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 ^*, 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.

Pages

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:

Intro — contained a description of the program's premise (and sometimes other details, such as character profiles, series history and telecast schedules)
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
Cast — a list of the show's regular cast members, with their roles and links to their information pages
Crew — a list of the show's regular crewmembers, with their positions and links to their information pages
News — a section for current news items regarding the show
DVDs (Added northern autumn 2004) — a section for DVDs 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:

Information — contained specific information about the episode, such as its original air date, its producer and director, and a list of its guest stars
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.)

Notes — trivia about the episode, or any information that doesn't belong in the other sections
Quotes — memorable dialogue from the episode
Goofs — technical, factual, or continuity errors contained within the episode
Analysis — an examination or critique of the episode
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:

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.

Notes — trivia about the person, or any information that doesn't belong in the other sections
News — a seldom-used section for current news items regarding the person
Crew Credits — a list of links to TV Tome and Movie Tome pages that credit the person for crew work
Acting Appearances — a list of links to TV Tome and Movie Tome pages that credit the person for on-screen appearances, divided into subsections:
- Starring Roles — a list of links to the main pages of shows in which the person regularly appeared, along with their roles
- Guest Starring Roles — a list of links to television installments in which the person was billed as a guest star
- Co Starring Roles — a list of links to television installments in which the person was billed as a co-star
- 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^*.

Other pages

The summary page and the individual episode pages featured links to other sections, including:

Episode List — all of the program's episode titles and air dates (arranged chronologically), with links to individual episode pages
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
Goofs Guide — a page that listed all of the program's goofs (also contained within the individual episode pages)
Episode Reviews — reviews written or approved by the program's TV Tome editor^*
Features — a compilation of articles pertaining to the series and/or the people involved
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
Forum — a message board (dedicated to discussion of the series and the people involved), moderated by the corresponding TV Tome editor^*

Pronunciation

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.

Common criticisms

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.

Demise

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.

Spinoff / Related Sites

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 Austrailian shows and continues to grow. Episode Guides is now in it's 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 is currently ranked 21,000 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.

External links

TV.com, the successor to TV Tome
Archived versions of TV Tome at the Internet Archive
TVRage.com - Television Guides & more
TVIV.org
epguides.com
TV NAIE
TVFansonline

1995 establishments | 2005 disestablishments | Television websites