Quoting VirusPil:

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Quoting Addicted2DVD:

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One of us must be confused... as the way I understood it with the id's you wouldn't have to worry about name changes any longer. From what I thought they were saying You use the ID for the person... an ID that always stays the same and for each ID you get a list of names that person uses. So they all link. So when a new name comes up you add to that list.

But what that wouldn't solve is when 2 people use the same name in their list. I believe you would still need something similar to birth years for when more then 1 person uses the same name.

Wouldn't it be like that: you will always have the possibility to add a new one. For example:
In database: John Doe (ID 123456789) [aka John A. Doe]
If you add a new one, the second will be: John Doe (ID 987654321)
The ID instead the BY as separator and as collector for the variants.

Possibly... as I said in the last post...

Though it is hard to say reading it. I am the type of person I understand much better by actually seeing it in action vs. being told about it.

speaking as someone with a rather slow system... I would rather have the system sign onto the online database and compare it to the online instead of having to download the cast/crew database(s) each day and have countless cast and crew members in my local that I do not even own titles for. Not sure what the downside would be... you would still be checking the entire database(s) when you go to contribute.

Quoting Taro:

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Only possible problem I see is if all contributors just click 'create new ID' and we'll have tons of actors with multiple ID's who are actually the same.

And that's exactly what would happen, I'm afraid. Quite a lot of users won't bother with anything more than the "new ID" option, and we may very well be ending up a constant, ever-lasting stream of "new" entries that really aren't "new" at all. I think there'd have to be a way to discourage that somehow.

Quoting DJ Doena:

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If you make the ID optional (see my post) you don't have that problem. You don't have linking either but you wouldn't have that anyway if you press "new ID" all the time.

Granted.

Quoting DJ Doena:

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I could imagine the following system the accomodate both sides:

You can enter the credits as credited, straight-forward, text-only. No birth year. Just a one-, two- or three-name field. When entered as such these people don't link to anyone. They are just text. If you click on Bruce Willis in Armageddon it won't show you Bruce Willis in Die Hard
You can contribute that and that's it then.

But you can do this too: You can say that this actor entry in that profile is linked to an actor entry in the online actor database (OADB). This online actor entry is very compact. The actor's most credited name* and maybe a birth year (and a gender) to make it easier to spot if we're talking about the same person.
Then this entry in your profile becomes more: You have a "credited as" AND an ID. And if you have other profiles where a guy with the same ID appears, they will link. Now Die Hard will show up when you click on Bruce in Armageddon.

* the most credited name is determined automatically by using all the "credited as" where that actor's ID was used.

What you need for this OADB is a search function where you can type in the name and it'll show you all the actors with that name (ideally considering all "credited as"ses) and then the profiles where that actor appears. If you don't find him/her, you can create a new actor ID which you then link with that entry in your local database.

This actor ID info is also contributable of course.

Hope that was somewhat understandable.

This would mean you would have to be on-line and connected to the online database in order to do linking.  I'm not sure that's the best approach.

Quoting Addicted2DVD:

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Quoting T!M:

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Quoting DJ Doena:

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If you make the ID optional (see my post) you don't have that problem. You don't have linking either but you wouldn't have that anyway if you press "new ID" all the time.

Granted.

Question here though... if the ID is optional. What goes into the online when you contribute? If they have to have an ID for the online.. how would these ones go into the system with no ID?

Imagine the ID just like the birth year. You don't need the birth year to contribute a cast list, do you?
And you wouldn't need an ID to contribute either. And when someone else downloads the profile he gets it without ID.


Quoting hal9g:

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Quoting DJ Doena:

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I could imagine the following system the accomodate both sides:

...

This would mean you would have to be on-line and connected to the online database in order to do linking.  I'm not sure that's the best approach.

You could make a two-step approach. He could look it up locally (e.g. He already has Bruce Willis movies where Bruce Willis has an ID). And only if he doesn't find what he's looking for, he goes online.

The problem is that you can't have it all offline AND sufficient data at the same time. Sure, you could have a list with all the actors and their ID. But even that would be a huge file. For example: IMDb lists over 4 million different people in cast & crew. Take 100 bytes for each and you get a 380 megabyte file alone. And with that you don't have a single movie association. Sure you have two Kevin Smith's with two IDs but you still don't know which is the silent one.

Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

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Next time Robin Wright (Penn)'s name changed, we'd only have to update 40 entries, not 592.

With the simple linking system, one person would have to contribute the link to her "new" name one time and all profiles in everyone's local db would be linked automatically!

Another idea for the "Request new ID" system.

Imagine a new movie comes out. It has this new rising star actor in it - let's call him Karsten  - who has never played in a movie before.

The Blu-ray will be sold world-wide from Jan 31st. Now 15 different people want to create a profile for their locality. All of them look Karsten up and find nothing. We surely don't want that they create 15 IDs for the same guy, just because he wasn't in the system and contributions are open for voting for 6 days.

So this is how I imagine it has to go:

I look into my personal DB. No actor ID for Karsten
I look up online. No actor ID for Karsten, or at least not for that Karsten.
Now I have to request a new ID.
I enter the name (as credited) and a note for which movie I want to create that actor entry.
The system immediately creates that entry+ID and downloads that entry into DVDP.
Now I can assign it in my local profile
The next guy looks up Karsten. He finds one, but it hasn't got any profiles attached to it yet. But he sees the note that says "for awesome new Movie 2011". He knows it's that Karsten and uses him for his profile
Then the contributions are approved. Now Karsten has actual profiles attached to him. So the note can be removed, because it's not necessary anymore.