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nic_b
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Tuesday, November 14th, 2017 10:28 PM

Updates to Characters

Today we are modifying the display of Characters across IMDb.
 
After in-depth discussion and examination, we have decided to simplify the display of Characters on IMDb, focusing our on-going efforts towards title specific character details.  While in concept, we love the idea of character data spanning across all titles, in practice we do not feel our past experience lived up to expectations. The majority of our previous character pages were dead ends, without any related content, providing a confusing and disjointed experience.  The filmography credits were often unusable, and the bios many times were inconsistent given numerous disparate story lines. While the previous experience had drawbacks, we truly appreciate all the hard work of everyonewho contributed to characters over the years.  That said, as of today, we are simplifying the experience, allowing us to retain the character concept while building a foundation for future growth.

With today’s release we have begun this transition.  Our new character experience will support title specific images, quotes, and keywords.  Moving forward we will no longer support character filmography, biographies, videos, character lists or polls.  To aid in this transition, we are temporarily retaining our prior character experience until Dec 6th.  This will provide our users time to archive any character lists, polls or biographies which they previously created or contributed towards. If you wish to migrate any character lists or polls, we recommend rebuilding the content with an image list.  Existing character lists can also be archived by selecting the “Export this list” option. During this transition, we have temporarily retained the character search option, but will suspend support after Dec 6th.  In the coming months, we plan to re-enable character search based on our new experience.
 
We understand this is a significant change which was made only after careful consideration.  We appreciate your understanding.

Here is an example of the new experience
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080684/characters/nm0000148



Nic

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2 months ago

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79

adamlorincz

2 Messages

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102 Points

6 years ago

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled List disappeared.

So, I've had this old list with my favourite characters on the following link: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls006468071/
About a week ago I've noticed that it only gives me a big fat 404.
I was hoping it was a temporary thing, but it's still gone.
I'm using Facebook login, dunno, do you need any other info?

Also, is it possible to export my lists?
'Cause this one was not that important, but if my watchlists go, I'll be very pissed.

2

jeorj_euler

10.5K Messages

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221.5K Points

Adam Lorincz, you'll surely think twice about trusting the next website.

— Jeorj Euler, an IMDb regular registrant

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6 years ago

Vincent_Fournols

2.4K Messages

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81.2K Points

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6 years ago

jim_burke_acvewq74iw7x7

2 Messages

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100 Points

6 years ago

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled The other side of the lake. 2016..

Hello. I put some character biographies on some of the characters in a film called: The other side of the lake. 2016. They seem to have just disappeared. I am concerned as the film is based on a short story that I wrote and I also appeared in it.

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mart_n_hyggelig

1 Message

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160 Points

6 years ago

There's a big loss to data access because of this. Took me less than two days to notice. Say I remember a movie where someone plays god. All movies where god had been portrayed as a character was a neat list. Now it isn't. the evolution of Bond as a character?. chronological list

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Col_Needham

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166.7K Points

Thanks, as noted above in the thread (and this search is being built as part of our on-going roll out of fixes from the changes in late 2017):
The correct way to do this is with a proper data model tied to the underlying credit database, backed with a full search; available across all IMDb interfaces. Once this is built, you will be able to find all instances of a character name across titles without requiring another contributor to have done essentially duplicate work to manually add each character credit to a separate character page.  

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6 years ago

djv_6

12 Messages

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870 Points

Well, yes, but the correct way to do this would be to leave the data available to users while you run the scripts that pull the data from the existing pages to build the database. That's where you're getting the character data from anyway because you need humans to differentiate characters with same name while allowing the same character to be identified in separate titles. So, why not have it all available at least for searching and browsing while you build the new site and its database offline? You're not supposed to make changes "in production"!

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6 years ago

Marco

2.6K Messages

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79.6K Points

Thanks, as noted above in the thread (and this search is being built as part of our on-going roll out of fixes from the changes in late 2017):
The correct way to do this is with a proper data model tied to the underlying credit database, backed with a full search; available across all IMDb interfaces. Once this is built, you will be able to find all instances of a character name across titles without requiring another contributor to have done essentially duplicate work to manually add each character credit to a separate character page. 

Is there anything that can be said about this, almost two years later?

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4 years ago

bill_gale_95kkw5m7umvbn

1 Message

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80 Points

6 years ago

If anyone is looking for a character page alternative for just VO, check out http://www.behindthevoiceactors.com/characters/

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richard_d_fleenor

1 Message

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60 Points

6 years ago

Even if you don't list all the titles where the character appears or who played the character, you should at least maintain the basic character description that already existed.

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jeorj_euler

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221.5K Points

Hi, Richard D. Fleenor. What do you mean by "character description"? You do realize that every character biography was part of its corresponding character entry within the database? Well, the whole catalog of characters was taken offline, so there is no available paradigm, let alone a mechanism, to display any of the biographies.

The only thing left is the information found within the "role" field found in every cast list and in every filmography, some of which are monikers of characters, whereas others are literal brief descriptions of characters. We could make the role information more descriptive but the longstanding guidelines do not concur, as the information is expected to be as short, concise or abbreviated as possible.

So, the soundest thing to ask for is that the character database be ported to the new software platform, just like the title FAQ pages, synopses and parental guide pages have. The problem is that there were too many poorly-maintained character entries, and it was difficult to use in terms of linking characters to castmembers and works. It was a mess. That whole system has to be rebuilt in such a way that it is improved. In particular, the very paradigm of it may need to be rethought.

— Jeorj Euler, an IMDb regular registrant

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6 years ago

cosmin_constantin_chera

2 Messages

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120 Points

6 years ago

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled how to check if the movie has previous parts.

Hi guys, I don't know if this question was asked before but I am new here so bare it with me. I believe IMDB is great, a fantastic place to find all the data you need about movies and actors but recently they changed something. You know when you used to go on a movie lets take as an example "Iron Man" (big fan of Marvel and DC sorry) and when you could see all the actors and the roles that they were playing you could click on "Iron Man" and you could see all previous games, movies, cartoons and so on which Iron Man appeared, new I don;t know how to do that.
It shows quotes and other stuff. Can you please help 

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zulma_alamos

1 Message

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80 Points

5 years ago

Dear IMDB, How could you? ... I really loved the character page. 

“A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.”

"Looks like I'm walking."

“I don’t love you anymore. Goodbye.”

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robbi_robinson

2 Messages

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80 Points

5 years ago

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Character Search.

In the drop-down menu from the Search box, there used to be a selection for "Character".

I watch movies (particularly on vaughnlive.tv) which are free, but I have no control over when the movie starts.  Therefore, I'm often tuning into a movie in the middle, and have no idea as to the title.  I used to be able to search on a character name and subsequently identify the movie, but the IMDb's character search feature has gone AWOL.

I REALLY would like to see that character-search feature returned!!

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ACT_1

7.5K Messages

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166K Points

Therefore, I'm often tuning into a movie in the middle,
and have no idea as to the title.
by Robbi Robinson
Joined on February 16, 2017
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/people/robbi_robinson
- - -

IMDb had a TV grid from
https://tvlistings.zap2it.com/
Now gone!

You can sign in ZAP2IT with email and password
(Get an email account from _?_ just for this)

You can select your local TV provider and select fav channels
Displays 3 hours (starting Now) and you can change this to...

I use it on a Desktop computer
Do not know if it works on a mobile device

https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/why-did-you-take-away-the-tv-listings
Why did you take away the TV listings?
Posted October 19, 2017
by Nathan
Joined on October 19, 2017
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/people/nathan_1spgqt3erq8vv

EDIT

This may not work with vaughnlive.tv


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5 years ago

ACT_1

7.5K Messages

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166K Points

5 years ago

Today we are modifying the display of Characters across IMDb.
November 14, 2017
by Nic Bachhuber,  Official Rep
Joined on October 17, 2014
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/people/nic_bachhuber_6867878

- - -

How many Characters are listed ?


Not updated since Sat Dec 9 2017 (?)

https://www.imdb.com/pressroom/stats/
IMDb Statistics
Titles: 4,734,693 (Year Range: 1874 - 2025)

People : 8,702,001 (Credits: 91,169,747)
Actor  : 20,267,616
Actress 12,485,267

? ?


- - -
July 6 2018

SurpriZed II  (2019)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8665500/reference - 8,665,500 titles

Laura Santana (VI)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9956000/ - 9,956,000 Names

Some of these pages are blank



0

franklin_seal

1 Message

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80 Points

5 years ago

You say you are restoring character search functionality until December, but I do not see it in search or in advanced search. How do I get to this newly restored character search?

1

Peter_pbn

Champion

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13.2K Messages

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317.1K Points

Character search has not been restored yet.

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5 years ago

ACT_1

7.5K Messages

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166K Points

5 years ago

= Just a BUMP =

Bring back the character pages for Lists and Polls

95% of GS is for Lists and Polls

- - -

https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/changes-to-imdb-characters?topic-reply-list[settings][filter...
1. As part of this change, IMDb will no long be supporting character lists
 and polls after Dec 6, 2017.
by  Dan Dassow, Champion
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/people/dan_dassow

- - -


See more on "Related Conversations"



0

saul_jaffe

12 Messages

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310 Points

4 years ago

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

I used to be able to search by character name.  That went away a couple of years ago.  2 years ago, there are posts in these community boards saying that the ability to search by character name was going to come back "soon".  2 years later, it's still not back.  What's the latest word?  

How does everyone else feel?  Is this something that you would find useful?  If so, how about telling IMDB!  Maybe they'll bring search by character back!

7

jeorj_euler

10.5K Messages

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221.5K Points

Hi, Saul Jaffe. Who stated that the feature would be back at all? I don't remember reading this. We have to rely upon third party search engines or our own devices for the time being, or even Wikia perhaps (for notable cases but who are not necessarily credited by full name or full salutation). Which characters are you interested in determining movies or actors associated therewith?

— Jeorj Euler, an IMDb regular registrant

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4 years ago

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Peter_pbn

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317.1K Points

See Col's replies in this thread, including on this page.

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4 years ago

jeorj_euler

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221.5K Points

Thanks, Peter. I forgot that IMDb did/does intend to roll out a feature that allows for searching for movies and actors by the content of role field (character name/salutation/description). There was/is just no timeline for the implementation. I'd imagine there are a great many plans that will take a decade or a half to be implemented, and they all have to somehow keep pace with the world of computing device resource developments. I would have hoped that it would play out like a non-zero-sum game, but it looks more like the desktop interfaces have to be pulled down in order for the mobile interfaces to be pulled up.

— Jeorj Euler, an IMDb regular registrant

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4 years ago

0

djv_6

12 Messages

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870 Points

Oh, that's complete bullshit. They could've mined their webpages to form an interlinked database in six months had they wanted to. Then it's just a simple matter for a DBA to make it fast and a web monkey to recreate the page templates that refer to the database.

They don't really want the feature back. They just want character pages with character profiles i.e. long descriptions and histories of simplistic, useless trivia. Well, I would argue most people want neither to read nor to write those, especially when there are better resources and forums for those elsewhere. Also, IMDB users actually WATCH those movies, so they don't need any reference sheets to characters.
The back-links from character to actor, however, would be (and were) useful and would certainly bolster the "Db" part of the name, which is really the reason why the site exists.

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4 years ago

jeorj_euler

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221.5K Points

There are hardly any sites that have composite canon, intercanon and canonless filmographies; of characters, archetypes and story renditions of historical figures. IMDb used to have that; never mind the uselessness of character biographies.

— Jeorj Euler, an IMDb regular registrant

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4 years ago

jacek_bogucki

15 Messages

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542 Points

I will say it AGAIN: this was the simplest way to see in one, consistent place all appearances of Batman or Frankenstein or Sherlock Holmes. how REMOVAL of those pages is by *anyone* considered an improvement - is beyond me.

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4 years ago

ang_k

1 Message

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84 Points

Totally agree!

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4 years ago

jacek_bogucki

15 Messages

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542 Points

4 years ago

"after careful consideration". this is a good one. :/

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0

susan_2446205

17 Messages

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702 Points

4 years ago

What a silly idea to remove the ability to search by character name. I wanted to search for a famous person who has been portrayed in many movies and cannot do that. This is database 101, so pretty sad that this was removed.

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bderoes

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Yes, character search is missed.

As a poor substitute, I'd use google, as in:
winston churchill site:imdb.com
It's a very poor search because each title will probably be included more than once (fullcredits, title, character, trivia, goofs, etc.), and does not provide a quick way to add titles to a list.
On the other hand, it might uncover someone else's list, especially if you refine the search to 
winston churchill site:imdb.com/list

Keywords are nice, when they're present. Since they are user-added, not all titles have the keywords that would be relevant to them.

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4 years ago

jeorj_euler

10.5K Messages

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221.5K Points

But search for what by character name? The movies? The actors? Depending on how the character is credited on screen, there will be false positives or at the very least ambiguities. In the absence of a character registry, it would be best for the Advanced Title Search (ATS) and the Advanced Name Search (ANS) to be enhanced in such a way as to narrow the results down by the presence of particular contents of the "character" data field.

— Jeorj Euler, an IMDb regular registrant

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4 years ago

dan_dassow

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464.6K Points

I definitely miss the character search. Much like bderoes, Jeorj and other active IMDb uses, I used the feature extensively. IMDb deprecating character pages, character lists and character polls was a shock to many of us. In anticipation of character pages going away, I created this list of the first 1000 character pages on IMDb saved via the Internet Archive.

Since these were the most popular characters, its possible you may find the character you seek on this blog entry. Otherwise, using a google search, as bderoes suggests is your best option.

Links to Internet Archive of Character Pages

https://mypollwatch.blogspot.com/2017/11/links-to-internet-archive-of-character.html

This is the first entry:
ch0000001 Archive Jesse James

ch0000001 - Character ID
Archive - Link to Internet archive of IMDb character page
Jesse James - Link to the original IMDb character page; this link now produces a 404 (page not found) error

● FAQ: Key Threads - IMDb Poll FAQs Index

● FAQ: Summary Statistics and Poll Index

● BonaFideBoss' IMDbStats

● FAQ: Updating Threads After Poll Goes Live

Follow the IMDb Polls in Facebook and Twitter

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4 years ago

bderoes

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Dan,
This link seems to require special access:
Links to Internet Archive of Character Pages
"Your current account ... does not have access to view this page.
Click here to logout and change accounts."
The second link works fine.

When using Archive.org, keep in mind that the character pages were disabled 6Dec2017. I tried Bugs Bunny, and the site had captured several 2018 and 2019 pages, which were, of course, merely error 404s.

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4 years ago

dan_dassow

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18.3K Messages

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464.6K Points

bderoes,

I was careless to include the first link, since it is link to edit the list.

Archive.org has multiple snap shots prior to 6-Dec-2017. For instance:
Bugs Bunny (Character)
https://web.archive.org/web/20171126131911/http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000574/

(Partial image capture; click image to enlarge.)


● FAQ: Key Threads - IMDb Poll FAQs Index

● FAQ: Summary Statistics and Poll Index

● BonaFideBoss' IMDbStats

● FAQ: Updating Threads After Poll Goes Live

Follow the IMDb Polls in Facebook and Twitter

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4 years ago

lady_aleena

16 Messages

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690 Points

4 years ago

As others have said, removing this feature was a really poor decision. At least let me sort an actor's acting filmography by character. I don't want to have to scroll slowly down an actor's filmography looking for the character in every film/miniseries/tv series the actor was in. It is taking me far longer than I like to find all appearances of a character by a specific actor.

5

bderoes

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Excellent idea about filmography.
I took the liberty of including it in this Idea thread:
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/need-character-search
You may want to vote for/comment there.

As a workaround (on the desktop version), when you have Show All clicked, you can use your Browser's Search Within Page option to find each listing for the character.

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4 years ago

alex_fzyrz05m90yzm

4 Messages

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122 Points

I'm not sure if this is a "character page" issue per se, but I would just like to be able to search for a specific character name and get a list of all the titles featuring a character with that name.  So for example, I would like to be able to get a list of all titles which feature a character called "Aloysius" and which actor played each character.  I should have thought this would be fairly simple to implement.

On a similar theme, it would be good to be able to search for all the titles which feature two specific actors, so you can see, for example, all the films where actor A has starred alongside actor B.

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3 years ago

Tsarstepan

3.8K Messages

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83.6K Points

Alex, it's called Google and Wikipedia.

"On a similar theme, it would be good to be able to search for all the titles which feature two specific actors, so you can see, for example, all the films where actor A has starred alongside actor"
That exists already and still exists.


https://www.imdb.com/search/common/

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3 years ago

ACT_1

7.5K Messages

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166K Points

  
titles which feature two specific actors...

Bing Crosby (1903–1977)
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001078/
Quick Links
Related Items
Credited With
Bob Hope

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?roles=nm0001078,nm0001362&title_type=feature,tv_episode,video...
Feature Film/TV Episode/Video/TV Movie/TV Special/TV Mini-Series/Documentary/Video Game/Short Film,
with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope
(Sorted by Popularity Ascending)
79 titles
.

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3 years ago

0

djv_6

12 Messages

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870 Points

Stephen, that is called being an unproductive asshat. Look it up in Google or Wikipedia.

Alex, that is close to a character page issue. If you were to search character pages, you would get a listing of characters of that name, but only those worthy of a page. (Then again, you could easily create a simple page for those without one on the fly, so that all characters would be included.) Each page would correspond to a specific character, listing its appearances, instead of having all characters sharing the same name mixed up. In any case, there would likely be fewer pages than appearances of a character of that name, since some characters appear in multiple movies.

That is clearly different from a mere list (search) of appearances of all characters by that name. The former would only show each separate character once (one character per page), regardless of the actual number appearances. Both would be trivial to implement, though, provided that the information was in a database. A list of appearances would be a single SQL query, same as a rudimentary character page could be, or a listing of matching character pages.

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3 years ago

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