Just registered there and searched for a few titles, the TV show Legion for instance but no archived posts there. Did find some for Star Wars IV but certainly not all the IMDB posts for that film. I got one page of threads and a totally bewildering date range with a bunch of threads from 1 to 10 months ago followed by a half dozen threads from 47 years ago! I know the IMDB has been around for a while but not that long.
The site definitely needs work.
ETA Maybe they will need time to migrate all the threads.
Right, I am not in touch enough with modern IT to have been able to predict whether the migration would have been essentially impossible in this time span, or actually quite easy and nearly instant. It appears that it’s maybe something in between.
My guess is that a “migration” of the message boards to a new site is entirely feasible, if it’s authorized. The database containing the messages could be copied to an external hard drive and moved to another website. But of course this is completely unauthorized. It’s the same thing that’s happened to the SDMB more than once.
I don’t know about “completely”. There have been messages from the IMDb management saying people can use the time to archive any posts they want to save.
The announcement says that the two-week delay in the shutdown (ending tomorrow) is to allow users “ample time to archive any message board content they’d like to keep for personal use.” I think they mean that if you want to save a few posts to read later, that’s fine. But wholesale screenscraping is probably not what they meant.
Wow, they couldn’t wait until the end of the day to pull the plug, apparently–a couple of minutes ago, POOF.
Rather nasty of them.
ETA–they may be pulling off one server at a time—boards for two movies I looked up are gone, but another is still there, for the moment.
Yeah, I can still get through on a few boards but not before I get the ‘Oops something went wrong’ message and have to refresh once or twice to get through. I’m not sure where their servers are but I’d guess they’ll pull the plug on them at midnight in the time zone they’re in, or as you say one at a time ending then.
They didn’t wait for midnight in the USA–maybe it’s midnight in some part of the world. But all who happened to be on a message board page get this when trying to get to another message board page:
The URL shows that it previously had been a message board page (and it may not be possible to get to that page unless one has a saved bookmark or such for a message board page).
…So at this moment, though it’s certainly still the 19th in the USA----for Amazon, it’s some day in which February 20, 2017 lies in the past.
As I said earlier: rather nasty.
(Is there anything more loathsome than “corporate speak”…? “*We are passionately committed…” *Gadzooks.)
Well, perhaps we should all bone up on our flag work, given the geo-political state of the world. And as we gesture frantically across the post-apocalyptic landscape, I’ll be enjoying the thought AMAZON IS DEAD AND BEZOS IS SUFFERING IN HIS BUNKER, HA HA.
Yeah, all vanished into the ether now. Whenever a company promises to ‘enhance the customer experience’ you can guarantee they’re going to take something away from you. Col Needham should be thoroughly ashamed to be associated with such weasely doubletalk, the guy was once a genuine enthusiast who with other movie lovers just wanted to provide a real service and did it for the love of it. I wonder where that guy went?
That’s right, Col Needham was the one who actually engaged with me a bit. I cited examples of threads where very low-profile (but critically acclaimed and masterful) films were being discussed without trolling and in very sophisticated ways. He acknowledged that some of the “title boards” like those I cited were “hidden from trolls”, and that if the traffic was light enough, discussions could go on for years. But he insisted that any board with even a little more traffic would “break” if it didn’t purge threads periodically, so a lot of good content was being lost. And he maintained it was better to preserve that kind of thing permanently through FAQs and the like.
My counterpoint was that the high level of intellectual discourse on these films had emerged from a process of discussion and debate, a kind of dialectic, with people rebutting points or adding to them. That if you just sit there with a blank screen and “FAQ” or “Trivia” or anything else in front of you, you won’t produce the same quality of prose. I certainly won’t, anyway. I went on to point out that there are some circumstances (like movies with ambiguous or controversial endings, or characters whose motivations or basic ethics can be argued either way) that can’t be covered at all except in a debate format.
In this welcome message to MovieChat.org, the founder says he was formerly an IP lawyer and is confident there is minimal risk of copyright legal action; he also says about the question of donating to the site:
Yikes.
Not only did they kill the message board but i think they killed their website too.
The whole thing feels like a huge ad.
Fugly. Time to look elsewhere.
Thanks for this–very interesting. And of course I agree with your point that for many movies and even television series, a “FAQ” or “Trivia” section is wholly inadequate to addressing the issues that engross viewers.
I’d add that review-sections are just as unsatisfactory; for many titles, what brought us to IMDb was a desire to learn how a particular element of the plot was interpreted or received by others–and reviews, notoriously, avoid discussing the plot (spoilers!) of the work in question. Only a forum with ongoing debate really serves the purpose.
And it’s disheartening that (apparently) Bezos was so concerned about keeping the giant studios happy. Their reported disgruntlement with the forums never made much sense, anyway: the influence of the forums on opening weekend attendance seems unlikely to be more than a fraction of a percentage point, and a small fraction, at that. Surely the combination of Facebook, Twitter, and face-to-face discussion dwarfs any IMDb Message Board impact on people’s impressions (on whether or not a movie is worth seeing).
(I could see the Message Board impacting DVD and streaming revenues down the line, maybe. But not opening-weekend box office.)
Anyway, I’ll certainly look at the alternative sites mentioned in this thread. I know SDMB users will share whatever they find (as will I). Many of us will continue to feel a stab of disappointment as our usual routine–see a film or show, then check out Wikipedia, then progress on to IMDb–is short-circuited.
It’s always been a mass of ads if you’re not logged in (or ‘always’ for the years I’ve been using it, anyway). I don’t know if the basic look has changed for those not logged in, but the main pages look the same as usual to me, today.
That said, I don’t see much reason to go there anymore. I guess if I’m interested in the production side of a work (which isn’t as well covered on Wikipedia as far as lists of names is concerned), I might go to IMDb again. Otherwise, probably not.
:mad:I am inordinately pissed off at this. I KNOW IMDB was populated with trolls and idiots and had a reputation as having the stupidest posters on all of the internet. But I could sift through the sea of shit to find an occasional voice of reason, and if I wanted a question answered, or something I didn’t get clarified, I could ask and get a decent answer within a day. Now I guess I’ll have to go to the AV TV Club or try reddit. So now IMDB is only good for telling me what shit movie is top of the shit heap for the weekend, what bimbo is going to be in the next Batman movie, and whose birthday it is today. Woot.
