racliff's profile

31 Messages

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456 Points

Monday, January 5th, 2015 7:17 AM

7

Genre needs a priority order setting

Alphabetic isn't good enough for 'genre' values.  I like that people can set multiple values but what was a production meant to be primarily? everyone wants to know that.

This evening we went to see "Into the Woods".  I knew nothing about this movie except that it was a Disney production -- my wife wanted to go, and she would not have asked if she knew I wouldn't enjoy it.  However, there were people in theatre seemingly confused by the movie, but most really were into it.

This movie is musical, based on a play, and the dialogue is almost completely in music.

IMDB's listing has 'Musical' as the 4th value and it doesn't even appear during the initial display of the movie.  This swings between being a disservice, and an outright error, when describing this title.  If you're not sure about this importance, look at "Mary Poppins" -- the same, 'Musical' doesn't even appear.  It's time to fix this and accurately show the readers what these titles are.

Champion

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4.6K Messages

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236.3K Points

10 years ago

I guess I'd start off with, how would one adding the film into IMDb know what the filmmaker intended it to be, primarily (and did it come out as planned, or not?)?

I am not sure how that could ever really be applied to all titles, let alone more than a few at best. Then, at what point does staff know to lock it into place so it's not, forever, being changed back and forth by those not agreeing?

46 Messages

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1.5K Points

4 years ago

This really does need looking at. Currently, genres are listed alphabetically, except for Animation, Documentaries, and Shorts, which always take precedence.

Firstly, there are one or two other bold genres that should join these three:
Musicals are very very different from non-musicals, and for the genre not to automatically display at the top of the page is quite problematic.
Horror is another very divisive genre, so should probably be given precedence, too, though it's not as clear a cut-off (no pun intended) as the above four genres.

Secondly, if it's not possible to have a custom genre order for every film, here's a more viable suggestion. There are certain genre combinations where one genre is written/spoken before the other genre in prose. I suggest changing the default order to these.
Some examples which would be different to the current alphabetical order:
Musical comedy, Musical drama, Crime comedy, Crime documentary, War comedy, War documentary, War drama, War thriller, Music documentary, Music comedy, Music drama, Romantic drama, Romantic comedy, Sci-fi drama, Sci-fi comedy, Sci-fi fantasy, Sport drama, Sport comedy, Western thriller, Fantasy drama, Fantasy comedy, etc.

In general, comedy, drama, and thriller always come second, and it so happens that when it's just these three genres, you get the alphabetical "comedy drama", "comedy thriller", "drama thriller", and "comedy drama thriller".
I could go into more detail on how to order multiple genres if this proposal is considered.

The above proposals would avoid staff having to process lots of conflicting contributions regarding which genre is most prominent in a film/show, and, as we know from other contentious areas, there can be endless battles between editors who think their version is more appropriate.