson's doesn't even mention Dunder Mifflin.  Are they encyclopedia caliber? --Jeremy Butler 11:57, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For the links section? Honestly, I think we can keep Jenna Fischer's and we'd be fine. The other blogs can be linked from the individual actor's entries, plus Jenna is linked to everyone else's MySpace page on her own MySpace.Williamnilly 15:06, 23 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kill the MySpace Stuff? 

message: The trivia section has an entry stating: ‘The name of the firm "Dunder Mifflin" appears to be a derivative of the real publishing company Houghton Mifflin.’ I find that very puzzling; perhaps it's possible that Dunder Mifflin could be a reference to Houghton Mifflin, but in my view it's unlikely. Unless there is some other justification I'd suggest deleting that sentence. --Mathew5000 14:18, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree, although I believe the Mifflin Avenue info part of the sentence should remain. Williamnilly 16:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I added it because the similarity between the names of the fictitious paper company and the real publishing company seemed pretty obvious, and it wasn't mentioned elsewhere in the entry. I consider it trivia, and indeed it may be untrue, hence the use of the phrase "appears to be" instead of simply "is". Certainly the inspiration for the name of the company is of interest, but since it's only theoretical at this point, it could be removed. -Loadmaster 20:11, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just don't see much similarity between a publishing company and a paper-manufacturing company, and "Mifflin" is a common enough name so I would be very surprised if it were more than mere coincidence. As for "Mifflin Avenue" in Scranton, I left that in the article but I have my doubts as to whether that too is anything more than mere coincidence. In the show, the company seems to be headquartered in New York City with Scranton being just one of several branches, so why would the name of the company have any relation to a street in Scranton? The first governor of Pennsylvania was named Thomas Mifflin; I imagine that the street in Scranton is named after him. --Mathew5000 00:23, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The writers etc. are pretty diligent about referencing actual Scranton elsewhere in the show, so I wouldn't be surprised if they did it with the company name, even in spite of your NYC issue. Call it artistic license, or an oversight. I think the combination of 1.) the real paper supply company, 2.) its real location a block away from Mifflin Ave., and 3.) the fact that the real paper supply company's real building is shown at the beginning of every episode makes it more than a coincidence. If there were only two of those things, it probably wouldn't have enough significance to be mentioned, because there are indeed plenty of "possible" origins of the Mifflin component of the name. Even if it is just a coincidence though, I'd say it's sufficiently interesting to keep.Mls393 19:36, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Houghton Mifflin 

message: I would like to apologize for linking two a couple of Office fansights earlier today in the "Outbound Links" section.  I didn't read it carefully enough to see the instructions to visit the discussion page first.  
What criteria do you go by when selecting links for the outbound links section?  Why are some office fansights included, and some are not?  Just curious.  Thanks!
May I or someone else add the GOOGLE CALENDAR of The Office that I made and maintain. I list up-coming reruns and new episodes along with other information. You can see it The Office Google Calendar. Thanks, --Jeff 15:34, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Since no one objected (or responded) in nearly two weeks, I've added it. Williamnilly 21:56, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

text: It's been over a month with no objections. Adding link. Gudlyf 03:18, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

text: TV.com - The Office Link is already available in the Infobox hence doesn't need to be added again to the outbound link Makowsky 03:30, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Outbound Links 

message: Why does the article's second sentence say "It is filmed in the style of a documentary...", rather than simply "It is a mockumentary"? The way it's worded is incorrect because the series certainly isn't filmed in the style of a documentary, although it is filmed (and written and edited) to look like a documentary. The way the sentence is written suggests that the actual process of filming is done the same way a documentary is filmed. Let's just say that the series is a mockumentary (unless somebody wants to argue that it is not). --Mathew5000 09:50, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: By "it is filmed in the style of a documentary" the sentence means exactly what you said ("it is filmed (and written and edited) to look like a documentary"). One reason to use the word "documentary" is that everybody is familiar with documentaries, while not everyone is familiar with mockumentaries. Qutezuce 20:27, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is that "filmed in the style of a documentary" does not mean "filmed to look like a documentary". The first purports to describe the actual methods they use when shooting the show; the second describes the effect they are trying to achieve. --Mathew5000 20:52, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I personally believe that "filmed in the style of a documetary" is the proper way to present it.  Besides, if you're going to get all technical about it, "filmed to look like" would be wrong, and need to be replaced with "edited to look like."  However since the filming often includes of documentary stylings, "filmed in the style" is indeed correct. --Embattledseraph
How do the outside references refer to the show - as a mockumentary or documentary? Do we even have an outside reference for this statement, or is it merely original research?--Jay Litman 14:15, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

text: "Mockumentary", mostly. The Mockumentary WP article even lists it as an example. -- Fru1tbat 14:40, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "filmed in the style of a documentary" 

message: On the opening credits, I notice the employees using liquid paper on documents and using paper shredders to shred documents.  Is it just me, or does this show Dunder Mifflin trying to evade taxes ?--198.53.110.105 02:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Huh?  I use liquid paper and shredders all the time, never with the intention of evading taxes.--awh (Talk) 04:18, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Illegal activity at Dunder Mifflin? 

message: Don't you think so? Not in Wikipedia, but with NBC.  --154.20.217.225 20:00, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Toby, Kelly, Creed and Darryl should be added to the main cast 

message: Added in a brief mention of the band in minor plots section, Its made 3 appearences so far (Health Care / Casino Night / Hot Girl)
Might be more though.
::Kevin's band is no longer a Steve Miller tribute band. It is a Police cover band called Scrantonicity, and this is the band Roy Anderson hires. BabuBhatt 19:49, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Forgot the title of the band --Tauraunt 19:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kevin's Steve Miller Tribute Band 

message: Shouldn't this article be at The Office (U.S. TV series) per WP:MOS#Acronyms_and_abbreviations? --Fritz S. (Talk) 10:21, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television) specifically says "US", I guess because it comes in the title of the article and not in the article text? Qutezuce 22:24, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was just about to link there! :) Yes, this has been an issue before. Fritz, for more info, please refer to the discussion archive under "Latest move to The Office (US TV series)".Williamnilly 22:29, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Haha I was looking all over for the "Naming conventions" but I totally forgot what they were called. I used to reference those every other day lol Mrtea (talk) 09:05, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article title 

message: I mean, I know it takes place in Pennsylvania, but come on...  --awh (Talk) 02:56, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I took it off.  That's just silly.  Some of the show is filmed in Pennslyvania, but a lot of it is also filmed in LA.  Should all Wikiprojects related to California also be added here?  Like I said, it's silly. Jtrost (T | C | #) 04:19, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Other than shots from the opening, is anything else filmed in Pennsylvania? Qutezuce 05:52, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Answering the question of a Scranton resident, Jenna Fischer, who plays receptionist Pam Beesly, writes in her April 22, 2006 TV Guide blog: "As you know, the show is set in Scranton, but we haven't filmed there yet. It is really a question of budget. It would cost a lot of money to transport the entire cast and crew to Scranton. But we'd like to! I think it would be fun. I figure that it is just a matter of time." She probably does not consider the opening shots in that statement. --Liberlogos 01:33, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject Pennsylvania?  Really? 

message: So, should I add this in? Pacific Coast Highway {blah • I'm a hot toe picker • WP:NYCS} 02:53, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Never mind. Pacific Coast Highway {blah • I'm a hot toe picker • WP:NYCS} 03:01, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Emmy=Yes