Quoting hal9g:

Quote:
Just because the contributor includes the link, does not mean that I am going to check it every time any more than I check the cast every time.  But it's there when I feel the urge/need to do so.

Which thereby renders the inclusion of sites redundant. If people don't bother checking then why bother including them.

I do actually see your point, believe it or not. I actually can see the point of all supporters of the documentation camp.

I don't agree with you and that's not gonna change unless Ken starts to agree with you too. At present Ken doesn't agree with you.

Therefore, I'm going to agree to disagree and leave people to discuss this issue as they see fit - providing that neither myself or T!M are used as scapegoats in the discussion. After all, we aren't the ones who imposed a ruling on the community.

Happy debating.

Quoting GSyren:

Quote:
Funny,

When I asked about documentation for Credited As in this thread, everybody agreed with me.
Where were T!m, Pantheon & co then... 

That thread predates Ken's clarification. At that time, posting in favor of only using CLT results was a heretical viewpoint in the forum. Even now with the clarification, one can get red arrows on posts and contribution notes for espousing that viewpoint as well as 'no' votes. Back then though, it was even worse.

Quoting T!M:

Quote:

But once again, as you noted yourself, it is a correct change. Of course there are exceptions to everything, but generally, it's pretty safe to assume that someone who contributes such a link, has researched it. Those that really don't care about linking name variants together simply don't bother to enter it like that.

Why is it safe to assume?  These are the notes for the profile that Skip voted 'no' on...

"...using the "credited as" feature where necessary (determined by checking against other credits using the NameVariants plugin and Invelos' own "credit lookup tool")"

Those notes tell me that you used a plugin to find names that were similar and then used the CLT to decide which one was credited most often.  Where, in those notes, does it say you did any other research?  Why would I assume that you did anything other than what you claimed?

Again, this is a moot point as I simply voted 'yes' and will amend the data should I decide to download the update.

These are the notes for a profile I just voted NO on:

"...using the "credited as" feature where necessary (determined by checking against other credits using the NameVariants plugin and Invelos' own "credit lookup tool")"

Here is the credit that was the reason for my NO vote:

Barbara Ann Grimes [Barbara Ann Walters]

How does the NameVariants Plugin or CLT determine that Barbara Ann Grimes & Barbara Ann Walters are one in the same person?

Quoting richierich:

Quote:
It took 2 minutes to determine that these are 2 seperate ladies.
Walters
grimes

So your vote should be no, and a big question mark for the contributor in the future.

I think this is what Ken wants us to do

All of the credits in the CLT for "Barbara Ann Walters" belong to the actress also known as "Barbara Ann Grimes". None of them are for the journalist known as "Barbara Walters", who's middle name is actually "Jill".

The vote here should be yes*. The contributor correctly matched up two names.

*in my opinion. 

This perfectly illustrates the problem with forcing the voters to do the research.  While it only took Richie 2 minutes to find out that the names refered to two different people, his research turned out to be wrong.  Wouldn't it have been easier for the person who made the contribution to include the correct research so that there wasn't an issue to begin with? 

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Quoting m.cellophane:

Quote:
All of the credits in the CLT for "Barbara Ann Walters" belong to the actress also known as "Barbara Ann Grimes". None of them are for the journalist known as "Barbara Walters", who's middle name is actually "Jill".

The vote here should be yes*. The contributor correctly matched up two names.

Indeed!

Quoting Unicus69:

Quote:
While it only took Richie 2 minutes to find out that the names refered to two different people, his research turned out to be wrong. Wouldn't it have been easier for the person who made the contribution to include the correct research so that there wasn't an issue to begin with? 

There really wasn't an issue to begin with. It's a contribution containing nothing but good data - that's all. 8ballMax thought for a second that he spotted an error in it, but he turned out to be wrong. Withdraw the no-vote, and no harm done, I'd say.

<takes deep breath> The thing that is more interesting to note is this: like Pantheon's contribution that started off this thread, this is about a contribution that replaces an very incomplete and obviously IMDb-mined set of data with a complete, huge set of cast and crew which was actually all painstakingly copied from the actual credits. I know because the contribution was mine, and the profile being for a 22-episode TV-show season, I can tell you that I worked on it for three days in a row, a couple of hours each day. It's not like there was a "Barbara Ann Walters" entry in the profile that was replaced by the correct "Barbara Ann Grimes [Barbara Ann Walters]" - it wasn't there at all! Seeing as this set was released several years ago, and there's still only a little bit of IMDb-mined garbage in it, you'd think voters would be pleased with someone who took the trouble to actually do the work. And when someone finally does do the work, surely you can imagine any no-votes - especially incorrect ones -  to be slightly annoying for the contributor who put in the hours and followed the rules to the letter. If you've spent several hours auditing a profile and it gets voted down because of votes like that, I can honestly understand that a lot of people would start to think: the hell with it, let 'em do the work themselves (which, again, nobody bothered to do for the last three years). I'm sure you noticed we've had more than a few users thinking along those lines recently. Ken's clarification seems to have brought some of them back, and I'm very happy about that. Now, "wouldn't it have been easier for the person who made the contribution to include the correct research?" Maybe it would have been easier for you, yes. There are literally hundreds of names in the profile, though: I'm really not going to do that for all of them. It would also have been a lot easier to not do anything at all, and leave the old, incomplete, IMDb-mined profile stand for a few more years. What do you think, ultimately, is the best choice here for the DVD Profiler database? Ken has already made that decision...

All in all, I think the above explains quite nicely what was wrong with the approach some users have been taking. We reached the point where some people decided on their own that no data, or just a bit of IMDb-data like in this particular example, was preferable over a complete, fully "as credited" (in the appropriate field, that is) set of cast and crew data verified from the actual credits. That clearly was the wrong road for DVD Profiler, and it's very good that Ken has now set the record straight.

I'll end with a little egotrip: I, and lots of others of course, spend HUGE amounts of time on DVD Profiler. Over the past eight years, I've spent countless hours copying credits from my discs, researching name variants, finding birth years (read about my latest find here), and I've even submitted thousands of quality headshots to the headshot master database. I've contributed to many rule discussions, and have frequently been proven right by Ken in my matter-of-factly rule interpretations - mostly, IMHO, because I always look at the rules as they stand, instead of being clouded by what some of us keep referring to as "intent". I've got a huge amount of approved contributions under my belt - here and previously at Intervocative as well. However: nobody is forced to accept my work into their local databases - everyone is free to do all the work for themselves. But compared with some of the IMDb-data, or even the "strictly as credited" profiles I sometimes encounter, I do honestly feel my work is worth having in the online database. And if you spot an error, you can always talk to me about it - we'll probably work it out.

Edit: one more encore for those who keep asking for documentation. Let me ask you a question: do you ever document the people you enter "strictly as credited"? Do you provide links to show me that you've checked to see whether it might have been necessary to add a common name? To use your own argument: how do I know you've bothered to actually check up on what you entered, that it's not just a copy of what you saw on the screen? Do I just have to trust you? Remember that, contrary to popular belief, the rules actually REQUIRE us to use the "credited as" feature where necessary. They don't say: "if you feel like it" or anything like that. Profiles needing not even a single use of "credited as" are highly unlikely: yes, they exist, but they're few and far between. If I see someone doing a "strictly as credited" update, I expect there's further work to be done on that profile, and I can't help but wonder whether the contributor bothered to check up on those entries. But they never document their findings, do they? And does anyone ever complain about that? I don't think so.

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