Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

imdb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 340 posts

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

#81

Post by everling »

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…

Though it's no replacement for a forum, my side project has been a web app that finds thematic links between films. I use it to find hidden gems and such. I've had zero traction here on HN, but Gizmodo just did an article on it:

http://gizmodo.com/a-way-to-search-for-film-recommendations-...

/plug

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

#82

Post by Yhippa »

If bulletin board software was made today and was free of the archetypes and styles of the 90's and 2000's would they be more popular today? Spent a lot of time on them during those years and I still find valuable information there whether it's how to fix a car or what strategy should I use to play a certain game.

I think these communities were more tight-knit. They had some modicum of moderation as you typically had to sign up and typically you had to be a good citizen for a while before posting threads. This is in comparison to many social media where you can begin trolling with little to no effort.

Reddit favors gamification or conforming to popular opinion. Many of the forums I frequented didn't have any sort of rep other than post count and maybe join date to see seniority.

I see a lot of sites I used to visit go this way including the forums for Magic: the Gathering. Based on user numbers and the rise of social media platforms they are very likely going to substitute for the old tight-knit forums of yesteryear.

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

#83

Post by degenerate »

chippy wrote: post #74

This is pretty bad move and here's why: IMDb relies on users using the site, editing entries, facts, quotes and correcting things. These are the community, and they are movie fans, hardcore fans, the reason why IMDb continues. The "db" in IMDb has been created, by hand, by volunteers - the users who use the message board. IMDb has totally overlooked the value of the Message Boards - they are for the community. Remove…

It would be like Y Combinator shutting down its "message board", citing "Increasingly, Y Combinator customers have migrated to Reddit"

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

#84

Post by virtuabhi »

bluedino wrote: post #66
exodust wrote: post #42

Thumbs down to whoever decided to close the boards. I'll miss being able to argue about why a movie is rubbish with someone who thinks it's fantastic, or vice-versa. There's some great discussions on some of the movie boards where people talk about the stories and motivations of characters etc. Sure it gets heated sometimes, but that's life. You just navigate around that stuff and find things worth responding to. Sen…

The sad part is it's due to a very small amount of trolls that did a lot of damage. I can't help but be disgusted that these guys are now laughing about IMDB shutting the whole thing down because of their actions.

IMDB says the decision was based on traffic and data. They don't mention trolls.

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

#85

Post by distances »

Yhippa wrote: post #82

If bulletin board software was made today and was free of the archetypes and styles of the 90's and 2000's would they be more popular today? Spent a lot of time on them during those years and I still find valuable information there whether it's how to fix a car or what strategy should I use to play a certain game. I think these communities were more tight-knit. They had some modicum of moderation as you typically had…

Discussion boards also provide much longer-lasting content. Twitter and Facebook are totally ephemeral.

Reddit content seems to be somewhat valid even after the discussion has ceased, but once discussion leaves a subreddit front page it basically dies. That applies to HN too, of course. Discussion boards usually resurface a topic when someone answers, resulting in a longer discussion and a chance to revisit the topic.

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

#86

Post by huac »

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.

For one, complying with the law is pretty important. For another, when your livelihood is based on (to a non-trivial extent) your physical characteristics and appearance, having your age revealed, and possibly aging you out of more glamorous roles, is an important protection to ensure.

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

#87

Post by pgrote »

ptrptr wrote: post #33

This just shows how Amazon is only interested in selling movies, not building communities. Can someone recommend any other movie forum with similiar scale?

Since the announcement I've looked and haven't found anything. This is a huge bummer since the value in the comments were discussions outside of the larger movies.

I've learned many things about movies I've enjoyed and appreciated the other takes of movies I hadn't thought of.

If you do come across something, please let us know.

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

#88

Post by alecco »

virtuabhi wrote: post #84
bluedino wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad part is it's due to a very small amount of trolls that did a lot of damage. I can't help but be disgusted that these guys are now laughing about IMDB shutting the whole thing down because of their actions.

IMDB says the decision was based on traffic and data. They don't mention trolls.

Right

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

#89

Post by pthreads »

Notre1 wrote: post #62
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?

There is a comment on Reddit saying that the ArchiveTeam is working on archiving them: https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/5s0iiv/slug/ddbugy5

Thanks for the link. Following the link it appears that the db can is available for download from these two ftp sites :

ftp.fu-berlin.de (Germany) ftp.funet.fi (Finland)

PS: I have not verified them yet.

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

#90

Post by bsenftner »

trengrj wrote: post #12

It 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.

I would be very surprised if your issue was even realized or considered.
Post reply on HN