MovieChat Forums > General Discussion > Welcome to MovieChat.org

Welcome to MovieChat.org

posted 8 years ago by jim (137)
157 replies | jump to latest

Hey guys,

Jim (founder) here. I thought I'd start a post where everyone can let me know their thoughts/suggestions publicly (I've been getting tons of emails, but decided to create a post so everyone can see and follow the discussion). For now, here's a mini-FAQ that addresses some of the more common questions I've received via email since we launched earlier today. Please continue to ask away!

1. How many movies/posts does the site have? Is it a full or partial backup/archive of IMDB?
We currently have a message board for every single movie and TV show on IMDB (that's over 4 million!). To access the message board for a particular movie/show, simply search for it in the search bar at the top of the site. Alternatively, you can go to moviechat.org/movies/IMDB_ID, where IMDB_ID is the IMDB id of the movie/show (e.g., tt0903747). I am also currently working very hard to back up as many posts on IMDB as I can - we currently have 3 million posts backed up so far, all accessible here on MovieChat.org, and I'm continuing to add more and more.

2. Are there legal concerns about archiving IMDB's posts?
No. Before I became a software engineer, I was a lawyer for 4 years practicing in the IP and copyright space, and thus I have a deep understanding of the current situation, which is partly why I decided to start this site. Furthermore, I have spoke with several individuals at AMZN/IMDB, all of whom state that the message boards are of absolute minimum value/concern to the company, and it is highly unlikely that the company would pursue any legal action should someone attempt to archive the boards. In fact, IMDB was actually considering creating an API / data extraction tool to allow users to retrieve whatever they wanted before the boards shut down, but they decided it just wasn't enough of a priority for them (it wouldn't bring in any revenue, so why should they do it?). The (much) more likely scenario is that a few individual users may directly request to have their posts removed (much like you can request Google to remove personal information about you from its search results). Such an action would have a very minimal effect on the overall content of our site.

3. Will you be adding pages for actors and other information/metadata?
If there is enough demand from the community, then absolutely. My current focus is on archiving as much information as possible from the IMDB message boards before they shut down, but once I complete that, I will begin working on the most popular requests from the community.

4. Will you require donations to keep the site running?
Donations are nice, but I am fully financially committed to this site, regardless of donations. After the terrible experience we all went through with IMDB, I pledge to keep this site up come hell or high water.

[–] curiouscat (71) 8 years ago

I vote for archiving the actor/director/etc boards! It would really suck to lose them, so if you could, that would be awesome. :)

And thank you for doing this! I was never signed up on the IMDb, but I always lurked on the boards for additional information. And now I get to continue doing that here, lol.

[–] jim (137) 8 years ago

Thanks for letting me know curiouscat. I'm actually in the process of archiving at least a limited subset of the actor boards!

[–] lennonforever (2453) 8 years ago

You sir ,are an angel and a great humanitarian .

[–] Bargle (21) 8 years ago

Great idea. Thanks for starting this.

[–] klownz (478) 8 years ago

Huge thanks for building this site! I have one request... Please back up the Horror Board! The horror board is a very active community so you would definitely attract plenty on new members.

[–] Cornelia123 (784) 8 years ago

Jim, it's fantastic what you have done, so one big thank you to you!

The only problem I've had with the site is that I have noticed how not ALL posts from a thread have been archived. Where in IMDB a thread could have several pages of posts, here you only have one page. Can this be fixed so that ALL the old posts are attached to their threads? Some replies to posts are very informative and I think it would be nice to somehow safe them, even if the threads do run to several pages.

[–] Cornelia123 (784) 8 years ago

Oh, one other question!

Will be able to EDIT our posts at some stage? Just realised I wrote 'safe' instead of 'save' in my last post and was going to edit it but couldn't. lol

[–] wanton87 (934) 8 years ago

“Will be able to EDIT our posts at some stage?”

I was wondering this as well Cornelia123. This site is only a few days old, and I think that Jim's main priority right now is to archive as many threads from IMDB as possible before they pull the plug.

I'm hoping that some of the first features that Jim implements is a way to delete/edit our posts, and an “ignore user” option. We also need a way to edit our user profiles as far as passwords and other important settings go. But at the moment this isn't his 1st priority, so I guess we will have to be patient.