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I have talked to several people and have decided I need to learn more about this topic. My hope is that, after thoughtful discussion, we to will reach a compromise that will satisfy everyone.

In order to do this I would like to see all the pros and cons of the various options outlined.

I am not very good at consolidating information into a cohesive list, especially since I do not have a clear understanding of this issue.

So, I would like to ask the community to help me achieve this. I would like to see the 3 most important issues for and against open credits. Please make this list as succinct as possible.

After we collect this data, it might be possible to work to solve any problems that are brought up.

Because this is a global community, I would like a day or two to gather all the information before getting input on addressing any of the specifics.

Thank you.

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(...) would YOU as such a user want to be FORCED to do all that work and everyone else who wants it as well, or would you prefer to be able to share it. Thta is what I mean by at that point the OOnline isaccessible and usable to ALL user not just the select few elitists who Ken allows to run the program. As long as those us like you and myself can select what we want or don't want then EVERYONE is served.(...)

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Do you get it, Donnie

40 want some form of Open credits. FORTY. (...)

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CONS of open crew credits
1. Language issues, as crew roles are named totally different in different languages.
2. Linking does not work anymore: For example, Director and Directed by or Written by and  Screenwriter are no longer linked together in Full open credits. means if you want to search for Steven Spielberg Movies, you are not getting all entries.
3. Too much work capturing millions of best Boy Electricians, 2nd unit assistants and so on (and do we really need to know those things ? )
4. Much more server space would be needed with all those millions of new entries. The databse will explode spacewise.
5. Useability and Contibutions would become less and less atrractive for the "normal" user, as you need an hour or two to just do one contribution.

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Quoting Prof. Kingsfield:

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(...) would YOU as such a user want to be FORCED to do all that work and everyone else who wants it as well, or would you prefer to be able to share it. Thta is what I mean by at that point the OOnline isaccessible and usable to ALL user not just the select few elitists who Ken allows to run the program. As long as those us like you and myself can select what we want or don't want then EVERYONE is served.(...)

Even though I have a hard time catching up with this thread, I want to state the following better late than never:

I want to recognise easily from a downloaded profile, who has been the director of the film. I want to do this no matter how he has been credited in the film such as "director", "directed by", "written and directed by", "un film de", "Regie", "Regisseur", or maybe one of "juuyaku, inchou, kanchou, shachou, soumu, shuji" or their Kanji representation. And I want to search and filter for director in the exported data from profiler. I even wish that one day Ken will implement a filter for director in profiler itself.

Therefore open credits without standardised role names will not serve EVERYONE.

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Quoting DarklyNoon:

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CONS of open crew credits
1. Language issues, as crew roles are named totally different in different languages.
2. Linking does not work anymore: For example, Director and Directed by or Written by and  Screenwriter are no longer linked together in Full open credits. means if you want to search for Steven Spielberg Movies, you are not getting all entries.
3. Too much work capturing millions of best Boy Electricians, 2nd unit assistants and so on (and do we really need to know those things ? )
4. Much more server space would be needed with all those millions of new entries. The databse will explode spacewise.
5. Useability and Contibutions would become less and less atrractive for the "normal" user, as you need an hour or two to just do one contribution.

Another huge con:
- Birth years for everyone - once we're opening up the database for literally every imaginable crew credits, you'll soon find that there are no more than a handful "unique" names left. The worst thing is that for most of these people, it'll be impossible to even find the birth year. 

Other than that, I can't help noting that the vast majority of the userbase already finds crew far too detailed and cumbersome to even deal with it. We've had several polls showing this. If anything, the average user cares about the writer, the director and the composer, and that's about it. As far as I'm concerned, we've taken crew too far already, and I see no need to keep adding more and more detail of which I'm pretty certain that not even 1% of the userbase has any interest in it.

My main concern, however, is the fear that it will hamper contributing. We already have that in so many different areas: when my local parsing differs from the online version and I want to contribute another simple correction/addition, I often find myself having the change the parsing locally, then contribute, then change it back. The same procedure happens for certain capitalisation issues, and since the change to 3.6, the same issue also affects the use of dividers. For nested group dividers, there are currently several "acceptable" methods of handling, so there again, when my local method differs from the online version, I have to change it before contributing, and then change it back. As long as these problems - that are severely hurting the ease of contributing for me on a daily basis - aren't addressed, I have to confess I have little faith in the same principle working flawlessly for open credits. Because I can tell you now: I don't want the likes of best boys, gaffers, carpenters and accountants in my database. I won't be tracking them myself, nor would I want to accept them into my database if someone else entered them. Now, not accepting such contributions is one thing, but if doing so subsequently renders me unable to contribute any further crew corrections/additions, then I'm strongly against it. Again, based on the exact same problems I'm experiencing right now with regards to parsing, capitalisation and dividers, I'm not exactly hopeful that those problems wouldn't affect "open credits" too.

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There is one thing, actually the most important, that must be answered first:

Ken,

Are you considering adapting any form of Open Credits to the database?

Please let us know either way so that the community does not waste their time debating the issue if it is a moot point.

Thank you.


ps: zombie...zombie...zombie