Doug Appleton ... Thor: Ragnarok

Quoting Gamemaster:

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Ant-Man and the Wasp --> Doug Appleton as Visual Effects and Animation by Perception

He has no valid title (VFX, DFX or SFX), so the credit is invalid.

Quoting Gamemaster:

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Visual Effects by is a valid credit according the rules. Though I personally have mixed feelings about these credits, they are supported by the rules.

The rules state, in bold no less, that only "Individual Credits" qualify for entry. That specific demand is *only* added to the visual effects section - it doesn't apply to any of the other crew sections, just here. A large group of names under a company header, with no indication of what job they actually performed, are not "Individual Credits", so no, I wouldn't say those are supported by the rules - on the contrary: they're explicitly forbidden. And for good reason, too: without a specific job description, we don't know what these people did. If you research these people, a lot of them are visual effects producers, rotoscopers, animators - heck, even the person answering the phones at the Perception offices may be included. There's absolutely no point in dumping them all into the profile, and that's exactly why that "Individual Credits" restriction is in place for visual effects crew.

Quoting Gamemaster:

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but the majority believes the credits are valid

That poll is from long before *before* the "Individual Credits" restriction was added to the rules, which makes it irrelevant. I think the current rules on this point are perfectly clear, I happen to agree with them, and if I've made mistakes, I'll have to fix them.

Once again, I'll try to explain why including all of those people would be a really bad idea. Imagine this wasn't visual effects, but the sound section. Imagine a film with no production sound mixing credits, no sound editing credits, no re-recording mixers - and instead, there'd be a single header "Sound by <company name>", followed by, say, twenty names, with no specific jobs. We could award them all with equal "Sound" credits, but the truth of the matter is that among those 20 people are not just the jobs we track, but also "Effects Editors", "ADR Editors", studio technicians, "Foley Walkers", and so on - people we normally wouldn't enter in DVD Profiler under any circumstance. By lumping everyone in, the data becomes meaningless. And that's exactly what happens with that bunch of non-specific visual effects company personnel as well:  among them, there are loads of people doing jobs that would never qualify for entry in DVD Profiler - if only the credits bothered to be more specific, then most of them would be left out. It was never the intent to devaluate our crew credits by awarding them to people who have, in their entire life, never done a job that would ever qualify for entry in DVD Profiler - and that's exactly why the "Individual Credits" restriction had to be put in place.

To me, the bolded "Individual Credits" header means that we're after "Individual Credits" only, and I don't see how it could mean anything else. If it *did* mean anything else, then that same header would also show up in other sections of the crew credits table - or it would be addressed outside the crew crew credits table altogether, as a generic guideline. But it doesn't: this bolded header was only and explicitly included in the visual effects section. And the fact that company names aren't allowed is already addressed in the next column, so it's not about that either. No, there really is no mystery here: "Individual Credits" really does mean that we're after "Individual Credits", and not after entire groups without individual job specifications. And besides the fact that the rules explicitly say so, it also makes perfect sense, as lumping all of these people, providing a wide variety of jobs that we wouldn't track otherwise, under a generic credit like this is, as you say, useless.

Quoting Gamemaster:

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In this specific case you wouldn't list a Visual Effects Director.

That may very well be, but we can't know that for sure from those credits. It's not that I won't list a Visual Effects Director - I certainly would, every time someone is credited as a Visual Effects Director, I diligently enter him into my profile. What I won't do, however - and IMHO that's what the rules tell us to do - is list someone without a job description. Whether that person turns out to be a visual effects director, a visual effects producer, a visual effects director of photography, a compositor, a rotoscoper, an animator, or whatever else, doesn't matter. We can't make that distinction if the credits don't tell us - that's the whole problem. The choice is: either you list dozens of people - I've even seen up to sixty people in such groups! - in the hope of catching one or two significant jobs of the kind we'd track if they were individual credits, or we don't list any of them, then losing one or two significant jobs of the kind we'd track if they were individual credits. There's something to say for both approaches, certainly, but by demanding "Individual Credits", the rules have made that choice for me. Whether that particular rule happens to be "popular" or not doesn't change that.

We can keep going around the block, but that won't help. I won't list someone without a specific job description - and that's what I consider dozens of people under a generic visual effects header to be - and I feel the "Individual Credits" restriction in the rules is there to support that. You don't. As with so many things around here, everything can be interpreted to death, and it's unfortunate that nothing is ever resolved. But I'm not interested in rehashing the same points over and over again, as it won't matter: it won't change my point of view, and it won't change yours either. It is what it is.

Quoting Gamemaster:

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I Think AiAustria was right the rule was implemented to avoid company names as a credit.

I don't think so, as that's already addressed in the next column. As I said: there's just no point to this...