As TVmaze grows larger, we get more and more users contributing to our database by creating and amending show/episode data. That's awesome, because over 99% of the edits we see are correct, leading to a more complete and accurate experience for everyone.
But every now and then there's a situation that causes various users to see a case differently. Yesterday's episode of Stitchers is a nice example: it's a special, but their website incorrectly lists it as episode 1x11. This caused a user to change the episode to a special, after which another user changed it to 1x11, after which another user changed it back to a special, and so on.
Previously, our system didn't limit the amount of edits you could make to a show/episode. It would be possible for the episode to switch back and forth between "Special" and "1x11" indefinitely, until the users gave up or we manually intervened and banned one of the users from making any more edits globally. That's not ideal, because the user persisting the longest isn't necessarily the one that's right.
Just now, we launched a new system that automatically detects such Edit Conflicts. As soon as there have been too much edits to the same attribute of the same show/episode/etc, any further edits to it are automatically locked. From that point on, only Trusted Contributors and higher are able to make further changes to that attribute.
An example can be seen when editing the aforementioned Stitchers episode at http://www.tvmaze.com/episode/update?id=266947: displaying a warning "Some of the attributes can't be edited by regular users because they're protected or have been changed too many times, indicating an editing conflict. This concerns: Episode Type (3 edits), Episode number (3 edits)".
If you see such a message, please ask yourself if the change you want to make is really correct and consistent with our policy (more on that soon!). Of course the answer could be yes, if the last person to make an edit before the attribute was locked was incorrect, and that change slipped under our radar. If so, please post a message in our Data forums and one of the Trusted Contributors will check it out, after which it should be safe for ever.
So how many edits to an attribute is too much? It varies. Some attributes like an episode's name or number never change. A handful of edits to it are justified, for example when the network re-shuffles the episodes after announcing them, but after that it should always stay the same. Other attributes, like a show's "default air time", can actually change many times throughout a show's run. Because of this, we can specify a different threshold for every attribute.
Based on your feedback in the coming weeks, we'll likely tweak the exact numbers some more. So if you encounter an attribute that's locked while you think it shouldn't have been yet, or vice versa, let us know here and we'll take it into consideration.
This change is part of a broader effort to ensure the highest possible quality for our database, while keeping the barrier to editing as low as possible. Expect more on this front in the coming months / years. In the mean time, maze on!
