This is here as a handy reference on Person ID#s:

TheOldBill wrote:

I thought I would share the results of my research! There has been much concern in this forum about the search engine and duplicate IDs. By way of background, legacy IDs, brought across from TVTome, are in the range 1 to 372591. These are fully searchable, but although they have a credited name they do not have separate forenames and surnames. TV.com IDs have credited names, forenames and surnames. The first batch, from 372597 to 410906, use a blank as a middle name, so the credited name is John Smith, and the web address is http://www.tv.com/john--smith/person/xxxxxx/summary.html, with a double hypen between first and last names. "Fixing" the space-as-middle name gets you 5 points, but doesn't make the name searchable. Person IDs are searchable only if manually added to the search engine by TV.com staff. Currently, that means person IDs to ID number 373963 only: those from 373967 are not searchable. The second TV.com batch, from 410909, were created after the "space as middle name" bug was fixed. None of these is searchable. Now for the complicated bit... When you manually add a person to a show/episode guide, this will be tagged to an existing record if the input details match the record exactly. This is regardless of whether or not the name is manually searchable. This means you don't need to worry about creating duplicates, although bear in mind that you will not usually get a match with a TVTome ID, as most of these do not have separate forenames and surnames. However, be wary if submitting a number of forms with the same new person. If the second one is submitted before the first of these is approved, the system will not have a match to recognise and will create a new ID for each input! There are 5 points available to anyone who wants to go into any of these and either: Range 1-372591: add separate forenames and surnames, add sex. Range 372597-410906: delete one of the spaces in the credited name, and add sex. Range 410909 up: add sex. If, on your travels, you come across 2 or more person IDs for the same person, why not correct the higher numbered ones and flag the duplicates up for correction?

===========================================================
Additional note:

TheOldBill wrote:

You have to move the credits from one ID to another yourself. Now that waltmor has moved on, there is no way to get IDs deleted, but if you post to the Duplicate Submissions thread, someone may look at them eventually!

Additional note:

Angus_Mac wrote:

Also keep in mind that the deleted and renamed ID's will still retain their old names somehow and block Add Manually's.

Additional comment from Ed:
This means that when you add a credit to a name that has been deleted it will display the character with a blank for the name, because the credit will not create a new person when the deleted name is still being seen by the system.

This user name is an alias for my other user name, EKlumppJr.

Actually, I started this as an experiment to see how long it would take me to get to level 5.

I created this ID on 03 Jan. 06, and selected favorite shows and people, started tracking the staff and the same people as on my other ID.
On 04 Jan 06 I reached level 2.68, and made 25 subs for 29 CPs.
On 05 Jan 06 I reached level 4.34, and made 25 subs for 29 CPs.
On 06 Jan 06 I reached level 4.64, and made no subs, since I didn't get full level credit for the last subs.

Level 5 in 4 days! (and a lesson to those who want to know how to increase their level quickly)!

On 07 Jan 06 I reached level 5.63 and made 11 subs for 40 CPs.
On 08 Jan 06 I reached level 6.07 and made 11 subs for 88 CPs.
On 09 Jan 06 I reached level 6.45 and made 15 subs for 16 CPs.
On 10 Jan 06 I reached level 6.95 and made 25 subs for 25 CPs.
On 11 Jan 06 I reached level 7.68 and made 34 subs for 41 CPs.
On 13 Jan 06 I reached level 8.59 with no more subs made in between the two dates.

Since then I've only made a few subs, mostly to shows and people I edit under my other ID. I've had only a very limited amount of time to spend on the site for the last month, and so my rise in level slowed down a lot, but I started to use this ID to reply to the posts in the Support & User Submission Questions Board, instead of my primary ID.

I mostly use my primary ID to make subs to shows and people without editors, since they tend to get looked at much sooner; and use this one to make subs to shows and people that have editors (my primary ID's shows and people included). A note to those looking to increase their level with subs - make them to shows and people that have active editors, and you'll get them looked at much more quickly than those that go into the QoD, especially at lower levels.