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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”

#311
post #17

Sad. 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.

plenty of good movies are still released each year, just the ratio of good vs the rest seem worse than in past or it's maybe nostalgia and i an becoming old, for instance recent Arrival was decent movie

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

#312

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.

Well, it's time to come up with a better solution than 'don't feed the trolls.' I have been saying for years that trolling (the aggressive kind, not the witty mutual banter kind) is a serious problem and the response is almost always 'oh just don't give them attention, that's what they feed on blah blah.' this ignores the fact that trolls and bullies systematically pick on people who are vulnerable and target their s…

Meatball wiki has developed a specific approach based on soft security[1], Consumerium has a similarly based approach based on leveraging the lowest troll[2] vs sysop power structure.

[1]: http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/SoftSecurity [2]: http://develop.consumerium.org/wiki/Lowest_Troll

"today, the word troll are both verb and noun, and are applied loosely to any outsider. If you don't like someone's manners, he is a troll. If you don't like a gadfly, he is a troll. If you don't like a philosopher, he is a troll. If you don't like a inquirer, he is a troll. If you don't like a humorist, he is a troll. If you don't like a teacher, he is a troll. If you don't like witches, they are, well, witches and must be witch-hunted. Thusly, from weirdo to witches, from teachers to philosophers, from gadfly to firebrand, from loner to gay, they are all trolls online at your call. Quick spun the guild of killfilers and troll-criers. Anyone who has contrariwise things to say or the manner of saying it is a troll." - "troll ignorance", Xah Lee

http://xahlee.info/UnixResource_dir/writ/troll_ignorance.htm...

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

#313

It's a shame to see the boards go, but I can understand their reasoning. Letterboxd and the others are handy for tracking movies, but I found that using Google Sheets with the OMDB API is much better. I can pull the information that I want and easily input titles from lists on Letterboxd and other sites. Add 'Cloud Ignite' instead of pulling from the XML though. Going straight to the XML isn't reliable. For those loo…

reddit is too messy, you don't have subreddit for every single movie ever released plus thanks to voting system you will see only popular opinions, controversial but valid opinions will be hidden

i would recommend checking TMDb which launched discussions for each listed title just yesterday, so don't expect there will be much content, but at least each movie or TV show had its own page and own forum, much more neat than reddit

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

#314

Sigh. I actually had hope that IMDb would eventually fix its social functionality. That's obviously never going to happen. There is (was?) a way to add friends on IMDb, but I found it ridiculously hard to find, and even now I can't see their movie ratings or watchlists. The message boards were stuck in the 90s, but at least they got the job done. Maybe I should write a script to migrate all my ratings to Letterboxd..…

check out TMDb, it has watchlists, ratings, API for apps and also discussions launched yesterday plus it's by no means some newcomer, they are around since 2008 as alternative to IMDb

Thanks! Will do.

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

#315
Its tragic when every niche web facility gets axed because it isn't mainstream enough. This is what gives us watered-down media and bland food. Aim for the middle is ok, you gotta survive in the market - but to actively axe the ends of the bell-curve is irresponsible. Even though only a percent of the visitors used the boards, isn't that still hundreds of thousands of people? Aren't they a special demographic? How do they know its nobody they want to support?

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

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

the watched list is the list with your ratings.

That's not the same, as I rarely rate movies I've watched.

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

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Telling people to just ignore it is equivalent to telling them that their injuries don't matter and you're not interested enough to help No, it's equivalent to giving them a toolset to make many attempts at injuring them unsuccessful. I'll be the first to admit that "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is a porous filter. But removing it because it's not perfect only makes people mor…

Pointing to the existence of unpleasant things in life is very different from just shrugging them off. If you're really concerned, do something about changing the behavior of the antagonist instead of worrying that you might be 'coddling' the victims.

If you're really concerned, do something about changing the behavior of the antagonist

Once you suggest a mitigation strategy that doesn't have laughably bad cost/benefit in comparison to teaching coping mechanisms, I'm all ears.

Until then: stop telling me to "do something." I can't figure out how to fix the world for you, rise to the occasion yourself. If you do find it, it'll be easy to convince me to join.

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

#318
post #206

Developed/ran a message board software for 4 years. Running a large message board network is one of the worst experiences I have ever had. You are constantly wasting time moderating people, blocking people, recalculating algorithms, dealing with attacks and explaining to the police you don't have the IP address in question. Every large message board I have developed or managed revolted or sued us ([1][2] random examp…

I developed and ran social networking features for a fashion site with an almost entirely female audience, age range 20-50. I was fully expecting bad behavior but was surprised as it grew that people were unfailingly nice, supportive and encouraging to each other, with only a few exceptions. Of course I'm aware that females, like anyone else, can be nasty to each other, but it barely happened here with membership in…

it barely happened here with membership in the thousands. It would be an interesting social experiement to replicate that on a larger scale while limiting the demographic by gender, age, and so on to see how it affects the behavior of the group.

If you want the results of that experiment, you'll find it in the conventional wisdom among reddit moderators and dedicated users. Subs with under 10,000 subscribed users are not only good interpersonally, the content of the subreddit is in it's heyday. If the userbase balloons, or the content quality nosedives, then you get bad interpersonal interaction.

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

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed the same thing on Reddit in subreddits where women make up 50% or more of the population. When I'm posting in these communities, I tend to be given the benefit of the doubt and receive a lot more supportive or cheerful replies instead of walls of text/sarcasm/"well, actually". It's made me unconsciously change my posting habits.

I can confirm that the general quality and civility of discussion in TwoXChromosomes spiraled downward extremely quickly once it was made a default subreddit. It was designed as a haven for women to discuss women's issues with other women on reddit, and has become one more public pool for gentlemen to tip their fedoras and "raise a debate" on paternity law, when the community was never meant for that sort of discussi…

That just shows that any time you open stuff to participation by the general population and lift it out of obscurity, it turns to shit. Just look at our elections. We'd be better off just having a monarch.
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