For a very long time we’ve kept actors’ names out of plot summaries, preferring to refer only to the characters they play. We asked around and found that many people would actually prefer that we allowed them – it makes it easier to figure out who’s who – so from now on:

• if you wish to you can include actors’ names in plot summaries (eg,” The plot then follows the life of a simple farmboy, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), as he and his newly met allies…”) but only for completed titles
• they should be linked in the usual way using the (qv) notation – eg ‘Mark Hamill (I)’ (qv) – see the guide for more information
• unfinished titles, animated titles, video games, and (uncredited)/(credit only)/cameo roles are all still excluded
• we’re limiting the name links to principal cast members
• this change applies to plot summaries only – plot outlines (the short version) should still just refer to characters
• it’s completely at your discretion – if you don’t want to include names, then please write your summaries as you always have
• this new policy applies only to summaries you have written yourself – please do not edit other contributors’ plot summaries to include this newly-allowed information

If you want to discuss this policy with us and with other contributors, please feel free to join in with this Message Board thread.

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For a very long while we’ve been distinguishing the episodes of chat shows by their broadcast date or episode number but it occurred to us (as it had to a great many of you) that a far better way would be to list the main guests in the title. So, from now on, that’s what we’ll be doing.

This means that the episode of the Letterman Show which would previously just have been known as “you know, that one they showed on the 17th of March” is now known as

“Late Show with David Letterman” Gerard Butler/Mindy Kaling/Free Energy (2010)

Note that we list the main guests and the musical guests.

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Tricky blighter, Johnny Chat Show. With the USA being wide enough to contain several time zones it’s possible for the same  TV show to be shown on different dates if it’s aired in different time zones either side of midnight. Some broadcasters stick to the convention that the East Coast release date has priority, regardless of any other considerations, but leads to some confusion and disagreement when trying to settle on a definitive release date for our purposes.

To save that confusion and the consultation of rules and opinions, we’re going to rigidly apply our “earliest release date” rule to TV chat shows just as we do with everything else. This means that the release date for a chat show is the earliest date on which it was shown, no matter which region that happens to be in.

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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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We’re about to make a behind-the-scenes change to the way we store titles which, to be honest, most users won’t notice but which will affect some submitters.

For years we’ve followed the standard practice of moving articles (the, a, an, etc) to the end of titles when we store them in the database. So, for instance, The Godfather (1972) has been stored as Godfather, The (1972) since… well, since forever. We even used to display it like that, although astute users will have spotted that we now swap the articles back into place for display (but only for titles in English). The advantage of all this article swapping is that it makes it easier to sort titles alphabetically but the disadvantages, especially when dealing with non-English titles, are many and varied.

The time has come, we’ve decided, to bite the bullet and store titles as written.

Little will change on the site because we display English language titles “naturally” anyway but it will make a difference in some places:

• submissions - if you refer to a title in a submission (including submitting a new title) you will now need to enter it in its “natural” form rather than swapping the article. For the majority of submitters this should be more intuitive and more straightforward.
• display - Non-English titles will display properly, so that, for instance, Buono, il brutto, il cattivo., Il (1966) will become  Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo. (1966) and Boot – The Making of, Das (1981) will be stored and displayed as Das Boot – The Making of (1981) just as nature intended.
• “browse” pages – we don’t sort titles alphabetically in many places, but where we do (the various Browse pages or MyMovies, for instance) The Godfather (1972) will now be sorted under T and Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo. (1966) under I.
• ftp files – if you download our list files from the ftp server you need to be aware that the sort order of the titles will change in case this affects the way you use them.

The change will affect around 10% of the 1.3 million titles in the database and we’re hoping to make the swap during the day on Tuesday 7 April so that they’ll be visible on the site when the new version is published on Wednesday 8 April.

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A little while ago we made a slight policy change in the Spouse section of our name pages. Previously we only recorded details of “marriage” in the commonly understood, old fashioned sense, but we are now accepting all legally recognized partnerships (marriages, civil partnerships, domestic unions, etc – the exact terms vary by jurisdiction). The submission guide has been updated to reflect this change but the gist is: if it’s legal, we’ll record it; if it’s not formally recognized by the local authorities, we’ll take it as a biographical trivia item.

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