Knight Rider season 1 metadata shuffled; probable data loss

Trakt Questions & Help
1

Go through some of the episodes in Knight Rider season 1 and you’ll see references to the “wrong” plotlines in “old” comments, based on the displayed title and synopsis.

Something I’ve always known was possible seems to have happened: Metadata changes merged a two-part syndicated/DVD-order episode pair into one long episode, and the other 20 episode titles in the season were shifted back. Comments (and presumably collected/played times) did not get shifted along with them. I can only assume that everyone’s comments, play times, etc. for what used to be episode 1x22 are now simply lost.

Honestly, I watched this season so long ago that I have no idea if the change is recent enough to be covered by my backups from the relatively new VIP backup feature. But ultimately, that doesn’t matter. This makes me wonder if Trakt has a safety net that requires manual moderator/staff approval for metadata pulls that update a whole bunch of titles and synopses at once.

But leaving that big question aside, is this supposed to have happened? Can the metadata be rolled back, and any lost comments/plays for 1x22 recovered?

I saw that Friends metadata updates are paused because of a TMDB ordering change or something, and this seems similar—but I didn’t find any forum search results for “knight rider”, so here’s a thread.

2

I’m still looking into this, but it does appear we made a mistake in removing the 22nd episode. What likely happened is there was a 2 part episode that was changed to a single episode. Since 1x22 was removed, there is no way to recover that data unfortunately. I will likely move the comments up one episode so they match up correctly.

I don’t know when this was adjusted, but I will say our moderation process has improved since then. In more extreme cases, we pause the reports to research or confirm the change is going to stick before adjusting Trakt. We also try to merge or move episodes, and just delete them outright.

3

Update: Checked the other seasons, and it looks like all four are affected.

On a personal note, I’ve probably been led to skip an episode of season 3 because of this.

But from a relevant-to-everyone-else perspective, that means more comment-shifting, and whatever other cleanups you’re planning, @justin :smiley_cat: