Classic Film : IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

I like the word 'discerning', which is the first synonym for 'selective'.

adjective
having or showing good judgment.
"the restaurant attracts discerning customers"
synonyms: discriminating, judicious, shrewd, clever, astute, intelligent, sharp, selective, sophisticated, tasteful, sensitive, perceptive, percipient, perspicacious, wise, aware, knowing; informal clueful
"some real treasures for the discerning collector"


But that's just my inner Waldo Lydecker coming out.

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Whoever runs a website is presiding over a household. We're all guests. You come to my house and annoy the other guests, you get tossed out. Don't even bother to try to tell me "I have the right to free speech" because in my house you follow my rules. You take your shoes off when you come in, you don't go causing others to get upset and don't think that free speech empowers you to be able to use hate speech or keep steering the conversation to The Revenant.

I go to one site that's movie oriented but it's also extremely gay friendly as the founders of the site are gay. There is no tolerance there for any "Suck my dick you homo" posts and they do their best to screen applicants. Which is easy enough to do most of the time as it's part of a network of boards and most who find the place do so via the network's search engine. So, they can easily check out if you have a history.

If I were to go over to Proboard and start a forum, you best believe that I'd be discerning. And it's not as if I'm some 40 year old that nobody wants to sack either, I'm well past that but I did quite well in my day. There were BBS boards around when I was 40, it was a possibility to hang on the web but I was generally too busy to bother.

Ahh - less than two weeks to go and this place is history. Just the thought of the nonsense that I won't be witnessing is enough to balance the things that I'll miss.

It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Exactly. That is how I feel as well. I get the feeling there are a lot of cops handling Waldo's priceless vase around here.

As I've said many times, for six years I paid the $99 a year fee, as it was back then, and even then I never felt like I had the right to trash the place. I always knew I was in somebody else's house.

Horror of horrors I guess I was brought up properly.

Re: Oy….


And it's not as if I'm some 40 year old that nobody wants to sack either, I'm well past that but I did quite well in my day.


💤 💤

~~~~~
Proud to be Canadian! 🇨🇦

Re: Like what, exactly?


Ahh - less than two weeks to go and this place is history. Just the thought of the nonsense that I won't be witnessing is enough to balance the things that I'll miss.



Like what? Parody threads? Call-out threads? Recipes and other mean-spirited ways of driving away unwanted but harmless CFBers?

~~~~~
Proud to be Canadian! 🇨🇦

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience


Whoever runs a website is presiding over a household. We're all guests. You come to my house and annoy the other guests, you get tossed out. Don't even bother to try to tell me "I have the right to free speech" because in my house you follow my rules. You take your shoes off when you come in, you don't go causing others to get upset and don't think that free speech empowers you to be able to use hate speech...


That's the way I handle my FB timeline. I consider it an extension of my home, which means the guests can't drop in and be rude to me or the other guests. They get one warning, and if bad behavior persists, they're shown the gate. "For permanent," in the words of Stanley Kowalski.

Re: Hopefully some folks realize…

Hopefully some folks realize that, on other forums, they won't get to start idiocy like parody threads, call-out threads, and insulting people by posting recipes (something that used to be very common on this board).

~~~~~
Proud to be Canadian! 🇨🇦

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

You used that household argument when I took over OldAle's poll as well. It was a weak argument then, and it still is now.

While the owner of a place technically has the rights to that place, it doesn't mean they should be allowed to do anything. They are still supposed to run things the most morally they can. The fact that they have higher power precisely means they have higher moral responsibilities.

Re: also………

It's also their responsibility to make sure that ALL guests are made to feel welcome, not just a select few.

~~~~~
Proud to be Canadian! 🇨🇦

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience


You used that household argument when I took over OldAle's poll as well. It was a weak argument then, and it still is now.

While the owner of a place technically has the rights to that place, it doesn't mean they should be allowed to do anything. They are still supposed to run things the most morally they can. The fact that they have higher power precisely means they have higher moral responsibilities.


And I find your argument weak. Maybe I should have used the pub argument and say that the owners have a right to toss out anyone who is depriving them of conducting business because they are abusing the other customers. Yes, everyone should be welcomed coming in but after that, it's up to the customer to be moral to the other people in the place.

Sorry, if someone is going to come to this forum and insult one of the sweetest posters, a young woman who has never been involved in anything other than film discussion, that is highly immoral and must be stopped. Now, maybe you would allow someone to come into your house and insult one of your guests, calling her vile names and suggesting that she perform sexual acts, but it would never go in my house. It certainly should not apply in this house and forbidding it is the enactment of facing up to one's moral responsibilities.

No, a forum administrator should not be allowed to do as they pleased. Just the other day I posted an obit thread for the IMDb boards on another film site. There was at first a mix of opinions relative to the experience here but then it resulted in a political free-for-all with people insisting that it was the fault of Obama's policies, of Trump's attitudes - way outta line and I stepped in as the author of the thread to suggest that we refrain from making this all political as troll behavior has been on the boards since I first got here and it has steadily progressed regardless of who was in office. The thread ended up being deleted with no explanation and apparently no consideration of just deleting the so-called offensive posts.

I have expressed my displeasure, for me that's an abuse of power but the board does have a "no politics" policy. It's made quite clear. It's up to me to decide whether I'll post there again and I probably won't, I'm that annoyed and I've been a member of that forum for over a decade.

It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me

Re: in the long run………


I remember well the September 2014 experience. It was worth the trouble.


In the long run, that big thread got deleted. If it hadn't been deleted, it would have gone into read-only mode.

Eventually, people calmed down and went back to talking about film.

~~~~~
Proud to be Canadian! 🇨🇦

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

So I just found out via pm the other day, a good thing or I might have simply come on here to find the whole place gone as I rarely go into board mode these days and there's no other notice outside the boards.

I was torn a bit between saying nothing and waxing a bit, decided on the latter.

I've perused the boards whenever time allowed since yesterday, most things have been said about why it's small thinking on the part of IMDb, how it's like burning down a ship to get rid of a rat problem. I do think Col Needham has a geeky side that has more sympathy for the old core of IMDb posters than this decision lets out, or we wouldn't have been allowed to continue perusing IMDb in the old format all this time, the new skin would have been forced on us. They probably had to mull over long and hard that the boards could only be a source for media debacle now, how that tarnishes the brand, hits their bottom line etc. It had grown to be pretty bad in some areas.

Small thinking because the supposed millions who come on to check Jennifer Lawrence's page and bounce off the site again are no measure for the core group who power the place under the hood by contributing content. Most of the prolific reviewers I know of, trivia and bio contributors with credits in the thousands and others, they've all sprung from the community and have been anchored to this or that board. IMDb is what it is - partly but significantly - because it has been stretched to encyclopedic size by our efforts. Jennifer Lawrence's IMDb page deserves to come up first in google because there is a page for the obscure silent film Melodie Der Welt that someone has set up on the same platform, others enhanced by info and three of us contributed reviews.

IMDb have no idea what they're scuttling. We know this at a glance by comparing reviews from the days before and after boards were in existence, many of the former from 1999/2000 were impressions a few lines long because I guess that's how the section felt like it might be used in the absence of boards, a place to hang opinions.

It would take a whole other post to broach the subject of web gentrification. "It's their business" as line of thought enjoys some traction in the US, not where I come from. The idea that we can't monetize this part of the platform would cheapen any room where it was brought up, including San Francisco. Are they losing money? No.

I won't miss what the boards have become the last couple of years, although that's only part of the reason I don't visit, but to think no more elegant solutions presented themselves than shutting all of them down boggles the mind.

More simply, what's going on here is they're shifting their platform to the prevalent "app" architecture where users are happy to just glide off stuff the same way they do with social media. I'll bet there are ongoing discussions about ways to allow users to curate personality, these will probably be centered on list-making with the opportunity to "friend" others and space for facebook comments. They've tweaked things a bit in that direction in their latest revamp.

-"There by the becoming lotuses of its own person"

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience


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

What I am failing to work out is who precisely are these people who are not getting a 'positive, useful experience' from the messageboards? From what I can ascertain, by removing the boards IMDb will alienate the current users of the boards, while the vast majority of users are pretty casual in their use of the site and most of them wouldn't be able to even find this message board if you put a gun to their head, therefore, I don't think its an exaggeration to say most of these people will be ambivalent at best regarding this news. So who does that leave exactly? Who is this demographic of users who are going to benefit so much by the removal of functionality from the database? And when did they have their say? Cause I sure missed that meeting if it ever was held.

I think it all points to the tactic where someone holds up a minor truth in order to hide a bigger one. In other words I am sure there are users who have been bullied on the boards and there are proper idiots regularly posting but the fact is that, while that is true, it is a more palatable excuse to say that its the eradication of these nasty factors that is the driving force behind this than to give the answer that I think to be true and that it this decision is down to monetary factors; this I think has been driven by commercial partners not wanting to advertise on a site which has uncontrolled forums.


...Frazer
http://www.imdb.com/user/ur1616919/comments

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

At another message board I visit (in Australia) there is a thread about the end of the IMDb message boards. Most of the people said they don't use the message boards, with one exception.

A number of them said that when they watch a movie, they look for it on the IMDb, read the cast, trivia, goofs, etc. then visit the board attached to the movie to see what other people thought, pick up on details other people spotted, or to ask a question about the movie.

I think these individual boards are a huge attraction, and therefore, a valuable asset.

At the very least, if the IMDb kills the other message boards, they should reconsider ditching the the individual boards, at least for a while.




What!!! No Gravy???

Check out the FAQ. http://tinyurl.com/cf6pvux

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience


I think these individual boards are a huge attraction, and therefore, a valuable asset.

At the very least, if the IMDb kills the other message boards, they should reconsider ditching the the individual boards, at least for a while.
Wholehearted assent!

I've posted on the general boards such as this one for only the last couple of my 18 years here. It's on those for individual films/players/directors/etc that I've always found the most in depth, scholarly, thoughtful, philosophical and rewarding discussions, which have sometimes stretched across weeks, months and even years (I was still getting replies only three months ago to a thread I opened back in '06; just enough occasional activity, apparently, to keep the thread alive).

I'm sadly aware, though, that at this point I'm only commiserating. As Sherlock's landlady Mrs. Hudson used to say, what can't be cured must be endured. But it still seems both satisfying and necessary to bitch about it.



Poe! You are...avenged!

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

The film boards are one thing, often very informative once you get away from the modern mainstream and the obvious targets such as Citizen Kane or Casablanca which tend to draw a lot of "Why is this considered great?" and not being asked in anything other than a provocative manner.

The actor boards can get hairy - it seems every one has at least one "Is he gay?" thread.

It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

"- it seems every one has at least one "Is he gay?" thread."

I think only Warren Beatty is above suspicion on that one clore... There's a rumour Borgnine will "come out" on the 21st Feb - the new Caitlin!!!! - and we won't be able to dish

Tell mama, Tell mama all....

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Trust Borgnine to put a new spin on coming out of the grave.


"Security - release the badgers."

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

actually it was Connery and he paid me to find him a beard. Here's the evidence Trev
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-y4n6AirXO7U/UPldxKiLNPI/AAAAAAAAAWk/CRMeVeCznPI/s1600/connery-zardoz.jpg

Did you find viewing that image a "positive experience" Trev ??? If ever a film <i>should have been banned it is ZARDOZ .....and at the time the BBFC were getting their panties in a bunch over Romcoms like THE NIGHT PORTER and Ken Russell's fripperies

Tell mama, Tell mama all....

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Well, it was originally going to be Burt Reynolds in the loincloth - not that it did him any good after he had that massive weight loss after injuring his jaw in a fight scene in City Heat even Sally field was going on chatshows saying "I dunno, he might be..."


"Security - release the badgers."

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Surely gave an entirely new dimension to the term 'red-diaper baby'.

50 Is The New Cutoff Age.

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000010/thread/265708058?d=265890484#265890484

It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

I dunno. Warren Beatty really liked me, so he probably is gay.

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

well I'm hoping the news will take Annette's mind of that terrible Oscar snub...

Tell mama, Tell mama all....

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Ha!

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

What was the Borgnine comment about Brokeback Mountain? Something like "If John Wayne were alive, he'd be rolling over in his grave."

That sounds more appropriate for Bela Lugosi.

It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

"If John Wayne were alive, he'd be rolling over in his grave."

Yes, but who with?


"Security - release the badgers."

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Gabby Hayes was his beard.

It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

I posted a thread a few days ago with that very same thought. The CFB, movie genre board I visited, has grown tiresome with the trolls and a general lack of fresh original posts. I have found myself more and more gravitating toward the individual movie and TV show boards. I catch Rosemary's Baby or an episode of Leave it to Beaver that strikes a chord in some scene or whatever and immediately I go to IMDB for corroboration or some other insight.

I know of no other site on the internet to be able to do that now.
I think IMDB should eliminate their genre message boards and keep the individual movie, TV and cast and crew boards.



I told you a million times not to talk to me when I'm doing my lashes!

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience


I know of no other site on the internet to be able to do that now.

And that's the saddest part. There are no other options out there, and when they're gone, that's it.



What!!! No Gravy???

Check out the FAQ. http://tinyurl.com/cf6pvux

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Glenn: Please see my reply (below) to karmala's post, suggesting a site that might fill the bill for now.


Poe! You are...avenged!

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience


I know of no other site on the internet to be able to do that now.
There's one with possibilities:

https://www.themoviedb.org/

Individual listings of films and personnel (actors, directors, writers, etc), and discussion boards available by clicking on the "balloon" icon at the upper left of the artwork for a selected title or person. It's seems sparsely populated as yet, but several IMDBers for whom I have great respect have begun trying it out.

The layout is unfamiliar to those accustomed to these boards, and it's media-heavy: photos, videos and whatnot. But it does at least offer the capability of title/artist-specific discussion.


Poe! You are...avenged!

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Doghouse, can you link me to one of the individual listings for an actor?

Let me repost here what I posted earlier in the thread, from a couple of days ago:

@Wayne, https://www.themoviedb.org looked promising on an initial glance.

I really don't care for the layout, although in theory it could be reworked.

But unfortunately, as you pointed out, there isn't much discussion yet on individual entries. For example, no discussion yet for

Lost Horizon (1937)
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/3598-lost-horizon

Some Like It Hot
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/239-some-like-it-hot

hardly anything on even
Birdman
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/194662-birdman

Gravity
https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/49047-gravity/discuss


edit: Ok, looks like they have a grand total of 166 "discussions" on movies so far, many of which have been about problems with the data in the database entries rather than discussions about the content of the actual works themselves.


and there's no way that I have found yet to access any discussion on individual artists-- say, Meryl Streep or Harrison Ford or George Lucas.


Just checked--the discussions count there has doubled ... to just under 400 threads.

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience


Doghouse, can you link me to one of the individual listings for an actor?
Sure. Selecting from your examples, here's Meryl Streep:

https://www.themoviedb.org/person/5064-meryl-streep

You can access any individual from the search field at the top of the page, or from their listing in a given film, say, Ronald Colman: just click on his listing on the Lost Horizon page.

I don't imagine activity there will pick up to any appreciable degree until this venue's officially defunct, but I wouldn't expect a flood either, for some IMDBers are certain to be exploring other options. Still, it presents an opportunity to do a little pioneering, what with a relatively clean slate and all.

I'm not crazy about the layout either, but then I found even the small changes IMDB made from time to time disruptive, and everything new takes a little getting used to.





Poe! You are...avenged!

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Tyger, tyger, burning bright,
in the forests of the night.
What immortal hand or eye,
could frame thy fearful symmetry?
-Blake

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

I have been a lurker on CFB for over seven years now (and a lurker on IMDB in general for over ten). It has been a fun and informative pastime for me. I came here looking to expand my knowledge on classic films and I most certainly have.

I know most of your names, I have enjoyed reading the conversations over the years, and I just thought I'd tell you all, thanks. Thank you for all of the great information and even though I was never a participant, I still felt like a member of this board.

I will miss spending time here and seeing familiar handles, especially those such as Clore, Addison, Maddy, and Telegonus. I learned much from you all.

For me, reading this has been a habit and a hobby and it will take a while for me to find one as great, I think.

Again, thank you! I appreciate all the hard work users on here have done!

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

I encourage everyone to make their way over to themoviedb which just opened up individual discussion boards for film, tv, cast and crew. It won't be the same, but it might be better, might not be filled with trolls.

https://www.themoviedb.org/

-------------------------------------
Allow myself to introduce...myself.

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

A.Everybody seems to be putting up websites to replace IMDB.
B. 99% of them will be gone within a year.
C.If they are using a "Free" website hosting site,the chances of them being among the 99% is abouot 100%.

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

You're right. There are a couple of huge differences with themovieDb and the other ones.

This one actually has individual boards for every movie, show, cast and crew member just like IMDb, not general discussion boards like all the other sites people are posting, secondly, this one is an actual movie website, not just a forum, and last, it's been around since 2010....

But yea, dismiss it and keep crying that they're taking away a place for you to discuss obscure movies from the 70s.

-------------------------------------
Allow myself to introduce...myself.

Re: Also…

Also, since they are using the name "IMDb" and the same message boards, they could get into trouble for copying IMDb. I hope it doesn't come to that.

~~~~~
Proud to be Canadian! 🇨🇦

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience


Everybody seems to be putting up websites to replace IMDB.


And it has very quickly become extremely tiresome.

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Where are we to go to discuss the passing of Olivia de Havilland when her time comes?

I told you a million times not to talk to me when I'm doing my lashes!

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Bad enough that she wouldn't get a banner, now she won't get the CFB send-off.

It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

Maybe it's just me, but I take more than a little satisfaction in all these relics of antiquity - golden age movie stars, magazines, radio, and yes, even typewriters and bathing caps - outliving the new-fangled internet that was supposed to make them obsolete because it would go on forever. Except the bathing caps, obviously.


"Security - release the badgers."

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

I never had to worry about trolls screwing up my smoke signals or carrier pigeons. I've had editors and teachers do damage to manuscripts and essays, but that would happen with anything generated by a word processor.



It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience


I never had to worry about trolls screwing up my smoke signals or carrier pigeons. I've had editors and teachers do damage to manuscripts and essays, but that would happen with anything generated by a word processor.

That was because you were smart enough to teach your carrier pigeons not to fly under those darn bridges where the trolls live. ;-)

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience


That was because you were smart enough to teach your carrier pigeons not to fly under those darn bridges where the trolls live. ;-)


I taught them to save their droppings for when they did see trolls coming out from under the bridges.



It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

I see this as a great opportunity for some enterprising soul(s). If this had come at a different time, or with more time between the announcement and the actual shutdown, I might have worked on something myself, but too busy right now.

There's obviously a need that currently available platforms are not filling, and it doesn't look like they will be in the immediate future.

But it shouldn't be too long before something that works, and hopefully works as well as or even better than IMDb, comes along.

10-15 years is eons in the digital age.

Remember when AOL ruled the roost?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znESQTt3L80
Does AOL even exist anymore?

How about MySpace?

As if overnight, MySpace has become an Internet phenomenon. Launched in January 2004 on a shoestring budget, it now claims more than 50 million registered profiles.... According to Nielsen/NetRatings, in November there were 24.5 million unique visitors. Each day, 170,000 new members sign up.... One analyst estimates MySpace took in $30 to $40 million in 2005, and says that number will likely triple this year.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2006/03/myspace200603


News Corp, the company run by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, has made one of its first major internet purchases.
It has bought Intermix Media, owner of Myspace.com, the fifth most-viewed internet domain in the US and owner of other sites for $580m (£332.85m).
Mr Murdoch says the networking site will drive traffic to his Fox TV sites.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4695495.stm


We just need to be a little patient. What I worry more about is the loss in the meantime of the community, such as it has been, that contributed to the boards here.

Re: IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive experience

When I think of AOL and MySpace it makes me wonder how long Facebook will last.

I know people who will actually have to go to detox when that day comes. It´s their one and only contact with the human race.




Mice work in mysterious ways.
No, dear. That's God.

Clore_2 I couldn't agree with you more!

I too have been slowly disengaging from the boards, as it has turned into a rampant grade school playground fight.
Been here going on 12 years now, and I've learned from legit posters here, and I've helped a few out as well.
Been good to interact with you, take care.
Cheers Mate
Best
Paladin

"Nothing but a silent mass of impenetrable vapour hiding its dead"
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