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Claiming they're "no longer providing a positive, useful experience" for the vast majority of its users, IMDB has announced that as of February 20, 2017, their message boards will be no more:
As part of our ongoing effort to continually evaluate and enhance the customer experience on IMDb, we have decided to disable IMDb's message boards on February 20, 2017. This includes the Private Message system. 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. 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). We regret any disappointment or frustration IMDb message board users may experience as a result of this decision.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:11PM
I'm not familiar with IMDb's messaging boards... can somebody with more insight say what is going on? Is the messaging board environment truly toxic (and if so how... flaming? Doxing? Providing a platform for consumers to coordinate anti-elitist action?)? Is this a smokescreen for them wanting to close the messaging board for other reasons?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:15PM
I guess the most upsetting thing an IMDB board can do to the movie scene is... honest reviews.
Trolls and sh!tposters are everywhere and people get used to filter that out, but a honest review sticks.
Reddit and others will be happy to pick up the slack. Maybe even this site?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:52PM
Bot I totally agree with your views on modern movies, but I think there's a separate section on IMDB for "audience reviews" that I'm guessing will still be staying. I do find it hilarious that sites like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes have sections for Audience Reviews and Critic reviews where more often than not the Critic reviews seem full of paid shills and pretentious wannabes with some kind of superficial fake idea of what is arty whereas many, many audience reviews seem far more detailed, honest and sincere. I guess it's all market forces in action.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday February 08 2017, @07:20PM
Every time you see a film review on rotten tomatoes, the audience rating is usually a lot higher than the so-called critics. Not uncommon the see the audience review score a good 30 points higher than the critics.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:04PM
Yeah, I think critics can be unfairly harsh in some of their ratings but I suppose the audience section is also a free for all for yet more shills, bots and astroturfers. That kind of contradicts my earlier point except that I think a lot of the best audience reviews are often better and more insightful than the so-called critic reviews. Maybe it's the difference between doing it for a living and doing it out of passion; I don't know.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by WillR on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:31PM
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:17PM
Yeah, whats an IMDb? I guess I can look it up (and to be honest I think I know, but still have to verify), but it seems like what it is could have been provided as a definition in the foot of the submission.
And my looking it up does no service to everyone else, who also need to do the same. Think of the Bothans lost getting us this information!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:18PM
Internet Movie Database
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Movie_Database [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:34PM
sorry guys, i don't really read the reviews from poisoned wells unless they are phenomally bad or entertaining. Might have landeded there a few times. I mean -- I am not going to look up the reviews of star wars. I think I get the idea already.
Anyway, my outlook was shaped on previous Internet Behaviors: Once upon a time I entered data into the CDDB database, many many albums, hundreds, typing them in with each CD I ripped into that new MP3 format that came out. CDDB was awesome, play an unknown CD and IT PULLS THE NAMES FROM THE INTERNET! This is too cool! Then they went private and locked us contributors out and started charging for access to the data people like me gave them. For free.
This taught me something. After that I stopped paying attention to these internet databases of media stuff that takes public contributions. Too tempting to repeat mistakes. It also seems they tend to become hostile to their users after a while.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:40PM
What is this internet thing again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:21PM
If you are on the internet and are not aware of IMDb then you must live under a rock.
If they mentioned Yahoo in the summary would you be asking why everyone is so excited?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:36PM
What's an Yahoo?
(Score: 2) by rts008 on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:57PM
Wrong question.
Who is Yahoo...Serious, dude. ;-)
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:50PM
I only learned about IMDB at university; unsurprisingly in a module about databases. It took a few lectures for me to realise that there really was such a thing, and that it wasn't a ficticious example used by our lecturer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:50PM
Come on. IMDb is older than the World Wide Web! You honestly never heard of it?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:18PM
What's an World Wide Web?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Aiwendil on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:42PM
Hmm, that one is interesting, a quick lookup tells us:
* 1987 paper list by Col Needham
* pre-1990 USENet posts
* 1989 (March) Berners-Lee writes the proposal "a large hypertext database with typed links"
* 1990 (Sept) failed sales-pitch by Berners-Lee
* 1990 (Oct) shellscript-version of imdb
* 1990 (Dec) Berners-Lee had written his stuff
* 1991 (Jan) first webservers outside of cern
* 1993 imdb on independant server
I guess it all depends on exactly what we consider to be the defining moments (and pre-states are dicey due to NLS).
I'd say "about as old as" :)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:23PM
They were created in an era of "Why, if we add social features, we'll become the next MySpace" back when MySpace was cool and not a punchline.
Then they discovered that rather than providing them with a profitable free community they can stripmine for data, what they actually got was nobody wants to pay for that worthless data and rather than getting a free community all they get is extra work erasing all the troll posts pointing out that the female actress from Ghostbusters sucks.
Took them awhile to figure out merely adding comment don't magically create billions.
"We thought having a comment driven website would provide us with Facebook style financial numbers, but instead we got Soylent News style financial numbers, so ..."
Basically we're seeing a slow motion death of social media. Remember when "homepages" like yahoo died? Someday, probably soon, that's how people will look at facebook. "Oh they're still on line, no kidding? I remember that site."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:49PM
Then they discovered that rather than providing them with a profitable free community they can stripmine for data, what they actually got was nobody wants to pay for that worthless data and rather than getting a free community all they get is extra work erasing all the troll posts pointing out that the female actress from Ghostbusters sucks.
The problem I have with this analysis (besides the Ghostbusters comment: how is it a "troll" to state the truth?) is that it ignores the value of traffic. Isn't it normally a good thing to have lots of traffic on your site? That means more pageviews, and more ad impressions (not everyone uses an ad-blocker, in fact it's probably a minority still), and more ad dollars. Yeah, I understand that they have to expend some effort in deleting the actual trolls and messages that go beyond the acceptable-use policy limits, but surely IMDB is making more money from all that traffic than that costs, right?
By shutting down the forums, they're going to lose out on a tremendous amount of traffic, I think. The people hanging out on there aren't going to want to read the movie info pages over and over; they're hanging out on there because of the message forums.
Now of course, my rebuttal here really depends on the *actual* costs of managing the forums versus the actual revenues generated by them. I have no way of knowing either; only IMDB would know that detailed information.
Basically we're seeing a slow motion death of social media. Remember when "homepages" like yahoo died? Someday, probably soon, that's how people will look at facebook.
Again, I have a problem with this. To me, pseudonymous message forums are not "social media". We've had message forums on the internet since the very early days, with USENET (though those weren't pseudonymous), and then later with other web-based message forums that were around long before Facebook and friends. Slashdot was around quite some time before the term "social media" even existed. It's not the same thing. There's some similarities of course: both let you post message, but "social media" really goes farther, letting you post pictures and videos, letting you "like" things (and your "like" being attributed to you), letting you "follow" things and repost things from others, etc. A traditional message forum like this, or like IMDB's, does not do all these things. You make up a fake name, post messages to that, and that's about it. There might be a user-based moderation system where people can mod things up or down, but those moderations are generally not attributed to any user like a Facebook "like". There's no way to "follow" things and for your "friends" to see what you're "following". You could say the traditional forums are quite "primitive" in comparison to social media (though I assert that this is a good thing).
I hope that Facebook does die; I think social media like that is a cancer. However, traditional message/discussion forums, oriented towards specific topics like this one, I think are quite valuable and I don't think they're likely to go anywhere.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:59PM
I think are quite valuable and I don't think they're likely to go anywhere.
Truth is probably in between. I admit Yahoo is not dead, but its still "not so alive anymore".
The thing about businesses is they don't admit defeat too well for various financialization reasons. IMDB was totally "we gonna be MySpace 2.0 billionaires" and anything less that that is collapse rm -Rf / the whole thing. Whereas I agree hobbyist level sites are unkillable. Partially for technology reasons, Slashdot used to have a data center, well after it moved out from under the desk, and now its just a big linode account. Maybe in 10-20 years something slashdot like will be a raspberry pi 100.0 distribution running off someones old cellphone charger. That works for hobby not business.
Also WRT the increased traffic, I suspect a huge problem is the people least likely to use adblock come there like once a year, and the people most likely come there with an adblocker and shitpost for hours per day, and they make no money at all off the latter although most of their costs are also from the latter, so the axe falls. Note that legacy print media has mostly given up on free access for eyeballs because not enough ads are seen to make up for the costs, if even the clickbait experts can't profit, nobody can.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:55PM
You are aware that IMDb started as a hobbyist site? (Well, actually when it started it wasn't even yet a site, as the WWW didn't yet exist).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 08 2017, @07:59PM
Interesting but not relevant. 19 years ago it was an early Amazon.com purchase and I checked and it still is. Its as solidly megacorporation as megacorporation can be.
HP was started in a garage which has approximately nothing to do with anything in 2017.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:27PM
It is relevant, as it shows that a hobbyist site actually can be killed. Namely by being bought by a business.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:12PM
As I commented below, the traffic on message boards in general has steadily dropped for several years now. Unfortunately, most people are content with Facebook, Facebook groups, Google Plus, and Google Plus communities. With the dwindling traffic, meteoric rise of ad blocker usage, and dealing with trolls and flamewars, Amazon most likely decided that it was no longer worth maintaining the IMDb message boards like many other companies have decided as well.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:44PM
Google Plus, and Google Plus communities.
This part sounds fishy to me. No one uses Google Plus except maybe the Linux kernel people. Google tried really hard to push it and it bombed.
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:50PM
It's certainly not popular in general, but in certain circles it is. For whatever reason, Google Plus has a near stranglehold on tabletop gaming discussion and there's a lot of overlap with tabletop gamers and video gamers.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:00PM
There are also lots of photographers, as they had a great photos capability that has since been extracted out as a separate application. It's still quite well peopled though, with a passionate bunch of folks across a wide range of topics. I always likened it to wondering around at a party and joining interesting conversations. You do need to take the time to find people and groups that interest you though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:41PM
The thing is, google pushed it so hard that it became a red flag for me. Without that I'd probably be using it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:04PM
how is it a "troll" to state the truth?
Wouldn't you consider this a troll post, even though there is a true statement in it:
"Two plus two equals four and Grishnakh is a whore."
There are plenty of troll posts on the ghostbusters page and their purpose wasn't to provide valid criticisms of the acting abilities. Trolling is about disruption and negative attention-whoring.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:53PM
That's true enough but trolls can't force this and haven't. At most they've become a convenient excuse for those who do not like free discussion and never have liked free discussion to prevent it from happening.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @10:11PM
a convenient excuse for those who do not like free discussion
This point is certainly true, but trolling does have an effect that disrupts discourse and causes polarization. The first example that comes to mind is the study that came out a while back on comment sections disrupting the way people view scientific news articles.
http://archive.jsonline.com/features/health/online-comments-hurt-science-understanding-study-finds-ib88cor-185610641.html [jsonline.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @07:39PM
the troll posts pointing out that the female actress from Ghostbusters sucks.
besides the Ghostbusters comment: how is it a "troll" to state the truth?
Hey, grishdank, YOU SUCK. And that's not a troll, its the TRUTH.