Why did IMDB shut down its forums?

They said the servers couldnt handle the traffic....
AND asshole trolls were not making for a pleasant experience anymore
PSSSHHHH...seemed like bullshit to me
But what the hell do i know?

I think for the following reasons:

1) costs - both with server storage and paying for moderators. It must have cost tens of thousands of dollars.
2) brand - they felt that boards where people more or less troll movies and actors cheapened their professional image
3) hollywood pressure - imdb is like a linkedin for movie stars. Having posts about how horrible the person is in real life or how ugly they are or how they've aged etc wasn't what agents wanted on their clients page. I had heard of actors making the mistake of going to their page and reading what people say.

This page and themoviedb seem to have less trolls and more film fans. It's actually refreshing to have had the trolls cleared out.

I like the functionality of this page better as well. The 'threading' and all those other things got confusing.

The internet started with forums and tweeting or facebooking about a movie is not the same. I'm very glad that this page and themoviedb exist.

Because they're a bunch of butt heads.



😎

Trolling is an obvious reason. I believe the straw that broke the camels back was the Donald Trump board. That alone was enough to "sink" just about ANY discussion boards.
As to whether or not the answer was to shut down everything was like "throwing the baby out with the bathwater".

What needed to happen was to ban certain people permanently. PERIOD!

I know its not exactly easy but its necessary for any orderly discussion.

I honestly think that certain boards themselves needed to be shut down because there was little to no productive material there. Again the Trump Board comes to mind.

Perhaps the person or subject being discussed should have the right to ask IMDB to close certain boards because of irrational abuses.
Remember the abusers need and want an audience. If it becomes apparent that a certain person is contributing NOTHING but abusive material, it should be obvious that they should be banned.
I remember some little snide suggestions from IMDB that I should review the posting guidelines. This happened because I dared to dish back some crap on someone who had done NOTHING but post abusive stuff. I I was being warned for a VERY OCCASIONAL negative posting/ WHY weren't the REAL abusers long gone?
99.8% of my posts were on topic and productive. It seems like they didn't take that into account. NO I was never banned or even limited on anything.

Imdb had silly Posting Quotas which delayed the posting time between postings. For those who got into back and forth battles, lengthen the delays SUBSTANTIALLY...... and Increase if necessary. Give actual warnings and temporary bans for violations and EXPLAIN those violations if people are too stupid. 3 Strikes you're OUT.

These are basically simple things which could have helped to create a better environment.

Sadly IMDB didnt really TRY to take needed steps.
I hope that will not be the case here

there are basically 2 real reasons:
1. which is only a minor one, would be that they did not make any money from the forum, yet had an admittedly small amount of costs in comparison to running the whole mega site

2. imdb is owned by amazon and as such they do everything to stop any factor affecting their sales. the forum was a way better indicator for the quality of a movie than any other component on imdb, ergo making it harder for bad movies to get sold. amazon does not care for the catual quality of a film, they are interested in sales and if you look at a rating for example, you usually don't get the full picture. any rating for example, that has less than 10k votes is basically useless, since the studios are hiring shills to vote their stuff up and also because of fanboys mindlessly voting stuff up. this is especially a problem with indie film.

there are a gazillion of films on imdb that look like crap, have a cheesy storyline and overall look like they were done with a 2k budget. not 2k million, 2k. funny enough those films always tend to have an unbelievably high rating, like 8/10 and you look at the screen shots and think to yourself "that can't be true" and are right, it is not.

but it also affects mainstream films, because there are still people who want to know more about a film, before checking it out. the thing with the rating is, that you blindly have to rely on it or take the word of someone who wrote a questionable review. with the forum there was no escape, because not only were you able to check the actual criticism, but also the discussion that comes with it. if a significant amount of posters have the same problem with a film, in most cases there is a reason to it. if they are all over the place then they usually have no ground to stand on.

as for the official reason, that it has stopped being a pleasurable experience, that's bs. there was nothing as awesome as watching a film and afterwards talking about it.

We're nearing the one year anniversary of that fateful IMDB day. Remember the shock we all had when they dropped the news out of nowhere and said they'd shut down the forums on February 20th? (or around that date)

Good thing Jim cared about the forums and saved so much for us. I still think this is one of the better IMDB forum alternatives. IMDB2 and TMDB don't really do it for me (sorry, but it's hard to read things over there, and kind of messy in its organization of topics).

If I wanted to talk older films or see the opinions of others on older films from the 1940s, I'd have to start a thread on IMDB2 and TMDB. Here, the thread discussions were all saved and there to read immediately. That's what I love. Hopefully more former users will migrate here over time.

It had nothing to do with trolls, but with Hollywood not wanting any criticism. Because of their huge egos, but also because they believed that this criticism they couldn't control scared away the investors.

Because there was no money in it.