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Sooner or later we'll need to adopt a more organic concept of media categories, but for now, yeah, anything published on a streaming video service without first going on TV would qualify as Web Video.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"So should we start moving things like Series.Daredevil? What about in terms of Forum topics?
Incidentally, should we change the description of Series.Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt that calls it a "television show produced exclusively for Netflix" which seems a bit off since, well, it's not on television.
Edited by Larkmarn Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.I fail to see a difference between the series produced exclusively for Netflix and the ones produced for cable channels. This indicates that the current definition of live-action TV has become otdated by technology changes and should be changed.
Further: to me, TV is a medium, not a distribution channel. Perhaps we should distinguish between movies, series and other video programming?
And, to pick a nit, Netflix isn't really the Web.
^^ But the thing is, they also... aren't all that much like a TV series. Seasons getting dumped at once, no commercials, varying episode length, no censors, being made to binge at once... they're really not that similar to TV series any more than they are movies or Web Series, really.
Edited by Larkmarn Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.Series made for public service also have no commercials. Series made for HBO or for non-US channels also have no censors or at least more permissive censors than those made for US network TV. British series have a different format than US ones (much shorter seasons, for example). And so on. The entire medium is in a state of flux, and there are different subsets of TV series. We can't be too granular here.
And regardless of the difference, I think the Netflix original series are more similar to network TV series than to more traditional web video such as vlogs.
An analogy: a made-for-video movie still has more in common with a made-for-cinema feature movie than with a TV series. And an e-book is still Literature.
Edited by GnomeTitanHonestly I'm in the came that says we need either a definition update or to move the Nexflix shows into Web Video (and place pages like Mr Enter or Jon Tron to a new Namespace for Vlogs or reviewes). If the show never appears in TV proper then the "TV" in LiveActionTV becomes rather unnecessary
My mind rebels against classing something like Daredevil as a Web Video, but that may be because I haven't watched anything broadcast live on television, in, like, a year and a half. For me, everything is available primarily on the internet and I differentiate more based on production and budget and how available the publishing platform is to the public.
Kind of reminds me of "indie music": indie technically ought to refer to an independent label, which could in theory sound like anything, but you can also say "indie music" to make people think of a specific sound. I guess that's how I feel about web video. Technically Daredevil, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Sense8, etc, are all "web video", but they don't fit the general connotation of web video, do they?
Since the lines are blurring, though, I'd say it would make the most sense to move things from Web Video to Series rather than the other way around, and do something to redefine and rename the Web Video section.
What are the subcategories within Web Video that should definitely not be folded into the Series namespace?
Edited by calmestofdoves^ Web Animation/ is the only one I can think of, but I think if we gonna do what you suggested, then we should move the pages to Western Animation/ and Anime/ (unless web videos made in Japan are already in the latter by default)
Edited by MorningStar1337Would a differentiation based on whether or not the show gets released by "season" make sense? Even though Netflix makes up its own release dates without much respect to the trafitional primetime schedule, it still gives us shows in "seasons," as do many other web shows, a very broadcast sort of convention. Other web shows, though, are much more haphazard, releasing videos whenever they're made, or on a regular schedule year round with no delineation between one season and the next.
So, weirdly, this makes me want to class Red Vs Blue with traditional television but keep Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog classed as pure web video.
Edited by calmestofdovesHow about a Web Series/ namespace to differentiate between both
- Series shown on TV vs series shown on the web
- Web videos that are series vs web videos that aren't series.
Namespaces are for organizational purposes rather than definitive statements of genre/medium. "Close enough" is what we aim for. Pending the TVT 2.0 redesign, of course, where we intend to remedy this problem.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"^Granted that, the question remains whether Netflix original series should be organized in the Series or Web Video namespace. If a decision is made that goes against how tropers in general think about these series, people will be confused.
I can only state that to me it feels very unnatural to put, say, Orange Is The New Black under Web Video, because
a) to me, Net Flix is TV - TV on demand, but still TV, and most of their content is still either movies or what undisputedly goes as TV series here.
b) While Net Flix have a web site that lets you access their content, I don't really think of their content as "on the web". You can't link to an individual episode of a series, for example. If it's not on the Web, it's not Web Video...
Edited by GnomeTitanThe Namespace page says Netflix originals go in Series, but as I was the one who added that rule to the page, it's not necessarily official policy. Regardless, the lack of a revert in 4+ months may indicate it as policy.
2025: the year it all ends?If Series is being used in practice, then let's go with it. No sense confusing people.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

So given the number of Netflix original series and the like... what separates Live-Action TV from a Web Video?
Just seems odd to me that these series get listed as Live-Action TV even though they never come onto the TV itself. From the Web Video page: please note that, to fall under Web Video, a work must have first been posted or be available primarily on the Internet. A television program that's rebroadcast on the network's website or You Tube should still be listed under Live-Action TV and use the Series namespace. By that criteria, Netflix original series should go under Web Video (Netflix, after all).