Bug with the names

the idea was to remove characters like : - ( ) , ' from the solutions but here it fails really hard (damn you utf8!)
We only count alphanumeric characters but i assume it would be better to leave titles as they are and only remove interpunctuation

oh, and if you have suggestions for a smarter way, feel free to post here

And we should definitly remove foreign articles like "les, le, la, el, der, die, das, ... "
I received an interesting mail of Ego Gramme, explaining this problem..

Quote:
I would like to draw your attention on the fact that Amants du Pont-Neuf, Les
is a little odd... like Herbstzeitlosen, Die or Maquinista, El

Nobody will think to write the title like that: it is just a way to sort out the title without taking in account the empty words like "Le", "The", "Die", "El".
Myself I tried "Les Amants du Pont-Neuf" (which is the correct title visible in the poster or on the DVD) and "Amants du Pont-neuf" and other English translations mentioned by IMBD.com without success. I am pretty sure that others registered users of your website have recognised the film but not thought to put Amants du Pont-Neuf, Les as a title.
Is it possible to ask bap2008 to add "Les Amants du Pont-Neuf" as a good answer ?

Thanks for that!

"Amants du Pont-Neuf, Les" is the title on IMDB.com

Can't you routine check those ones ? Like if there's no le, la, die, etc, that's okay tambien ?

Sorry that was spanish...

A solution to the "amant du pont neuf" problem would be to accept both forms.
Whenever a movie title contains a coma, it is also accepted when what follows the coma is put before. Conversely if you enter in the solve box a title with a coma, the checker also tries it by reversing the coma part.

Example :

• When someone uploads a movie and gives the title "Maquinista, El", a script adds the alternate title "El Maquinista"
• If a screenshot has the title "El Maquinista" but someone types "Maquinista, El", the script tries both "Maquinista, El" (which fails) and "El Maquinista" (which works).

This is about 3 lines in any reasonable scripting language...
Also, if this is no more an issue, it would be good to ask people to give the imdb link of their movie as a required field. Then the script can parse the page and get the real imdb title so that we are sure that this one will work (I'm thinking about French titles that some people enter without the accents, so it doesn't work if I input the title with the accents). If the "official" imdb title is always accepted, then we can also add alternate titles (without accents if you want, with simplified names like "Star Wars 2", etc.)
Btw, "the godfather: part II" didn't work because someone posted it as "the godfather: part 2" (which is kind of annoying...).

Again, getting the imdb page from the link, parsing it and extracting the "official" title (at least the title with typable characters on european keyboards...) can be done with a very simple script, which I'm willing to write for you in perl if you want (with such a script you can also automatically add all the "also known as" titles from the imdb, which cover a large number of foreign languages too).

"Amants du Pont-Neuf, Les" seemed a little odd to me, too. But since the instructions for uploading referred to IMDB I thought this would be o.k.
@naut: please tell me how i can add additional answers to this title. i will gladly do so

I agree with the imdb instruction. That way at least everyone can be sure that he's entering the right thing whenever you really want to (and do a seach on imdb). But obviously that's not the natural way of inputting the title, hence why I suggested accepting automatically both forms whenever the title contains a coma.

Sometimes strange things happen:
When I enter a movie name in English because the flag below indicates one should only try the English title the solution bar says "You solved it" – however it shows the German/French/Danish etc. title!

That's because it always shows the english flag when there's only one international title, regardless of nationality. There needs to be an option to choose a different flag already in the first "name of the movie" line during the upload.

Yeah, well, at least with the IMDb instruction, everybody has the same and easy references. You know it's "Les amants du pont neuf", doesn't match, check IMDb, find ou that it's "Amants du pont neuf, les", cut & paste, tag, you're it, and for myself I need to stop begining all my sentences with "Yeah, well".

Oh my god. Too much coffee a 1.40am... the humanity...

Dammit. I tried many times movie http://whatthemovie.com/beta/movies/view/4142 but never got it because I always used "2" instead of "II" ("2" is the way it appears on the imdb).
Really, this title thing must be done automatically from the imdb title (and then people can add the many variations they want, but the imdb title MUST work).

http://whatthemovie.com/beta/movies/view/2929
The original title doesn't work at all... how are we supposed to find it ?

For 2929, just type in the english/international title, which is also the most common one, that'll work.

And I don't know why there should be a '2' in this title http://whatthemovie.com/beta/movies/view/4142 ?

My mistake, I meant 2852 (probably had two tabs open when I copied the number...)

As for the english/international title it makes no sense. The orgininal title (with common western symbols that is, I agree...) is the one that should be always accepted (imdb is the best way to set a standard in this case).
Then of course, adding the international english one is a good practice (but as a secondary version).

Depends on. Not every movie has its translation in the IMDb. Check out the Magnificent Seven ; in France it's called "Les Sept Mercenaires" (the seven mercenaries, for those who flunked school :D ). If you don't know the original title, but know the movie, kinda gets crappy and frustrating. Having as many translations as possible can be useful.
Who knows Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult is translated in Y a-t-il un flic pour sauver Hollywood (Is there a cop to save Hollywood ?) ? Call that reverse engineering :D

Zanapher: I fixed 2852.
The problem with looking the name up on IMDB is, that it's illegal.
You can't build a script which ripps content off another page.
The titles of movies always have to be entered by the useres of whatthemovie.

However:

1. We will make the IMDB link mandatory and thus try to get the title from correct uploaded movies with the same link.
2. The soon implemented new queuing system allows multiple moderators to look over new shots => more eyes see more faults.

Starvey, you'd probably be amazed to see how many alternate titles akas.imdb.com knows... For instance

The Magnificent Seven
Also Known As (AKA)
Sept mercenaires, Les Belgium (French title) / Canada (French title) / France
Glorreichen Sieben, Die Austria / West Germany
Siete hombres y un destino Chile / Mexico
Siete magníficos, Los Argentina / Spain
7 rohkeata miestä Finland
7 vågade livet Sweden
Koya no shichinin Japan
Magnifici sette, I Italy
Sedam velicanstvenih Serbia
Sedm statecnych Czechoslovakia
Seitsemän rohkeata miestä Finland
Sete Homens E um Destino Brazil
Sete Magníficos, Os Portugal
Siedmiu wspanialych Poland
Syv mænd sejrer Denmark
Yedi silahsörler Turkey (Turkish title)

and about as many for Naked Gun 33 1/3.

I see the legal problem and why you don't want to make it automatically retrieved from the imdb. But then make sure the administrators check that the imdb title really does appear in the list of valid ones.

By the way, I keep complaining all the time but overall you have a great site and I'm enjoying it a lot, I thought you should know that :)