Does anyone think it's time we set some rules concerning background vehicles? I'm not saying we should have no background vehicles, and I sometimes add background vehicles, but I think sometimes people (I don't want to name any names here because I'm trying to attack anyone, just trying sort things out in general) are just posting too many background vehicles that have nothing to do with the action or just are too commonplace to be worth noting, and it just takes up more and more space and as antp has said we will eventually run out of space and have to move to another which isn't an easy task is it? I believe in showing the best quality pictures possible of cars that play a real role in films, I don't like the idea of having to compress images to save space when it wasted by vehicles that frank aren't really worth listing.

Here's the factors that I believe should justify posting a 1 star background vehicle:

1) If it has some kind of connection to the characters or action, ie if it brakes when someone walks in front of it, swerves if a cars cuts in front of it, or can be seen in the driveway at a character's home. And if fits this description, it has to be somewhat visible, not just a big blur.

2) If it is particularly rare or unusual car, not something that was a common car during the time of filming. This should be really be case with films made in the last 20 years, maybe an exception can be made for films from earlier periods.

3) If the camera dwells on the vehicle or if it was well visible (close to the camera) during an important scene.

I think from now on if it's not immediately obvious to people why the car is worth listing or for those who haven't seen the film, the contributor should post some kind of explanation why the car is worth noting, if they can't think of a reason why it is more significant to the film than all the other background traffic vehicles (there are usually 100s of traffic vehicles in films set in cities, we can't list them all) then it shouldn't be listed.

Things I don't like seeing:

1) overhead shots of large car parks containing tons of cars (unless a "used" vehicle is in the car park

2) Shots of cars passing by that appear through the rear windshield (or side windows or front windshield, during interior shots of characters driving or riding in cars.

I could list more things but I'll leave it for now (I might edit this post later).

Does anyone agree with me? By the way if anyone would like to mention any background vehicles I've posted that you think are gratuitous, I'll be more than happy to discuss them and perhaps remove them. I'm tired of having to nitpick about gratuitous background vehicles whenever they appear, and I think everyone is probably sick of me doing this (it doesn't seem to change much does it?), I'm just trying to offer constructive criticism, but if as a site we cut on background vehicles (surely everyone realises there's a lot of irrelevant background vehicles on this site), then I won't have to keep picking people up and far more importantly, we'll save space and be able to focus more on the important cars in films.

I agree with that, as I often repeated similar things when some members posted too-background cars.

Main problem with background cars is not the space taken on the server (even if it is annoying to have to move to another server, it is far to be a major problem).

For me there are two problems when too much background cars are posted:

- at movie level, it "hides" the car that have a role (even a small one). The user that will want to find what is a particular car seen/used in the movie will have to search amoung lots of pictures, which is quite heard. And myself I often have some difficulties to find a car in a "heavy" movie page when I do not know the make/model of the car.

- in the general vehicles links, it gives too much pages of vehicles. Someone that will search for movies where a particular car is seen will get hundreds of movies where the car is seen only a fraction of second. If the car is well visible it is not much a problem (there is the picture showing it clearly, or he can even watch the movie if he wants to show more, if the car has a role). But for cars that are far and/or blurry there is not real interest of knowing that the car was in that movie.

Who do other administrators and regular members think? If we are all in agreement then we can post some official rules which cut down on the hoards of relatively pointless background cars that are added onto this site. I know you're Number One around here antp (you take responsibilty of all the important things required to keep this site running) but I don't want it to look like I'm just trying get on your side so I can have things my way, if anyone's thinking that, it really isn't the case, I don't fancy myself as Number Two

I want everyone to respond to this so we can work something out and lay this issue to rest, so please read this and say whether you agree or not.

I agree in general with what you're saying G-Mann.
Factors for posting:-
#1 Yes
#2 this is the more tricky one! again as i've said before, who's to say what's a good or bad car? and just because it's a rare car it's more important than an everyday car.? (I add any pics of cars/vehicles I see in a film/tv-show regardless.! I've already said to antp( as head admin),if there's anything he thinks shouldn't be included, he alone has the right to remove it!) and I'll not argue with his final decision!
#3 again agree
Factors for Not posting:-
#1 I've not included any recently (only one to the comments I think?)
#2 with this, refer back to #2 factors for posting.!
When there is a large amount of traffic I only include the most visible, at the front or near the front vehicles (not going too far back into the traffic with only partial views)
With foreground cars (which can be and often are blurry) that take up much of the screen, again i'll leave to antp if he thinks it should stay or go.!
note to antp:- Much of the background car's I added today to "Borat" I did not know what make/model they are, so how can I say it's a common car and not worth listing, when I don't even know what it is.!!? (let it be identified & then you can do what you like.! )
As for your comment above, in the general vehicle links, if someone was looking for a particular car in a movie, wouldn't they search that movie? ..and if they didn't know the movie name couldn't they do a search by vehicle star ratings? (for the majority of movies there is not much searching to do! how many films have over 50 vehicles?)
For TV series/shows it's different (ie: chips now over 700) but it can't be helped.! (unless you wished to give each episode an individual page entry?)

Well,in cockney rhyming slang we all know what a number Two is!

I meant "interesting", not "important". And when I said "important cars in films" I meant cars that were important to the action in a film. You could say a bus is more important to you than a sports car, because you need the bus to travel to work everyday and you can't afford the sport car anyway. You should have an idea which cars are more interesting to people than others, I imagine you enjoy going to motor shows but you don't go and visit car parks to look at cars do you? The thing is Stronghold if you feel yourself that a car isn't worth adding (and sometimes you've admitted this), and there is nothing to be learned from posting it, then you shouldn't add it in the first place. You really ought to be more discriminate rather adding every car you watch see in a film or TV show. I'm not sure antp wants to have delete other people's listings, if every car was listed for a fair reason (hence the star system) then he wouldn't have to keep asking people if it was unnessary to post certain background cars, unless it wasn't immediately why it was there.

But this thread is supposed to address the practise of posting background cars in general, not just your efforts.

Yes we do!

I think it's only OK to post real background vehicles in films that don't feature many cars (either set in the early 20th century or in a remote area), but for films set in urban enviroments when travelling in car is part of everyday life, posting cars in regular traffic is pretty pointless! Unless there is a big chase through the traffic.

And I want everyone to post their opinion, don't think this is just a discussion between me, antp and Stronghold.

I totally agree. I have tried to start this discussion on many background cars/blurry cars/half-seen cars/quarter-seen cars but no one has actually deleted this cars. When I first got admin rights I put every car on that I see!

But now I'm running through my movies to check if a car is worth listing.

I will comment every car that not fits your description #1, #2 or #3...

Maybe we should make system (with an extra button on an entry), 'mark for delete', if it's clicked 3 times by a different admin, it's really deleted. This means work for Antoine...

It might be an idea to review existing films and decide whether to trim down the amount of 1 star vehicles in them, though I don't think it's right to delete loads of stuff without people's consent. It would certainly free up some space. If a film that doesn't feature that many cars has a few background vehicles (up to about 3 or 4), that's OK but the real problem is the films that have TONS of them, can they all be worth pointing when there's already so many cars in that film?

Why not delete? It's no problem to me when another admin deletes a blurry background car/half-seen car etc. that has no role and nothing is said in the comments about why this vehicle is listed that I have posted...

In fact, when I post a car, and someone comments: 'is it really worth listing?' or 'why list this blurry thing' or something, I delete it immediately...

Lots of people interested in cars, That i'm not particularly interested in! (certain daf,volvo's,saabs,citroens,fords come to mind.!)



If you've been to many motorshows,fairs,exhibitions,pageants you'll know that the car parks are filled with cars of other car collectors
and can be more interesting than some of the main exhibition cars.!
(I've been going to car shows since the mid 70's and have taken photo's from many a car park.!)



Well I think all cars/vehicles have an interest to someone out there.
I've (personally) been trying to cut down on background vehicles I post.
But still feel there's an interest in these vehicles (and I think other admins, such as 'sixcyl' have a similar way of thinking)
I believe antp looks at every film/tv-series listed on the imcdb.? and gives comments on any vehicle he wishes to, so why bother giving a comment on 'If' a car should be included , when as already said ..as chief admin he could delete it there and then & don't bother with pointless comments.?

"If you've been to many motorshows,fairs,exhibitions,pageants you'll know that the car parks are filled with cars of other car collectors
and can be more interesting than some of the main exhibition cars.!"

I know that, I was talking about ordinary car parks in towns.

The only cars that I delete are those really very small, but that's rare: I usually wait that at least one other admin puts a message so I see that I am not the only one to think that it is too background.
Sometimes it is hard to guess from a picture if the car is worth mentionning or not for the people that didn't see the movie. I remember that one for example: http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_20573-Cadillac-Seville-1978.html

"don't bother with pointless comments.?"

I only post those comments to try and make the contributor think about whether he should have added that kind of entry. I don't want to delete cars on someone else's page because I wouldn't like it someone screwed around with my pages. Sometimes some of the unidentified vehicles I've posted have been deleted, I don't mind too much because if I think the vehicle has any relevance and is still possible to identify I'll put it back on. Would you rather other admins went through your films and deleted loads of stuff?

to take again the example of "Borat", I deleted one very small because Stronghold said that he was ok that we delete the "uninteresting" ones, but I would be for deleting those:
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_82460-Ford-Focus.html
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_82464-Toyota-Camry.html
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_82482-Chevrolet-K-1500.html
http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle_82481-Toyota-Corolla.html
When there are multiple background vehicles of same model but different years, we could group them too (e.g., still for Borat, the two Explorer and the four F-150) - I agree that this can be done only once cars are identified, but this is the responsability of the uploader: check once a day, for the movies that you recently uploaded, if there are cars to regroup. I sometimes do it, but I can't do everything.

But are we going to set down some rules, so we don't keep having to talk about this?

It is not so simple to set rules.
e.g. for me http://www.imcdb.org/vehicle.php?id=20522 is acceptable but it didn't seem to be the case for you