Box Office : Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boards.

Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boards.

Here's an idea, don't delete your account.. instead create many more fake accounts and vote on every movie as a 1 out of 10 stars.. doesn't matter how great it is, how much you love the movie, how much it made you cry etc etc... VOTE 1 STAR FOR ALL MOVIES/SHOWS

What will happen?

Well, once the honest votes that we usually cast are gone, IMDB will ratings will start TANKING... doesn't matter how great the movie is, IMDB's ratings will show it looking like garbage making the site even more irrelevant since the reviews wont be accurately portrayed. More people will stop going to the site since the ratings are always wrong and Amazon will have no control over it unless they decide to remove ratings next.

Think about how much we could effect the ratings if all the board members decided to do this as a mass group. Especially on any Amazon produced film.

Overall it probably wouldn't do much, but seeing as how it's currently at #181 in the IMDb top 250, we could, fairly easily, get Manchester By the Sea out of the top 250 by voting it a 1. It doesn't deserve to be in the IMDb top 250, anyway (I gave it a 6 before dropping it to a 1 a few minutes ago). And, while it wouldn't put Amazon out of business, it would certainly not make them happy to see their little vanity project drop out of the top 250 before the Oscars and after such a short time on the list. This would allow us to see if the forum users are as "small" a group as they claim. Copy this post and paste it again and again if/when it gets removed.

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa

Wouldn't work. Votes don't count if they don't fit a statistical valid voting pattern.

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa

IMDB already is irrelevant. Without the boards there's nothing here that Wikipedia, metacritic, and rotten tomatoes doesn't give you. I think they'll find without the boards traffic to the site will vanish fast.

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa

Wikipedia rips off a ton of stuff from IMDB so it is not strictly a substitute. Also, the IMDB is the only place I know of where you get a full list of cast & crew. The real question for IMDB is will it remain as comprehensive if they no longer offer a carrot for its most active participants? I come nearly every day to read the boards and will often make corrections, add trivia and so on. If I stop coming everyday then the amount of free time I donate to IMDB will also decrease. It's a very short-sighted view IMO.

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa

I think they will re-think their decision once they see the huge drop off in traffic to this site.

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa

It will be arguably too late thought, if all message board user completely stop using the website (worst short time scenario), it will not change the traffic, well say 250 million unique visitor a month to around what 247.5 to 249.5 million ?. Looking at the number of people signing those petition, not that many message board enthusiast.

And we are a specially bad traffic (we message board user all have adblockers, much more than the general population and worth very little, usually an expense not a source of revenue). When was the last time you clicked on a ad when using the message board for example ? (Me it would be about never, I never see one even)

The website content value could go down by loosing the best contributors (or not, maybe the studio and movie star will start contributing exclusive content on the new platform and will bring much more and much better traffic than trivia, reviews, list and other user contributed content) but that will be something visible only in say 1-2 year.

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa

for me the movie talk was nice, but there were so many conversations about TV shows that will know be lost and never had.

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa

It's less about loss of traffic as loss of content. It may only lose them the 10,000 or so who've signed petitions, but they should be worrying about what message board contributors contributed to the site. They may have made up only a tiny part of the IMDB's footfall, but I'll wager that most of the reviews, corrections, bios, award info and additions to he site came from active message board users. Without the boards to at least give a forum to create the impression that their contribution is valued or at least offer some quid pro quo I suspect that will gradually dry up and the site will merely become a lifeless credits list.



"Security - release the badgers."

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa


It's less about loss of traffic as loss of content... but I'll wager that most of the reviews, corrections, bios, award info and additions to he site came from active message board users.



You would win your bet, some content will be loss.

But maybe some will be gained by being a 100% business friendly platform, maybe the business side will start putting more content on their movie page.

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa

But that would only make it relevant to new films: the whole database being constantly updated on older titles aspect would fall into ruin.


"Security - release the badgers."

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa


But that would only make it relevant to new films


I would imagine that it is where almost all the potential money/traffic is. And now with the franchise movie announced year's in advance, a film can be a not yet released movie with an imdb page for 2,3 year's, if not more.

But yeah, except for the more popular title getting remaster type of edition to promote, I imagine smaller title and new very small new title that are feed by the filmmaker themselves will go away (except for a dry factual/already there content).

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa

It does sound like they are going the corporate route, and Amazon may take the view that most of the traffic comes through pages for recent movies anyway. But this is what I don't understand: the message boards add very little overhead and the "boarders" are probably their primary content creators, so they are getting a lot of free labor. They may take the view that the free labor is expended on pages that are traffic light so it doesn't offer them much value overall, but it does offer them a monopoly. Other film sites have come and gone, and those that are still around don't measure up to the IMDB. Not even the mighty BFI or AFI databases are as comprehensive as IMDB. Offering a sub-optimal product actually creates a gap in the market: Myspace and Friendsreunited were both usurped by Facebook because they were sub-optimal.

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa

So there's hope for me yet...?


"Security - release the badgers."

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa


Other film sites have come and gone, and those that are still around don't measure up to the IMDB. Not even the mighty BFI or AFI databases are as comprehensive as IMDB. Offering a sub-optimal product actually creates a gap in the market: Myspace and Friendsreunited were both usurped by Facebook because they were sub-optimal.


I imagine that contrary to Myspace, Friendsreunited or Facebook Amazon can sleep without much fear about IMDB just completely closing, I don't think IMDB is even mentioned in there annual report (that will be soon have over 150 billion in annual revenue).

If something else come and take control of the market because it is better, it could even end up being positive for them (sell more movies, if a new platform is more popular and better at selling movies)


But this is what I don't understand: the message boards add very little overhead and the "boarders" are probably their primary content creators, so they are getting a lot of free labor.


I would imagine not much overhead (at least not much in term of disk space, even thought they delete old message aggressively, so maybe the software infrastructure is so old that it does not scale well but maybe it is heavy in number of transaction, a Game of Thrones episode slow it down, even crash it). But if you want them well moderated, the hundreds of thousand of them (millions ? with individual actor, director, tv episode, etc...), it must be a serious hassle.

You can easily keep them if you decide to not moderate them well, like it is now, but that could limit business and sponsor participation to your content.

Imagine the business YouTube would loose if closing the comments section was not an option for the uploader.

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa

Logan, why don't u join this page http://imdb2.freeforums.net/. It looks pretty similar to this one and your support is essential -)

Re: Make IMDB Irrelevant!!!! Plan to get back at them for taking our boa


Here's an idea, don't delete your account.. instead create many more fake accounts and vote on every movie as a 1 out of 10 stars.. doesn't matter how great it is, how much you love the movie, how much it made you cry etc etc... VOTE 1 STAR FOR ALL MOVIES/SHOWS

wrong thinking.. see the idea I shared on this board..
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