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Query regarding reporting duplicates
publicat per dmutantxSTAFFMOD el dia 24 n de 2017 a les 4:14 P.M.
Over the last couple of months, I have become a sort of part-time contributor to TMDB. If I had any 'speciality' to speak of, I'd say it mostly lies in Bollywood films, and even there, mostly Bollywood films from the 1950s (I have been watching some of them over the past month). I have been updating the TMDB pages of some of these films (and the actors and crew members working on them) to include as much information about them as I can find. But I have had a couple of issues doing so that I'd like to bring up, and see what others (especially the mods) think about it:
Duplicates. Holy shit there are so many duplicates. I have only watched about half a dozen Bollywood films from the 1950s over the past month but while updating their TMDB pages, I must have come across dozens of duplicate pages of actors and crew members. Many of these duplicate pages seem to have been a result of the infamous "multi-clicking the Save button when creating an actor/crew's page directly from the film's page" bug, but many other duplicates were a result of actors/crew members being credited with different spellings in different films - an especially common problem in these films - and contributors crediting them without checking for alternative names. I have myself been guilty of that mistake a few times, although I've corrected them as soon as I discovered them. Now like a dutiful citizen, I have reported duplicate pages every time I have found them, and many of the pages I reported only a couple of weeks ago have already been deleted, but there are some duplicate reports from a month ago that still remain up. I was wondering why that is. I understand there must be so much of this work for the mods, but I thought it would make more sense to delete duplicates in the order they are reported, rather than randomly. Or is there a specific internal process that has to be completed to verify duplicates before deleting them, and that's what has been holding them back? Or do some reports just get lost in the flood of reports you must receive all day? In any case, there are still many duplicate pages I have reported that still remain up. So here's my first question: Is there some way we can speed up this process? Maybe by giving some contributors (with a minimum number of contributions) the power to delete duplicates themselves, especially considering many of these are pages of actors and crew members that are so obscure, it's doubtful anyone would ever even visit them?
Lastly, whenever I report a duplicate, I always ask that the mods "please merge the credits before deleting". I was wondering if the mods actually have some magic tool they can use to merge credits of multiple pages, or is it just a case of manually moving credits from one page to another before deleting the duplicate? If the latter is true, that would help explain why some duplicates might still be up - there are too many of them to work on. I can do the moving credits part myself if that is true to help you guys out.
Thanks and apologies if I got anything wrong.
Resposta per Rebecca
el 24 n de 2017 a les 5:00 P.M.
I do admit I will handle reports in a random order. If someone previously moved all the credits to the correct profile (lower ID number), and all I have to do is delete the page, I will handle those much faster than the ones I have to manually maneuver the credits around. Depending on the amount of reports we receive in a day, there are some that have gotten lost in the flood.
One thing you can do is bump up your older reports; it's okay to bump them if no one has responded in like two months.
If a profile only has television credits, we can merge those over from one profile to another. We only have that tool for tv credits, though. If you feel up to moving them yourself, feel free, but please verify all credits are correct for that person and make sure you merge them to the lower ID number (the number in the person's URL), since it was created first before the duplicate.
No worries.
Resposta per Banana
el 25 n de 2017 a les 12:49 A.M.
I want to explain a few things:
Also, little things that I always have to fix on movie pages :
Resposta per dmutantx
el 6 e de 2017 a les 9:01 A.M.
Extremely sorry for the late reply. I have no excuse.
And here I was thinking you guys were just flicking a button to handle those duplicates, oblivious to all the burden I was inflicting on you guys. Sorry about that; the next time I see a duplicate, I will merge the credits myself before reporting.
That's the first of many problems I face when adding these credits - IMDb is, for the most part, the most extensive source available for old Hindi films. It's not perfect by any means, often confusing older actors/crew for someone else, but it's also helped me identify people who were only referred to by their first names in a film's credits (surprisingly common for supporting cast and assistant credits in these films). To make matters worse, often times these names are spelled differently across different films that are only a few years apart, which is just so infuriating, like ISN'T THERE SOME FORM YOU ASKED THESE PEOPLE TO FILL BEFORE HIRING THEM OR DO YOU JUST LISTEN TO THEIR NAMES AND MAKE UP YOUR OWN WAY TO SPELL IT.
breathes
I do use some basic techniques to verify this data, like checking the other IMDb credits for a person to make sure IMDb did not credit a namesake, and also by using search engines to see if there are any blog posts by hobbyist Indian cinephiles that can shed some light on who these people were. When there is too much ambiguity involved, I forgo adding the credit altogether. (On that note: is it okay if I use the 'Discussions' page of a movie to add the names in the film's credits that I did not add to TMDb due to insufficient data as to who that person is? Like, I don't expect anyone to reply to it, it's just a way for me to keep these names in one place for easy future reference - both for myself and anyone reading it - in case I come across any info or someone else knows something that can be helpful in identifying these people?)
Never been involved in any violations of the first three things, so I'm safe there.
The fourth one is something I would like to talk about. With some Hindi films on TMDb, I have noticed that when the 'Original Title' is written in the original script, the 'Translated Title (English)' is the literal translation of the film's title, even if that title has never been (at least proven to be) officially used to market or release the film in foreign territories. Case in point: Do Bigha Zamin. Its TMDb title is 'Two Acres of Land' which, as far as I can gather, is not an official foreign title. But let's just assume that it is (because there are some major outlets/orgs that refer to it by that name) and let this one pass; there are, however, other films, some even by the same director, whose 'Original Title' is written in the original script but whose translated title is not used anywhere else on the internet except where TMDb APIs are used. An example would be Parineeta, whose title on TMDb until recently was 'The Fiancee' (I have changed it now). I am 99% certain that no Indian could have figured out which film 'The Fiancee' was just by the name, or even by its release year. But as soon as you said 'Parineeta', they would know which film you were talking about (although most would think you were referring to the 2005 adaptation).
This creates a bit of a conundrum: very few Hindi films are released in English-speaking countries with translated titles, most just use the romanized title because the Indian diaspora is so vast. Even in India, romanized titles are pre-dominantly used over Hindi script in marketing for Hindi-language films. So while I guess it's okay to use original script for the original titles, I think it's probably best to use the romanized title in place of literal translations in the 'Translated Title' field, or maybe we should add a separate 'Romanized Title' field and use radio buttons to select which of the two (Romanized or Translated) should be the main title. That's my two cents on that.
Jeez, I can't believe people do that. I'll fix 'em if I find 'em. One little question tho as I am still a newbie: how much of a particular language should a film's dialogues be in to add to this field? Cause some Hindi films tend to have brief conversations between characters in another language like Punjabi or Gujarati. Some have a minute of such convos, some have more. Is there some official guideline for that, because I couldn't find one.
Again, Jeez. We Indians may be invading Silicon Valley with our engineering degrees, but we can be really dumb at simple tasks. I'll fix 'em when I find 'em too.
Ah, this is also a problem. It's very tough finding posters for older films without a logo, which is either a watermark by the website that posted it (WHY?!) or the logo of the company that is distributing it on video (fair, but still). So far, I think haven't added any posters to TMDb and this would be the reason. I just stick to adding pictures of lesser known actors via movie screenshots, which in itself is challenging enough because many times the names of characters these actors play are not listed anywhere on the internet.
Thank you both for your insight. It's much appreciated.
Lastly, I checked and you have indeed closed all my duplicate reports from August! Thank you, and like I said, I'll make sure not to overburden you guys next time!
Resposta per Banana
el 6 e de 2017 a les 7:32 P.M.
Thank you!! That would really help.
Yes! We make them sometimes too e.g. to recap our research or justify a change. Just make sure you select 'content issues", not general and maybe write that the post is just for informational purpose.
You are right, it is another common issue! The 'Translated Title (English)' should only be used for official translations (i.e. an English title used for a release in an English market or an English film festival). Informal translations can be added as alternative titles, but they should never be added to the translated title field. Some users take the name of the field, translated title, a bit too literally.
And, of course, for films with a non-Roman original title, the romanization can be used when there is no official English title.
I think most Hindi should indeed have a romanized English translated title. I also agree that if you can't find confirm an English title, it's probably safe to switch it back to the romanization. According to IMDb, Two Acres of Land was used in the UK, but we should be able to confirm their data.
I would LOVE something like that. I think I proposed something similar to Travis before, but it wouldn't hurt to let him know more users would be interested in a new field for romanized title or a marker for romanized title.
For television series, we usually add the main language. 99.9% of TV series only have one language. But for movies, we're not too picky. I think it's fine to add Punjabi even if only a few lines are spoken. But it's not a big deal if you decide not to add them.