We need a better name linking before we add more people for sure. I'd be for something that makes the current people easier to track or easier to understand their job so long as it didn't complicate things too much. I'd be for cutting out people like re-recordists, for that matter. These aren't major sound crew.

Quoting Ken Cole:

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It's easier from a coding perspective but the coding is of course not the only consideration.

Oooh, two zombie sightings in one day...I'm going to have nightmares. 

If I may ask, what are the other considerations?

I agree with the idea of open credits - that every user can focus on the credits that are important to him/her - at least in principle. But I can't for the life of me figure out how this would work in practice.

Let's say I submit sound credits, another user submits accountants and a third submits writing credits. How would Invelos know how to merge these credits correctly? The only option I see is to list them in the order contributed. But would we really want to accept a jumble of out-of-order credits for the sake of including more of them? I know I wouldn't.

Similarly, how would Invelos know when I mean to submit a correction rather than an addition? We would need to have add/modify/delete flags for every single credit line, complicating the UI and the contribution process.

Then I read that a user should only have to accept the credits that he cares about into his local database. How exactly would this happen? If someone contributes the full LotR credits I don't want to go through hundreds of credit lines to find the individual crew that I'm interested in. Sure, the program could include customisable filters to do this automatically, but since we would no longer have normalised crew roles I would have to configure a significant number of credit variants and would still probably miss out on quite a few people I would have liked to include because they happen to be credited in a way I didn't think of when I set up the filters.

If someone can device workable ways of getting around these obstacles, and the problems of translation and filtering for person/role that have been pointed out earlier, I will be in favour of open credits. For now, though, I feel the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits.

Dag

Quoting Dag Ove:

Quote:
I agree with the idea of open credits - that every user can focus on the credits that are important to him/her - at least in principle. But I can't for the life of me figure out how this would work in practice.

Let's say I submit sound credits, another user submits accountants and a third submits writing credits. How would Invelos know how to merge these credits correctly? The only option I see is to list them in the order contributed. But would we really want to accept a jumble of out-of-order credits for the sake of including more of them? I know I wouldn't.

Similarly, how would Invelos know when I mean to submit a correction rather than an addition? We would need to have add/modify/delete flags for every single credit line, complicating the UI and the contribution process.

Then I read that a user should only have to accept the credits that he cares about into his local database. How exactly would this happen? If someone contributes the full LotR credits I don't want to go through hundreds of credit lines to find the individual crew that I'm interested in. Sure, the program could include customisable filters to do this automatically, but since we would no longer have normalised crew roles I would have to configure a significant number of credit variants and would still probably miss out on quite a few people I would have liked to include because they happen to be credited in a way I didn't think of when I set up the filters.

If someone can device workable ways of getting around these obstacles, and the problems of translation and filtering for person/role that have been pointed out earlier, I will be in favour of open credits. For now, though, I feel the drawbacks far outweigh the benefits.

Dag

Hmmm, I think I see what you are saying, Dag. An interesting thought, I will have to ponder that. Perhaps in such cases as you describe, at some point, as painful as it might seem , some user might take it on himself to fully audit such data to put in the correct sequences.

Right now the big challenge i am working on is the language issue that has been raised.

Quoting scotthm:

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Quoting Prof. Kingsfield:

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I will not even reveal whether I might or might not be interested personally because that is not relevant. I can deal with MY wants and preferences LOCALLY, I suggest you do the same

The more this issue is discussed the more I'm convinced that the only crew we should have in the ONLINE DB is that which virtually everyone is interested in, and leave the rest to each local DB.

As it is, more and more people are doing their own thing locally, which makes it much more difficult to contribute.  Why not just use the lowest common denominator for the ONLINE?

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Well, back when I started with this program, I was constantly smacked with idea that the online is only a starting point for your personal database.  Anything else I want to do I should keep local.  I might add that some very loud voices were the ones doing the smacking. 

That's correct, midnit. Abd i will do so again. <Smack> That's not a reason to DUMB it down however.

Quoting Prof. Kingsfield:

Quote:
Quoting scotthm:

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The more this issue is discussed the more I'm convinced that the only crew we should have in the ONLINE DB is that which virtually everyone is interested in, and leave the rest to each local DB.

Why? Don't improve the database, don't try and make it the best database in the world, just DUMB it down? NO!

Adding more roles does not necessarily "improve" the database, as you've frequently pointed out with your rants against our Visual Effects credits.  Fully open credits will cause issues for other users, and I think make the crew credits too unwieldy.

I think we should have a handful of categories that virtually everyone is interested in, and use a Credited As feature within those categories.  It would be very similar to what we have now but the actual credit could be recorded along with the pre-defined radio button selection.  This way the foreign language films contingent can know who the screenwriter is even if the Credited As data is in a language they don't understand, and the open credits contingent can know what the actual credit is.  I believe the only problem this won't address is credited order, but that's a fairly minor problem compared to the rest.

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I agree, Charlie and as I have said this could be improved a lot if Ken would tighten up on the Rules and the Notes. Make the Custom Roles Contributable and required, make the notes required to be a LOT better and more specific than they are now, so that people will communicate and not be able to refuse to do so because ken doesn't require it. The one thing that still astounds me is the number of people who are willing to vote Yes for anything, even against the Rukles, some of these people are MY sharpest critics, I come along and spot a an obvious problem, whatever it is, but it's wrong and it needs to be corrected. Once these people have cast their Yes vote, they have done the damage, they never go look at those votes ever again to see if maybe somebody spotted something....what happens....garbage into the program...that has to be corrected by somebody else. That's one of our BIGGEST problems. The notes require changes to be souced, yet users will state that a movie is anamorphic, no supporting data of any kind just the user's comment and it will get approved...that's NUTS. We have Rules the screeners need to pay attention to them as well as the voters. As I have said thousands ONE valid NO vote is all that should be required to throw out bad data, no matter how many people have BLINDLY voted Yes. OK, I'll get off my soapbox. But in parting some of you who like to criticize me are the absolute worst offenders and you should make sure your own house is cleaned up before taking me on.