Remove the requirement for TMDB to have IMDB and TVDB IDs
You didn’t check or communicate with TMDB to fully understand their rules and processes.
This is a problem that needs to be fixed/removed. It seems like you’re relying on TMDB but not relying on them.
For example they treat American Idol as two separate shows while TVDB and others do not. This means they will not add those values into the new show because they can’t have duplicate values.
They do this for most network changes for a show. This means that many shows like this will no longer function in trakt.
Remove this requirement, restriction, or process.
If you’re looking for duplicates set a search check to prevent the exact name from showing up twice, allowing for admin override. This is easily done. I’ve worked with developers to accomplish this and with LLMs (it’s not really AI) it’s even easier.
And I think they’re conveniently sidestepping the issue of how many of our records got deleted when all TMDB entries without an IMDb or TVDB just disappeared from our watched history.
I’m slowly working my way through updating all the ones I can identify from my last backups, but this is a slow tedious job. Something entirely unneccessary.
I’ve noticed the same problem also with people. If their TMDB page doesn’t have an IMDB link, they are not imported into Trakt, and even worse, if they were already on Trakt, they have been deleted. This has definitely led to a lot of cast data being lost in Trakt, especially for people working on TV, who may not always have an IMDB entry.
@Sonply Do you think it would be possible to remove this IMDB link requirement at least for people? I don’t think there are duplicate or fake pages for actors on TMDB, so very low risk to import wrong stuff. IMO, the damage done to Trakt by the lack of actors in the cast listings is much greater.
Oh wow I just now realized this! No wonder the actor counts were off… I thought Trakt just wasn’t refreshing and pulling all the data from TMDB yet. I noticed this with the latest episode of The Pitt. V2 web shows the full 38 versus v3 only showing 33. Plus the fact that v3 web and app don’t even show the count anymore or the regular/guest star separation (that I have been begging for this whole time ). Yeah, this requirement needs to be rolled back ASAP.
@kcador@Sonply When was this IMDB requirement changed? I’m assuming sometime within this past month when I noticed the actors regular vs guests lists merged. Something on the backend changed because the iOS app won’t even display the correct count now.
I understand wanting to avoid duplicates and can kind of get it for the movie and show level but this definitely needs to be removed for actors. This is affecting directors and writer credits also. When adding someone on TMDB there is no way to tell if their IMDb link is attached without going into their specific person page and digging through the edit section. This is insanely time consuming and unsustainable to double check for every credit I add.
I have no way of knowing if it will show up on Trakt until I wait for it to do a data refresh. Even then if it is missing I have to go back through various edit pages to add the link and refresh. Taking the time to update these credits weekly and not seeing them all actually get transferred over is frustrating. Please fix this issue!
). Yeah, this requirement needs to be rolled back ASAP. 
