Why was my submission declined

Could you please stop shouting?

@Grayson

Dear Grayson: 

I frequently have this problem with submissions of credit corrections.  Quite often the actor/character credit information on the IMDb is just dead wrong, but when I try to correct it, I get a message like this:

ReasonUnable to verify.

Your contribution has been declined.We have been unable to verify your contribution. Unfortunately we were unable to accept your submission as we were unable to verify the information provided. 

Yet in my explanation, I always indicate that I have just *watched* the film on DVD or Blu-ray, and I give very precise information, including the exact time information -- how many minutes and seconds into the film the relevant evidence is.  What can I do, beyond this?  The only thing I could do is somehow take the DVD or Blu-ray and put it into my computer and try to upload the actual scenes for IMDb staff to view -- but I don't have a clue how to do that.  And I'm not confident that anyone at IMDb would look at the scenes even if I could figure out how to send them.

The problem is that information -- even if it's wrong information -- *already* on the cast lists is treated as sacrosanct, whereas corrections are treated as dubious.  But why weren't the *original* erroneous additions declined with:  "We have been unable to verify your contribution"?  Why is the standard higher for corrections than it was for the original acceptance of the wrong information?

To give only the most recent example, on the MGM short "Forbidden Passage" (1941), the IMDb currently has George Cleveland as "Anna's Father".  This is an erroneous bit of information, presumably submitted in the past by some IMDb user.  (It's not from the MGM credits list -- there's no onscreen credit for Cleveland or "Anna's Father.")  At that point, when it was first submitted, the IMDb staff did not challenge it -- they accepted it.  And now they treat it as sacrosanct.  I watched the film the other day -- twice -- and George Cleveland's character is not "Anna's Father" but "Anna's Brother in Law" -- as the dialogue makes clear.  I even gave the minutes and seconds for the relevant dialogue.  But no dice -- "We cannot verify your contribution."  So the error will stay up, because of the double standard, whereby the first contributor of the information -- no matter how careless or sloppy -- gets no inspection, while anyone trying to correct the information is expected to provide proof as rigorous as is demanded in Euclidean geometry.  And this happens often.  

I often spend 10 to 20 minutes for each of these corrections I submit, providing detailed references to the exact DVD containing the proof -- but most of them are rejected.  I can't afford to keep doing that.  

I think the IMDb should maintain a history log for every actor/character entry, so that the person who uploaded the original information for each film can be determined, and, in principle, contacted.  Ideally, there should be the equivalent of a Wikipedia page for each cast list, where all those who have submitted corrections in the past for that particular film, or would like to submit them, can talk to each other about the particular film the page covers.  They could discuss and debate uncertain actors and character names.  It might be that after talking to each other, some of them would withdraw previous contributions that are erroneous.  There could be a procedure for that, whereby if the original contributor of wrong information withdraws the information in favor of another suggestion, IMDb will make the change.  

Hey there - it's always hard to say how incorrect data gets on to IMDb in the first place. The best thing to do is submit a screenshot of the credits for the title showing what you want to update. A timecode for a particular scene is unfortunately not very useful for us, as we do not always have access to the title in question and if everyone submitted credits in this manner we'd have a backlog of months not weeks.

My recommendation is to submit any credited corrections with a screenshot from the credits and if the role is uncredited make sure to say so in the submission. If your submissions are rejected please contact us direct with your evidence and we can investigate further if possible.

To contact us direct please go to https://help.imdb.com/contact and make sure you give us the 18 digit submission reference.

Thanks, Grayson, for this contact information.

I don't know how a screenshot from the credits would help any.  In most cases the corrections I make can only be proved correct by listening to the audio of the film.  That would apply to the case I just named, where only when one hears the man's wife reading his letter aloud would one learn that the tailor is her brother-in-law, not her father.  It would also apply to the correction I made yesterday which was just rejected, for another MGM short, The Luckiest Guy in the World, in which the name "Frankie" is not used for Anthony Caruso's character; he is called "Pinky".  How could I prove that to someone who has not heard the dialogue in the film?  A screen shot of the credits wouldn't prove anything, as all they show is that Anthony Caruso is an actor in the film, not what character he plays.  

Again, I think that it would save a lot of work for IMDb staff, and also would produce more accurate cast lists, if IMDb would set up a "Talk Page" format, such as is found on Wikipedia, where people who have watched the particular film in question could discuss disputed actors and character names.  In many cases, more than one of the people in the discussion would have a VHS, DVD, or Blu-ray of the film in question, and it would be possible to verify.  If there were a rule that any time a suggested correction gets a "second" and a "third" to it, the erroneous credit would be changed, the results would be better than the current system, where most changes are vetoed because there is no way of providing proof for them, even when they are right.

I add that IMDb seems a lot stickier than it used to be regarding changes.  It used to be that if I gave a rational explanation based on actually viewing the movie, the IMDb would make the suggested change maybe 1/3 or 1/2 of the time, as when it accepted my correction for the erroneous identification of Keenan Wynn as the lawyer in Touch of Evil.  At least, this was the case for most of the uncredited roles.  But now my corrections are rejected about 9/10 of the time.

The one exception is corrections to release dates.  My corrections to release dates are accepted immediately, doubtless because I verify them with links to movie times from old newspapers.com pages.  But it's impossible to link to individual scenes from most of the films with cast list errors, which means that I have to count on the IMDb staff recognizing, from the literate and detailed explanations I give for character identifications, that I'm very probably accurate.  I'd like to think that my nearly 100/100 acceptance rate for release date corrections would be proof that I'm probably careful about cast lists corrections as well, and that those corrections can be trusted, but I guess the treatment of cast list corrections doesn't take into account performance elsewhere.  :-)