Quoting Ken Cole:

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  As a further step if necessary, we would require users to designate their "home" locality, and prevent contributions for profiles outside this locality, again instituting a 48-hour delay on home locality changes.

That would be pretty awful for me (and I suspect a whole lot of other Dutch users) because I order most, but not all, of my titles (Blu Rays in particular) in the UK. I would effectively be denied the right to contribute or vote on a very large part of my collection.

I'm all for leaving things as they are. The voting and contributing regarding profiles you don't own isn't all that much of a problem anyway is it? I know some of you are against it on principle, but the official view isn't against it and even knowingly accepts it.

Besides, ANY system can be cracked if you really want to. (In this case for $30. If you REALLY want to vote on titles you don't own, just buy an extra license and keep a ghost collection in that owned section)

Quoting m.cellophane:

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Quoting Mark Harrison:

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I think it should be the responsibility of a user with an incomplete profile to copy from a good profile.  It shouldn't be up to people with the "good" profile to distribute that data out to other profiles.  As long as my profiles are good, I'm content.  Why should I care if other profiles are good or not if the owners of those profiles don't care enough to add that data or copy from another profile?

Because profiles in the db which are not 'as-credited' affect the CLT results that we all have to live with.

Thanks James.  I was late for a meeting and had meant to ask what I was missing here but in my rush, I forgot. But you've answered it quite well.

That, along with Ken's clarification, have cleared this whole mess up quite well for me.  Hopefully Ken doesn't have to put restrictions in place. My vote is now changed.

And I certainly appreciate your input Ken.  It's amazing how quickly a little input from you can put out the flames of a heated debate!

Quoting Ken Cole:

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Quoting Forget_the_Rest:

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Thanks for the update! The official viewpoint is clear.
Are you able to give us a basic rundown of how this would work. Or more specifically would it prevent people without DVD/Blu-ray drives from contributing/voting?

No, not at first.  However, if users persisted in working around the prevention mechanisms, we might be forced to move to that as a final solution.

Not everyone has a DVD and/or Blu-ray drive.

Quoting Ken Cole:

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A basic initial implementation would limit contributions/voting to the contents of the Owned collection, and restrict this to items which have been in the collection without interruption for at least 48 hours.

I often contribute from a disc the day I move it from Ordered to Owned. With this plan, I'd have to wait 2 days, forget it.   

Quoting Ken Cole:

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As a further step if necessary, we would require users to designate their "home" locality, and prevent contributions for profiles outside this locality, again instituting a 48-hour delay on home locality changes.

I don't like this at all. Most of my stuff is R1-USA, but when I get Canadian releases or other regions, I should be able to contribute them. And if I have to switch from US to Canada, wait 2 days, contribute, change from Canada back to US, and then wait 2 days before I can contribute again?   

Updates for new releases take long enough under the current system. Why increase the time it takes to get the updates through the system? Well, I guess I could move my pre-orders to my Owned collection on Sunday so I could contribute them on Tuesday. 

Quoting Ken Cole:

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All that being said, I would still rather avoid implementing this as I believe the current system is superior.

I do too.

Quoting kdh1949:

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Before I would want to see this be implemented in place of the current system, I would want to know just how serious a problem this really is.  As I see it, we have one well-meaning user contributing profiles for titles he doesn't own based on a profile he does own -- across regions -- and another, also well-meaning user adding profiles to his wishlist to be able to vote yes/no to the first user's contributions.  But what I don't know is how pervasive such behavior is -- if, in fact, it is pervasive.  Unles this is (or becomes) a significant issue, I'd rather not see things changed from the current system.  Otherwise, we may end up throwing the baby out with the bath water -- an no one would be happy with the result.

I totally agree. There's a phrase that the law is a blunt instrument. If these restrictions are put into place, I believe they'll create many more problems than they solve, if indeed there really is a problem to solve in the first place.

Quoting kdh1949:

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Before I would want to see this be implemented in place of the current system, I would want to know just how serious a problem this really is.  As I see it, we have one well-meaning user contributing profiles for titles he doesn't own based on a profile he does own -- across regions -- and another, also well-meaning user adding profiles to his wishlist to be able to vote yes/no to the first user's contributions.  But what I don't know is how pervasive such behavior is -- if, in fact, it is pervasive.  Unles this is (or becomes) a significant issue, I'd rather not see things changed from the current system.  Otherwise, we may end up throwing the baby out with the bath water -- an no one would be happy with the result.

Let me come out of the closet on this topic. Yes: I am the well-meaning user who made those contributions to Black Dahlia and Black Snake Moan (and some other titles in the last few months). And thank you, Ken, the other Ken (kdh1949), Tim and James (m.cellophane) for bringing some nuance this heated debate, which shouldn't have been started at all. I've sent pm's to a few people, explaining why I updated these profiles.

The only (and ONLY) reason why I updated these profiles, is to bring some consistency in the database. This has nothing to do with deliberately trying to corrupt data of someone's collection. I am only updating titles that I own, so I can verify the cast and crew from the credits. Yes, there are some cultural differences on last/maiden name conventions. No, I don't update anime or dubbing cast for localized animation titles (thanks Tim). The discussion started out with a generalization, and ended with talking about 3 or 5 specific titles that I don't even own, or at least have no intention to update whatsoever. Try looking at it in a broader view, and not by the limits of your own particular collection or locality.

Two things surprised me:
First, people started to vote against my contributions only because I didn't own the profile, and not because the data in the contribution was incorrect.
Second, after I withdrew some contributions (and I'm not talking about the ones for Black Dahlia/Black Snake Moan), nobody went in and contributed the info from their own disc. I'm pretty sure that they are still not updated by anyone. Thanks to Dragon 6 for actually stepping up to the plate and make updates to the BD/BSM profiles I withdrew.

If you don't agree with a contribution, vote 'no' by all means. But don't run to the forum and start WWIII  . Instead, make a contribution that's better. If you do that, I'm the first to withdraw mine. My motto is: "Don't yap about it, fix it!". And that's exactly what I was trying to do.

Thanks for reading. Let's put an end to this discussion, and start enjoying the program. Watch a movie! Update a profile you haven't updated for a while! (you can sort by 'last edited', you know...)

I for one can live very well with the approach Ken has stated to prefer. If it helps getting rid of IMDb-mined data and making CLT results more accurate, I'm all for it. Especially in smaller localities, this practice will overall lead to better quality data. I deliberately said "better", not "perfect".

Users contributing to other releases of a DVD they own just have to be aware of what they're doing (and when NOT to do it), but as Ken himself mentioned, so far these were all veteran users with a good track record, so I'm not overly concerned.

Thinking about it, if any kind of restrictions were implemented, I think having the disc in the drive would be the best. This is said even though I don't currently own a Blu-ray drive. Yes it would make it a bit of a hassle (or impossible) for some but it would at least guarantee that the user owns a specific DVD-ID.

Quoting T!M:

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Quoting Forget_the_Rest:

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I for one import a lot of titles both from the States & mainland Europe.

As do I. Apart from a number of discs from my own locality, I've got lots of R1 stuff, a bunch from Australia, and quite a few from various other European localities. And then a few from even more "exotic" places like South Africa, Hong Kong,...

you can add me to this list as well. I have 233 R1, 1157 R2, 57 other locality.