WHY ARE FIXES TO SELF CREDITS CONTINUALLY REJECTED?

@Michelle 

Yes that is correct. They were talking about his taking his legal business to the show's fictional law firm of Lockhart, Gardner, and Bond.

If I can ask a question though, perhaps I am misreading the guidance, and if I am please tell me, but the guidance and intent seems to be to limit self credits to talk, reality, news, and the like shows where the person is actually talking as themselves.

Let me give an example though where the guidance strictly speaking should make a self credit but it's in the person's name. When Sammy Davis Jr was on All in the Family, Carol O'Connor wanted to give Davis flexibility so there were no lines written for Davis. So in reading the guidance strictly, then Davis should be credited as self and not by name, but part of Davis' portrayal was talking about having riden in Archie's fictional cab and Davis made up lines regarding the cab. The point is that I'm not sure how a person can be in a fictional work and not play a fictional version of themselves with the exception of a musical act only performing a song.

Your question makes it seem as if there c/would be a time when someone could be credited as self in a fictional work.  The one example I can think of as I said, but is not very common today is for when musical groups performed. In the 70-90s it was fairly common but much less so today. Even still, let's say all they did was perform a song. Even then, they were generally doing it in a fictional bar. So sh/would they be credited as self or by name?

Maybe the guidance needs clarification a/o to make it strict that in a fictional work a person playing "themselves" will be credited by their name saving self credits for reality, talk, news, etc.

Any clarification as to why this is such a problem area would be fantastic.

I'd like to add the following links, but there are more, where this issue of self credits has come up before. This is clearly not a minor problem, and although I've had it many times there are many others that too have had problems.

 Example4 Example5 Example6 Example7 Example1 Example2 Example3

@Michelle , you ask a question that has not been asked before, so I think that there needs to be some sort of additional guidance to clarify both for contributors/volunteers and imdb staff. In reading, apparently some keywords "fix"/move self credits. A suggestion would be to create a keyword, and more likely a combination, that would reliably indicate that a show was fictional (maybe as an example "action/crime/drama" or possibly just drama). I have to confess that I 100% do not feel knowledgeable enough as to what keywords would create the fix but I'm confident some one does.

Thank you for taking the time to read my blather :)

@Michelle 

Could you please try and explain why changes to self credits that use the above criteria are rejected and suggest how to get them accepted on the initial submission? With seven examples of rejects that should not have been rejected clearly indicates a problem as I described above. So please HELP.

Thank you.

I sure hope a staffer will respond.

It's certainly not just Mike.

I corrected 2 such credits in 1 contribution in the last week, and accepted/declined ran 50/50.

I did nothing extra to justify the declined item (other than point out the other got through), just sent it to the Contact desk, and the 2nd was approved too.

Inappropriately Declined items are a lot more work for us, and for IMDb staff.

I hope IMDb tracks _who_ declines things that get reversed, and train them better when their stats warrant it.

In the meanwhile, contributors are getting frustrated, and perhaps not even checking to see if things get declined, making IMDb less accurate than it could be.

Mike, if you'd rather not have this comment on your thread, just reply as such and I'll delete it.

Hi @MiketheWhistle - I've read through this thread and others linked herein and have raised the issue as a training concern for all data editors who handle cast credits.

While I can't promise immediate change here I'd like to apologise for the inconvenience this has caused.

As a side note - I would recommend an explanation comment that is something like:

"This person is playing a fictional version of themselves - https://help.imdb.com/article/contribution/filmography-credits/characters/GKLQVXKH7U8DATWX"

If you have any further of these rejected please get in touch with our customer support team here rather than making a new thread: https://help.imdb.com/contact 

THANK YOU GRAYSON!!! I hope that it works but regardless I appreciate your effort and response.

have a happy holidays and stay safe.

We appreciate it, Grayson.