And I am not interested in what a guy who delivers pizzas has to say on law.

Quoting Prof. Kingsfield:

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Because some of us just don't get all worked up over linking, james, and we understand that is by and large a LOCAL issue and decision that has absolutely NO IMPACT on the Online beyond sharing of the information. Am I likely to want to see a list of John Wayne movies that i own...YES, how about mary Smith (hypothetical) who was a faceless dancer in 3 or 4 films....not likely.

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This is a feature request to force names to not link. If you don't care about Mary Smith, why do you care whether her name links to another Mary Smith? If it links, but you don't care, why would you want a program mod to force her name to not link to another?

Quoting m.cellophane:

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Quoting Prof. Kingsfield:

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Because some of us just don't get all worked up over linking, james, and we understand that is by and large a LOCAL issue and decision that has absolutely NO IMPACT on the Online beyond sharing of the information. Am I likely to want to see a list of John Wayne movies that i own...YES, how about mary Smith (hypothetical) who was a faceless dancer in 3 or 4 films....not likely.

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This is a feature request to force names to not link. If you don't care about Mary Smith, why do you care whether her name links to another Mary Smith? If it links, but you don't care, why would you want a program mod to force her name to not link to another?

You don't get it, james. The linking is a LOCAL issue. I can make Mary Smith link to anything i want and so can you. There is NO effective linking relative to the online, as has been repeatedly demonstrated, it is merely a system to share poorly documented links with other users who also use poorly documented link data. But since we have no real search of online actors and crew its significance to the Online is minimal at best. I use the linking system locally and i document each and every link, but like i said am I interested in some faceless dancer who appeared in 3 or 4 movies in her entire career...NO and why would I be. If Mary Smith happened to be a relative or somebody i knew, then i would probably have an interest, but then she wouldn't be faceless either, would she and i would probably be able to pick her out of the crowd of 20 to 40 other faceless dancers which appeared with her on screen...but guess what, James, that is something largely of LOCAL interest.

This is also why I have ALWAYS said that using a linking system which is dependent on users inputting data properly according to the Rules is NEVER going to be functional in any sort of real environment. Users don't ALL follow the Rules, to this day we still see users managing to get IMDb data past the screeners all the time, not to mention that sloppy documentation used by some users, though in at least one case I have seen great improvement in that area...not perfect but greatly improved. The best system still is a simple association system...one which sets NO priority name. James you are an accountant, NOT a programmer, unfortunately bean counters don't function well with software, I have seen this in many government programming contracts where bean counters try to get in the way of the software, and without fail if they are allowed to interfere they will make a hash of a program. I have seen perfectly good programs get trashed because of an accountant, and they always wind up starting over and spending money AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN, when and IF a final product is ever able to be developed to conclusion, it usually looks very much like the ORIGINAL program. You have some good ideas, James....BUT

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Quoting Alien Redrum:

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I know about the rules, I'm talking about the software aspect. I've seen claims that Roman Numerals (or even numbers) cannot be used because of lawsuits and such things, and I find it hard to believe is what I'm saying.

Ah, o.k. then.  Carry on. 

Quoting m.cellophane:

Quote:
Insulting me and my profession has nothing to do with why you would want a program mod to disable linking. Additionally, I've never seen Invelos state that linking is a local-only issue. Quite the contrary if you look at the program features list.

Not insulting you and your profession, James. Not at all, I get the distinct "pleasure" of dealing with government bean counters all the time, and trust me they, to a man, have a very overblown image of themselves. But and i have said this to you before, some of your ideas, come from your background and sometimes are in direct conflict with good database design and management, that is my only point.

Invelos BTW, doesn't have to state it's a local only issue, it's not rocket science and who knows maybe Ken has something in mind for DVDPRofiler Pro, I don't know. But as it stands right now the linking system has very little if any function as it relates to the Online. We can do no searchers of any kind within the Online, and I am not referring to the CLT, open up your Online collection and try to search on Anything....you can't. We know have some limited Search functions through the friends system and through that system we can even swap Profiles, which I have found to be far more useful, since the Rules are sinking into a quagmire with great rapidity and while i won't really point fingers at any ONE in particular, I think the problem stems from an ages old problem and something that i strove to avoid all those years ago. Rules by committee never works well, unless the committee is limited in its size and scope, which ours is not.

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When the data comes to the user from Invelos, if it has been entered properly, it will link for the user. That doesn't make linking irrelevant for the main database. 

And really, to ask again regarding the actual topic of this thread, why do you want to have the ability through a program mod to block the linking of an unknown actor to the same name in your local database? That is the topic.

If you don't care whether Johnny Unknown links to other Johnny Unknowns, just enter the name Johnny Unknown, leave out the birth year, and be done with it. Why would someone want the additional step of checking a box to block the link at the local level between 2 Johnny Unknowns?

That's my question.

It seems like addtional effort to keep one from not getting a linking match when they would never click the name in the first place!

I'm just asking for a simple explanation for why this is a good program mod.

Why can't the contributor just contribute a name without a birth year instead of needing this feature request?

Quoting m.cellophane:

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Why can't the contributor just contribute a name without a birth year instead of needing this feature request?

Let me see if I can explain this a little better.  I am currently going through the credits on Korean movie, Mother.  After about 20 top cast member, we get into ~30-40 cast members that I have very little information about other than their name and role.  About 1/4 of the time, the cast name will bring up a close match in the cast database as having appeared in some other feature.  Sometimes, I know they will be different actors with the same name, because it will be someone well known, other times I'm not so sure.  In these instances, I'd rather enter these credits without linking, because I simply don't know whether they should be linked or not.  But I do see the point of others who say, who cares if these people link or not.