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“We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

imdb.com

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Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#51

Post by exodust »

Strom wrote: post #40

This is incredibly sad news. I have been a regular reader of IMDb message boards for over 15 years now. It's the last actual forum that I still visit. There's so much valuable information stored on those boards, it's a tragedy to see it get deleted. Sure the most popular movie threads might be filled with toxic flamewars, but the long tail of more obscure movies has reasonable discussion and human recommendations of…

Exactly. The good finds on the boards are worth the bad contributions - which could be managed with a bit of effort and changing the format.

The value of attaching discussion to a movie database is unmatched by any alternative.

Take for example the old obscure film Stalker (1979). We see discussions 4 pages long about the meaning of the dog in the film. Or this one, "Other 'visually beautiful' films?", and people respond with suggestions. This information will be lost, and the opportunity to create similar threads in a sensible place in context with the movie, also lost.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/board/thread/138657635?

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#52

Post by Markoff »

roryisok wrote: post #27
5_minutes wrote: post #19

Perhaps 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".

I agree. Keeping archives of decade old arguments between random strangers seems like a waste of digital resources. It's like taking and storing minutes for the water cooler conversations in your office. I wonder how many petabytes of forum content there is out there on the web

it's not arguments, there are plenty of intelligent discussions which can help someone watching movie years later, there is no surprise to see thread old 10 years answering your questions about movie and also people joining old threads and reviving them with other new people and seriously, flat forum with few comments is really in 2016 any storage problem? so lame YouTube videos are OK but storing few gigabytes of comments or decades is issue?

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#53

Post by bogomipz »

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #32
dsr_ wrote: post #10

Translation: "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."

i think it might have something to do with litigation. Wikipedia says that they have been sued by actors that got their age revealed on the message board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMDb#Litigation And now California has a new anti-ageism law; wikipedia says "The bill forces IMDb to comply with requests by the actors featured on its pages to remove information about their age" so they might have decided to close th…

That link contains one suit on grounds of ageism and the plaintiff clearly lost:

In 2013, Pechman dismissed all causes of action except for a breach of contract claim against IMDb; a jury then sided with IMDb on that claim.

Then after the plaintiff refiled the suit:

"All claims against IMDB were dismissed by the court in March 2015, handing Hoang zero damages.[41]"

That is the only suit regarding ageism for IMDB which is a 26 year old company.

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#54

Post by johnnyo »

pestaa wrote: post #48
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think it might have something to do with litigation. Wikipedia says that they have been sued by actors that got their age revealed on the message board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMDb#Litigation And now California has a new anti-ageism law; wikipedia says "The bill forces IMDb to comply with requests by the actors featured on its pages to remove information about their age" so they might have decided to close th…

So it's less work to simply just destroy one of the most used online forums because a few actors in California feel like they're too old.

Most used online forum? Is there data to back that up?

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#55

Post by Markoff »

numerlo wrote: post #24

The younger generation or even people newer at the internet never learned how valuable those boards where. IMDb failed with the newer generation and that's why they are shuting them down (the fact that they have to spend resources to keep them up doesn't help either). The comments here (up until now at least) are a representation of their failure as everyone states that nothing of value was lost and most didn't bothe…

project on HN apparently don't watch movie or search superhero crap and other sophisticated stuff, otherwise it's hard to understand why would anyone agree with shutting boards where movie fans discuss movies, especially those less known and especially since there is ZERO alternative to easily find discussion board for some obscure movie you just watched where would anyone head

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#56

Post by Arnt »

myf01d wrote: post #50

I can't understand, is storing pure text too expensive for IMDB which is owned by Amazon which runs half the servers of the planet? Why don't they keep the threads while disabling new discussions?

I've battled spam at another film site. If my experience is anything to go by, even mentioning the word "spam" is enough to make smoke come out of the operators' ears. They tried to delete the spam and abuse when it was posted, but some slipped through and leads to new support requests and new complaints even now.

Sorry if that sounded exasperated.

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#57

Post by Markoff »

Strom wrote: post #40

This is incredibly sad news. I have been a regular reader of IMDb message boards for over 15 years now. It's the last actual forum that I still visit. There's so much valuable information stored on those boards, it's a tragedy to see it get deleted. Sure the most popular movie threads might be filled with toxic flamewars, but the long tail of more obscure movies has reasonable discussion and human recommendations of…

same here, been user for 14 years. since there was no alternative everyone headed to IMDb boards to discuss movie so you could always find someone, now after destroying the boards not sure where to go, since everyone will try to find some place to discuss movies, though there is none really with critical mass of users

i am thinking about trakt.tv though it's just threaded comments, but better than nothing since rotten tomatoes have read only forums and tmdb and metacritic doesn't have even that. my movie watching experience will be severely affected by lack of discussion after finishing movie, might as well watch less movies because of lack of place to discuss them

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#58

Post by nkozyra »

bogomipz wrote: post #53
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think it might have something to do with litigation. Wikipedia says that they have been sued by actors that got their age revealed on the message board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMDb#Litigation And now California has a new anti-ageism law; wikipedia says "The bill forces IMDb to comply with requests by the actors featured on its pages to remove information about their age" so they might have decided to close th…

That link contains one suit on grounds of ageism and the plaintiff clearly lost: In 2013, Pechman dismissed all causes of action except for a breach of contract claim against IMDb; a jury then sided with IMDb on that claim. Then after the plaintiff refiled the suit: "All claims against IMDB were dismissed by the court in March 2015, handing Hoang zero damages.[41]" That is the only suit regarding ageism for IMDB whic…

But that undoubtedly cost IMDb money. Litigation on its own can be enough to sway the risk/benefit scale, even if the civil complaint is entirely baseless.

Re: “We have decided to disable IMDb's message boards”

#60

Post by Markoff »

pcarolan wrote: post #46

This would be a good opportunity for someone to build an independent message board layer similar to gitter or genius. Its been tried before unsuccessfully but sooner or later someone will get it right. As the web becomes more closed, this could be a platform for more open discussion.

the thing is it must have already big database of movies and enough users, only other sites meeting this are rotten tomatoes (disabled read only forums so apparently not interested), TMDb (nothing, seem they are not interested in this opportunity judging by discussion in their forum), Metacritic (nothing), Letterboxd (nothing and too few users) and trakt.tv (has threaded comments for specific movies, but also not that many users)

i talked with my friend running one of the biggest subtitles website who had obviously enough database of movies and TV shows, but he ain't interested because of legal responsibility for content of comments and need of expensive moderation, though i would think this could be outsourced to Disqus and legally comments would be stored on their servers

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