I personally agree with you. And I at first thought it would be needed. Unfortunately the way Ken ruled at the time was that all contributors had to do was use the CLT (or thread proving the CLT is wrong) for common names. Leaving it to the voters to have to look into the names to see if there is a problem. In my eyes this seems very backwards. If you (general you) are going to contribute such a thing you should give the voters all the info they need to vote correctly. But apparently Ken didn't agree with that for some reason.

But yes... it would be nice if contributors would provide such information. Though in my eyes personally I would like to see more then just imdb. As I really never liked or trusted that site in the least. But hey... that is just me.

Yeah,
would be nice, in the same way that any additional documentation for contributed data would be nice.

But sadly I don't see it coming. The request for additional documentation, that is not directly required by the contribution rules, seems to raise uproars every time (Compare e.g request for timestamps as documentation for uncredited cast).

Quoting Pantheon:

Quote:
I think this comes down to the trust thing. [...] We have to trust that the contributor has done the research before submitting. If you think it looks dodgy then check it.

Indeed. Also, the contribution rules are quite clear on this:

Quote:
It is not necessary to document the source of the common name, outside the use of the CLT. If there is a dispute over whether the credit references the same person, documentation may be necessary. However, in most cases it is not required.

Quoting T!M:

Quote:
Indeed. Also, the contribution rules are quite clear on this:

Quote:
It is not necessary to document the source of the common name, outside the use of the CLT. If there is a dispute over whether the credit references the same person, documentation may be necessary. However, in most cases it is not required.

T!M,
this rule doesn't cover the problem in the OP, if it was I could crosslink Tom Cruise to Robert deNiro simply by giving the CLT results.
This, of course, would be complete and utter nonsense, but it would be allowed.
So we can assume that this rule covers only the cases where it is already proven that the two (or more) names link to the same person.

I feel that there must be something wrong with the rules. As I see it, these are my options when confronted with a contribution that does crosslinking of names that I am not immediately familiar with:
1) Vote neutral
2) Accept blindly
3) Dispute blindly
4) Research and find it correct, vote Yes
5) Research and find it faulty, vote No
6) Research and find it inconclusive, vote No and dispute

The first two options are easy but (for me) unsatisfactory choices. They do not help building a correct database.
Always selecting option three would most likely make me an outcast, and possibly even make me lose my voting privilegies.
So, the only good way requires me to research every crosslinking contribution before voting. And with a collection approaching 6000 profiles, I get a lot of those.

Now, if the contributor has actually researched the names, why should I - and every other serious voter - have to do it again?

A crosslinking contribution actually contains two statements:
* Name A and Name B (and possibly more names) are the same person
* The CLT shows that one of the names has more credits in Profiler and should therefore be the common name.
In every other aspect of contributions it is the contributor's responsibility to document his sources. But in this case he only has to show the source for the second statement. So the burden of "unproof" is switched to the voter for the first statement.

Judging from the number of common name threads, accurate linking (and common names) seem important to a lot of people. This makes me wonder why this issue hasn't been raised - loudly - before...