As long as the rules say: "Do not enter unit crew", I will not enter - and will vote against - any crew listed under a "unit" header.

Quoting T!M:

Quote:
As long as the rules say: "Do not enter unit crew", I will not enter - and will vote against - any crew listed under a "unit" header.

Yes, I agree. But in some rare cases I could imagine that it's okay to add them but that should be well explained in the notes then!

Something is going to need to be done.

There is a contribution, that was just approved 44-0 on Dec 20th, that a new contribution is removing the location Crew.

United Kingdom
Art:
Frank Walsh: Art Director
Jason Knox Johnston: Art Director
Paul Laugier: Art Director
Andy Thomson: Art Director
Kenny Crouch: Costume Designer

Canada
Art:
Bill Ives: Art Director

No unit designator.  No unit word,

Contribution notes say

Quote:
Removed unit crew (production was filmed in different countries).

Are we now going to start "ping-pong", because management will not come out and give a ruling?

Is this what profiler going to be like?

Charlie

Quoting CharlieM:

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Are we now going to start "ping-pong", because management will not come out and give a ruling?

Is this what profiler going to be like?

That's what it looks like, yeah. 

If we really want a simple system that takes the guess work out of what to and not to contribute in terms of crew credits, then we really need a list of every possible role (in terms how people are credited), a decision on the creditworthiness of each made available (in terms of their inclusion in the database or not) and direction in how each is recorded in the database (in terms of how a number of roles are grouped under as a single one).  Yes it’s a lot but I don’t believe it would run into ‘silly numbers’ and we’d not be starting from scratch by any means, but extending what we have.  I’d hazard a guess that actually there wouldn’t be a huge amount of debate on the need to include most crew credits in the database (or not) regarding the vast majority of roles either.  A list like this would make things far easier and additions and requests for changes to it could be debated and decided on through a case by case basis.

Databases like ours are ever evolving (as we use it to collect data on a ‘moving target’), so it’s never going to be ‘right’ or static and anyone using it needs to accept that it will always be out of date to some degree as things change and as a consequence its data will always need updating.  A community contribution system is a wonderful way to do this but it must, must have very fixed rules or it just won’t work well.  We also shouldn’t shy away from the Rules being very regularly updated, clarified or changed as a result of this, as long as the changes are documented properly (i.e. not lost in the forums where a general consensus has been reached but for whatever reason not officially added to the Rules); for crew credits this would seem to be relatively easy to do if we had a list.

And yes, this credit list needs to consider the issue of what to do with things like Unit or Location crew, as well as the special/unique crew credits that come with music, animated and special interest DVDs, along with those with non-English credits.

This is not dissimilar in many ways to the idea of trying to give every person who appears in a film a unique ID number that has been suggested (great idea but a lot of work), but in this case the list of crew roles would be a lot, lot shorter.

Of course this isn’t going to mean we always successfully capture the most senior/creative people for each film (in the sense that one film’s “tea maker” is another film’s “beverage director”), but it will be very simple system to interpret, which would lead to a high degree of inputting consistency, which is a key feature of good databases.  It may still not provide what you want but at least it would provide a consistent inputting baseline to work from. 

The fact of that matter now is that the database has become so complex to contribute to that actually no one at all appears to fully understand the Rules anymore.  If those of you who frequently debate the ‘grey areas’ here aren’t clear on what some of them mean and can’t come to a general consensus that is then incorporated into the Rules, what hope is there for the rest of us?  I believe that in reality, not a lot of the people who contribute profiles go through the Forums for clarification on every ‘grey area’, so will simply continue to make innocent ‘mistakes’ based on their own interpretations of the Rules (or will do what they want anyway if they can reinterpret the Rules to support their view), unless the Rules are made a lot simpler to use.  Crew roles seems to be one of those areas where a number of things need sorting out. 

Bottom line is, the Rules need to be a lot simpler (which is not quite the same as shorter); period.  This means black and white, yes and no statements, not ones followed by a list of exceptions, or gaps.  Once a database becomes too complex for all its users to fully comprehend, then it will start to fail at the very thing it was set up to do.  The recording of crew credits seems to be one of the two most contentious and difficult issues that need resolving at present, so would be a good place to start. 

I think nearly everyone here really appreciates the database and all the work that goes into developing it and contributing to it by Ken and his team and the rest of us.  But to read some of the postings recently, where people are literally tearing lumps out of each other verbally (in that wonderfully polite but not polite way that we do) and people like Katy are considering not contributing anymore profiles, makes me think (as a relative newcomer) that some sort of significant point has been reached. A lot of this frustration appears to revolve around having a system that doesn’t always let us accurately link data relating to crew and cast, due to different interpretations of the Rules (or people filling in the blanks themselves).  This is a long post sorry, but on the issue of crew credits I can’t see how it will ever be resolved unless we try to implement a system like I’ve suggested (or reduce what we record greatly).

The organisation I work for has a huge Management Information System (basically a single, giant database) that has been developed and grown organically over the past eight years or so, which suffers from a lot of the same issues (but worse).  It’s simply so large and complex that it’s effectively impossible to write a rule book on how to use it now, as no one understands it fully and in any case it gets updated so often that the rules would go straight out of date.  Even the developers can’t, as they rarely use it in a practical way so aren’t clear on how it’s used by people and the consequences of this. 

Remember Skynet anyone?

Don't be afraid of grey areas. The world is not black and white.

Quoting RHo:

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Quoting TheMadMartian:

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Unit crew will have it's own director and DoP/Cinematographer.  Location crew will not.  If you look at the screen cap, the second and third unit have both and the New Zealand Unit has neither.  That is because the main Director and DoP/Cinematographer, the ones we track, are present on location and are just using local talent.

I can't see a 2nd or 3rd unit director in the screen cap. But I get your point.

They are credited as 'Assistant Director' here, but you will notice there is no 'Assistant Director' under the location header.

Quoting Leiterfluid:

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I seriously don't understand how there can be any ambiguity at all on this.  The rules are pretty clear that only main (non-unit) crew are to be credited.

Some films like Babel doesn't have "main" crew. Only director, writer and some of the producers are always the same, all others belong to some location crew.