I'm done trying to help incomplete foreign movie pages
 

Warning: A Rant! :eek:

I've tried to fix really spare or lame FOREIGN movie pages. I've put on posters, I've searched the web for production stills, I've downloaded foreign trailers to screen cap them, since I can't get a lot of them unless I order by mail from overseas, which is expensive, or the format is different and I have to convert it ..... all of which I don't want to do.

Then I noticed that a vast majority of these pages are done by 'drive by' contributors. Guys who put in a page, then stick around for about a month and are never seen nor heard from again.

No more. Frankly I'm sick of it. We have the {{no effort}} template and still these guys don't get the message. Having a LAME page is actually worse than having no page at all.

If the movie is available for rental at my local Hollywood/Blockbuster/video store then okay, someone here MAY eventually fix it. But why should the rest of us go through the 99% labor to finish someone else's sparse and lame page? I'm actually FOR deleting the pages and telling anyone, to make the effort or don't do it at all.

I note to many new members how PhoenixEnt has his pages nearly 100% done BEFORE he uploads a new movie page. He knows that a lot of the membership doesn't have nor may not have seen the films (especially the older ones). His method is what these 'drive by' members should be emulating. The "No Effort" template describes their maddening lack of courtesy, better than a 1000 words.

Again, the majority of other people's criticism of IMFDB is that we have too many incomplete pages. I'm sure guilty of not finishing a page 100%, but I am trying to fix that. But these 5% pages are just too much. Creating a new page with just a few lame lines "The soldiers use MP40s" just won't cut it any more.

I just wanted folks to know why the MODs sometimes go on deletion sprees. We get fed up with lame pages, lame files or lame contributors.

End Rant:

I really think requiring screencaps to be mandatory in order to create a page would solve this problem.

Screencaps or detailed descriptions, because if the author found the time to write descriptions of how the weapons are used in the film/show/game but haven't added any screencaps yet, there's a pretty good chance they will, and I'd be willing to bet a lot of the pages on this site started this way.

I don't think we need any hard and fast rules on this issue, because it's easy to tell when someone's put absolutely no effort into a page and mark it for deletion. Imposing a screencap requirement to create a page and, by extension, deleting any page that lacks screencaps is a bit drastic in my opinion and would, I think, discourage people who might otherwise become valued contributors from contributing in the first place. For example, even though they both lack screencaps, there's clearly a huge difference between this and this in terms of effort put in.

I agree with Matty. Screencapping takes time and some people just want to make pages without screencapping. However, you can always put detailed descriptions.

People don't want to screencap because it takes time??
Sounds more like they don't want to screencap because they don't want to put in any real effort.

I agree. NOT Screencapping pretty much is demanding that SOMEONE ELSE do it. Which is the message of the {{no effort}} template. They are so lazy that they are requesting that other members of IMFDB do the real work and finish their page. If they can't do it, then they should wait until they have the capability of doing so... BEFORE they make tons of new (and sparse) pages.

But of course you can still have a good page even without screencaps. Look at the Example Matty showed. The Operation Flashpoint page. It's a good page but it needs screencapping.

I believe there is a way to nominate pages for deletion, and then simply have them deleted 30 or 60 days later? This might keep the site clean on an ongoing basis.

Is there any way to completely purge all of the unused files, without having to delete each individually? That would also help keep the site clean.

How do you do that?