I found these message boards useful in the past. For example when searching for movies based on parts of a movie script, more if these were obscure mpvies. I don't care about closing the message boards but the data should be archived.
“We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”
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Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”
#12It is incredulous they are calling two weeks notice "ample time" for people to organise alternative contacts with friends they may only know via a handle and manually archive their years of messages. I expected better from IMDb.
Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”
#13IMDb's message boards have terrible UX and are mostly devoid of good content. That said, I wonder how loyal posters on the boards will take this. I can't imagine how frustrated I'd be with a site if they suddenly decided to delete 10 or 20 years of my commenting history. E.g. what if HN or Reddit decided to delete comments and just kept story links?
Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”
#14Translation: "We thought we would get a community of fans for free. We didn't realize that maintaining a community requires active engagement, setting rules for behavior and enforcing them. We really didn't think anyone would bother being a troll. This is all too expensive to do properly."
To be fair, IMDB have been at this game for a long time, they're not a random startup pivoting after 6 months. They've probably learnt those lessons a long time ago, I guess something has changed of late whereby keeping the forums stopped being worth the effort.
Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
What information are we going to lose when it's deleted? Will IMDB consider handing the data to the Internet Archive?
I'd argue we won't lose anything. IMDB message boards aren't exactly a trustworthy source of information.
Neither is HN for that matter, would you be as indifferent if HN decided to delete all comments?
Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”
#16Archive Team link: http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=The_Internet_Movi...
Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”
#17Sad. Usually when I have some question after having watched a movie, I can find the answer on the forum. But it seems all good movies have been made anyway. Maybe the era of movies are over.
Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”
#18And not much of value was lost. Those boards had terrible usability. IIRC not long ago you could only see one comment per page and had to click on every single comment to read the thread. That changed a little while ago but you still have multi-pages for comments and it's hard to keep track of who replies to whom. They also have these weird signatures which are completely impossible to distinguish from the body of th…
That was a terrible default setting, but you've always been able to change it, or at least you have been since I started using it in 2003-ish. You're right, though, it was an extremely poorly-designed bit of forum software with some baffling choices.
Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”
#19Perhaps I'm oldfashioned but all the discussions that happen on the "social web" are very scattered, volatile and basically instantly forgotten. So I don't really find that a good argument to delete these archives. That they're overal low-quality discussions, that's true, though.
I guess it has more to do with "Focus", and that comes before "Nostalgia".
Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”
#20Makes sense. I don't see what the big deal is, surprised to see this at the top of the front page? I had to double check I wasn't looking at /new
IMDb is one of the biggest websites in the world, and they're deleting a large percentage of the content on their site. Seems front-page-worthy if only for the scale of the content being lost, whatever your view of the value of that content.
Messages are a tiny fraction of the content on their site.