ido_hammer's profile

35 Messages

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956 Points

Friday, July 21st, 2017 1:59 PM

2

The policy regarding profile pictures

I'm aware of IMDB's policy concerning profile pictures, requiring the person in question to have an IMDBPro account in order to have pictures associated with his or her account. While I completely understand the financial reasoning behind this policy, I can't help but feeling it has a couple of disadvantages worth mentioning.

The first one, and perhaps the most significant, is the fact that many cast and crew members choose not to participate in this arrangement, thus creating a major hole in the database. Not only is the database incomplete - it's incomplete and going to remain incomplete by definition, because of an internal policy. Going through a list of cast members for a movie or a TV show and noticing that 20-30% of the profiles have no pictures, doesn't make a very positive impression, in my opinion.

Also, while having an IMDBPro account might be trivial for popular actors or actresses who have a lot of work (and can usually therefore afford it much more easily), that is not necessarily the case with people who are not as well-known, or people who do the occasional gig without committing to a full-time career.

Is this really the best way to go at it?

2.5K Messages

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69.2K Points

7 years ago

This is not an official reply from IMDb, but I believe they're trying to protect the privacy of the people. If anyone could add personal photos/headshots to any name page, it could open up a whole can of worms.

35 Messages

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956 Points

Well, I believe that can be said about any other type of data in the database as well. I suppose that's the reason IMDB has staff members, to sort and refine the requests to add, change or delete data entries. In most cases, especially when it comes to pictures, it should be relatively easy to verify the link between a certain picture and a certain person. I guess the obvious first step would be to check with the person himself or his representative.

It looks to me like the major motivation behind this arrangement is making money, which is legitimate by itself, in my opinion. Keeping such a site running surely costs lots of money, and nobody should be expected to work for free.

2.7K Messages

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83K Points

7 years ago

It doesn't solve the problem for recent titles, but I feel it should be possible for relatives of deceased people to add photos to their IMDb pages for free.
Long ago, this used to be possible (it was called the Family Tribute Waiver or something like that IIRC).