godix wrote:IIRC only older titles are linked like that. Years ago when the database was cleaned up duplicate entries were linked. Since then we had to ask for new anime to be entered and I'd bet that only the proper titles were added without multiple linked titles.
Not entirely. Toradora! isn't under its proper title. And that's only one example. The rule of thumb that was in place for as long as I can remember was that the Japanese title was used, but only in instances where there was no official English title (which is why the Toradora! issue is all the more frustrating - not only is 'Tiger X Dragon' not its proper title in Japanese, that's not even its proper English title, because it's not even licensed yet; if that arose because of that licensing hoax trolling from back last October, it really needs to be fixed - well, it needs to be fixed anyway, but whatever).
I agree that some system needs to be in place to easily facilitate alternative titles, but the question of how to do it is the bigger problem. One way would be to ask for both the original Japanese title, and then the standard English title (with a big fat warning specifically saying that 'English title' is for the official English
licensed title, not a half-assed translation*). Or making it to where the English title option is greyed out until a license deal has been confirmed, and then it's entered as well. A standard style guide for grammar - to avoid the [movie title], The (the movie) stuff - might also be in order. It probably would do well to have two or three people (that are separately assigned to the catalogue maintenance, and do nothing else) that are really strict on the issue be in charge of inputting new titles and checking suggestions to the catalogue so that these issues don't arise, or at least that their frequency is cut down a lot. That's generally how MAL does it, I think, although there's some fidgeting.
*The same could generally be true about entering the Japanese title, making sure that the title isn't a botched transliteration if there's any clearly-foreign words written in katakana.