IMDB boards shut down

Only took 16 years

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/02/rip-imdb-message-boards.html

I'm in two minds about this.

The forums were mostly ugly troll-bait wankers, either white-knighting something bad or random nitpicking something good, for example religious fanatics proselytising pure shite like God's Not Dead regardless of the movie's actual watchability or people hating on anything Di Caprio because they don't like the look of him or because he said something once about something they disagree with.

It was like wading through a junk yard and occasionally finding something that seems to be of interest. And this is where the shame is. The 10%ish of information/discussions that were actually interesting or useful were sometimes worth wading through the crap for, particularly for "is it just me, or" and "did I miss something or" type questions and thoughts.

Relying on just the reviews to replace the good aspects is not as effective as, firstly, they are usually quite obscene walls of text with little regard for paragraph or narrative structre and the points your looking for are often buried within ever rambling retellings of the plot. Secondly, the reviews are even more prone to white knight rubbish from friends, family and employees and trolls who have a bone to pick with something fairly irrelevant to the movie. There's no way to enjoyably 'skim' over 700 reviews.

So, yeah, it's a bit like a teacher walking in on a disruptive class because they're 5 minutes late and then putting the whole class on detention because they don't really have any idea who was actually being bad but on first glance it looked like just wiping the whole lot out seemed appropriate.

It's not the whole class on detention, this is permanent wipe.

Seen trolling on imdb forums, seen useful info too. But I won't miss those boards. In fact I wouldn't miss imdb as whole, in recent years just as in games it's user reviews became retarded 0/10 and 10/10 only, with many of max stars inputs obviously paid by producers, with genre discrimination where certain genres can't go above 8 ever while certain can't go lower than 8 (bloody boring dramas) and where geography, not quality, means everything (India pumps up Bollywood scores skyhigh).

Will imdb go social networks next I don't know, but deep down I hope it'll happen, that site smells of decadency just like EA.

In case imdb dies completely, there is RottenTomatoes site with user comments, there is wikipedia.

I think closing forums is a big mistake. What is the imdb without it's forums? Its just a lifeless database. The whole site was built around the community interaction. People discuss and contribute and that way the whole site grows. Heck the whole site sparked from news group discussions. Forums in some form have been a core feature for that site almost all of it's existance.

And on a personal level, for me the core imdb experience (or what ever you want to call it) has always been checking out imdb forums once I had watched a new film. It was really cool how you could have discussions about any movie no matter how forgotten or obscure it was. I've been visiting that site ever since I began using world wide web and I've have had many intresting discussions about films over there.

Sure for some time there have been too many trolls and dickheads, but if you avoided general forums and those most populars boards like game of thrones, the site was pretty decent even before the forum closure.

And to be honest, the reason why troll infestation became such a problem, was lack of moderation. Over the years they just gave up moderating forums. I belive they have been wanting to kill those forums for few years. They were just waiting for the right time to pull the plug.

I also suspect that this is because of money and maybe because big hollywood studios don't want people commenting their latest blockbusters and their star actors in a critical fashion.

And ofcourse they likely now expect people to jump into social media bandwagon. Not me. Besides you can't really have proper discussions there. Social media is just noise. Short comments about whats hot now. And plenty of trolls there as well.

As a perpetual early-adopter this will sound weird and curmudgeon-y coming from me, but stuff like this reminds me of how much I miss USENET and always hated the general web forum concept, because with very few exceptions the sites are single purpose, and the entire concept is always less efficient.

But for a while I hav simply used IMDB as a database ... and even there it is now less useful since the site can be requested by actors, etc to remove birth dates. Maybe it is none of my business that the youngest person in that crappy Lifetime movie about high school kids is 26 ... but it made the crappy movie more interesting ...

Why do you think they are shutting it down ?
The official announcement is a bit vague.

Pladio said:

Why do you think they are shutting it down ?
The official announcement is a bit vague.

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It's always about money.

They are probably saving a few grands by not having to keep a database for the forums and don't have to pay someone to clean all the spams anymore.

azarhal said:

It's always about money.



They are probably saving a few grands by not having to keep a database for the forums and don't have to pay someone to clean all the spams anymore.

Click to expand...

Never frequented those forums but it seems to me from what you all are saying that they are shooting themselves in the foot ...


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This is strange to me. I have used the IMDB forums in the past, not in recent years, but it always seemed like a friendly place, where you could learn things and discuss movies with other fans, both those who liked or hated a movie would chime in... Most of the people were nice, there were a few trolls here and there, but nothing major.

Since I have been out of the loop, maybe they did have big problems start happening with trolls and spammers. I don't know. But I still wonder if, as was commented above, if politics was part of the decision...since everything has become super polarized, and Hollywood, as a whole, has adopted a hard core political position, which probably meant a lot more politics was being injected (unnecessarily) into the discussions, by those arguing for and against Trump. Keep in mind I'm guessing here, I could be wrong.

If that is true, then only Hollywood has itself to blame, for becoming so hyper-partisan...

That can't be good for business either, not in the long run. You want to appeal to as many people as possible and want them to go see your movies, regardless of political leanings or affiliation. Even if you are talking about *God forbid* Trump supporters (I will humbly beg forgiveness, and say 3 hail mary's as penance for bringing up the devil himself, and his evil acolytes (which include me)...

I didn't even know IMDB had forums and I go there from time to time.

They are not saying but that was the speculation from most of the posts I read.

However, those threads were always easy to spot and avoided. I didn't think they were a big deal.

But I thot they were great - where else can you get insight on actors and movies where you couldn't find anywhere else. Wikipedia gives you more accurate information even because its vetted by everyone.

It ruins a great reason I had of going there.

This trend to push people to facebook and twitter has got me mad. At first it was just places like the LA Times, but now even NPR and now IMDB do it. I actually found myself reading the Washington Post just because they are one of the major outlets that still have user posts.

Maybe we can just have the database here and redirect our forums and comments to facebook too. Myrthos could save a ton of money!

Just hypothetically, as I'm not making a ton of money here

Without getting into much detail, I think it's silly to assume this is due to server maintenance or capacity issues in any way. I also think that despite all the vitriol that has been circulating there, such boards should exist. Commercial industries wanted democracy and a free and open society, but clearly there is some ambiguity and double-standards at work here. They can say now, we've never meant for the boards to be like this, but to me it's clear that Hollywood didn't like the IMDB boards. Maybe it has to do with certain (new or not new) AAA movies getting too much heat from the public. However you turn it, this is pure hypocrisy and censorship.

luj1 said:

Without getting into much detail, I think it's silly to assume this is due to server maintenance or capacity issues in any way. I also think that despite all the vitriol that has been circulating there, such boards should exist. Commercial industries wanted democracy and a free and open society, but clearly there is some ambiguity and double-standards at work here. They can say now, we've never meant for the boards to be like this, but to me it's clear that Hollywood didn't like the IMDB boards. Maybe it has to do with certain (new or not new) AAA movies getting too much heat from the public. However you turn it, this is pure hypocrisy and censorship.

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I hadn't thought of that but that makes lots of sense. Hundreds of billions of dollars are at work and the IMDB has becomes bigger than Variety.

Consider the recent law passed in California banning IMDB from publishing the ages of actors. This is totally a cop to the screen actors guild which everyone knows is not only unconstitutional but can't work. Its like Gov. Brown has never heard of Wikipedia?

Lucky Day, I would not be least bit surprised if the push for closure came from Hollywood. Forums aren't exactly an ideal tool to promote new films and such as they can't control how people respond.

If you look at Imdb facebook page (yack!) its just bs. Pure marketing without any real substance.

I certainly won't shed any tears. Can only hope the Youtube comment section is next.

OMG !!!! …IMDB Broad is shutting down ???? But why ????

heard about this at the beginning of the year; didnt read much trough there but for one like me that doesnt browse movie/actors news sites, those forums were pretty good, there were enough threads with interesting info

IMDB is the best site for all movie reviews , cast , plots and information and rating based on people review ... If it shut down .. is there be any other site like that ??

I sometimes used the forums to read info so this is a loss. There were lots of trolls but those are easy to ignore.