I can’t say as I care.
Whenever I tried reading the boards, every thread I read was trolls and idiots. Not worth my time to join. The discussion here is levels above that board.
Now if they’d replace some of the useful features they’ve removed over the years, and get rid of those too-tiny-to-be-useful profile pictures, that’d be great.
At least they have avatars.
As mentioned, Cafe Society but thats probably easier to start a new thread on a particular movie, beyond that, Reddit has a forum for movies, but have not seen anything earlier than the seventies, but I was never really looking either.
Yeah, me too. When I saw the IMDB, I knew I had to ditch my Amiga and move over to the “IBM-Compatibles” and get in on this internet thing. Luckily, Win95 had just came out. Made the switch easier to bear.
I never really got into the message sections though, so I’ll live.
Anything here is wholly unsuitable. I am not particularly fond of IMDB, going there only to read hateful reviews, but the MO is look up a film, then find a thread beneath — here one would have to go to that forum and search for a thread on a film ( which mostly wouldn’t exist ) = FILM:THREAD over THREAD:FILM.
Nor would the limited number of members here contribute much that is valuable. I myself am barely interested in films, and wouldn’t have anything to say.
The IMDB was what convinced me that this “Internet” thing was going to be huge. Back then, it wasn’t even a website yet; it was a database that you could query with commands sent via email. Since then, it’s replaced a whole shelf of reference books; it’s no accident that Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide has ceased publication.
Although I did enjoy the message boards for a while, IMDB is primarily a reference source for me. I stopped participating in the forums when they became too trolly; I always had the feeling I was surrounded by jerkish 15-year-old males who made a point of hating everything and everybody.
You can discuss the latest Hollywood movie practically anywhere on the web, but where am I supposed to go for obscure films? I would hit up the imdb boards after viewing every foreign, older, or just plain obscure films and there were hardly any trolls and always a few discussions worth reading. It was also a good place for early reviews of movies playing at film festivals. This sucks.
This is seriously the worst non-political news I’ve heard in I don’t know how long. 
You must have only checked out the boards for big, current films. Here’s an example of a thread for the kinds of movies I counted on their boards for. Not a troll or 12 year old in sight.
Exactly. Whether it’s a semi-obscure film released 50 years ago, or a microbudget indie from 2009, I am constantly seeing movies for the first time and knowing I can go to IMDb to discuss it with others who have seen it. And there just aren’t a lot of trolls on those kinds of threads.
To illustrate: anyone want to chat about Wendy Reichardt’s brilliant and devastating 2008 film Wendy and Lucy? How about Jacques Tati’s classic French masterpiece Playtime, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year? No one?
I did not know this–and I use it all the time for TV. I have to wonder if it can funnel people into discussions the way IMDb does with its massive size, the fact that a Google search for a film will bring the IMDb page up high on the results (not to mention that Wikipedia pretty much always cites a movie’s IMDb page on its main list of links at the bottom, not buried in all the footnotes).
Yes, this. Exactly this. And for movies that aren’t that widely known (like the ones I linked above), you could get into slow-motion discussions with people. Reply to those years-old messages, and they’d get an email notification, and often come reply back! I get IMDb notifications every day, and while they skew toward stuff I’ve commented on in the past week or two, at least once a week I get a notification about a reply to a comment I made literally years ago. I love that. (Soon to be “I loved that”, sigh.)
ETA:
Also this. I guess we should try to make the Previously TV boards a thing. I doubt as I said above that it can match the reach of IMDb, but it’s better than nothing.
Also, as painful as it would be (I’m in way deep up to this point), I’m seriously considering cancelling my Prime account and boycotting Amazon over this.
Still, remember when ‘Jump The Shark’ was bought by Gemstar ( TV Guide ) in order to destroy it ( as motor companies bought up streetcar systems to destroy them ); nothing ever replaced it or had the same impact.
That’s really sad. I always enjoyed reading the board and even registered to post a few times about Westworld.
I know there are other places but I liked THIS one.
Ahhh, I remember that day. It was Roger Ebert’s brilliant deconstruction of Haskell Wexler’s uncredited B-roll work in “Barney’s Great Adventure”.
But what worries me is how I’d deal with TPTB taking down this message board.
What would I do with the sudden 3-5 hours a day of extra time?
BoneTheFish tried, but last I checked it was a ghost town (and before that for certain sensitive topics leaned very far right).
Nice to see I’m not the only one upset about this. Though I’ve never participated on the boards myself, i almost always go directly to them after ive looked up whatever brought me there.
That’s a bummer. About a third of my visits to IMDB is to read the message boards and that’s what I spend the most time doing there.
I like message boards because they are topical. I might have a question or am curious what others are finding interesting about a movie and the format allows me to focus in on what I want to read about.
Now, instead I’ll probably go to Wikipedia more often.
The problem is I’m interested in more then they dry facts. I might want to know what how people are liking some noncritical aspect to a movie, or opinions on a superhero’s new costume, if there should be a sequel, why they should have stopped at the third in the series or if the slang used was appropriate to the era it was set. There are always these softer questions dependent on personal takes that every movie raises and I don’t like having to wade through 50 reviews before I find someone talking about the one thing I might be interested in.
Plus message boards allow people to directly respond on topic.
My hope is that Amazon might be willing to keep the IMDb boards going IF they were transitioned to something like the model we see working here at SDMB: users would either have to look at ads (which would make money for Amazon) or pay a fee to have a no-ads experience.
Currently, there is sometimes a pop-up ad when you first go to the movie-or-show’s main page—but no ads on the message boards.
If Amazon had simply instituted the ads-or-pay-for-membership system, there would be howls of outrage. But if they come in a couple of weeks after the announcement of closing the boards and say ‘well, we COULD keep the boards open…IF we start showing ads or make you pay not to see the ads’-------they’d be greeted as benevolent saviors of the IMDb-board-using masses.
So I’m kind of hoping that that’s what they’re up to.
Even if the board-users are fewer in number than the general-information-page IMDb users, it’s a dedicated bunch (and we’re certainly talking thousands if not tens of thousands). That’s an audience worth keeping, if Amazon can do so profitably.
Aha, kind of like the cola wars with New Coke and then “benevolently” bringing back “Classic Coke”. I like it! I hope like hell you’re right.
I remember when TwoP shuttered, they did at least rescind the plan to not archive anything, and then Previously TV came in to fill the void. Archiving the boards for the smaller films that never got much traffic would be a nice consolation prize at least. (Will that stuff be on the “Wayback Machine” at archive.org, I wonder?)
I haven’t posted on there in years, but I was very active before MySpace/Facebook. Social media sites just aren’t the same.
I find YouTube music comments to be pretty sane and positive, but then I never listen the music that is frequented by 12-yo snots. They re pretty useful for finding background information about artists, but for my selections, the comments are not often in English.
I’m in two minds about this. Part of me won’t be sorry to see it go, it’s stuffed with trolls and idiots. But on the other hand you do occasionally get into interesting discussions with other film buffs and it’s sad that they have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Youtube follows suit soon, their comments seem to be 90% from lunatics but maybe that’s just my impression. But there again I’ve had some great dialogues there with other opera fans, science/computing geeks, etc so I kind of hope they don’t go.
IMDB goes on to say that most people use Facebook and other social media but, hey, some of us still prefer message boards!
BTW I love the bit about ‘enhancing the customer experience’. Why do companies always use weasel phrases like this when they’re about to shut a service down? 