Talk:List of How I Met Your Mother episodes

message: If someone will add the remaining summaries to season 1, I will add the screenshots.  For legal reasons, it's best to have the summaries first. - Peregrinefisher 01:29, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Summaries = Screenshots

message: Has there been any change in the policy for HIMYM episode pages? The new episodes from season 3 are either being considered for deletion or redirect to the episode list.
Vellayappan (talk) 07:08, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion of Episode Pages 

message: Hi, folks.  I see that the episode articles which have ambiguous titles (like "Pilot" and "Matchmaker") are currently disambiguated by the phrase (How I Met Your Mother episode).  Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television) recommends that when such disambiguation is necessary, all that's required is the name of the series (unless that itself is ambiguous, in cases like Serenity (Firefly episode), since Serenity (Firefly) would be ambiguous.
This is a heads-up that in the next few days I'll probably be moving these articles to the disambiguation (How I Met Your Mother) — so, for example, Pilot (How I Met Your Mother episode) will move to Pilot (How I Met Your Mother).  The old titles will remain as redirects, so it won't be necessary to change all the links.  (See also WP:R#NOTBROKEN.)
This is just a minor stylistic matter, so shouldn't be controversial.  While I'm doing it, I'll also check to make sure that there are links to the articles on the appropriate disambiguation pages (I noticed that there is no link to the HIMYM episode "Matchmaker" at Matchmaker, for example — there should be, and I'll add one after I move the page.) —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 06:02, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 20:42, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Disambiguation 

message: Do we really need the date at the top of the article? I mean, people haven't come to this page to see what the date is. If anything, the date should not automatically update and it should me manually updated every time a new episode airs, so it really is accurate. With the current system, if nobody updates that counter the date given portrays it as though the counter has been updated. Yally (talk) 21:10, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Date at Top 

message: Does anyone have an actual source on the release date for Season two  in region two format? It says October 1, 2008, but believe me I have trawled shops and the internet and have yet to find a Region two DVD for Season Two.78.105.240.23 (talk) 09:50, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Season 2 region 2 release date

message: Just thought I'd let everyone know that the external links, etc that normally show at the end of the article are stuck above the Season 4 information table. I looked in the code and they were in the correct order there...maybe some line of formatting that I didn't understand threw them off.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.139.218.3 (talk) 03:41, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Formatting Problems

message: I've been looking through some of the individual episodes recently and noticed that almost every "Errors" section has been removed. I even added an errors section to the Season 4 episode "Sorry, Bro", but it has been removed. Why are people removing these sections?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by JDVirgil (talk • contribs) 14:22, 21 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That is me. I've been removing them because they all fail WP:TRIVIA as unsourced and unimportant. All of that exists elsewhere, anyway. This is Wikipedia, not IMDB. That doesn't belong here. Rwiggum (Talk/Contrib) 04:28, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: One issue I have with this is that a major facet of How I Met Your Mother's specific comedy is how it uses continuity-based callbacks and callforwards, which is something that was lost in this trivia purge. Rwiggum has stated these are 'unimportant'; I'd actually claim that they are a very important aspect of How I Met Your Mother's unique style as a television show (and use of comedy in television). Is there any way to preserve discussion (and perhaps examples) of this style in a way that conforms to notability guidelines? 76.68.143.197 (talk) 06:05, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion of Sections 

message: Since there have obviously not been 283 episodes aired to date, I have been trying to revert the count at the top of the page back to "83" and am getting a browser error every single time I submit the correction...this is happening in chrome, IE7, Firefox, and Opera. I have had absolutely no problem making any other revisions, even to this page...only to revising the episode count. Is anyone else having this problem or can someone else PLEASE change the episode count to 83? It's driving me nuts...(maybe because 83 is Barney's go-to fictional statistic number...who knows?)ocrasaroon (talk) 05:12, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  why can i not revert? 

message: I am proposing merging most or all individual episodes to this page. From what I've seen, almost all of them fail the general notability guidelines as completely unsourced. Most of them only consist of plot summaries and a description of what music appeared in the episode. Now BEFORE YOU RESPOND, please keep in mind that this isn't about whether or not you like the articles. Arguments like "People find them useful" or "they're TV episodes, of course they're notable" are not valid, since Wikipedia notability guidelines are based on sourced notability, not how many people use the articles. Of course, there may be some that can be kept if they are in some way notable, but we can deal with that on an episode-by-episode basis. Rwiggum (Talk/Contrib) 14:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: *I don't see what difference that would make, we're talking about it now. This isn't something that would happen right away, we have time to discuss it. Rwiggum (Talk/Contrib) 01:50, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

text: *In terms of reception, you can couple of reviews for almost every episode. Additionally there is information available on television ratings for first airing. But the question is: is that information sufficient enough? I feel the primary information in the episode article (excluding plot) should be regarding its production. LeaveSleaves 02:00, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

text: *Having peered at a random selection from :Category:Lists of television series episodes, the majority of 'non-blockbuster' series seem to be limited to a maximum of a couple of sentences in terms of plot description. CultureDrone (talk) 07:57, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

text: *Reviews aren't enough to prove notability. There needs to be actual coverage of the episode. Also, while 9-10 million viewers seems like a lot, it isn't enough to make each episode notable. To give you an idea, look at List of Friends episodes. Friends was one of the most successful sitcoms of the last few decades, if not of all time, and even IT doesn't have individual episode pages. Sorry, but there just isn't anything to suggest that these episodes would be notable on their own. Rwiggum (Talk/Contrib) 15:06, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: *Responding to himymfan's comment above - "so it seems like you're saying we should merge most if not all tv episode summaries" - actually, yes that's true as all series are subject to the same criteria as we're discussing here. However, the 'removal' of articles about every episode of a TV series has always started a war amongst those in favour of keeping them, and those in favour of merging them - hence my original comment about being drawn into another notability war - and as soon as they're merged, someone unmerges/rewrites them - and round and round we go until someone gives up or gets reported for 3RR/edit warring. I support the merging of the non-notable episodes of any series - but I'm also realistic enough to know that, unless the pages are protected, or an admin/crat steps in, or the guidelines are made more specific, that individual articles are likely to creep back in over time - but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try in the first place. I also suggest people have a look at Wikipedia:Television episodes, and its associated talk page. CultureDrone (talk) 08:46, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

text: *I should point out that two of the sections you mentioned, "Cultural References" and "Continuity/Errors" are unsourced in almost each article, is considered trivia and mostly added there as fancruft. As for the plot description, they can be succinctly explained through summary style as is done in this article. Remember 
*I oppose the merge. The Wikipedia pages are informative not only in plot but in other details. Wikipedia pages make them easily accessible - most viewers do not go to the individual pages to read the plot summary in my experience. Since How I Met Your Mother makes ample pop culture references and extreme continuity is present throughout the series, I think that an individual page for each HIMYM episode is fitting. Such details could not fit into one episode page index.
WP:NOT#PLOT. LeaveSleaves 01:58, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

text: *But it wouldn't be a full merge. Please see List of Big Bang Theory episodes. Rwiggum (Talk/Contrib) 01:24, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

text: *Clearly you don't understand how Wikipedia works. The prime criterion for inclusion isn't "It doesn't do any harm." The fact that you even admit the difficulty of providing sources is proof positive that these articles aren't notable enough to be included. Also, most of the Friends episodes DID have articles, but they were deleted for the same reasons I'm proposing these articles are. And the show itself can be sourced to verify information, but it cannot be sourced to provide notability. External sources are needed for that. Rwiggum (Talk/Contrib) 21:06, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

text: *Also, by your logic, I should be able to create an article for the band I was in in high school, since it "wouldn't hurt anybody." Rwiggum (Talk/Contrib) 21:07, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: *I did not admit difficulty of providing sources, I said there is no need to search for sources other than the sitcom itself when you write a plot summary (and that's what all those articles basically are). I can provide you with sources that prove notability. Lets take any episode. For example Showdown (How I Met Your Mother) (the one with the lowest ratings). There is no problem of finding secondary sources about it: , , , ... I do understand how wikipedia works, but I think that people often overemphasize notability requirements. Look at those Notability guidelines: first four of them are only concerned with independent of the subject sources, because it is not possible to write a verifiable, neutral article without them. The problems with you witting about your high school band are stated in WP:AB and WP:PROMOTION - it would hurt readers because probably it would not be neutral. The only problem I see about somebody else writing about your high school band is that you couldn't know if all that information is true, because there would be no independent of the subject sources, which I could use to check it.--Tired time (talk) 07:43, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

text: A lot of the trivia being used would be more appropriate on the How I Met Your Mother Wiki which could really use more contributors with the enthusiasm here. — JediRogue (talk) 00:25, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Episode notability 

message: It is great that so many people want to keep the articles. Unfortunately there are plenty of editors who don't and are cutting the articles down to size very quickly, deleting all kinds of things in the articles they don't like. The articles do have a lot of trivia but a lot of it could be saved if it was better organised and not just lumped under the Trivia heading and it should be possible to find sources for it given a bit of time but editors are just deleting it from the article so you will have to dig through the article histories to find a lot of it. If you have the series on DVD and can add references to the episode commentaries that would go a long way to providing the necessary sources, and keeping the episode summaries at a quality level where deletion is very hard to justify. I've been adding References sections to any of the episode articles I've edited, hopefully we can add plenty of references. It would really help improve the quality of the articles and give us many potential sources of references if they had a "Critical response" section. The AV Club has a category full of reviews of How I Met Your Mother. There are more thing that need to be done to improve the articles than I could possibly do on my own and plenty of editors deleting which takes them a lot less time than it does for me to find sources or even dig through the article histories nad then go to the Wayback machine at the Internet Archive and find archived copies of old sources.   Please help, if all of those who expressed interest here in keeping the article alive could pick one episode and add one bit of properly cited information or find a citation for content has been deleted, it would quickly make the quality of the articles much much better. -- Horkana (talk) 00:48, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: A lot of the trivia being used would be more appropriate on the How I Met Your Mother Wiki which could really use more contributors with the enthusiasm here. — JediRogue (talk) 00:25, 8 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improving the episode articles 

message: Is there a reason why there are no plot summary anymore, as in this revision ? I found them useful for a quick preview of what the episode was about... I know there's a page for every single episode, but it's a pain to click on each link to see the plot. Metoule (talk) 15:41, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The summaries are at the season pages (like How I Met Your Mother (season 1)) as is standard for most TV programs with more than one season, see List of Lost episodes. With over a hundred episodes the page was far too long. Darrenhusted (talk) 22:21, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text:  Took me a minute to realise where the summaries had gone too but this is a good move. Anyone wanting to just get the episode names and dates can now do so without getting any accidental plot or guest star spoilers (and far too many people abuse the spoiler policy just to be jerks and inflict grief). The extra space means we can be a little bit more detailed in our summaries too. I also think a lot of these summaries could be re-used in the articles themselves to give a brief overview in the intro/lead of an article but there are so many articles that need* references and citations I'll be kept too busy with that to do much else. -- Horkana (talk) 02:07, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Darrenhusted, thanks for the explanation! Metoule (talk) 10:49, 7 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  No plot summary anymore ? 

message: I've been trawling through the Internet Archive for old versions of Barney's blog (and occasionally http://www.legen-waitforit.com/barney/ ). The CBS website isn't particular well structured and all of Barney's blog entries are presented on one page. Perhaps when the Internet Archive releases the pages they have logged since 2008 we will be able to make better links but for now that Season 5 has finished I have used WebCite to created an archived copy of the Barney's blog page which should make it a bit more reliable as the page continues to change. I will be using the long transparent link from WebCite (and there is also a short link but I will not be using that, I prefer the more detailed link) to preemptively backup Barney's blog entries from Season 5. I previously used WebCite to archive a few of the blog posts for the episodes at the start of the season, it is preferable to use those links so that the relevant text will be at the top of the page, and not require readers to scroll down. Pity the headings don't have any anchors set. -- Horkana (talk) 05:39, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Barney's blog 

message: I checked the source for the premiere date and it actually says Septmber 20th, not 27th, as was mistakenly reported on the page  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.41.235.20 (talk) 00:43, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Wrong 6th season premiere date

message: Is that (plus the cast list) really necessary here? --82.10.203.103 (talk) 13:29, 29 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: This article follows the template of other TV articles, if you have a suggestion then take it to the TV project. --Darrenhusted (talk) 12:00, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Series Overview 

message: For some reason, when I click on the link for the Season 2 episode "Robin Sparkles" (which the title should also be changed to "Slap Bet"), it goes to Robin's character profile instead of the correct episode summary, which I had to look for since it isn't easily found on this page here: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slap_Bet
Since I'm a total noob when it comes to editing Wikipedia pages (and this is my first time posting here), please make the necessary changes.
Thank you.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.87.148.148 (talk) 11:54, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Robin Sparkles" 

message: What happened to the season 7 section of this article?--A9l8e7n (talk) 06:34, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Season 7 

message: Currently, there's a summary for "Last Forever", but it's not cited, and I'm not sure it's official. I mean, it's technically correct (unless the show pulls something in the last episode), but it might not be the official CBS release, especially considering that The End of the Aisle has no summary yet. Celarix (talk) 14:46, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Summaries for both can be found here and here though I have removed the one from "Last Forever" as a WP:COPYVIO --Jnorton7558 (talk) 15:11, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

text: I have now referenced and attempted to re-word the summaries for the final four episodes. --Jnorton7558 (talk) 15:24, 15 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Last Forever" Episode Info 

message: I've noticed multiple upon multiple times, and I've only corrected a few of them, that there are numerous bad links within many episode descriptions. In other words, whoever posted the plots for any of the episodes, they inputted links to nonexistent Wikipedia articles. Simply put, they show up as red links. Who wants to clean these up? Because I'm certainly not going to do all of them. Aidensdaddy2k9 (talk) 19:05, 17 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who Links This Stuff?! 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on List of How I Met Your Mother episodes. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130718230645/http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/how-i-met-your-mother/videos-season-1/192257 to http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/how-i-met-your-mother/videos-season-1/192257
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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on List of How I Met Your Mother episodes. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100515042234/http://blog.zap2it.com/korbitv/2008/05/how-i-met-your-mothers-craig-thomas-on-ted-barneys-breakup-eriksen-babies-and-the-future-of-robarn.html to http://blog.zap2it.com/korbitv/2008/05/how-i-met-your-mothers-craig-thomas-on-ted-barneys-breakup-eriksen-babies-and-the-future-of-robarn.html
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thread_title:  External links modified