Hi @SydneyFife,

This is currently by design. I have an open ticket to think about this here but it requires a decent amount of work to change which is why we use the show/movie release date instead.

Hi @travisbell,

Has the situation changed since then?

And is it just as complicated to implement something similar in the API? For me it would be really helpful if the /person/{person_id}/tv_credits method returned the air dates of the first and last episode the person is in. I don’t know how episode_count is calculated, but is it perhaps possible to get these two dates in this process?

The situation has not changed yet. My open ticket for this is located here. The model behind this is a bit simpler than it was back in 2018 but no work has been done on it yet.

With regards to the website, we are now using the year of the first credit to sort a person's filmography.

Regarding the API, as the cached objects expire over the next 8 hours or so, you'll start to see a new field on the TV credit endpoints called first_credit_air_date.

Cheers.

This is a really great feature. I love and appreciate it so much.

I do just want to call out an odd side effect, though maybe intentional. Here's an example:

When you look at someone like Kathy Scambiatterra: https://www.themoviedb.org/person/1893742-kathy-scambiatterra Her Chicago PD credits are split up as "M.E.", "Medical Examiner", "Medical Examiner Ruth Dwyer" and "Ruth Dwyer", so Chicago P.D. now shows up multiple times in the list.

In the past, I would've thought we should merge these into one credit like "Medical Examiner Ruth Dwyer", but the mods didn't like when I did that (because it's not EXACTLY how she's credited on screen), but with this new change it makes the credits even more fragmented.

the mods didn't like when I did that (because it's not EXACTLY how she's credited on screen), but with this new change it makes the credits even more fragmented.

What new change?

Different example here with two different characters.

What new change?

The new change that Travis announced in the previous comment:

We are now using the year of the first credit to sort a person's filmography.

Before yesterday, all of the "Chicago PD" credits would be together, because they used the start date of the show. With that new behavior of using the date on the credit, the credits are no longer grouped together (because they have different dates).

With the example you gave, one person played two different characters, so it's easier to accept that Chicago PD shows up twice in the credits (this is the "new behavior" now that TV credits are sorted by first_credit_air_date).

With the example I gave, one person is playing one character, but is credited non-uniformly, so the credits are now split up confusingly. (Well, WAS credited non-uniformly.... @Banana re: The change you made to her credits; I did exactly that back in December, but another mod changed it back... and later told me that the credits need to be exactly what's on screen).

Yeah, sorry I misread that. I meant to ask about following the TV credits to a T and ending up with two or more credits for the same character. I always merge them when I see them.

Okay. I think this is becoming a separate topic from the original thread about merging vs. what's exactly on screen. In light of the change to sort filmography based on first_credit_air_date (which again, I love) merging makes even more sense.

I'll back off and let you Mods and Staff figure out what it should be and just do what I'm told from here (but I'd love explicit guidance, since the contribution bible and what I was told by a mod do conflict a bit...)

@travisbell said:

With regards to the website, we are now using the year of the first credit to sort a person's filmography.

As @jedi.jesse mentioned, this is great. Thanks!

Just another side effect I noticed:

• Credits in the specials season (0) aren't appearing in a persons profile at all now, or if they are credited identically in a regular season, it's not being added to the total episode count. It used to be there (while not appearing in the TV shows full cast + crew page).