IMDB continues to ruin the once great movie site

Warning -- *Long Rant*

I'm a movie buff, like many others here, so this really pisses me off. Let's do a bit of history first. IMDB dropped all public message boards, like, in the past year or two, I forgot exactly when, but it was very disliked by a big majority of movie fans, who used to hang out on the boards and talk about their favorite hobby - movies of course.

But IMDB decided that because of all the political heat that had started getting too hot for them - boo hoo (sarcasm) - so IMDB went all authoritarian, and decided to punish everyone for a few trolls and troublemakers on their message boards, and no further discussion of movies was allowed.

Before this lame move by IMDB, I enjoyed occasionally checking in to the message boards, and seeing what people were talking about, especially when a hot new movie, one that I may have been interested in, would be released. So this was the first sign that IMDB was going to shit, when it used to be easily the premier and best movie site on the internet.

So now, I was checking out IMDB today, as I just saw a good movie in the theaters and was browsing the reviews section for it. IMDB used to have an outstanding reviews section. Now, they have changed it, and just about every other review is hidden, with "spoilers" as a warning label attached.

Basically, before they were much more lax about what was considered a spoiler, and then even if there were spoilers, the review text would still appear, but with a spoiler warning in bold text.

So IMDB basically, for some reason, doesn't want reviews to be shown by the regular folks out there any longer, and you have to deal with the hassle of clicking every time (or a lot of the time) you want to read a damn review.

Next, they put in a new and hard to read font, instead of the great readable font they had used prior.

Finally, and worse of all, now reviews are locked in order by "helpfulness" WTF??

IMDB took all the options away from sorting through reviews. They used to have several sorting methods, for example - you could sort reviews chronologically (which was the standard default view, and happens to be my favorite)

Or, you could sort the reviews by "Loved it" or "Hated it" or by which reviews were best received by the community, basically highest rated reviews, and so on.

Now, IMDB in their authoritarian wisdom, has taken away all choices, and there are no longer any options but a forced one of sorted by "helpfulness" only. Again - WTF??

IMDB apparently hates the public and the normal folk out there in terms of receiving reviews and feedback, as well as open discussion. Why does IMDB all of a sudden consider the general public their enemy? Is it because Hollywood has suffered this year, with bad box office results, and the big movers and shakers in Hollywood have decided its because too many poor reviews are being made about a lot of these crap films they have been releasing lately??

That is my speculation, at this point.

*Rant Mode Off*

I rarely read reviews on that site but used to check the forums for cool info alot, there were many pieces of misc interesting info about the actors, what they done lately and so on...

^ Exactly, you could find out all kinds of interesting info and stuff in the forums before IMDB nixed them.

I agree, IMDb has turned shit lately.

Also, something happened to aggregrate ratings in general on the Internet. Can hardly blame IMDb for that, though - but I'm finding it a very odd phenomenon.

I can't quite figure out if people are actually that stupid - or if they're paid or something.

Seems to me a very, very large portion of voters vote EXTREMELY low or EXTREMELY high based on personal politics rather than any kind of informed opinion about the qualities of the film itself. As in, if they were entertained somewhat or they imagine the movie supports their world view - then it deserves a 10/10 - and if they were bored or they imagine it goes against their world view, it's 1/10.

Since I've been a very avid user of the Internet since the early 90s (Usenet) - I know for a fact that it wasn't like this in the past.

You can see it everywhere - including Steam and Metacritic.

Something is very, very off about aggregate ratings these days.

I strongly suspect it has now become the norm to vote based on preconditioning - rather than having actually experienced the movie or played the game. While that has always been a factor - I don't think it was the actual norm 10-20 years ago.

Are people more politically aware? Is it some kind of trend started without me noticing it?

I'm not sure.

Like others I have also witnessed the degradation of reviews and associated data.

I don't think its anything to do with politically aware. I think the average person is LESS aware of whats really happening today in politics. They are hyperaware of sensationalist news which forms the basis of their political views. Sensationalist news is meant to provoke an emotionL response so forums/comment sectioms etc become very heated about emotions rather than facts. So many forums deal with this by confining discussions behind walls, or removing ability to coment or rate etc.
The trend is pretty pathetic.

NewDArt said:

I agree, IMDb has turned shit lately.

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Well it has been in decline for few years. The site has turned away from it's roots and orginal vision. It used to be site for movie fans from all over the world to gather and share ideas and opinions about films and such while building a great database… It has for several years become more or more a marketing site for movie industry.

All these "changes" Arkadia7 described fit perfectly to this pattern. Amazon owns it, so it is natural that they desire IMDB to sell products rather than remain an open global forum for movie reviews.

Btw call me a crazy conspiracy guy, but I'd not be least bit surprised if hollywood studios had paid some corruption money to imdb owners to make this happen.

Also, something happened to aggregrate ratings in general on the Internet. Can hardly blame IMDb for that, though - but I'm finding it a very odd phenomenon.

I can't quite figure out if people are actually that stupid - or if they're paid or something.

Seems to me a very, very large portion of voters vote EXTREMELY low or EXTREMELY high based on personal politics rather than any kind of informed opinion about the qualities of the film itself. As in, if they were entertained somewhat or they imagine the movie supports their world view - then it deserves a 10/10 - and if they were bored or they imagine it goes against their world view, it's 1/10.

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Thats a good observation. I find it very tiresome that many people are no longer willing to see the shades of grey. It is pure black and white. Hate it or love it. Nothing in between. It is puzzling to me since I can think only few number of films I've given perfect ten and the lowest one. For instance a film that earns one out of ten is in my opinion a film that doesn't work at all on technical level and the script of such film is likely so messy that one is unable to make any sense of such film. Very few films qualify here.

Are people more politically aware? Is it some kind of trend started without me noticing it?

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I think it correlates a bit to the political climate. We're no longer willing to look at things as much from the other guy's perspective as before. It is them vs us mentality that has crawled into movie discussion as well. And god forbid if any film has a political message of some kind. Then has to be utter shit if one holds opposite kind of political views.

Arkadia7 said:

I'm a movie buff, like many others here, so this really pisses me off. Let's do a bit of history first. IMDB dropped all public message boards, like, in the past year or two, I forgot exactly when, but it was very disliked by a big majority of movie fans, who used to hang out on the boards and talk about their favorite hobby - movies of course.

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There was a big thread on it here in this very forum. A few flicks through the pages here would likely soon find it. But yeah, it sucked.

Regards the latest miseries, I'm afraid it could well have more to do with politics than simply greed (even though politics is usually someone's greed put into law anyway, but that's a different topic). Anyway, yes, politics, the old press here in the UK is really going after social media, and I suspect it is in the US and elsewhere, mainly because the powers that be really do not like everyone having an opinion, to people in certain positions the very last thing they want is freedom of expression.

If something like this was considered important to politicians who bleat the word freedom every other day then you could be sure that there'd be laws to safeguard stuff like this, or at least more of an outcry. But sites like IMDB are fairly easy small fry in the word of online chatter, being a niche rather than an everyone of facebook, Twitter or Youtube.

Without some kind of Wikipedia-like crowd funding sites like IMDB are always going to be the first casualties of any politico-economic regression.

For whatever reason, there is no "most recent" review sort. IIRC it was called chronological before so you could easily push paid early 10/10 garbage "reviews" all way to the end.

Honestly? I'm done with imdb.
Wiki and mydramalist, here I come.

I am going to make the unpopular opinion that at least half of what is wrong with IMDB is the users ... or a reflection of their actions. Sites cost money to run and manage, and given the political climate noted (for example, if you have a homosexual person in a movie you will automatically have thousands of people give it a low vote and also complain the review and forum about it.

For a site, it gets down to a decision about what their core value statement is about and where they want to and can spend their money. Similar to how many comments sections on news sites have disappeared, I am assuming that the trolls have 'won' ... by destroying discussion.

NewDArt said:

I strongly suspect it has now become the norm to vote based on preconditioning - rather than having actually experienced the movie or played the game. While that has always been a factor - I don't think it was the actual norm 10-20 years ago.

Is it some kind of trend started without me noticing it?

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It has certainly been going on for more than 10 years, I would say at least 15 years ... but there were two things back then: the internet was 'smaller', and people were able to put more resources into things like discussions that they saw as having value even if there was no revenue stream attached.

It has certainly been going on for more than 10 years, I would say at least 15 years … but there were two things back then: the internet was 'smaller', and people were able to put more resources into things like discussions that they saw as having value even if there was no revenue stream attached.

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I think a lot of it has to do with social media - and how it has become culturally acceptable to spend much - or even most - of your life online, with the majority of your exchanges or debates happening with strangers.

In that way, you get to vent all your frustrations and rant about all the terrible people who's to blame for all the terrible things in your world - completely without repercussions.

Sort of like the ultimate modern outlet for a disturbingly large amount of people.

To me, it only underlines the deeper issue of modern society - and how falsehood is necessary as a social lubricant when faced with real people in the real world. We're used to wearing masks at work and, for many, even with our families. We can't really speak our minds lest we risk being shunned or ridiculed.

In a similar way to how sexual repression will lead to perversion - I think social media is giving people a way to overcompensate and go too far the other way.

NewDArt said:

I think a lot of it has to do with social media - and how it has become culturally acceptable to spend much - or even most - of your life online, with the majority of your exchanges or debates happening with strangers.

In that way, you get to vent all your frustrations and rant about all the terrible people who's to blame for all the terrible things in your world - completely without repercussions.

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I think that is a really good point - and I think it is interesting how communication has changed as we get more 'engaged' with social media.

You note USENET, and I think for many of us, that formed our earliest 'communicating globally with strangers' back in the 80s and 90s. In that setting it was all about the discussion - everything was 'threaded' and so on. Over time, moving to the Web and blogs, and now Twitter/Facebook/etc ... it is all much more 'me' centric, less about the interchange of ideas, therefore less open-ness to the back and forth of discussion.

And I believe as you say that there is something truly lost in that type of 'progress'.

txa1265 said:

I think that is a really good point - and I think it is interesting how communication has changed as we get more 'engaged' with social media.

You note USENET, and I think for many of us, that formed our earliest 'communicating globally with strangers' back in the 80s and 90s. In that setting it was all about the discussion - everything was 'threaded' and so on. Over time, moving to the Web and blogs, and now Twitter/Facebook/etc … it is all much more 'me' centric, less about the interchange of ideas, therefore less open-ness to the back and forth of discussion.

And I believe as you say that there is something truly lost in that type of 'progress'.

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Yes, something has definitely changed that's more significant than I originally thought - and not in as positive a way as I expected.

I used to think the Internet was all about understanding and the exchange of information to the enrichment of all - but now I'm not so sure.

I wouldn't want to go back, though. I just think we're facing a longer period of adaption than it would have seemed.