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Welcome to the Database Correction page. This page is for letting me or the other editors know of corrections that need to be made. Please read the posting instructions carefully.
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| Friday October 27 03:58:33 2017 Re: Entry cleanup, IMDb cross-checking, and date formats |
| I would really like to see years for isolated TV shows disappear (where no similarly-named shows or movies exist). But it's only aesthetics; I otherwise have no practical reason for that. |
| Sam |
| Friday October 27 12:36:36 2017 Re: Entry cleanup, IMDb cross-checking, and date formats |
| Sam wrote: > I would really like to see years for isolated TV shows > disappear (where no similarly-named shows or movies > exist). Yeah, I think I agree. The date in this case would be for the episode as opposed to the series, so it doesn't really belong in the Title, but in the Description it would probably be clutter. Episode number should suffice. Right now I'm taking a closer look at the Medium field, and I don't think this will be news to anyone, but there's a ton of inconsistency in how folks have been using it. As the lines between traditional forms of media continue to blur, I expect we'll see even more of this. I'm wondering to what extent we've formalized the guidelines, and whether part of my cleanup project should involve standardizing the entries with the IMDb as a guide. (This is a pretty deep rabbit hole, and I'm not sure how far down it I'm prepared to go, but I figure it can't hurt to kick it around a bit.) The IMDb defines a bunch more media types than we do. Here's how I *believe* they should map: movie -> Movie short -> Movie (yes? I see shorts listed as both Movie and Other. I think Movie makes a bit more sense, with Other reserved for very specialized types of shorts such as music videos and commercials, but I don't really care as long as we standardize on one.) tvEpisode -> TV Series tvMiniSeries -> TV Series tvMovie -> TV Movie tvSeries -> TV Series tvShort -> Other? tvSpecial -> TV Movie? or should it be Other? video -> Movie videoGame -> Other On the flip side, we've got a couple media types that don't map neatly to the IMDb, namely Movie Serial and Soap Opera. Both are being used for stuff at the moment that they probably shouldn't. It seems tricky to make completely unambiguous guidelines for them, but how about this for starters: * Movie Serial should NOT be used for anything that the IMDb lists as TV-anything, so for instance "I Misteri Di Cascina Vianello" and "Zodiak - Der Horoskop-Mörder" should be changed to TV Series. Anything past around 1960 should be given extra scrutiny as well, though there are cases like "Justine," "King of the Park Rangers," and "Butterscotch" that probably still qualify. And if I may be so bold... * Soap Opera should be reserved solely for daily dramas, telenovelas, etc. Weekly "soaps" are actually TV Series. |
| Raffish |
| Friday October 27 13:17:06 2017 Re: Entry cleanup, IMDb cross-checking, and date formats |
| Raffish wrote: > Sam wrote: > > I would really like to see years for isolated TV > shows > > disappear (where no similarly-named shows or movies > > exist). > Yeah, I think I agree. The date in this case would be for > the episode as opposed to the series, so it doesn't > really belong in the Title, but in the Description it > would probably be clutter. Episode number should suffice. > Right now I'm taking a closer look at the Medium field, > and I don't think this will be news to anyone, but > there's a ton of inconsistency in how folks have been > using it. As the lines between traditional forms of media > continue to blur, I expect we'll see even more of this. > I'm wondering to what extent we've formalized the > guidelines, and whether part of my cleanup project should > involve standardizing the entries with the IMDb as a > guide. (This is a pretty deep rabbit hole, and I'm not > sure how far down it I'm prepared to go, but I figure it > can't hurt to kick it around a bit.) > The IMDb defines a bunch more media types than we do. > Here's how I *believe* they should map: > movie -> Movie > short -> Movie (yes? I see shorts listed as both Movie > and Other. I think Movie makes a bit more sense, with > Other reserved for very specialized types of shorts such > as music videos and commercials, but I don't really care > as long as we standardize on one.) > tvEpisode -> TV Series > tvMiniSeries -> TV Series > tvMovie -> TV Movie > tvSeries -> TV Series > tvShort -> Other? > tvSpecial -> TV Movie? or should it be Other? > video -> Movie > videoGame -> Other > On the flip side, we've got a couple media types that > don't map neatly to the IMDb, namely Movie Serial and > Soap Opera. Both are being used for stuff at the moment > that they probably shouldn't. It seems tricky to make > completely unambiguous guidelines for them, but how about > this for starters: > * Movie Serial should NOT be used for anything that the > IMDb lists as TV-anything, so for instance "I > Misteri Di Cascina Vianello" and "Zodiak - Der > Horoskop-Mörder" should be changed to TV > Series. Anything past around 1960 should be given extra > scrutiny as well, though there are cases like > "Justine," "King of the Park > Rangers," and "Butterscotch" that probably > still qualify. > And if I may be so bold... > * Soap Opera should be reserved solely for daily dramas, telenovelas, etc. Weekly "soaps" are actually TV Series. I don’t have any solutions to your questions, but I do have a few thoughts to deepen the rabbit hole. As far as dates go, I disagree with Sam. Having dates on isolated TV shows may add a bit to the clutter, but you never know when an old title is going to be resurrected. The original Hawaii 5-0 went off the air in 1980, and was revived in 2010. S.W.A.T. died in 1976. There is going to be a new version premiering here in a week or two. There are dozens of more titles which are being considered for revival. I’d rather live with a little bit of clutter than have to go back and retrofit bunches of entries to differentiate between series. A second issue with dates which you didn’t mention was whether to specify release date or production date. Lots of things are filmed and then left on the shelf for considerable periods of time. One example which springs to mind is the pilot for “The Saint” revival. It was filmed in 2013, but just released a couple of months ago as a movie, with a release date of 2017. “The Saint” pilot also overlaps with your question about medium. It was released as a movie, but filmed as a pilot, and would have been shown as episode one if the series had been picked up for production. Should it get classified as a TV episode, or a movie? Another question would be whether we should differentiate between TV movies and theatrical movies? Lots of movies are filmed for theatrical release, but get diverted directly to video or TV. The Oscars require a movie to have at least one showing in a theater to be considered for an award, and anything which gets an initial showing on TV is automatically disqualified. We might want to forget about where the product was shown, and consider length as the major consideration in how to classify the project. 90 minutes or over would be a movie. 30-90 a TV show or a short, etc. This would require a lot more thought to come up with a coherent plan that addresses the majority of productions. |
| Gagster |
| Friday October 27 13:18:44 2017 Re: Entry cleanup, IMDb cross-checking, and date formats |
| Dates in Description....I've always been torn on how to handle those. The way I've done them so far is: *If an episode has a title, plus season and/or ep number, I omit the date. *If an episode has no title but has a clearly defined season/ep number, I still omit the date. *If an episode's season/ep number is not easily defined, I use an MDY or DMY date (format depending on North American, European or otherwise) to signify the original airing. Most applies to the US and UK daily soaps. One thing I dislike seeing for telenovelas is the "Capitulo" prefix. Totally unnecessary. Just use a simple format of ep title & number: "¡Arriba jejeje ayyyy!" (34) Or if no title, number only. IMDb lists many German series as being composed of TV movies instead of episodes. Wish they wouldn't do that. Tatort is a damn series; I don't care if the eps are 2hrs long (and thereby feature length), they are EPISODES. |
| Sam |
| Friday October 27 14:07:04 2017 Re: Entry cleanup, IMDb cross-checking, and date formats |
| Gagster wrote: > As far as dates go, I disagree with Sam. Having dates on > isolated TV shows may add a bit to the clutter, but you > never know when an old title is going to be resurrected. Good point...though we should also consider that, if we do set a new convention that dates should be added for TV series, I guarantee that many contributors won't remember. I might be able add them all as a one-time update, but we'd have to keep an eye on it going forward or settle for it being done inconsistently. If we did go with dates here, I'm realizing that they should continue to be the premiere dates for the series, not the episode (even if we have easy automated access to the latter). That way people can still search on "Knight Rider (1982)" and get meaningful results. > A second issue with dates which you didn’t mention was > whether to specify release date or production date. Whatever the IMDb says, I'm fine with. In fact, I'd say we can safely defer to them in many if not most of the gray-area cases you mention. They're wrestling with a lot of the same questions as the lines between media types continue to blur, but let's face it: they've got a lot more experience and a much larger community. So maybe all we really need to do is settle on some definitive mappings from their types to ours, and let them worry about it. The IMDb criterion for a short is "any theatrical film or made-for-video title with a running time of less than 45 minutes, i.e., 44 minutes or less, or any TV series or TV movie with a running time of less than 22 minutes, i.e. 21 minutes or less." That doesn't entirely help us with the new-media whatsises, since we don't currently have a Short bin to dump them in, but maybe it's something. |
| Raffish |
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