Contribution History (Beta) page feedback

This post includes bugs as well as suggestions.

Firstly, there’s no “Track Contribution” button for title corrections on the IMDb Contributor Update History page, so there’s no way to see if any changes were approved, declined, or even submitted.  Likewise, these submissions don’t show up on the Your Contribution History (Beta) page.  For ex, see #200528-214847-618000, #200908-205621-257000, and #210310-061735-038000.  The 3rd one has a track page b/c it was submitted along with other changes, but shows only 10 out of 11 items, and the missing item is the title correction.  The 2nd contribution was eventually approved, but I know that only b/c I saw the changes appear on the site, though I had to resubmit it from the Update History without any changes like it just got ignored from the original submission (#200613-161329-871000).  And the 1st contribution was approved right away.  I also have to assume that these didn’t count toward badges b/c there is no track page to show they were approved.

Regarding badges for titles, it seems either that the approved title corrections I have made either don’t count toward the title badge or that the description needs to be rewritten here.  Either way though, it needs to clarify which title additions/corrections count and which do not, including release dates.  I had dozens of approved submissions recently, yet my 10+ Title badge remained the same.  If they counted toward that badge it would have increased to at least 25+.  See #210330-033943-502000 & #210330-152140-628000 for examples, but I can list all title additions and corrections here if needed.

Also, what’s the difference between Name and Filmo badges since I assume all names are cast & crew.  Is it that name submissions count for ones that do not yet exist in the database and filmo are for names that do already exist?  Aren’t these too similar to exist as separate badges when so many other data types don’t count for specific badges other than Lifetime Total?

It would be tremendously helpful to have a comment box on submission pages for data editors to clarify the reasoning for declined submissions when the menu options aren’t sufficient.  Otherwise, the reasoning is useless, confusing, and counterproductive.  The reasons selected for most of my declined submissions don’t make any logical sense based on the instructions in the Help section, and most of them are inconsistent with submissions that were approved.  It’s like the reason didn’t exist in the list of available menu options, so it’s impossible for a contributor to know why a submission was declined based on this alone.  This makes it much more time consuming for everyone involved, b/c contributors have to then either post messages on the forum to inquire, email support, and/or resubmit the data without knowing what was wrong the first time.  A comment box would allow the contributor to know specifically why a submission was declined so he knows what needs to be corrected before resubmitting.  It also doesn’t seem ideal to have contributors post questions about private submissions on the public forum since they can’t be viewed/referenced by other users and permanently inundate the forum search results and related conversations with countless posts.  Can’t these be better addressed directly thru email?  Not that I haven’t already tried this, but most of my questions/emails go unanswered.

If a submission is declined due to insufficient evidence, then it would be ideal to have an option to add more evidence to the same submission rather than having it declined and then having to create a new submission.  The data editor could simply select an option to please provide additional evidence (and hopefully add comments as well).  For ex, genres can be extremely difficult.  With some genres/titles, a single phrase or sentence is sufficient to have it approved while for others I can spend a couple hours providing detailed explanations w/ comparisons, a couple dozen reference links from well-known film sites and reviews, and even video clips to where the evidence is overwhelmingly supportive, yet the submission is declined b/c of a reason such as “Unable to verify”, “Unable to accept”, or “Not enough evidence”.  But there isn’t a way to know how much evidence is needed in order to be sufficient before making the submission, if a genre is already blocked, or why the overwhelming amount of evidence provided was still insufficient.  There should also be an easier, more direct way to contest a blocked genre or other data type if you’re willing to provide sufficient evidence.

Additionally, there should be a way to edit or delete a submission while it’s still pending.  There have been several instances where just after submitting I realized I had made a mistake or left out an edit which I intended to add.  The edit option could change it to a saved submission where it could then be further edited or later deleted.

Note that the paragraph formatting is completely lost when including comments for submissions, so it all looks like one single line on the submission page (line breaks don’t appear to be working).

If I “Undo Close Tab” on a website submission it submits a duplicate w/ a different contribution # (e.g. #210330-013757-511000).  This happened a few times unintentionally with Safari 14.x on macOS Catalina 10.15.7 when I was trying to restore a different tab that I closed.

Better organization is desperately needed too as this current Contribution History (Beta) page is void of any alternatives to the default view.  Having buttons at the top to view only pending, declined, and/or approved submissions is essential, along with sorting options and a search field.  When you have thousands of items to scroll thru it’s extremely time consuming to find something.  Being able to reverse the default Date Added sort (Old -> New vs. New -> Old), as well as sort by "name of title" so you can view all submissions for a specific film grouped together, “original release date”, and “data type” so you can sort submissions by Cast & Crew, Company Credits, Basic Data, Plot & Quotes, Fun Stuff, Images, etc.  A secondary menu to view submissions by “badge type” so you can see everything grouped together that counted toward badges for Name, Filmo, Trivia, Image, Plot, Bio, Title, etc. would also be extremely useful.  Additionally, a show/hide tally could be added at the top to display the totals for all contribution types shown on the badges page, as well as the badge type displayed for approvals on each submission page so you know what badge each one counted toward.

It looks like the Help section needs to be updated to reflect the corrections to capitalization made for this submission: #210306-163705-252000.  As you can see from the relevant Help page under "Description format", it shows that “article” should not be capitalized, but it looks like the system automatically changes this if you look at the approved links.  This happened with other submissions as well.

Also, the Edit page should include a section for Watch Options rather than having to email IMDb support in order to add these.  Many titles are missing watch options for some or all relevant content providers and I’ve reported a lot of these, including missing Amazon Identifier links and 3rd Party streaming providers, yet most of them have been ignored b/c email support is very insufficient and sporadic.  As I stated above, most of my questions/emails go unanswered.  Some content providers don’t appear to be syncing correctly w/ IMDb, preventing certain titles from having their watch options updated properly.  For example, when FXNOW has new titles added to their site, some of those titles don’t list FXNOW in the watch options while other titles do even though FX doesn’t currently offer the title.  I’ve reported problems with HBO in the past though it looks like their titles are syncing better now.

Thanks