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) 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