Quoting GSyren:

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The bottom line is that when I enter the UPC for my new DVD, I would be happier to find a Lazy Bum profile than no profile at all.

Hey, that sounds almost like the Swedish locality, the land of the Lazy Bums. It's not a pretty sight. You should try it sometime Gunnar, you may find that you don't like it very much.

Quoting hal9g:

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I don't see anything in your proposal that isn't already being done today.

That's strange. According to Skip it would be totally unworkable. It would probably be the end of civilization as we know it, if his tone is anything to go by.    And according to you it's already being done. Dear me...

Btw, if you read the very first sentence in my original post you would know that this wasn't actually a proposal.

Skip,

This point of my argument was not about partial contributions. It was about setting minimum and maximum requirements for field content so that even those "Lazy Bums" as you call them can feel encouraged to contribute new titles that would otherwise possibly never make it into the database.

Five green arrows on the initial post tell me that at least some people here understood and agreed. So now I know that I'm not the only one who feels this way and therefore this thread was not pointless, at least not to me.

Oh, perhaps I should add that in my opinion there are no lazy bums. In my view, any contribution that improves a profile is welcome and should be encouraged. Reproaching people for not also doing this or that, rather than thanking them for what they did do, is counter productive.

Quoting Dr Pavlov:

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You did not say that they had to follow the Rules for the "reasonably correct" data, IMDb (which is flat-out NO)  could be called reasonably correct.

Sure I did. That was the whole point of my original post.

There would be a minimum requirement for every type of field. That would be part of the rules. For cast that could very well include No IMDb.

There would not be two sets of rules. There would be two levels for each field (well, not every field, obviously). Those would be the minimum requirements for the field and the desired.

Overview is a good example. The minimum requirement could be that you just enter the text from the back without regard to capitalization, bold, italics etc. The desired level is the text including these things.

One would obviously have to think through what the minimum requirements should be. Since I'm pretty much in the "Anything is better than nothing" camp, I would set the bar low. Since you're in the opposite camp, you would probably set the bar so high that there would be no point to it.

However, since this is not likely to happen, there is little point in continuing to argue about it. I have made my position clear. You have made yours clear.

Quoting GSyren:

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Skip,

This point of my argument was not about partial contributions. It was about setting minimum and maximum requirements for field content so that even those "Lazy Bums" as you call them can feel encouraged to contribute new titles that would otherwise possibly never make it into the database.

What would be the maximum and minimum requirements for the "Release Date" field; or the "SRP" field; or the "Title" field; or the "Rating" field; etc., etc., etc.

Personally, I don't understand why anyone would deliberately submit an Overview which included bolding on the cover and not include it in their submission.  It takes all of about one second extra to do it right????

I'm sorry, but I really don't follow what you're getting at.

If you're talking about Cast and Crew (the most challenging fields to do completely and accurately), then you should narrow down the scope of the original post.  Perhaps there are a couple of other fields which can be challenging, like studios.  But for the most part, the data required for each field is pretty straight forward, and contribution submissions are either right or they are wrong.  Very few fields have some "middle ground" that you seem to be referring to.

Or maybe I'm just being dense today???

Quoting surfeur51:

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Quoting hal9g:

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Personally, I don't understand why anyone would deliberately submit an Overview which included bolding on the cover and not include it in their submission.  It takes all of about one second extra to do it right????

Than after having contributed the profile, another extra second to get rid of this ugly thing... 

Why do rules want to dictate cosmetic preferences that have no value for the  coherence of data?  And unfortunately, they always choose the most hideous solution... 

In this particular case, because a bunch of users wanted the feature.  While you find it hideous, they find it desirable.  Speaking for myself, I didn't care either way as long as the single quotes were eliminated.

Quoting GSyren:

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where people say they shun DVD Profiler because the rules have been so convoluted (and you get insulted if you don't follow them to the letter).

In fairness those who insult are by far in the minority. Most will point out & advise how to do it the "correct" way.

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I did a little experiment. I copied the rules into MS Word and checked the statistics. 6529 words (6669 if you count voting rules as well). Is it any wonder that newcomers, especially those who do not speak English as their first language, feel a little intimidated?

I'll give you that one & have fully supported having translations of the rules into various languages. I think that would have to be with support from the community as I don't think Ken could translate them himself into 20 or so languages! I can understand only allowing contributions in English though due to the screeners needing to understand what is being said. A kind of compromise though would be to include suggested sentences in the "foreign" rules. For example, under the Cast section, have something that suggests using "Cast taken from the end credits as credited" or similar.

I'm not really seeing a purpose in two sets of rules without specific examples of what isn't necessary. I just vote yes for anythignt hat's beeter than what it replaces, even if it still isn't perfect. One important aspect of this idea is the ability to copy information from approved profiles. For instance, lets say an older movie is coming out on Blu-Ray. Right now, it isn't in the database. A user creates the profile with whatever info they can get from the press release and copes the cast and crew from the DVD. I would vote yes and figure we can fix the overview and such later.