Quoting hal9g:

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I still say the way to do this is to submit "As Credited" (exactly what's on the screen) only in the profile.  The "Credited As" field should be eliminated altogether.

Linking of actors should be a separate function, submitted entirely aside from a profile contribution.

That way, you don't affect people who want to just contribute profiles, and let the people who want to go to the trouble of proving that different forms of an actor's credit are in fact for the same person.  They would have to be fully documented and voted on in the same way as profiles today.  Links accepted into the main database would become part of the download process so that everyone would benefit from the work.

This was more or less what I was trying to get at.  Thanks Hal~

Quoting W0m6at:

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Quoting Vittra:

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That's 90 changes with a total of 12 contributions just to make that one link between two names and two anime series. (Correct me if there is an easier way and I just haven't found it  )

A simple way to do this would be to copy + paste the cast list into a word processor (I'd say notepad because Winword often applies formatting you won't want) and do a Find/Replace.  It can cut back time, particularly if you're going to repeat the same thing (when you paste the info back across, leave notepad open and you can use the same Find/Replace search).  My main use for that process is to drop in "voice" tags, and to remove "(English)" and "(Japanese)" from roles when moving profiles over to using dividers.

There's also software/a plugin that someone around here developed for working with credits.  I'm sure someone will come up with a link promptly.

Did not think of that, and thanks for the advice W0m6at. Although the example I gave is only 1 anime series out of many that would have to go through the same change for one voice actress: Dorothy Melendrez, and one alias I might add. She has many others. Would be awesome if this connection were in the program rather than being profile specific.

In the mean time, I will have to try out your suggestions, thanks!

I think he forgets that is precisely why we have the BYs.

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Quoting xradman:

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Quoting Dr Pavlov:

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I think he forgets that is precisely why we have the BYs.

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Except that BY is awfully tough to get for many second and third tier actors.

Exactly.

Birth Year is a bandaid to a gushing wound.

Quoting surfeur51:

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Quoting xradman:

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Except that BY is awfully tough to get for many second and third tier actors.

That is also my opinion. In many cases, I was obliged for my local database to set fake birthday years (just evaluating the age on screen), and list them on an Excel sheet. Not very satisfying....

I am not objecting to that, but we need some way of distinguishing namesakes.

Quoting Dr Pavlov:

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True, true, xradman. Which take me back tio the ORIGINAL discussion when I suggested that an alternative for BY that could not be found could be the actor's first documented appearance on film. That should be relatively easy to locate.

Where will you "relatively easily" find the first credit from? Clearly that won't be IMDb! 

We don't track one's earliest film credit since we track only those credits that make it to DVD. So it can't be from us. Sources similar to those used for birth year could be used, I suppose. But then we get into the whole "yeah, but are the alternate sources derived from IMDb or not" conundrum. And production years might not agree source-to-source.

Earliest production year listed by the same first credit appearing in 3 sources, one of which can be IMDb? 

Quoting Morglum:

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Thanks, but I know how the current system works. My question was for the system with unique id for actors. Same procedure or more complicated?

My apologies, I completely misunderstood your question.
To answer your actual question.. 

This is how I would imagine it would work:
You currently have 3 entries in your database: Tohko (ID 1), Toko (ID 2) and Touko (ID 3).
Either by editing a profile, right-clicking on a credit or a direct menu option you open a Name Linking window. In it you select the names you want to link together, I imagine it may look similar to the boxset contents window with unlinked names on one side, and linked names on the other. You have to remember because this system wouldn't rely on common names it wouldn't matter which name you chose first or which order you put them in the list.
When you click on OK, all 3 names will be given a new, local ID - say L-ID 1.
Now you could leave it like that - in your database they link under the same ID (L-ID 1), but everyone else still has 3 separate names (ID 1, 2, 3).
But you decide to contribute and share the link.
Because this change would affect many rather than a single profile, I agree with Hal, they should be treated separately when it comes to voting. So maybe under the A-Z of profile titles we would have a 2nd A-Z of name contributions - or something like that.
On the voting page I imagine it would show all three names that you propose to link and under each one a list of all the affected profiles. Maybe like the CLT but with a column for each name.
Once it's accepted then all the linked names will be given a proper ID, for the sake of efficiency I imagine the system would re-use ID 1 for all 3 names and recycle IDs 2 and 3 for new name entries. A new Actors.dat (or whatever it's called) would then be downloaded on the next profile list update giving everyone else the new linked names: Tohko (ID 1), Toko (ID 1) and Touko (ID 1).

I hope this makes sense, it's very hard to describe how I think I see it working. I'm worried I've put too much detail in. Here's a condensed version:

Instead of editing the cast member to use "credited as", you would simply select a bunch of different names from a list and link them with a button press.
They would be voted on separately from other profile updates.
The updates would be part of the refresh of the Online Profile List.

But you have to remember, this is all hypothetical and I imagine very hard to visualize. To be honest it's not really worth going into such detail if Ken has shown no interest in changing the name database.

Quoting xradman:

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I was going through my cast and crew lists to clean things up a little because a member asked for a copy of it.  It's hopeless.  Even after going through goodguy's name variants plug-in several times, the cast and crew database is full of duplicate entries and it's not just relegated to Asian names.  There are literally thousands of duplicate names from all color.  I gave up after spending several hours.  Current system is hopeless.  Anyone who believes otherwise should take a look at their cast/crew database.  Open any profile and go to cast/crew listing and take a look at the list of actors on the left pane.  It's really sad.

I hate to say it, but this idea of "as credited" has got to go.  I think this is the single biggest reason why the cast/crew database is so corrupted.  We need to explore some sort of unique ID system for cast/crew that will not allow duplicate entries to be created.

Can someone explain why we are so interested in how someone is credited at the cost of proper cross-linking?  I know people have stated that it's important to get the information down first and then develop tools to link those information properly afterwards.  But looking at the mess that is the cast/crew database, I am extremely discouraged that it can ever happen this way.

The worst part is, once you make the effort to start cleaning it up, you can no longer accept cast/crew updates from the online.  Otherwise it will quickly turn back into a plate of spaghetti.  Not so bad, but when new crew slots are added via a program update and you've got a couple of thousand profiles in your collection...