I think that making moderators system is a very good option and I will be so happy if I can help

Pay attention to what your competitors do in terms of dealing with the situations that arise. I think some handle them poorly and others decently well. Say for example, MyEpisodes and FMTV both use TVRage, but yet run into different problems. MyEpisodes lets you pull new shows down at any time, FMTV doesn’t. MyEpisodes checks multile times a day, but FMTV only checks once a day, so MYEpisodes gets their changed data faster.

But… MyEpisodes seems to struggle more with changes that are very confusing from the API side. It isn’t unusual for something to be broken for longer on MyEpisodes, yet FMTV seems to trip up on other things. It is strange to say, but what effects one doesn’t always effect the other.

This is of course true with the superior TheTVDB. If you can figure out how to get your site to talk to it better and correct problems, perhaps a user reporting system leading to an admin API check or something, then you might be set.

The problems will always be there, but trust me, TVRage is not better. You won’t be any happier. In fact, feature wise, you may actually take a step back and have to go through all that effort to convert over for nothing.

I don’t think you will ever defeat the changes made on the API providers, but maybe you can simply get your site to respond quicker and more accurately to changes. This haunts every site I have ever seen using either of those, but… some definitely handle it better than others.

As for your users things, I have never been in your site. I am just guessing based off from the way other sites run. If you have enough users, there are always people looking to contribute. I find both database providers to be weak, so I would love to see someone that has the checking off feature to actually come up with it’s own database, someday. The problem with TheTVDB and TVRage is that they aren’t all that interactive, which is what separates this type of site from those. The more you can do to follow along, the more you want to contribute. If you go to mark off a show and it isn’t there, you would be more inclined to add it. I don’t get that feeling from the providers, because there is less at stake. The people going to mark things off here don’t feel like going elsewhere to jump through hoops to add a show. I know I wouldn’t.

Either way, the better you can handle and keep up with the data, the better the site will run. It doesn’t matter if you use an API or not. So… I completely understand what you mean and where you are coming from.

I actually disagree with the having the same problem as those two. They are both designed to maintain, lets say accurate records for the average home user. You, on the other hand, do not cater to that user. The standards that they have, are not the same ones that appeal to the users of a site like this. You will end up having to play by their rules, which means that putting up with all of the combined episodes that should be one, the changed tv show titles because they can’t decide, and so forth.

Why? Well, they aren’t built for checking off episodes. Actually, having had a few back and forth emails with one of the people behind TVRage, showed me that they don’t even care about you or any of the other API sites. What they have for standards would be nowhere near what a check off your tv type site would desire.

Thus, it begs the question. If you are already storing all that data, then why not make it far more accurate by using your own data?

The difference between the people here and the people there is that people who mark off episodes have different standards than those that are just filling in information on episodes. In my opinion, it would be far more likely to line up with data created by people on your site, than it would by either of those APIs.

Of course, who am I to be trusted? All I have to offer is that I have a collection that is well over two years worth of watched material, all in exact order. I keep up with hundreds of shows to see if I want to watch in the future. I have accounts at multiple sites and have since the beginning of them. I know how both TVRage and TheTVDB work.

I never figured you would change to it, but at the same time, the first one of these types of sites to change will probably be better off for it. Those two APIs lack big time.

I understand your goal. I just hope that someday, you do.

If we had to create that database, we would still have the same problems as theTVDB or TVRage. Because we would have to implement a moderation system, and people would still create duplicated episodes and have different opinions on wether two episodes that air together are just one or are two different episodes