I Need To Know : Why not keep…

Sorry if this has been said. (and sorry for my english too).

Why not keep the message boards as a database/opinionbase?

There always will be good opinions an explanations. Why not keep it and give options to investigate to the people who are only looking for answers?

I just watched The Hill from 1965. There are few, but there are opinions, from the ending, a color version i didn't know, the actors and the acting

Why not keep it and give the chance to investigate every movie we see if there are opinions about that open ending, the acting, the music, the remakes, the camera movements. all aspects from a movie.
Every movie has a message board. Every movie has already opinions. Just don't delete it.

I can think of two reasons.

One: how a web page is coded become dated (like all technology) once it's published. Over time, the web page works less and less well with current browsers (and there may be other tech/software issues at work here). Another site I was on ran into this issue and had to essentially archive their existing boards and start an entirely new one. They tried to keep the old boards available for reference but it just wouldn't work. They are no longer accessible at all.

IMDb may be running into this wall with the boards and they know it's only a matter of time before accessibility becomes too difficult to maintain.

Two: For every board or thread that has meaningful content, there are at least one (and I'd wager more than one) board or thread that is full of out of control negative, argumentative, offensive, and trollish posts/threads. IMDb specifically addressed this in their statement. They don't want that content on their site anymore.

I can assure you that the IMDb message boards do not have a good reputation across the net. If they leave the boards in place, all those troll, offensive, angry posts are still there, as well. And I suspect this second reason I've presented is the most influential one. This is from their statement:

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After in-depth discussion and examination, we have concluded that IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide.

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I liked the INTK board and I think it was a useful and civil board. I hung out on the LOTR trilogy movies boards and that was 85-90% respectful, civil conversations. But every time I visited other boards - checking for conversation on a movie/tv-show I'd just watched - I only found mostly negative threads with many using coarse, offensive, disrespectful language. (It became a virtual drinking game for me wait for it there it is: Complete Crap! utter pretentious wank Rubbish nonsense movie This movie truly was overrated tripe. What a piece of sh$t! This is a crap movie with Capital C)

There might be people looking for meaningful conversation but they were drowned out by the 'haters' (and I think 'hating' in this sense is an occupation for some they just go looking for that thing they can vent and vex about). I don't think it was because way more people hated that show than liked it. I think it was that people who liked the show - or maybe just wanted to discuss in a meaningful way what they liked or didn't like - just decided this wasn't the place to do that.

I'm sure there were other safe harbors out there like the INTK and LOTR-movie boards. But I didn't find very many and I looked into many message boards over the years.

People just seem to want to scream about stuff these days. Maybe that doesn't seem jarring or unpleasant for some folks who are used to that form of online communication. But it is very off putting for a large majority of folks who only check the internet for things they specifically want to know or especially discuss.

So, from what I've read, you're saying The Trolls win.
It's like saying, The Terrorists won after 2001.
It's the wrong way of going about things. We are already becoming a society who are cocooned into our homes, whether from fear, economic factors, or just plainly not caring.
God help the next generation. Our future looks pretty grim.

I would agree with you on this: 'the future looks pretty grim'.

And I've lived a long time and seen a lot of stuff.

Yes, I understand you point magpie930, and it has a lot of sense, of course.

But this site will exist for ages. And I suppouse the administrators and web makers they can do whatever they want with programming (i don't know how it Works, i'm not an expert ;P)
With the money they earn every day, why don't hire a bunch of begginners to start cleaning the site erasing all bad commnets and users, and normal people could see their messages and dicussions and information whenever they want.
It doesn't matter if it tooks 2 or 3 years.
Imagine a troll looking for his messages and finds none of them between info threads.

Silly idea, I know :P

I totally agree with you. They COULD do something to fix it if they wanted to.


I believe that they DONT WANT TO and that is the real problem. They are using 'trolls' like a straw man.