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Quoting leo1963:

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have no idea what the orginial retail covers look like.

It's this one.  In the case of covers, the screeners have to rely on the votes.  If the voters, who own the title, say 'yes', how can the screeners, who don't, say 'no'?

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Of course, the best source of data is the DVD itself.

But, Ken and invelos allow for data to be cloned from an accepted profile in the invelos database to another profile for contribution.

Invelos has even made this feature easy by letting one copy, past and append directly on the Cast and Crew Edit page. I frequently use this feature as it saves a lot of time and typing.

It has also been my experience that in the vast majority of cases, the credits are exactly the same when I double check the cloned data with the actual credits.

In the rare instances that there are any differences, these can be fixed by the community when it gets to it. Ken even allows for a few mistakes if the majority of a profile is correct.

On a rare occasion I have found a contributor has lied about where they got their data from. For example I have seen contribution notes stating data was taken from the DVD credits but were actually taken verbatim from IMDb.

This, in my opinion, is the issue that compromises the contribution process and the database accuracy more than any other, including cloning.

Of course an occasional mistake happens, but most people are honest and they actually check the data that they are contributing. And, since invelos does allow cloning, I am confident that most, if not all of the data I have copied is legitimate.

In order to make this process even a little more accurate, there are a couple of things I do when I do clone a profile.

I always check the contribution notes to see where the data I am cloning was taken from and I document this information.

I also include the UPC or EAN numbers of the cloned profile so that the community can check that profile.

So, my notes would be something like "Cast and Crew copied from the same film in the invelos database UPC 000000-000000. Documentation notes this data came directly from the DVD credits."

I often update several dozen DVDs at a time adding/correcting data as needed. When I do these updates I am not going to take the time to go through all the credits unless I actually watch the movie.

Once I do get to seeing the movie, I do double check all the data for that DVD against the credits making additions or changes as applicable.

Eventually, the database will become more and more accurate as the community will eventually get around to double checking the DVD credits and changing or updating as needed.

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Cloning is not supposed to be allowed, re-releases are not supposed to be allowed, and yet this is supposed to be a DVD/Blu-Ray database. A database which holds information with a specific id - UPC numbers. To me that means a database that will attempt to hold every release as long as it has a different UPC. However most of the topics in all the forums and most of the problems relate to movie specific issues. I mean, really, if there are 100 different UPC specific of a particular movie because of different countries, editions, time scale etc then the database should strive to list all of these. It shouldn't be limiting things because of cast members, or this ones got a different cover on the box etc. As long as the UPC is unique it should be allowed.

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And as such any information that can be deemed "constant" between those dvd/blu-ray's should be presented in such a manner so that each entry has that same information.

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There is nothing wrong with cloning, as long as contributors VERIFY that the data they are submitting matches the specific release for which they are submitting the information....

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If you are contributing to a profile that you don't own, our only requirement is that the notes submitted accurately reflect the source of the data, and state the specific profile used as the source.