I'm relatively new here and have hopefully added to the knowledge bank on the site by identifying a fair few vehicles.

I've a couple of questions.. who decides what is or isn't a definitive answer (and what criteria do they use) and is anyone actively looking out for comments posted on some of the very old unidentifieds?

Thanks

Welcome the sad biker - Always glad to see new members.

If you go to the Help/FAQ page on the site, you will see a list of current admins. You will also find the criteria used for accepting movies and pictures. The admins are the only ones who can edit entries. They generally know a lot of the IDs already. As you can see, we have admins from all areas around the globe, so we have experts for most markets.

We usually work on the honor system with IDs. Most members give us accurate IDs, and we will edit based on their IDs. Usually for new posters, we try to verify the information before we edit, until we get to know you. Most members tend to have their favorites that they know well, so that helps us know if the IDs are accurate for the most part. You seem to know bikes, which is always a plus, we don't have many that do. I know nothing about them myself, so I tend to accept the IDs of posters who know them.

I usually look through the comments to see IDs, but others work through the Unidentified list. Older Unidentified, unfortunately, get buried, so sometimes we need to be reminded if there is an ID missed. Unfortunately, the site is an older, bulkier design, that is not always efficient, so older IDs get lost. Our webmaster, Antp is working on a new version of the site, to streamline things.

I hope this answers your questions. Let us know if you have any more and again welcome to the site!

I think that many of the admins try to check recently posted comments, so the fact that you post on an old unidentified or a recent one does not change much, the comment has in both cases chances to be seen.

Until last summer I had time to check all comments, so usually I was trying to take in account all what was missed by other admins (though that often I couldn't really know what was correct or not). Unfortunately nowadays I can't do that anymore. Other admins try to check what is posted, but it is not possible to check everything.

As Night Cub said, indeed we do not always know if new contributors are reliable or not, if it is out of our expertise area. So sometimes we wait that someone else with more knowledge than us confirms what has been posted. Unfortunately for bikes we have a lack of experts, so when someone new arrives his comment can't easily be checked.

I'd add that imcdb is a fairly organic process. People come and go, so expertise changes with time. We don't have allocated responsibilities as admins for particular subject areas or tasks, but fit in where we can and where it's most useful. Plus trying to avoid intervening where it's not (ie where other folk know far more than I do or ever will, or where it would take me 15 minutes to check and confirm something which someone else can do in three seconds). As said above we admins also build up our own individual pictures of who our experts are and their reliability and therefore our confidence in trusting IDs outside our own comfort zones.

If you ever feel your comments and IDs are being ignored, there is this thread - http://imcdb.opencommunity.be/forum_topic-1987-66194-Non_Unidentified_Vehicles.html#p66194 .

However another trick to get your IDs included more quickly is to explain why it's a 1973 Bloggsmobile Zoom GTX - can be as brief as needed - a reference to the visible trim detail or a link to an online photo or to a comparable example already in our collection. That encourages admins to make the change more confidently.

And if you want to excavate within the older unidentifieds which have been accumulating cobwebs since imcdb began - go for it. Many have tried so instant success may be elusive .... Maybe a more effective way might be to pick a make from the list on the Home page, pull that up and then tackle those shown as Unknowns - I've done that every so often and you can build up a monmentum for an hour or two.

Or check for incoherent model names in that list, as there can easily be spotted when viewing all the models of a make, but they are not easily seen (so easily missed) in other listing views

Thanks guys, I've got the idea and will keep chipping away at the archive of unknown or misnamed bikes, I'd like to think I'm pretty good with Japanese stuff from mid 60's up til the mid 80's (when I lost interest in modern bikes, if you peel the stickers off the fairings they all look the same :benou_grat:)

One thing I would find helpful if possible, an indication of where a movie or TV show was filmed or produced ? Knowing the market a vehicle was built for might make things easier?

Cheers

Agreed. Bike makes are particularly weak for duplicated permutations of model name - so we can have parallel groups for eg 650TR, 650 TR, TR650 and TR 650. Plus TR650 Bullet or Bullet TR650 variations as well. I sometimes try and weed these out by switching to the permutation with the most existing entries - the gravitational approach - but without much idea of what is really correct.

So expert comment on these situations particularly useful.

Usually fairly straightforward - click on the yellow imdb logo beside the film title and date - that should open up a page about the film. Look under the Details sub-head - there's often a line about Filming Locations and open that up to see contents. If there's nothing on locations, there can be clues from nationality of film producers etc. But as ever, there are holes in the info (no entry or incomplete listing - we often discover through imcdb's captures additional locations to those presented by imdb) or multi-national locations (eg Bond films etc) or films which pretend to be in a different country etc etc, so things can get complicated.

Info about movie origin & location is one of the numerous things added in the next version.
Indeed for the moment it requires going check on IMDb, though that the info is sometimes specified in the comments of the movie page (mostly for unusual locations).