Stats 16 July 2006
Rank : Prison Warden Level : 54 Percentage : 65% (+1) Forum Posts : 1,465 (+8)
Submissions Reviews Accepted : 26809 (+34) Shows : 1 Pending : 22 (+7) Episodes : 2 Denied : 124 People : 0 Total : 26955 Total : 3
Edited Guides Trusted User 157 Shows 2 Shows
Stats 15 July 2006
Rank : Prison Warden Level : 54 Percentage : 64% (-) Forum Posts : 1,457 (+4)
Submissions Reviews Accepted : 26775 (+35) Shows : 1 Pending : 15 (-28) Episodes : 2 Denied : 124 People : 0 Total : 26914 Total : 3
Edited Guides Trusted User 157 Shows 2 Shows
Searching for a solution to the problem of the huge number of person IDs that disappeared from search last month, I carried out a detailed study of this area, and confirmed some long-standing theories. As I went through a long-running show from the 1960s and searched for cast members to add, I made reference to literally hundreds of duplicate IDs nestling in a handful of British shows. These duplicates were caused by contributors who do not to use the Search For Actor Name feature when adding a star or guest, preferring to use the Manually Add a Guest Star/Manually Add a Show Star for every submission.
As you recall, for several months after launch, TV.com was adding a blank as a notional middle name to manually-added cast and crew. During this time, manually added credits did not match the true TVTome-era ID, and a new ID (in the range 372597-410906) was created.
Since the blank-as-middle-name bug was fixed, if a contributor adds the actor using the Manually Add a Guest Star/Manually Add a Show Star feature, manually added IDs match the true ID (unless the original ID has a blank-as-middle-name). If the actor has more than one of these, the system will determine which one is attached to, normally the highest numbered one, I believe, although I haven't had occasion to test that theory.
Since the blank-as-middle-name bug was fixed, however, the contributors to those shows are still managing to create duplicate IDs using Manually Add a Guest Star/Manually Add a Show Star feature. This is achieved by leaving a trailing space at the end of the First Name field when they copy and paste the name.
That's all rather complicated sounding, but here's the important bit. Every now and again, actors disappear from search. We can continue to add the credits to the correct ID even if it isn't searchable. If the search doesn't yield any results, or if it throws up some results but not the one you are looking for, find the true ID by Googling. (Personally, I Google whenever the search throws up only TV.com-era IDs from 372597 up.) If the web address of the true ID has a single-dash between names, you can safely add the name in the Manually Add a Guest/Manually Add a Show Star feature, remembering to add the appropriate Roman numeral to the Last Name field if appropriate. If the true ID has a double-dash between first and last names, just add a space at the end of the first name field and it will match, although best practice dictates that we should submit a correction to remove the blank-as-middle-name for any true (non-duplicate) IDs.
In the fortnight that we lost a substantial number of people IDs from the search, I was able to attach credits to the correct (hidden) ID in a hundred and fifty or so cases where the search showed only a duplicate blank-as-middle-name ID, and many more where there were no search results whatever.
One of the benefits (drawbacks) of the recently reintroduced person ID hyperlinks on the cast submission pages is that, when I go in to correct a single credit, I find that it is one of a batch of consecutively-numbered duplicate IDs attached to the episode. My ongoing mission is to correct the credits for hundreds of further duplicate people IDs for this handful of problem shows without doing enough to acquire the editorships, and I have flagged my concern to the current editors of most of these show guides.