Talk:Academy Awards/Archive 1

This is a good place
This is a good place for general "committee" discussions on how the various sub-articles are to be organized, or to telegraph each other's work plans to avoid duplicating each other's efforts. Eclecticology


 * Good idea. I'm working now on the supporting actress nominees and screen plays - original Danny

I've gone as far as I reasonably can with Best Picture and Animated short. As I indicated once before my easy information source only goes to 1987, and even though I could slowly pick off the info from IMDB, my time would be better spent for now developing other categories. Hint! Hint! to other than Danny, who's already contributing a lot.

In the near term I'm looking to insure that there is a separate article for every Best Picture Oscar winner, and for every nominee with an ambiguous title, but that's a one off sort of thing as and when the spirit moves me.

The categories that I'm considering to develop next: Foreign Language Films and I may look into some of the technical awards.

Does anyone have any idea just how much about a single move should go into these listings? With Best Picture I followed the pattern: Title, Production Company(-ies), nationality (sometimes), producer(s). With Best Foreign Language Film I'm looking to add Original Title (often), nationality (always), and language (sometimes). The person who first set up the category for Wikipedia was showing directors instead of producers. Should we show both? Eclecticology

Moved from Talk:Academy Awards/Best Picture

One thing, -- I think that, when you first create all these potential links, they should be disambiguous -- Lots of these films have titles that have been duplicated, or that are also books or plays. I would pipeline the links from the get-go. JHK Eclecticology
 * I try to disambiguate whenever it seems appropriate, but sometimes it's hard to know when that is going to be needed. For the vast majority, the names or titles are unique anyway.  I've also favoured putting films of the same name on the same page; at other times the book and the film are so interdependent that they should be together.  This can give a great overview of how a subject was trated at different times.  See Hamlet.  In any event I plan to approach the issue pragmatically on a case by case basis.

"Academy Awards are nicknamed "Oscars", which is also the nickname of the statuette (the name is told to have been born when Margaret Herrick saw the statuette on a table and said: "It looks just like my uncle Oscar!")."
 * I was under the impression Bette Davis thought it resembled her husband or ex-husband when viewed from the rear.? --1 Lucky Texan

- I was about to change a few of the sub-pages to get rid of the "/" but immediately ran into an interesting little problem. Do we use "Academy Award for Best Picture" or "Academy Award for best picture". An argument can be made for either format. I'll wait a few days to see comments before I change anything. Eclecticology, Friday, July 12, 2002

I think that's the formal title in caps: here's a cached version of an official press release:

And either way, we'll probably have to link them both and make one redirect to the other, but they're both more natural links than the piped subpage option. Koyaanis Qatsi, Friday, July 12, 2002
 * Thanks, I looked at the Oscar site, but if you go further on the site to http://www.oscars.org/74academyawards/index.html you find that even the Academy itself is not consistent with its usages. Also very few of the award categories include the word "best". We might be stuck with using common sense.  In a Dilbertian universe its the technique used when all others have failed. Eclecticology, Friday, July 12, 2002

eh, what a mess. --Koyaanis Qatsi
 * I wonder whether the piping is necessary on this page. It seems to me that on the main Academy Awards page list it would be good to have the article titles appear as they really are.  For now I'll be working down from Foreign language Film to de-sub page, and leave the top part to you. Eclecticology, Saturday, July 13, 2002

Ok then. Thanks. Koyaanis Qatsi - Question: "Academy Award of Scientific or Technical Merit" does not return any results in Google; neither does "Academy Award for Scientific or Technical Merit." I'd like a phrase that works well in a regular sentence (for instance, unlike "won an award for Academy Awards/Scientific or Technical Merit") but that means we have to coin a phrase. Should we continue in the pattern of using "for", back off on that one, or adopt some other solution entirely? Koyaanis Qatsi
 * I've puzzled over this one myself. These three categories are handled very differently from the rest.  They began in 1931 as "Scientific or Technical Awards", and imaginatively called Class I, Class II and Class III.  The names were not changed until 1978.  The Class I is now the "Academy Award of Merit" which clearly sounds more impressive when you consider that these awards are handed out at a separate event from the one we all know and watch.  The "Scientific and Engineering Award" and the "Technical Achievement Award" are less well know, and several are given each year.  There is no element in these names that wouldn't give thousands of irrelevent hits on Google.  The article titles that I suggested did have a made up element to them already, but as long as these articles have no content changing them is easy.


 * We all have different search habits. I mostly avoid exact phrases, especially when they're long.  That would give me a far too narrow range of results, and I might miss otherwise good sites which happen to have their spelling a little different.  If I were searching for this material I would begin with the exact phrase "Academy Award" in the first instance, and then use one of the other terms in the "search within these results" function.  It works.  So I think that the term "Academy Award" is a must for inclusion in all the awards -- after that??  Eclecticology, Tuesday, July 16, 2002


 * PS The IMDb naturally has a list of all the winners of these technical awards, but very few entries include hyper-links to the winners. At that rate your fears about how to make entries in the winners' pages are not likely to be a real worry. -- Ec.

try www.littlegoldenguy.com Danny

Interchangable use of Academy Award and Oscar
I've seen "Academy Award" and "Oscar" used interchangeably (for example, in the new article on Frances McDormand). Should they be? Most people use the words interchangeably, but I didn't know if we ought to choose one for simplicity's sake, and to limit confusion for the many people worldwide who pay little attention to the AMPAS's awards, let alone their nickname? Jwrosenzweig 21:19 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * Yes, at least in the same article with all parts written by the same person. Being properly chastened, I've changed Frances McDormand accordingly. Bill 21:31 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)