IMDb eliminating its message boards

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by JozefK, Feb 3, 2017.

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  1. JozefK

    JozefK Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Dixie
    ANNOUNCEMENT: CH board moving to Get Sa... - IMDb

    Message from "Col Needham", founder of IMDb:

    your suggestion of rebuilding the boards is the first thing we considered when we looked at the next steps. We hate to cut features. The extra context is that in 2017 we are coming to the end of a multi-year technology migration which you may have seen covered in recent end-of-year messages. It is this migration which is enabling things like data publication within minutes of arrival by the database content team and new interfaces for photo contribution / display. Almost the whole of IMDb has been rebuilt behind-the-scenes on a modern scalable platform which can handle the traffic of a Top 40 web site along with two app platforms (iOS & Android) and a mobile site, plus data exports to a whole host of other systems, including Amazon Fire TV. This is on a scale which many people here are not appreciating; they still think of IMDb as a small site BUT that is because, out of all our traffic, boards are a tiny (and shrinking) share.

    As more of IMDb is on the modern platform, we get faster and faster at adding new features and improving existing ones on a huge multi-billion page view scale. Unfortunately, this means that the older technology becomes more and more of drag and disproportionately slows progress, hence our desire to finish everything in 2017. When we sat down for our annual planning cycle in the second half of 2016, we looked at the options for everything which still needed to be migrated. We had deep discussions on what would migrate and stay the same, what would migrate and be improved and also what would not be worth migrating.

    For 26 years IMDb has been collecting film, TV, celebrity and other information and creating what we hope are powerful and useful services on top of this data for our many different customers. Our strengths are in gathering, processing and publishing permanent information around entertainment. Message boards are quite a different thing than the rest of IMDb (see my comments in the post referenced above). For years, our customers have done nothing but complain about how the boards are run, what features are missing and how angry they are about how other users have treated them. This is reflected in the relative traffic shrinkage of the boards. We have reached the point where most of our customers do not even know they exist; many that do know about them have been scared away after bad experiences. We have lost a non-trivial number of customers due to bad experiences on the boards. This is wrong on so many levels.

    Even despite all of these problems, and per the post of mine which you highlighted, we still see value in the boards. However, during the planning process when we looked at the time and effort required to rebuild the boards, it just did not make sense. We can better serve customers by getting better at that things at which we are already good -- the core functions of IMDb and building things on top of the real data. Essentially, in business terms, it is core competency issue. Wrangling temporary discussions around topics like entertainment which naturally cause friction is not an IMDb core competency; you can even see this in the complaints in the last 24 hours from people who want us to keep the boards, yet then tacitly admit that the boards are not very good anyway. We see the helpful suggestions that if only we did this, that, or the other, then all the problems will disappear. The reality is harder at this scale; I am not going to address them all, but volunteer moderators, buying other software, charging subscription fees have all been examined with the full information available to us, and if there was a magic wand which could be waved, we would have found it.

    I love our boards. I ignore trolls. I am going to be sorry when the boards close. However, I am going be more excited about the new possibilities which we can build and deploy once the boards are gone and are no longer slowing us down. As we like to say at Amazon, it is still Day One.

    Col
    ANSWERED: Will staff continue to answer... - IMDb

    But the message boards for individual films and TV shows are some of the most invaluable resources for entertainment discussion on the entire Internet - removing them is going to hurt IMDb, and it's going to hurt film discourse. There's been more times than I can recall that I've seen a complex film or television show and immediately logged in to the IMDb forum for those titles and joined the conversation or read what other people had to say about them. That's all going to be gone, and that's a real punch in the gut to the film and TV fans this site has catered towards for the past 15 years

    These are fair points, but you do not have the whole picture: only the tiniest minority of customers read those boards and an even smaller set post there. The type of unique and insiteful content you describe mostly* belongs in the permanent parts of IMDb like in user reviews, trivia, goofs, plot synopses and the FAQ feature for titles and in the various biography sub-sections for names. These are sections which are used by hundreds of millions of users and are nearly all on modern platforms (we still have some work to do). This type of content can be fully be fully included and made searchable across all of IMDb's interfaces and services. Boards discussions are an unmoderated mix of fact, fiction and outright trolling which is ephemeral in nature, and is only really available on our desktop site (our mobile site has limited boards features some of which in turn are accessed by our apps). ​
     
  2. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Hmmm.
    Col Needham"Only a small minority of customers post there".

    Couldn't he have just paid someone to moderate the message board?
     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2017
    agentalbert, Planbee and PonceDeLeroy like this.
  3. Gaslight

    Gaslight ⎧⚍⎫⚑

    Location:
    Northeast USA
    This will sting the most with Indie movies or older obscure titles - I always enjoyed reading the boards there once I watched one of those.

    (those areas btw usually were the ones with less trolls)
     
    Tuco, AndrewS, PonceDeLeroy and 4 others like this.
  4. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Older movies
    Very informative and zero idiots.
     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2017
    Planbee and Gaslight like this.
  5. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    Anyone know the reason why IMDB is doing this?
     
  6. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Message board...
    Detrimental to Amazon's sales.
     
    MikaelaArsenault likes this.
  7. MikaelaArsenault

    MikaelaArsenault Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Hampshire
    Thank you.
     
    alexpop likes this.
  8. murphywmm

    murphywmm Senior Member

    The IMDB boards used to be an okay place to discuss movies, but recently they've become flooded with political crap. I can't say I will miss them at all. There's plenty of better places to discuss movies - such as this forum!
     
    MikaelaArsenault likes this.
  9. Mirrorblade.1

    Mirrorblade.1 Forum Resident

    Oh no.......... Poor Amazon...:rolleyes:. crybabies:laugh: bad movies hurt sales .
     
    alexpop likes this.
  10. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Yes ! The consumer decides anyway.
     
  11. albert_m

    albert_m Forum Resident

    Location:
    Atl., Ga, USA
    Yes there are many areas that get political, or get hit with trolls. However, there are many shows and movies that are not on the radar for that kind of crap and people can discuss, ask questions etc without it.

    Collectively, this is a lot of content that and content rarely (if at all) impacted by this kind of stuff.

    IMDB is going to lose a lot of traffic.
     
    beat_truck, Tuco, OldSoul and 3 others like this.
  12. Mirrorblade.1

    Mirrorblade.1 Forum Resident

    Maybe Amazon should just sell the site to somebody that can maintain
    it better than let be free for all as I seen on there..
     
  13. shokhead

    shokhead Head shok and you still don't what it is. HA!

    Location:
    SoCal, Long Beach
    Bet anything it's Hollywood. They bitched about posting age of actors. Hollywood cry babies.
     
    MikaelaArsenault likes this.
  14. AndrewS

    AndrewS Senior Member

    Location:
    S. Ontario, Canada
    I've been a member there (since 1999) longer than any other discussion forum. I'll really miss it for exactly the reason you mention.

    I've never used it in the fashion which many others are mentioning. I always go to a movie/actor/director etc. page and then look at the message section at the bottom of that page. No social media platform can replace that convenience.

    I think the biggest loss will just be the archived information. I'd be reasonably happy if they just locked the boards, as they are.

    This reminds me a bit of when DVDSpot (a DVD/Blu-ray cataloguing site) shut down. It was comprised almost, if not entirely, of information contributed by its users, which was then lost. Looks like the same is about to happen, here.
     
    Tuco, Planbee, PonceDeLeroy and 3 others like this.
  15. ZenArcher

    ZenArcher Senior Member

    Location:
    Durham, NC
    I wish they'd just be honest about why increasing numbers of sites are shutting down their discussion areas. They need to jam in more advertising, and its more trouble than it's worth to monitor them for spam and abuse (admittedly tougher with today's decline in manners and intelligence). And then to claim that somehow Facebook and Twitter replace focused discussions of particular films -- it just doesn't.

    Soon, Amazon will be the only place for product and media reviews.
     
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  16. kreen

    kreen Forum Resident

    This really sucks: evey time I'd watch a new movie, I'd go to the IMDB boards to discuss it.
     
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  17. Rufus McDufus

    Rufus McDufus Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    It may be only a small minority of users, but there are thousands if not millions of different boards. One for each film, TV series, actor/actress etc. etc.

    I was a systems engineer for the systems that IMDb runs on when I worked for Amazon up until 2005. They prided themselves back then that it was the largest set of message boards anywhere, though this has been overtaken by the likes of Reddit, Facebook etc. Back then as far as I recall there were still only around 30-40 people working for IMDb specifically though I suspect the number has grown, but not in quite the same way Amazon has grown as a whole. I have to agree, the boards have become a real nest of vipers and generally aren't terribly useful in gaining any useful information.
     
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  18. agentalbert

    agentalbert Senior Member

    Location:
    San Antonio, TX
    I don't think I ever noticed spam on the IMDB message boards. I'm sure there has been some, but I never noticed it, unlike other sites where the comments are always plagued with those "I make $50 an hour at home on my computer..." spam messages. There are lots of rude posts and definite trolling on IMDB, but that never bothered me too much. You could block a user if you wanted. And I find that stuff easy to ignore. I somewhat prefer the wide open unmoderated style, though I'm not suggesting it for this place. And I'd certainly prefer some level of moderation to no boards at all.
     
    Tuco likes this.
  19. keefer1970

    keefer1970 Metal, Movies, Beer!

    Location:
    New Jersey
    I've used the IMDb message boards on and off since around 2006 but in the past couple of years I've visited them less and less because the inmates were definitely running the asylum.

    Lately it seems like this is a typical IMDb message board thread:

    "What did everyone think of (name of movie)?"
    "It sucked."
    "You suck."
    "No, YOU suck, fanboy."
    etc., etc.
    (repeat ad infinitum)
     
  20. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Another thing that put the nail in the coffin was free movie downloads that littered the message board.
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2017
  21. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Using the IMDb message board just there and Amazon app appeared. :)
     
  22. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    I can't say I used IMDB boards often, but it was a useful resource when looking up relatively obscure actors and films.

    I have no doubt that moderately or hugely popular films and actors are flooded with tons of trolls on their respective boards.

    But I have looked up random relatively obscure things on there and have found useful info in the boards attached to specific actors and films.

    I do think it's ironic that a number of commentaries point out that IMDB boards are "getting almost as bad as the YouTube comments section", but then are there a ton of people calling for YouTube to get rid of comments?

    Whenever someone says a given internet community is awful or getting too rough, I always point out YouTube comments sections are always ten times worse. Some of the most vile, troll-ish stuff around.
     
  23. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Yeah, IMDb was almost humble in comparison.saying that it's getting really wacky anticipating closure in 14 days.
     
  24. Tuco

    Tuco Senior Member

    Location:
    Pacific NW, USA
    Thanks so much for posting this link. There will be some growing pains, and it doesn't mitigate the loss of so much useful information that was posted in the IMDB forums, but it's a start.
     
    alexpop likes this.
  25. signothetimes53

    signothetimes53 Senior Member

    My question: will the message board simply be locked, for archival review, or will it be removed entirely?

    I often found fascinating little nuggets of information about TV shows and movies, and the actors/actresses who played in them, in those message boards. I'd hate to see that information simply disappear for good.
     
    alexpop likes this.
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