26 Messages

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352 Points

Saturday, April 4th, 2026

Solved

Title edit changes dashes into colons

Recently title edits have changed the dashes (-) in the titles into colons (:) for no reason, even though the official title doesn't have a colon but a dash. Why is this? Last three edits I made within a month have been incorrectly edited. Is there some AI used in this or is there someone who deliberately misspells the titles that the users have input?

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Champion

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1 month ago

You should probably give examples and post the reference numbers of your edits.

There is a policy which may be relevant:

Subtitles are separated from the main title with a colon for English titles and a '-' for German titles IF the title on the 'film' uses no separator. Other languages are not (yet) standardized. If the title on the 'film' already uses a separator it is used.

https://help.imdb.com/article/contribution/titles/title-formatting/G56U5ERK7YY47CQB?ref_=helpms_helpart_inline

26 Messages

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352 Points

Sorry, I do not understand the policy.

I forgot to mention that I'm not talking about the English titles, but the titles that are used in my country (not German either). Also, some titles may have colons, some may have dashes, or even both (like Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace). There is no one correct way, it is what it is when it was first translated. Not sure why there is some kind of upper policy to basically change the titles incorrectly to what they shouldn't be. How to get rid of this? And if there is no policy in other countries, why do then change them incorrectly from what I've input?

(edited)

Champion

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16.4K Messages

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351.3K Points

Maybe you need to include evidence of the correct title.

26 Messages

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352 Points

#260324-075040-051000

#260403-124646-374000

Edit: there were others, but I re-corrected them and they finally went as they should.

(edited)

Employee

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7.6K Messages

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79.9K Points

@Lex87​ - Thank you for reporting and posting the references! For the first one, it has been corrected and the second one, I can see that your correction was already approved.

26 Messages

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352 Points

Good to know, thanks. So in the future, will this happen again, people need to edit twice every title to make them correct? Why is this happening if there is policy only for English and German?

26 Messages

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352 Points

#260404-155526-212000 declined

#260404-083914-554000 declined

Can you please fix this issue or people can't put the correct titles for stuff anymore. If it's not fixed then I guess I can't contribute anymore.

Employee

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79.9K Points

@Lex87​ - Thank you for the references! Further reviewing, the processing erros have been reported and these have been re-submitted on your behalf. The changes will be live shortly.

26 Messages

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352 Points

Thank you, they have now been approved.

Forgot there was one more that was declined at the same time:  #260404-155401-856000

Employee

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7.6K Messages

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79.9K Points

@Lex87​ - You're welcome!

This one has been re-submitted too and will be live shortly.

26 Messages

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352 Points

This doesn't relate to the subject of this topic but to the guidelines anyways. #260419-061919-526000 was declined because "Does not meet contribution guidelines." They do, though. Please review your reviews.

Is there a way to make these contributions easier? 25% of what I try to contribute, whether it's titles or images, get declined/have problems even though there should be none. It shouldn't be this hard for a site that works based on users' contributions. :(

Employee

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7.6K Messages

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79.9K Points

@Lex87​ - This has been re-submitted and will be live shortly. 

If you have supporting evidence like links and such, as a suggestion, you can always add them to the 'provide an explanation' box.

26 Messages

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352 Points

@Maya​ Thank you. :)

Of course. Unfortunately there isn't always links, but that is a different reason to get refused. I think that message says something like we couldn't prove this to be the case or something. But this message states: "Does not meet contribution guidelines." There are no guidelines that it does not meet, the guidelines were for English and which these weren't, and they meet the guidelines as they were to my knowledge, I do not see any guideline breach here.