IMDb Top 300 Data Contributors for 2022 (and Happy New Year 2023 from IMDb)

@Col_Needham​ what is the advantage for being in the Top 10?

Col

Simple math tells me that our "Top Contributor" is a bot. This translates to 17 "contributions" every minute of every hour of every day of 2022. Not humanly possible.

@ned_3atz32i7uumbx​ He does use bots. He has admitted this. You're not covering new ground. 

@owenrees​ 

This has been one of the interesting things I've noticed since I started editing TV shows. The first episode of new seasons is always fraught with getting new positions for certain crew members.

@EvanD71​ Sorry to hear this and we are sorry to lose you if you go ahead with your decision ... 

The new name pages are designed to improve access to IMDb's content and therefore improve access to everyone's contributions (so the opposite of your concerns).  As we wrote in the separate thread announcing the new design ...

The new name pages work across all device sizes; they are available in eight additional languages beyond English; they improve consistency with the rest of the site & our mobile apps; and they comply with the latest accessibility standards.  All this is to enable IMDb to better scale and grow our audience into the future. The full launch will enable a further enhancement in terms of even faster page loading speeds once we are able to activate client-side rendering.  We also have other enhancements in the pipeline which are now easier thanks to the new technology. 

A reminder to read the FAQ at https://help.imdb.com/article/issues/GMWASETVPLJYXEZE/ and do take the time to explore the significantly more powerful options available to sort and filter credits. In particular, see the "All topics" menu in the upper right of the page and the blue filter symbol under the "Credits" heading. All of the old features / sorts / links / subpages are still available.

We are seeing increased engagement on the new pages with customers visiting & exploring more content than before, as well as improved search engine optimization so more people are visiting IMDb in the first place as well.  

Hope this helps. 

The FAQ mentions "By default, the Credits section is loaded with filters applied for jobs that the person is most known for."

As an example (as I binged his latest series "Romantic Getaway" yesterday afternoon), this actor/comedian https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4229189/?ref_=tt_rv_t12 has his 9 Producer, 18 Actor and 7 Writer shown, yet his 110 Self credits (which I would argue as a stand-up comedian would be what he is "best known for") is filtered away.

The filter also doesn't stick between actor pages. This is particularly annoying as a Contributor when you are trying to determine is Actor (I), Actor (II) or even Actor (XVIII) is the correct person (or if there is a merge needed). As a Contributor, the pages aren't fit for purpose.

You'll notice the episodes for  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20450344/reference/ are mostly incomplete. I'm sure someone else will get around to it.

@EvanD71​ Thanks for providing the details … 

yet his 110 Self credits (which I would argue as a stand-up comedian would be what he is "best known for") is filtered away.

There is no change in behaviour here though — the previous name pages only showed one section open on initial load and then you would have to scroll to either open further specific sections or scroll to click the “Show all” link as you can see from this archive.org copy from July at https://web.archive.org/web/20220705193707/https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4229189/

[we have always had to deprioritise the self section as the most famous people (at least actors and directors) tend to have more self credits on talk-shows than they have actual movie and TV-credits]

On the new pages you can quickly access a person’s full credits via the “All credits” link in the “All topics” menu in the upper right of the page.  In this case, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4229189/fullcredits/ 

The filter also doesn't stick between actor pages.

We are looking at providing an option to make the filters sticky. 

This is particularly annoying as a Contributor when you are trying to determine is Actor (I), Actor (II) or even Actor (XVIII) is the correct person (or if there is a merge needed). As a Contributor, the pages aren't fit for purpose.

The “All credits” view should cover this use case well. 

Hope this helps

@Col_Needham​ Clicking a drop down arrow is easy. Especially when you know there is something there. 

Having the filter at the top, means when you get to the bottom, you assume that is it.

It doesn't help that when there are multiple categories that don't fit on the one line available to the new filter, it gets hidden under an arrow, never to be seen (unless you click on the arrow before scrolling down).
This is particularly annoying for crew members with credits in many departments (it doesn't help when some of those categories have very long names).

That said, I am looking forward to seeing a new release movie and not having to explain to cinema staff why I'm taking photos of the credits!

@EvanD71​  Thanks for the further details ...

It doesn't help that when there are multiple categories that don't fit on the one line available to the new filter, it gets hidden under an arrow

In case this helps from the FAQ:

@tatjana1984​ Congratulations (and thanks)!

@tatjana1984​ Kudos to you! Your profile shows you’ve only been a member for 8 months and you finished 8th for the whole year and made it into the Top All Time Contributors your 1st year. That’s very impressive and the pay off of hard work. Good job!

@skip_eastport​ i did many asian and egypt series in December

@adrian​ Thanks -- I was #1 in 1995 with 91,745 items and yet that would have only placed me at #58 in 2022! 

@Col_Needham​ That you're still in trenches working to improve the site you created such a long time ago and being accessible and helpful to us, always deserves a tip of the hat.

@Col_Needham​ 😀

Contributor Hall of Fame
https://contribute.imdb.com/czone/hall_of_fame

Top Contributors
- Top Plot Summary Writers
- Top Mini-Bio Writers

? ?

Does not count 
Names, Titles, Reviews, Keywords, Trivia, Goofs, FAQ, etc
- - -

Col Needham
https://www.imdb.com/user/ur1000000/

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?plot_author=Col+Needham

https://www.imdb.com/search/name/?bio_author=Col+Needham

.

@nickromm​ 

It's also my seventh consecutive year.

I've only been a Top Contributor once, quite a while ago, and somehow I didn't even receive a notification about it for that year.

@nickromm​ Congratulations and thanks!

@adrian​ The badges should be issued later this week once people are back. 

@Col_Needham​ 

On a similar note, what is the timeframe for the top movies of 2022 badge?

@adrian​ It’s the same. 

@Col_Needham​ 

The top contributor badge is live. Thanks!

@adrian​ i have seen it too, it answers my question what we get for the Top 10

@adrian​ 

On a similar note, what is the timeframe for the top movies of 2022 badge?

Also live as of yesterday -> https://www.imdb.com/badge/  (please revote for one of the eligible titles if it was not automatically issued.  I have mine :-).

@Col_Needham​ 

Thanks!

I saw this yesterday and have the page already bookmarked filtered to the movies I need to see for the badge. 25 more movies to watch!

I've been working through the backlog of these badges. Most of the movies, I've seen before but was before I joined IMDb 20 years ago. It's a chance to re-watch some (mostly) classic movies. I just finished the 2004 and 2005 badges this week.

@adrian​  Good luck with the viewing catch-up.  I have discovered many movies I now love via collecting these badges.  

@bonitao​ All data contributions, including biographies, are already included in the published totals on the leaderboard.   We do not break out categories separately, although we do list the all-time Top 20 bio writers at https://contribute.imdb.com/czone/hall_of_fame#minibio

Hope this helps. 

@Col_Needham 

Thanks for the answer, I expressed myself wrong, my question is if they will update the top bio contributors, in the last year I made a lot of contributions in this area with the expectation of getting the "Top Bio Contributor" medal

@bonitao​ I’ve been a Top Plot Summary contributor for several years, and yes those numbers are updated at the beginning of each new year. You should see the Hall of Fame rankings updated sometime within the next week. Congratulations on your efforts! So many more personal bios are needed.

@skip_eastport​ can you send me tips for to achieve this badge?

@bonitao​ 

You already have the Top Bio Contributor badge.

However, it looks like you are copying from Wikipedia, so my tip would be to stop doing that.

@Nomissimon10​ You’re very kind to mention me. I’m in awe of YOU. Talk about accomplishments. You went from #63 All-Time to 2nd in just one year. The ingenuity and output of you, inespape-1, and cinelamour is amazing; it does inspire me to compete with myself for my own personal best. Don’t believe I could challenge you for a full year, but our occasional monthly flip-flops between 1st and 2nd place do add a bit of suspense to the proceedings, and with the meteoric rise of tatjana1984, 2023 should be an interesting year. Either way I don’t mind being Sundance to your Butch Cassidy 😂. Happy New Year, all.

@Nomissimon10​

Hey @Col_Needham, I have a question and an issue with being a contributor. Hopefully you have the time to have a look. To give some extra motivation to get through my paragraphs I have added some treats (statistics) for you in the end of my post.

Trouble with Pending Contributions

Would it be possible to add an auto-decline feature to titles that is still pending after X months? I currently have around 2,800 episodes (contributions) pending, some since 2021 or start of 2022. These have clearly fallen out of the loop or IMDb system somehow and should either be processed or just declined and resubmitted.

Contribution Counting

I also have a question related to what counts as a contribution (simply because I can't get the numbers to match). I track EVERY SINGLE contribution I make until it has been declined or accepted, thus I keep a 100% accurate count of how many episodes, podcasts, titles etc. I add to IMDb every month. I have long believed that one episode contribution (without an episode number) counted as 2 contributions as you add the title and release date. This however does not match my count vs the official ranking count. I also assume the same for contributing new podcasts and have picked a number based on the average fields filled (7-9) per new podcast. If these numbers are to be followed for the month of

September 2022:

- 380 new podcasts

- 124,971 episodes added

Would total to: 380 * 8 + 124,971 * 2 = 252,982

However, the number that is posted by IMDb is much higher, siting at 385,108.

This discrepancy exists for all of my tracked months. (Since around February 2022)

So my question is then, how are the contributions counted?

Disclaimer: I do not work for IMDb, and all the following data is either gathered from public sources on IMDb or generated by myself unrelated to IMDb.

More Stats (because they are fun)

- I contributed to IMDb on 262 / 365 days this year

- Average unprocessed: 103,582

- Average outside SLA: 74,258 (71.7%)

Unprocessed by Priority (avg):

- Platinum: 84,593 (81.67%)

- Gold: 2,075 (2%)

- Silver: 16,914 (16.3%)

Treats for Needham

You probably don't need me telling you this, but you spend a ton of time watching movies and really have something to show for your claim to love movies. Your movie-watching adds up to a total of 24,441 hours! (Not including rewatches) You have made a whopping 14,567 ratings since the beginning. Your most watched genre is definitely Drama, adding up to 57.8% of all your rated titles. Even though you are watching a lot of movies you manage to stay away from only watching mainstream movies, out of your titles rated most will be considered not mainstream. For 2022 85.6% of your rated titles is not mainstream. With your highest year for division of mainstream was in 2012 where 50.2% of your titles rated were mainstream.

Moving onto a quick comparison to other users of the site (IMDb) your ratings are slightly above average ratings for the rated titles. In 2022 111 of your ratings were above, 253 similar and only 10 titles with a lower rating. Your average rating is 6.85 / 10.0.

This is my Segway into giving informing you about your favorite year to make ratings throughout the IMDb history, 2021 was definitely the year you made the most amount of ratings, clocking in at 932 ratings. That is 2.55 ratings a day! 2022 was definitely not bad either, with 766 ratings making for an average of 2.1 ratings a day. (This is half the amount of contributions I am able to put out every second) June has been your favorite month to rate titles, accounting for 9.4% of your total ratings.

Most of your ratings were made in 1970 (in reality not, due to the IMDb error with tracking rating dates from before 1998 (educated guess). This means that the actual data will show 1970 and January is your favorite time to make ratings, but we can look away from this data due to the untracked rating timestamps.

Moving onto the last treat, your badges. You have unlocked a lot of badges within the different categories. Below you can find the amount of unlocked badges (per category) including sub-badges.

Miscellaneous (2 / 6)

Contributor (96 / 240)

Polls (5 / 8)

Top Contributor (10 / 30)

Oscar Highlights (18 / 18)

Top 250 (21 / 26)

Adding up to a total of 152 / 328 (46,3%) badges. (Accounting for every sublevel)

I hope you liked my quick summary of data you might not know about your own IMDb account. Hopefully you learned something new and found it interesting.

@Nomissimon10​ 

Your favorite genre is definitely Drama, adding up to 57.8% of all your rated titles.

Instead of "favorite," I think what you mean there is the most frequently watched genre.  

For 2022 85.6% of your rated titles is not mainstream.

How do you define mainstream?

@keyword_expert​ You are correct about the favorite part, I corrected it. Mainstream is defined by a certain threshold of votes for the title. (50k, I am just experimenting putting interesting data together)

@Nomissimon10​ 

Trouble with Pending Contrubutions

Sorry about those; they are caused by system overloads due to the large number of pending items at the time. We have since strengthened our systems to protect against this.  I will ask if we can do a one-off pass through the ones left in your history. 

Contributor Counting

This is all related to how the elements of a contribution on the front-end map to discrete fields in our systems on the back-end; some things are stay grouped together and others are split apart, this is especially true around new title submissions.  I will ask the team for some clarifications here. 

Treats for Needham

Thanks for those.  Some things I knew, some things were new :-)

We only stored dates of ratings from the very late 1990s onwards so that explains all of those default 1970 dates. I have been voting for everything I watch since the ratings poll launched in May 1989 (and I did a catch-up voting run from when my electronic film diaries began in 1980/1 through to 1989 at that time). 

I do have private IMDb lists with each year's viewings stored. My best year was 2000 with 985 full-length movie viewings. I managed 790 in 2022, down from 943 in 2021 as life started to return to normal with travel and events which eat into viewing time. I also do not rate TV-series and I watch more shows these days.  Your counts from my ratings only give you some visibility, as for example, each time I rewatch anything I last watched in, say, Y2000 and I re-vote for it, that title moves out of that year in my history.

For 2022 the 790 movie viewings translate to 763 unique titles as I had a total of 27 re-watches within the year itself (for example, I saw Glass Onion three times in 2022). Of the 763 titles, 367 have an IMDb year-in-title of 2022; 93 have an IMDb year-in-title of 2021. Of the 763 titles, 735 were first-time viewings in 2022 (I re-watch less these days as I am on a mission to reach 15,000 unique titles and re-watches do not help by definition). The oldest title I watched for the first time in 2022 was Grandma's Boy (1922) in honour of its 100th anniversary; I re-watched Nosferatu (1922) for similar reasons which is slightly older though. The newest title I watched was A Man Called Otto (2022) which premiered on 25 December 2022. Thanks for inspiring me to gather some of the above data. 

@Nomissimon10​  I heard back from the team on this point:

However, the number that is posted by IMDb is much higher, siting at 385,108.

This discrepancy exists for all of my tracked months. (Since around February 2022)

Following on from my reply above, the reason for the discrepancy in your case is that if you provide the text title for the episode then that counts as an additional item. 

@Col_Needham​

Trouble with Pending Contributions

Thanks a lot, removing those in the backlog would save my program checking accept/decline a lot of time as they no longer will be checked 2x a day.

Contributing Counting

Thanks for checking out the contributions for me. So does this mean that each episode contribution counts as 3?

Episode Contribution Form

I also have a question related to how the form works and what matters when using it using only HTTP requests. (As when I use it I get ctrf tokens and api form tokens that should not be possible) Should I address the support or is this something they won't be able to assist me in anyways?

Statistics

Glad to hear that you were inspired! A Man Called Otto (2022) (Your newest rating) is inspired by the same story as A Man Called Ove, I recommend this move a lot more than the Tom Hanks ripoff. A Man Called Ove is a great movie if you haven't already seen it.

It would be cool if IMDb had a page made up for these statistics with more graphs for your profile, best would be an all year-round page. But a yearly summary would also be nice. When I can generate the information I displayed with some work it should be more than possible to do in a shorter and more correct way. Examples below. (In addition to these adding distribution of country of origin would also be cool, this is not something I could make with the data)

@skip_eastport​ 

@Nomissimon10​ You’re very kind to mention me. I’m in awe of YOU. Talk about accomplishments. You went from #63 All-Time to 2nd in just one year. The ingenuity and output of you, inespape-1, and cinelamour is amazing; it does inspire me to compete with myself for my own personal best. Don’t believe I could challenge you for a full year, but our occasional monthly flip-flops between 1st and 2nd place do add a bit of suspense to the proceedings, and with the meteoric rise of tatjana1984, 2023 should be an interesting year. Either way I don’t mind being Sundance to your Butch Cassidy 😂. Happy New Year, all.

Thanks for kind words, here is a treat for you too. Showing your rapid increase in contributions recently and showing since December 2021.

Should probably add a few more names to it as there are other people with meteoric rises that belongs to the list.

@Nomissimon10​ 

Thanks a lot, removing those in the backlog would save my program checking accept/decline a lot of time as they no longer will be checked 2x a day.

Ticket number for this is P78524249 if you ever need to chase this on another thread which I might not see.

Thanks for checking out the contributions for me. So does this mean that each episode contribution counts as 3?

Yes, that is correct, plus then additional points for the attached credits and other data. 

I also have a question related to how the form works and what matters when using it using only HTTP requests. (As when I use it I get ctrf tokens and api form tokens that should not be possible) Should I address the support or is this something they won't be able to assist me in anyways?

This is something to ask support about separately, thanks. 

A Man Called Ove is a great movie if you haven't already seen it.

I have, thanks :-)

It would be cool if IMDb had a page made up for these statistics with more graphs for your profile,

We do already have the years and genres graphs via the "See more" link in the "Ratings Analysis" box, in my case on https://www.imdb.com/user/ur1000000/ 

The user activity pages and many of the features included there, such as lists, are still running on the old IMDb technology, so we will be able to look at new features once all of the migrations to the new platform are complete.  This is why these features have fallen behind-the-times in recent years. 

@Col_Needham​ I know about the current graphs, thanks for informing me about the migrations. Hopefully you draw some inspirations from my example graphs.

Where can I access the details related to the ticket? (Or is the ticket number purely for addressing it in another ticket or thread)

And would it be possible to (if it does not already exist and I missed it) add a preferences when it comes to contribution mails/updates? I get tens of thousands of mails every day from my contribution and currently have 434k mails in my Trashcan.

@Nomissimon10​ what isthe link of this site?

@bonitao​ I would link it if I could, but IMDb has told me I am not allowed to share due to some unspecified reason they won't specify. (Took them 6 months to come up with this response) Otherwise I would share the site with more of the tools I have created.

My intention was for people to be able to go to the site and be able to search on their profile and receive the same information after ~1 min of waiting. (Blocking this is to a certain degree makes sense due to scraping which is against TOS, but it sucks to not be able to share things that gives extra information that is fun/entertaining and provides an extra layer to the IMDb experience, I am just hoping IMDb will implement a few of the examples I put together)

And for me to be able to crowdsource help as well to even better quality and verification of the titles I add with the ability to downvote and upvote the upload of certain titles making sure the quality of the uploads are of higher standards opposed to what I am doing right now where I do it all alone.

@bonitao However, I could mail you your images of your stats if you want. Send me a mail or add me on Discord.

Mail: Simonbjornstad4@gmail.com

Discord: Nomissimon10#6948

@Nomissimon10​ Oh thanks bro, i send a email to you.

@bonitao​ Sent you a reply (for some reason it ended in my junk email folder, so did not see it until now). Enjoy!

@Col_Needham​ I know about the current graphs, thanks for informing me about the migrations. Hopefully you draw some inspirations from my example graphs.

Where can I access the details related to the ticket? (Or is the ticket number purely for addressing it in another ticket or thread)

And would it be possible to (if it does not already exist and I missed it) add a preferences when it comes to contribution mails/updates? I get tens of thousands of mails every day from my contribution and currently have 434k mails in my Trashcan.

@Col_Needham You probably missed my question, so just quoting it :)

@Nomissimon10​ This is an internal tracking number.  You cannot access the details yourself, but anyone on the team to whom you may mention it to later can use the number to see if there are any updates. 

@Nomissimon10  We have completed the backfill on past statuses when the system was overloaded (and fixed the root cause of the overload).  Sorry for the delay. The best we could do was to set these contributions to a new "Unknown" status, which is at least better than "Pending" as all have been processed ("Accepted" or "Declined"). 

@Col_Needham​ Thanks a lot for solving the issue. And for letting me know. Glad to hear this issue should be sorted for the future.

@ACT_1​

@ACT_1​ 

I changed the title of my post to "Summary & Leaderboard"

@ACT_1​ 

Why do you want to delete it?

@ACT_1​ 

No. let it be. First, it is not off-topic. Second, I'd like to keep our chats. 😀

I noticed you already deleted the one on my post. You don't have to delete your messages addressed to me, at least not on my threads. I don't mind. 🙂

Are you embarrassed, ACT_1?

:P

@scgary66​ Thanks for the feedback.  The team responsible for the search update are monitoring this thread -> https://community-imdb.sprinklr.com/conversations/imdbcom/issues-with-the-updated-find-search-results-display/6395814ab830ce436bbd3302 where the same issue has been raised. 

@Col_Needham​ Glad to know this issue is under consideration. Another annoyance is that acting credits are now displayed by default in chronological order, regardless of whether they were movies, TV, etc. I know there's the option to sort by project type if I click on the blue icon - but I have to do it EVERY TIME. Is there any option for users to set it that way by default?

@Col_Needham​ did I get the IMDB Pro for the Top 10? I found out cause I can add more informations to new Companies when I add them since today

@tatjana1984​ Yes, that's an unspoken perk for good contributors haha

@VonPunk​ thx, thats great

@VonPunk​ / @tatjana1984 

Yes, that's an unspoken perk for good contributors

It’s not exactly unspoken … from the end of the annual letter itself, as posted above and as sent by email to all contributors: “If you are inside the Top 300 contributors, as usual, we are offering you free access to IMDbPro for all of 2023 as a reflection of our appreciation. We will contact those people who qualify next week with access details.”

Hope this helps. 

@Col_Needham​ Oh good addition, is this the first year it was mentioned.

I still recall first time I got one and thought it was an unauthorised free trial that I cancelled again and again but it kept coming back, only when complaining to IMDb staff outta fear I was going to be charged into debt was I informed it was a reward. So glad it's on the letter now. I should learn to read. 

@jeorj_euler​ Well, I tried this with the aforementioned theoretical Chris Smith, and was offered 20 options - 14 with that exact name, and 6 with variations; the highest numbered of the 20 was Chris Smith (CCLXXVIII), which might seem like it's close to the end of the list, but it's not. The system offered me the option of creating Chris Smith (CCCXXXVI), so there seem to be 335 at the moment (or perhaps fewer, as some may have been merged). Getting to see 20 of them is a relatively small dent. (The suggestion system is obviously not prioritizing those Chris Smiths who were actors, or who may have been active on an 1894 title.)

Another weird glitch I've just noticed is that the same name sometimes comes up multiple times in the same list. I searched for Jim Campbell, and when I clicked on exact matches, James B. Campbell turned up three times in the first two pages of options. I can't believe you want that to happen.