Main cast listed under guest cast

MAT13 wrote a year ago: 1

When you go and chec characters under some show, lie, for example this...

https://www.tvmaze.com/shows/909/perry-mason/characters

...you can see that main cast is listed twice. Both under "Main Characters" and under "Recurring Guest Characters". I've been noticing these things since I joined the site and I always found it weird, but only now do I realise that this is a bug of some sort. There is no reason why main characters should be listed one more time with all the rest under under recurring guest characters.

Okay, I see the problem... main characters are incorrectly marked as "guest" in one episodes which makes them appear under both main and guest characters. But shouldn't there at least be a different number of appearances in such cases?

If a character was main in say first 3 season and total of 66 episodes, but then appears in season 8 as guest character, s/he shouldn't be added under both main and guest characters with 67 appearances, but 66 as main and 1 as guest, no?

david wrote a year ago: 1

No, the amount of appearances is intentionally tracked on the character level, so it's the sum of both main- and guest-appearances. Otherwise the appearance count would be way off for characters that start off as guest cast but are promoted to regulars after a few seasons.

MAT13 wrote a year ago: 1

@david wrote:
No, the amount of appearances is intentionally tracked on the character level, so it's the sum of both main- and guest-appearances. Otherwise the appearance count would be way off for characters that start off as guest cast but are promoted to regulars after a few seasons.

So it is okay for them to appear under both main and guest appearances with sum total number of appearances listed under both? If character is prominent guest character, s/he will appear among top of guest cast, and if he's more prominent main cast, s/he will appear there. Often because the sum is see, we see duplicate of main cast listed first under guest cast as well even if they were only guest once. Well, okay, I just thought there could be a better way to display this. Thanks for the reply.