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Does a director trademark keyword ever work?
From Submission Guides: Biographical Information:
So, does a director trademark do anything? If not, did it ever? Or, is it just a useless piece of junk that's added by those who read the submission guides and then removed or edited improperly by those who don't, and all it does is confuse normal visitors and make trivia uglier? And if so, why don't we get rid of them all at once?
Also, on a less important note, how is one supposed to distinguish director trademarks from usual, personal trademarks on a director's biography? I mean, I've never seen Eastwood grunting off-screen in his film or QT directing himself rapid-firing and geeking out. I'm sure it's no brainer most of the time, but for the sake of consistency, readability and aesthetics, shouldn't director trademarks on biographies be completely distinguished from normal ones like they are from normal trivia on title pages?
A director trademark can be followed by a shorthand form of the trademark in square brackets. This is cross-referenced to the corresponding trivia list DIRTRADE entries.From Submission Guide: Trivia:
The trademark keyword(s) should be short and to the point, and should be consistent with other entries for that director. Please use the following format:But despite my effort, I couldn't find a single instance where a trademark keyword seemed to do anything remotely remarkable (like linking to a certain page) either on a director's biography page or on a movie's trivia page! For starters, I couldn't even find one case where the same trademark keyword appeared both on a title's page and on the director's page...
DIRTRADE('firstname lastname' (qv)): [trademark keyword]: explanation
So, does a director trademark do anything? If not, did it ever? Or, is it just a useless piece of junk that's added by those who read the submission guides and then removed or edited improperly by those who don't, and all it does is confuse normal visitors and make trivia uglier? And if so, why don't we get rid of them all at once?
Also, on a less important note, how is one supposed to distinguish director trademarks from usual, personal trademarks on a director's biography? I mean, I've never seen Eastwood grunting off-screen in his film or QT directing himself rapid-firing and geeking out. I'm sure it's no brainer most of the time, but for the sake of consistency, readability and aesthetics, shouldn't director trademarks on biographies be completely distinguished from normal ones like they are from normal trivia on title pages?
Michelle
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17.5K Messages
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313.1K Points
9 years ago
I have forwarded your inquiry to an experienced data editor who will take a look as soon as they can.
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ljdoncel
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51.4K Points
9 years ago
This looks like a beautiful project to work on. In addition to consistency, readability and aesthetics of the database, the rules on recording director trademarks (here and here) are clear. Sadly, as Nardog said above, a cross-reference system between trivia-keywords and bio-keywords hasn't been implemented yet. This does not detract from the fact that data entries should follow the guides and, if
I've cross-matched data from plain text files trivia.list, directors.list and biographies.list (05-Feb-2016) and I've compiled a list with (I believe) all the director trademark items both on trivia and bio pages, and here are the results:
A) CURRENT ENTRIES INTENDED AS DIRTRADE ITEMS BUT NOT IDENTIFIED AS SUCH:
Some entries (marked with
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ljdoncel
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9 years ago
While processing the trivia text file I've come across some entries without the dirtrade syntax (
C) CURRENT DIRTRADE ITEMS:
As of 05-Feb-2016 there were 1,443 well-formatted dirtrade entries belonging to 264 different directors. Most of them (1,427) have a keyword enclosed in brackets, and there are 712 unique trivia-keywords. As Nardog suspected, only 10 trivia-keywords (along 52 dirtrade items - less than 4%) have an exact match (capitalization included) among the bio-keywords for that director.
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ljdoncel
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9 years ago
The comprehensive list would be as follows:
I've put a lot of effort into retrieving and transcribing these listings so that
- Correcting keywords on dirtrade trivia items (
) so they share a combining keyword (
).
- Correcting keywords on related dirtrade bio items (
) to replicate the shared keyword (
). - Adding keywords on related dirtrade bio items (
) to replicate the shared keyword (
). - Creating new dirtrade bio items with the shared keyword (
) in cases where there isn't a corresponding entry for the dirtrade trivia item (
).
If(note: I have the complete list of trivia keywords with their respective titles if needed)
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Jayseph
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129 Messages
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3.8K Points
9 years ago
hmm this was a very good question! I've just chatted to Col, and it seems as though that section of the Bio: Trademarks submission guide refers to old display logic which existed many moons ago, and is certainly no longer relevant. There is currently no cross referencing between lists in place and so, as it no longer applies, I will be removing it so avoid further confusion.
However the DIRTRADE prefix definitely does have an impact when applied to Title Trivia. All Trivia formatted in this way will be collated under a specific Director Trademark heading; see here
I'd also just like to thank Ljdoncel for your incredible research! Brilliant work on identifying those trivia items which require tweaking in order to meet our formatting rules. If anyone wishes to make these changes it would be much appreciated!
Thanks again all
Jay
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