[RFC] Streamlining Support for Nameless Performers

[echo6ix]

Summary

As IAFD demonstrates, there are many cataloged performers that have been identified in a decent amount of scenes, however they are uncredited in all their work, and their names remain unknown. Such as "unknown male 497922".

Whether or not a stash-box's guidelines requires performer name attribution to be a sufficient criteria for acceptance, stash-box does not currently have an optimal way to catalog these type of performers. Manually, users could use a placeholder name, such as Unknown, but doing this would be less than ideal as consistency of manually entered data is always a casualty of crowdsourced information. Also, there should be a simple and reliable way to filter all nameless performers without relying on their placeholder name.

Proposal

To simplify the handling of nameless performers, I propose implementing a checkbox on the performer edit page that sets a nameless performer flag. Ideally this should be located near the name forms, within an onboarding type card that reminds the user "hey, is this performer nameless? did you do the adequate research to ensure they don't have a name? if so, click this checkbox"

When the checkbox is selected, the following behaviors will be enforced by the system:

1. Mandatory Performer Image. Since nameless performers lack a name, at the least they need a visual identifier (performer image), and this must be uploaded to maintain some kind of unique and recognizable reference throughout the app. The software cannot let the edit of a nameless performer proceed without a corresponding image.

2. Automatic Placeholder Name. When a nameless performer flag is enabled, the performer will be automatically be assigned the placeholder name [Unknown]. This ensures consistency in how nameless performers are referenced throughout the software.

3. Blacklist the Placeholder Name [Unknown]. To mitigate user confusion and error, the software needs to blacklist any manual entry of the name [Unknown]. This will prevent users from mistakenly naming performers [Unknown] themselves, as the system will handle this automatically when the flag is set.

Group/User Privileges

This might be a feature that would require privilege (user/group rights). Given how crowds tend to take the path of least resistance, I'm not sure if something like this would be abused through laziness. Where users don't bother to do the research and just mark a person as unknown, as they pass the buck off to the crowd.