Questions for IMDb staff about the forums' closure.
1) Will the message boards for individual titles be removed, also, or just the main forums? (If the former of the two options - this is incredibly sad, as the individual titles are an invaluable resource for discussion relating to movies, and you won't find discussions on art house movies or even just older mainstream films on, say, the Facebook or Instagram pages where people are reacting to posts about Beyonce having twins.)
2) Will the board profiles be deleted? For example, I have been a member for over 15 years and currently have that listed on my account, with my join date. It has never changed, aside from very minor aesthetic tweaks, over the years - and has been a source of nostalgia when I login. Will that all be removed, and will the "my profile" page effectively be deleted altogether?
3) Will user review databases be removed? I rarely write reviews anymore, but am still - from my more active days - ranked a "Top Reviewer" on IMDb and have a couple thousand or so film comments racked up over the course of 15 years. I have no arrogance about this - frankly many of my older comments in particular make me cringe to read - however it will really sadden me if this is all purged one day, especially if it happens without notice and is tied into the message boards shutting down.
Unfortunately this is what social media has done even to once great resources like IMDb - everything is now about instant reactions, Facebook posts, generating compulsive reactions. No one cares to take time to dig deep. This was a wealthy resource for like-minded film obsessives over the years, a place for people to get together to talk about any movie or television show, and now they're telling us to instead take our conversations to Instagram posts. It's depressing, but it's not entirely surprising, I guess.
After ten years or so, I've finally changed my signature!