I know ioi is far too busy for some of these ideas, and I imagine the mods have their hands full enough as it is. I also know the mods have to have fun here doing their thing, not slaving away on one seemingly endless task. Still, the game database is getting out of hand pretty badly. Once you really get crawling through the database, you'll see how bad it is.

Duplicate games often occur by mis-spellings/proper spellings, partial titles/complete titles/, differences in US/EU/JP titles, differences in punctuation, etc. I'm sure some of these are honest mistakes, I know of one I made myself. Some just defy logic, like today's addition of "super mari galaxy" for the Wii. 

Risking the wrath of the mods, I will request this task of them anyhows. Would it be possible to coordinate amongst yourselves a sort of schedule for cleaning up the database? For instance, when things aren't too hectic, perhaps two mods could periodically and methodically comb the database for errors/duplicates for a few days. Then the duty could be passed on to another set of mods for a few days, and cycle through like that. I know many of the mods didn't sign up to be database monkies, so perhaps some would be kind enough to volunteer. It might seem like a huge undertaking, but a little bit of teamwork between you guys could get things straightened out. Last week I took a few days and added boxarts to nearly half of the Saturn games. It just looked so ugly seeing half the games with drab gray boxes, I sat down and made it happen. I'm not bragging, just giving an example of what one person can do, let alone if many of the mods chipped in to clean things up.

Another thing that would help would be if the process of adding games was modified. Again, I know ioi is busy, but I'm just putting the idea out there for when there is time. I'm not very good with PC's, but perhaps if there was a required field in the submission form for a link(to GameFaqs) to verify the game's existance. In an ideal world, any games with links already submitted would be automatically rejected. I know if this were somehow implemented that it wouldn't solve all of the problems, but it would certainly help. I'm not even sure how difficult something like this would be to program, but I know someone out there would be willing to help do so if ioi needed the help(and thought it could work).

Another thing is that maybe another mod is needed who would specialize in the database management. I'm sure Neos wouldn't mind doing something like this(I hate to speak for the guy, but he's on a lost wager ban right now). I don't care who it is, just so long as they are truly wanting the database cleaned up and are easy to work with. I'd be willing to go through the database game-by-game, make a list of obvious duplicates and errors to PM to him or her. I'm sure there are plenty of others who would be willing to do the same also. We could sniff them out, then the mod could come in with his or her list and get busy. 

Then there are some other problems I've saw with the database, that I don't believe mods can do much with. For instance...

Some games will have multiple entires with different spellings/titles ,and both will have partial/complete data. Sometimes a game that doesn't have a complete title will have sales data, but the properly titled game will have no data. 

Some games are listed under the Japanese name, yet there isn't a slot for the American or European title. Editing a game has a box for "Japanese title, if different than American". I haven't tried this, but I imagine simply putting the American title in the "Japanese title" box would work fine. But perhaps this "Japanese title" box is what is causing some of the duplicates to pop up(same game, one entry with English title, one with Japanese title). Maybe it should just say "Alternate title", or something along those lines.

It would be nice if mods had the ability to merge database entries. Or if they spot poor spelling/incomplete titles, create a new entry and float the sales data/boxarts/dev/publisher/release dates to the new, proper entry. 

 Alright, that ended up way longer than I intended. I should have been in bed watching Harry Potter over an hour ago, but I wanted to get everything I'd been thinking of put down in one thread. Seeing as how I've been up over 24 hours, I'm sure I missed something. Again, I know the mods can be busy and your efforts are appreciated. I know some of you have no interest in messing with the database, and that is fine. I know some of you have already worked hard on the database, and feel it's time for someone else to do some heavy lifting. I just wanted to see if we can get something going to tighten things up(before it get way out of hand).

In addition to the mini-chart showing sales figures split by region, can we also have a fourth line indicating total sales?

very nice, I tried to wade through the games data... a few times... it was scary...

Thanks for responding ioi. I'm glad to hear that the duplicates, spelling errors, etc have gotten your attention.

Cool beans on modifying the game pages. I'm not sure I can think of anything major I'd like added, other than things you have already mentioned adding previously. However, I have been confused sometimes by not knowing if I have already added a game to my collection or not. It would be nice if a game already in your collection didn't have the clicky to add a game to your collection. I'm still wanting to see how everyone votes on a game. That system will never be perfect, but it would be nice to know what we have already voted on, and what everyone else votes on certain games. Something sort of like on IMDB, where you can access your voting history and such.

I'll wait a few days before I give a good "tisk-tisk" to the mods, as many of them probably haven't had the chance to read this yet. It's not something I expect everyone to hop on with, but would be nice if it got the ball rolling again.

I'd like to see less errors when loading the front page :)

From the looks of the mysql_connect errors theres a seperate query for each user on each post. Please tell me thats not true?

Maybe some better batching for the updates? It seems like everytime a weekly update happens theres 50 replies saying console x did really badly this week, then another 50 saying the numbers arn't up yet for console x.

Oh yeah, get rid of the tables on the forum pages. Aside from being bad design it makes it a pain to edit quoted text.

flukus, this isn't a thread for telling ioi how to run the site.

ioi, I was adding release dates to some games that were missing EU or JP dates, and saw something I hadn't noticed before. Each time I would edit a game(just adding dates that weren't filled in), it would add one day to the other release dates. Just as an example, a game would have no EU release date, but a US release date of 9/17/1998 and JP release date of 5/20/1998. After adding in the EU date and saving the change, it would show US 9/18/1998 and JP 5/21/1998.

I guess that would be something to look into when you're working on the game pages. I suspect the problem has been around for a while and didn't just pop up on me, so just ignore this if it's already been mentioned.

Alright, I know some of you sneaky mods have saw this by now. Every great movement starts with the first little baby step. In case you're wondering: first little baby step=deleting "super mari galaxy".

Seriously though, if anyone wants to get cracking on this and needs some help, just PM me. I'll do what I can. 

sadly, I have made many post specifically pointing out with links and all games that need fixing and the mods have turned a blind eye to it, if there is a technical issue they don't have the mindset to even mention it.

But hopefully you have more success.