This is to prevent the system from counting Seamus McTavish and and Seamus Mctavish as separate people. It doesn't actually leave birth years untouched unless I'm misunderstanding a new 3.8 feature.

Quoting StaNDarD:

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As you can see in the second shot, BY are NOT deleted local while updating.

Actually I cannot see that, but it shouldn't get deleted. There is no knowlidge if your local has also Mark Taylor without BY and then it would change the link to point at incorrect Mark Taylor. At the moment this feature works as it should.

Quoting Kulju:

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Quoting StaNDarD:

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As you can see in the second shot, BY are NOT deleted local while updating.

Actually I cannot see that, but it shouldn't get deleted. There is no knowlidge if your local has also Mark Taylor without BY and then it would change the link to point at incorrect Mark Taylor. At the moment this feature works as it should.

These shots are done AFTER the profiles were updated and so you can see the BY still exists.

So if someone mistakenly uploaded a wrong BY which then is downloaded by me I never will get rid of it automatically. I will have to do so by hand.

In my opinion updating a profile should update a profile - and this in a complete manner.

I don't see the point in having a Mark Taylor w/out BY local. If the BY is correct than it should not be deleted in the online DB, so this would not be the problem. The problem is a deleted known wrong BY in the online DB won't make it to my local DB unless I delete it by hand!

Quoting StaNDarD:

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Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

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Let's say you have 12 entries for Mark Taylor. If you accept a change that adds a birth-year, this will apply to all the profiles with a Mark Taylor who did not already have a birth year. If someone makes a change later on one of the other profiles, it doesn't want to remove a birth year, making this Mark Taylor appear to be a separate person, just because it wasn't propagated thoroughly.

OK, but what will happen if I have an actor Tom Smith, correctly w/out BY. Now I download a new profile with an incorrect entry of Tom Smith (1987). I think then I will have two Tom Smith in my local DB.
After updating the online DB with a corrected profile using Tom Smith w/out BY, I expect updating my local profile to correct this too. But it won't happen - I would still have two Tom Smith in my local DB...

You would actually have one Tom Smith with a BY of 1987. In theory, it should never be correct to have two actors with the same name where one has a BY and the other doesn't. In practice, we frequently can't find the correct BY, but this can't be solved with tweaks to BY acceptance. We need an overhaul of the cast system.

Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

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We need an overhaul of the cast system.

I wouldn't disagree on that.

But since the online DB can hold two actors with the same name, one having a BY the other not, it should be possible to do the same local. And I want to have the same linking as it is online. And if a BY is removed in the online DB I want it to be removed local, too. That's my point.

Removing/adding a BY in one online profile won't remove/add BY for this actor-name in all online profiles, that's the way I like to see it local, regardless of any linking. That's why I said this should be optionally, so every user can choose.

Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

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So how do you want to work? Accepting a profile with a birth-year updates that profile only and not all profiles with that actor?

Yes, that's the way it's done online and what I would expect local. - And you don't know if the BY update is in fact 'that actor' or another one...

If a BY is correct and needed, then all affected profiles would be updated by time. As you know, a BY is only needed when there are at least two actors with the same name. So updating all profiles would be the same as not adding a BY at all - I still have only one person instead of two.
If by time no profile is linked to an actor name w/out BY this one would be deleted by database repair.
If you can find BY to only one of two people you would have them separated as well.

Edit: And if there are three or more people with the same name and only one of them a BY could be found, I think it still would be better to separate at least one of them...