Will the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb) ever reinstate its message / discussion boards?
As many of you know already, the IMDb message boards were disabled on February 20, 2017. This included the Private Message system.
They must’ve been gawd-awful to moderate, and indeed the system was strongly abused by some users. But even though I suffered a lot of abuse, I really hate not being able to discuss movies and insightful observations and themes. They were like a social network in this regard.
I know the system was inundated with trolls and had problems but I really miss being able to share discussion on the IMDb message boards.
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7 Answers
Based on my past experience with Internet discussion boards (and it’s considerable). Once a website’s gods have decided the interactive functions are more of a hassle than a desirable feature, they don’t come back.
In many cases this leads at least partially to a site’s ultimate downfall, but I don’t see that happening with IMDB. The discussion forums, though occasionally interesting, are hardly integral to the function of the site.
I think you’re out of luck. I’d start looking for a new movie-discussion site. @filmfann might know of one.
@Seek Thanks for the referal,, but I haven’t seen a good film discussion site.
IMDB is the best and most useful website for film. Their discussion board was nice, but not imperative to their appeal.
The discussion boards very often descended to ridiculous levels of silliness. However, I quite enjoyed reading people’s views on films. I watched San Andreas yesterday. I’m in shaky Christchurch on the 13th floor of a hotel, so that wasn’t the best film to watch. Rather than scaring me it had me in stitches laughing. I would have loved to read people’s reactions to that film.
The forums are gone and I can understand why. I’ll miss them though.
I occasionally read the forums to get a better understanding of some films. Sadly the site did not have mods, like we have here :-) , so 80% of responses were junk. I did enjoy the 20% good ones though.
If someone didn’t like you or your response, they could open a second account and flag you with both accounts—two flags and your response was “deleted by administrator.”
Some antagonists were so determined that they would follow you from board tp board—or would have entire “perspectives” scrubbed by doing this.
Five such deletions and your whole account was scrubbed.
If you complained, you’d first of all see that lots of people were experiencing this user-controlled censorship. And you’d be sent policy and bylaws which essentially said you must be doing SOMETHING that qualified as hate speech, sexuality, etc etc. and warned that you could be banned from the site.
REAL hate speech and personal attacks could stand forever
There was a LOT of abuse on the discussion boards
@Yellowdog Thanks for that explanation. I guess it takes a few jerks to ruin it for everyone.
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