IMDb Is Shutting Down Its Long-Running, Popular Message Boards After 16 Years (polygon.com) 168
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Polygon: After 16 years, IMDb's message boards and the ability to privately message other users is shutting down, with many members of the community openly mourning the loss of the section. IMDb, which stands from the Internet Movie Database, is one of the world's biggest databases for film and television. According to the company, there is information on more than 4.1 million titles and 7.7 million personalities available on the site as of January 2017. The message board, which was introduced in 2001, reportedly remains one of the most used services on the website, but despite that, the company is getting ready to shut it down, citing a desire to foster a positive environment and serve its audience the best way it can. "After in-depth discussion and examination, we have concluded that IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide," a statement on the site reads. "The decision to retire a long-standing feature was made only after careful consideration and was based on data and traffic. Because IMDb's message boards continue to be utilized by a small but passionate community of IMDb users, we announced our decision to disable our message boards on February 3, 2017 but will leave them open for two additional weeks so that users will have ample time to archive any message board content they'd like to keep for personal use. During this two-week transition period, which concludes on February 19, 2017, IMDb message board users can exchange contact information with any other board users they would like to remain in communication with (since once we shut down the IMDb message boards, users will no longer be able to send personal messages to one another)."
Sad Day (Score:2, Insightful)
Sad day now that this message board is ending. I always enjoyed reading the comments about old movies, although I never posted.
"...continue to be utilized by a small..." (Score:2)
Re: "...continue to be utilized by a small..." (Score:5, Funny)
No, "passionate community" is the key. Likely it has completely devolved into people mindlessly screaming at each other that either Trump sucks or Trump rocks. It may even be so over the edge that he does both at the same time.
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We try so hard on our communities to prevent this sort of behaviour - which usually spills over from places like Facebook and Reddit. Tough moderation then turns into complaints about freedom of speech. (Yes, I know your reply has been moderated as 'funny' - but this is so true! Civil online spaces are disappearing.)
Anyways, this could be an opportunity to develop a new-ish community. Yep, I never give up on this shit despite everyone telling me that communities are dead, long live facebook / reddit. :(
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You're right. For me this has involved ejecting many regulars who take on an air of self importance - that the community would not survive without them. But guess what - it does and a regular ejection of a bully just makes things better for everyone and several more members rise - an a couple of them go down the route of ejection.
What is needed is ruthless moderation (Score:2)
What all message boards need are ruthless moderators who re-write and/or delete posts that are stupid or trolling.
Obviously that cannot scale well... for now. One can easily imagine a "ToneAI" that fixes post to be less trollish or flamish. Then maybe we can all have nice things again.
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I have never, not even once, seen a web forum that had enough traffic to need more than one mod that did not quickly devolve into the mods being the biggest asshole trolls, using their mod status to protect their favorites. Not once. Ever.
I'm pretty certain I never will, either.
Protecting others from certain harm is not fascist (Score:1)
That's pretty fascist of you. In tune with the 'zeitgeist'.
Protecting a bunch of innocent people who just want to talk peacefully from the ravening mobs of trolls is not fascism. It's the opposite of fascist, it is the reasoned rule of law. It is being a police officer helping the innocent stay safe.
I'll bet you think the seatbelt in your car is fascist too. And the lock on your door.... and your door.
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Protecting a bunch of innocent people who just want to talk peacefully from the ravening mobs of trolls is not fascism. It's the opposite of fascist, it is the reasoned rule of law. It is being a police officer helping the innocent stay safe.
One big problem is, ruthlessness affects innocent people too. It creates more tensions, it creates more fears, thus general oppression, often leading innocent people to cause problems too in the longer term. Plus it generally provokes increasingly negative reactions, to complete chaos. It's quite natural to react strongly, even when you're at fault: in a stressful situation, it's even more difficult to reflect on yourself, and you simply react to the immediate counterattacks by more attacks, even though you
Corrected Title (Score:5, Insightful)
The story's title isn't quite accurate, so I've gone ahead and corrected it.
"IMDb Is Shutting Down Its Long-Suffering, Vitriolic Message Boards After 16 Years "
The contents of comments sections and message boards are getting worse year-over-year, and IMDB's are no different. Through no direct fault of their own, mind you, it's just that as the number of users on the Internet continues to expand, those users are living up to the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory [penny-arcade.com].
Re:Corrected Title (Score:5, Interesting)
I think WotC got rid of their forums just a year ago as well. This is... a bad trend. Because none of these major social media sites that are replacing the old forums, not a single one, takes a strong free-speech stance. At one time Reddit might've qualified as an exception but, sadly, this is no longer the case [slashdot.org].
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Trolls don't bring honesty. They will say anything to get a reaction.
In fact, people who are honest are usually the ones who get modded down and mobbed, because that's the ultimate form of trolling. Turning the system that is supposed to prevent trolling into the means of trolling.
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Trolls don't bring honesty.
Real life is full of trolls who are never called out or modded down.
Re: Corrected Title (Score:4, Interesting)
The human race invented "the lies and customs of 'RL' interaction" for good reasons
Rape is a sound evolutionary game-theoretic strategy for gene propagation too, thus explaining its prevalence. Therefore is ethical and an institution worth preserving?
probably to save civilization.
Civilization has very, very little in common with "civilization" as it existed when modern humans first evolved. The numbers of people one interacted with were much smaller, specialized jobs and leisure activities limited and probably rigidly formalized by cultural custom, dying of hunger or disease a constant risk, etc.
Letting the id roam free just because you can is not necessarily a good idea.
Honesty and id are not synonymous. The subs that were closed were apparently closed because someone was trying to "dox" the man who assault the white nationalist twat on camera. Trying to determine the identity of a criminal is now "doxing", which is worthy indiscriminate censorship. And the only feedback I got when I tried to point this out in Slashdot's article on this was a single -1 Troll mod.
Because regular, traditional RL interactions and ethics do not value a concern for the truth or consistency. We're supposed to be virtue signaling over the nazi. Duh. Ditto lying about the contents of Trump's pussy-grabbnig tape, inserting the words "for consent" after "I don't wait" when there was already sufficient context (including the phrase "they let you do it") to indicate that he was not talking about sexual assault. The lie is deemed completely acceptable by dozens of mainstream news organizations, actually bordering on "invisible", entirely because of the context surrounding it.
(I'm a leftist who's repeatedly spoken out against Trump, incidentally.)
The echo chambers of RL have been duplicated online, you see, and the vitriol is a result of those echo chambers being challenged. I'm not saying those challenges are widely successful, but they are at least happening and from what I've seen *some* progress is being made. For now. But there are very worrying developments at Twitter and Reddit and Youtube, and the current political climate certainly does not bode well.
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there was already sufficient context (including the phrase "they let you do it") to indicate that he was not talking about sexual assault.
You know, if you walk up to someone while holding a gun and take their wallet, they let you do it. If you have sufficient power over someone, they'll let you do all sorts of things. But in your mind basically it seems to be OK if they don't physically try and stop you, no matter the consequences for themselves.
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But in your mind basically it seems to be OK if they don't physically try and stop you, no matter the consequences for themselves.
This is just whole-cloth imagination on your part, though. I'm not saying it didn't happen; I'm saying it has nothing to do with what's on the tape. "Let" means to permit. There is no alternate definition of that single word, "let", that means "to not offer resistance while under duress". Yes, it *could* be used as part of a sentence that contains the words clarifying that the person is being coerced, but Trump didn't utter those words.
If you want to talk about Trump's accusers, be my guest. Did he wa
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“You described kissing women without consent, grabbing their genitals,” said CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. “That is sexual assault. You bragged that you have sexually assaulted women. Do you understand that?”
And Trump responds:
“No,” Trump replied. “I didn’t say that at all.”
And this is completely true. Maybe he's raped plenty of women, maybe the sexual assault accusations against him are very compelling and disturbing indeed, but what Cooper just said was an utterly shameful, baldfaced lie.
The mainstream media, in confronting Trump, must not try to out-fox Fox News at their own game. This will only provide them with more ammunit
Word of the Day (Score:2)
rape is pretty much unrelated to the issue so fuck off with it
Your word of the day is...
Analogy (from Greek , analogia, "proportion"[1][2]) is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another (the target), or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. In a narrower sense, analogy is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as opposed to deduction, induction, and abduction, where at least one of the premises or the conclusion is general. The word analogy can also refer to the relation between the source and the target themselves, which is often, though not necessarily, a similarity, as in the biological notion of analogy.
Analogy plays a significant role in problem solving, as well as decision making, perception, memory, creativity, emotion, explanation, and communication. It lies behind basic tasks such as the identification of places, objects and people, for example, in face perception and facial recognition systems. It has been argued that analogy is "the core of cognition".[3] Specific analogical language comprises exemplification, comparisons, metaphors, similes, allegories, and parables, but not metonymy. Phrases like and so on, and the like, as if, and the very word like also rely on an analogical understanding by the receiver of a message including them. Analogy is important not only in ordinary language and common sense (where proverbs and idioms give many examples of its application) but also in science, philosophy, and the humanities. The concepts of association, comparison, correspondence, mathematical and morphological homology, homomorphism, iconicity, isomorphism, metaphor, resemblance, and similarity are closely related to analogy. In cognitive linguistics, the notion of conceptual metaphor may be equivalent to that of analogy.
Analogy has been studied and discussed since classical antiquity by philosophers, scientists, and lawyers. The last few decades have shown a renewed interest in analogy, most notably in cognitive science.
Re:Corrected Title (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I see far more people complaining about SJWs than I do actual SJWs.
Re:Corrected Title (Score:5, Insightful)
This
An odd occupation for self-described tough guys, as well. If they're so tough, why do they care what anyone else says about them?
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“I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinion of himself than on the opinion of others.” -- Marcus Aurelius
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Interesting quote !
In case anyone is interested is the paragraph it is quoted from:
The Meditations By Marcus Aurelius, Book 12 [mit.edu]
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Why do dogs lick their genitals? Because they can. Such is the human condition that self-love is insufficient unless you're extraordinarily limber.
And yes, it's a metaphor [youtube.com].
At the end of the day, you can't eat self-opinion. I suspect Marcus Aurelius was deliberately playing dumb for comic effect.
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No, he's taking the standard Stoic line on reputation.
While a Stoic philosopher wouldn't dispute that it's preferable to be respected by other than to be despised by others, that is not nearly so important as having respect for yourself. It is possible to be happy if you respect yourself while others despise you. It is impossible to be happy if you despise yourself, even if others admire you.
Thus the Stoics refer to things like reputation as neither good nor bad, but "indifferent", which is a somewhat mis
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Power refutation by an Anonymous Coward.
Oh wait...
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I don't disagree, but I see plenty of both. They both commit the most heinous sin on the internet: they're boring.
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Re: Corrected Title (Score:1)
That's because you are cursed with liberal eyes.
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You know, I see far more people complaining about SJWs than I do actual SJWs.
It only takes a few bad apples to spoil the batch for everyone eating from it.
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You know, I see far more people complaining about SJWs than I do actual SJWs.
That's because you've gotten so used to the smell you no longer think it smells.
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Right. Last year Amazon turned off the "No" votes in the reviews on Amazon.com. Those "No" votes were useful. Now you only see "x people liked this comment", or nothing. But how much was the nothing? -1? -100?
It is ironic that Facebook *started* this way, then changed...
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Short of a mod/meta-mod system, there is no way to stop people from posting and voting the way they want, and often in groups.
When you switch it to no down votes, all you do is lose comment value. Whereas if you left the bias in there, the pattern could at least be seen and avoided by many.
For example, I've seen (on IMDb) where someone clearly when down the page of reviews and -1'd all the 9 or 10 star reviews. So you can factor that in and not get fooled by it. Also, software can limit how many votes yo
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By the way, alt-left communities do the same thing. The notion that we only want to block one side of things is fascism at its finest.
Yeah, the hippies sit there, doing nothing, dreaming about doing nothing, would like nothing more than stage an unarmed armed uprising to put down anyone in their way.
Nope, the labeling of the "other side" and working on your persecution complex, while you are in the most protected class, is the sign of fascism at its finest.
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Ah, I see. It was a secret alt-right conspiracy, as you know through your secret sources. Sure it was buddy.
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"No" buttons are clearly visible on Amazon.com reviews. Are you sure you have ceased to see them?
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It _is_ possible to down-vote a review.
It is _not_ possible to show how net negative a review was rated.
Example 1: it used to show "10 out of 197 people liked this review". Now it shows "10 liked it"
Example 2: it used to show "0 out of 197 people liked this review". Now it shows "...crickets..."
Both are now misleading but weren't before.
Crapification (Score:3, Insightful)
That's half the usefulness of IMDB gone then, as the message boards were the perfect place to look for discussion of obscurities you noticed while watching something.
This has the taste of IMDB being deliberately crapified, due to the financial incentives of being an advertiser of movies and tv shows - a place where open criticism is not welcome (unless buried somewhere at the bottom of the reviews).
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This has the taste of IMDB being deliberately crapified, due to the financial incentives of being an advertiser of movies and tv shows - a place where open criticism is not welcome (unless buried somewhere at the bottom of the reviews).
+100
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Re:Crapification (Score:5, Informative)
That's half the usefulness of IMDB gone then, as the message boards were the perfect place to look for discussion of obscurities you noticed while watching something.
TV Tropes might work for that.
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The End of an Era (Score:5, Interesting)
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I have been reading the IMDB forums for about 15 years, ...
Its a shame you newbies will never know how awesome the IMDB used to be.
I think the rot started when they moved from Usenet to the WWW. Then came AOL and the unwashed masses.
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See Eternal September [wikipedia.org]
Reddit took a big dump after digg self imploded too.
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this is the only valuable comment for this article, yes fuck everybody's fight over trump, SJW or alt-right, you don't even know what are you talking about anyway
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I had also been reading them for at least over 10 years and yes, I agree completely with the sentiment. Where else can I go now after watching some obscure foreign film to discuss or read other people's discussions about that film. Very sad to hear this.
Nobody wants to provide a reliable service anymore (Score:1)
If it's not improving or generating more revenue, it gets cut. Nobody wants to just keep providing the same service they provided yesterday anymore.
Not very long (Score:1)
Negative reviews will follow soon (Score:4, Insightful)
So what if only a minority find it useful? (Score:3)
IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide,"
So what if only a minority find it useful? Turning off functionality that works, and took a fair amount of resources to create, is a waste and a shame.
You know how pedestrian crosswalk signals make a beeping sound for the benefit of the visually impaired? It's a very small minority that finds that useful. By IMDB's logic, that feature should be shut down.
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That is how quite a number of discussion boards are today.
I have not used the imdb message boards, but a quick sample of comments there unfortunately confirmed that most of it is negative noise. Little of value will be lost.
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>"False comparison. If there were a hundred idiots standing around the crosswalk making noise with their kazoos, then the signal would pretty much be useless for the blind, and could be turned off."
Yep, and for some of us, the stupid, repeating sound of those things is also annoying noise pollution (there are better ways to signal, like a single signal). What is great for some is often horrible for others.
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Don't know about kazoos, but I've noticed mockingbirds getting pretty good at imitating the cuckoo sounds from them. I'm starting to wonder if they're part of some vast animal conspiracy along with the cats to rid the world of humans once and for all, but maybe I'm just paranoid.
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Unlike the beeper, the IMDB forums need significant resources to maintain (bandwidth, servers, moderation, security). Unlike the beeper, people won't be screwed without them.
In other words...we don't make money from it (Score:2)
Problem was a lack of quality (Score:3)
There are exceptions. But the vast majority of the time when I clicked through to a message board, hoping to find some insightful discussions about the movie or TV show I just saw, the discussions were just kinda stupid.
I think online communities build standards, early on /. managed to set a standard where most comments are relatively thoughtful and that seems to have persisted as the site grew. I don't think IMDB ever managed the same and the message boards have just become a bit of an eyesore.
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This was exactly the problem. Maybe 1 in 10 threads was something other than insulting one of the actors or some form of trolling. Many of the threads are just spam or totally unrelated to the movie. I don't see why these couldn't just be removed.
These low quality are almost entirely by new accounts. It would have been much smarter for them to have some kind of moderation system than scrapping it all together. For example give mod rights to older accounts that have written reviews with good feedback. They s
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Agree, although that's a lot of work for them.
It has gone from "Explain that plot point to me" to "This film is racist!!!" (or sexist or homophobic or..) and "I can't believe people liked this" or "Why do people hate this?"
Where can people that _like_ films go..?
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Forums are dying (Score:5, Insightful)
As a former sysadmin of a popular forum back in the late 90s, I can say that this form of social networking is definitely dying. Killed, as should be obvious, by the likes of Facebook. Basically the progression over time has been...
Usenet (for those select few with internet access back in the day)
Stand-alone BBS - the first real online social networking available to the public
Networked BBSs / online services (AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve, GEnie, etc)
More general use of Usenet (around which time it became filled with spam and binaries, making it nearly unusable except for moderated groups)
The advent of the WWW brought the HTML based discussion forum, which ruled (and is still very much applicable) for the greater part of 20 years.
Hybrid, topic based discussion (Slashdot, reddit, etc)
Facebook and its various constructs (celeb pages, groups, and the totally unorganized comment discussion that originates based off of random posts created or shared by users).
The thing that concerns me in the Facebook era are the lack of organization, clear moderation (who is even in charge of which group?), searchability, etc, of anything on FB. Let me give you an example. If I want to work on my vehicle, I can search for the topic online, and find a discussion forum where owners of that vehicle discuss in great detail the problem I've encountered and how to repair it. That's not even possible with FB.
Anyway, after all that semi-offtopic rambling, I'll say this is not a good thing in my opinion that IMDB is shutting down their forums, because there is no adequate replacement.
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> The thing that concerns me in the Facebook era are the lack of organization
What concerns me is the exact opposite: one organization controls any discussion and flow of information. Facebook shapes what people see. They determine what is news and what isn't.
The more things centralize on Facebook, the more power rests in their hands. Which as we currently see makes governments giddy at the prospect of control over information.
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Also, forums have a lifespan....a forum will attract a crowd who will participate enthusiastically for 5 or 10 years, maybe a little longer, but then those people start to move on with their lives, die off (literally), lose interest, etc etc....and the forum declines in traffic and interest. I see this effect across a slew of forums I manage.
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19 new threads started in the last 12 hours, 27 years after the series came to an end. [imdb.com]
A perfect example of the exception that proves the rule.
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You missed Fidonet which was pretty popular prior to the internet really starting to take off, which is when usenet really took off. So things a little out of order there, but close enough. Fidonet still deserves mention.
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As a former sysadmin of a popular forum back in the late 90s, I can say that this form of social networking is definitely dying. Killed, as should be obvious, by the likes of Facebook. Basically the progression over time has been...
Usenet (for those select few with internet access back in the day)
Stand-alone BBS - the first real online social networking available to the public
Networked BBSs / online services (AOL, Prodigy, Compuserve, GEnie, etc)
More general use of Usenet (around which time it became filled with spam and binaries, making it nearly unusable except for moderated groups)
The advent of the WWW brought the HTML based discussion forum, which ruled (and is still very much applicable) for the greater part of 20 years.
Hybrid, topic based discussion (Slashdot, reddit, etc)
Facebook and its various constructs (celeb pages, groups, and the totally unorganized comment discussion that originates based off of random posts created or shared by users).
The thing that concerns me in the Facebook era are the lack of organization, clear moderation (who is even in charge of which group?), searchability, etc, of anything on FB. Let me give you an example. If I want to work on my vehicle, I can search for the topic online, and find a discussion forum where owners of that vehicle discuss in great detail the problem I've encountered and how to repair it. That's not even possible with FB.
Anyway, after all that semi-offtopic rambling, I'll say this is not a good thing in my opinion that IMDB is shutting down their forums, because there is no adequate replacement.
Agree 100%. Usenet was good because the client would provide a consistent interface for all topics, while web forums change based on vendor.
Regardless, an incredible amount of useful information is stored in these forms of communication. Message boards exist for almost any type of car, or technology, or hobby. The collective knowledge has solutions to any known problem with a given car, or device. In a way they can achieve what wikis attempt to, but with a lower bar of entry. Users know how to format posts
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I think you were using it the wrong way. The way I used the imdb forums was to discuss details and questions about a movie after I had already watched the movie. I think it was excellent for this, especially for smaller movies for which you were unlikely to find any discussion anywhere else.
Well this sucks because (Score:1)
This sucks because I often made posts in there calling out issues with shows and also when shows were "done" that I could then reference later showing how awesome I was at predicting their demise.
The Joss Whedon guys must have actually read the forums because there have been a number of posts I made where they actually made changes to the show.
Seriously? WTF??? (Score:5, Insightful)
I liked the message boards a lot. They gave a bit of insight into the movies and characters you wouldn't get otherwise. Also, if you read a message board in a movie that came out a couple years ago you can see how the messages change from before the movie came out to afterwards.
Yes, there are griefers, but that's just the Internet. If you can't handle it, go elsewhere. Or, if you are IMDB, close up the communication forums.
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I imagine that you're right about the cost/benefit analysis, but the problem for them is that for every user that posts, there are probably 50 that only read the message boards. I'm one of these users, having only posted about 4 or 5 times in over 10 years there while on the other hand reading them relatively frequently. I agree completely with the GP poster.
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If you can't handle it, go elsewhere. Or, if you are IMDB, close up the communication forums.
That IS IMDB going elsewhere. You are literally complaining about them doing what you are saying they ought to do. You are also mixing up "can't" handle it with "don't want" to handle it. Everyone who doesn't feel that putting up with an avalanche of shit on a daily basis is a worthwhile way to spend time goes elsewhere. All that leaves you is the avalanche of shit. What's the point in having one of those?
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I noticed IMDB forums starting to turn into crap during Breaking Bad. Tons of people were jumping on and seriously discussing the show, but a lot of other people just logged in to crap all over everything.
Then I guess about 1 1/2 years ago they changed things a bit - requiring either a credit card or a phone number to post - and I wasn't giving either of those things out so I stopped posting.
I think the forums were manageable until they got too popular. I still sometimes hop over and read comments on thin
One of maybe 10 forums I have an account with (Score:3, Insightful)
I posted there rarely, but never trolled.
If you watched a film and didn't understand part of the plot, found something unrealistic, or particularly enjoyed something, you could head to the IMDB forums and almost always find a discussion about what you wanted to know.
Now that is gone. And it didn't have to happen. Pure corporate greed.
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Now that is gone.
Like tears in the rain.
there was a IMDB forum? (Score:2)
sad. wonder if they will keep reviews (Score:2)
The reviews and the message boards were the best part of imdb. That and the parental advisory section are the only reasons i really go there.
I wonder if they will keep the reviews part of it. If not, its a real shame. Many people put probably millions of collective hours into reviews and posts on there. To have it all simply deleted is a real waste of human effort, to future historians and to humanity at large.
One can only guess that this is due to financial constraints, which is sad. I loved being able to
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The message boards were the only reason I visited their site. While its true that trolls and SJW (pro and con) topics abound, there were also plenty of good information about the films in question. It seems to me that the real reason why they are shutting them down is because they aren't interested in the administrative overhead (dealing with complaints, etc.) to maintain them. Perhaps they are making enough money from the corporate side and paid subscriptions that they feel that they no longer need page
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Only newer or very famous titles and people boards got heavy trolling and or crapflooding. It was annoying on GoT, but if you get out of that 10% popularity bubble the they dissolved if not disappeared completely.
Most older films and people boards had little traffic and often had useful trivia or information about the actors -- where are they now, etc. Some films really had useful discussion on the topics.
And the per-title/person board format meant you could post about a small-role actor from the 1940s or
This is apalling (Score:5, Interesting)
I was literally just researching some films in the discussion boards. When you're looking up obscure films, the decade and a half of expertise that is buried in the comments and stories that people have — often by family members and friends of the cast and crew— are invaluable. Also useful are the tangential comments and links that take you from one title to another via the comments.
It was often just good reading.
Let's not be dramatic. This is not the burning of the library of Alexandria, but it's a unique resource and as someone said above, there's nothing close to a replacement in site. And if there was, there'd be no reason to go to it because it doesn't link from anything, or to anything.
They could at least zip up the archives and post them to the torrents for posterity. On the basis of killing off the comments, in my estimation, they've cut out a huge reason for me to visit their site.
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Can't wait for the Amazon Usurper quite frankly. Their Sales portal is utter crap compared to even Target and Walmart.
Even AliExpress is frequently easier to use than Amazon.
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They could at least zip up the archives and post them to the torrents for posterity. On the basis of killing off the comments, in my estimation, they've cut out a huge reason for me to visit their site.
Agree with this 100%. Definitely should leave the forums intact, with write permission turned off, for at least a year or two, then possibly an archive after that, that users can download. It would definitely be a shame if much useful information was needlessly deleted.
Maybe someone can whip up a forum scraper and siphon off the entire forum into an archive before the 2 weeks are up.
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It's really unfortunate that IMDb is closing their forums, but I can only imagine the statement author having a shit-eating grin while writing, "but will leave them open for two additional weeks so that users will have ample time to archive any message board content they'd like to keep for personal use". I don't know what sadness has befell the IMDb forums in the past year, but any time I watched an enjoyable movie, I'd scramble to the message boards and find interesting information, asides, etc.
I'm
Re: (Score:2)
They could at least zip up the archives and post them to the torrents for posterity.
Agreed. But this seems to be the common pattern in forums closing down these days: just delete it all. Frankly, aside from a couple of sites I visit frequently though, the ONLY time I read forums on other sites is when they're already inactive threads... But discussions are sometimes fascinating and sometimes informative or helpful. It seems those who make decisions to close down forums just want to "wash their hands" of the whole thing, but it points out the fragility of data in the information age. In
Re:This is appalling (Score:2)
I was literally just researching some films in the discussion boards. When you're looking up obscure films, the decade and a half of expertise that is buried in the comments and stories that people have — often by family members and friends of the cast and crew— are invaluable.
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Let's not be dramatic. This is not the burning of the library of Alexandria, but it's a unique resource and as someone said above, there's nothing close to a replacement in site. And if there was, there'd be no reason to go to it because it doesn't link from anything, or to anything.
They could at least zip up the archives and post them to the torrents for posterity. On the basis of killing off the comments, in my estimation, they've cut out a huge reason for me to visit their site.
Absolutely agreed. I couldn't have put it better. This is terrible news. Yeah, sure there was quite a bit of crap there (with some films, a LOT of crap), but I've learnt some real gems from those forum threads. Funnily enough I've been meaning to finally sign up to them lately, as I've been watching a lot more films recently. Oh well...
I do worry just how much info will be lost though.
Re: (Score:2)
They could at least zip up the archives and post them to the torrents for posterity.
IMDB could do that, because according to their Boards Terms and Conditions [imdb.com] they own all submissions. Not an exclusive or non-exclusive licence — exclusively own:
You agree that any materials, including but not limited to questions, comments, suggestions, ideas, plans, notes, drawings, original or creative materials or other information, provided by you in the form of e-mail or submissions to IMDb are non-confidential and shall become the sole property of IMDb.
Re: (Score:2)
Posts I know I made in the late 80s and early 90s are forever gone.
That's a relief!
Re: (Score:2)
Dejanews was going to archive all Usenet content, then Google was going to do it. Try to find Usenet content now.
Google does archive USENET, though it took them a while to complete their archive. It only became complete a couple of years ago I think when they were given a copy of some older archives some private groups/universities had.
The content is easy to find:
https://groups.google.com/foru... [google.com]
try entering your topic/subject, username and newsgroup name as follows in the search bar.
subject anoncoward@foo.com group:name.of.group
Good move (Score:1)
Can't say most of the comments were useful.
In the old days before the USE*NET flame wars, we have film message boards where people posted useful reviews and film commentary, but ever since then, film criticism has become less and less useful.
I don't even bother reading the comments anymore, if it isn't one posted by professional reviewers, or by fellow Lifetime members of film societies.
Is this related to the lawsuit about age? (Score:1)
One has to add to this mix... the lawsuit brought against IMDB about their practice of publishing the real age of actors. Once you silence the masses you have completed the first step in information "management".
Peace out.
Said about every film on IMDB (Score:2)
"You just didn't understand it"
"Most boring movie ever made"
etc., etc....
However, in between, there were a lot of great postings about soundtracks, directors, subplots, scenes, that only true fans that had seen the film several times would have known or noticed. I'll miss these postings. Without them, I have no reason to use IMDB.
Office Space message board is funny (Score:2)
What OTHER reason to go there? (Score:2)
The message boards is where you could find people discussing when the next season of a show was going to premier, talk about how the filming of an upcoming movie is going and if it is delayed, discussion about a recent episode, talk about a plot, alternative theories on what something in the plot meant, news about long lost actors/actresses, tidbits about a show/movie etc..
Other than looking up the list of actors which you can just do on Wikipedia, t