Browsing the sci-fi movie thread I clicked a few links to check out the suggestions and instead became intrigued by the links themselves. Some people link to the Internet Movie Data Base and others to Wikipedia. I got to wondering what were the pros and cons of each. Personally I use Wikipedia so that’s the set up I’m familiar with. It treats movies as just another media and puts the story front and center. That works for me. I’m guessing the people who prefer IMDB have more of an interest in films as films. Thus the attraction of having the movie stats at the top of the page with the story relegated to a brief synopsis which you have to jump to to even finish. Does that sound about right? I’m interested in why people prefer one resource to the other for movie info.
Apparently, anybody can post to Wikipedia. But the information is subject to review.
I’ve seen too much unchallenged crap posted to IMDB. The site has limited uses… (And the comment section makes SDMB look like the fucking Algonquin Roundtable.)
IMDb is generally written by professionals and is moderated and vetted - the “fun stuff” categories being lightly moderated in most cases. (I’ve written two or three entries more or less from stubs, but I think most new films are entered by the studios or someone highly enough placed to have all the information at release.)
WP is written by whoever cares to write followed by whoever cares to undo their changes.
When it comes to movie facts, I’ll look at and rely on IMDb far more than WP, which often draws its info from the former anyway. I’ll concede that WP is at its best for this pop culture stuff, where accuracy doesn’t matter all that much anyway, and it presents films in a more readable, accessible format.
I usually use Wikipedia since it isn’t blocked at work and usually has the same basic information. I’ll read IMDB sometimes at home if I want to read the trivia or goofs.
I notice that Wikipedia often lifts information directly from iMDB, and that iMDB seems to lift things directly (phraseology and all) from Wikipedia (especially in the “trivia” section.
Wikipedia vs iMDB? They’re often essentially the same thing.
I think of Wikipedia as a general resource, and IMDB as one tailored to movies and related entertainment.
And by hobbyists. And by people with no life (trust me on that one 
).
IMDb is considerably more comprehensive on the official stuff. While it doesn’t quite have every movie and TV show ever made, the ones it doesn’t have are truly obscure, lost things. It has entries on nearly everyone who acted or worked on the movies and TV shows it has entries on. It comes close to being a hyperlinked combined cast and crew list of virtually every film ever made (with, again, the exception of some things you’re unlikely to ever see). The non-official stuff is sloppier. It has interesting trivia and goofs about many of those films, but this isn’t checked very carefully and is likely to contain mistakes and omissions. Things like the budget, the box office, and the alternate titles for the films are also hit and miss. Some actors have useful short biographies and some don’t. The links to outside reviews of the movies is useful but unlikely to be very complete, especially for very old films. The reviews that people contribute to IMDb are obviously just personal opinions. The average of their ratings tells you something perhaps. It’s neither the average critical opinion nor the average moviegoer opinion but somewhere between them. It’s something like the average opinion of a hardcore moviegoer. This is more true for films with thousands of reviews that ones with a few dozen of them.
Wikipedia is missing many of the obscure films, all of the actors with only a few credits, and most of the crew members. Where it truly shines is the entries on major films, actors, directors, and perhaps screenwriters. These articles are solidly researched. They often look like the outline of a good biography. This is often because the facts are taken from some published biography of the person.
Wikipedia and IMDb serve different purposes. Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia with well-written articles on every major subject, but it has little to say on very minor topics. IMDb is supposed to be comprehensive folder with a file for every film, actor, and crew member. It doesn’t feel the need to consistently and accurately fill out its entries with biographical, trivia, and other sorts of supplemental material.
Wikipedia has better descriptions and I like their “Reception” section, overall I prefer it even though it won’t tell you who the hairdresser or best boy was.
You have to differentiate between IMDb’s movie data sections and what even they call “the fun stuff” - trivia, goofs, and quotes. The latter three come from fandom and are often erratic, duplicated or just plain wrong. They won’t approve every suggested entry (I have two or three completely factual and relevant points that never seem to make it past the vetting stage) but they don’t seem to waste time checking the validity of many of them, either.
But the data sections are far more meticulously maintained. I had to submit a complete set of screen captures to verify the cast and crew listings of one rare item.
In the words of Darkman, you gotta be shittin’ me. Setting aside vague handwaving about notability, which mostly invoked to keep every two-bit software creator from inserting a page for himself, WP is absolutely loaded with trivial topics.
ETA: Although there are superstar editors who will delete additions to entries that fall beneath their personal standards of interest.
I like the cast/crew and Trivia sections on IMDb, but I like the “story behind the movie” sections (Production, Reception) in Wikipedia (when there is one).
I go to Wiki for the plot summary and links to reviews, and IMDB for the talk. IMDB’s forums are disparaged, but I think it depends on the subject.
If the movie, TV show, actor or tech person is a real concern for me, I will check both sources. I was familiar with IMDb first so I’m more comfortable with it.
On new shows and episodes, it’s sometimes the case that players in an episode won’t be listed at IMDb until maybe later – if ever. In those cases the “home page” for the show may have the needed data. Otherwise I have scrounged around in reviews and promos to get a fix on who that was that was in that episode. It may take weeks or longer for IMDb to get up-to-date on people.
As they say: it depends.
I’ve come across many, many obvious errors on IMDb and there’s no simple way to get them fixed. In theory it should be more reliable, but in practice it isn’t. You get what you pay for in both cases.
Problems with errors? Just let me know. I’ll take care of it.
For precise release dates of movies I’ve found that IMDb is almost always wrong. That is, anyone can easily look in old online newspaper archives and find a given movie in theaters some time before IMDb says it was released. They may be in the right ballpark, but if you’re doing research and care about finding out an exact release date, don’t trust it.
I always go to Wikipedia.org first, because when you do the cursor is automatically placed in the search box. At imdb.com, you have to put it there yourself. Man, is that annoying! 
Seriously though, this does bug me to no end. They used to always have an ad at the top of the page that would pop up just as I was trying to put the cursor in the search box, which would invariably move down, resulting in me clicking on and having to then kill an unwanted ad. Arrrrrgh! Fortunately they’ve stopped this.
In all seriousness though, I go to IMDB first, because it’s been around much longer and it’s just automatically what I do. If I want a quick synopsis of a movie I haven’t seen, I like Wiki for that, as the basics of the movie are usually given at the top. Yet wanting to know as little as possible about the actual plot of a movie before I see it, I generally don’t read the Plot section until later. Probably my favorite thing from either site is the Trivia section of IMDB.
It’s the “b” that’s supposed to be lowercase, not the “i”. IMDb. It’s not owned by Apple.
I prefer linking to Wikipedia, just because it provides the kind of information you’d want to find a copy to watch, or would remind you of the movie you saw once but had forgotten about. IMDb is formal and bland, but consistent, and includes obscure crew and cast which sometimes is pertinent.
If you link to Wikipedia, the name of the movie is in the URL can can be seen when mousing over. I hate when someone puts in an inline link like " the most accurate depiction of Egyptology ever to come out of Hollywood" and I have to click the link to know what movie they’re taking about.
Wikipedia usually has an IMDb link at the bottom of the page.