Sorry for seeming a bit non-tech, but what has really happened to all that history IMDb scrapped ? Has it really gone forever, or is it being held somewhere unknown. I know Jim has collected a great deal of it , but surely, there are decades of interesting stuff, that bit the dust before the VBD (very bad day ) In this era of techno magic, I guess I am wishing that it is still around somewhere. Or is it just like burning the library at Alexandria ?
shareNothing that was on IMDb at the moment of closure was lost, Internet Archive managed to save all of it.
But speaking of "decades of interesting stuff", I'm afraid that a lot of older posts are lost cause IMDb had a habit of occasionally deleting posts to make room for new posts.
Right before IMDb closed the boards, I managed to read a story by some old user who complained about a 500 posts-long thread that IMDb casually deleted. He wrote that there was such a thread on some paranormal movie board, where people would write stories about paranormal stuff that happened to them. Apparently that tread has been going for years and had a lot of interesting real-life stories. Until someone at IMDb one day decided to simply erase it. Stuff like that is really gone forever.
Thanks for that info. Sad that so much has gone forever. I shall keep looking for that warehouse from Indiana Jones!!!
shareYeah I heard they did a purge some years ago and deleted some of the oldest threads if they didn't have recent replies. And in the beginning, IMDB was mostly film nerds and no trolls, so those older discussions were high quality content.
It's a terrible shame they didn't place more value on the discussions. It reminds me of the movie studios destroying their master copies of so many older films. Especially silent films, they thought nobody would want to see them anymore after talkies came out. So if they couldn't monetize it anymore, they saw no reason to save them. Only a small fraction of all the silent films ever made are still existing to watch, and many of those were only saved because some theater owner kept a copy. (the masters were gone)