Hey, I would also like to chime in as a Trakt user and future user of TMDB API.

While I do agree that there should be rules about how contributors insert raw data to provide consistency, I don't think official websites should be a (single) source of truth. Websites may be tailored to provide better experience to the readers (some may just accommodate manga, so it's 1:1 connection, but I don't know if that's the case here), but to data analysts and alike, it's a huge hassle. We have to modify data in such a way that is easier for people that watch anime, or any show for that matter, on TV. I think, in its current state, this is not the way to present the data to people - as you can see by the backlash.

Let me give you an example. If I told you: "Hey, I watched episode 36 of this anime!" what would you think if you knew the season has 24 episodes? Another anime, Tokyo Revengers, is a victim of the same issue. Arcs and chapters should be split in different season. That is why their official Twitter account tweets the episode numbers in the right way - how it's aired on TV (see https://twitter.com/uy_allstars/status/1614094961447673857 - Tokyo Revengers example https://twitter.com/toman_official/status/1609202741121015812).

I think the rules need changing, as much as I would love to see that, it is very unlikely to happen. I like how TMDB is open, unlike TVDB (subscription) and IMDB (no API), but this presents a huge downside of it and I would now have to implement multiple source of truths to my future project.

Episode groups functionality has a potential, but is limited. Titles, descriptions, runtimes and cast would have to be merged. Maybe a great way here would be to implement a segment functionality (which they are really a part of an episode).

I think that's all I wanted to say, I hope you take everything I said into consideration. After all, why are we pulling the data if it's not in a readable, consistent form? :)

Sorry for all the salt and have a good day!

@Timic brings up a good point in regards to how an official source is determined.

For context, I've created and maintain a couple personal apps that utilize tmdb for it's main source and pull in extraneous data from fanart.tv and tvmaze. I used to be a user and contributor of tvdb until they went the route they did. Mid-season data shifts like this are incredibly disruptive. I've recently implemented a feature to allow for selecting an episode group which seems to be the only way to really bridge the gap in which everyone else labels seasons and episodes.

I appreciate the work that goes into maintaining this site, but there is a question of consistency and reliability. For me, an episode is a container for a viewable item. For example the movies The Hateful Eight or The Ballad of Buster Scruggs have separate sections with individual titles but are considered parts of a whole. For this series or the recent Beavis and Butthead, the listed parts are parts of a single episode and are shipped/presented to the consumer as a single entity. For Beavis and Butthead I conceded the separation of episodes because each part truly was a different story, but it was shipped/presented as one item with 2 parts so maybe the episode listings on this site could just have both part titles/descriptions combined in the episode listing (much like how they did it on their site). Digital presentations sometimes make determining these entities confusing and I understand debate in those cases. Let me reiterate, a "part" is something that makes up a "whole", in this case the "whole" is an episode. An example for the formatting of this series' episode 1 could be

Title:
Young Love on the Run/Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Description:
Part 1: To save Earth, unlucky Ataru must win a high-stakes game of tag against a beautiful alien. Luckily his friend Shinobu has offered a helping hand (in marriage) as motivation!
Part 2: Ataru is fed up with Lum interrupting his phone calls with Shinobu every day. The two, unable to make a phone call due to the jamming signals that she sends out from the spacecraft to Earth, get excited and decide to meet face-to-face.

Though, in the above, the title's / should be a file safe character, so a unicode ∕ or maybe just a simple &.

@TheOneWhoKnocks said:

@Timic brings up a good point in regards to how an official source is determined.

For context, I've created and maintain a couple personal apps that utilize tmdb for it's main source and pull in extraneous data from fanart.tv and tvmaze. I used to be a user and contributor of tvdb until they went the route they did. Mid-season data shifts like this are incredibly disruptive. I've recently implemented a feature to allow for selecting an episode group which seems to be the only way to really bridge the gap in which everyone else labels seasons and episodes.

I appreciate the work that goes into maintaining this site, but there is a question of consistency and reliability. For me, an episode is a container for a viewable item. For example the movies The Hateful Eight or The Ballad of Buster Scruggs have separate sections with individual titles but are considered parts of a whole. For this series or the recent Beavis and Butthead, the listed parts are parts of a single episode and are shipped/presented to the consumer as a single entity. For Beavis and Butthead I conceded the separation of episodes because each part truly was a different story, but it was shipped/presented as one item with 2 parts so maybe the episode listings on this site could just have both part titles/descriptions combined in the episode listing (much like how they did it on their site). Digital presentations sometimes make determining these entities confusing and I understand debate in those cases. Let me reiterate, a "part" is something that makes up a "whole", in this case the "whole" is an episode. An example for the formatting of this series' episode 1 could be

Title:
Young Love on the Run/Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Description:
Part 1: To save Earth, unlucky Ataru must win a high-stakes game of tag against a beautiful alien. Luckily his friend Shinobu has offered a helping hand (in marriage) as motivation!
Part 2: Ataru is fed up with Lum interrupting his phone calls with Shinobu every day. The two, unable to make a phone call due to the jamming signals that she sends out from the spacecraft to Earth, get excited and decide to meet face-to-face.

Though, in the above, the title's / should be a file safe character, so a unicode ∕ or maybe just a simple &.

The point moderators are trying to make is "the main reason for the split is that segments are often paired differently in subsequent releases". Although in that regards TMDB doesn't stores multiple broadcasts anyways so I don't think it should be a problem.

@Supriyo Ah, so parts are more of a CMS question, and how to manage them later via Episode Groups then.

If I were building the system:

• I'd add a toggle within the episode creation that reads "Contains Multiple Parts".
• Once enabled, an extra "Add Another" button would appear below the Title, Description, and Runtime inputs (there may be more I'm forgetting).
• Since I don't know how the database is structured, I can't give suggestions on that, but the parts data would have to be easily assignable to any episode.
• On the series page and API results I'd combine the parts data as I outlined above.
• Episode Groups would have to detect if any episodes contain parts. If they do, it'd be a two part move. One, move parts into an episode container, then move the episode to the group.

The above is of course a high-level overview, and I imagine would involve a few technical hurdles. Implementing such a workflow could trim down a lot of the content issues, and make TMDB more flexible with data management.

It would be a good addition and a good compromise but yes, possibly difficult to set up... However in this specific case and in the current state, I persist, the episodes should be grouped with a separator.

Another problem with splitting the segments as episodes is that the rolling credits are not split for each segment, but listed for the whole episode. That prevents the specific credits from being added to each segment, unless they are all entered duplicate in each segment.

The best solution to handle this situation would be to implement a feature that allow to add segments to episodes. This way, the segments might be grouped later in any fashion to reflect how they are broadcasted in the different services, channels or any other kind of release. Then, the episode title and description would be the result of combining each segment title and description. Of course, this would require a redesign of the database, but I think the site would benefit quite a lot from it and make it more flexible and powerful.

I agree that rules should be followed, but rules should be flexible and adapt as different needs arise. When a rule causes more disadvantages than benefits, I think it should be reconsidered and, where appropriate, reformulated. In my opinion, this rule has more disadvantages than benefits, since it distorts the episodes as they were originally broadcast, makes it difficult to enter credits and causes inconvenience to the sites that use TMDB as a source of information.

Are the mods going to resolve this issue? Leaving these split creates more problems not only for TMDB but also other services (like Trakt) that use TMDB. Regardless of the current rules looking at the feedback from the people that use this service should indicate that the changes that were implemented are not beneficial for users.

@JLChamberlain said:

Are the mods going to resolve this issue? Leaving these split creates more problems not only for TMDB but also other services (like Trakt) that use TMDB. Regardless of the current rules looking at the feedback from the people that use this service should indicate that the changes that were implemented are not beneficial for users.

看样子，网站管理员会严格遵守网站站规，不会参考任何官方信息和用户建议。

@岡坂日川 said:

@JLChamberlain said:

看样子，网站管理员会严格遵守网站站规，不会参考任何官方信息和用户建议。

You're probably right, still a very weird decision.

@andresabad said:

What in the actual hell did you do now??? Cmon!! The rules of this site are absolutely absurd, it's not the first time and I'm not the only one who complains about the huge amount of errors you have, especially in anime series. Really, if it wasn't because this database is used in Trakt, I wouldn't spend a single second on this crappy site and its nefarious "rules" that do nothing but worsen the user experience.

I'm also just in this because of Trakt. I'm paralelly using simkl, which paid for tvdb. Plex uses both too. I'm actually considering now to drop Trakt completely.

It's supposed to make things easier for me not complicating everything...

We'll see.

@ruegnueg said:

@andresabad said:

What in the actual hell did you do now??? Cmon!! The rules of this site are absolutely absurd, it's not the first time and I'm not the only one who complains about the huge amount of errors you have, especially in anime series. Really, if it wasn't because this database is used in Trakt, I wouldn't spend a single second on this crappy site and its nefarious "rules" that do nothing but worsen the user experience.

I'm also just in this because of Trakt. I'm paralelly using simkl, which paid for tvdb. Plex uses both too. I'm actually considering now to drop Trakt completely.

It's supposed to make things easier for me not complicating everything...

We'll see.

Same here, I will cancel my Trakt subscription if this problem is not fixed. I won't pay for a service that gives me wrong stats. Although to be fair, it's not their fault, it's TMDB's rules.

@andresabad said:

@ruegnueg said:

@andresabad said:

What in the actual hell did you do now??? Cmon!! The rules of this site are absolutely absurd, it's not the first time and I'm not the only one who complains about the huge amount of errors you have, especially in anime series. Really, if it wasn't because this database is used in Trakt, I wouldn't spend a single second on this crappy site and its nefarious "rules" that do nothing but worsen the user experience.

I'm also just in this because of Trakt. I'm paralelly using simkl, which paid for tvdb. Plex uses both too. I'm actually considering now to drop Trakt completely.

It's supposed to make things easier for me not complicating everything...

We'll see.

Same here, I will cancel my Trakt subscription if this problem is not fixed. I won't pay for a service that gives me wrong stats. Although to be fair, it's not their fault, it's TMDB's rules.

I know. But if simkl could afford TVDB, why couldn't Trakt? TMDB got so many airdates wrong in animes its ridiculous. Plus those weird anime guidelines.

I'm watching basically 90% animes, so that's really bugging me.

Still nothing 😑. Can the mods at least respond to the concerns and implement a fix for these idiotic changes that satisfies YOUR USERS! The current situation isn't correct and messes with all the other services like Trakt that stupidly use TMDB.

All other database platforms are displaying the data correctly except yours!

AniDB - 46 eps total (23-24 minutes each)

TVDB - Will be listed with 46 eps (23-24 minutes each) - Splitting into 2 seasons.

MAL - 46 eps (23-24 minutes each) - MAL will split this into seasons 1 & 2 (each season being 23 episodes).

Anilist - X2 Seasons with 23 episodes each (23-24 minutes each)

Episodes need to be merged to accurately display their data regardless of your rules, if you're unwilling to do so then you need to re-evaluate your rules specifically for anime and this data is incorrect.

I’ll add IMDb. A serious reliable source that doesn’t split segments as different episodes. This nonsense only happens here because of the RIDICULOUS rules made by people who know NOTHING about anime series.

@JLChamberlain said:

Still nothing 😑. Can the mods at least respond to the concerns and implement a fix for these idiotic changes that satisfies YOUR USERS! The current situation isn't correct and messes with all the other services like Trakt that stupidly use TMDB.

All other database platforms are displaying the data correctly except yours!

AniDB - 46 eps total (23-24 minutes each)

TVDB - Will be listed with 46 eps (23-24 minutes each) - Splitting into 2 seasons.

MAL - 46 eps (23-24 minutes each) - MAL will split this into seasons 1 & 2 (each season being 23 episodes).

Anilist - X2 Seasons with 23 episodes each (23-24 minutes each)

Episodes need to be merged to accurately display their data regardless of your rules, if you're unwilling to do so then you need to re-evaluate your rules specifically for anime and this data is incorrect.

Those database platforms have their own rules that entries added to them have to follow, just like TMDB has its own set of rules that entries have to follow.

I used to contribute fairly often to TVDB and I can tell you right now that their entry for this anime is breaking their own rules. Their anime section just deals with OVAs and split-cour anime so it's reasonable to assume that, even though they are not "cartoons," anime with multiple segments are also subject to their Multi-Segment Episode Splitting rule, which says the following:

When a cartoon has multiple storylines in a single episode, the standard guideline for TheTVDB is to enter each story as a separate episode.

@andresabad said:

I’ll add IMDb a serious reliable source that doesn’t split segments as different episodes. This nonsense only happens here because of the RIDICULOUS rules made for people who know NOTHING about anime series.

From the Source Reliability guidelines:

User-contributed data sources like IMDb, Wikipedia, TVDB and fan websites should only be used if there is no official information available (anymore) or to double-check information found in secondary sources.