IMDb makes it impossible to correct obvious gender errors

@Bethanny​ 

Is this going to be the only way to correct gender errors where no outside sources are available? Will they fix the default to male to prevent this in the future?

@adrian​ Hey!

So, unless it's the owner of the page we do need something to proof it's wrong, since now it's more common that even if someone has what we would consider a women's name, they can identify themselves as male, non-binary, etc. We specify on our help guides that evidence has to be provided to contribute this information on someone else's page. I hope that makes it clearer on why it was not accepted before.

Cheers!

@Bethanny​ 

I'm not sure if I'm just not communicating well here or what. There are plenty of women (who identify as women and whose only roles are of women) in IMDb that are identified as men because of either laziness or bad data entry. This happens because when you enter a new name, it defaults to male. Since a lot of these people are either extras or one offs in documentaries, there is no proof that they are women. There was never any proof entered that they were men when they were first entered. You understand from a data entry perspective why I find it baffling that there is more proof needed to correct obvious mistakes than there was required to make the mistake in the first place?

@adrian​ I get your point now. I have escalated the situation of the defaulting to male so our technical team can look for a solution, ticket number: V866487529

However, going forward, as mentioned, we require evidence before we can make any changes to genders.

Thanks!

@Bethanny​ And I've said many times now, evidence rarely exists for most of these cases.

If you are going to require evidence to correct the wrongful initial entries, maybe you should also require evidence on initial entry? This would prevent the whole problem that I have been correcting without issue for years. (Of course, this would effectively end adding knew actors/actresses to IMDb.)

IMDb's change to require proof to change gender is well meaning but, as usual, completely ignored reality and was poorly implemented.

@adrian​ Again, for the ones that are wrong already, we do need evidence to correct. The issue though as mentioned was escalated so our technical team can prevent this from happening in the future. 

Thanks!