For someone (from an alien planet, for instance) that has never heard of Courtney Cox and never saw her in any of her previous works, they could easily create a new profile and enter Courtney Cox-Arquette in both the "master" name filed and in the "credited as" name field.

With someone as well known as her,  the voting community would would most likely "correct" this submission. 

For less well known actors, these could easily "pollute" the database, at least temporarily.

I guess we'll have to rely on the contributors and the voting system, to eventually get them all right.

A separate forum area specifically to discuss and vote on these would be a good idea, IMO.  Although not everyone visits these forums, a good number (especially those that contribute a lot) do spend time here, and if this group can come to agreement on "original" names, then we can police most of these names.

I think we need to give it a shot and see how it goes.

I agree with Hal.  Will there be some rough patches?  Of course there will.  BUT, if we all come to this with an open mind AND put our differences aside, I am sure we can work through this.

when you have say Courteney Cox as master and Courteney Cox Arquette in the Credited as field... will you see this online to vote for or against corrections/mistakes? like will you see it say Courteney Cox (credited as Courteney Cox Arquette) on the screen when you vote so you know? In other words what do you see in the voting screen to know what name is in which field?  up till now all you see is 1 name and 1 role name. will you see 2 names and 1 role name to see that it is right?

I am not against this at all I am just trying to understand how it will work... though I usually have a hard time understanding how something will work till I actually see it in action anyway. 

Quoting tlevel:

Quote:
Quoting skipnet50:

Quote:
As you said Rick, we need Ken to clarify a couple of points, dismissing the potential out of hand is NOT the right answer. We have too many users perfectly willing to turn the database into an unmanageable electronic pretzel.

Skip

You know this would be a lot easier for you to understand if you knew something about databases.

HEY SKIP, A COMEDIAN!     

Quoting Rifter:

Quote:


HEY SKIP, A COMEDIAN!     

Things have changed a lot in databases since Skip's retirement.... we use computers now 

Quoting Gerri Cole:

Quote:
Addicted - in answer to your question, when reviewing contributions, you see both of the names. If I can, I will try to get a screen shot of what an approver sees and once contributions are reenabled, you can see what it looks like to you.

And yes, it is 2 names, one role. I think they are labelled as Credited As, but I have done too many contributions at this point, there are all a blur...

-Gerri

Gerri, are you sure? Last night, I contributed a wrestling title (Wrestlemania X8, which is still pending, if you want to look) using the Credited As feature, and when you go to vote on it, you can only see the "Credited As" names...they're not color-coded like everyone else, though.

Now I'm a the only one that find this system a serious disappointment? It is nothing more but a glorified (as ...) tag in the role description which IVS made us remove in version 2. Back in the day, (as ...) in role descriptions often popped up because people were using IMDb data mining programs to automatically fill in cast lists. But for the sake of accurate data (because IMDb = evil  ), we had to use the credited name, destroying the linking capabilities of the program.

I also spent many hours editing profiles to display proper onscreen cast lists as required by the rules. But now version 3.0 requires me in fact to undo all these changes and put back the "common" name and use the credited name in the new "credited as" field. If the (as ...) in the role description had been allowed in version 2 (which I always found an ok solution), these tags could have been automically parsed, just like the (voice) and (uncredited) tags. Oh the irony...

I'm sure this system is the easy way out from a programming standpoint. What I hoped for would have allowed linking different aliases to each other, instantly linking every profile in which 1 of the 2 aliases appeared. This would have avoided heaps of work and avoided discussions on what the common name should be.

I never bashed Skip, and he knows it. 

But it was just too irresistible...