Model Name Source Reliability

[slowdiver]

Originally Posted by effCup

What do you mean by "correct"?

To be honest, I've always tried to narrow a model down to a single name, simply for ease of cataloguing.

At the end of the day, it's actually probably better that models are listed with multiple names, where those are available, if only to increase the chance of people searching for that model - If I know a model as Patty Pink and you know her as Betty Blue, giving both of the used names in her id means that we'd both be more likely to find her thread.

Realistically, the more names a model can have attached to her, the greater chance of work from multiple sources coming together (Patty Pink, aka Sharon from Fiesta, Jenny from Mayfair, Ingrid from CC etc), which in turn means it's easier for people to find a particular model's work.

There is also a bit of OCD on my part, but that's my problem

[effCup]

Yes, I too prefer a model to have a single, two-part name wherever possible rather than a list of alternatives. But that's different from using evidence about their real name to decide which one is "correctly" their best-known-as. It seems like you're saying that the professional handle that most resembles their real name is preferable/"correct", that it helps you to prefer/pick one over another. But there are models/performers for whom we do happen know their real names and where those may not at all resemble their best-known-as professional handles--Traci Lords for one. So your approach seems arbitrary, I still don't see or understand any meaningful basis for it?

[slowdiver]

Originally Posted by effCup

So your approach seems arbitrary, I still don't see or understand any meaningful basis for it?

The models/actresses I tend to collect or have an interest in aren't (usually) well known. They're mostly English/British, appeared more frequently in magazines and photoshoots rather than videos, and appeared in said magazines c.1985-1995. And perhaps crucially (or at least in my case) they largely weren't well known by a specific professional name, or at least that's how it seemed at the time. A lot of crossovers, as 'Sharon' in Fiesta may well appear the same month as 'Tracey' in Escort.

Once I started scanning magazines, and subsequently collecting pictures, I realised that rather than simply scanning an entire mag, I was interested in the pictures of specific models (although I will scan complete mags or specific photos if requested, even if they aren't my personal favourites).

Accordingly, for my own use, some form of arbitrary identification was needed, particularly when the same model appears under lots of different names. Once it became possible to find (as close to) a definitive name for a model, that was the name I would use - so scans from multiple publications will appear in a folder, named after the model herself, rather than the magazine.

I had assumed that everybody else worked in the same, or a similar way. In fact, everybody works in their own way dictated by what works best for them.

With models/actresses who are primarily famous because of their professional name (such as Traci Lords or Sandra Scream), then I would use that name for cataloguing and storage. But the vast majority of material I have in my collection doesn't fit that criteria.

At the end of the day, it's all about personal preference

[beutelwolf]

Originally Posted by slowdiver

Accordingly, for my own use, some form of arbitrary identification was needed, particularly when the same model appears under lots of different names. Once it became possible to find (as close to) a definitive name for a model, that was the name I would use - so scans from multiple publications will appear in a folder, named after the model herself, rather than the magazine.

I had assumed that everybody else worked in the same, or a similar way. In fact, everybody works in their own way dictated by what works best for them.

I do that in a similar way, though the folders are organised hierarchically, as there are 20000 of them. Differences on multiple names: I keep subfolders for each name to see whether one prevails eventually. I also keep folders for "known unknowns", attaching a tag to them as replacement name. These I also use in databases.

[effCup]

Originally Posted by slowdiver

The models/actresses I tend to collect or have an interest in aren't (usually) well known.

I understand. I deliberately used examples of well-known models for one specific reason. If we have "other"/independent evidence that suggests which is the right outcome of a given process, then we can use that extra knowledge to test the processes we apply to our input information, in order to check whether those processes lead us to that "right" outcome or not. In software it can go by the name unit testing, or assertion testing. So "testing" how we handle model names using some well-known examples can show us whether what we're doing with such model name information is a useful process, or is instead potentially misleading.

What is the difference between well-known models and relatively unknown ones? Contrary to your implication, in my view nothing at all. An example of the latter today could tomorrow become one of the former, were we to somehow gain an additional piece of information that allowed us to link things together; an a-ha moment. So I think it's a mistake to treat models as if they somehow constitute different "classes" of data. That's an arbitrary imposition or projection upon our data.

@slowdiver: I'm sorry if it feels like I'm picking upon you in these posts, it's just that some of your comments have struck me as touching upon important issues, but ones that I think should be handled differently from the approach(es) it seems you're implying, and I've tried to illustrate why.

[effCup]

Perhaps time for another little illustration?

Hot Shots has several collections of annoyingly small model cards with (largely? entirely?) US-based model information. Many of the models were photographed by Stephen Hicks but it is unclear whether all the sets were from his work or not. Many of the models were also photographed by other contemporaneous photographers including Suze Randall, etc. The hot shots cards themselves list various professional names for the models, though not always ones that we know them as/by from magazines. The information on the cards is sometimes contradictory--i.e. we know some of the models are one and the same person and yet the date of birth, height, and measurements given on two different cards may sometimes differ significantly. So it's not "reliable".

In some/many cases not the cards but the website on which they are accessible also lists a claimed "real name" for those models. I have posted some queries in MIR and included that claimed "real name" information where it was available. I did so because I felt it was already published--i.e. had it not been already so I would not have divulged it on vef. Perhaps more to the point: I listed those claimed "real names" not because I thought they were necessarily themselves good candidates for the models' best-known-as handles but rather, because in some but not all cases it has seemed that models' professional aliases have part-related to them, and so I've included it simply for reference, in case it triggers someone else's memory of the model under some related professional (e.g. magazine) name.

So, all that seems rather similar to the suggested example of model information obtained from facebook, right? Except that I think many people perhaps still regard facebook as a bit more private than they do the web in general. /shrug/

[slowdiver]

Originally Posted by effCup

@slowdiver: I'm sorry if it feels like I'm picking upon you in these posts, it's just that some of your comments have struck me as touching upon important issues, but ones that I think should be handled differently from the approach(es) it seems you're implying, and I've tried to illustrate why.

I don't feel like you're picking on me, I posted originally to inspire discussion so it's perfectly natural that we'd respond to each other's posts, don't worry about it

At the end of the day, as I've said already, it's all about what works best for each individual. My methods have worked fine for me for a long time, and unless somebody shows me another way of working that I feel would work better for me personally then I'll no doubt keep using the same methods I've always used

The italicised bit above is key here - we all do what works best for us individually - my approach to scanning/posting/filing is based largely around a folder on my drive, which contains 26 subfolders, labeled A-Z. Each of those folders in turn contains subfolders with a single name attached, each of those in turn containing "from VEF", "Videos", "My scans" etc etc.

While others may and will do things differently, this method appeals to, and works best for me. Any suggestion or argument about efficiency or practicality would have to be balanced against personal preference (which is probably going to come out on top, regardless of whether it's the 'best way of doing things' )

Originally Posted by effCup

So, all that seems rather similar to the suggested example of model information obtained from facebook, right? Except that I think many people perhaps still regard facebook as a bit more private than they do the web in general. /shrug/

When I originally posted about Facebook profiles, it was simply intended to be a further source of information towards providing names for the models within our hobby.

Facebook is a public resource - anything posted to a Facebook profile is visible to anyone else, unless the user chooses to make it limited or private. By typing a name into Google, it is possible to retrieve a person's public profile from the search results, unless that user has made said profile private.

My own Facebook profile is completely public, and I don't post anything on there that I'm not perfectly happy for anybody (whether I know them or not) to see. If I wasn't happy with this arrangement, I'd change the settings accordingly

[effCup]

Originally Posted by highwayman274

for Jacklyn McQuerry.

Can we rely upon that name, or does anyone else recognize her from other sources?

I think the latter question is perfectly reasonable/open. The former makes me wonder: what standard of reliability is being sought? Oui mag. used models' professional names, whether created by the model themselves, their photographers, or the magazines we can only guess. In that sense Oui was pretty much like Mayfair, Penthouse, & a whole bunch of other mags. of similar era. It seems like you want a "short-hand" rule-of-thumb such that, say: Oui names are always "reliable", or always un-"reliable", but neither extreme is true of pretty much any comparable mag. It's not true of either Penthouse or Mayfair. There are some Penthouse or Mayfair names that vef disregards in favour of others and there are other Penthouse or Mayfair names that vef accepts in preference over others. The same would, logically, seem to be equally possible with regard to Oui. /shrug/ No need to put Oui on a pedestal as somehow exceptional, is there? Do we have any mag. titles in that elevated position, to date?

I think the question about model name/id reliability is a dead fish. It turned up some interesting info. about certain mags. from beutelwolf awhile ago but apart from that the main thing that seems to have been produced since then is a lack of confidence on the part of mods. in the MIR section. Yes, it's "easy" when there's an existing thread/id or egafd/iafd/the nude, etc. The more difficult cases are when a model is "emergent", i.e. going through a process of discovery/recognition.

That's in the nature of this very topic. We're dealing with made-up (professional) names. There is no such thing as reliability per se, in such a field. The "reliability" attribute of these professional names is a "known unknown" and I can't see any objective means of overcoming that. There was no industry-wide independent catalogue/registry of skin-mag. or porn models' "real names", or the like. Certainly nothing like it back in the 1970s or perhaps for most of the 1980s. We can see this from occasional court cases--e.g. one from the early-/mid-1970s between Larry Flint & a US photographer/agent who sold him a model's set but then shopped it around other mags. despite Flint claiming he'd gained "exclusivity" (it was less clear-cut with Flint characteristically trying to pull a fast one over payment). The court documents show that the model's "real name"/identity was unknown to Flint/Hustler at the time. Photographers (or agencies), generally acted as free agents (only a select few were contracted "in-house"), and would offer catalogues/sets to mags. for use/publication.

Instead the relevant question should be: is this name that model's best-known-as handle. No, I'm not talking about mag. circulation numbers but instead how do we assess the current information that we have about each model. In this instance we have only one two-part mag. name: Jacklyn McQuerry. Does that name meet the requirements for a model id? Yes, it is a two-part name, and yes, it is pretty distinctive from other model names/thread titles. So the name we have found is satisfactory for an id. The next question is: how long should we wait to see if any other names turn up? Well, that's another "known unknown"/piece of string.

From the perspective here:

Originally Posted by hos

moderators can always and without any problems merge threads together - or change thread titles if better names appear. you don't have to visit model id request first if you're just unsure if the name is good enough. it's good enough if you can proof it

Jacklyn McQuerry satisfies. There's nothing to stop the creation of a thread for her under that name. If in time additional names (& presumably content) turn up then they can be used to amend her thread title/id, or her thread can be merged with another if that's appropriate.

MIR is generally quite swift at dealing with most model ids, for reasons I hopefully don't need to explain. There are other cases where the names turned up so far do not satisfy the criteria for an id, e.g. perhaps only a bunch of different first names. Where MIR seems to struggle, though, and where I don't see any good/logical reason for it to so struggle, is where we have a model with at least one, but also sometimes several, two-part names. If a model has, say, three two-part names then yes, it can be tricky deciding which one to use, but still all that's needed is just to choose one of them.

Often it seems as if mods. in MIR would rather wait for some other name info. to turn up. That is an avoidance strategy. Perhaps they feel they'll be "told off" for having got it "wrong" the first time and so hold off just to be "cautious"? There are no perfect model names. It's an iterative process of discovery. There is evidence that creating a model thread can be more successful at turning up that additional info. & content than leaving her in MIR. That means leaving models to languish in MIR for a long time may well be counter-productive, may often be a less-effective approach to resolving the very difficulty that's causing that model to be left in MIR in the first place. No, that sentence is quite accurate if perhaps overly concise.

My point is not to advocate for rushed judgement and rapid "solves". Waiting awhile longer on Jacklyn McQuerry is perfectly fine. The mistake is when we wait forever on the likes of Jacklyn McQuerry. The mistake is when we delude ourselves that there is some form of reliability to be sought in this field. Turn instead to consider the processes for handling the model (mag.) name info. that we already have.

[highwayman274]

I agree that in a forum where we are prohibited from using a model's legal name, we are left to struggle with which stage-name is most appropriate.

In this instance I could not turn up any on-line references to "Jacklyn McQuerry", and wondered if anyone else knew her by that name at another source.

My mistake (I think) was to dash off a quick post without thinking about the impact of the word "rely".

Anyway, the thread has now been flagged for follow-up, and hopefully will not fall through the cracks.

[effCup]

Originally Posted by highwayman274

My mistake
without thinking about the impact of the word "rely".

Nah, you made no mistake, it's just your wording made me think once more about processes. If people here think my previous post was about the specific instance of Jacklyn McQuerry then they've misunderstood or I've not expressed it well enough. Any points I raised were about "the likes of Jacklyn McQuerry": models with 2-part mag. names where we're not sure if we've (yet) found their best-known-as handles.