Welcome to the TV.com Person Submission Guidelines for submitting new material to editorless person pages. If a person has no appearances listed, please PM a tv.com staff member and let them know. It's possible the entry may be present in error and needs to be deleted. We will update these guidelines as things change on the site, so consider this your most valuable resource for general information about TV.com person guidelines!
If the First/Last (and Middle if applicable) name fields are blank, or the gender isn't selected, please fill them in regardless of anything else you put on the page. This makes sure people show up in the search engine.
If you make an edit, please use Comments to indicate exactly what you are changing. The less clear you are about what you're adding, the less likely your submission is to be accepted.
Also, if you decide to reorganize info, particularly moving it from one category to another, please check to make sure the information isn't copied from another site. Just because the material slipped by once or was cut-n-pasted back on TVTome does not make it acceptable for it to be here now, or to be resubmitted as part of a clean-up effort.
TV.com Person Submission Guidelines
Biography
Copy / Paste Material
Movie / TV / Play Titles
Quotes
Reference to Time Submissions
Trivia
Submission Policy for Non-TV Stars (Athletes, Musicians, Politicians)
Mass Submissions
(Back to Person Guide Submissions)
Biography
Place of Birth, Full Name, Birth Name, Date of Birth, Date of Death, Cause of Death, credited Aliases, etc., should all be submitted here rather than as Trivia.
A brief Biography should sum up the person's career, have unique content rather then restate material already on the page, and be roughly 50+ words long and contain two or more sentences.
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Copy / Paste Material
As per Terms of Use, all material submitted unless otherwise noted must be the contributor's own content, and stated in their own words. If the bulk of at least one sentence can be found on another site using a search engine, the submission will be rejected.
You should provide a specific source for all material. If there is a URL, provide the complete URL (rather than just "wikipedia"). If you don't and staff can't verify the information, your submission may be rejected with a request for the source.
Stick to facts about the person's life, not yours or anyone else's opinions. Don't use exclamation marks on Trivia and Biography entries. Alternately, if you're citing a source for a commonly held opinion, provide that source. Vague statements like "People think" or "Critics say" or "They are best known as" are not acceptable.
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Unacceptable: Frank Jones is the greatest actor of all time!
Acceptable: Readers in the March 2005 issue of Entertainment Weekly voted Frank Jones the greatest actor of all time.
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Movie / TV / Play Titles
Movie, TV, and play show titles (and other types of titles as well) must be italicized, bolded, or in quotation marks as per tv.com standards. If one of these formats is already in use on the page, stick with that.
Outside of quote identifiers, do not italicize, bold, or otherwise special format names of people, bands, institutes, products, etc.
Always assume the reader knows nothing about the person you're writing for and what they've been in. Even if they're in a single show, that may change in the future.
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Unacceptable: Bob was chosen because he impressed the director with his skills. (Chosen for what? What director? What skills?)
Acceptable: Bob was chosen for the role of "Jim Bob" on Who Wants to Be a Pig Farmer? because he impressed director Samantha Smith with his pig-slopping skills.
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Quotes
Quotes should be interesting and give the readers insight about the person's life, values, beliefs, etc. As with Trivia, submitting 20 Quotes is often as bad as submitting none. Ten is typically a good maximum.
Quotes can be cut-n-pasted for the purposes of accuracy, and as copyright law does not cover public statements. Q&A-type copyrighted interviews belonging to web sites, magazines, etc., in part or in whole, are not acceptable. Wholesale cut-n-paste from another site's copyrighted database in any number is not acceptable.
Quotes should always be formatted to tv.com standards. The name is bolded using xHTML start and end tags, the colon is not. At least one space follows the colon. The quotation itself is not in quotation marks. Contextual material is italicized and separated from the bulk of text using brackets or parentheses. If another format is used on the page, please correct it. Do not use BB code. An example of xHTML tags usage:
| Code: |
| <strong>Joe Smith</strong>: <em>(about George Washington)</em> He is my idol and inspiration. |
Quotes should be the person's own words about their own life or someone who influenced their life. Quotes from their TV shows and/or movies are typically not acceptable (see below). Reviewer comments about the person are not acceptable.
Quotes from a person's books, scripts, stand-up routines, political speeches, stage performances, etc., are not acceptable except for one or two well-known quotes or catch phrases.
Provide context for the quote. An actor talking about "he," "she," "my show," etc., means nothing to most readers.
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Unacceptable: Joe Smith: He is my idol and inspiration.
Acceptable: Joe Smith: (about George Washington) He is my idol and inspiration.
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Reference to Time Submissions
All material submitted should be in complete sentences. This includes a subject noun (the person's first name, full name, or simply he/she) and a period at the end of the sentence.
General submissions with no reference to time should be reworded. The words "currently" and "recently" and "now" tell the reader nothing about when the event occurred since they don't know when the entry was provided. Please provide a specific time reference, or at least the year, when posting. Don't assume another site that says "currently" is necessarily up-to-date either.
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Unacceptable: Is currently married to Mary Jo
Acceptable: As of 2006 he is married to Mary Jo Smith.
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Trivia
Trivia should be obscure but interesting. Keep in mind that not all readers may be fans of the person, and submitting 20 Trivia items is often as bad as submitting none. As with quotes, taking another site's copyrighted compilation/database of trivia is a violation of tv.com policy and copyright.
Appearances in and of themselves are typically not Trivia since they are already listed on the page under All Appearances. It is acceptable to submit TV appearances if the show does not currently have an entry on TV.com. However, see below for the submission of related material. If they had an appearance on a show that is listed on TV.com, but their appearance isn't under All Appearances, submit them for the show/episodes that they appeared. Once the editor or staff approves your submission, they appear automatically under the celebrity's Appearances.
Trivia should typically be about the person you're submitting for. Unless it has a direct bearing on the person's life, what their mother, grandfather, dentist, etc., did is not acceptable.
Trivia should be confirmed facts that have actually occurred, not rumors. News about future events is iffy and it's typically better to wait until such events have occurred and can be confirmed. Likewise, try not to submit info that will need regular updating, such as upcoming movie appearances, scores and statistics for their current season, etc.
Do not submit mailing addresses and off-site URLs.
Please do not submit "Trivia" that can be easily determined by information already on the page such as birthdate (i.e., astrological signs, year of high school graduation, their current age, shared birthdays etc.).
Whenever possible, all related material should be combined into a single submission. This refers primarily to brief one-line items, but can include taking a Biography and breaking it up into separate Trivia submissions. This includes but is not limited to: movies and roles, sporting statistics and awards, physical description, family members, discographies, and favorites.
Do not post "constant update" Trivia. i.e., Trivia that is simply a continuing update of something in their lives. "Fred Jones appeared in 24 episodes of Leave It To Weasel." when the show is still on the air and they're still participating in it isn't acceptable.
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Unacceptable: (three separate submissions)
"He played in the World Series in 1992."
"He played in the World Series in 1993."
"He played in the World Series in 1994."
Acceptable: He played in the World Series from 1992-1994.
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Submission Policy for Non-TV Stars (Athletes, Musicians, Politicians)
TV.Com's primary intent is to focus on TV stars: people who work primarily in the TV industry. This includes actors, crew, and reality-show "actors." With this in mind, the policy for non-TV stars is differs from that for TV stars.
Someone who does not work primarily in the TV industry should not be listed as a guest cast member for any show unless the person has three or more televised appearances. Typically such a person's appearance should be added as a Note for the show(s) in which the appearance was made. (If the person is listed in the title or summary, a Note isn't necessary.)
Editors should not approve any such guest cast submissions or these submissions themselves. Any such entries found in the guides, should be removed. Once a non-TV star has three or more Appearance Notes, the notes should be deleted and the individual should be added as a guest star. When removing these notes, please use the comments section of the submission form to indicate what you are doing and why.
Additionally, video and archival footage appearances should never be entered as a guest cast member.
If you find a non-TV Star with inappropriate Appearances, please submit to the episode/show, deleting the a guest cast member and adding the appearance as a Note. Please use the comments section of the submission form to indicate what you're doing and why. Then, please PM a staff member, such as danmod or jaxiecracks, and notify them that the page should be deleted. Please include the guide ID number (found in the page url for the guide) in your PM.
If you find a non-TV Star with three or less Appearances, do not submit to that guide. Your submissions will be rejected.
Athletes and Sporting Events
For a sporting event, team members should not be listed as main stars or guest cast members.
An athlete's sports stats, if the athlete is currently playing, should be placed in the Trivia section and limited to one year, and only after each season is over. If the athlete's career has ended, the lifetime stats should be listed in the biography.
Musicians
A musician's or band's current discography should be listed in the biography, with any additional album releases added in the Trivia section as appropriate. If the career has ended, then the complete discography should be listed in the biography.
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Mass Submissions
As a best practice when submitting, please remember that:
1. While you put a lot of work into researching and compiling your submissions, an editor or staff member is potentially processing submissions from several other users as well. Please use common sense and reasonable judgment when considering how many submissions to make to a single guide in one sitting. Especially given the attempt to process submissions within the 7 day (regular shows)/3 day (popular shows)/24 hours (editorless submissions) timeframe, it's more reasonable to pace out submissions so that an editor has a manageable amount due one day, a manageable amount due the next, etc., instead of a huge amount due all at once. Parsing out your submissions also ensures that you can get feedback from the editor instead of having a potentially large batch of submissions rejected for the same reason. It is within the discretion of editors and staff to reject mass submissions that inordinately strain moderation resources.
2. While TV.com thrives on passionate, knowledgeable users, at a certain point the guides become cluttered, clunky, and hard to navigate. Remember, that while you might find every achievement, every appearance, every quote significant, their significance is relative to the amount of information otherwise available about a person or show.
We would love to be able to process any and all submissions that come our way, but unfortunately, we don't always have the resources to keep up with your enthusiasm. We hope you understand that rejections of bulk submissions are not intended to discourage contributions, but rather an effort to maintain rapid turnaround times for everyone. (Back)
(Back to TV.com Person Submission Guidelines)
Edited on 02/26/2009 2:30pm
Edited 4 total times.
Edited 4 total times.
