Since I don't keep my cast and crew data locked and have no intention of ever maintaining them myself, I would have to accept the online as my primary source.

Same here. I know the online database is far from accurate, but I don't think that I can do a better job just locally. It's only possible with just a few DVDs (but I have more than a few ) or when I use all my spare time to check/correct the cast and crew locally.

Since I do contribute and I also don't lock cast data, I am somewhat forced to use Invelos/CLT for the common name, but what I would *prefer* is something different.

If it were up to me, when it comes to aliases, I would use the name the actor/actress currently goes by. So for instance the Rock would be Dwayne Johnson regardless of what CLT says since that is what he goes by these days. This comes up fairly often from an anime fan's prespective as aliases are used religiously for voice actors.  Currently I have to use many VA's aliases as their common names because it is their most creditted form, which just seems wrong to me. For instance, doing a search for Steven Blum, you'll find a VA that is also known as David Lucas. He used to go by David Lucas but has since unionized and is going by Steven Blum (or a varient of that) full time.  Likewise doing a search for David Lucas won't get you anything but sites about Steven Blum.  It just seems wrong to credit everything David Lucas [Steven Blum] when David Lucas technically doesn't exist. This is only one example, it happens all the time.

I understand that the method I mentioned probably has flaws, and like I said, I follow the Invelos way as best I can so I can help the community with my anime contributions. 

As for name varients, like dashes between names and spelling differences, I think CLT is great for deciding which form should be used. 

Since my local cast list is a rip-off from IMDb, so are the common names.

Quoting DJ Doena:

Quote:
Since my local cast list is a rip-off from IMDb, so are the common names.

Do you use some kind of periodical update process or do you take them only once?

Quoting Dr Pavlov:

Quote:
For the two users who prefer Option #3, want to guess my answer. I'll give you a hint, why are you using Profiler?<shrugs>

Because it's a very good DVD Manager? Just the cast name cross linking doesn't work properly and I doubt it will ever work as long as there's no real identifier for actors.

As I said numerous times before: It doesn't have to be perfect, it has to work.

When I am auditing cast and crew my first check for common name is to see what I have locally. I usually try to delete the variations and see which ones have the most titles assigned.

From there I look at the CLT.

The vast majority of my local collection is AS CREDITED (from doing full audits a couple of years ago), so I KNOW that my cast is accurate.

So if I see that James Blogs is in my local db 10 times, but the CLT shows James A. Blogs is the more popular I have to check further. I will invariably find that the CLT results are wrong, eg. that the 10 films I have locally are incorrectly credited via the CLT.

Subsequently I keep James Blogs as the common name and DON'T submit the profile.

This is a VERY, VERY, VERY frequent occurrence; and it's one of the major reasons why I would like the Credited As feature a local only feature - and it pleases me immensely that Ken is considering doing this.

However....to be fair....Ken's subsequent suggestion of making the downloading of this information optional is the better solution. It meets everyone's requirements and I see no reason for anyone to complain about it.