Quoting White Pongo, Jr.:

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Quoting madacid:

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at the moment you link them to the the ID "John//Doe".
If you don't know the person, don't link it.
No matter if we use the old/existing system or installing a new. It's nessecary to "NOT" to be forced to link (regardless neither linking to "John//Doe" nor to [PERSONid]

Well, let's peek at what happens in the IMDb.  It seems to me that they do force you to link.
For instance, if you try to contribute a credit for a Johnny Smith, here is (part of) the window that is displayed:
...

choose " I don't know - submit it as 'Smith, Johnny' anyway" and be happy without linking

Quoting White Pongo, Jr.:

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Quoting madacid:

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Don't know which programm you use, but with the DVDProfiler it's impossible just to add "as credited" info. You are forced to select a "person's id" first, before you can set "as credited" on "role name".

If you want to contribute a "Johnny Smith", and he is not already in your local database, you just enter his name and that's it.

madacid is right, if you filter for a name that isn't there and you press "Assign", you basically create a new profile. And if you select someone with the same name you automatically "link" it to him/her, regardless whether it's really the same person.

As I said, it's basically a "by accident linking" sometimes you're right, sometimes you're not. The program decides that actors with the same credited name are the same person and those with different credited names are different persons, with no basis on actual accuracy.

Quoting White Pongo, Jr.:

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Quoting northbloke:

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The point is the common name won't be that important anymore, it could change and still link all the roles together.
With the introduction of a unique, unchanging primary key for each individual - we can call them anything we like, even have different names in different databases, as long as the key remains the same they will still all link together.

OK, they would be unique identifiers just like IMDb's.
Still, how should we vote on a contribution with a list of credits assigned to their identifiers?
Should each and every association credit-identifier be documented in order to establish the real person behind the credit?
If not, how on earth would we know that a contribution for "Johnny Smith", id DP0001234 is actually correct  and not a "John Smith" id DP0005678 sometimes credited as Johnny Smith.

I think this has already been answered, but as the others have said; it's exactly the same as with common names now: if you know the person is meant to link, link it. If you don't know the person is meant to link, you don't - you create a new one.
With this idea, no one is expecting you to do any more work on a profile than now, it's simply we believe that this will make linking easier and more consistent - especially seeing how common names can sometimes change.

Quoting White Pongo, Jr.:

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Well, let's peek at what happens in the IMDb.  It seems to me that they do force you to link.
For instance, if you try to contribute a credit for a Johnny Smith, here is (part of) the window that is displayed:
*SNIP*

I am willing to bet that you will lose a LOT of contributors if they have to go through this, for every single cast and crew member, for every profile they contribute.

As I have already noted, we don't have enought people doing full audits as it is.  What's going to happen if it is further complicated?

Quoting Unicus69:

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Quoting White Pongo, Jr.:

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Well, let's peek at what happens in the IMDb.  It seems to me that they do force you to link.
For instance, if you try to contribute a credit for a Johnny Smith, here is (part of) the window that is displayed:
*SNIP*

I am willing to bet that you will lose a LOT of contributors if they have to go through this, for every single cast and crew member, for every profile they contribute.

As I have already noted, we don't have enought people doing full audits as it is.  What's going to happen if it is further complicated?

Why are you assuming that it will be more complicated? On the surface it will work pretty much as it does now.
If you know you have the person in your database already you pick them from the list and create the credit.
If you don't know you have them in your database you create a new entry and create the credit.
If you realise two names are actually one person, you create the link, use "credited as" and submit the change - but the important thing is - you don't have to pick a common name to do this! If accepted the primary key of one name will simply be changed to the primary key of the other name.

Quoting Unicus69:

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Quoting northbloke:

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Why are you assuming that it will be more complicated? On the surface it will work pretty much as it does now.

Did you not see the image in Pongo's post?  If something like that popped up for every person I typed in, it would drive me mad.

That's the way IMDB does it. It doesn't mean we have to do it the same way.
In fact don't we already have something similar: if you try and create the same name twice - doesn't the program stop you to check? Actually, doesn't it even prevent this until a BY is added? This new way wouldn't need that - duplicate names could be added.

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.

Quoting northbloke:

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Quoting Unicus69:

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Beyond that, nobody has to do anything else.  To do anything other than that, complicates the process.

Has anybody said otherwise? Nobody has even remotely suggested that any more work is required when adding cast or crew. What exactly are you expecting to change via this suggestion?

@Hal,
I believe this suggestion would do that, or at least go a long way to achieving it. The names on all the profiles could be exactly as credited, as it would be the primary key that would do the linking.
In fact, depending on how this was implemented, only one name field may be needed: the "credited as" one.

If that's true, I'm all for it, but it didn't sound that way to me.