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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”

#131

Post by buyx »

yoodenvranx wrote: post #37
roryisok wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> seems like a waste of digital resources Yes, that's exactly the same what Sumerians did say back a few 1000 years ago. Why keep all these clay tables about ordering wine? Who is gonna be interested in that kind of stuff in 10 years? Don't you think that such an archive would offer a nice glimpse into our current culture a few hundred years in the future?

I've posted about this in other places on this thread, but after feeling the same way as you, I looked at some old movies, and found that most posts are fairly recent. It turns out that IMDB has been expiring posts all along.

Your argument is sound though. Comments on websites, even if filled with trolls and fakes ought to be treated with respect and saved for posterity, since they give an important insight into the current zeitgeist.

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

#132

Post by Narretz »

amatix wrote: post #110
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…

Head to https://letterboxd.com — besides looking and working beautifully, it's designed from the ground up as a social movie site to find, review, track and share great (and awful) watches. The list functionality is superb — Best car chases? Submarine films? Movies where white people solve racism? Got it.

This looks interesting, as I use imdb mainly for lists, and they are too inconsistent to me - there's a watchlist, but no watched-list, for example. Or I haven't found it, because the ui is so inconsistent. Does Letterboxd have the option to export your activity / lists?

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

#133

Post by ClassyJacket »

bsenftner wrote: post #90
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.

It explicitly says that it was.

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

#134

Post by buyx »

emn13 wrote: post #7
simias wrote: post #5

And 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…

Not a great loss, but it's amusing to read imdb's definition of "ample time" to backup anything of value.

IMDB's been expiring messages all along, so there isn't much there to backup. After reading this announcment, I wanted to save the fanboy comments for Cloverfield (2008) back from when it was first released, since I regard it as a classic example of the phenomenon, and they are already long-gone.

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

#135

Post by robinhood »

amatix wrote: post #110
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…

Head to https://letterboxd.com — besides looking and working beautifully, it's designed from the ground up as a social movie site to find, review, track and share great (and awful) watches. The list functionality is superb — Best car chases? Submarine films? Movies where white people solve racism? Got it.

I've been using Letterboxd extensively for 6 months now - after 13 years of rating everything on IMDB. The experience of rating and reviewing a movie is superior on Letterboxd, definitely. But when I need discussions about a movie, or if I need to know an exact detail (revenue, soundtrack,...), I still head up to IMDB.

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

#136

Post by dewey »

Narretz wrote: post #132
amatix wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Head to https://letterboxd.com — besides looking and working beautifully, it's designed from the ground up as a social movie site to find, review, track and share great (and awful) watches. The list functionality is superb — Best car chases? Submarine films? Movies where white people solve racism? Got it.

This looks interesting, as I use imdb mainly for lists, and they are too inconsistent to me - there's a watchlist, but no watched-list, for example. Or I haven't found it, because the ui is so inconsistent. Does Letterboxd have the option to export your activity / lists?

Maybe Trakt would also be an alternative for you? They have a "watched" list as it's their main feature. Lots of media centers automatically submit what you watched to the site so it's great to keep track of things.

Here's what it looks like for a profile with some data:

https://trakt.tv/users/dewey

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

#137

Post by burger_moon »

It seems crazy that in this time of wanting to hoard and mine user data Amazon (who owns imbd) would close down a direct channel for collecting user information.

If trolls really were the issue then why not use that as an opportunity to devise a new bot to watch and moderate that. amazon is always exploring new ways to use machine learning and this could have been a great use case.

It all seems to go against their core principles.

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

#138

Post by dewey »

reportingsjr wrote: post #107
hbosch wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the best discussions on movies that I've been a part of are taking place on archival movie torrent sites. There are many passionate, smart, and well-educated film buffs around those sites that have a depth of knowledge that I haven't experienced in many other corners of the web.

I'm very interested in learning more about that sort of topic. Would you mind sharing some of those websites? If you aren't comfortable sharing them publicly my email is in my profile.

That's would be one of them: http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/weekend-post/karagarga-and...

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

#140

Post by Chathamization »

chris_st wrote: post #118
Chathamization wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some really interesting things you find on the message boards: - I once came across a nomadic TV watching club - they'd decide to watch a classic TV series, and then go to the board for that series to hold weekly discussions (you go in one week and see them discussing the first episode, then go in the next week and see them discussing the second, etc.). When the series was finished, they'd announce the next…

Possibly an opportunity to create a website just for the "nomadic TV club"?

I imagine they'll migrate somewhere. But they won't have the same opportunity to pick up random people as they float from board to board (they won't be nomadic anymore).
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