What is missing on shows - what needs to be added

Gadfly wrote:

For me, lightening up would be not contributing until I know my data is secure. That's as "light" as it gets. :) I would think that would be the concern of any long-term TVMaze contributor, so I don't believe I'm alone in my concerns. If you want to get dedicated contributors, you need to make sure their data is secure. I'm not going to quibble about quotes and cultural references and all. If you don't want them, you don't want them. No problem for me. But making sure the data I submit stays where it is is my number 1 priority. Not that it can be recovered if someone somehow notices that it's missing. But that it doesn't get dumped in the first place.
That's not something I take on faith, and it doesn't seem like something that right now you're interested in. I pick my database sites to secure my data the way I pick my banks: how secure they are. I don't have trouble adjusting to what you guys are doing when it comes to the entry of data, or what data you want. But if that data ain't secure... well, then we're not a good fit. Fair enough.

I think with our approach of several steps to become more and more trusted, the data is secure...1000% secure ? NO!. Nothing is 1000% secure, every bank can get hacked, the NSA can get hacked and so on.

Also one point we have completely left out so far.

I can fully understand that you want the stuff you contributed to be safe, but what if another user has better data to contribute to some stuff you already contributed ?

For example a nicer screencap, or a better written recap, or he spotted that a character is slightly misspelled....all things that can happen.

I would never be mad if another person finds a better fitting show poster and puts mine into the gallery and puts his as the main show picture. I am not perfect, I am far from that, I would gladly see my data put to second place if the one submitted is simply more fitting.

An editor has so much power that he simply can reject everything, even if it is better than the stuff he had done.

cheers
Juan

If an editor abuses their position, you deal with the editor. You no more let one case of abuse rule out the editor system, then you let one case of open-edit abuse rule out the open-edit system. Either way, if someone abuses the system, you deal with the abuser. You don't toss out the system.

I have no objection if someone wants to put in a "better" image. I'm immodest enough to think that no one will submit a better written recap. :) That, and I know not many people write recaps. But if it happens, it happens. What I don't want is the person making the submission deciding their submission is "better." Because of course, guess what they're going to be biased towards.

For instance, what if they think a 50-word recap is "better" than 500 words?

That's why you have a system involving a neutral third party. The problem isn't that I distrust you guys: it's that I distrust a small percentage of thousands of contributors to the system.

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FYI, I was "Upper Management" at TVRage. As well as an editor. So when you speak in general terms of having problems with TVRage Upper Management... well, I'm one of the people you're talking about. It most likely was before my time, but if you're going to talk about Upper Management generally... well, I'm generally going to figure you're talking about me. :)

As far as the character guides are concerned, i completely agree with Gadfly that it seems overkill to automatically have one created for every character that are listed (not to mention the amount of space that thousands and thousands of pages would take up). I think you only really need them for main cast and for the recurring cast that are in loads of episodes. So maybe set it up so main cast still automatically creates a characterpage but when adding guestcast you'd have to tick a box if you want to have one created, that way you don't have a gazzilion empty characterpages of waiter and nurse#2 out there and if someone does come along and actually have something to put into a characterpage they can always go in and edit to have that page created.

Just one more point I'd like to make for now.

We've been online for over a year and in all that time our editing system has served us pretty well. It has evolved and expanded, but the upsides have always outweighed the downsides. (FYI: we started completely blanco, without copying any existing database. Everything you see on the site now has been manually added by its users. If all of that data would have had to go through one or two people for approval we'd now have a backlog impossible to ever catch up with.)

Since tvrage went down a couple of weeks ago we've had a large influx of former tvrage users and editors. In the mean time we continue to grow for organic reasons. This might cause the circumstances to change and as a result, the system may have to be tweaked or even changed. What worked for tvrage, what worked for TVmaze a year ago, what works for TVmaze today, and what works for TVmaze in a year from now are all probably entirely different things!

I think what Juan is saying is that if you've come to TVmaze expecting a clone of what tvrage used to be, you're going to have a bad time. We're not, we have never aimed to be, and even if we wanted to make any major changes the fact that there's only 24 hours in a day means that we couldn't implement them tomorrow or next week.

But rest assured that we want nothing but the best possible environment to contribute information, that we want the information to be as accurate as possible, and that we don't want any good work to be ruined. So that's what we're always going to be working towards.

So please keep all the feedback coming (although I'd like it to become more structured than in this thread), just try to keep in mind what is and what isn't realistic to ask of us in the short term. The more tightly scoped and the more concrete a thread or suggestion is, the more likely it is that we can actually use your feedback.

Fair enough, David. But I don't think I'm arguing only on the basis of "This is how TVRage did it." At least, I'm trying not to. :)

Data security of the nature I'm talking about is fundamental to every successful database that I've worked on. And that's a lot more than TVRage. Equally, I've seen others fail because of a lack of it.

And so far, I'm just not seeing anything here that indicates "we don't want any good work to be ruined." Again, it's not because of malicious intent on anyone's part. But when you have 100, or 1000, or 10,000 contributors, the idea of "better" becomes very flexible.

To give another example, what if someone thinks official recaps are "better" than unique contributor-written ones? Or the one they found at some wiki is better. Poof, there goes my two hours of work for someone's 30-second cut-and-paste job.

I'm not trying to attack your current system. Really, promise. :) But in this instance, I don't have a concrete suggestion to give you. Or at least it seems like staff doesn't like the one I've proposed: less open-editing, more moderation. All I can say is this kind of data security is important to me. Implement it however works best for you. Or let me know that you're not and we can go from there.

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If I may make one suggestion? Ignore where someone came from when considering their suggestions. If TVRage is done and over with, bringing it up isn't going to help anyone. We've heard several times from staff about how TVRage was broken and terrible to emulate. So noted.

When I bring up issues, it's not based on just what TVRage did. I was working databases before TVRage. So telling me or anyone else, "Well, we don't do it the way TVRage does it" is kind of... dismissive. I may use TVRage as an example because obviously it's closest in my mind. And people here are familiar with it. But it's not the only source of my experience.

Let's take it as a given that I'm not just making a suggestion because I'm stuck on how TVRage did things, that I have a minimal amount of mental flexiblity, and move on from there. Okay? :)

Gadfly wrote:
Fair enough, David. But I don't think I'm arguing only on the basis of "This is how TVRage did it." At least, I'm trying not to. :)
Data security of the nature I'm talking about is fundamental to every successful database that I've worked on. And that's a lot more than TVRage. And so far, I'm just not seeing anything here that indicates "we don't want any good work to be ruined." Again, it's not because of malicious intent on anyone's part. But when you have 100, or 1000, or 10,000 contributors, the idea of "better" becomes very flexible.
To give another example, what if someone thinks official recaps are "better" than unique contributor-written ones? Or the one they found at some wiki is better. Poof, there goes my two hours of work for someone's 30-second cut-and-paste job.
I'm not trying to attack your current system. Really, promise. :) But in this instance, I don't have a concrete suggestion to give you. Or at least it seems like staff doesn't like the one I've proposed: less open-editing, more moderation. All I can say is this kind of data security is important to me. Implement it however works best for you. Or let me know that you're not and we can go from there.

I definitely get your points, but we think "right now" it is more suitable for us to continue the path we started, open-editing, as david mentioned, we are doing this for one year and didn't have one bigger problem with it.

cheers
Juan

Gadfly wrote:
If I may make one suggestion? Ignore where someone came from when considering their suggestions. If TVRage is done and over with, bringing it up isn't going to help anyone.

I'm not sure how it started, but there's a lot of "but tvrage..." in the last 3 pages from everyone involved. Either way, yes, I'd love to focus on the future rather than the past.

All of your arguments are very valid and I don't want it to seem like they're simply dismissed at all (they're mostly questions we've asked ourselves since before we started!). All I need is for the discussion to be moving in slightly smaller - incremental - steps. Otherwise it'll be a very interesting discussion, but too broad and overwhelming for us to actually respond to, and that would just cause frustration for everyone.

Hey guys,

Can someone make a readable tl:dr post regarding the conclusions of this thread?

Seems like everyone likes to write books. Full disclosure and respectfully, we* don't really have the time to read long threads like these. The best you guys can do for us when suggesting features or changes is to limit your responses and keep it to the point.

I hope you guys understand that we try to stay up to date with the forum and suggestions. But that we also need to limit the amount of time we spend here in order to get work done.

*(David and myself)

TL;DR: "No."

Which I agree on. The extreme majority of users don't need to know who turned on the coffee machine on set in the morning.

Jan wrote:
Hey guys,
Can someone make a readable tl:dr post regarding the conclusions of this thread?
Seems like everyone likes to write books. Full disclosure and respectfully, we* don't really have the time to read long threads like these. The best you guys can do for us when suggesting features or changes is to limit your responses and keep it to the point.
I hope you guys understand that we try to stay up to date with the forum and suggestions. But that we also need to limit the amount of time we spend here in order to get work done.

*(David and myself)

tl:dr ? - Most may understand what that means but I don't know hardly any abbreviations used on the internet except for LOL? Please spell these kind of things out in the future for dummies like me to know what is being said/asked please?

JAGUARDOG wrote:
tl:dr ? - Most may understand what that means but I don't know hardly any abbreviations used on the internet except for LOL? Please spell these kind of things out in the future for dummies like me to know what is being said/asked please?

You're not the only one Ron. I have no idea what tl:dr stands for? haha

ThomasNL wrote:
You're not the only one Ron. I have no idea what tl:dr stands for? haha

Thank you so much for saying so!

Dragen wrote:
Which I agree on. The extreme majority of users don't need to know who turned on the coffee machine on set in the morning.

Actually had to laugh :) Very good one...

TL:DR stands for ...Too Long: Didn't read

cheers
Juan