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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | Reputation:  |  Posts: 17,334 |
| | Posted: | | | | Hal...
Wouldn't the same thing work with Alan Smithee? Put a birth year to Alan Smithee for each person that used this alias... then you just need to know the birthyear of the person that used to alias to link them correctly. | | | | Pete |
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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | Reputation:  | | Posts: 6,635 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting Addicted2DVD: Quote:
Hal...
Wouldn't the same thing work with Alan Smithee? Put a birth year to Alan Smithee for each person that used this alias... then you just need to know the birthyear of the person that used to alias to link them correctly. A quick look at IMDb shows that 43 different people have used Alan Smithee as an alias over the years. There's a good chance that at least two of those have the same BY. | | | | Hal |
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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | | Reputation: | | Posts: 17,334 |
| | Posted: | | | | This is true... but until there is a better answer to the problem it should at least fix the most of it. | | | | Pete |
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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | | Posts: 2,759 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting hal9g: Quote:
Apparently, i am not being clear. There is a very simple solution for the John Does vs John Doe, Sr vs John Doe, Jr. situation as I described above. BYs would be required for "John Doe" to make them "unique" and then they could be linked to the correct John doe, Jr. or John Doe Sr.
The birth year would have to be entered to every profile with either John Doe, Jr or Sr. And you know how difficult it is to find birth years. Quote:
I do not understand the issue with John A. Doe vs John B. Doe at all. Those are already unique names, so you'll have to explain to me why these would cause a problem.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I'm talking about the case when both John A. Doe and John B. Doe are credited at least in one case as John Doe. We have seen several of those cases in the forum. And we have seen other cases (e.g. Al vs. Allen) where we have unique common names in the current system but still have identical credits for two persons in individual profiles (which would not be the common name under the current rule). |
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| Registered: February 23, 2009 | | Reputation: |  Posts: 1,580 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting hal9g: Quote:
Quoting Addicted2DVD:
Quote:
Hal...
Wouldn't the same thing work with Alan Smithee? Put a birth year to Alan Smithee for each person that used this alias... then you just need to know the birthyear of the person that used to alias to link them correctly.
A quick look at IMDb shows that 43 different people have used Alan Smithee as an alias over the years. There's a good chance that at least two of those have the same BY. That is indeed a bit of a pickle. Just bouncing ideas here but would adding a unique ID key to each name be a possible solution? A bit in the same vein as how each profile has a unique UPC? For example, we could have: Alan Smithee with ID key 334 Alan Smithee with ID key 1232 Alan Smithee with ID key 453 The first two would for example refer to the same person, so they are linked. The third one is a different person so he's not linked to the previous two. Or we could add the DNA string of each actor. That's also unique  I'm not a programmer, so I don't know what would work best. I guess we need to find a way to easily make sure each actor or crew member can be identified in a unique way. | | | Blu-ray collection
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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | | Posts: 2,759 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting Addicted2DVD: Quote:
Hal...
Wouldn't the same thing work with Alan Smithee? Put a birth year to Alan Smithee for each person that used this alias... then you just need to know the birthyear of the person that used to alias to link them correctly. The whole birth year concept does not really fit with the association system. In the current system we have an unique id for every person which usually is just the common name. In the cases the common name is not unique, we naturally expand the unique id with the birth year. the birth year is the linked to the common name. With the association system on the other hand we try to avoid the creation of an unique id by all means. But to separate the same credit for two different persons, we would still have to enter the birth year (even for much more cases as in the current system). But now the birth year is linked to every individual credit of every profile of those people. |
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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | | Reputation: | | Posts: 6,635 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting RHo: Quote:
Quoting hal9g:
Quote:
Apparently, i am not being clear. There is a very simple solution for the John Does vs John Doe, Sr vs John Doe, Jr. situation as I described above. BYs would be required for "John Doe" to make them "unique" and then they could be linked to the correct John doe, Jr. or John Doe Sr.
The birth year would have to be entered to every profile with either John Doe, Jr or Sr. And you know how difficult it is to find birth years. No, actually, I envision the BY becoming an integral part of the name in the linking table, so there would be no need to update BYs in every profile. The issue of finding BYs is a sticky wicket. We may need to come up with an alternative. I'm open to suggestions. Example of table entries: John Doe, Jr. = John Doe Jr = John Doe (1976) = John Doe Jr. John Doe, Sr.= John Doe Sr = John Doe (1953) = John Doe Sr. John A. Doe = John Alan Doe = John Doe (1968) John B. Doe = John Bradley Doe = John Doe (1942) Quoting RHo: Quote:
Quoting hal9g:
Quote:
I do not understand the issue with John A. Doe vs John B. Doe at all. Those are already unique names, so you'll have to explain to me why these would cause a problem.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I'm talking about the case when both John A. Doe and John B. Doe are credited at least in one case as John Doe.
We have seen several of those cases in the forum. And we have seen other cases (e.g. Al vs. Allen) where we have unique common names in the current system but still have identical credits for two persons in individual profiles (which would not be the common name under the current rule). Ahhhh....I should have figured that out. Again, we could use BYs to solve these problems (or the alternative that we come up with). | | | | Hal | | | | Last edited: by hal9g |
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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | | Posts: 2,759 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting hal9g: Quote:
No, actually, I envision the BY becoming an integral part of the name in the linking table, so there would be no need to update BYs in every profile. The issue of finding BYs is a sticky wicket. We may need to come up with an alternative. I'm open to suggestions. Ok, I don't think that I understand you. Let's assume that we have two entries in the linking table, one "John Doe, Jr" = "John Doe" = BY 1975 and the other "John Doe, Sr" = "John Doe" = BY 1950. How would you link a profile with the credit "John Doe" to one of the entries without adding the birth year to that profile? |
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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | | Reputation: | | Posts: 6,635 |
| | Posted: | | | | See my edits to the post just above your last | | | | Hal |
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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | | Posts: 2,759 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting hal9g: Quote:
John Doe, Jr. = John Doe Jr = John Doe (1976) = John Doe Jr.
John Doe, Sr.= John Doe Sr = John Doe (1953) = John Doe Sr.
John A. Doe = John Alan Doe = John Doe (1968)
John B. Doe = John Bradley Doe = John Doe (1942) That could work. We would add the birth year to the conflicting credited name and not to the association. We still would have to enter the birth year to every profile with the credit "John Doe" though and it would not really be WYSIWYT. |
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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | | Reputation: | | Posts: 6,635 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting RHo: Quote:
Quoting hal9g:
Quote:
No, actually, I envision the BY becoming an integral part of the name in the linking table, so there would be no need to update BYs in every profile. The issue of finding BYs is a sticky wicket. We may need to come up with an alternative. I'm open to suggestions.
Ok, I don't think that I understand you. Let's assume that we have two entries in the linking table, one "John Doe, Jr" = "John Doe" = BY 1975 and the other "John Doe, Sr" = "John Doe" = BY 1950. How would you link a profile with the credit "John Doe" to one of the entries without adding the birth year to that profile? OK, I understand your question now. Sorry for being dense. Yes, of course, BYs would have to be attached to the names in the profiles when they are created, so that they would link to the correct alternatives based on the linking table. Ken could add functionality to the program that would display any names that have BYs when you enter that name and make you pick the one you want. | | | | Hal |
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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | | Reputation: | | Posts: 6,635 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting RHo: Quote:
Quoting hal9g:
Quote:
John Doe, Jr. = John Doe Jr = John Doe (1976) = John Doe Jr.
John Doe, Sr.= John Doe Sr = John Doe (1953) = John Doe Sr.
John A. Doe = John Alan Doe = John Doe (1968)
John B. Doe = John Bradley Doe = John Doe (1942)
That could work. We would add the birth year to the conflicting credited name and not to the association. We still would have to enter the birth year to every profile with the credit "John Doe" though and it would not really be WYSIWYT. Just as today, the BY does not need to display in the cast/crew listing, so it could still display in a way to match the film credits. | | | | Hal |
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| Registered: March 14, 2007 |  Posts: 2,337 |
| | Posted: | | | | I support the idea, but we must get rid of BYs. In some cases they are impossible to find and then we are forced to use fake ones. In my opinion Unique ID is the only way to go. |
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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | | Posts: 2,759 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting hal9g: Quote:
Quoting RHo:
Quote:
We still would have to enter the birth year to every profile with the credit "John Doe" though and it would not really be WYSIWYT.
Just as today, the BY does not need to display in the cast/crew listing, so it could still display in a way to match the film credits. Yes, of course, this remark is meant for the folks who believe that WYSIWYT is everything you need to know to enter credits. As you may already know from other topics (title graphics, functional equivalents, studio standardisation), I'm more into the structure of data than looks.  But if Invelos ever implements this association linking, please also change to a single field credit system to end all parsing discussions. I would happily drop the sorting by last name, specially since we would not really go after names any more but solely after credits in free form text. |
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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | | Reputation: | | Posts: 6,635 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting Kulju: Quote:
I support the idea, but we must get rid of BYs. In some cases they are impossible to find and then we are forced to use fake ones. In my opinion Unique ID is the only way to go. How is this unique key used when entering the person into a profile? John Doe = Unique Key 1234 John Doe = Unique Key 1235 How do I know which one is the guy who was born in 1953 versus the one born in 1968? | | | | Hal |
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| Registered: March 13, 2007 | | Posts: 2,759 |
| | Posted: | | | | Quoting Kulju: Quote:
I support the idea, but we must get rid of BYs. In some cases they are impossible to find and then we are forced to use fake ones. In my opinion Unique ID is the only way to go. The problem about arbitrary unique ids vs. existing data used as unique id (e.g. common name plus birth year) is, who would generate the ids and make sure that every id is only used for one person and no person gets two ids. When we look at the big database (IMDB) which uses arbitrary ids for people (nm1234567), they have a relative complex system to create a new person. Normal credits can only be contributed easily for people who are already entered into the database. Their database is designed to rather leave a credit out than to add a credit to a film which doesn't link. I don't know if we really want a contribution system like this. |
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