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Saturday, June 15th, 2024

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Odd "other name" blocked...

Just curious. William Fawcett: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1016589 Several of his credits have the attribute "as a different name". I happened to come across a credit for The Bill where it was "William G. Fawcett". This was blocked as ineligible for submission. I ended up putting it through without the abbreviation mark, which I have doubts about now. But it's curious as to why that would be blocked.

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MovieCat: This is yet another example of people suppressing variations of their name under IMDb's name suppression policy, under circumstances that the policy was clearly not meant for. See https://community-imdb.sprinklr.com/conversations/data-issues-policy-discussions/as-attribute-for-cast-name-of-beth-no-longer-accepted/65d1766b36d43032e5748d3c for another example. As I said in that thread: If "Jane Smith" tells you that she needs to suppress the alternative name "Jane" or "Smith" or even a variation with a middle initial like "Jane L. Smith", that appears to be, at best, completely missing the point of having the name suppression option. Doing so tends to discredit the name suppression policy altogether. If IMDb is going to have a name suppression policy at all, it should restrict what names can be suppressed, so that people can't suppress name variations like this for no particular reason. If that would be difficult to implement, I recommend that the instructions for this at https://help.imdb.com/article/contribution/names-biographical-data/manage-the-display-of-your-alternate-name-s/GHX5ZDWNL7D98C3Q# be amended to explain what the name suppression policy is intended for. I suggest something like "You should request that your alternate names not be displayed only if you have a serious personal reason to suppress an alternate name. This option is not intended for people to hide names where they were credited, for example, with or without a middle initial or by first name only."

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@Col_Needham​ I believe I understand your point, but I suspect that some of the people who have selected this option may have misunderstood what it actually does.