Little bit of a can of worms, huh?

Ok, well thanks for the welcomes and advice.

What I have garnered from these responses is that accuracy is king, and I know accuracy can be pretty damn time consuming. As mentioned, it was desirable, but not exactly essential at DVDSpot. Many of the cast lists I added there were taken from external sources like HKCinemagic / HKMDb / Koreanmovie.com etc (not IMDb so much, as their listings for foreign actors are really quite bad).

I promise I won't do that here!
I think I have about 40 or 45 profiles to add, therefore it may wisest for me to do this (upload the new profiles) in stages.
I can add basic profiles pretty quickly, with limited info, and then edit the profiles later to include cast and crew / cover scans / whatever else. I do seem to have a bit of OCD when it comes to getting things right, and it's irritated me a little already that some entries are missing release dates, have the wrong currency, don't have cast lists or cover scans etc.

But this latter part may have to wait until I have time to get each disc, stick it in the PC, and trawl through the end credits.

One more question, regarding cover scans:

5) When I uploaded the Hitchcock boxset profile, I tried to include a pic of the box front (I was still in DVDSpot mode). However, the "include scans" option was greyed out. Now, it wasn't a proper scan, but a downloaded image, and not massive (probably 500px tall) but accurate. I didn't see anything in the contribution rules that explained why the "include scans" option would be unavailable. Is it because downloaded images are not allowed? Must all cover images (for upload) be scanned in, and must they be scanned using the software's own scanning options?

Ta!

Quoting ClemBones:

Quote:
One more question, regarding cover scans:

5) When I uploaded the Hitchcock boxset profile, I tried to include a pic of the box front (I was still in DVDSpot mode). However, the "include scans" option was greyed out. Now, it wasn't a proper scan, but a downloaded image, and not massive (probably 500px tall) but accurate. I didn't see anything in the contribution rules that explained why the "include scans" option would be unavailable. Is it because downloaded images are not allowed? Must all cover images (for upload) be scanned in, and must they be scanned using the software's own scanning options?

Ta!

As Giga says, the only time I've ever seen the "include cover scans" greyed out is when there is no image attached to the profile.
So it's odd that you wouldn't be given the option. How did you add the images to the profile? Did you drag and drop or copy and paste or some other way?

And judging from your list of external sources you enjoy your Eastern films, so just to let you know - if you have a film that doesn't have credits in english, then you're allowed to use external sources for cast and crew then - just find a few of them that agree to support your contribution. And don't ask about last names/family names!! 

Quoting Giga Wizard:

Quote:
Why threatning? 

Quote:
i promise to stop contributing, happy?

I wasnt threatning, i emphasized my point. I make new profiles based on an existing one, if people dont want me to contribute, i wount. I'm not going to go the lenght of deleting all cast/crew just to contribute and re add them. Call me lazy, but the most important thing with DVDP is my local collection and how complete i can make it. I contribute to help others, if that isnt the case, there isnt a reason to contribute.

Quoting Giga Wizard:

Quote:
If possible take your cast and crew from the US R1 or UK R2 or Netherlands R2 locations? By now you should already know what contributions to trust or not. It is so simple:

Download the profile

Edit the downloaded profile, go to Cast

Right click on the cast list

Copy all Cast

Close the downloaded profile

Edit your local profile

Right click on the cast list

Paste all Cast

repeat the same steps for the crew

With existing profiles i do that. With new profiles i copy an existing one, countries i use are:
Norway (very good profiles), Sweden, Denmark, UK and US (in that order). If all those fail i consider other localities.
First 3 are because pretty much always they have the exact same disc (only have to check many of the fields), if those arent available i check US / UK cause those are usually the CoO's.

Quoting northbloke:

Quote:

And judging from your list of external sources you enjoy your Eastern films, so just to let you know - if you have a film that doesn't have credits in english, then you're allowed to use external sources for cast and crew then - just find a few of them that agree to support your contribution. And don't ask about last names/family names!! 

That's fair enough, when I get round to that part, I'll check the discs first, but failing that, I'll try to submit multiple agreeing sources.  Appreciated.

And yeah, I know the script with the East Asian names. I've set my collection to display surname first for this very reason. The likes of IMDb do my head in. I understand the reasoning - when East Asian names that are written correctly (family name first), I've seen western people applying the western order to them many times, e.g. wrongly assuming "Kitano" is his first name and "Takeshi" his surname.

I'm so used to it now, that I usually recognise Chinese / Japanese / Korean names family names and can work the order out, but HKCinemagic is great for this, because they bold the family name, even when including any English first names, e.g. Alexander Fu Sheng.

A lot of my contribs to DVDSpot were either informing them that they had the names the wrong way round, or that they had multiple entries for the same person with slight spelling variations.


Quoting DJ Doena:

Quote:

Quoting ClemBones:

Quote:

5) When I uploaded the Hitchcock boxset profile, I tried to include a pic of the box front (I was still in DVDSpot mode). However, the "include scans" option was greyed out. Now, it wasn't a proper scan, but a downloaded image, and not massive (probably 500px tall) but accurate. I didn't see anything in the contribution rules that explained why the "include scans" option would be unavailable. Is it because downloaded images are not allowed? Must all cover images (for upload) be scanned in, and must they be scanned using the software's own scanning options?

I never knew that either until the day before the day before yesterday but then I had the very same problem and it lies in the bolded text. If you don't have a back cover contribution mode won't allow you to contribute covers.

Simply copy the front cover in the back cover section and then you can contribute the cover(s).

Ah, ok. Gotcha.

Quoting 8ballMax:

Quote:
Nobody said you have to delete anything. All that should be done is verify that what you copied is what is actually in the film's credits...nothing more. If there are differences, then make the appropriate changes if you are going to contribute to the online. What is so hard about that? 

You seem to be missing my point. There is nothing hard about that, but what it is, is time consuming. I'm not about to start a fulltime job making contributions, so the first and foremost priority is to get my own db correct. If i'm going to use time to do full audits, i will have 100 empty profiles in my local DB. See it like this, i do few hours every week. I can use that 2 hours to do 10 contributions (with cover scans and all) or 1 contribution. Naturally i want 10 good profiles, then 1 very good one. Now if i want to contribute those 10 (as i always do) i would have to delete the cast and crew to satisfy users that will never even use them. because a vast majority of the contributions i make are new profiles. I do not have the luxury to use time on one profile. I have 14 empty profiles and over 100 cover scans i need to do before that.

Quoting 8ballMax:

Quote:
No, I'm not missing your point. Your point is that you can't be bothered. Fine, load your local DB with garbage but leave the online database alone by NOT contributing.

Are you saying that i should stop contributing profiles that are acceptable to the database by the screeners?

Quoting hal9g:

Quote:
They would not be acceptable to the screeners if they knew you were using anything except the actual film credits for the cast and crew!

I do not lie or intentionally break the rules. I always write down that i have copied the credits from a DVD of diffrent locality. If Ken or Gerry would say copying the credits isnt ok, i would immideatly stop doing do.

Quoting hal9g:

Quote:

Copying from other profiles is a time saver, but only because you don't have to re-enter each and every credit manually.  And I believe Ken has stated that it is OK to do this, however, I do not believe he meant it's OK to do it blindly and not check those entries before submitting them.

Ditto.