The TV series The Wire only has a list of castmembers in its credits, with no roles assigned to the actors. It's easy enough for series regulars who have character names documented on the official website. But for smaller roles, it gets trickier, especially for non-actors who round out the cast.

As a specific example, in season 5 of the show, a real-life soup kitchen is used as a location of the show. The actual founders of the soup kitchen appear on the show as proprietors of the soup kitchen. They are credited in the cast, but they are not referred to by name during the episode. You would only know they were playing themselves if you had heard it as a bit of trivia or looked at IMDB where they are credited as playing themselves. In this case, should their character roles be left blank? Should they be credited as "Himself" or "Herself"? Should they be credited by identification with something like "Soup Kitchen Proprietor"? Or should the role be their own names?

In another case, former staff members of the Baltimore Sun newspaper round out the fictional onscreen staff. Occasionally, they are referred to by their first or last name. In these cases, they're not necessarily playing themselves, but characters with same/similar names. What would their roles be? Left blank? Their own full name? The name they are referred to by (for example just "John" for John Doe)? Or as "staff member"?

As an aside, I contributed the cast list for Season 5 of the Wire several years ago. At the time, to make the task easier, I took automated data from IMDB, Wikipedia, etc. and tried my best to edit it to the credits of each episode and used HBO's website and approved profiles for earlier seasons for character names. But many of the smaller roles still use the roles from IMDB, Wikipedia or other fan sites. I'm trying to fix this by doing the job properly.

Okay, thanks. I'm currently going with what I've found on other sources, and verifying when I can by watching each episode and matching names to what's mentioned in the dialogue. For the non-actors playing either themselves/characters named after themselves, I'll use their full names if mentioned in the show. If no name is given on the show, I'll look at an internet source, or use an appropriate descriptor (e.g., TV reporter, Boston Globe Staff Member). I'll use Himself or Herself only when the appearance is from a known personality (Fox News personality Nancy Grace is credited in an episode). I'll do this because it's not really helpful to credit an unknown person as "Himself" when you have no idea who he is or what role he has.

TV(dot com) has been great to me in finding role names when I couldn't make them out from the credits or watching the shows. I filled in almost all my Tales from the Crypt and a few ESPN shows from their nice list of episode guides complete with cast and roles.