Add a contributor text view for name credits

Why in tarnation was All Credits (Text Only) disabled???? For printing credits, it was great, there's no dealing with images and the credits appear on printed pages just fine. Now, credits are being cut off on page breaks, probably to make room to show film images and user rating. All that's needed with Text Only is title, year, character...it wasn't broke and didn't need fixing.

Seeing pictures and not the Full text page for credits is not anyone's idea of a DATEBASE. This is now useless to find and search, copy and paste, . BRING BACK THE FULL TEXT PAGE for all CREDITS.

@Col_Needham​ "the view has been moved to a more visible spot on the main name page in response to customer feedback"

No it hasn't. You are missing the point of what people are saying in this thread.

Fine: the "all credits" option un-sets the default of separating the listing into page-sized chunks with a "more" option to continue going back in time for another chunk. That's great. But that is no substitute. The list is still hierarchical: for a given TV series title, all you see is "41 episodes" and you then have to click on that link to display the actor's credits for one season at a time.

What we want is a full, expanded view which shows everything without having to go through season by season to see all the actor's credits for that TV series. As it used to be in the "text mode" listing.

About the only way now that I can see an actor's full set of credits is to pretend to edit their filmography - that at least shows everything.

Why does IMDB have a death wish to make what was easy and simple, into a convoluted task with far more button-clicking? By all means introduce these new views and layout, but for heaven's sake don't even think about removing anything which has been there all along.

So the text only view is being kept right? That's the only view I use because as has been stated above by another user (not sure why we are "customers"???) The text only view is the easiest and most concise view to see a performer's (and any other person working in the industry) credits. The title, the year and the episodes, all easily clickable.

Here is some of my situation related to imdb:

I'm not a contributor (having only DVDs, etc., to gain non-imdb info about titles) but have occasionally tried to help correct obvious mistakes I've found with imdb pages through the years.  It would probably surprise most people how mistakes stand out when comparing imdb data a few months apart.

I use imdb to help maintain my personal database (MariaDB / HeidiSQL) of content I own or content I potentially would like to add to my collection.

 This DB currently controls about 10K movie, 50K TV episode and 250K potentials relating to my collection.

Years ago I used the "imdb alternate interface FTP site" to download the Actor/Actress files, ran them through a couple reformat programs, did some manual updates with compare software and loaded my database tables.  This took a couple days once a year or so to accomplish in my spare time.  Additionally, if I added a name to my potentials list, the needed data was already mostly in proper format to load to my database.  

When the FTP site was replaced with the current alternative interface files [by the way: Thank you imdb for what is there], the ability to tie titles to names went away (the "known for" type inclusions are useless for my purposes).  At that point I began using a browser's developer mode to manually flat file out the roughly 2.5K Name pages in my potentials list.  Then processed these saved html sources (after a sometimes nasty manual update to fill in the "cross site scripting" and other gotchas imdb web developers block my approach with} programmatically.  This takes 2-3 months to accomplish.  When the "new format" Name pages were introduced, I originally thought it best to give up on imdb all together, but then I found the link to the "fullcredits/text" pages which continued to work for me.  Unfortunately, the html page sources on the new page design (especially the breakup of TV episodes on popups that can't even be selected/copied in Windows browsers) seem to make my usage case no longer reasonable to pursue.

If I had a say, I would simplify and strip down the "fullcredits" pages by getting rid of the extraneous links (user lists and other fluff already contained on the main pages), internal page html scripting, etc., and leave a link someplace on the new Name page to get to the text page.

In my case, even better would be: including in the alternative interface files some form of name/title xref.  Would need: nconst, tconst (TV parentTconst can be retrieved from the "title.episode.tsv" files) and primaryProfession (to classify the row as being in the actor/self/archive_footage/etc., grouping).  PrimaryProfession (my case needs only actor/self/archive_footage) could even be the filename instead of a column to reduce individual file sizes.

Is there no light version of IMDB? if I copy a filmography to a word file to check it, this is what I get:

Bruce Willis, Dominic Purcell, and Nomzamo Mbatha in Assassin (2023)

Assassin

3.2

Valmora

2023

Bruce Willis, Willow Shields, Edward Drake, and Jack Kilmer in Detective Knight: Independence (2023)

Detective Knight: Independence

3.4

James Knight

2023

Bruce Willis and Paul Johansson in Detective Knight: Redemption (2022)

Detective Knight: Redemption

4.0

James Knight

2022

What I WANT to get is: only year, movie, role and possibly indication of TV or movie. There was a time when i could get this info with the help of this symbol: 

As of now, i get lots of unnecessary info. And if I want to copy a cast list I get every name twice (name + photo) unless I copy and paste from print preview which is slightl better

It used to be called "name reference view".

@Col_Needham​ Col, we should not NEED to give specific use cases. The "flat" (as opposed to hierarchical) page used to exist. You have removed it. You should replace it. We should not have to justify and beg and plead to keep something that used to be there. Please, Col and other IMDB staff, stop destroying IMDB little by little.

Remember that IMDB lives or dies by the quality of its information. If submitters find it more difficult to research and to make sure that they have selected the correct John Smith (by looking at other titles for each possible match), they will accept the path of least resistance and will create a brand new name instead of choosing the correct pre-existing one, thus fragmenting a person's filmography.

You have lots of different types of users with differing requirements. Make sure you have *different* page layouts and formats that cater for those different requirements, rather that trying to make one title page and one name page layout suffice for everyone.

I almost wonder whether there need to be two different IMDB sites, accessing a common database: one with fancy images, icons, "you might also be interested in" links and images; and one with pages which display the information that the submitters need, in a flat structure (no hierarchy of TV series -> season -> episode -> cast links).

The thing that still frustrates the HELL out me with the name page layout is the "Related News", "More to explore", User lists", "Users Polls", "add a demo reel", "how much have you seen" sections which are placed incorrectly, so the "Edit page" button is buried somewhere in the middle of them.

If the page is opened full-screen (eg 1920x1080) all this irrelevant info is in a sidebar. But if I narrow the browser window so I can display IMDB and a video player (eg VLC) side by side when transcribing from video to IMDB, the irrelevant info (though I call it something a lot more scatalogical!) moves below, "burying" the "Edit page" button in some random place so I have to scroll up and down to locate it. That is bad page design. It has not been vetted by real users - particularly real submitters.

If you really *must* display the irrelevant info, at least make sure is it kept out of the way of the important stuff like the person's filmography and the all-important button to change/add to that filmography.

I feel VERY STRONGLY that IMDB is being changed so the needs of the casual user are now the most important thing, and the different needs of the submitters are no longer important. Are we *really* a nuisance to you? Do you want us to continue submitting or should we pack up and go home?

Col, as I have said many times before, THE BALL IS IN YOUR COURT. Please don't alienate your submitters. Because that is what it feels like.