Certifications with unnecessary attributes

I agree.

Whenever I come across one of those (unneeded IMHO too) "ICAA" attributes I don't usually remove it, though, because while it is true that the ICAA issues most (nearly all) of the film certificates in Spain (default official body, hence unneeded attribute), other regional agencies are also authorized to issue valid ratings since 1997 (see section [1997] within this post), so it didn't bother me too much.

I also had the feeling that the number had been increasing recently, so in 22 Oct 2018 I counted the number of instances (736 at that time) and intended to re-count them one or two months later to assess if, as you suspect, some new contributor was adding them. However, I had forgotten about it completely until your post of today.

Indeed, the number of "ICAA" attributes has nearly doubled in the last 6 months, from 736 to 1,331 (81% more) as of 24 Apr 2019. Interesting to note that those newly added "certificates with ICAA" cover titles of nearly every year.

Wow, somebody was busy with these additions...
How exactly did you query the database to show you the amount of ratings with the ICAA attribute?

Hi, Elwood.

It can't be done via ATS. You have to look into the Extended Contributor datasets (title.certificates.tsv).

Hi, Michelle.

Thank you very much for the clarification. I usually submit Spanish certificates for films (e.g. around 200-250 during the last year), issued by the ICAA, and I had never attached the attribute. Now I see had changed the guides and the attribute seems to be encouraged. I'm sorry for not having noticed before.

Just a quick question, because there's a big inconsistency. Besides the 6 different age groups (A, 7, 12, 16, 18, X), since 2009 and 2011 respectively (and ratified in 2015) there are two special badges/tags that may accompany the rating:

• Especially suitable for children (/i).
• Encourages gender equality (/fig).
  

These tags can be attached only to some of the age groups, as I show in the table below, leading to the following 15 combinations (SPANISH RATINGS):



Here's the inconsistency. While the "children tag" is correctly (in my opinion) attached to the certificate in the drop-down menu...

...the "equality tag", according to the guide, is expected to be recorded as the attribute (fig). Both tags/badges have the same use and relevance in the law. Shouldn't both of them be represented in the same manner?

I can understand why a distinction between ICAA ratings and ratings issued by other regional agencies is asked for. But since the vast majority of ratings is issued by the ICAA, why not do it the other way around and add an attribute for those ratings NOT issued by the ICAA. That would probably be more interesting than explicitly stating the default for almost every movie.

Hi ljdoncel,

It was decided at the time that adding the additional certificates for each combination of i and fig would be a little overwhelming in the dropdown selection however I agree, we should be consistent across both. Would you recommend that each combination should be added to the certificate in its own right then? 

Regards,
Will 

Hi Elwood Blues,

Thanks for the feedback. If the rating applies to the ICAA we would prefer to capture this information as opposed to assuming that a blank attribute implies an ICAA rating, as this isn't always necessarily the case.

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Will 

Hi, Will:

Would you recommend that each combination should be added to the certificate in its own right then?

After thinking about it some time, I see pros and cons of adding all the 15 certificates...

PROs:

• Consistency: Both tags are treated equally, like does the official norm.
  
  
• Prompt access: The complete denomination of the rating (age group/tags) is displayed directly when opening the main title page (both in web and app interfaces).
  
  E.g. The Book of Life (Age group: 7 / Special tag: Children)
         -  Web:
  
         -  App (Android):
  
  
  
• Visibility (from a user's POV): Ratings' attributes need to be looked for intentionally in the film's Parents Guide because they don't appear anywhere else on the database. Any user quickly sees the "children tag" on the main page or search results, unlike the "equality tag" .
  
  E.g. Con la pata quebrada (Age group:7 / Special tag: Equality)
         -  Title page:
  
         -  Parents Guide:
  
  
  
• Visibility (from a contributor's POV): According to the ICAA, as of today there are 195 films with the "equality tag", distributed as: A/fig [76], A/i/fig [14], 7/fig [29], 7/i/fig [2], 12/fig [60], 16/fig [13], 18/fig [1]. Do you know how many (fig) attributes are currently listed in the database? Only 5!
  In other words, if searching for Spanish certificates were available (see following bullet points below), and some user would look for titles which, according to the Spanish classification board, promote gender equality, less than 3% of the actual titles would be gathered. Granted that this low percentage depends of the contributors who submit them (blame myself first), but if /fig certificates were ready for use in the drop-down menu, forgetting to add the (fig) attribute would be less likely (and unneeded).
  
  E.g. Captain Marvel (Age group:7 / Special tag: Equality)
         -  Official rating (from ICAA page):
  
         -  Parents Guide (the original contributor forgot to add the fig attribute):
  
  
  
• Searchability (regular users): Except for USA, titles can't be search/filtered by certificates via ATS, but at least the results page displays the certificates in the user's country (set in preferences) if available. So, if some user is looking for recent animation films with the "children tag", at least they can do a more generic search and go down the list cumbersomely picking the titles of interest from the results (e.g. 2,289!! animation films in the last 3+ years only).
  
  This process, laborious yet feasible, can't be done in any way for titles with the "equality tag". (which is somewhat fortunate, because try to find 5 instances from a list of more than 410,000 titles! ).
  
  
• Searchability (advanced users): Veteran fellow users and contributors know that I told a little lie when I said that titles can't be filtered by non-USA certificates. It indeed can be done by tweaking the parameter certificates=  of a generated search URL.
  E.g. Films with rating "USA:PG-13": [here].
  Looking at the URL, if we remember some html-codes (colon: %3A, slash: %2F), we can manually adapt the search query to our interests...
  
  
  ...Films with rating "Spain:7/i": [here]
  
  Therefore, with a bit of expertise, titles with the "children tag" (Spain: A/i and Spain:7/i) are actually searchable. However, since "/fig" certificates don't exist, this method isn't valid for titles with the "equality tag" either. If they were in use, the parameter certificates=ES%3A12%2Ffig would display "all the titles not recommended for viewers under 12 that encourage the gender equality" (Spain:12/fig). Such a query (getting films that promote gender equality according to the Spanish board of classification) is impossible at the moment.
  
  
• Excess of attributes: Given that the new policy is that the attribute (ICAA) be added to every film whose certificate is issued by the ICAA (in practice, >99% of titles), all the films with the "equality tag" would bear at least two attributes (ICAA, fig) that represent different concepts (official body; content), not to mention when in the future may have titles with more attributes, e.g. (re-rating, 2019, ICAA, fig) (update, year, official body, content). I agree this is a minor factor, since titles with the (fig) attribute are just a few.
  

CONs:

• Overwhelming drop-down menu: I agree with you that, to make the list of available Spanish certificates complete, 7 new certificates should be added (Spain: A/fig, Spain: A/i/fig, Spain: 7/fig, Spain: 7/i/fig, Spain: 12/fig, Spain: 16/fig, Spain: 18/fig), raising the number of total "Spain:" certificates (historic+in force) from 15 to 22.
  Currently on there are 562 different certificates in use (i.e. used in at least one title), pertaining to 73 regions. The countries with most different certificates are USA (34), Finland (26), UK (25), Canada (21), Japan (20), and then Spain (15) is tied with Australia and France.
  
  
• Rating meaning: I believe the problem is not so much the number of certificates (as I've shown above) but that the contributor who's adding them to a film doesn't have the definition/meaning of the ratings readily available. E.g. a title suitable for all audiences may fall into one of the following certificates: "T", "A", "A/i", "A/fig", "A/i/fig", "TP"... so a certain confusion can be understandable. Ideally, if the drop-down menu looked something like this...
  
  ...mistakes like the current certificate of Captain Marvel could be avoided.
  

I don't know... Cheers!


ETA: Now I realize that there's no need of using html-codes to tweak the search... You can enter certificates=ES:7/i  directly.

Thanks ljdoncel, this seems like a no-brainer then. I've added the 7 additional certificates now and converted all live instances of (fig) attributes to the new certificates including Captain Marvel. I'll also update the submission guide to include the new certificates shortly.

Regards,
Will

Thank you very much, Will!

I've now updated the submission guide with the new certificates.

Regards,
Will