Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

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3. New submissions. Here, the program doesn't say what exactly you are submitting. For instance, I submitted child profiles for Weeds: Season 2 a while back. An actor named James MacDonald appears in this season and has no birth year online. In my local DB, it automatically filled in 1906, the year a Disney voice actor of the same name was born. When I submitted the child, I had no idea what birth years were going in because the program doesn't warn.

I wasn't aware of this one.  I am willing to bet that this is where most of the bad BYs are coming from.

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What can we do about these?

I don't think there is anything we can do about it.  Ken will need to address this particular oversight.

If it would just show exactly what you were submitting, it would go a long way. I think a link on the contribution screen explaining the technical aspect of how to use birth years would go a long way, too.

Quoting Ace_of_Sevens:

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I've been working on getting all the birth-years in my local DB in line with the online one. I've discovered that most bad birth years come down to three causes.

...

3. New submissions. Here, the program doesn't say what exactly you are submitting. For instance, I submitted child profiles for Weeds: Season 2 a while back. An actor named James MacDonald appears in this season and has no birth year online. In my local DB, it automatically filled in 1906, the year a Disney voice actor of the same name was born. When I submitted the child, I had no idea what birth years were going in because the program doesn't warn.

What can we do about these?

I don't see how new submissions can easily submit birth years that are not already in the database.  One can easily submit an incorrect birth year which is already in the database but belongs to another actor (or crew).

But if I try to submit a birth year for actor John Doe, and none of the John Does in the common database have that birth year, I get a very noticeable warning.

Quoting contribution submission form:

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The contributed profile contains cast or crew entries with birth years that have not yet been accepted. Unless checked below, they will not be included in the submitted profile.

Submitted birth years must serve to distinguish between otherwise identical cast or crew members credited in this or another profile.

To include the birth years, select each below and include a supporting note in the Notes section above.

These birth years have not yet been determined as necessary and should not be submitted unless they are required to distinguish between two otherwise identical cast or crew. Submit these only if you have included specific information about both actors. If you're not sure, just leave these unchecked and submit your contribution.

[checkbox] John Doe (1966)

The last paragraph of that warning is in red; not easily missed.

Of course, one can still enter unnecessary, invalid birth years, but any submissions with new birth years seem to take a relatively long time in the review queue suggesting that they will actually get reviewed.

Invalid birth years that are in the common database endlessly bounce back into other profiles in the common database. If I download a profile that has (unnecessary) BY for, say, Joel Silver; all of the profiles in my local database now suddenly get the birth year for any Joel Silver credit that has no birth year.

If I make a change to any of those profiles and contribute that, the submission forms presents the Crew change with BY for Joel Silver if the on-line database doesn't have it in this particular profile and if I'm not aware of the invalidity of Joe Silver BY, I could be tempted to just include a note "propagating accepted BY for Joel Silver".

This mechanism is a virus!  Nowadays I don't contribute any birth years, unless I remember it's valid or check at least the birth year thread first.

I don't see how the invalid birth years will ever go away, unless Invelos removes them from the common database.  After wholesale removal, subsequent contributions for those invalid birth years (still in many local databases) would then prompt for supporting documentation.

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Quoting M_E:

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Quoting Ranavalone:
I don't see how the invalid birth years will ever go away, unless Invelos removes them from the common database.  After wholesale removal, subsequent contributions for those invalid birth years (still in many local databases) would then prompt for supporting documentation.

Does that really help? Just recently someone discovered that the documented BY for Billy West, is not the correct BY. Great... who would have suspected, that people in Hollywood don't like to talk about their age, and if they actually do, that they'll most probably lie about it?! 

I think it will.  We do have a list of invalid BY's in the BY thread.  If those are removed from the online database it will at least stop those from being propogated back unless the supporting documentation is given and good.

It would also be good if the contribution system did show you exactly what you are going to submit in a new submission.

What would also help is after the submission is done you could see what you submitted in the way the voters would see when they pressed evaluate.

Quoting Scooter1836:

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It would also be good if the contribution system did show you exactly what you are going to submit in a new submission.

Without question this would be a help, and if memory serves, it has already been requested a few times, including the option to deselect sections, you don't want to contribute.

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What would also help is after the submission is done you could see what you submitted in the way the voters would see when they pressed evaluate.

You mean on an initial contribution? It's just an educated guess, but I think this is already possible, as you can access evaluation screens through the Contribution Notes. You just have to upload you Collection first.

Quoting StaNDarD:

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What I don't understand is, why there's no official list with all BY in the DB. This should be a 'simple' query on the DB to always get the full list. This way we could go through this list and see which ones may be incorrect, discuss those in the forum and give a report if there's really no need for it. Then this BY could be removed completely from the DB.

Yes!

Quoting M_E:

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Quoting Ranavalone:
...

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I don't see how the invalid birth years will ever go away, unless Invelos removes them from the common database.  After wholesale removal, subsequent contributions for those invalid birth years (still in many local databases) would then prompt for supporting documentation.

Does that really help? Just recently someone discovered that the documented BY for Billy West, is not the correct BY. Great... who would have suspected, that people in Hollywood don't like to talk about their age, and if they actually do, that they'll most probably lie about it?! 

That would probably help a lot.  It seems that truly wrong birth years are a tiny part of the problem compared to incorrect birth years in DVD Profiler sense (there's only one actor/crew with a particular name in the common database -> the birth year in the actor/crew database is unnecessary, i.e. incorrect).