I've known for some time that the birth years in my local database were all messed up. This happens because accepting a profile with a birth year on it adds that birth year to every credit for that name which does not yet have one, even though the whole reason we add birth years is that there's more than one person with that name.

Now, likely years later, I go to submit a different profile and find that I have a birth year which isn't in the main database. Before I submit, I have to figure out whether it's valid.

I will use Peyton List as an example here. I discovered her when trying to contribute a birth year for Sarah Wynter on the complete Sex and the City set. Peyton had a bit part in season 3. She had a listed BY of 1986 in my DB and none online. She isn't on the list in the approved birth year thread. I can't go by that, though, as it isn't a comprehensive list of the valid, accepted birth years.

So I went to Google. I did a search for "Peyton List" 1986 on Invelos.com. I got bupkiss. I then removed the 1986 and got lots of hits, but most of them were just vague "propagating approved BY" stuff. I did manage to find one that explained the situation. It hadn't come up inititally because it didn't mention the year.

Alternatively, I could have checked all the profiles I have with her in them, then looked through the notes when I found one where she was already in the online, and hope they were something useful.

So basically, the system is broken because there's no easy way to tell if data is valid. I am adding these to the list as I find them, but that's a kluge in itself. It isn't guaranteed that just because a birth year is accepted that it's supposed to be there, either, so submitting information isn't just about making sure you have the correct birth year, but verifying that there needs to be one at all. This makes things way more complicated than they need to be, even with the system we have now. Here are my requests:

Users: When you propagate a birth year, please include some sort of explanation or link so we know why you are doing this beyond that it popped up when you hit contribute, so you clicked to send it. (The notes more-or-less said that's what happened on some of the bad ones I fixed.)
Invelos: Please delete the known invalid birth years from the database so people will stop propagating them. The users can build a list of them for you. Better yet, scrap the linking system and start over or at least change the behavior of this one. I think the best we can hope for without major changes is that years only apply to the profiles where they are accepted, not all instances of a name. There would be some sort of audit feature where you could get a list of name that exist in versions both with and without years so you can check the ones without years and fix them.

It's broken for sure. Cubbyups said it in another thread, it's what we have now, so we have to work within it, and I agree, but it sure can be a pain. With the whole addition of the color field, and going through my mostly Canadian locality profiles (of which there are far less contributors than U.S. locality profiles so someone has to take the unfortunately enormous amount of time to do it) and submitting that field, the number of BY's I've run into that aren't accepted into the system yet has left me shaking my head. And I thought I was being really good and careful about accepting BY's into my local.

And even the ones that are valid, the amount of time it takes to properly add the notes required to show it's valid to add it to the profile is staggering. Not all are listed on the front page of the BY thread (no blame being placed, I would NOT want to be the person having to upkeep that thread, The Martian and T!M get my respect for volunteering to take that on) which then requires a search of the forums... Which is a pain because the search function will search any term you put into it, meaning you get 822 matching results for searching Michael Shannon if you use the option to search the entire thread (which doesn't link to the specific post needed, just the actual thread, and that thread has a lot of pages in it...), and not a single correct match if you search subject only. Or google, which can be hit or miss. Searching Michael Shannon through google will link you to the BY thread, but not the specific post (this is just an example as Michael Shannon IS listed on the front page). So what should be three clicks really... add color, contribute, submit, turns into a ten minute ordeal to add a single BY... It's not a good system.

And that's only when we're talking about adding proper BY's. The fact that the system will attach a BY to all credits with that name when accepting it into your local, when, as Ace pointed out, the entire reason we have BY's is that there's more than one person with that name, is maddening. You accidentally accept a BY to John Smith when accepting a profile update, and you have four John Smith's in your local... they now all have that BY. It just doesn't make sense.

In regards to brand new BY's that go into your local database via an updated profile.

As far as I know there is only one Sally Field, but let's say that there are two actors by that name.

In your local database you have the more famous one, and then another actress comes along with that same name. Now say that someone updates that one profile with the second Sally Field and adds a new BY of 1980 for her.

The problem is that the 1980 BY one will replace the no BY Sally Field without any sort of notification to prevent it from happening in the first place.

What I would like to see is when a new BY is added and a profile has it that the program would show a pop up with the other Sally Field and ask if you want to apply the 1980 BY to her or create a BY (real or fake) for her to separate her from the 1980 BY Sally Field.

That would prevent the wrong BY from being applied in the first place and allow users to decide what BY applies to whom and also allow them to add a new BY right away for the other person.

Oops, my bad.

I'm with you guys, BYs are always changing. If you accept a new contribution and it includes a BY, half the time it breaks what was already OK. Most of the time anymore, I just let them do whatever they are going to do and dare I say it, I use another source to check them on occasion.