I would not agree, Staid. The BY has a purpose and we are not trying to recreate something which already exists. BY and Biograp[hical data is available elsewhere for those wishing to send birthday cards.

The bigger problem I see with cver's suggestion is when building a Profile, I am comnfronted with name (A) and Name (B) how do I decide which to use.

Skip

Quoting Jubal:

Quote:
I would not agree, Staid. The BY has a purpose and we are not trying to recreate something which already exists. BY and Biograp[hical data is available elsewhere for those wishing to send birthday cards.

The bigger problem I see with cver's suggestion is when building a Profile, I am comnfronted with name (A) and Name (B) how do I decide which to use.

Skip

You are right and that problem would indeed also exist with "pre-filled" BYs. My proposal to add them was not for biographical interest, but to have them when needed, and cut out the arguing about whether they are needed.
Whatever we suggest, there is always a problem, which hints at a basic flaw in the linking system.

Quoting Staid S Barr:

Quote:
I would vote to accept all BYs, whether "needed" or not, as long as they are properly documented. And of course, it should not be compulsory.

I tend to think the same. Provided there is proper documentation, I don't see the harm in adding a birthday to an actor. It could be considered a pre-emptive solution in case another actor with the same name pops up.

As far as I understand it, it has only been removed from the accepted list of BY. It will need documentation when the birth year is submitted again (But you already have that documentation, so it shouldn't be any problem)

What about when no Birth Year can be found that the year of the earliest credit would be entered.


So let's say that we couldn't find the birth year for Chris Rock (mainstream).

According to IMDB his earliest credit is in 1987 for Beverly Hills Cop II.

So in the example I given it would be the following.

Chris Rock (1987)
Chris Rock


So perhaps two options could be entered for actors

A Birth Year when it can be found
or
A Year for the Earliest credit  (Which could just be called "Earliest Credit")

Quoting CubbyUps:

Quote:
What about when no Birth Year can be found that the year of the earliest credit would be entered.
So let's say that we couldn't find the birth year for Chris Rock (mainstream).
According to IMDB his earliest credit is in 1987 for Beverly Hills Cop II.
So in the example I given it would be the following.

Chris Rock (1987)
Chris Rock

So perhaps two options could be entered for actors
A Birth Year when it can be found
or
A Year for the Earliest credit  (Which could just be called "Earliest Credit")

A problem would be that the earliest credit may change, whereas BY can't (errors aside). How to update all profiles with such actor?

Maybe one possibility that might work in addition to BY's could be middle initial.  That might or might not be easier to find, but it is something that we already have the spot for.  We could go with something that said: "For differentiating between actors who have the same name and same birthyear, credit them with their middle initial [if known], ignoring CLT results and using the 'as credited' feature to reflect the on-screen credit."

This way, say we have 3 people working who all use the name Joe Schmo.  We could then have:
Joe Schmo (1970)
Joe A. Schmo (1970) [Joe Schmo]
Joe B. Schmo (1970) [Joe Schmo]
... even though for all three the most-credited form would be Joe Schmo. 

The problem I see with the idea is pretty much the same as current issues: how do you know which Joe is the correct Joe?  Like say one Joe was a sound guy, one a make-up artist, and one a visual effects guy.  Or, alternately, how does one know that there ARE 3 Joes?  Maybe someone only has films from one of the Joes, the visual effects guy, and doesn't know there are two other Joe Schmos out there doing there thing and they should credit their Joe as Joe B. Schmo. 

But we have that problem now with birth years, so ...

Anyway, feel free to pick this apart. 

I don't know... I think any official information to be added (birth year... middle initial... and so on) would be all the same problem... it would be information that is hard to find for the majority that it is needed for. I would say we need to find something similar to what imdb does... either find a way to number them or letter them

John Doe (1)
John Doe (2)

John Doe (a)
John Doe (b)

Or some sort of unique identifier.

No matter what we use... a Birth Year or what... we still will have to look into it further to be sure we are getting the right one. So I don't think that needs to factor into it. So I would say something like the above with a way to see what other profiles each name is listed in.