Updates to Advanced Search

The Title Text Search and Name Text Searches have been temporarily removed, but will return.

When?  Next week, next month, next quarter, next year, some day in the future beyond 2018? Thanks.  I've been missing it since well before you posted.

It really sucks that you can't search within the "quotes" category anymore. I used that all the time. Why remove that function?

IMDb is continuously making improvements to our website and apps based on our customers’ feedback and the usage of our many features

Anyone else find quotes such as these insulting and funny in a gallows humor kind of way? Every time you do an "improvement" these days, it is in actual fact a nerf; the removal of something useful, without a proper replacement, and completely and utterly disregarding the customers' feedback about the usefulness of those features, as well as a reskin (most of the time looking worse than before) of the remaining features...

Talking of the remaining features; you do a massive "update" to the advanced search, but you don't first fix the bugs in the advanced search, like the keywords search in the advanced title search? You can be glad you're running a pretty much unique service on the web, because if you were selling something, you wouldn't survive long running your site like that...

this is a temporary limitation and will be returned to the page in the future

Tip for the future; fix temporary limitations in an internal beta program before running them out to your customers! In a world with useful tools like VMware and Hyper-V available, as well as the decades-old ability to duplicate a database for testing purposes, doing testing on live servers if beyond belief!

Change is fine, as long as it is change that doesn't impose limits upon what was possible before, as such you should never change anything before you've actually tested it, and finished implementing the things that worked before, and that you intend to have available in the future.

The number of complaints coming along on this site (which isn't exactly easy to find for the average IMDb user, since it is run on a completely different site than IMDb and a such not intuitive to understand has anything to do with IMDb) every time you do an update, crying out for useful features that has suddenly disappeared, should speak books to you that the way you're doing these things now is the WRONG way to do it! Simplifying the administration on your part is a noble cause, but getting there shouldn't be something your customers have to suffer through. Do it, but do it in the background; get all the bits and pieces ready in the new system, test it internally, make a closed beta for contributors and super users, etc. - get all of it working, THEN roll it out full and complete to your customers, and fix the few remaining bugs, which of course cannot always be anticipated, quickly afterwards.

Currently you're just pushing out limitation upon limitation, and new designs worse than the previous, saying; "this is necessary, but we will fix it 'soon'(tm)" without even giving even the simplest clue as to WHEN we can expect the site to be working as intended again.

Please, for the love of movies and your precious customers (we should be priority #1, after all!), roll back everything you've done in the last couple of months, continue working on your vision internally, and give it to us complete and working when it is actually working!

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Advanced name search.

Why did we just lose the function to use lists in name searches? Seems like a very random, unnecessary and for me personally extremely inconvenient change...

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: Upcoming changes to several IMDb features.

Well, it looks like the Advanced Name Search no longer includes results for people not credited at the series level, when the filmography parameter is that of a television series. Take The Sparticle Mystery, for instance, as it only shows one credit when previously it show multiple pages' worth. I'm disappointed.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled What happened to the ability to sort by height?.

I've always made use of the sort by height feature when looking up people by their birthdate etc.  Why did this disappear?

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled How to search trivia?.

Hullo,
Back in the good old days, you could go to advanced search and search for certain words or phrases in title trivia. For instance, I could type in 'Philippe Noiret' and find every mention of the actor across all trivia pages on IMDb. Sadly, I can't seem to find the function in the new redesigned advanced search page. Could you help me find it?

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Strange glitch in collab search.

I tried to search in collab searching for people that worked on both GTA 5 and Law & Order 1999/1990. Searching is giving me no results but actually it should be plenty of them.
Here are some links
First attempt (no results)
http://www.imdb.com/search/name?roles=tt0203259,tt2103188
and an actual collab that happend
http://www.imdb.com/search/title?roles=nm0902623,nm0577329

somehow it seems to work with gta...
http://www.imdb.com/search/name?roles=tt2103188,tt0383385
...but with those two titles it seems broken
http://www.imdb.com/search/name?roles=tt0203259,tt0098844
I cannot prove that but i think searches on other titles from law & order universe may be broken too.
So, help me if you can... i'm trying to make a research and its a bit important for me.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled IMDb search.

I'm betting it's all television series that aren't handled properly.

Clearly The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961) and Mary Tyler Moore (1970) have at least 1 person in common (MTM), but this search comes up empty:
http://www.imdb.com/search/name?roles=tt0054533,tt0065314

This search yielded only their common producer, Norman Lear:
Credited in All in the Family (1971), Maude (1972) 
http://www.imdb.com/search/name?roles=tt0066626,tt0068103
(Maude was a spin-off of AitF, so it's stars definitely appeared in at least 1 episode there.)

Likewise for these, finding only producer Garry Marshall in common:
Credited in Happy Days (1974), Mork & Mindy (1978) 
http://www.imdb.com/search/name?roles=tt0070992,tt0077053
Again, M&M as a spinoff of HD. Guaranteed common cast.

Nothing in common for this parent & spinoff:
Credited in Cheers (1982), Frasier (1993) 
http://www.imdb.com/search/name?roles=tt0083399,tt0106004

So the search is not digging down to episode-level data? Or cast data?

Did developers misunderstand a prior bug report about NAME collaborations (which are finding TV series in common between 2 people, but not identifying the episode, and they were NOT in an episode together?) And instead now they've restricted TITLE collaborations to some inappropriate higher level of search? (The bugs are really sort of inside out of each other.)

Example:
Most Popular Titles With Reginald Owen And Reginald Gardiner
http://www.imdb.com/search/title?roles=nm0654239,nm0306786
includes  Bewitched (1964–1972)
Reginald Owen is in 2 Episodes: 
- Mc Tavish (1968) ... Ockie
- The Short Happy Circuit of Aunt Clara (1966) ... Ocky
Reginald Gardiner is in 1:
- I Get Your Nannie, You Get My Goat (1967) ... Lord Clive Montdrako

Being in different episodes would not satisfy my definition of collaboration.

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: Strange glitch in collab search.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled To find the word in quotes..

Hi! It s impossible to search by the word in quotes? I can't see this option anymore. Thanx

Yes, please confirm that quote search IS coming back? I used it every day.

Yes, quote search is coming back to the site and while I can't share an exact date when it will be done we expect to reinstate it within Q1 of 2018.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Advanced Search - Soundtracks.

Has the "Advanced Search - Soundtracks" facility been disabled?

I have tried to use it recently and it no longer appears as an option. 

I will be most disappointed if it has gone. I found it very useful. Many of my contributions came about because I used it to

1. locate names of songwriters and performers in Soundtrack items that did not have links.  I then created links for them.

2. locate songs and check that (the correct) songwriters were credited, adding/ correcting songwriters where necessary.

3. locate songwriters and performers of particular songs in order to copy the links into a new Soundtrack item, instead of having to search for names, locate the 'nm0000000' and paste it into a new item (which is a pain when you have a triumvirate of songwriters).