Man and Superman
Posted by tim in Policy Change on March 4th, 2010
We view Superheroes and their alter-egos as two separate characters (as opposed to one character with two different names).
Sometimes, Superheroes and their alter-egos are manifestly distinct personalities – bumbling, clumsy Clark Kent vs. Self-assured, confident Superman, for example, and most of the time the alter-ego is literally playing a different character to disguise their superhero status. With this in mind, here is the updated Superhero character policy:
1. Unless otherwise displayed in the credits, character names for Superheroes and their alter-egos should be separated by a slash on the site (i.e. Bruce Wayne/Batman).
2. If the character names are displayed differently in the credits, the ‘as credited onscreen’ rule applies. Example: If Christian Bale is credited as ‘Bruce Wayne – Batman’, in the next Batman movie, then that is what will be displayed on the site.
3. If only one character name is displayed in the credits (either the Superhero name OR the alter-ego name), the ‘as credited onscreen’ policy again applies.
4. Where no superhero/alter-ego names are credited onscreen, one or both may be submitted.
5. In the rare cases where no screen credit exists in any capacity (i.e. both actor and character names are missing), one or both character names can be submitted with an ‘uncredited’ attribute.
It has also been agreed that alter-egos should have their own character pages. This will be implemented soon.
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Certificates
Posted by tim in Uncategorized on February 19th, 2010
Although it seems like the perfect place for it, there’s no need to put the MPAA reasons for a movie’s rating in the “attribute” section of the certificates form. We get that info direct from the MPAA so you can save yourself a job (and us) by leaving it out.
What’s in a name?
We list people on the site by their professional name (stage name, best-known public name, what have you) and this, obviously, isn’t necessarily their real name. If you happen to find out someone’s real name, please don’t try to change their name on the site with a “name correction”. Instead add it as their “birth name” under Biographical Information.
And while we’re on the subject of names, one of the many fun things that the Interwebz have taught us is that very few of us have unique names. Please be careful when you spot that Ethel Doofenshmirtz was the costume designer on a French film made in 1930 that she really is the same Ethel Doofenshmirtz that we have listed. Take a quick look at her page – if her credits are as a stunt performer in American films in the 1990s, the chances are very high that it’s a completely different woman, no matter how rare the name. We have tools that can help us spot these anomalies, but you can help us greatly by having a quick delve and seeing if you can resolve the complication yourself.
URLs for external reviews – TV series
If you’re sending us links to reviews of TV series, please remember to send them to the right place.
- if the review is of an individual episode, send the update from that episode’s title page
- if the review is of a whole season, or of the entire series, please send it from the main title page for the series
Movie Connections – top tip
Please take a look at the Movie-Connections (movie-links) guidelines for how to connect a series of
movies.
If you have Movie A and it has two follow-ups, you may think it is correct to
just add those two movies to Movie A with “followed by” connections. That
would be incorrect. What you would end up with would be:
Movie A followed by Movie B
Movie A followed by Movie C
On the site, Movie A and Movie B would be connected, and Movie A and Movie C
would be connected, but Movie B would not be connected to Movie C.
The correct way to submit the connections is to go to the page for Movie A and
submit that is is followed by Movie B. Then go to the page for Movie B and
submit that it is followed by Movie C. What you would end up with is:
Movie A followed by Movie B
Movie B followed by Movie C
Our software will automatically make the connection between
Movie A and Movie C.
Think of a series of connected movies like links of a chain, each one
following the previous one.
The submission guide can help answer questions, and many experienced people
are available to help on the contributors help message board.
Links to YouTube clips on name pages
Are you submitting links to YouTube clips of yourself for your name page? Rather than sending in links to loads of individual clips, it would be much easier for other users to find stuff if you collect all your clips together onto one YouTube channel and send us the link to that instead.
Color info
It’s perfectly fine to add an attribute to note the color process used. Common examples are:
- (Metrocolor)
- (Eastmancolor)
- (Fujicolor)
- (Technicolor)
But please note that Technicolor was only a process until the mid-70s, after which they only processed Eastman/Kodak, so these should go to the technical list.
A mistake we often see is to add the name of the film laboratory as an attribute in the Color Info list. These should go to the technical list. Common examples of labs would be DeLuxe, Rank and Movielab.
Also note that in most cases we don’t accept episode level color data except where special episodes are different from the rest of the series.
Spelling
We recently noticed that for a good long while we’ve been spelling the abbreviation of “microphone” as “mike” instead of the more commonly used “mic” in the pull-down menu for goof submissions. From 14 January 2010 it will be changed. For reasons of consistency, you understand.
Happy New Year
That is all.
Top 200 Contributors for 2009
Posted by Col Needham in General on January 1st, 2010
This is a quick note to announce the top 200 data contributors to IMDb for 2009. The list and more details have just been posted on the IMDb message boards — thanks and Happy New Year from everyone at IMDb!
Happy Holidays
Thanks for all your contributions throughout 2009. We’ll be operating with a reduced staff over the Christmas and New Year period so it might take longer than usual for us to check and approve your submissions. Please bear with us – we’ll all be back in 2010 full of vim, vigour and far too much festive food.