Trolls?

"I think the real reason was because they couldn't make money out of it."

Exactly what I think.

I think the real reason was because IMDB has become such a huge tool for Hollywood that they needed to limit the "damage" done by posters trashing movies or actors. If one take a look at the reviews and ratings just after release of a new movie it is ALWAYS a whole bunch of overly positive ones by studio shills. It is a long time since I started learning how to filter out all the fake reviews and ignore the rating of a new movie. Checking the headlines of the forums would more often than not tell me more if the movie was worth my time.

Forums like these is just to hard to control with the number of posts users make in comparison to the reviews. With the amount of money IMDB makes, keeping the forums up with some moderation tools would have been cheap compared to the hit in clicks they will get from all the angry forum users leaving.

I know this may not be popular, but I'm for a posting limits for new users.
A sock account (or 10 of them) should NOT be able to make endless threads to pollute the forums. IMDB's problem was they needed to be more strict regarding new accounts. A sock account was able to post just as much as a 12-year IMDB veteran. Regular users actually don't make many threads. Sock trolls made them all the time for attention. It's their social interaction for the day.

If we bar them from even making a thread, that should cut down on attention-grabbing troll material.

When that is taken away from them, next they'll turn to trolling through the posts. But a posting limit would again make it hard for them. Perhaps they only get 10 posts a day for the first two months (play with the numbers - just using a quick example). Now, the problem here is, this would also affect us, since we ourselves are technically new to MovieChat too.

But I think regular users can and will respect the rules, and understand that MovieChat does not have the same size of IMDB's staff. If IMDB was an infested mess with a large moderating staff in place, imagine how hard it is to watch over potentially hundreds to thousands of users one day over here, without that large staff. Jim is almost like a one-man army right now. I trust that regular users will understand the need for more "rigidity" in posting privileges.

And regular users do an average of 10 posts or more a day anyways. I don't think we'll even notice the limitations. It's the trolls who will feel silenced, because they spend all day (wanting) to make 20-30 attention-grabbing posts.

This is just an idea. Maybe an upvote/downvote system like Reddit could also work, where downvoted 'spam/troll posts' quickly become invisible? There are downsides to that system too, I'm aware. Whatever we settle on here, I just want to add a few more barriers to the troll infestation. Whatever makes it harder for them, and frustrates their eager need for attention/destruction, should help considerably in making MovieChat an enjoyable place to discuss movies.

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