I believe that this in some form is the best solution to the ills of our Forums.

There are tw possibilities (1)Proposed by Pete to add some additional categories and simply list what you see (20 or have the ability to list all credits. I shall discuss both of these ideas and what I view as pros and cons.

As to Pete's proposal, this is good BUT it will require some discussion to determine exactly what we want and I am not sure that it will end the animosity or the discussions. Do we want to be able list Assistant Directors, Co-Directors, Line Producers and so forth. Dowe wanttocapture non-original Song data, I will discuss this at the end.

The ability to simply list all Crew data, this should not impede Contributions in any way as users can still Contribute as much or as little as they desire. This serves several factors, (1)should a user want to capture ALL of this data, why should he NOT be allowed to Contribute it, assuming a good faith effort on the part of the user it can only make our database more accurate to each film. The biggest single drawback would be Contribution could be problematic with so much data. We would need to allow each user the ability to determine which data he/she might be interested in accepting, I would do this on a one time determination by the user as to which data he wishes to accept with the ability for the user to Override on a title by title basis if he/she chooses, this I would also apply to Pete's proposal. If a user only want to accept Director data, he checks the box ONE TIME  and that is all he will download, but he also has the ability to Override this decision title by title. It would be an interesting study to see if any users actually took advantage of the ability to list everything, but if one wants it there are likely more and why should they be denied additional data if they choose. Under the system as I propose it, such additional data would harm no other user, nor would it make their life any more difficult, they remain in total control of their local data and could accept or decline acceptance of whatever they data they chose to accept. Tim has raised the issue of BY becoming problematic under such a plan and that is the ONLY really rational concern that I can find. The biggest single advantage this offers aside from allowing users who want to capture so much data the opportunity to do so if they choose, is that this would end all the back and forth in the forums....see it...type it as much or as little as each user wishes. BTW you wouldn't catch me listing complete datasets, but neither is it right for me say nay to the user who might want to do so.

The biggest single argument against this that I have seen revolves aroumnd what I consider to be an extremely selfish argument. "I am not interested in all credits" or "It would make life much more difficult when accepting updates." I have tried to eliminate the latter argument and I can't figure out what right any of us have to deny this a user who wants to do it, I will agree such a person is sick, sick, sick and we should probably have Nurse Ratched and the orderlies pay him/her a visit, but we don't have any right to say no.

Now as to Songs, I think Ken should another field (under the current system) to allow for performers to be captured, such as Shirley Bassey "Goldfinger" Sung By or however the credit reads.

Discuss and cuss.

Skip

These issues should absolutely a part of the discussion, Ace. But they are not a reason to exclude. They are an opportunity to come up with answers.

Skip

While I have no problem with the current system, I would not object to Pete's suggestion.  I can't, however, support full open credits.  As for denying user the ability to track all credits, that is a non-issue as they have that ability under the current system...it's called 'custom credits'.

Quoting reybr:

Quote:
I would absolutely hate open credit. Open credit will make it much harder to filter on different crew roles like director.

Is that really relevant, reybr. You can't filter Online data at all. I provided fior all of us to be select that data which interests each of us. Now yes we would have to come up with a better discriminator than BY, but we already need to do that anyway. The ONLY complicating issue I can see is NameA=NameB documenting, but then again that is not likely to be very much of an issue unless you are going to accept full or expanded Credits.

Skip

Quoting Prof. Kingsfield:

Quote:
Quoting TheMadMartian:

Quote:
While I have no problem with the current system, I would not object to Pete's suggestion.  I can't, however, support full open credits.  As for denying user the ability to track all credits, that is a non-issue as they have that ability under the current system...it's called 'custom credits'.

Ah yes, they do Martian. But as UI noted IF (and frankly I hope it's a big IF) such a user is out there, there is probably more than one and by what right do you deny those users to be able share that data just like the rest of us. That's just selfish and wrong. A user who is interested in full credits should have the same ability to share data as the rest of us, it is for US to figure out how to accommodate such a user while not making a mess for everyone else...and I think I have done that to some degree.

Skip

By the same right any user has to offer an opinion.  If you don't like my opinion, that is fine, but please stop with the insults.

I just finished auditing the full cast for the entire Farscape set.  99% of the cast was without credit.  I spent quite a lot of time researching every single actor and role to make sure the data was correct.  Now that I have finished with that, I am going to go back and enter all the crew data...even though I hate doing crew for TV sets.  In my book, that is anything but selfish so, please, use that word on somebody else. 

Quoting Prof. Kingsfield:

Quote:

Is that really relevant, reybr. You can't filter Online data at all.

No, but when you download the online data to your local and export it to the xml, you can filter on it.

If a person is credited with director in one movie, directed by in a second and regie in a third, how can you easily list all these three movies as movies this person has directed if we go for open credits?

To me, this would be a huge drawback

The problem is that with open credits, it is impossible to find all the different variants for a valid directors credit. That can't be solved by the program or a plugin.

Well you all know my preference.  Here is my thoughts on the concerns.

1. Who to allow within the sections?

think the easiest way to do this. Easiest rules to write and easiest to follow... allow all that is within that section. Director, Co-Directors... what have you. Then locally everyone is free to keep or remove as they wish.

2. Filtering on crew jobs?

Like Skip said... I think this is a problem to solve... not a reason to exclude this data. I don't write programs so I don't know if this is workable... but I see no reason why not. But the first thing that pops into my mind to fix this is....

Instead of doing Category: Text Field (where you could get Director, Co-Director or what have you) Maybe go with a 3 field version. So we have something like...

Category - brings up choices (as it does now) Click on Choice (Director) - Opens Text Field (Type in Co-Director) And all this be contributable so we sorta have a credited as for Crew Jobs as we do names. And yet when you filter on Directors it gets it from the job list under each category. So it will bring up Directors you get results of Directors and Co-Directors (if we decided on all crew per section that is).