Acting credits appear in Self section when combined with a Self credit and vice verse

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When a cast credit is entered as "Himself/Character", the credit appears in the Self section in the actor's filmography. Judging by this previous thread on the same issue that didn't receive attention by a staff member (https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/submitting_actor_credit_where_himself_host_is_one_of_multiple_roles_puts_all_roles_in_self_category), if you re-ordered them, the credit would appear in the Actor section.

They should really be separated into both sections.

Matt

144 Posts
66 Reply Likes

Posted 5 years ago

5 years ago

DavidAH_Ca, Champion

3263 Posts
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You are right that that would be better, but when IMDb was started, the decision was made to restrict each cast member to a single credit per film.

I am not sure why this was done, but I suspect that part of the reason was so that they would not end up with 10 different entries for a single person playing John Smith, John Quincy Smith, J.Q. Smith, J. Q. Smith, Mr. John Smith, etc. It would be quite difficult to separate legitimate 'double credits' from items like these.

Also at that time there was no separation in the listings between Actor and Self credits, so this specific problem did not exist and was not foreseen. Changing the system to split the credit and show it in two places would likely require significant programming, and I doubt if IMDb will make that much effort for what really is a relatively small result.

(Edited)