I'm wondering, based on the nearly 60 page thread, if some tweaks to the item search might help reduce the number of duplicates added? My suggestion is that when a new item search comes up empty, a "deeper" query is made for less exact matches.
One general search feature that I think would help a lot (it doesn't look like you're currently using it) is the SQL wildcard "%" with the LIKE search. If you replace the spaces in a search with the "%" wildcard, it should find matches with the words in the order entered regardless of the content between them. This would let you enter "mario 3" and find Mario Advance 3, Mario Bros. 3, Mario Bros 3 (no period), etc without having to know the exact title and punctuation if the item you want. I might consider doing this for all searches, not just empty ones.
I saw a couple recurring themes in the duplicates, and I'm sure others could add more. In no particular order:
1: Wrong system identified
2: Misspelled title
3: Odd punctuation in title
For #1, when a new item search comes up empty you could also query similar systems that might get confused, especially if they're next to each other in the pull-down. This would probably take some manual logic to group systems, but nothing too complicated (and I'm sure you could find some volunteers, including myself). I'm thinking if nothing comes up for a GBA search, check the other systems in the "Nintendo Gameboy Handheld" category (GB, GBA, GBC) for matches.
For #2, a partial text query may turn up a valid entry for longer titles. The easiest fix I can think of is to search for chunks of text. Something like "does the first 2/3 match, or the last 2/3, or the first 1/3 and last 1/3" based on the query text length.
#3 could be addressed by stripping punctuation entirely, perhaps against a hidden punctuation-free title entry in the database. This might significantly improve searching overall, since punctuation can be a pain and isn't always consistent. This would also make the "bad" entries show up in a search, so they could just be fixed rather than having to deal with a duplicate later.
Hope this is helpful. I figured in exchange for this awesome service I could at least try to reduce some of the editing overhead I see taking up the admins' time.
