egafd.com

when trying to id models i find that certain cross-references are useful and to enable this i was wondering if it was not possible to make the site a little more user friendly and include extra info if known. here are some examples maybe others can post their own suggestions in this thread.

the movies to be listed by year (or searchable by year) - i know not all the years are known but a 'circa' would do if not known exactly.

years active range for models

nationality of models where known (the same nationalities often work with each other)

i think model pages could be tidied up by listing films first in alphabetical order based on the original title and then the alt titles immediately after the first title in alphabetical order.

the killer app would be the ability to load up a photo of a known actress and then be able to scroll through the unknowns side by side.

don't know how practical any of this would be but it would i think reduce the unknowns

Rob4 wrote:


> don't know how practical any of this would be but it would i
> think reduce the unknowns

I think Alec's struggling enough as it is putting in the unknown ids people submit. I have submitted some identifications last July that still have not been processed.

What is probably more needed is (i) a web interface for standardising certain forms of submissions, and (ii) some software that permits to process these semi-automatically. In other words, pretty much what the IMDb has been doing all along: even before they created a web-interface (must have been round about 1993) they had a database to which one could contribute via standardised emails. The web interface originally simply generated these, but later lots of pre-submission checks were added, to eradicate simple mistakes before a submission even reaches the database administrators, significantly reducing their workload.

The trouble with that is:
a) it's time-consuming [and requires expertise]- it may be that other
priorities [mainly, day-to-day business] have supervened;
b) as you hinted, ultimately any automated submissions must themselves
be checked individually quis custodiet....?], which rather reduces
any net time-benefit.

The one change I'd most like to see [one introduced only last year,
even on iafd] is clcikable thumbs against actresses' names [particularly
the unknowns].

jj wrote:

> The trouble with that is:
> a) it's time-consuming [and requires expertise]- it may be that
> other
> priorities [mainly, day-to-day business] have supervened;
> b) as you hinted, ultimately any automated submissions must
> themselves
> be checked individually quis custodiet....?], which
> rather reduces
> any net time-benefit.

I would think that the pre-procession of web submissions has a limited effect, because of the subsequent needed check, however it becomes necessary in the long run to have it, because once you do have automated submissions people will submit before they really know what they are doing.

The big benefit of automated submissions is that it helps the procession of data tremendously. Instead of having to dig out the information out of a large email where they tell you that this is their favourite film/actress, that they also have an uncle called Alec, that that Italian stud looks a lot like a young Terry-Thomas, and otherwise they wonder where they might be able to purchase more films like this, doing all of this possibly in grammatically bad Italian on the assumption that their native Romanian might be even worse understood, and to make matters worse the email is sent using an East European character set that is not labelled as such, displaying all accented characters as dead midges of various subspecies... Instead of all of this you would get a text of a formal structure that is read by a program, which extracts the information, hands it to the administrator who then just presses one of three buttons (ACCEPT, REJECT, FURTHER CHECKS), which upon approval would add all the relevant info to the database.

And yes, it takes some time and expertise to build such a thing. But you get the time back with interest and then some...

A well-argued and highly amusing exposition....
"... displaying all accented characters as dead midges of various
subspecies."- well, I might at least be of some small help with the
finer taxonomy of the Chironomidae. It all hinges on the antennae,
you know : -)) Oh, and the legs; and the tracheae. And the venation
of the wings. And some other stuff, that I've forgotten for the moment...
....bloody entomology [img]http://www.egafd.com/forum/smileys/surrender.gif[/img]

It's not my call, thank the non-existent Deity, but I do recall Walter
mentioning that iafd's DB had to be basically demolished and built-up
again to accommodate the improvements; so not a task for the faint
of heart. Did mention I have an Honours degree in Pusillanimity?
We do all seem agreed at least that 'something must be done' : -)

i don't know about the technical aspects of improving submissions but a practical solution for the submission of data would simply be to take it out of the main forum.

you could create sub-forums for the submission of:

1) new film data
2) corrections to existing film data
3) identification (and mergers) of XNKs
4) miscellany for inclusion in the 'notes' e.g. nationality, 'resembles', years active, magazine pseudonyms, etc.

this should be fairly easy without dismantling the present system and enable alec to revise data more efficiently

One thing I would like to see is a note on each model page telling when the film list was last updated. It would be nice to tell if anything new was added without having to check the film list each time.