Wiki Updates, Fifteen to One and Only Connect

OK, so, tomorrow, the 10th of February, is the birthday of both the Wikis I set up: the Fifteen to One Wiki from two years ago, and the Only Connect Wiki I set up last year.

 

Now, I set these up for very different reasons. Only Connect I set up so that all the results would finally be available for people to look up in one place if they wanted to, rather than having to scan through various different websites/blogs to get a specific result.

 

I'm still updating it to this day, all by myself mostly, I post the score of every game every week. There was another user who briefly surfaced last year, who put in quite a lot of work, including creating a navigation box to go at the bottom of each page, which was very useful, and creating seperate pages for each game and team of the current series.

 

At least, at first; after about five or six episodes, they stopped showing up and haven't been back since. I suspect this person wasn't from Britain and was relying on YouTube uploads of the episodes for their contribution and, when they dried up around that time, they had to stop. This has unfortunately made the page for the current series look a bit odd, so, unless someone else is willing to finish what has been started, I'm going to have to remove all the extra pages already up to bring it back in line with the other pages.

 

As for Fifteen to One, I set that up because, well, back at the start of 2021, I became rather obsessed with that show following the appearance of numerous episodes in quick succession and, because we had just gone back into lockdown and there was little else to do, I needed something to keep myself occupied with, so collating all those results was that something.

 

I did write a short blog on here before I set the Wiki up (don't click any of the links on it, almost all the videos they link too are no more) where I set out what I was hoping to achieve by creating it. The main point was so that, not only was there somewhere to collate all the information about the show, but also to correct any inaccuracies in information about it in other places.

For example, it was well established that, in Series 25 of the show (the one with the late Bill McKaig's perfect score), it was established that Dennis Collinson's score of 201, scored in the first show of the series, was knocked off the finals board on the last show of the series; yet, every cop of said finals board available showed him still on it. Thankfully, this mystery was resolved when someone uploaded said final last year, so, if you want to correct board, go to the Wiki.

There are others that remain unresolved, however. For example, the available finals boards for Series 4 (the series with the orange set) claim that Robin Price (who won after future three-time winner Anthony Martin took one question too many in the final and knocked himself out) was one of two winners of the four way play-off needed for the last two places in the final. However, Weaver's Week's history of the show, published the week of the final show of the original run, disputes this, claiming he lost.

As we currently have no way of verifying this claim, we have to go along with the current board we have. Anyone who knows of this, or of any other mistakes on any other available finals boards, do please let us know somewhere.

Another important thing is the number of episodes in various series. For example, Series 19, the first series of 1997, is listed on Wikipedia as having 55 episodes and having wrapped on the 28th of March that year. But various episodes uploaded to YouTube dispute this, with the uploader of one from late in that series able to precisely date it to nearly two weeks later than this.

As I mentioned in the earlier blog as well, various available eps bring further dispute into the series lengths on Wikipedia. Here are a few examples mentioned in various shows that I've observed:

• Show 3 of Series 26 (1999) is Episode 1,600 (Wikipedia isn't that far out here admittedly)
• Show 1 of Series 29 (2000) is Episode 1,778
• Show 3 of Series 30 is Episode 1,850

Of course, because Channel 4 doesn't have a comprehensive listings archive like the BBC does, the only way of getting precise running lengths for every series would probably be to look at every Radio Times from when the show was on to work it out for sure.

So, again, if anyone has any definitive information about series running lengths and start and end dates that confirms for sure that the ones on Wikipedia are wrong, do please let us know.

Which brings us back to the Wiki, where, over the past month, an anonymous editor has been filling in various blanks on it, giving episodes numbers where they had previous been unaccounted for and adding in a few new episodes as well. While this has been very welcome, and thanks to them for that, they have also been going a bit far in some respects and I, regretably, have had to get a bit firm with them and revert some of their (good faith I'm sure) contributions. (I'm sure at least three of the numbers they've assigned to various episodes are incorrect)

Of course, as a comment on my previous blog pointed out, finding out the outcomes of every single daily episode of the original series is perhaps a bit too ambitious, and I knew this at the time I first set it up. And, unless 4OD or another steaming service makes the entire run available to watch, I doubt we ever will (petition for it on Change.org anyone?). But that wasn't really the point of why I set it up.

The point was, as I said, I wanted somewhere where any incorrect information could be easily corrected. And, in that respect, I'm very happy with the, admittedly limited, progress we've made on the Wiki over the past two years.

So, if you would like to contribute any information to either of the two Wikis, do please get involved. Your contribution will be appreciated!

Back on Monday with my usual write-up; see you then...