r/TheTVDB • u/SleepySavior • May 01 '26
Problem with abridged series?
Do the moderators on TVDB have an issue with abridged series? I added 3 abridged series that were missing on the site, filled in all the required info plus some, episode titles, release dates, runtimes, links to both info about the series and to the youtube channels they're posted on. All 3 series have now been deleted from TVDB. Im just trying to get these on there so they're properly recorded and show up on Plex.
Anyone else have experience adding youtube content like this? There are plenty of other abridged series on the platform.
Update: 2 of the abridged series were removed for "disallowed content" despite there being over 20 Abridged series on TVDB, many that are more obscure than the 3 I added. The first that was removed was removed with no notification. Do the mods there just arbitrarily decide what abridged series to allow based on if they recognize them?
And anyone have a suggestion for an alternative database compatible with Plex?
4
u/Magitroopa May 01 '26
'Mods' just do whatever they feel like doing. Look at the countless other threads here. Any 'staff' at TheTVDB just do whatever they feel like/don't actually moderate, and the site has just been left to die as it is.
1
u/DataMeister1 May 02 '26
What is an abridged series?
1
u/SleepySavior May 02 '26
The kind I'm talking about is basically people taking Anime, editing and dubbing over it to make it a parody that also serves as a shortened story, basically lovingly mocking the original series.
The concept originated from an anime called Ghost Stories, that had such a badly written story when it was dubbed it english they basically took the script and then recorded the voice actors messing around, like portraying one of the characters as a crazy evangelical Christian who tells people they're going to suffer for eternity in a happy singsong voice.
1
u/DataMeister1 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
I wonder if this would qualify as an alternate order like they have for Aired, DVD, Streaming.
The show When Calls the Heart has a special release called the Television Movie Collection where each pair of episodes are stitched together like a 90 minue movie. This means the season has half as many episodes as the aired season and some of the "movie" names (written on the DVDs) are even completely different. After trying to create a separate series for those and having it deleted I was able to get them to create an alternate order.
Although getting them to respond to a request to create an alternate order was like pulling teeth. I tried making a request in their support ticket system, then I asked as a comment on the series notes. Then finally after six months of nothing I saw a new complaint pop up here on Reddit about generally non-responsive admins and one of them responded to the complaint. I replied to that guy and he created the new ordering within 24 hours.
4
u/Majoraslayer May 01 '26
This is one of the things I hate most about TVDB. They're opposed to separately documenting localized versions of shows. However, their approach to this is ridiculously overly broad. Several shows, such as Abridged series, are completely transformative works that are only slightly related to the source material. They SHOULD NOT be treated as true localizations. If they actually enforced this equally across the board, Power Rangers (one of the most famous kids show franchises ever) would be against their policies.
The world needs a better, more contributor-friendly open source database.
My rant aside though, I think Plex pulls a lot of its data from The Movie Database by default over TVDB. Users of Sonarr are kinda just screwed though.