NEWSLETTER #7

June 1996

this issue edited by Jon Reeves

Welcome to issue 7 of the IMDb newsletter. The newsletter is intended to keep database users and contributors informed of the latest developments from the management team. Comments and suggestions are welcome and should be directed to newsletter@imdb.com. Issue 8 is scheduled for mid-July.

See the further information section at the end of this file for more information about The Internet Movie Database (IMDb).

Contents

• Survey launched
• Please update your links!
• IMDb helps Boston Globe with research
• On accuracy
• Major review URL updates
• Plot summaries wanted
• IMDb in the news
• Web server changes
• Database statistics -- one million!
• Future developments

SURVEY LAUNCHED

A couple of weeks ago we launched the IMDb survey in order to find out more details about who our users are, what they use the database for and how it could be improved. So far we've had several thousand replies with hundreds more arriving every day. This article describes some of the results we've uncovered. If you raised a question in one of the free-form comment sections then you should be receiving a reply soon. We are reading each one but it will take time to catch up.

I'll cover the general results first:

• 20% use the database every day; 36% weekly; 25% completed the survey on their first visit
• 25% see movies on the big screen twice per month; 18% once per week and 18% once per month
• 75% have been using the database for less than a year and 14 people said they'd been using it right from the start back in 1990
• 36% first found the site by a search engine; 28% via link from another site; 5% via newsgroups (this was surprising given the amount of time I spend promoting the IMDb on USENET)
• 12% have a local copy of the database installed
• Favorite movie genres were as follows: 74% comedy; 60% drama; 59% action; 57% science fiction
• 76% use the Netscape Navigator browser and 5% use Microsoft's Internet Explorer; 66% use a PC and 14% use a Mac.
• Yahoo! is the most used search engine at 31% followed by AltaVista at 22%
• the age distribution took us by surprise: the most frequent answer was 35-49 with 22%; the four ranges in 18-34 were about 12% each.
• 70% were male

Now on to the general questions. There were some very clear trends in all these questions and we'll be looking at how to balance the needs expressed.

What's the best thing about the IMDb?

Answers here nearly always boiled down to something like "free access to a huge, cross-linked, continually updated database of movie information, including filmographies, reviews and fun stuff like quotes and trivia." This was very reassuring since it's what we're good at!

What's the worst thing about the IMDb?

The number one complaint centered around information missing from the database, mainly that not all movies are covered equally, and specifically, that there aren't enough plot summaries and biographies. The number two complaint is related: people generally find it hard to add information to the database or think the turnaround on new data is much too slow. We'll be working to improve all these things with a better additions and acknowledgement process, as well as looking at ways to encourage people to improve specific areas such as the summaries.

The other major complaint was that the site wasn't "glitzy" enough (no frames, no large click maps, no Java and none of the other features which other sites which lack real content use to disguise that fact). On the other hand, this was offset by the large number of people who were pleased with the fast loading pages, browser independence and uncomplicated layout. No need to state our position on that one! Even so, a few people did complain we already had too many graphics on the pages so it shows you can't please everyone.

Finally there were several individual complaints about specific areas for improvement, all of which we'll try to look at. The other common answer was that the survey is too long!

What new things would you like to see us do?

There were many requests here for features which are already available on the site, so we've concluded that we need to make people more aware of the site index link already on every page!

The top request was for more pictures of people in the database to be included so we'll be investigating licensing archives and better ways to collect links to image sites. Another very popular request was for more direct links to video sales outfits, especially for non-mainstream movies. We have a number of ideas in this area, but feel it is important not to turn the database into an online product catalog.

There were lots of ideas for new ways to search or organize our existing data and many of these will actually be implemented over the coming months as time permits. We're always interested in suggestions along these lines.

Do you have any general comments about The Internet Movie Database?

People mainly used this section to congratulate us on the database. We were pleased with the overwhelming number of positive comments and specific instances where the database has helped in some way or another.

So thanks again to everyone who has filled in the survey so far. You should start to see some of the results via improvements to the site in the next few months. Feel free to mail us or just complete the free form questions of the survey if you have any further ideas (which reminds me, *I* haven't filled in the survey yet :-)

PLEASE UPDATE YOUR LINKS

By the time you read this, one of the IMDb's old mirror sites will have closed forever. The mirror at rte66.com run by Los Angeles Webstation was closed down some time back and has been redirecting to us.imdb.com since then. The Los Angeles Webstation site is scheduled for complete shutdown any day now after which there will be no automatic redirecting to the new site. Thanks to the Webstation staff for operating a mirror for the last year.

IMDb HELPS BOSTON GLOBE WITH RESEARCH

The Boston Globe (US) recently contacted me about an article they were writing which proposed to determine whether movies' running times are generally getting longer. A premise that, in the wake of such "epics" as Braveheart, Casino, Heat and Pulp Fiction would seem reasonable.

Always happy to help out where we can I started compiling some statistics for the Globe from our extensive datasets. My own findings were very interesting. Put simply, from the start of cinema in 1895 up to about 1960 there was indeed a steady increase in the average running times of movies. However, from 1960 to present day, the change is minimal and subject to fluctuations in both directions.

The findings were promptly passed to the Globe, who I guess didn't find the results to be what they expected as they never ran the article.

Oh, well :-)

ON ACCURACY

Someone asked recently how accurate our information is. To answer that, you need to consider the nature of "facts" and examine the sources.

To help us, we use as many sources as we can get our hands on, and we have a large number of consistency check tools that we run on the data (though every time we add a major one, it takes us months to clean up the problems it uncovers, and we can't always keep up). However, there's absolutely no substitute for an international team of movie buffs with an encyclopedic knowledge of trivia and a large assortment of reference works (I include in this group many of our loyal contributors). But where do these people get their information?

First and foremost, there are on-screen credits. These are the best source, and the one we prefer people to use; it's what we rely on for most of our information. They are usually pretty good on modern movies, but are subject to several problems:

• Name drift. Rita Hayworth started under her real name, Rita Cansino. Christopher Lambert is still billed as Christophe when he makes French movies. Middle initials and nicknames come and go. Names in non-Latin alphabets have varying transliterations.
• Name fusion. There are two different Harrison Ford actors (I) (II). There are two Australian directors named George Miller (I) (II). We've probably got hundreds of uncorrected cases of this, particularly in the tech credits. When we spot the problem, the names are distinguished with roman numerals in parentheses.
• In-jokes. J. Todd Anderson is credited with a Prince-like symbol in Fargo.
• Unbilled performances. These can be cameos (Emma Thompson in My Father the Hero) or major (Bill Murray in Tootsie). Similarly, writers often use pseudonyms (Paddy Chayefsky in Altered States) or are denied credit. Before Mary Pickford, no actors were billed by name; until recent SAG contracts requiring 50 names, only leading players were credited, often without character names. The best sources are, unfortunately, confidential: contracts, deal memos, and payroll records.
• Misspellings. Ernie Hudson's character in Ghostbusters wears a patch over his pocket saying "Zeddemore" (which matches the published script) but the credits say "Zeddmore".
• Alternate titles -- both translations and retitlings (the German film Der Bewegte Mann is on its third English title). There's also times when two movies with the same title get released close together and their data gets intermingled. (The two Japan-set films released in 1989 titled "Black Rain"(I) (II) are confused in some sources; the Academy Awards confused High Society (1955) and High Society (1956) briefly).

Press kits often contain the on-screen credits -- but these may be an earlier revision than what appears on the final screen. Characters may have been cut; songs may have been changed; in rare cases the presence or absence of a character may be too much of a spoiler to include in the press kit.

Then there are official bios, autobiographies, and interviews. These are good for unraveling name fusion/drift problems, but have their own problems:

• Resume padding. Quentin Tarantino invented some acting credits early in his career that still persist in some reference works.
• Credit inflation. I've stopped trusting "producer" credits in bios; these can be just about any producer-related position, including unit production manager. Similarly, sound editors sometimes become sound designers.
• Title/year mangling. Rare is the bio that doesn't flat misspell some film. And the years cited, if any, are often incorrect; the resume of one famous writer has a film released one year, when it opened nationally in December of the previous year, and writers often list the date they wrote the book, not the date the movie was released. A producer once couldn't find his own movie in the database because he spelled the title wrong.
• Intentional omissions. Early films that are now embarrassments or considered "too minor"; films made too long ago (makes the person look old).

Subject-matter experts can be very helpful because they know about most of the above problems and can clean them up; a Charlie Chan expert spent some time cleaning up those films, for example, and we're heavily dependent on the net's Hong Kong film fans. But they are fallible, too, particularly when something crosses into their expertise from another area (for instance, when name drift/fusion problems intersect). And like anything, the levels of expertise and scholarship vary.

Reference works. Well, they are usually working off the same primary sources described above, with all the attendant problems. Add to this transcription errors. And disagreement among sources: I have 9 different sources giving 5 different dates, spanning 11 years, for the birth date of Ray Walston. They can't even agree on the month or the day of the month.

Filtered contributions from our loyal readers. Subject to many of the problems noted above, since they are often working from these sources; in addition, there are more typos and people working with faulty memories.

Oh, and general incompleteness; we mark complete casts, but there's usually no way to confirm that a person's filmography is complete.

So, the general answer: Trust nothing. Or everything. If this is thesis-quality research, definitely use us only as a starting point; for most casual users, though, you'll find our data very good, though we certainly welcome any improvements in our data.

REVIEW URL UPDATES

One of our most frequent requests is more reviews. With that in mind, several thousand online review links have been added to the database over the past month, including several hundred from the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, Eye Weekly, the Pathfinder site (Time, People, Entertainment Weekly), USA Today, and Mr. Showbiz. We have been including links to their reviews, but they had not been added to for some time. A process is now in place to add new reviews from these sources and others weekly.

In addition, thanks to the Chicago Sun-Times archives, over 1800 reviews by Roger Ebert have also been linked to their titles. We hope to add reviews from the Boston Globe shortly.

All these review links are available from the commercial reviews icon

PLOT SUMMARIES WANTED

Going by your comments in the survey, the plot summaries are very popular, but many of you complain about the coverage.

So help us out here... I know someone reading this will have seen some of the films listed here - why not take a few minutes to write a quick summary of the plot, and send it in? You'll be doing your bit to please thousands of other IMDb users!

Listed below are the top 20 most voted for movies without summaries.

Over 450 people voted for Nine 1/2 Weeks, so someone must know what its about...

Nine 1/2 Weeks (1986)
Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment (1985)
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989)
Police Academy 3: Back in Training (1986)
Night Shift (1982)
Johnny Dangerously (1984)
Battlestar Galactica (1978) (TV)
Wolf (1994)
New York Stories (1989)
Doctor Detroit (1983)
Taps (1981)
Hairspray (1988)
Force 10 from Navarone (1978)
Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987)
River Runs Through It, A (1992)
Jabberwocky (1977)
Raw Deal (1986)
Highlander III: The Sorcerer (1994)
Postman Always Rings Twice, The (1981)

IMDb IN THE NEWS

Just a few of the traditional media outlets that have mentioned us lately:

Milwaukee (Wisc.) Journal Sentinel. PBS: Life on the Internet. Filmecho (Germany). Boston Globe. USA Today. Netday (iworld.com). AT&T's leadstory.com. Die Zeit (Germany).

We've also won the following new award. See the whole gallery here.

Webdo (Switzerland) Top 125

WEB SERVER CHANGES

In early May we added a second machine at our US location to improve response times. Those of you with an interest in the technical issues might be interested to know that we're using round robin DNS, everyone else only needs to know that the address "us.imdb.com" points to both servers.

The two old US mirror sites rte66.com and www.msstate.edu are now redirecting to us.imdb.com. This will not last forever, so please see the "PLEASE UPDATE YOUR LINKS" section to help smooth the shutdown of these old mirrors.

Our first batch of advertisers debuted recently. These include Eachmovie - a movie recommendation service, and movie promotions for The Phantom, Mission Impossible and Independence Day. We expect this will allow us to improve server performance yet again in the near future.

DATABASE STATISTICS

This is a regular section giving information about the current size and growth of the IMDb. We receive between 20,000 and 35,000 additions every week from users all over the world.

   Number of filmography entries: 1,021,550
   Number of people covered:        294,903
   Number of movies covered:         74,632

   Size of the database (Mb):            84

Recent milestones:

• Over 20,000 sound mix entries.
• Over 50,000 country entries.
• Over 70,000 director entries.
• Over 100,000 miscellaneous filmography entries.
• Over 200,000 actress entries.
• Over 1,000,000 filmography entries.

Note: the "Number of people covered" statistic was calculated incorrectly in previous issues, so the number above is not directly comparable.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS

This is a regular section listing some enhancements we're currently looking at. Please bear in mind that some of these may take quite a while to come to fruition or even fail to materialize because the original volunteer decides not to proceed.

• full support for accented characters (ISO 8859-1) without losing people that can't type them. Implementation in progress.
• a list giving the language(s) of the original release.
• proper handling of writer credit order.
• a Windows interface in now in final beta test after recent work to improve performance and make it work on multiple Windows platforms (95, 3.1, NT).
• enhanced awards section for the database covering more international festivals, national film institutes etc.
• general support for alternate titles in languages other than English and the language of the original country.
• a movie recommendation service that will use your vote records to suggest other movies you might enjoy. Time to check you're up-to-date with your voting!

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