I know that at this point, 18 pages into this thread, my reply won't make a shred of difference, but I want to throw my hat in the ring that's against full open credits.

I'd be fine with contributable custom roles, I think that would be good, but full open credits would simply detract me from contributing anymore crew.

Recently I completed full cast and crew updates for the television series Reba, seasons 2-6 (1 was completed before expanded crew roles were put in place, I was planning on going back to it in the future), including the full season boxsets and all individual discs included in the boxset. Something like that is a TON of work. Took me over a week to complete. I absolutely cannot imagine the pain and hassle of putting in absolutely everything the credits had to offer, for each of the 13-24 episodes, for five full seasons. I simply wouldn't even bother tackling it.

Plus, full open credits would simply, for lack of a better word, intimidate me.

Knowing full well I didn't HAVE to contribute full and open credits, I would feel like I was doing a half-a** job if I did anything but full and open credits. But then I wouldn't be entirely sure which credits I should selectively choose to enter. Would I stick with what used to be? Would I go further and enter one or two more credits than what used to be? Would I enter what I personally consider to be useless credits like catering? I know I wouldn't be taking the extreme amount of time it would take to enter them all, but what would I enter?

It would simply stop me from contributing crew, plain and simple. And I know I wouldn't be the only one.

I spend too much time here as it is. Between school and work, I just don't have unlimited time to spend entering full and open credits. In the past 26 days, I've submitted 72 contributions to the system. Some small changes (such as adding digital copy), some complete re-audits of really really messed up titles (like Canadian localities of The Passion of the Christ and The Perfect Storm) and some complete and brand new submissions to the system which include full crew as it stands now.

If I'm scared off (and I feel I have a nice understanding and a decent grasp of the system), I can only imagine how many others would be scared off. Take my 72 submissions (all of which at this point that aren't still pending have been approved) and multiply that by however many other members get scared off.... We're talking about losing a TON of data. And honestly, I just don't see anyone else picking up the slack for those that no longer want to contribute. I'm still, to this day, finding titles in my collection from pre-invelos days that haven't even been touched. We don't have enough contributors now... I don't want to lose the ones we have, and I don't want to lose future data that's important to me. Crew would become a useless section of the program (I dare someone to enter the full credits for The Lord of the Rings Trilogy) and with such daunting work staring me in the face, I'd probably just go local and say screw the online (this isn't even touching the other problems mentioned in this thread so far).

I think full open credits is a bad idea and asking for problems no one wants. I agree with those that said: Fix the problems we have now, worry about creating new ones after these are taken care of.

As would I Forget... though I would still prefer open credits within categories.

I don't know why we are talking absolutes:

We seem to have 2 basic camps

  1 those who want the system we have, but more strealined
  2 that want to be able to enter in extended credits (of various degrees)

I do not see why we cannot have a hybrid system

First we would have to decide on the master categories.  (Direection, Production, Music, Sound, Effects, Makeup/ Costumes) as examples.  We then would have to decide what we want to track within those categories.

Second, decide on what the base crew contribution would be.  My choice for this would be the Credits that you primarily find in the opening credits or pre-closing credits (director, producer, executive producer, writer.  film editor, Production designer, casting) to name a few.  Make these selectable, as we do know.  Eliminate the VE and most of the sound credits that we argue about now.  At the same time, allow a custom field to be entered for the people that want the true credit.  (this should satisfy the less is more crowd)

Third, within the predefined categories, anything else is a custom roll (or "other" in today's environment)  As long as it fits within the parameters of the predefined categories, it is contributable in WYSiWYT.

I am not so sure about contributing the caterers and assistants and what not.  This would have to be discussed and decided upon, and probably under another category, maybe support staff.

From the contributors standpoint, you could contribute as much or as little as you choose, just like it is now.  If you want to only contribute the predefined categories, that would be your choice.  If for some reason, you wanted to specialize in sound effects, you could do that to.

For the average collector, you could decide on how little or how much you want to maintain in your local.  User selectable.  Any thing from the predefined, up to the entire contribution.

This would provide satisfaction for both sides, while adding to the DB.

This of course would have to have full character support within Profiler, which we do not have.

Now let's solve the linking system

Charlie

Quoting CharlieM:

Quote:
I don't know why we are talking absolutes:

We seem to have 2 basic camps

  1 those who want the system we have, but more strealined
  2 that want to be able to enter in extended credits (of various degrees)

I do not see why we cannot have a hybrid system

First we would have to decide on the master categories.  (Direection, Production, Music, Sound, Effects, Makeup/ Costumes) as examples.  We then would have to decide what we want to track within those categories.

Second, decide on what the base crew contribution would be.  My choice for this would be the Credits that you primarily find in the opening credits or pre-closing credits (director, producer, executive producer, writer.  film editor, Production designer, casting) to name a few.  Make these selectable, as we do know.  Eliminate the VE and most of the sound credits that we argue about now.  At the same time, allow a custom field to be entered for the people that want the true credit.  (this should satisfy the less is more crowd)

Third, within the predefined categories, anything else is a custom roll (or "other" in today's environment)  As long as it fits within the parameters of the predefined categories, it is contributable in WYSiWYT.

I am not so sure about contributing the caterers and assistants and what not.  This would have to be discussed and decided upon, and probably under another category, maybe support staff.

From the contributors standpoint, you could contribute as much or as little as you choose, just like it is now.  If you want to only contribute the predefined categories, that would be your choice.  If for some reason, you wanted to specialize in sound effects, you could do that to.

For the average collector, you could decide on how little or how much you want to maintain in your local.  User selectable.  Any thing from the predefined, up to the entire contribution.

This would provide satisfaction for both sides, while adding to the DB.

This of course would have to have full character support within Profiler, which we do not have.

Now let's solve the linking system

Charlie

LOL          Would that it were that simple.

Quoting Prof. Kingsfield:

Quote:
Quoting m.cellophane:

Quote:
Quoting Prof. Kingsfield:

Quote:
But overall standard roles are a failure for any users who want to be able to KNOW what job is being done by this individual, that's probably more important than linking to some or the reports issue.

Name linking is far more important to me than whether someone was credited as Re-Recording Mixer or Sound Re-Recording Mixer. Interesting that you would dismiss the linking feature and the reports issue just as you dismiss the language issue.

That's you, james, but that does not apply to ALL.

Quoting Ken Cole:

Quote:
Quoting Kathy:

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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 

Yes, I am following this thread.  I can say I am not actively working on a switch to an open credits system right now.  I expect the current system to remain relatively unchanged in the near term, so focusing on the problem areas in the crew rules would likely yield faster results.

However, it's not a moot point to discuss this - virtually every change ever made in the program started life as a post on this forum.

Thanks, Ken. It would be nice if the film industry would say, you know those profilers are a bunch of werdos but they have some ideas we should listen to....that'll be the day. I am not overly worked up about it because this not something I expect to see tomorrow or next Monday, I don't see a 3.7 or 4.0 that fast. But, then again you have surprised me before. But I truly do this is something that needs to be seriously looked at to clean up our system and improve the accuracy of the data.

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