Missing Images | Jack and the Beanstalk (1952)

Which makes me wonder: how can 100-200 approved still images suddenly get deleted? Due to some unfortunate database error? Increasing deliberate hacker attacks? Or at the request of some producer or distributor? Or because of some periodical across-the-board clean-up operation of, say, lower-quality or older uploads initiated by the IMDb staff? I'd like to know.

Regards,

Richard

@Richard_J​ 

I used to collect screenshots of an entire movie and submit them to the database. And by "entire movie" I mean one still per shot. This collects all the credits from the credit sequences, every shot of every actor and anything else interesting. I submit them in reverse order so that when they appear in the media index you can "read" the entire movie like a comic book.

I figured this was useful for several reasons.

1. It verifies the credits in the database.

2. It verifies all the actors, especially the uncredited ones.

3. It allows users to find any particular shot they may be looking for, for whatever reason.

This does not break the rules. The rule it comes closest to breaking is the one against submitting an excessive number of stills from the same shot.

Nevertheless, a contributor objected to my work and took the trouble to request the removal of thousands of my stills from hundreds of movies. At least one staffer agreed to remove them, presumably because it just felt excessive.

My feeling was that IMDb is very thorough in all of its other categories; I assumed they'd want to be just as thorough with their screenshots.

Now, with JACK AND THE BEANSTALK, I wasn't quite that thorough, but I did submit all the credits, at least one shot of every actor and any shot that was especially interesting. Even that was too much for the contributor. (When I do a thorough job with a feature-length movie—as with Alfred Hitchcock's FRENZY—it can come to 1000-2000 stills.)

IMDb later changed its mind about my stills and agree to restore them whenever I notice a title with the images missing. And so periodically, I find one and post my request here.

The exceptions are when the stills are too low-quality. I like to screenshot very old, very obscure movies, even when no high-quality prints are available. The stills from those movies are gone and the staff won't restore them, even in the cases where the page otherwise has no stills at all.

This was a depressing experience for me. I've been contributing since 1999, but some time in the 2010s, there were a number of contributors removing the "uncredited" attributes I added to daytime soap opera acting credits. (Soap actors in the USA are not credited for every episode.) The regular soap contributors felt that "uncredited" was pejorative and continually removed the attributes and did a number of other things to spoil the careful cast lists I collected. The staff agreed that my submissions were correct, and yet did nothing to stop the other regulars from corrupting my work. They refused to restore it after it was corrupted; I had to do it myself, which was tedious. And then my restorations were undone a few days later anyway.

I stopped contributing for six years over this issue. I only came back because of the images, which were a new and exciting feature. And then I saw my work getting removed again.

Instead of ragequitting this time, I decided to keep my cool and see if the staff were more helpful now, and they were. It's much nicer to deal with the staff these days.

Nevertheless, I stopped submitting my "comic book sequences." I work on other things. Maybe if the staff actively encourages a thorough presentation of a movie, rather than just a representative sample, I'll go back to it. But it's possible they are just tolerating my work and don't consider it ideal.

@jay_spirit​ 

How do you know that contributors reported your images? As far as I have seen in your previous threads IMDb have not offered an explanation.

@Peter_pbn​ 

The user I believe reported them was very angry they were restored. I assumed he was the one reporting them, but now that you mention it, he never said so explicitly.

There were a handful of my galleries—three or four, I think—that were reported here. One of them was for FRENZY (1972). The staffer resolved the issue by wiping out all the images I had submitted. So those for sure were reported but not via the usual method.

@jay_spirit​ 

Dear jay_spirit,

Thank you for your long, informative reply! I can perfectly see your point of uploading stills that verify the cast and vice versa. Actually, I'd come up with this idea myself some time ago for two-way or even three way verification (for staff and viewers) of submissions of cast, stills and trivia. I suppose features like "Keywords" could be added to this practice (e.g. 'Viking ship' of 'sepiatone').

I know it must be very frustrating to see all of your work gone all of a sudden, especially when no explanations are given. I believe the IMDb staff and editors should be far more honest and transparent about their procedures and decisions.

As they rely on the work of thousands of volunteers for a large part, who often invest a lot of time and effort in it, nothing can be more discouraging than mass deletions, seemingly at the editors' whim.

Good luck!

Richard

@Richard_J​ 

Thank you.

The staff is nice to work with these days. I would like more transparency, but that would have to be a decision made from the top. IMDb has concealed things from the beginning, and part of the reason was to protect the contributor, rather than keep things from him. A lot of contributors have not wanted their contributions attached to their names or even to their pseudonyms.

I love your idea of using the images to verify keywords. The same thing had occurred to me. I'm hoping management will come to see the images less as representations of a movie and more as data.

@jay_spirit​ 

You're welcome! Just to make sure, I wasn't thinking of exposing some particular user as a troll or anything, or some overprotective movie producer, just what general policies or considerations might apply.