FULL EPISODE SUPPORT (back to top)

Jan 26 2006:

IMDb Announcement: Full Episode Support has launched! 
From a contributor standpoint, not sure how much more I can say beyond my pre-announcement except, thanks for all the feedback, and your help in populating some of the missing areas that have now opened up will be crucial.

To give you some idea of the scope of this launch, this final build alone has taken about 32 hours and involved about 6-8 very sleep-deprived people. There are now almost 750,000 primary titles -- each episode has its own title. Among the data that needs to be filled in:

- Episode-specific plot summaries
- Episode-specific cast (we have the guest list, but we need to know if the series regulars are in a specific episode)
- Existing unmigrated episode-specific data (quotes, any crew members that failed to auto-match, etc.)
- Episode-specific connections (movie references, etc.)

Again, thanks for all your support on this, and have fun. We've got a few data issues that will take another day or two to sort out (for example, some ep-specific soundtrack data will be moving tomorrow), and I'm sure it's going to take a couple months to get some idea of where things are going, but I'm happy and excited to get this out the door for everyone to see.

Jan 19 2006:

Q: Paul Thomas Anderson's page indicates that he was born in 1970, and directed an episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975. Is that correct?
A: [I]n full episode support, this will sort into the appropriate place in his filmography (2000) and the series title appears with no year; under it, is "Episode #25.13 (2000)" -- so maybe we'll stop getting this kind of question.


Jan 19-23 2006:
Follow-up Q&As to the Announcement

Q: Loose series?
A: It won't happen immediately on launch. I'm not clear yet whether it's something we'll do ourselves once the title list has been updated, or if it's something we need help with -- I'm guessing it will be a mixture, where we deal with some of the most prominent cases (like the ones I mentioned, and Tatort, and Intimate Portrait, and maybe a few others), and we rely on contributors for the rest. But I haven't confirmed that yet.

Q: Including episode details when submitting a new title?
A: Good question. Don't know the answer yet - I'll check and get back to you. As I said, there are still some bugs in this area, so I can't determine the answer experimentally.

Q: Will the email submission system work?
A: Yes - bearing in mind the new title format using braces, of course. And some new functions, like cast/crew migration, are best handled with the online interface ("best" both because it's much simpler for you, and because our processing of it is much simpler).

Q: Will we be able to restrict searches to Main titles only vs including Episode titles?
A: Ultimately, yes. However, we're waiting until after launch to add episode titles to the search index - not sure if it's coming shortly after launch, or if it will wait until V2.

Q: Will "People Working Together" search work for episodes now?
A: Ooh, good question. I'd guess so, but unfortunately, that's another thing that's missing/broken in the testbed.

Q: Complete guest list?
A: Not at the moment, though we may add it. There are still some formatting issues being hammered out.... Requests noted.

Q: "Regular guest" split on main TV show page?
A: It's not on the test site, but I don't know yet if that was intentional or an oversight.... The distinction between cast and guest will go away. Eventually, it will go away completely; for the interim, the regular cast will be listed separately until it's been migrated to episode-specifics. I would expect that once that's done, we'll see something like "regular guests" come back to the series overview pages.

Q: Guest ordering?
A: Yup, once this change is made, the guest list will actually be folded into the cast list, so everything works like it does there - you can supply order numbers, gender changes will actually matter for people with only guest credits, etc. Not immediately clear how order numbers interact with the series regulars -- whether guest credits should begin at 1, or at {regular-count}+1, or what. I'll try to get that clarified. At the moment, you can't get both lists at once when you try to do an update - you can either "correct/delete" the guest list as if it were a cast list, or you can "Episode migrate" the series regulars, but EM doesn't let you set order numbers, and you can't do both at once (the way that you can correct+add today).

Q: WGA-supplied writer credits?
A: We haven't talked to the WGA about episodic credits yet, but it's certainly a possibility. (We had no good way to handle them before, so didn't ask for them.)

Q: Separately-listed pilots (i.e. TV movie/special) moved under show umbrella?
A: Pilots will only be converted automatically if they are already listed as episodes.


Jan 19 2006:
IMDb Announcement: Full Episode Support details

"Well, "pre-announcement" might be more accurate, but the internal beta test is nearing completion, so I can finally describe what the implementation looks like.

First, you're probably wondering, when will this launch? The answer is, soon. We've currently got 13 open bugs. Before we launch, we need to either fix them or decide that they can wait until after launch. (In fact, by writing this message I'll partially clear one of those bugs.) We're evaluating readiness several times a week.

"OK, now, what does it look like? The first thing you'll probably notice is that /name pages include specific episodes listed under TV series appearances instead of having a separate "guest" section. The episodes are listed there by title -- the "episode title" is the title if available; if not, then the season/number; if not, then the date. (If there are more than a few episodes, you'll see a summary or partial list instead of the entire list with a link to the full list.)

"If you go to a series, you'll see more subtle changes: The "guest appearances" link has been replaced by a link that will either say "episodes" or "series data", and there's a line showing a list of seasons in the text area (under the plot outline) with a "more" link at the end; all these links go to the same place, with the season numbers going to anchors within that page.

"When you visit that page, you'll see a list of episodes, each of which includes a link. Those links take you to new title pages -- yes, we've created a new title page for each of the 250,000 or so episodes we listed. This page will also include a lot more episode-specific data, like plot summaries, as it becomes available, but of course there isn't much of that yet.

"An episode title page looks a lot like the current title pages, with a few additions. First, there's navigation at the top of the page to step through all the episodes for the series. There's a link back to the series main page. What you'll probably notice most, though, is that the cast list is broken into two groups: "Episode credited cast" and "Series cast." The first list is the existing guest list; the second list shows all the cast regulars from the time frame of that episode (thus, for example, if you look at a first-season episode from "24" you won't see Kim Raver on the list).

"There's also a special link at the beginning of the "series cast" list: "Were they in this episode?" If you click on that, you'll get a special update page listing all the regular cast members, with "yes" and "no" boxes you can check to answer the question. These updates ("Episode migrate") have a special processing path that allows us to handle them more efficiently, so should not add significantly to the burden of our list managers. (This sort of thing can also be done from the name page, but I think the mechanism there is too complicated, and I don't really recommend it unless you're feeling adventurous -- though it can be useful for a series regular.)

"A note about title formats: Internally, the episode title is in braces following the series. Thus, "Friends" (1994) {The One with the Monkey (#1.9)} or "Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The" (1992) {(1 August 1995)} (exact date format subject to change). You won't see this on the main display page, only on some of the update pages; on the main display page, it's formatted a bit more neatly (details depend on whether you're using Pro or not).

"One of the open bugs I mentioned is to finish converting data, but the idea is that goofs, soundtracks, quotes, and other data tagged with specific episodes should appear under those episodes in addition to the cast and crew data (I haven't said much about crew, but it works a lot like cast -- for example, for a title like "X Files, The" (1993) where we have detailed writing credits, you'll see ep specific credits).

"Because episodes are now full-fledged titles, they can accept a lot of new kinds of data -- things like plot summaries, keywords, "movie" connections, URLs, release dates, etc. can all be applied to specific episodes (this means that some kinds of previously forbidden connections can now be applied -- for example, you can now start sending all those movie references in The Simpsons to their relevant episodes). In some cases, notably keywords, the series-level list will be inherited by all the episodes. There may be cases where this exposes some episode-specific keywords that had been at the series level; you should delete those at the series level and re-apply them to the affected episodes (one example we've used is "klingon" for the various Star Trek series).

"There's one place where episodes won't be treated quite the same, though: Message boards will still be at the series level, in order to keep a critical mass of discussion.

"As always, we'll need your help and support to make these changes as useful as possible. Once this launches, the main places we'll need data are: cast/crew migration (as described above), episode-specific plot summaries, and episode-specific title connections. Other episode-specific data, like soundtracks and keywords, would be nice, particularly for a soundtrack-driven show, but generally would be second priority. I should mention that for crew migration, the automatic process exposed a number of misspelled titles; these crew credits remain at the series level, and we'll need your help migrating them to the proper episodes. For example, if you look at the crew credits today for "X Files, The", you'll see several people credited for episode "Signs and Wonders", but the real title is "Signs & Wonders." (Please wait until full episode support launches to fix these.)

"New episodes will be created using the new title form, but will be much simpler than creating full-fledged new titles, and won't have the burden of proof for a completely new title. Again, there will be a special, more efficient processing path, and updates more than once a week. (A couple of the open bugs are around this area, so I can't walk through all the specifics just yet.)

"Also, after launch, we plan to finally clean up some "loose series" like all those Columbo movies, or the hundreds of A&E Biography / E! True Hollywood Story titles, and connect them once again as series.

"Remember that this is the first phase of a work in progress, and we expect to add a number of enhancements and refinements over the next few months. For example, episode-specific voting still needs a bit more work, so it won't be in the first phase (but it's a top priority). We're keeping the changes deliberately subtle until there's a lot more episode-specific data present. I'm interested in your feedback about what I've outlined here, or questions about anything that was unclear or omitted above. Because we are still working on bugs, some of the details above might change (particularly specific text), but the broad outline should be much as I've described."


Jan 1 2006:

"Finally, part of the reason for the delay to other projects above is because full episode support is now well on the way to launch. The team have been working hard over the last several months to prepare the way for a massive expansion in our TV data coverage. The groundwork is all complete and a working version of the new system is currently undergoing an internal beta test ready for launch in January/February 2006. This is a huge project and involves creating title pages for every episode of every TV show in the database. We will be able to list cast, crew, plot, trivia and any data on a per episode basis as well as store generic information and summaries at the main series level. We are very excited about launching this in 2006 and know that most of you will enjoy the added depth of coverage in the TV area (and hopefully help us complete the missing information)."

POSSIBLE EXPANSIONS OF THE DATABASE (back to top)

Jan 24 2006:

Kevmo:  [P]rojects in such early stages of development have generally not been eligable for inclusion in the main IMDb at all. So nothing has been lost here. The titles you're talking about which are only on IMDbPro never would have been allowed on IMDb.

And the reasons they're not allowed on IMDb remain as valid as they ever were. Maybe even more so, given the ever increasing submissions workload. Read the general eligability guide. I'd imagine by restricting updates on these tentative titles to IMDbPro subscribers only they can keep a lot of the noise out. 
A: Thanks, Kevmo has summarised the situation perfectly.

I'll also add that titles which are in the very early stages of development yet are major releases (and therefore eligible for the main IMDb site) are still present here.

Jan 17 2006:

Q: At one point as recently as two weeks ago, the 'Orbit' page was located on regualr IMDb but was moved to Pro. I am clearly interested in making as much information available to the non-IMDbPro users as possible (although I do love IMDbPro myself). Is there some critical information I need to submit to make it available on regular IMDb as opposed to only Pro?
Q: The Development Status on the regular IMDb only allows for Production Unknown, Announced, Pre-Production, Filming, Post-Production, Completed, and Released.  I don't know if this is new, but the the Development Status on Pro has all the above plus Pitch, Optioned Property, Treatment/Outline, Script, Turnaround, and Development Unknown. It seems that if the production status is one of these the title can only be seen on Pro. I would guess this means that if a title has one of these statuses only someone with Pro can see it and change its status to one viewable on the regular site.

A: New feature for Pro users only, and listed only on Pro: The rules for in-production titles are different. In addition to those new statuses, the rules for acceptance are a bit looser -- but the followup process is tighter. Every few months (sorry, forgot exact number), you'll need to either update the status of an in-production title or it will be deleted, and once it's completed, it needs to meet our normal inclusion rules.

Now that it's launched, I'll see about getting some of the relevant guides clarified a bit.


Jan 1 2006:

"Other items of note in 2005...the launch of a much-requested "in development" category for IMDb pro to enable better tracking of more speculative projects at earlier stages of their making.

REORGANIZING / SPLITTING CREW CATEGORIES (back to top)

May 9 2006:

"Breaking up the misc list is indeed on our list of upcoming projects. One major prerequisite was changing over the way we managed credits internally; that work has been completed in the last few months."

Jan 1 2006:

"The filmography credits are the last major area to be moved completely to the new processing software, the first filmography sections moved just before the holiday and the remaining ones will move over in the January 2006 timeframe....This will also finally allow the long-promised more flexible organisation of credit categories on the site itself. As mentioned in my message last year, we were intending to spin off more departments from the miscellaneous crew section in 2005, however, we decided to wait until the new procesing system was complete rather than duplicating the effort twice. 

COMPLETE PLOT DESCRIPTIONS (back to top)

Jun 24 2005:

Q: sometime a few months ago I asked whether I/we could submit complete and detailed synopses (properly headed with spoiler warnings, of course) for older films which most people have either already seen, already read about in detail, or aren't likely to seek out (or, in some cases, find anymore). And you said you would check with the Synopsis guy about this.
What have you found out?
A: I remember you asking. He didn't respond, but while this might be a nice feature, it's currently not on the list of things we want to add.

DISPLAYING MOVIE CONNECTION REASONS (back to top)

Feb 23 2007:

"we've just launched basic support for the display of the movie connection explanations."

"Displaying that information is on the list of near-term planned enhancements."

Feb 7 2006:

"... like with movie connection reasons (though at least displaying them is a scheduled enhancement, and longtime contributors know how to see them today)."

INTEGRATION OF SOUNDTRACK DATA / COMPOSER LISTING (back to top)

Mar 22 2006:

"Yes, a major revamp of the composers section is planned. Much as the acting filmographies were getting overrun with "self" credits, the composer filmographies are getting overrun with this kind of thing, as well as song credits that don't belong there."

Feb 9 2006:

"The composer section is slated for an overhaul this year (primarily to properly integrate the soundtrack section)."

Jan 1 2006:

"We also plan to sort-out the confusion caused by soundtrack credits being split over several sections of the site in 2006."