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, @04:02PM
So anyone who happens to be on a two-week holiday without internet connectivity will be out of luck.
Two weeks are not "ample time". Maybe two months might be considered "ample time".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @07:50PM
Don't forget, anyone doing any serious archiving will probably get automatically banned by bot detection. Dem evil bots, gotta stop them all by destroying the internet one step at a time.
(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.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:16PM
...for Elizabeth Warren to spew her bile.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:43PM
Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!
Er
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:31PM
She may a sad, pathetic but entertaining liar. But please PLEASE do not deprive us of kellyanne conway's rantings.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:33PM
As movies become more formulaic, more repetitive endless sequel or remake of a copy, less risky and innovative, and retreat into shoveling crap, there is probably less to talk about.
Imagine what it would have been like to have a IMDB back when Star Wars was released in 77 or 78 or whatever it was. Or the Charles Bronson vigilante era movies. Or the era of Dirty Harry movies. Or the era of the great Western epics. Interesting stuff used to happen in Hollywood movies. Not so much in the last decade or two.
A coworker was making the analogy of Hollywood movies being mismanaged by the same kind of pressures that mismanaged American car manufacturers in the 70s. The quest for CYA leads to a lot of trash being shipped out. The problem is the only competitor of note is Bollywood and I'm not seeing "typical Americans" watch that unless they put acid in the water. Then again shipping stuff no one likes has never stopped the movie biz before, so ...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:47PM
OH good example here:
Imagine a discussion board for transistors where people used to talk about the exciting world of transistors from 1950 to perhaps 2000. The great conversion from germanium to silicon. The first epitaxials and the death of point contacts. Quantum weirdness with tunnel diodes which commercially flopped. The exciting new world of MOS. The commercial failure of gallium arsenide. The days back then transistor SSRs of modest power first became cheaper than electromechanical power relays. VFDs start to rule the world. Rectifiers go from 50 volt PIV to everything's a 1000 volts PIV. Remember making "diode strings" for high voltage vacuum tube power supplies with equalization resistors and transient capacitors across each diode and you stacked like 10 of them in series for a decade or two and then some mfgr starts shipping 5000 volt PIV rectifiers so you replace like 30 parts on a circuit board with one little diode. Its a little before my time but transistors used to be so low performance they sold them on alpha values and they converted to betas due to high gain around the silicon conversion I donno 1960 or something. RTL DTL TTL made of discrete components. Packaging going from metal cans to plastic and leads going from thru hole to SMD. The first time somebody shipped a darlington in a transistor can. Who remembers jfets? Pour a little of your 40 oz out on the ground in memory of the MPF102. In the pre-internet era who remembers cross reference catalogs for replacement transistor purposes? Who here cut the top off metal can transistors to act as light detectors like in the 70s or 80s because they were bored and didn't want to mail order a single phototransistor across the country with a $25 minimum order (back when minimum wage was like $3). Who remembers SCRs? Triacs? How about stupid Zener effect tricks using non-Zener diodes?
I mean all that stuff was interesting if you were around back then or know the history.
But today imagine how dead a transistor discussion board would be. "Hey guys we sure love ISO9000 practices" "How about that MTBF increasing by another boring decimal point" "If you though 0402 was a small footprint try 0201!" "microcontroller manufacturers stealing 'our' SOT-23 footprint for their own use"
(Score: 2) by nethead on Wednesday February 08 2017, @09:45PM
Yes, I use to live and die by the ECG catalog.
How did my SN UID end up over 3 times my /. UID?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:15PM
Imagine what it would have been like to have a IMDB back when Star Wars was released in 77 or 78 or whatever it was. Or the Charles Bronson vigilante era movies. Or the era of Dirty Harry movies. Or the era of the great Western epics. Interesting stuff used to happen in Hollywood movies. Not so much in the last decade or two.
Yeah, but people are still talking about those movies. Go to the IMDB message forums and you'll probably find lots of discussion about those movies, decades after they were released.
The problem is the only competitor of note is Bollywood and I'm not seeing "typical Americans" watch that unless they put acid in the water.
They're fun to watch once in a long while, but you can only take so many spontaneous dance routines in the middle of a movie.
The real competitor you're missing is TV shows. Between HBO, Netflix original content, Amazon original content, etc., there's a lot of TV shows out there these days that are much more engaging than today's Hollywood movies. Just look at Game of Thrones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @09:38PM
> Just look at Game of Thrones.
Very true, not to mention, Game of Thrones is actually quite long. Each episode is 1 hour. That is the low end of a feature film. I remember TV Series being 20-30 mins and generally of a lower production quality than feature films, but GoT?
Exotic locations (check), large generally good cast (check), good stage (check), good quality filming (check), good sound (check), very good post production (check), industry standard CGI (check).
I mean, a single GoT series could have been compressed into around 3 hours, and it would be a decent feature film in its own right.
In many ways I see it less as a TV Series, and more as a collection of film sequels forming an long arching story. I really like the format. The enjoyment of a feature film with every episode, but enough sequels that the writers can explore as much of the story they want without having to miss bits out, or otherwise sacrifice the story in order to fit into 3 hours tops ( The LotR Extended editions were between 3 and 4 hours long, really the upper limit for me for one viewing).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:52PM
As movies become more formulaic, more repetitive endless sequel or remake of a copy, less risky and innovative, and retreat into shoveling crap, there is probably less to talk about.
Imagine what it would have been like to have a IMDB back when Star Wars was released in 77 or 78 or whatever it was. Or the Charles Bronson vigilante era movies. Or the era of Dirty Harry movies. Or the era of the great Western epics. Interesting stuff used to happen in Hollywood movies. Not so much in the last decade or two.
This kind of talk annoys me to no end. There is a lot of repetitive endless sequels, but that's because that's what the customer wants. More to the point, there are countless innovative new movies coming out. Many of them even succeed. But nobody ever thinks of them.
As one example which springs to mind, the Disney movie Frozen [wikipedia.org]. It is incredibly innovative and subversive (in the TVTropes connotation), especially for somebody as mainstream as Disney. A movie in which the man is a betraying gold-digger (not a prince charming), a literal witch hunt against the queen, and numerous other non-standard subversions of audience expectations.
Or we have movies like American Sniper [wikipedia.org], Brokeback Mountain [wikipedia.org], Hacksaw Ridge [wikipedia.org], The Matrix [wikipedia.org], Avatar [wikipedia.org], and countless others which I'm too lazy to actually try to list. That's not counting the neigh-countless B-list, C-list, or independent films.
You only hear about the "Rocky: Part 16" movies? Well, see previous statement about what sells. You can't really blame Hollywood for selling people what they want, can you? That the publicize the next blockbuster is not to say they that innovation doesn't exist, or movie studios don't try new things.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:43PM
Avatar is a perfect example of what we like to say “Give me the same thing… only different!”
-- http://www.savethecat.com/beat-sheets/stc-beats-out-avatar [savethecat.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @09:36PM
I want to clarify that the list of movies I listed were each different in different ways. The Avatar example was one talking about technology, and how it was a pioneer in "good 3D." The story itself may have been lackluster. Much like how Frozen animation styles and techniques were fairly well established, and the characters were formulaic, but their interactions and the situation were innovative.
As for the pithy sounding "Give me the same thing… only different!" ... What's that even supposed to mean? I think literally every story has been done before. See The Hero's Journey [wikipedia.org]... or TVTropes [tvtropes.org] if you prefer [tvtropes.org]. I defy you to name a single story written in the past 1000 years for which there is no predecessor it was "copying."
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday February 08 2017, @10:08PM
The Save the Cat! books have been highly influential on screenwriters; besides outlining various stories which can be told, they go so far as to prescribe the amount of time that should be spent telling each part of those stories. Their popularity been criticised as leading to sameness among films.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/07/hollywood_and_blake_snyder_s_screenwriting_book_save_the_cat.html [slate.com]
On the page I linked in my other post, a proponent of the Save the Cat! techniques showed how Avatar! followed them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @10:12PM
They have always been formulaic. Most of all media in all forms is. The main reason it seems not so, when looking further into the past, is the weaker less original examples have faded into obscurity.
It also helps that the sheer volume of what gets made these days, and the ease it can be distributed, means that the 99% that is crud is a deeper pool.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09 2017, @01:42AM
What you are describing is true but also false. Its Schrodinger's movie! :)
But seriously you are describing survivor bias.
Take this list for example http://www.imdb.com/year/1987/?ref_=tt_ov_inf [imdb.com]
The top 10 of year 1987 are all good movies (though I personally can not stand dirty dancing but whatevs...).
It is also the same year of Superman 4, Leonard Part 6, and Jaws the revenge (4th in the series).
For every 10 good movies they make they churn out 3000 bad ones. You look back and see the good stuff. But that is because you have the rose colored glasses of history on your side.
Or take say 1977 since you brought it up. It gave us lovely gems like http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076125/?ref_=adv_li_tt [imdb.com] and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074213/?ref_=adv_li_tt [imdb.com] and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076137/?ref_=adv_li_tt [imdb.com]
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:36PM
I know that the raging nerds here (heh, says me) don't pay attention to hollywood and suits and all that crap but the reason is a whole lot more cynical than a "people are mean to each other :(" thing. It's because hollywood is making a shitton of money internationally with vapid content that other countries enjoy due to epic special effects and somewhat-racist pandering to the east-asian market. Domestically this is not so much the case. Because for some reason entire generations raised on empty effects are starting to dislike empty effects. Hollywood like any other industry center prefers safety and stability and would overall just prefer you pay for a movie and not even see it. Critics that are not in their pocket are therefore terrifying to them, especially the ones that won't be bought.
Internet makes it easy to focus on one thing down to its fundamentals. Hollywood likes money. Critics don't like hollywood. Imdb probably likes money too. Boom bang shamalang
Or maybe they are legitimately studying referrers and traffic and outbound links and conversions, decided they might as well cut some fat out of the codebase if people are just using facebook and shit. Granted, I'll never make a facebook account and I deleted my twitter account out of sheer disgust during this election. So people like me lose out. But my preferred medium of bitching is youtube videos anyway. So I've got that going for me.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:58PM
> Imdb probably likes money too.
The site is owned by Amazon, which also produces and distributes programming.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Celestial on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:50PM
Unfortunately, local message boards and commenting systems are going the way of the dodo bird. It's a combination of companies no longer willing to invest the time and money required to properly set up and maintain message boards and/or commenting systems, and the majority of people spending most of their online time on Facebook/Google Plus/Twitter these days. The IMDb message boards are just another casualty.
My primary two hobbies are comic books and video games. Over the past six years or so, I've noticed that more and more comic book publishers and video game publishers are forgoing message boards entirely, and telling people to use Facebook groups, Google Plus communities, or Reddit to discuss their comic books or video games. DC Comics for example used to have a thriving forum, but shut it down in 2011 because they no longer wanted to deal with the trolls and flame wars.
Back in 2007, two friends and I established a forum dedicated to discussing... you guessed it, comic books and video games. For the first four years or so, it was a thriving little community with about 175 or so active members. In 2012, I noticed it started diminishing. I managed to get an up tick in 2014, but by 2016 participation absolutely plummeted. The other two administrators haven't logged on in over a year. I asked several people why they stopped coming. Every single one of them said that they spend their online time now on Facebook or Google Plus and don't want to be bothered with using a forum. You just can't beat that. Now the forum has about eight active members. It has become more and more difficult to justify the hosting cost.
Now, I probably suck as a forum administrator. I don't really doubt that. But the death of message boards (perhaps outside of the technology communities), and the move to social media is a definite pattern, and a sad one at that.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @09:18PM
It's a continuation of the trend of abolishing personal homepages.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by ewk on Thursday February 09 2017, @09:08AM
More like: your facebook page is your home page.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @07:59PM
IMDB was told by a certain group to end their comment system so people cannot communicate using their website. Too many comment systems gives them technical challenges to track each commenter and cross-reference with other comments that user made in other places.
Truth is the enemy of that group and they will fight tooth and nail to stop it from getting to too many ears.
If IMDB was not lying here, why wouldn't they fix their comment system? "Toxic comments" is only an excuse. The real reason is control over the truth. Just think about it...
The group that lurks in the shadows and does not like the light of truth questioning their dark, evil, unfounded claims is controlling information flow. They want one channel for all communication, where it can be controlled and "fixed".
We need to replicate IMDB. User-funded. Not located anywhere in the "free world". If TPB can stay alive and well, why can't a user-run IMDB?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 09 2017, @01:53AM
Oh you are not wrong. But the comment section in IMDB was basically 'dead' anyway. Pick a movie any movie say from 10 years back. Scroll to the bottom. You will see the comment section is probably dead there. Whoever happened to post last 'wins'. Probably the crappiest thing they added was the 'lists' thing. Basically people posting a bunch of top 10/100 of whatever genre they thought of. Sometimes interesting but usually not. This move will probably nuke the contributions to it and it will stagnate too.
They were interesting to read but not terribly useful.
I just hope they turn the whole thing over to archive.org.
But if you are serious about starting an alternate version? ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/misc/movies/database/ [fu-berlin.de] One of the things they have done since the beginning. Thought about doing 'something' with it for years but never could really figure out 'what'.
Once amazon bought it the 'monitization' was sure to follow.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Thursday February 09 2017, @02:23AM
I have used IMDb pretty much since its inception to learn about movies I've watched. Common questions about movies I like were discussed, analyzed and at times there's some pretty astute explanations giving a point of view I hadn't thought of. For movies like Primer [imdb.com] it can quite helpful. Even though you see [Post deleted by administrator] more often as the trolls inevitably become the last ones left, there are some great threads that I'll miss:
Delete your post Clerks style [imdb.com]
So Little Bill was the good guy in the ... [imdb.com]
Egregious error [imdb.com]
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.