Talk:IMDb

Accessing IMDb content from Wikipedia

Further information: Wikipedia:IMDb

A link to a page on IMDb about a title (a movie or a tv series), a person (actor, actress, etc.), a company, a character, or tv episode, can be made by means of five templates: {{imdb title}}, {{imdb name}}, {{imdb company}}, {{imdb character}}, and {{imdb episode}}. Instructions about the use of these templates can be found on their respective document pages. Note that these templates should be used in the "External links" section.

There is also another mean: using InterWiki by adding [[IMDbName:ID]] or [[IMDbTitle:ID]]. Just replace "ID" with the IMDb code (at the end of the URL) for a given title/person (eg. Frank Sinatra's is "0000069", and Ocean's Eleven is "0054135"). Example:

• [[IMDbName:0000069]] is rendered as IMDbName:0000069
• [[IMDbTitle:0054135]] is rendered as IMDbTitle:0054135

You can also make a piped link to use a text for the link:

• [[IMDbName:0000069|Frank Sinatra]] is rendered as Frank Sinatra
• [[IMDbTitle:0054135|''Ocean's Eleven'']] is rendered as Ocean's Eleven

This method should only be used where in-article links are needed. For the external links, the use of the imdb name, title, or company templates is preferred.

Archives
Archive 1 Archive 2 – March 2006 Archive 3

IMDb wiki

I have opened up a request for a IMDb wiki at Wikia.com. If you think this wiki is useful, please go to the request page and write {{support}} --~~~~ or if you don't think it's a good idea write {{oppose}} --~~~~ at the comment part, including any personal comments you might have like why you like it. If there are no responses from other users then it will likely be rejected. For starters the Wiki page will mostly be translations of occupations to help users to submit credits from a non English film, but it can easely extend as far as you want it to. This includes, for example, keyword explanation. I hope to see you there. --Steinninn 13:13, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The site is now up at IMDb WIkia. I invite everyone to contribute what they can.--Steinninn 16:36, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Image

Hi. It was me that change the image to the the front page, rather then just a profile page, since this is how most web page articles around here are displayed. But because of tecnical dificulties I couln't add the footnoter. Could someone upload a new version where all the front page is seen? See for example Wikipedia --Steinninn 12:10, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Hello Steinninn, I don't understand what it is you want. They look fine to me. The current IMDb front page is shown in the Info Box for the article. Further down in the article you show examples of previous styles of pages. They all have footnotes -- SteveCrook 13:18, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi SteveCrook. I'm talking about the foot-footnoter, "Copyright © 1990-2007 " and all that. I wanted to include it, but I just have a 'free download' image software. I would have included it if I had Photoshop, but I don't. --Steinninn 20:31, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Criticisms Section

There was an extensive section on criticisms that existed until January of this year, when it was inexplicably removed. This is an important part of the article. If you wish, edit the section, but do not remove it wholesale. Afabbro 07:54, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

A list is not a good wiki article. There are some interesting facts there, and it's good that you brought it back up to the list. But. There are a lot of original research that needs citation. --Steinninn 10:03, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, it was discussed here --Steinninn 10:16, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Criticisms section are not encyclopedic, they often become POV dumping grounds. Relevant criticism should be integrated into the article. Aaron Bowen 05:44, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

So should we remove it? --Steinninn 01:09, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Aaron Bowen 23:32, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

^^ 2 shills is more fun than 1 shill

Size?

The article states it's the largest online movie database. Any idea of how large? Like, how many movies are on there at the moment? 82.69.28.55 21:07, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, http://imdb.com/database_statistics 376,851 Theatrical released titles. --Steinninn ^talk 21:15, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

And 2,269,572 people! (further down the same page) -- SteveCrook 22:37, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Criticisms

NOTE: I moved this to talk I'm going to work on integrating it into the article in the next couple of days. Aaron Bowen 23:34, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Some people regard IMDb as unreliable, even by the standards of a wiki. Common complaints leveled against the site include the following:

• The 2006 transition to "Full Episode Support", as described in the section "TV Episodes" above, has seriously impaired the use of the database for TV references.

- Until all entries are converted, the main pages for TV shows may not display the Series Cast or tenure without reference to individual episodes. (e.g. The Virginian and James Drury) - This has introduced profound TV omissions in the 'actor' listings, as many 'Series Cast' actors are only credited for their 'non-regular' episode appearances on a show.

• The database doesn't accept every vote submitted for movies to be placed on the "Top 250" or "Bottom 100" list. They only count votes from "Regular Voters," and they refuse to publish the criteria for what a "Regular Voter" is. The staff claims that it is to prevent people from taking multiple accounts and voting for their favorite or least favorite films repeatedly, but many users question this claim. Accusations abound that the voting is "rigged."

• The site's listing of titles for foreign films does not list any alternate titles except under "Also Known As." This leads to problems in searching for foreign films and titles, given that many people only know their language's translations of the titles, or have incomplete information about the original titles of the films.

• Staff members gauge the validity of contributed data based on the past reliability of the contributor, as none are themselves experts in all of the significantly varied areas of film history to know what is valid themselves. The volume of submissions and the number of volunteers who submit information are therefore likely to result in frequent errors. This is especially true for foreign cinema, which the staff appear to be much less familiar with, and where credits in a foreign language or alphabet may easily be misinterpreted by members of the predominately English-speaking user base.

• Submissions of product data are processed by categories of personnel contained in the submission, meaning the data for any one film is broken up into several components and examined independently of the other components, then reassembled without checking the continuity of the whole, which may be further disrupted if one manager's section(s) is/are backlogged, an unfortunately regular occurrence at IMDb.

• IMDb follows stringent rules on displaying cast lists only according to "the order shown on the screen in the most complete cast list shown." This was one of Col Needham's earliest rules. Such complete screen cast lists are frequently based on order of appearance or, occasionally, alphabetical listings of players. In either case, the rules for listing may result in the names of a film's stars appearing well into the cast list even though a list of main actors may have appeared at the beginning of the film or shortly after the end, as well as in advertising for the film. Consequently, visitors to the site may first encounter an abbreviated entry on a film which displays a list of cast and crew members who are not major actors in the film.

• Conversely, a fixed display by categories is used instead of screen order of credits. Only the writers category allows multiple names to be listed in the order of screen appearance within its confines.

• IMDb does not follow the eastern name order, meaning that Hong Kong Superstar Chow Yun-Fat is listed in the database as "Yun-Fat Chow", for example.

• Submission policies have become more stringent over the years, and approval of new titles to be added has become more cautious, but errors still occur while the added restrictions have made it more difficult to add information to the database or correct mistakes.

• IMDb also retains the right to publish and not to publish information in such categories as a film's trivia, goofs, celebrity information, etc., regardless of how true it is. It is not uncommon for an item to be published one day, only to be removed the next; the criteria are secretive. In other cases, it can be difficult to get a demonstrably untrue piece of information removed.

• There are increasingly recurrent complaints on general boards by certain users of a severe lack of moderation for its message boards. Thus, certain users complain that irrelevant, attacking or obscene messages, and general trolling is a problem on the boards of films and personalities, as well as the board set up by IMDb for the explicit purpose of being an outlet for screed (The Soapbox). Although offensive messages can be reported with the "Report abuse form", their removal takes some time (up to 2-3 days) and only one report per offending poster can be filed by each user under a revised system introduced in late 2005, replacing a system which allowed multiple abuse reports against an offender. However, users have an "ignore this poster" option as a sop: the function blocks the message from the view of the user who has placed someone on his/her ignore list. (Of course, the offending poster's contributions remain live and visible to anyone who does not have them in "ignore" status.)

• Regular complaints can be seen on general boards that posts and accounts are being deleted without any reason (particularly on-topic posts which have not violated any of IMDb's Terms of Service), which has raised the question of whether trolls (especially trolls with vendettas against posters they do not like) or other users have found a way to delete users' posts or even accounts. (If a post or thread is deleted by an administrator, it appears in the message board as "post or thread deleted by administrator"). In response to this complaint, the board administrators comment that "the problem they describe simply does not exist. The only people who can disable accounts are IMDb staff members on the boards administration team. For instance, the possibility has been posited that specific kinds of abuse report would result in automatic post deletion, such as posts which encourage illegal acts such as online piracy. The quantity of reports has also been questioned. Another recurrent issue raised on the IMDb general boards is whether the administrators thoroughly investigate reports of abuse or instead simply delete posts or accounts without verifying that the IMDb's terms and conditions for the message board have been violated. A recent issue coming up on the boards is that legitimate complaints filed by posters of trolling committed by ill-intentioned users are being ignored by the administrators.

• The "Mini biography" section on each actor's entry has information which is often very out-of-date and in many cases unverified (such as the information in the 'Height' and 'Trivia' sections). The information regarding the most popular and established performers is often (but not necessarily always) correct, while the quality and veracity of data for less well-known players is correspondingly less reliable.

• Complaints have been made about the advertisement being intrusive, however the IMDb says that it is working with advertising enterprises to reduce the impact that ads may have on the usability of the service

• Some actors and actresses have no information associated with them. These are usually in the process of being linked.

• Studios and people otherwise involved with a particular film will cast high ratings or post applauding comments prior to its release in order to generate buzz.

• While the staff are not expert enough to confirm actors in uncredited cameo parts, they simply ignore these submissions. Follow up e-mails are ignored, which means there is no appeal or escalation procedure.

If proof is supplied and it matches the IMDb criteria for inclusion, then uncredited roles can be, and often are included. Have you had such a request refused?

The criteria for inclusion of uncredited roles are laid out at http://uk.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?uncreditedcredits

The IMDb responds to appeals made on the Contributors Help Board

-- SteveCrook (talk) 19:07, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:IMDb.Logo.png

Image:IMDb.Logo.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.BetacommandBot 00:08, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

problematic sentence?

i took offense to this sentence: "Films aimed at audiences not in this demographic are absent from the list, including Titanic, the highest grossing film of all time, and all the Harry Potter films, the most successful film franchise of all time (so far)." all this says is that the most popular movies must be the best ones and of couse the classic retort is: nazism was popular too.User:ashburn247 07:00, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

What is there to take offense at? That paragraph is actually saying the opposite to what you seem to think. It is saying that films that are very popular with the cinema going public in general might not appear on the Top 250 list because they aren't very popular with IMDb voters. It is pointing out how the list can appear to be skewed -- SteveCrook 10:25, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree with ashburn247. More importantly, the sentence in question is one editor's opinion, there is no attribution (the footnote simply links to a list of box office rankings showing that Titanic and the Harry Potter films are high-grossing): it is not verifiable and seems to be original research. It does not seem to be rational opinion, since there is no direct link between the number who have seen a movie and its IMDB score. A much more interesting (and likely, veriable though I can't remember where I read this) point to make is that the IMDB list has a bias towards recent movies, or to put it another way, a recent movie will typically enter the Top 250 list at a higher point than its final resting place. Anon user (CM) 00:29, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

The section is about the Top 250 (& other similar lists). A reference earlier in that section gives a link to the IMDb Top 250 list which explains how it is arrived at, including which votes are counted. The reference after the mention of Titanic is to the Box Office figures to show that Titanic did well at the box office. There is no link between the number of people that have seen a film and its score in the Top 250, why should there be? The box office figure counts the people that saw a title, the Top 250 counts the people that liked it. However, as is discussed earlier in the section, because of the way the IMDb selects those that are eligible to vote, the Top 250 list can appear skewed -- SteveCrook 02:50, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism reversion and a question

I reverted some obvious vandalism, but also noticed that someone removed the "overview" section also. I'm not sure it needs to be in, but no discussion of removal appears here, so I'll revert that also, and let the discussion begin. --Rocksanddirt 19:29, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

db content, copyrights issues

A lot of website are parsing, and using the content of the imdb website, is it legal to do that ?

No. IMDb has a web service and is happy to provide licensed data for a fee. See http://imdb.com/Licensing/ for details. Kirbyk 22:54, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes and no. The IMDb makes certain claims, but they have never been litigated. The authors of all contributions own the copyright in their contributions. The IMDb has no standing to make copyright infringement claims against copyists, which is why they have never litigated. The individual contributors do have the power to make copyright claims, but in practice this be unlikely to happen, and the only sanctions realistically available would be injunctions to cease the copying, since monetary damages would be difficult to prove and without registration, statutory damages are unavailable. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.216.99.100 (talk) 14:33, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

The article says that the "For automated queries, most of the database can be downloaded as compressed plain text files". Is this information up-to-date? --91.152.105.212 18:43, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, see their page about Alternate Interfaces. Particularly the section "The plain text data files". I tried the first FTP site listed and the files were dated 12 October 2007, just a couple of days ago -- SteveCrook 19:17, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

IMDb is mostly credit list information, and that can not be copyrighted. So unless they are copy pasting trivia or other hand written information it is very likely ok to do. --Steinninn 20:54, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Protection

IMDb is the most vandalized article on my watch list. Dose anyone els think it should be semi protected indefenetly. I'm not very familiar with the policy on when to protect pages. --Steinninn 02:03, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

See also

There shoulkd be a see also regarding Wikipedia's stance on citation usage from Imdb (citability issues) that new users can find. I cannot tell you how many times new users ask me to prove why Imdb isn't citable. - Arcayne (^{cast a spell}) 23:26, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Why isn't it? Is it revenge for the IMDb not accepting anything from the Wikipedia as proof? -- SteveCrook 23:59, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Preview 10 syndrome

Speaking of astroturfing, has there been any discussion of how user reviews of movies posted before they've entered general release suspiciously often give a movie a 10 out 10 rating? (A random example I happened to come across just now is the 3 November 2007 review by "greggandkristi" currently on the Enchanted page...) -- AnonMoos (talk) 01:36, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

There's been discussion of it on the IMDb, certainly in the Contributors Help board. But there's not too much that can be safely done about it. It's hard to prove they aren't genuine reviews or votes after people have seen previews or have seen the film at a festival. The hope is that as soon as it does go on general release that the reviews and votes from more "real" people will balance things out -- SteveCrook (talk) 02:32, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Contributing experience

That's twice now that 68.162.244.22 has added a comment like:

Some members who subscribe only to IMDb and not to IMDb Pro have complaints against the fact that Pro members have the rights to edit biographies, trivia, and other related information. Non-Pro members are met instead with a message advising them to "get experience" before editing or revising biographical or trivial information. As it is impossible for a member to get experience editing biographical information when they aren't allowed to in the first place, regular members of IMDb complain that they should not have to pay for these rights, especially if they are correcting false information.

That's not true, or not as stated. You do have to get some editing and contributing experience before you can edit/create certain biographical information. But you can get that experience by contributing cast or crew credits, plot summaries and in many other areas of the database -- SteveCrook 02:36, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

INTERNATIONAL Movie Database?

According to this little post on this little forum, IMDB used to stand for INTERNATIONAL Movie Database:

http://reginaspektor.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/454107688/m/2031078171?r=1891075271#1891075271

Is that true? INTERNET Movie Database is elementary, and it took me a while to get the hang of not accidentally calling it INTERNATIONAL. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.232.126.158 (talk) 21:37, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

According to IMDB's website (http://www.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?history) it started as the Internet Movie Database...not sure where that rumor came from. :-/ --Wootonius (talk) 21:52, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

They might think that - they're wrong. Ever since it's used the initials IMDb they have stood for Internet Movie Database -- SteveCrook (talk) 02:19, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Social hacks on IMDB

As of about autumn 2007 the "user comments" section has been plagued by professional promoters. Most of the new and popular films have these pay-per-favourable-comment-on-first-page feeling. This is nothing new in the internet advertisment, you hire somebody to promote. And it works.

Please help me to include this on wikipedia, help fight the bad stuff in todays internet freedom. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.196.57.178 (talk) 17:30, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Wentworth Miller

I want to write to Wentworth Miller by e-mail. Who knows his e-mail? My e-mail: anechna@list.ru —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.38.63.176 (talk) 14:47, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

IMDB as a Wikipedia:Reliable source

Whilst wondering whether I could use IMDB information as a reference I came across this conversation Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_5#IMDB which indicates that it is not. -- John (Daytona2 · Talk · Contribs) 20:35, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

See "Pot calling the kettle black" -- SteveCrook (talk) 21:02, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is quite open about not considering itself a reliable source - "Articles and posts on Wikipedia may not be used as sources" - Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_sources_.28online_and_paper.29. Is IMDB ? -- John (Daytona2 · Talk · Contribs) 22:56, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

whats wrong with it?

i tried to log in and it wouldnt let me it said unnavalibe