TV Tome
For the later version of this website after June 13, 2005, see TV.com.TV Tome was a
U.S.-based
website devoted to informational guides for
English-language television shows and the people involved in their production. It was run mainly by
volunteer editors, with the assistance of user contributions.
Initially founded by
John Nestoriak, and instituted with the help of
George Fergus of
EpGuides.com (who is owed most of the success), the site took off.
The site had over 2,500 complete television series guides, over 3,500 developing television series guides and filmographies for 250,000 actors and crewmembers moderated by an astonishing 3 member crew consisting of John Nestoriak [Webmaster], fuddle, and GeorgeFergus. In addition to the television series guides, TV Tome had a rich forum for each television series with a wealth of information regarding episode interpretation and discussion.
A spin-off site,
Movie Tome, was established in the northern winter of 2003/2004. Originally, a videogame tome and a music tome were planned as well, but with the purchase of TV Tome, and seeing as how
Gamespot and
MP3.com equate to those sites, neither are going to go ahead.
On
April 22,
2005, TV Tome officially announced its absorption by
CNET, much to the dissent of many members. CNET announced plans to relocate the site to its
TV.com domain, which was acquired in 1996 for use in conjunction with the short-lived syndicated television series of the same name. A preliminary version of the new site launched on
June 1 2005 and on
June 13 2005, the site was permanently redirected to TV.com with an entirely new layout and TV Tome was considered by some to be officially dead. CNET
acquired TV Tome for US$5 million.
TV Tome was comprised of three main types of pages, which can be comparable to TV.com's pages.
Main show page (summary)
Contained overall information about a television series, divided into six sections:
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Intro — contained a description of the program's premise (and sometimes other details, such as character profiles, series history and telecast schedules)
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Information — contained specific details about the show, such as its network, status (New Series, Returning Series, Hiatus/To Be Determined, or Cancelled/Ended) and country of origin
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Cast — a list of the show's regular cast members, with their roles and links to their information pages
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Crew — a list of the show's regular crewmembers, with their positions and links to their information pages
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News — a section for current news items regarding the show
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DVDs (Added northern autumn 2004) — a section for of the show that had been or were scheduled to be released to the public
Episode page
Contained information about one installment of a series, divided into seven sections:
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Information — contained specific information about the episode, such as its original air date, its producer and director, and a list of its guest stars
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Synopsis — a brief summary of the episode's plot:Subsequently added was the
recap subsection, which provided a full synopsis of the episode, including the ending. (Users had to click on the "recap" link to access this information, as it usually contained
spoilers that fans wouldn't want to read until after viewing the episode.)
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Notes — trivia about the episode, or any information that doesn't belong in the other sections
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Quotes — memorable dialogue from the episode
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Goofs — technical, factual, or continuity errors contained within the episode
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Analysis — an examination or critique of the episode
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Cultural References — lists and explanations of real-life events and/or media that were indirectly or directly referenced within the dialogue and action of the episode
Additionally, each episode could be voted upon by users, thereby creating an aggregate rating on a scale of 1 ("awful") to 10 ("awesome"). All episodes' ratings were displayed on their respective pages, as well as on a separate page that featured the entire series, listed episode-by-episode (in order of highest to lowest TV Tome rating).
Person page
Contained information on a person associated with television, divided into five sections:
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Biographical Information — contained standard information about the person, such as his/her name, birthdate, death date, etc.:This section often featured a link to a separate
biography page, containing in-depth information on the person's career and/or personal life.
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Notes — trivia about the person, or any information that doesn't belong in the other sections
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News — a seldom-used section for current news items regarding the person
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Crew Credits — a list of links to TV Tome and
Movie Tome pages that credit the person for crew work
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Acting Appearances — a list of links to TV Tome and
Movie Tome pages that credit the person for on-screen appearances, divided into subsections:
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Starring Roles — a list of links to the main pages of shows in which the person regularly appeared, along with their roles
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Guest Starring Roles — a list of links to television installments in which the person was billed as a guest star
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Co Starring Roles — a list of links to television installments in which the person was billed as a co-star
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Movie/Mini-Series/Special Roles — a list of links to
Movie Tome pages of movies, miniseries and television specials in which the person appeared
Also linked to, was a message board (a forum dedicated to discussion of the person and his/her projects), moderated by the person's TV Tome editor[s].
Other pages
The summary page and the individual episode pages featured links to other sections, including:
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Episode List — all of the program's episode titles and air dates (arranged chronologically), with links to individual episode pages
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Episode Guide — a page (viewable for the entire series or season-by-season) that listed the information, short synopsis, and notes sections from the individual episode pages
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Goofs Guide — a page that listed all of the program's
goofs (also contained within the individual episode pages)
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Episode Reviews — reviews written or approved by the program's TV Tome editor[s]
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Features — a compilation of articles pertaining to the series and/or the people involved
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Cast Guide — a thorough list of cast members, divided under the headings
Stars,
Recurring and
Guest Stars*
Crew Guide — a thorough list of crewmembers, including writers, directors, producers and others
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Forum — a message board (dedicated to discussion of the series and the people involved), moderated by the corresponding TV Tome editor[s]
As part of a user survey done at TV Tome in 2003, it was discovered that many members of TV Tome incorrectly thought that the name of the web site consisted of three words, TV To Me. This was due to the fact that they were unfamiliar with the word "tome." A "tome" is a noun which means: 1. One of the books in a work of several volumes. 2. A book, especially a large or scholarly one. "Tome" rhymes with "Rome." Thus, TV Tome represented a large body of information about television shows.
TV Tome was criticized by those who felt that its format was less than ideal. Unlike a
wiki-style guide, TV Tome's content was controlled entirely by specific editors who were assigned to the individual television shows and people listed on the site. This was changed for TV.com, which allows any registered user to edit information while giving editors moderation rights and the privilege of having their information posted immediately in their guides.
While some editors were responsive to outside feedback, others tended to ignore such input. As a result, various errors (factual, spelling, grammatical, etc.) often went uncorrected, despite requests by users that they be addressed. Conversely, some editors posted all/most outside submissions indiscriminately, thereby introducing the types of errors cited above, as well as redundancies and arguably weak information.
Relatively few editors had arbitrarily imposed standards contrary to the site's general policies and the prevailing consensus. Examples include the prohibition of spoiler-containing forum messages (despite the provision of spoiler warnings and irrespective of how long ago the pertinent episodes aired) and refusal to publish goofs, based upon the belief that this disparages the series in question.
The community became fragmented and increasingly vulnerable to
spammers and
Internet trolls. Steps taken by the Webmaster and the members themselves failed to improve the atmosphere, and much of the community dispersed, with some users making the transition to the TV.com community.
Movie Tome
Movie Tome is the sister site for what was TV Tome.
The TV IV
Several people on the
Something Awful forums, who were unhappy about TV Tome after its acquisition decided to rebuild the content and created
The TV IV in July 2005. The TV IV runs
MediaWiki software, but has disabled
anonymous editing and has licensed the content under the
Creative Commons license (cc-by-2.5).
TV Friends
Independently from TV IV another community effort has begun to rebuild what was lost through the TVTome acquisition. Since, August 2005 the
TVFriends project is hosted by
Wikia (which also runs on
MediaWiki). Unlike The TV IV, it is open to anyone without registration. Wikia mandates the use of the
GNU Free Documentation License.
TV Palace
A website that began in development shortly after TVTome's demise by an
unknown user. He has since commented on Get Out The View that the website is now closed.
Get Out The View
This website is in development right now and is not intended to be used by the public. The Webmaster of this site is
RiverOne. The site has about 70-80 members who are also at Movie Tome and www.tv.com. When the site is formally launched, it will have a new name and domain, as well as many still to be announced features. EDIT: The development of this site has been stopped by the webmaster. He will move on considering the great amount of other TV sites, and will be working on the first ever search engine for TV only.
The Media Database
The Media Database is an approach to use the Mambo
CMS to build a new TV Show database. As it seems the Webmaster already added
all the shows TV Tome used to have. This includes Title, Initial air date, Director, Writer and Cast for each episode. As of the non-wiki way the site goes the editing features are currently only on the TODO list.
TV Fans Online
This is a website launched by former TV Tome editor, alley, who got banned for advertising his website on the TV Tome forums. The website was originally powered by xoops but recently has switched back to their proboard forum after having too many problems with their web host. TVFansoline is currently in the process of rebuilding and making new show guides, and episode guides.
Episode Guides
A UK based TV Show site covering all USA , UK , Japan and Australian shows and continues to grow. Episode Guides is now in its 4th Design style and has run for 10 years.
TVRage.com
TVRage was officially bought in
June 2005, and TVRage went public at the end of
October 2005, and uses a custom-made software base. The website uses a simple design that attempts to recreate the original TV Tome concept. TVRage contains both television show guides (episode guides, show cast, show crew, show forums, character guide, news about the show, merchandise and links) and people guides (biography, picture, links, trivia, list of credits). Several former TV Tome/Tv.com editors have since adopted show guides there. The site was ranked 21,000 but currently sits at 35,000 on
Alexa.
epguides.com
This former episode guide website, established in 1995, gradually moved most of its guide data to TV Tome, continuing to maintain its episode list pages primarily as an alternative portal into the TV Tome database. Since the sale, it maintains the same relationship with TV.com, operating as a simplified ad-free front end into their episode guide database.
Entertainment Aloud
This website was a forum hosted by proboards. It was run by 2 former mebers of TV Tome
Anthony Reardon and
Daniel Sarath. It ran from 2004-2006, the forum was inicially quite successful, gaining 50 mebers in its first month, however it was closed in March 06 due to constant spammers and hackers. Although at one point there was rumours of a revival they came to nothing.
TV shows Guide
This website was formed with everything in their collection plagerized from tv.com, with no information or disclamer on their site at all, their home page is just an alphabetical link to go and browse around for a tv's episode's guide.
TV NAIE
This website was formed from old TV Tome reality show fans that were fed up with TV.com. They are now attracting many new members, and currently the site boasts over 15 completed full scale reality games (and counting) played among members. More are currently running, and many more planned for the future in this growing online community.
The Shadow Clan
The
Shadow Clan (linked here at their current homepage) was a
Role-Playing Game that originated in the
Teen Titans message board, where role-playing was technically not allowed. The "game" of sorts yielded many contributors and also garnered much criticism, which was evident by them eventually being forced to post on the Members' Lounge, the off-topic board of TV Tome. It was started by a poster called Armok the Dark, and when they were forced to move from TV Tome altogether due to abundant waves of flaming, they then took residence at a
Proboard site hosted by one of their contributors, called Hikari Moriyaku. Recently they have chosen to create and migrate onto a new Proboard site that is more newbie-friendly as they have decided to go slightly more public. They are sometimes characterized by their excessive
Goth style. Though they have gone through three sites, many of the posters that remain agree that the TV Tome days were the most exciting and active, and therefore the days of TV Tome are often referred to as the "True" or "classic" Shadow Clan days.
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TVFansOnline*
TV Naie*
TV IV*
TV.com, the successor to TV Tome
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Archived versions of TV Tome at the
Internet Archive*
TVRage.com - Television Guides & more*
TVIV.org*
epguides.com*
TV NAIE*
TVFansonline
