rootsmusic's profile

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Thursday, January 14th, 2021

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ATS filters don't have option to choose "null"

Advanced Title Search's filters don't have an option to choose <null>.  So if I select a filter, then it excludes any title that doesn't have data for my selected filter.

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5 years ago

So, for example, if a title doesn't have a language, it should come back for any language search you do?

Then 1326 silent films will be included for a Romanian search?

(Yikes. 4,633,773 titles come back when I remove the "Silent" requirement from that search. Do that many titles really have no language? Episodes, shorts, etc.?)

rootsmusic, might you want to be more specific about your Idea?

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@bderoes, I select many ATS filters in order to reduce the number of results.  Since filters don't have <null> as a choice, I realize that some titles are being excluded if they have no data for a selected filter.  If a title omits data for a single filter that I've selected, then its omission would exclude the title regardless of its match with the rest of my selected filters.  So my idea is intended to propose a solution.

P.S. your example is filtering for Romanian as language but the results criteria says "not Romanian".

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My search was to attempt to count all titles without languages, not to provide an example of your idea.

And you still have not provided an example either. Your reply just restated what the OP said, and I already understood. My thought is that including "null" in a field that you're refining by would not really be refining by it.

The only time I've run into trouble like you're describing is when I wanted all titles (with other constraints) and fewer than 6 votes. But IMDb doesn't (or didn't at that time) put _anything_ in the vote count field until it reaches 5. But I would say nothing is less that 6, so that seemed like a comparison failure.

So what's your example?

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Ok @bderoes, a simple example: I want to find a title's color versions in English.  But my results exclude the 1974 version because it doesn't have data for color.

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That example is probably too simple. The search is overkill; even invoking ATS is overkill.

A top-o-page search box gives 3 results:

https://www.imdb.com/find?q=carries+war

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No @bderoes, examples are intended to provide an instance.  If Advanced Title Search can't handle a simple search, then it shouldn't be called advanced.

In addition to selecting "color" in ATS, you can feel free to select as many other filters as you'd like that match the title data at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278854/ .  No matter how complex your search becomes, the single data omission will exclude this title.

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Of course it would, because you asked for things that included Color, and that title doesn't have it.

So your search is too restrictive.

If I want all the opera versions of The Barber of Seville, and think "well, it's written in Italian", restricting to Italian will omit the productions that were translated into German or English or whatever, and all the titles where no one entered the language.

If I want to do a search of all Silent films (with whatever additional criteria), and your enhancement also dumps in the films where _no_ Sound Mix has been entered, that is going to make a bigger mess for my search results than omitting the actual silent films with no Sound Mix.

If you can come up with a better example, that might help.

Or perhaps narrow your Idea to specific data types where <null> should be included.

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(edited)