The IMDb has been "improved"

It seems that we have on our hands yet another case of somebody
deciding to fix something that wasn't broken. The IMDb seems to
be somewhat reformatted, with every episode of a tv series now
comprising its own entry, the "guest cast" entry for tv shows having
simply vanished, and for actors all appearances are now lumped

Roy Knable...

It does give them the opportunity to allow individual reviews of
episodes rather than whole shows, which should allow them to compete a
bit more with TV.com. I suspect that's what this is about, competition,
and not just a whim to change.

together rather than separated into (1) movie roles and cast
membership in tv series and (2) guest appearances on tv shows.

BreadWithSpam...

It always seemed kind of silly that IMDB lacked an
episode guide. Once one had used it a little while
and figured out that the "guest appearances" covered
that, it wasn't bad or hard to use - just somewhat
less than obvious.

Having an explicit episode guide - maybe ultimately
getting episode plot summaries, air dates, etc. will
be an improvement.

But I'd really like to see the guest apparances come back.
That was one of my favorite things about IMDB.

And you just *know* that any requests for a "classic format"
option will just be ignored...

Lord Vader III...

Actually, they weren't ...

Read the #2 complaint.

Ian J. Ball...

Thanks for posting this!

Ian (You are my new Lord, Vader. ;> )

wdstarr...

I can't register right now, as I'm using a text browser and they
want me to do the

To validate your IMDb registration, please enter the name of the
movie or person shown in the image below and press the "Submit"
button

thing... could you post the relevant entry here? Thanks.

shawn...

This is the response:

Thanks for all the feedback so far on the episode launch. We're
starting a new thread to ensure everyone reads the latest details and
ceases to complain about things we've already fixed or are in the
process of fixing [[smile]]

The #1 complaint regarding the changes is that some people do not like
the way all TV credits are now included along with the movie credits
on the /name/ pages. On the other hand, for those people who do like
the new system, this appears to be their favourite feature so it
presents us with a dilemma! Since it is very much a personal
preference, we're currently working on making it a site customisation
option. The default view will remain as it is today with TV and movie
credits listed together, however, for those who prefer the old style
presentation, we'll provide an option on
credits separated out as before. We're also looking at a second
customisation option which controls whether we limit the specific
episode details to 5 episodes or whether all are displayed. Since
these are relatively large changes, we anticipate it will take a few
more days before they can be tested and deployed. We appreciate your
patience in the meantime.

The #2 complaint is the disappearance of the complete series guest
listing which provided the option for people to search an entire
series for a particular actor or character. We've created a new page
to restore this functionality and it's live now. For example, please
see:

At the moment this page is only available by clicking the link
labelled See Episodes Cast at the top of the episode list subpage. In
our example case of "Lost" this is at the top of:

From tomorrow the epcast page will be available via a new link in the
lefthand side of every TV-series page labelled episodes cast. The new
page also includes episode plot summaries where they are available and
so represents an upgrade over the old guest page.

We are also busy addressing various comments regarding the episode
submission process itself and fixing bugs there too. We'll provide
updates via replies to the specific issues in the Contributor's Help
board.

Thanks again for your support during this transition.

Col Needham
IMDb founder & managing director

On Friday this was added:

The next phase of this launch went live earlier today -- we've created
a new "by type" name page which separates the TV, video and video game
credits from the other acting credits. It is accessible via the "by
type" link in the left hand side of the /name/ pages. For example:

Early next week we'll add a preference which allows you to select
whether you see a standard /name/ page or the new /filmotype page
whenever you search for or click on a person's name on the site.

Col Needham
IMDb founder & managing director

Frank Swarbrick...

Hmm, I just took a look and I rather like it, actually. The only thing
that I'd change offhand is that TV Episode (guest) entries should have
the full date and not just the year.

Anyway, if you click the "TV series" link under Filmographies (on the
left side of the page) you can see just the TV episode guest roles.

wdstarr...

Even then it's a godawful mess. And how does one do the inverse of
that -- get a listing of movie and regular-cast tv series for an
actor *without* the super-clutter of guest tv apperances?

Willow Ufgood...

It's much worse that that... for imdb submitters, that is. There is no
such thing as a cast "regular" anymore. Meaning that the regular cast
of a series must be entered again and again for each and every episode,
along with the guest stars.
I know this because I just learned the hard way.

shawn...

Ugh... I can't see why they made that change. It's going to make it
much harder to parse the data when looking at someone's entry. Now you
have to do a bit of additional work reading through the entries to see
what is a series role version an episode role.

As for the Guest Cast entry for TV shows those still exist. You have
to do a bit of additional work though to see them. For "Lost" they
have a new entry called "Season" at the top of the page after the Plot
Outline. Clicking on Season 1 brings to a listing of episode titles in
season one. Clicking on an epsiode title brings you to the entry for
that episode which includes the Episode Cast (guest cast), the Series
Cast and then all of the other people involved in the show.

So they haven't lost any data, but they have made it more difficult to

wdstarr...

Right, I knew that; I just didn't feel like going into gorey detail
in my whine^W complaint^W report. Yeah, that's it, report...

It's still a pain in the ass. All because some committee of nimwits
never heard about leaving well enough alone.

ANIM8Rfsk...

And since I just finished watching SMALLVILLE I went and tried to check
tonight's episode, and it's guest cast is completely wrong, as is it's
episode numbering. Well done guys.

Stan Brown...

And couldn't learn from the web-search example.

I suspect the basic issue is that IMDB's Web programmers were bored
and had too much time on their hands. A book I read long ago, /The
Organizational Imperative/, pointed out that any organization or sub-
organization quickly develops one primary goal: the preservation of
itself, even if that conflicts with its stated purpose. So IMDB's Web
programmers essentially said to themselves "Hmm ... this is running
smoothly, and we're not needed any more. Better find some way to
'improve' it and justify our jobs."

At least, that's what I suspect happened.

ANIM8Rfsk...

Except they haven't been bothering to put up updates and new entries for
weeks, maybe months. Maybe they were busy making things worse.

use.