(As a preface I want to make it clear that I don't know anything about web development so I'm not even sure if a new system is even feasible with the way the site is laid out)
I've contributed to the AL's staff DB a handful of times and while I appreciate the generally very fast response and thoroughness of the mods compared to other sites I think the system currently in place for adding staff credits is honestly not the best
Having to edit each individual anime/manga entry as opposed to being able to edit all anime credits for a specific person from their own staff page makes the process of getting staff credits up to date incredibly tedious and time consuming (it took me over 3 hours just to add every credit to an animator who's been active in the industry for less than 10 years...), and to be honest it actively discourages me from contributing more often
I've talked about this with @Taluun and he brought up some great points about the current system being beneficial for a variety of reasons but it would be cool to hear other people's thoughts on this
Just to add to this, I know before I was a mod and even a bit after I became a data mod I always submitted data the same way. It absolutely makes sense to submit data that way especially when you have specific people you care about, rather than titles that you care about.
While I think it is better in the long run to focus more on having entries have complete credits rather than individual staff pages, I also think this type of change would be a huge boon for users and mods alike.
+1
I'd love to see such a change, too. It's really bothersome to improve the connections for one specific person as you really have to go through every anime/manga site and edit those, separately. You can easily miss a connection then. Also, this can take quite a while.
I think if we had like a "tagging" system for works itself, too, this would be great. I'm referring to the "tagging system" we have within anime/ manga sites for staff. There it is possible to tag staff people (/or even add those directly if they don't exist yet) through the search option (and give them their role afterwards). I think being able to tag already existing entries sounds reasonable and really useful, tbh.
As it goes from the db aspect as well, a log would make sense, too. As well as a "submission sources & notes" field for Staff and character entries... I think it's especially important for these type of entries.
I think making it generally easier and more convenient for regular users to make submissions is a target worth to strive for. The easier submissions are to do the better (and bigger) the Anilist db will be. Ofc, we still also need control mechanisms, too. No change needed about that. I think we should strive to become the best Anime & Manga database and this, well, includes the data about staff, but also studios etc, too. I think linking them more would be quite useful in other aspects, too. Would also be great if we could implement a "staff overview" aka "studio overview" as an intermediate target, in which we could see the connections between the staff, the studios at which they worked as well as the works they worked on with sth similar to a timeline. (If you have any idea on that please let me know, I recently started to make notes of all the ideas, which came up while using Anilist...)
Also, we still really need a "tool bar" for the about section of these entries implemented within Anilist itself and not a custom user script. I think this is not yet implemented, right? (Sorry, I'm not absolutely sure about that one as I do use a user script for that.) Some entries just need some possibilities to link, make some parts bold etc. Not everyone is that much into coding as they'd know how to type that stuff out of mind. Like I said before every change that makes submitting stuff easier for regular users, is a good thing. This really needs to be implemented.. I think the longer the less we should rely on such things as user scripts. Let's make them not needed anymore (by implementing the options in the site itself).
I think one part in which we still lack quite a bit is the information about voice actors aka linked to characters with relation to works. We need improvement in that, too. We're still behind on that. I know quite some people who really are interested in works just because of a specific voice actor and I bet they'd rather add/submit sth if they could do so directly and uncomplicated. Another thing is I find it much easier to check if all connections have been added through a persons aka staff page.
I am not part of your team but I saw a Flueckli post about this topic. I have already made some submissions here and I agree with the proposed improvements. In fact, when I realized that a professional did not have a profile here, I felt too lazy to add. It seems more complicated, to me, than adding animes. I also think your voice actors database, especially westerners, is scarce.