Talk:List of highest-grossing film directors

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This article was nominated for deletion on 30 December 2010 (UTC). The result of the discussion was keep.

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# of films is not accurate[edit]

The-numbers website's table includes films not released yet in the count when they don't contribute to the box office gross.
For example, Spieldberg has 34 films as director (35 minus Duel): https://www.the-numbers.com/person/135430401-Steven-Spielberg#tab=technical
James Cameron has 10 films: https://www.the-numbers.com/person/23100401-James-Cameron#tab=technical
The # of films should be the entries that make up the total gross, not including future projects. Estariel (talk) 15:44, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

This is one reason The Numbers (website) is not a particularly good source for lists like this. The easiest solution would be to remove the number of films per director (along with the average gross, obviously) entirely. That would mean sacrificing context, however. I agree that unreleased films shouldn't be counted, but that is for some inexplicable reason how the cited source does it. TompaDompa (talk) 15:53, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I propose correcting it, if we know it's wrong. The source would still be The Numbers, but using their detailed list of grosses in each director's profile. Estariel (talk) 17:04, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We can't fabricate data because we disagree with the approach the source is using. I think including unreleased films is a very strange way of doing it, but it's not wrong, per se. Or perhaps more accurately, there is no single "right" way of doing this, because there are a bunch of judgment calls involved. Should movies that were released direct-to-video be included? What about television films? Films released only on streaming services? Should short films be included (and where is the cutoff between that and a feature film)? Documentaries? Ultimately, it's not up to us Wikipedia editors to decide where to draw the line – we leave that to the sources. TompaDompa (talk) 19:18, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I don't understand the judgment calls you're referring to. Is it not a given in a table ranking box office grosses that the count of films should only be those contributing to that gross? If a director has $10 billion of total grosses, the count of films is the population that is part of that $10 billion. If a film is direct to video or made for TV and has no gross, it isn't counted in a chart for total grosses. I'm not suggesting making up a source. The source is still the-numbers which lists the # of films that have grosses for a director. Simply counting that number isn't fabricating data. Estariel (talk) 01:17, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also I had questions in another box office page earlier, where grosses from the-numbers and boxofficemojo are adjusted by editors because there are known issues with the source. So editors are not supposed to just blindly copy from the source even when you know there are issues. Take the Russo brothers for example, the-numbers lists Joe Russo to have 9 director credits on the summary page, which is where I'm assuming the "9" in the current table on this page came from, but in his actual detailed credits page, there are only 8 director entries (not to mention only 6 actually have box office numbers). There's no source supporting the 9 on the summary page and just taking that number would be wrong. Estariel (talk) 01:41, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We don't have to follow the sources uncritically, which is why removing the number of films per director (along with the average gross) is an acceptable course of action, but we also can't pretend the source says something it doesn't. We don't have a license to extract data from the source and interpret it according to our own criteria—on the contrary, WP:No original research prohibits it.

As for the Russo brothers, The Numbers (website) also credits them with a different number of films (9 for Joe, 8 for Anthony) at the list of directors. Like I said, it's not a particularly good source. Really, we shouldn't even have this article unless we can find a better source than that. TompaDompa (talk) 22:34, 29 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

So I'm not suggesting that we pretend the source say something it doesn't. I'm suggesting that we use the detail data, which is from the same source, instead of their summary when we know it is problematic.

For the Russo brothers, that's my point. The Numbers credits Joe with 9 on the summary page, but the underlying data on their own site only has 8 credits for him. That is still from The Numbers, not a different source. Their own data shows that 9 is incorrect and we should adjust it instead of transcribing a known error onto this page. Also, being able to count public records is not original research. In the case of Joe Russo, the source would be this instead of the summary page.Estariel (talk) 20:44, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You have convinced me that we shouldn't use the movie counts (nor, consequently, the averages) the source provides since they are not even self-consistent. I have removed those figures from the article. This appears to be a garbage in, garbage out-type problem that is not fixable within the confines of Wikipedia's WP:Policies and guidelines. TompaDompa (talk) 01:37, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]