Changes to formats supported for creating links within contributions

Today, Wednesday 15th November 2017, we will begin the roll-out of changes to the types of linking formats supported within our contribution interfaces.

Currently within our contribution interfaces we support two types of linking. They are:-

• [link=nm1234567] for names and [link=tt1234567] for titles.  This is our modern linking method, which utilizes the unique identifier for each name or title in the database (which can be harvested from our URLs).

• 'Tomoyuki Tanaka (I)'(qv) for names and _"Buffythe Vampire Slayer" (2001) {Once More, with Feeling (#6.7)}_ (qv) for titles. This is our legacy format which requires in-depth knowledge of our legacy name or title text format and is error prone.
  

As we continue our work to make improvements to our systems to simplify and make contribution consistent across all desktop/mobile platforms (please see Upcoming changes to several IMDb features for more details), we have made the decision to move fully to our modern linking method. 

As part of this work, the existing ability within the legacy format to perform name matching will be removed. An example of this feature is below:-



From today all contribution interfaces will begin being updated to support only the [link=nm1234567] for name and [link=tt1234567]. This change will not impact how the data is displayed on IMDb, it is purely a change to the contribution interfaces. This change affects 23 different data types:-

• Plot Outline
• Plot Summary
• Crazy Credits
• Alternate Versions
• Connections
• Articles
  
• Books About This Person
• Biographical Movies
• Biography
• Real Life Quotes
• Name Trivia
• Trivia
• Nickname
• Other Works
• Portrayed in Other Movies
• Salary
• Spouse
• Trademarks
• Goofs
• Quotes
• Awards
• Soundtracks
• Literature
  

These changes will be rolling out over the next 24 hours during which time we will be monitoring the launch. We are in the process of ensuring that all submission guides are updated to reflect this change.

If you do spot any issues or have questions/feedback, please respond to this thread.

Thanks,

Rachel