Quoting hal9g:

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I think you misunderstood me.  I am not talking about actual mis-pellings in the Overview on the DVD.  I am talking about the introduction of mis-spellings when we convert all caps or all lower case Overviews to mixed case because the Rules dictate that 'TRES BIEN' (in an Overview) be spelled 'tres bien' instead of 'très bien'.

I did misunderstand you, however, that misspelling is only added in certain localities, which brings up an odd situation in the rules...when it comes to converting all caps into mixed case, we have three different rules:

Titles: use capitalization rules common to the language of the title.

Overviews: use standard capitalization rules for the locality of the DVD.

Credits: use a one to one conversion, E=e, but not è.

For names, I can understand why Ken went the way he did, but why treat the title and overview differently?  Why language for one and locality for the other? 

Quoting T!M:

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Quoting hal9g:

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T!M, in spite of your assertions, I don't believe it for a minute.

#1 - There is no way that you personally are aware of all variations that every actor has ever used in their career.  Therefore, it is virtually impossible that you have 100% linking in your local database.

That may very well be true. I can just tell you that I'm entirely satisfied with the level of accuracy in my database. And what I don't know doesn't hurt me. Still, while there may be "no way that I am personally aware of all variations that every actor has ever used in their career", I actually am fairly confident that I know that for most of the people in my own database. Still, the work is never "done" - whenever I learn something new, either here in the forums, or somewhere else, I will, of course, apply that new-found knowledge to my data. And that still happens very frequently. Things can only get even better; never worse.

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#2 - Ken's average user will never put the effort into linking that you have, therefore, the system is a joke!  It doesn't work properly for 99.9999% of users and only works for the rest to the extent that they have personal knowledge of an actor's "name history".

I agree that the average user will just download whatever is in the database, and stops right there. I have never claimed otherwise. Take note, however, that that won't change - even if we were to see a major change in how DVD Profiler deals with linking. No matter what happens, it'll always take work, and the average user won't ever be willing to do that. Of course you can hope for something fully automated, something which doesn't cause any kind of work for the average user, but then I'm afraid you're in for a pretty long wait... I just don't ever see that happening.

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You really should stop measuring the rest of the world against your own personal experience.  You are the only one who has lived it!

How about you do the same?

Then you admit that the current system does not work for the vast majority of the user base.  And you admit that your local is not 100%...nor is anyone else's because you (or anyone else) only rely on your own personal knowledge which, in spite of what you may think, is quite limited.

That is what makes the current linking system a joke and why it should be replaced by one that does not require users to spend untold hours trying to link names and then only being able to link those that they know about.

Unlike you, I like to "discover" that someone else actually knows more about some actors than I do and is willing to contribute that information to the main database to be shared automatically with the entire user base.  I could actually click on a name and have the list of their movies show me that low and behold, that actor used a different name in this movie over here that I had no clue about.  And no, the system could be set up so that the average user would not have to do a damn thing to get it to work perfectly.  The "work" would all be done by contributors, just like profile contributions are done today and the association would only have to be done one time in the main data base, and magically, all profiles would be linked instead of having to fix each and every profile individually like today!  That's insanity!

That's what I call a useful linking system!

As for your final little snipe...I am presenting the case of the 99.99%, so exactly how is it that I am looking at this from my own personal experience?  Don't bother answering..it won't be worth it.

Quoting hal9g:

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I am talking about the introduction of mis-spellings when we convert all caps or all lower case Overviews to mixed case because the Rules dictate that 'TRES BIEN' (in an Overview) be spelled 'tres bien' instead of 'très bien'.

The rules ask us to use the proper capitalisation rules in titles and overviews. Therefore the correct conversion would be 'très bien'. Ken's simplification to ignore accents is only made for names in credits in the context of linking.

I think the important point is the current system is a big hassle to people who live in areas where they speak Spanish, French, Vietnamese, or any other language that uses the Roman alphabet with diacritics. It's even less useful to people who live in areas where they speak Korean, Arabic, Russian and other languages that don't use the Roman alphabet. Addressing this would probably result in a lot of new buyers.

Quoting hal9g:

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Then you admit that the current system does not work for the vast majority of the user base.

No, I "admit" that the system works locally for anyone that wants it to work. I want it to work, and so I made it work. Everyone who wants to, can do so as well - it's not rocket science, really. If the program wouldn't accomodate a working, fully linking local database, I'd have abandoned DVD Profiler a long time ago - I wouldn't spend hours creating and auditing profiles per the rules if the data I ended up was meaningless. But it's not: my data is complete, correct per the rules, and contributable to boot. I also "admit" that the average user will just download whatever is in the database, and will stop right there. What you seem to forget, however, is that the latter will remain true no matter what improvements we may or may not get.

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Unlike you, I like to "discover" that someone else actually knows more about some actors than I do and is willing to contribute that information to the main database to be shared automatically with the entire user base.

Instead of talking about it, I actually do that, every single day. I share my knowledge with other users through the contribution system, and I continue to discover new information, both through contributions, from posts here in the forums, and from many, many other sources, and there again, I share all that new-found knowledge with the userbase through the contribution system. As stated earlier, I do believe that sharing that knowledge would be easier if we worked with one set of cast and crew per film, rather than per profile.

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And no, the system could be set up so that the average user would not have to do a damn thing to get it to work perfectly.  The "work" would all be done by contributors

You realize that you've just described the current system, don't you?

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As for your final little snipe...I am presenting the case of the 99.99%, so exactly how is it that I am looking at this from my own personal experience?

Ah, so you singlehandedly get to decide that your personal experience is the one of 99,99% of the userbase, and mine that of 0,01% of the users, and that makes your personal experience more valid than mine? The fact that you need to resort to empty rhetoric like this is very sad. In a civil, adult conversation, I would expect different parties to be able to state their personal experiences, without the other party singlehandedly dismissing them. Is it really impossibly just to state your own, different experience without dismissing that of someone else? Is it really necessary to drag every discussion into the gutter like that?

There are posts in this thread that really made me 

Quoting T!M:

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Quoting hal9g:

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Then you admit that the current system does not work for the vast majority of the user base.

No, I "admit" that the system works locally for anyone that wants it to work.

Requiring each user to spend hours upon hours correcting their own profiles.  You are among an infinitesimally small number of users who are willing to do this.  Therefore, it does not work for the vast majority of average users, whether you are willing to admit it or not.  It makes much more sense for Ken to fix the system so that this level of effort is not required of every user.

Quoting T!M:

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I also "admit" that the average user will just download whatever is in the database, and will stop right there. What you seem to forget, however, is that the latter will remain true no matter what improvements we may or may not get.

What you fail to recognize is that it is possible for the majority of users to download whatever is in the online database AND get every name properly linked, if Ken would implement a linking system that actually works properly.

Quoting T!M:

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Instead of talking about it, I actually do that, every single day. I share my knowledge with other users through the contribution system, and I continue to discover new information, both through contributions, from posts here in the forums, and from many, many other sources, and there again, I share all that new-found knowledge with the userbase through the contribution system.

I won't even touch the quality of your contributions or the fact that you constantly submit contributions on DVDs you don't own.  Suffice it to say, that regardless of how diligent you and one or two others are about contributing "Common Name" data to the on-line database, the number of profiles you will touch in your entire lifetime is minuscule compared to the number of profiles in the database that need fixing.  It requires the eyes of every user who has knowledge to contribute to a linking system that actually works, and right now, I know for a fact that a significant number of people do not contribute to the "Common Name" linking system because it is a disaster.  That would change if Ken would just listen!

Quoting T!M:

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Quoting hal9g:

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And no, the system could be set up so that the average user would not have to do a damn thing to get it to work perfectly.  The "work" would all be done by contributors

You realize that you've just described the current system, don't you?

On the contrary.  The average user will never get proper linking by downloading the online database while we are still using "Common Name" linking.  They don''t only own the DVDs that you just happen to be "fixing".  The rest of their profiles won't ever link properly.

Quoting T!M:

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Quoting hal9g

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As for your final little snipe...I am presenting the case of the 99.99%, so exactly how is it that I am looking at this from my own personal experience?

Ah, so you singlehandedly get to decide that your personal experience is the one of 99,99% of the userbase, and mine that of 0,01% of the users, and that makes your personal experience more valid than mine? The fact that you need to resort to empty rhetoric like this is very sad. In a civil, adult conversation, I would expect different parties to be able to state their personal experiences, without the other party singlehandedly dismissing them. Is it really impossibly just to state your own, different experience without dismissing that of someone else? Is it really necessary to drag every discussion into the gutter like that?

Use whatever numbers you like.  The fact is you are in a tiny, tiny minority of people who utilize the current linking system with the level of fervor that you do.  Anyone who visits this forum or watches contributions can easily verify that fact, regardless of your feigned protestations.  Poor T!M, the victim.  I'm so happy that the current system works for you.  But don't even pretend that it works for more than a handful of other people willing to put in the level of work that is required to make it work half-assed well.

There is a better way, and I find it sad that you seem to prefer to defend a screwed up system than to fight for a new one that actually works without the effort currently required.  Of course, given the amount of effort that you have invested in the current system, your recalcitrant position is somewhat understandable.  It reminds me of Skip's old arguments about why the Rules cannot be changed, even when they are wrong.  It would invalidate work previously done.  That's very logical!

Quoting hal9g:

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Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

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T!M, don't take this the wrong way, but you seem to be turning into the new Skip. If the program worked properly, the end users shouldn't have to resort to local kludges like made up birth-years. Personally auditing every title you own (and locking it down to make sure it doesn't get messed up in the future) shouldn't be a requirement to make the program function as intended.

Having to go through and change every profile someone appears in when one credited name becomes more common than another is a bad system. Having to use the forums to research every common name is a bad system. having to find dates of birth which may not be readily available and may not actually help you distinguish people is a bad system. Having to keep track of which actors are their name and which don't due mainly to typesetting choices in moves they've been in is a bad system. Having to argue over how to interpret Asian names basically every time is a bad system.

In short, just because the system can be forced to work, locally, by someone with a great deal of motivation and time doesn't mean it works well. When you try to tell people it works fine, it comes across as you dismissing their complaints as illegitimate, which is why people are being prickly with you.

Amen.

Well said Ace_of_Sevens!

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