IMDb will be disabling its message boards in two weeks, depriving cinephile trolls and people somehow too incompetent to run a Google search of the opportunity to stand in a virtual enclosed space together and bleat.
And nothing of value was lost.
“As part of our ongoing effort to continually evaluate and enhance the customer experience on IMDb, we have decided to disable IMDb’s message boards on February 20, 2017,” IMDb stated in a post on its site.
“After in-depth discussion and examination, we have concluded that IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide. The decision to retire a long-standing feature was made only after careful consideration and was based on data and traffic.”
The Feb. 20 shutdown date also includes IMDb’s private messaging feature, if you even knew they had that.
IMDb also pointed out the many other places its users engage with their editors and content:
“Increasingly, IMDb customers have migrated to IMDb's social media accounts as the primary place they choose to post comments and communicate with IMDb's editors and one another. IMDb's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/imdb) and official Twitter account (https://twitter.com/imdb) have an audience of more than 10 million engaged fans. IMDb also maintains official accounts on Snapchat (https://www.snapchat.com/add/imdblive), Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/imdbofficial/), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/imdb), and Tumblr ( http://imdb.tumblr.com/ ).”
Good for IMDb. If only more sites followed suit. Without moderation, comments become a worthless free-for-all full of trolls (paid and unpaid), hacks, and Facebook grandparents throwing ludicrous assertions and wild personal accusations back and forth while a third party smugly interjects with the Merriam-Webster definition of “logical fallacy.” While occasionally entertaining to read, this morass is rarely edifying or worthwhile.
THR pointed out a recent example of its user-driven features’ foibles, noting:
“The viability of IMDb's user voting system has been called into question, as the ratings of movies by minority filmmakers receive a disproportionate amount of negative ratings, which are measured by stars on a scale from one to 10. Today, some Twitter users have singled out Raoul Peck's Oscar-nominated documentary, I Am Not Your Negro, as a recent example of this issue.
The doc hit theaters today and already has received 409 one-star votes from users, compared to 318 10-star votes, with a nominal number of in-between votes.”
In its announcement post, IMDb promised, “We will continue to enhance our current offerings and launch new features in 2017 and beyond that will help our customers communicate and express themselves in meaningful ways while leveraging emerging technologies and opportunities.” If you sift through the haze of corporate gobbledegook, that means IMDb users will get some new features at some point. Thanks, I guess?
Does the loss of IMDb message boards affect your IMDb experience at all? Feel free to practice your best troll techniques in our comments section below.
