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Problems with the IMDB People plugin
rick.ca:
--- Quote ---my brain hurts
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I'm not surprised. ;)
I've noticed strange things too, but haven't commented because I haven't been able to figure out what's happening. You may be on to something with the malformed URL's. It seems plausible that if an incorrect URL is retrieved, the program is going to treat it as a separate record—thereby creating a duplicate.
I've noticed something similar involving series. A person's involvement with a series has a year associated with it (the most recent). This year is often different from that of the series (the year it started). As a result, updating the person's record causes a different item to added to their filmography than the original series record. This causes a duplicate series record to be created, and the person is not included in the original series record.
I think the plugin/program logic needs to recognize the year associated with a series in a filmography is not the same as the year associated with the series. If a person's filmography is updated via the update of a series, then the year in the filmography may necessarily be set to that of the series (rather than the actual year they last appeared). When the person's record is updated directly by the people info plugin, the existing entry for the series should be updated rather than adding a separate record with the later year.
AimHere:
--- Quote from: nostra on November 12, 2009, 03:00:16 am ---It seems that getting links for some entries in filmographies was already corrupt for some time, but nobody knew :( The only thing you can do is to rewrite all filmographies all over again.
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sigh... guess I'll just have to fix the bad entries as they crop up, because I am NOT going to totally rebuild all these filmographies.
Oh well... thanks for the updates anyway, Nostra.
Aimhere
rick.ca:
--- Quote from: rick.ca on November 12, 2009, 04:21:26 am ---I think the plugin/program logic needs to recognize the year associated with a series in a filmography is not the same as the year associated with the series...
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Thinking about this some more, I remind myself the issue is somewhat larger than this. The database design is based on the idea of visible vs. invisible movie records. If a movie is part of one's collection, it's visible. If it only exists because the movie is in a person's filmography, it contains only the information necessary for that purpose, and it's invisible. Theoretically, any one movie in the database should be in one state or another. If an invisible movie is added to one's collection, the existing invisible record should be made visible. In other words, there should be no duplicates.
In practice, however, this is not what's happening. I've already pointed out the problem with series records and years. Another problematic situation is where one is using the option to include only "main page" actors (the top 15, in credits order). BTW, I find this option essential for restricting the number people in the database to a manageable level. When people records are updated, their full filmography is added. For actors, that filmography is likely to include movies in the collection for which the person is not one of the top 15 credited. Exactly what happens in this case, I'm not sure. Based on what I see in my database, it's either of (1) the actor is added to the existing movie record, even though they are not one of the top 15; or (2) a duplicate invisible record is created to record the movie detail as presented in the filmography. In case (1), updating the movie will remove the actor from the movie credits, and the movie is removed from their filmography—a "no win" situation where neither a people or a movie update will fix the problem. In case (2), it seems the next time this happens with a different actor, the same duplicate invisible record is not necessarily used to record the filmography data.
I thought it would be interesting to see what impact this situation has had on my database. So I attempted to view my "invisible" movie records. Unfortunately, my tired old computer has difficulty handling a list with 270,000 (!!) items. I understand that number is going to be large, but I have to wonder if it's that large because of this issue. I was able to examine one interesting case before my computer choked. The X Files series had 48 duplicate invisible records. The visible record showed the top three actors (for reasons I don't understand, these are the only ones on the IMDb main page) followed by six unknown actors who had appeared in one to three episodes. Updating the record, as expected, removed these six actors.
I wasn't able to see if movies are similarly affected, but I suspect they are. When I look at filmographies, it's very common to see movies that I know are in my collection, but which are not highlighted as such. Ctrl-clicking such a link confirms it to be an invisible duplicate. This, of course, is expected. What I'm unsure of is whether there are multiple invisible duplicates—as there are for series.
I'm not sure what the solution is. I suspect it necessarily involves a significant change to the database structure, along with how the program handles these relationships. In other words, something to consider for the next major version, not a bug fix. Perhaps movie records for filmographies need to be completely distinct from "visible" records, and the two kept in sync in terms of credits.
rick.ca:
--- Quote from: AimHere on November 12, 2009, 02:32:09 am ---I don't know how the malformed URLs were getting into my "real" Movie View entries (the ones I added myself, not clicked on in People View)... unless, maybe, the IMDB People plugin was at some point trying to merge imported filmographies, saw an existing Movie entry, and added the malformed URL to it (even though it already had an IMDB URL associated with it) rather than creating a duplicate movie record? Bizzare...
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The significance of this observation didn't register with me until I discovered the consequences in my own database today. 278 movie records had the malformed URL added. Although the original URL is still there, the plugin attempts to use the bad one and fails. I've had to restore my database from backup predating my first noticing the problem on November 9.
Hopefully, not too many users have been affected, since probably few run mass people updates on a regular basis. Ironically, there wouldn't have been so many records affected in my database if I hadn't been investigating the problem. It would be a good idea, however, to issue a program update so users get fair warning of the problem before corrupting their databases.
To check for records affected by this, do an Advanced Search of URL containing onclick.
And always read AimHere's posts carefully. ;)
AimHere:
--- Quote from: rick.ca on November 13, 2009, 01:46:05 am ---And always read AimHere's posts carefully. ;)
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Well, that goes without saying, doesn't it? ;D
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