Ok, I declare this thread officially hijacked. Perhaps fulfilling someone's prophesy. I gave it a good try.

It is ironic that the single best idea from these conversations came from a side discussion that was thoughtfully moved to its own thread. (I will still do my best to write that report I promised - and probably announce it in a new thread for discussion - yeah, that's the ticket.)

Quoting surfeur51:

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Thanks, but I'll perk up after some coffee ... thanks for that gesture of support. Amazing how such a little thing at the right time can help.

@mediadogg:

I'm not sure why you feel that the thread has been hijacked.  Yes, Skip continues his random diversions into IMDB rants in response to any even peripheral mention of the site, but overall this is a significant project, and there are significant issues that have to be dealt with in discussing it.  There were a couple minor side discussions, but they had very little effect on the actual thread flow.

There seems to be very little actual opposition, but there is a fair bit of discussion that has to take place.  If you want to lead this project, you have to be willing and able to address the issues brought up in those discussions.  You say you want to reach a consensus; you have to do the work to figure out what things are preventing a consensus from gelling.


As an example, let's try addressing one of Skip's recent posts:

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The online must remain as is to have any value.

False statement.  The online can take many forms and still retain value.  The only question is whether it would retain a value that you consider valuable, and/or that it would retain a sufficient amount of value for the majority of people using it.

An example to illustrate: You could remove every bit of cast and crew information, and the database info would still be useful (ie: would still have 'value').  I would guess that the majority of usage patterns don't need that information at all; it's just an 'extra'.  It does provide additional value, but there is no single element that provides the entirety of the value of the database.

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First IMDb already exists and does not need to be cloned

While you keep bringing this up, I have yet to see anyone in this thread even hint that this is what they want to do.  Seems like a straw man argument.

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A database which is constructed os[sic: of] user imagined data will not long be functional.

A sufficiently vague statement that it's pretty much impossible to be considered falsifiable.  Also seems to be a straw man argument.

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Any "gold' standard must have s[sic: a] basis that is outside of user manipulation it[sic: or?] interpretation. Period.

A stable point to make an argument from.  However thus far the only proposed validation system is something matching, or close to matching, Invelos's rules.  Your point is valid for the purpose of being sure that things do not deviate too far, but it is not (yet) valid as far as any actual argument.

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at eo:
The database is standardized, just not to your liking.

Nowhere in his post did he say that the database was not standardized.  Straw man.

His actual points were that the data is not *normalized*, which is an entirely different issue (and which you should be well aware of, given a background in databases), and that there are inconsistencies in the UI.

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S[sic: A] database built on uset[sic: user] interpretation is never standardized to anything.

Nowhere in his post did he say that the database was not standardized.  Nowhere in his post did he say that the data should be built on user interpretation.  Straw man.

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We are standardized to the actual hard dta[sic: data] generated by the filmmakers, not the guess of some outside party not involved in the product nor ever making One

You keep attacking the same straw man over and over, but eommen's actual post puts his stance as:

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My thinking is that the 'gold' rules should conflict as little as possible with Invelos rules and focus on clarification; which leaves room to 're-activate' the partial locking and so secure the online db from inadvertent degradation.

Essentially, you're kicking up a lot of fuss over things no one is actually saying.  If you feel this assessment is incorrect, please provide actual quotes and responses, and build a coherent argument from supporting points.

Quoting mediadogg:

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Ok, I declare this thread officially hijacked. Perhaps fulfilling someone's prophesy. I gave it a good try.

It is ironic that the single best idea from these conversations came from a side discussion that was thoughtfully moved to its own thread. (I will still do my best to write that report I promised - and probably announce it in a new thread for discussion - yeah, that's the ticket.)

I'm not sure what happened. Hijacked?

Please reconsider because I've seem more thoughtful suggestions and commentary over than last few days than I have in years.

Edit: I see what might be the problem. Please don't let any person(s) derail this project.

The only person who can stop it is Ken and until he does let the brainstorming continue!

Quoting TheMadMartian:

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Quoting Kinematics:

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First IMDb already exists and does not need to be cloned

While you keep bringing this up, I have yet to see anyone in this thread even hint that this is what they want to do.  Seems like a straw man argument.

While they have not hinted that they want to clone IMDb, they have outright stated that they want a movie based, rather than a release based, system, using user defined names to allow for proper linking.  That system is a closer match to IMDb than it is to what Profiler is.

Speaking for myself, I can work within whatever system is chosen by Ken.  I do, however, like the current one, only because it seems fairly easy to follow when contributing.  I mean, crew section notwithstanding, it is hard to mess up 'copy exactly'.

I like Profiler, I also like IMDb. But, neither one of them are perfect.

No one has stated that IMDb be cloned but of course any database or program is bound to be thought of in developing or improving Profiler.

The issues brought up in this and similar threads are no different. Ideas need to start somewhere and Ken has implemented programs that was initiated by the ideas of others .

For example, the community's request for something similar to goodguy's Profile Comparison Plus plugin led to the development of an update to fill that need.

Ken has stated that invelos will be addressing the linking problem. So, why shouldn't there be thread(s) that try and come up with ideas that might jump start the process?

Edit: You edited your post, fixing the error.

Quoting TheMadMartian:

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While they have not hinted that they want to clone IMDb, they have outright stated that they want a movie based, rather than a release based, system, using user defined names to allow for proper linking.  That system is a closer match to IMDb than it is to what Profiler is.

The way I was reading it, the idea was to find some way to reduce the amount of duplicate effort.  If the same movie is released in two territories, or even just a re-release in the same territory, that means a lot of stuff has to be entered multiple times, and there's no direct means of updating all of the others if a fix is made to one of them.  From a programming perspective, it's wanting an inheritance-based system, where all the common data only exists in one place to make maintenance and such easier (because from the user perspective, maintenance costs are the single highest cost of using the program).

However, as that would require a notable revamp of the entire program and database structure, it's more in the realm of ideas for "ways things could maybe be done better", and that's how I viewed such comments.  I could be wrong in how these suggestions related to this whole GS idea.

CharlieM did indeed suggest such a methodology, though it was presented as sort of a brainstorming idea -- how can we make this as easy as possible?  He also later explicitly said his point was *not* to copy IMDB.

Surfeur51 considered the 'movie based' methodology as being what IMDB uses, which is partially correct.  They do use a movie-based system, however saying "movie-based" is not the same as saying "how IMDB does it".  As described above, you can still profile by disc, but composite from an underlying movie-based description.

However, my view is from the programming perspective rather than the user-side perspective.  Re-reading surfeur's post, I can see how it's being presented largely as "how IMDB does it" (and apologies to Skip, as his allegations were not entirely spurious).

Parsec's interpretation of the idea seems closer to my own interpretation of it.

Overall, it's mostly that "movie-based" is a somewhat ambiguous term to use, as people aren't trying to be terribly precise in this very rough hashing-out phase.

Quoting mediadogg:

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@Kathy, the problem may be that I am overwhelmed with information that I don't fully understand, and do not have time to absorb. Perhaps offering to write a report was premature.

If you, the plugin king, don't understand than what hope is there for me?!?

Quoting mediadogg:

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At this point, I don't see any way in heck I can read through all the verbiage and come up with anything coherent.

I'm in the middle of (3) 14 hour night shifts so I might not be able to do much until my day off.

Quoting mediadogg:

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Recently (last bunch of posts) I don't see any consensus, just a rolling exchange of topics that have been discussed for years - albeit very thankfully in a civil manner.

It's not unusual to rehash old issues. If there wasn't a problem, then the issues wouldn't keep coming up. There isn't any rush anyways. Good ideas take time, and lots of errors, before they come to light.

Quoting mediadogg:

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Can you offer a perspective that can help break the fog in my brain, or an approach that I can take that does something useful with the information?

I'm sure there are many members of the community more computer savvy who can address this more succinctly.

When I get a day off, I'll try and consolidate things in a way that the average computer illiterate person might see things.


Quoting mediadogg:

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As an aside, we are bracing for a major storm to hit eastern NY State, and I fully expect to be without power sometime next week.

I hope everything will be okay for you and yours. I haven't had the TV on all week - I'll have to check the weather and see if the storm is hitting western NY.

And user defined data is something i am absolutely opposed to. We have been there, done that and it sucks. User defined data belongs to each individual user, never in a central database. After all what is the key to user defined...user... updated and most every user will have a slightly different picture of what that means to him/her.