Internet Frustration Database

[silentfilm]

I think that the IMDB is a great thing. I use it almost every day. It was actually almost almost a Wikipedia movie database before anybody ever thought of that concept. But still I get frustrated by it.

Believe it or not it is still not complete. Yesterday, I was adding cast lists from the February 14, 1914 copy of Reel Life magazine that I won on eBay. This magazine was the magazine lising upcoming releases from the Mutual distributor (American, Ince, Reliance-Majestic, etc.). It has cast listings and scenarios for all the upcoming releases. When I was entering the infomation in the IMDB, a couple of the Ince films already had writers listed, and they were totally different from what was listed in the magazine. Now magazines like this and Moving Picture World certainly have errors, but it is hard to tell where the mistake occurred. The IMDB has no sources listed at all. This is probably because of copyright worries. I ended up adding the writers in the magazine to the writers already listed, since I have no way of determining which ones were correct.

Another problem with the IMDB is that they sell their content to so many other websites. The IMDB has Raymond Griffith listed in the cast of D.W. Griffith's Sorrows of Satan. I have not seen the film, so I'm not completely sure that Griffith is in the cast, but I'm pretty sure that the confusion comes from the identical last name. I've got quite a few books on D.W. Griffith with filmographies in the back, and none list Raymond Griffith. Do a Google search on the Raymond Griffith and "Sorrows of Satan", and you'll see lots of websites listing him in the cast.

The IMDB has The Ship That was Sent Off to Mars as a Raymond Griffith directed (!) film, but as far as I can tell this is an imaginary film. Paramount did announce a film titled Get Off the Earth with Griffith -- I have a color ad for it. But that film was never produced. Without a source, how can you dispute it.

Just because something is not in print doesn't mean it isn't factual. If Richard Roberts or Bob Birchard can identify a bit player in a film just by watching it that is good enough for me. But if an unnamed Joe Blow thinks their favorite actor is an extra or uncredited writer for a film, how is anybody else supposed to know if this is true?

Wendy Warwick White had a terrible time with her Ford Sterling biography. As she tells it, "I should have noted at the beginning of the filmography was that there is a good reason why it looks incomplete during the early Sennett years compared to IMDB. I wanted to try to only add names and titles that could be substantiated at the time of printing and some of those listed online (as we know) are not correct. A glitch I had during the proof reading was that a new ghost proof reader didn't know this, checked the IMDB and then added all the names I had omitted thinking I had missed them! They were removed, I would rather have missing credits than erroneous names. "

[Frederica]

I think that the IMDB is a great thing. I use it almost every day. It was actually almost almost a Wikipedia movie database before anybody ever thought of that concept. But still I get frustrated by it.

Just because something is not in print doesn't mean it isn't factual.

I feel your pain. The converse is also the case. Just because something is in print, that doesn't mean it's true (witness Henry Lehrman and his Crack Cadre of Killer Ostriches...). Unhappily if it is in print you stand ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE of getting it off the imdb, correct or not.

The IMDB is a herculean effort and a remarkable source, but it needs to be used cautiously.

Fred

[James Bazen]

I've seen The Sorrows of Satan and Raymond Griffith is *not* in the film.

[Rob Farr]

For those of us who specialize in comedy, the two volumes of The American Film Index, published in 1984, haunt us to this day. What were Lauritzen and Lundquist thinking? Huge swaths of credits are unsubstantiated anywhere else. One story (and it is probably just that) is that they blindly wrote down anything Jean Mitry fed them, and Mitry would make up credits out of thin air. Once I realized how horribly wrong L&L were, I had to methodically go through the filmographies I thjought I had completed and remove everything sourced from the L Boys unless I could find coorberation. But I can spot their incidious work in other filmographies to this day.

[Frederica]

I've seen The Sorrows of Satan and Raymond Griffith is *not* in the film.

Unhappily, that would not be considered a valid criterion for removing it from Griffith's imdb entry.

Fred

[Thomas]

I think that the IMDB is a great thing. I use it almost every day. It was actually almost almost a Wikipedia movie database before anybody ever thought of that concept. But still I get frustrated by it.

Believe it or not it is still not complete.

Surely it isn't complete. Especially in the field of the latin american silents it has a great lack of information.

[silentfilm]

I submitted a deletion of Raymond Griffith for Sorrows of Satan. Who knows, it might actually go through. Last year, I tried to add the Mary Pickford Imp short, As a Boy Dreams (1911), which used to be sold by Blackhawk Films on film and Grapevine on VHS. The IMDB editors complained that since I only knew of one cast member (Pickford) and the director (Thomas Ince), that it could not be added. But I checked a few weeks ago, and it has actually been added to the database.

[Frederica]

I submitted a deletion of Raymond Griffith for Sorrows of Satan. Who knows, it might actually go through. Last year, I tried to add the Mary Pickford Imp short, As a Boy Dreams (1911), which used to be sold by Blackhawk Films on film and Grapevine on VHS. The IMDB editors complained that since I only knew of one cast member (Pickford) and the director (Thomas Ince), that it could not be added. But I checked a few weeks ago, and it has actually been added to the database.

*Sigh!* I understand they need sourcing more solid than one person saying "this is so," also that they couldn't possibly include the sources for everything or the darned thing would never download. That (and an unfortunate propensity to prominently feature "reviews" of films that are quite lost) guarantee that it will always remain a starting point. But it is an excellent starting point.

Fred

[George O'Brien]

There is a great deal of valuable information there, but I tell people not to treat everything they see there as Holy Writ. Its sins seem to be largely those of omission, but it perpetuates confusion too, such as that between child actor George Stone and George E. Stone of "Seventh Heaven" and other notable silent and sound films.

And once something is seen in print, even in cyberspace, it gains some kind of authority.

On another site, a poster insisited that a particular photo was from "The Winning of Barbara Worth"(1926). It wasn't. I posted that I had seen that film, and that the photo had to be from another film. My co-poster turned adversary and insisted that the photo had to be from "The Winning of Barbara Worth" film since IMDB lists Ronald Colman and Andy Clyde as both appearing in that film.When I asked him if he had ever seen "The Winning of Barbara Worth", he refused to answer.

When I pointed out that the man with Ronald Colman appeared to be Chester Conklin that precipitated an even wider breach, since IMDB does not list the two as ever having appeared together. A third party posted a photo of Colman looking, and dressed, exactly as he was in the still, and IDed it as from another film entirely, a 1925 film I have never seen.

That convinced me, but my adversary was not so easily dissuaded. IMDB lists no film that Colman and Conklin appeared in together, so he reiterated that it had to be Colman and Clyde in "The Winning of Barbara Worth". Or, now conveniently, and for the moment, adopting my view that IMDB was not infallible, he wrote that perhaps it was Colman and Clyde, but not Conklin, in that 1925 film.

Sometimes, I wish IMDB did not exist.

[Jack Theakston]

Bruce, I and other legitimate researchers I know share your pain. IMDb has been a blessing and a curse. It's great when in the hands of capable and knowledgeable experts, but when armchair historians enter the picture, all forms of professionalism go out the window.

This is really tough because there are a lot of professionals who think IMDb is the gospel truth. When I wrote some notes for a film festival a couple of years ago, I was very careful in researching and documenting the release dates of all of the films. The IMDb frequently had incorrect release dates, many of them that seemed to be pulled out of thin air.

When I submitted the notes to a couple of peer editors, one of them (who I admit is young and somewhat naive about cracking open books), went up to IMDb, saw my dates differed and changed them! When I finished re-correcting the dates... or so I thought... I submitted the final notes to the printers. Much to my horror, one particular short that keeps being reprinted as the wrong release date (in fact, a full year after it was released), I missed and went into my printed notes!

Also wrong are many of the aspect ratios in the technical listings, but since people out there seem to think that there is never any one "correct" aspect ratio for a film or have no concept of what composing a shot means, that function on the website is worthless, as whenever I try to correct the material, it gets changed by someone else.

Wikipedia is a notch better for two reasons-- one is that everything technically must be added with citations, but on top of that, you can see who is doing the changes and what. The downside (and it is a MAJOR downside) to Wikipedia is that it is moderated by complete morons who like to play pathetic power games with what little control they have. So if you get into an argument with someone, it will always defer to whomever the moderator in the situation prefers, or more often, because something might be obscure, it is considered "too esoteric" or "not substantiated enough" to be on their holy encyclopedia.

What I'd really love to do someday is somehow form a real database through a staff of writers and researchers that I trust and are willing to spend the time to sit down, go through trades, and input all of the important information. It would be, in effect, a Wiki of film listings, but it would be extremely moderated and locked, and totally un-anonymous.

[George O'Brien]

A friend is trying to rectify the credits of George E. Stone. IMDB erroneously lists him as the child actor in John Ford's "Just Pals"(1920), the Buck Jones vehicle included in both the big "Ford at Fox" box, as well as the "Silent Epics" volume.

The very good child actor George Stone who does appear in "Just Pals"(1920) also appears in "Gretchen the Greenhorn"(1916), but in this case IMDB erroneoulsy does NOT list him in the cast of that film.

And both sometimes have their credits mixed up with "Georgie Stone" (1877-1939) an actor much older than either of them.

Sometimes IMDB magically morphs two people into one. Teens director of Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, Jack O'Brien, is melded as one with an actor of the same name who plays Dinny in "The Iron Horse"(1924). And neither was the brother of George O'Brien, as IMDB until quite recently claimed.

Thankfully, this does not happen with the two William Boyds, James Masons, and Harrison Fords.

[rollot24]

Thankfully, this does not happen with the two William Boyds, James Masons, and Harrison Fords.

Oh, think it would be amusing if they did to the Harrison Fords.

[silentfilm]

Here's a funny one! They've got the credits for a Mutt and Jeff cartoon mixed up with the Maurice Tourneur's Paramount South Sea Aloma of the South Seas (1926). So cartoonist Bud Fisher is a writer and Charley Bowers is a co-director! That is probably because Mutt and Jeff appeared in a spoof cartoon AloNa of the South Seas.

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0016598/

[Daniel Eagan]

It's a small issue, but I have been trying for months to correct the filmography for Spencer Williams. The director and actor Spencer Williams and the songwriter Spencer Williams are two different people, but imdb insists on giving the director a credit for every time "Everybody Loves My Baby" is used in a movie. This misinformation has spread to other web sites.

[precode]

Took me three tries before I finally convinced them that SONG OF LOVE is not a "lost" film. And I've submitted The Manhattan Transfer four or five times as the singers of the title theme for TRAIL OF THE SCREAMING FOREHEAD, and they still refuse to include it!

Mike S.
(maybe I should send them a wav file of the song)

[MattBarry]

I think that the IMDB is a great thing. I use it almost every day. It was actually almost almost a Wikipedia movie database before anybody ever thought of that concept. But still I get frustrated by it.

Believe it or not it is still not complete.

Surely it isn't complete. Especially in the field of the latin american silents it has a great lack of information.

The IMDb is really not that complete when it comes to film credits. The AFI listings available through the TCM database tend to be more complete in this regard, at least for major titles. Unfortunately, until more studio payroll records are used as sources, the credits listing for the older films will forever be only a brief listing compared to all the hundreds of people who actually worked on each film.

[Mike O'Wave]

I tried three times to get IMDB to list Biograph's 1904 "Kiss Me" but kept getting an automatic rejection for not knowing cast members despite linking to the Library of Congress web site where it is documented and can be freely viewed. I looked again just now and see that it is listed so I guess somebody does actually scan through the computer auto rejects eventually.

To IMDB's credit it took little effort to have Howard Stern's name removed from the cast of Kino's "Edison - The Invention of the Movies (1891-1918)" where he was listed as "Inventor of all media".

[larrys66diner]

Yes, I have relied too heavily on IMDb in the past too, considering it to be an authoritative and comprehensive wealth of information. However, recently I've noticed a few errors myself.

I have always wondered what resources they use, for example, like I recently pointed out about the birth and death dates they have for Gladys Egan. As much as I have been searching (with the efforts of others) using such resources as ancestry.com, findagrave.com, birth and death records etc etc, there have been a couple Gladys Egans that have surfaced that closely parallel the one I'm searching for. But which one is indeed the one I'm searching for??? How did IMDb go from having question marks in those fields to listing a year in each of those fields?

In fact, I still hesitate to believe in the birth year anyway, because if she was indeed born in 1896, that would make her 12 years old in her first film The Adventures of Dollie (1908). I'm sorry, but having seen her in Dollie several times, there is no way anyone will ever convince me that she was 12 years old! Now I would be more convinced that she was 7 or 8 years old! So did IMDb just hastily settle on a figure to put into that field or what?

It's clearly obvious that, for film data that far back into history, we just cannot rely solely on IMDb without resources of verification.

[boblipton]

Over the last year I have been frustrated in my efforts to get "ghost entries" removed from Over the Hill to the Poorhouse (1908) and correct the spelling of The Young Lady and the Hooligan (1918) (the last word is translated as "Holligan"), as well as other miscellaneous corrections. It's easy as pie to get a credit added; nearly impossible to get it removed. Lots of movies show up in Trivia as "lost". There was one young reviewer from Canada who was simply too free with the word, and I would inform her of when I might see a ""lost" William S. Hart at MOMA, and include the circumstances in my review. Alas, the IMDb no longer allows me to contact her. It also no longer allows someone who wants to know where I might have seen a film he or she cannot, so that omission can be remedied. Also, it saves me from the occasional person who wishes to inform me that my opinion is wrong.

Over all, though, I agree with Bruce's long-ago opening post to this thread: the IMDb is a valuable resource, but it must be used with caution. In the meantime, I shall continue to post reviews there -- mostly the ones I post for features here, as well as many short subjects -- based on my opinions after having seen the movies. I urge other Nitratevillains to do so, Augean as the task may sometimes seem.

By the way, the IMDb is not the only resource to get things wrong. When the LoC opened its "National Screening Room", I went through all the titles, and discovered it contained Over the Hill to the Poorhouse (1908) under a different title!

Bob

[Harlowgold]

https://www.theringer.com/tv/2019/6/12/ ... -chernobyl

The Problem With IMDb’s Rating System

‘Chernobyl’ is the best show ever, according to the internet database. About that ...
By Alyssa Bereznak Jun 12, 2019, 6:20am EDT

Online ratings make the modern world go round. We consult Yelp before making restaurant reservations, we skim Amazon reviews before buying light bulbs, and when someone suggests we watch a movie or a show, we inevitably end up on Rotten Tomatoes or IMDb to see if it’s really worth our time. These systems work until they don’t. Not every waitress at every restaurant has an “attitude problem,” as most bitter Yelp reviewers might have you believe. Five stars on Amazon will not guarantee that your new teddy bear will be appropriately proportioned. And the best television show of all time is probably not a retelling of a real-life nuclear disaster featuring distracting British accents.

Last week, HBO’s Chernobyl shot to the top of IMDb’s all-time TV rankings, outperforming other mega-popular hits like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and various stoner-friendly seasons of Planet Earth. And as of Tuesday, it had a 9.6-star (out of 10) average rating from more than 200,000 users on the Amazon-owned entertainment site. To the knee-jerk press, the limited series’ ascension was evidence of a historic hit. The Economist ran with the numbers, comparing them to traffic spikes on the “Chernobyl nuclear disaster” Wikipedia page, declaring the show “the highest-rated TV series ever,” and marveling at the reach of its subject matter.

“Documentaries typically struggle to gain as much attention as action and fantasy shows such as Game of Thrones, and the same is true of historical dramas,” The Economist wrote. “Even series about well-known subjects, such as Queen Elizabeth II or the trial of O.J. Simpson, earn user ratings that are typically below those of the most popular shows. In comparison, Chernobyl scores better than the greats.”

It’s a compelling narrative that lets you fill in the blanks. A society plagued with worries of environmental destruction and dogmatic leadership finds meaning in a series meant to encapsulate both. Forget the tits and dragons, forget the meth-making chem teacher—the people want history! But while Chernobyl is extremely compelling television, the unblinking enthusiasm with which outlets have embraced these rankings—both to sing the praises of the series and to declare it more well-liked than an obvious cultural phenomenon—is less a testament to its quality than it is the flaws of our pop culture rating ecosystem.

As one of the 50 most visited sites in the world, IMDb wields considerable power over the entertainment industry. And, from the company’s very early days, its role as an all-purpose indexing site has been exploited to influence releases both big and small. At times, that has meant studios massaging the information on their films’ pages to purposefully shape coverage. (In 1999, Artisan sought to market The Blair Witch Project by arranging for the IMDb pages of its actors to read “missing, presumed dead.”) Today, that manipulation is more often coming from online communities. As Wired wrote in 2016, IMDb’s “voter system has increasingly become a soft weapon in all sorts of online turf wars.” And the subject of these turf wars ranges from geopolitical disputes to plain sexism. When Angelina Jolie’s 2011 directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, made its way to international audiences, it was overwhelmed with 1/10 votes, likely due to its disputed depiction of the Bosnian War. (Current rating: 4.4/10.) Bangladeshi users launched a similar attack on the hit 2014 Bollywood film Gunday, after being angered by its sloppy depictions of 1971’s Bangladesh Liberation War. (2.2/10.) The 2016 remake of Ghostbusters was sabotaged by a faction of fans who appeared to be upset by its all-female cast. (5.2/10.) This kind of deliberate trolling also appears to be the reason the website shut down its message boards in 2017, tragically erasing 16 years’ worth of conversations between movie buffs to duck the responsibility of moderation.

Similar issues have plagued its competitor, Rotten Tomatoes. In 2017, ratings for The Last Jedi dipped to a dismal 44 percent on the site, while its “Critics Consensus” from verified reviewers sat at 91 percent. Many outlets theorized that this was due to a targeted campaign against the movie, headed by longtime Star Wars fans who felt it had betrayed the franchise. Brie Larson’s remake of Captain Marvel was also preemptively “review-bombed” this year, presumably because it featured a woman in the role of a typically male hero. The site ultimately axed its anticipatory “want to see” scores before the film’s release to prevent further abuse of the system. “We’re doing it to more accurately and authentically represent the voice of fans, while protecting our data and public forums from bad actors,” the site said in a blog post.

Though the most public instances of IMDb-rating sabotage center on film-related controversies, plenty of other movies have been swallowed or buttressed by the ranking system without any apparent motive. In 2016, the creators of the indie film Kicks were surprised to discover that a wave of negative reviews from IMDb users with no biographical data had suddenly lowered what was initially a promising rating, and suspected it was due to vote brigading. Conversely, IMDb’s Top 250 list, which ranks the site’s highest rated movies of all time, is itself living evidence that so-so projects can get ahead as long as they resonate with the site’s most active users. The top film on the list is The Shawshank Redemption; Avengers: Endgame is ninth; Citizen Kane ranks 120th; When Harry Met Sally and Moonlight, for comparison, don’t even make the list.

The company is predictably secretive about how it determines its scores, but we do know a few things about how its ranking system is designed. The score of a movie does not reflect the mean of all user votes—rather, “various filters are applied to the raw data in order to eliminate and reduce attempts at vote stuffing by people more interested in changing the current rating of a movie than giving their true opinion of it,” according to the IMDb website. But in its top ranking lists, the platform places more value on the votes of regular users than those of newbies. And a 2017 report in Mel Magazine found that those regular users often skew to an overwhelmingly male international audience between the ages of 18 and 29.

With this information, a pattern emerges. The internet’s go-to movie database is being shaped by a highly specific group of people with highly specific opinions and, quite frankly, a lot of free time. This problem is not unique to IMDb. Reference sites like Wikipedia are still struggling to diversify their voluntary staff which is overwhelmingly made up of white, male editors. Nor is this unique to online communities. The Academy Awards’ lack of diversity in both its voting body and award winners has been a recurring topic of conversation for the past few years. That Chernobyl has flourished under this system is not a surprise: It’s an excellent TV series, but also one that happens to have an all-white, mostly male cast, and a story line that appeals to exactly the kind of regular voters that IMDb prioritizes.

For the record, there is nothing wrong with certain demographics loving a certain set of movies that cater to their sensibilities. As a white woman raised in California who loves Lady Bird, I can relate! But IMDb’s influence is particularly insidious because the opinions of a very specific group of people are presented as empirical data: foolproof numbers that follow a title wherever it goes on the internet. At this point, we should all know better than to blindly take that information as fact—whether we enjoy pale actors muttering Britishisms in concrete rooms or not.

Wouldn't a better place to have posted this been here https://nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=28260 since it's a thread (admittedly started by me) about how absurdly high some movies are rated. This particular thread is a decade old and concerns the problems with data on IMDb - which 10 years ago was missing quite a lot of productions, including early movies, many short subjects, a lot of television specials, and often specific episode info for many television series, much of which has since been added. I'd also like to note adding and correcting data on IMDb is pretty easy these days, particularly if you have an established relationship with the site doing so.

[MaryGH]

IMDB has oversight issues for sure, if there is any oversight to begin with.

I've added information for some favorites over the years, and I think the main problem might be this:

Lack of astute research among the few contributors who do somehow manage to get information included on IMDB.

Case in point: Tom Tyler, and The Eagle's Talons (1923):

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0014011/?r ... mg_act_183

The earliest documented movie Tom appeared in was in 1924, "Three Weeks" with Aileen Pringle.

Second - there is in fact a movie titled "The Eagle's Talons" Tom was supposed to make, according to Exhibitor's Herald and Moving Picture World, March 10, 1928. For whatever reason FBO, the studio Tom was with, decided to not film it.

Third - and this seems to be a problem especially for early silent film and talkie westerns:

You have multiple films with the same name (like "Born to Battle") made over a period of years, even though the story is different, and of course different casts of actors. Personally I think this is a good exercise in film research.

Back to "The Eagle's Talons" for a moment. This was a Universal serial starring Fred Thomson, is presently considered lost. There is no documentation Tom Tyler ever appeared in this serial, although his first serial appearance was in Pathe's 1924 "Leatherstocking".

The one significant factor I should point out is this:

If an actor's appearance is "unconfirmed" and listed as such in IMDB - perhaps it should not be included, as in the case I presented above with Tom Tyler. My own opinion, but the lack of oversight, and "unconfirmed" information is not a good mix. Sure, errors can occur on a site like IMDB. But there should be some kind of oversight, especially for older movies like silent films, actors and actresses who have no immediate descendents or worse yet, no estate, to keep filmography information as correct as possible.

[earlytalkiebuffRob]

One gripe I have is in trying to add an entry, although this usually applies to shorts. I have attempted this on more than one occasion, only to retire defeated when I am requested for additional information to which I cannot possibly know the answers.

My other grump is when I go to IMDb on my TV set to look up a credit on a film I have just watched. At times, one is treated to a sudden loud blast of so-called music which is distracting to say the least...

[aldiboronti]

I've found that the best way to get anything done on IMDB is to use the official contributor site here.

https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb

IMDB staff frequent the site, even Col Needham himself, and any problem can be quickly dealt with there, at least such has been my experience.