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Great post, mreeder50! 

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For example Lon Chaney may not be what most users would presume to be Lon Chaney, Jr., don't forget that his father was acting long before he was and Lon Chaney, Sr sometimes used the credit of Lon Chaney, when his father passed away Lon Chaney, Jr. also sometimes used Lon Chaney...so who are you talking about when you use Lon Chaney, Bill Smith may not be the same person as William Smith, they could be two totally different people , they could be father and son...and they could be the same, how does IMDb determine this (They don't provide any documentary support), how can we determine this if users do not provide documentation but instead simply use a Name Variant Tool which points at the two names but proves nothing more than the two names are similar.

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Quoting Woola:

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For example Lon Chaney may not be what most users would presume to be Lon Chaney, Jr., don't forget that his father was acting long before he was and Lon Chaney, Sr sometimes used the credit of Lon Chaney, when his father passed away Lon Chaney, Jr. also sometimes used Lon Chaney...so who are you talking about when you use Lon Chaney, Bill Smith may not be the same person as William Smith, they could be two totally different people , they could be father and son...and they could be the same, how does IMDb determine this (They don't provide any documentary support), how can we determine this if users do not provide documentation but instead simply use a Name Variant Tool which points at the two names but proves nothing more than the two names are similar.

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Just to be pedantic, Lon Chaney (Sr.) never was credited as Lon Chaney, Sr. during his lifetime(*).  His son was named Creighton Chaney (and was credited that way in his early film roles during the 1930s) all of the father's life.  There was no "Lon Chaney Jr." while the father was alive, so there was no need for him to call himself Sr.  He was *always* billed as "Lon Chaney."  It was only in the mid-1930s, after the father was long dead, that the studios thought Son would be more marketable as Lon Chaney Jr.  For reasons I don't know, Jr. on occasion dropped the Jr.

(*) Reissues of his films may have been altered to include a Sr. after the fact, of course.

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Vittra:

Ken did make an attempt to allow similar usefulness" into Profiler, IMHO he did not execute it well for the reasons i jave outlined a thousand times. Anything that is totall dependant upon accurate and correct(per the Rules) user input to determine whatever the outcome in a community as large as ours is bound to be problematic. Let's say that the last time Ken posted any kind of population figure is still correct, something north of 500,000 users. That is the population of washington DC, now you can post all the speed limit signs and pass all the laws you want but there are some people who simply will not follow those laws or those speed limits, so the system you want to design dioes not depend on user input, I have outlined such a system numerous times...will Ken implement it, I don't know, can it be easily implemented at thuis point...again I don't know. What I DO know is that the systemwe have now, is rife with data not properly entered and in some cases bad data ported over from Intervocative.

ALL I am saying is the system we have right now can to a very large degree be corrected by the users who frequent tyheseforums. I don't support the kind of global changes that some users are currently engaged in making because we know that is faulty premise. However,I could easily get behind a user who ownns X Title and has X Disc ID making a change to any other copy that uses the SAME disc ID. That should present no problems whatsoever, regardless of Region or locality. But only if it is the SAME DISC ID. But it is something that we all must participate in, I really believe that we can do it if we put our nose to the grindstone and just get 'er done. (Thanks Larry the cable guy). I completely understand the importance of the linkage system and I want it to work. So, let's do it, I am willing to help, I am not willing to do it all. Documentation is also critical, name variants aren't helpful, they can point out similar names, they cannot conclude or prove that NameA=Name B, some people here seem to want usefulness at the epense of accuracy. I have Bill Smith and William Smith they must be the same guy so i'll list CLT results or even worse just state that i have checked the CLT. If everyone is dedicated to both accuracy AND useability then this can be beaten, but we all must be operating from the same page, and those whop don't wish to function in that environment must be shot down for the good of All. This is all i have ever worked, all I continue to work for and always will and the whole reason for the Rules. To create one page from which we all operate, not have some user over creating this or that interpretation, while somebody else dooes something different. Now the difference from my own viewpoint is that I have put tens of thousands of hours or work into researching and how to best do things, my comments are notbased on thirty seconds worth of thought.

So, my question who besides me is willing to pick up this gauntlet and tackle this monster, I am not going to touch Europe unless i find a Disc ID in Europe that is the same as a US Profile, which is always a possibility, I haven't done any work to determine how correct this idea might be but i suspect with Nulti-Region or region free Discs it is quite likely. We just all have to working from the same page to amke it work. Sooooooo...I am not a pothole.

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1. That IMDB has a superior linking system for their cast/crew. Not to say that their cast/crew is more accurate. I have found in many instances that it is quite the contrary. But the way they link cast/crew with each actor/actress/crew member having a unique database entry that you need only link another name to in order for all other titles incorporating said name to link would be most welcome in this program.

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2. When the rules force us to enter something that makes for unusable or difficult to use data, that Invelos change and lock the data to usable entries even though they break the rules. Note that I am not saying that each user interpret what they believe to be correct. This as you suggest would lead to more problems then it would solve.

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The movie Richie Rich is in our database as Ri¢hie Ri¢h. While I agree that this in theory follows the rules, it only makes the title much more difficult to search out, especially to the average non forum visiting user. In this case, I believe Invelos would be better off locking the title as Richie Rich and therefore making it more user friendly. The users that want to keep it as Ri¢hie Ri¢h could do so locally.

The bottom line is this: The casual user won't be tinkering with the program much. They won't contribute much if at all. They just want a program to keep track of their DVD collection with some features like cast lookup. Like it or not, this type of user is probably in the majority and who Invelos should cater to. So in my mind, things like "Richie Rich" should be the standard and the people who actually tinker, contribute, visit these forums should be the ones left keeping "Ri¢hie Ri¢h" a local thing.

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I am going to have to disagree with you on this point.  I have reccomended this program to a lot of 'casual users'.  Every single one, because the program tells them to, enters their collection via UPC.  Since they will, more often than not, find the title in the main DB, there isn't any need to look it up via title search.