Ken,

Not so much a "feature request" for the next version, but more of a plea to re-think the way birth years are accepted. Have a look at page three of this thread for the problems that we run into.

Summary: the rules tell us to only use birth years where they are needed. However, there seem to be a few users who keep succeeding in adding birth years to a string of "big names", without there being a need for them. The fact that they've been accepted by Invelos, leads to them being propagated further. Some obvious examples of unncessary, and therefore invalid birth years that have been accepted into the database are for the likes of Steve Buscemi, John Cleese, Robert De Niro, Laurence Fishburne, Stephen Frears, Stephen Fry, Tom Hanks, Charlton Heston, Samuel L. Jackson and Bruce Willis. None of these actually NEED a birth year, and obviously none of these are included in the forum's pinned "List of Accepted Birth Years with Documentation"-thread, yet they've somehow been accepted into the database.

Unfortunately, I don't have a perfect solution handy, but IMHO it really is something you should look into. Especially the fact that these birth years are included in the Headshot Master Database that is imported by many users (its creators understandably check which birth years have been accepted by Invelos, and leave only those in), ensures that these unnecessary birth years are swiftly spread among hundreds of users.

If you don't see an easy way to change how birth years are accepted into the database, maybe you can give us a procedure on how to submit any invalid ones to you, so you could remove them from the "accepted" list?

Thanks for listening,
T!M

Quoting Daddy DVD:

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For me the perfect solution would be the ability to contribute and see the full birthdates of every cast or crew entry...

I very much like this suggestion and I know it may be difficult to do because reliable birth year sources are kinda rare, but I think it's a worthwhile rule change nonetheless.

Along with such a rule change comes a desire to be able to lock the birth year on cast and crew, as I can also see an endless ping ponging for certain actors.

KM

Quoting cvermeylen:

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I fear however, people are going to say this is "DVD" profiler, and not "MOVIE" profiler. So I'm afraid this isn't going to happen soon.

For me, the birthyear is simply another "identifier" of an actor, just like his name. And since the linking depends on it, I think it's useful to add this information when available.

And it's not a DVD Profiler at all, we don't profile game DVDs or data DVDs or ...

Quoting Daddy DVD:

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For me the perfect solution would be the ability to contribute and see the full birthdates of every cast or crew entry, because I think it's interesting information and it could help to avoid possible future cross linking. And we also do not need to read forum threads or contribution notes to know if some birth years may be used or not.

The problem (and I'm not getting at you - its just that yours is the 1st post to respond to) - this would corrupt the database with all the existing entries for someone being changed so that they have a BY - whether or not there are two people with the same name (and different BYs) but which haven't been entered yet.

This has been discussed at length in previous threads and it was agreed that this would not work.

I'm for adding the birthyears only when needed: to differntiate between two actors or two crew members. The birthyear information is al ready hard to get and is sometimes contradicting.:
Robin McLaurim Williams (born July 21, 1951 or 1952) We have already problems getting the correct name for these people: Noel Burton <> Noël Burton

Quoting Agrare:

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As far as linking/voting goes. I would say that all actors with the same name, regardless of birth year, show up as a 'profile' so if you view the contribution notes for actor John Smith. it shows John Smith 1950, John Smith 1978, and any other John Smiths their might be (hope that makes sense).

I think it should be borne in mind that the reason for BYs was to distinguish between actors so that different actors (same name /different BY) wouldn't show up together.

If you want them all to appear to be the same despite the difference in BYs then the field would (should) be deleted from the database since its only purpose had disappeared.

Not to mention proper uses of BY get shot down by the reviewers; I just tried to do a disambiguation of Christy Mathewson (BY 1880) the baseball player and Christy Mathewson (BY 1959) the anime voice actor and all of the submissions were rejected en masse.  So I give up.  Crap BY goes in without any problem whatsoever; verified BY that is necessary is rejected.

Quoting pauls42:

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Quoting Agrare:

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I think you miss-understood my comment. The linking I was referring to is not between the actor's filmography but how submitted actor's birth years are linked during the voting process to each other and to our uploaded collections.

so, if you have an actor John Smith in any movie, and someone submits a birth year for him, you would see the submitted birth year and the accompanying contribution notes with why it is needed. This would link just by name so if you had a John Smith (1950) in your database, and I submitted a John Smith (1980) you would still see that 'new' John Smith to vote on and verify the birth year. Additionally, when its contributed, the 'profile' i referred to would be when it comes up for voting and it shows the changes, the changes would simply be a list of all the John Smiths in the database (however many there may be)

-Agrare

Yes, I thought you meant inside the program.

And.. I still don't understand how what you have said would work? After all - we don't have Actor contributions that are separate from the films - so how would seeing the other actors confirm anything about THIS actor?

no we don't but as I started off my first post:

Quoting Agrare:

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I think that it may be worthwhile for the initial birth year contribution to be just a contribution of that actor (or the group of actors causing the need for the birth year) and the birth year(s) with appropriate documentation for it.

So I am suggesting that maybe birth year additions should become their own separate contribution.
and no, it wouldn't confirm anything just provide more information to use to evaluate the correctness of the contribution.

-Agrare