IMDb destroyed this message board

That's progress...

I suppose these sites only have so much space to hold all our comments on.


I had a thread about the saloon doors in this movie and how I noticed they were somewhat different than most in westerns that I've seen, their shape and color. It's gone too.

Back in college, I had a very full log book with a sketch of every saloon door in every old western I'd ever watched and kind of studied that design particular for a while. The ones of the main saloon in this movie are decidely different. I've since moved on to other facinations, of course, but if I could only find that binder...





"Go back to your oar, Forty-One."

Yes I know. I was just looking back through all my old discussions and I distinctly remembered being involved in a discussion thread about this movie on this Board that has now completely disappeared. I admit it was slightly critical of the movie about things such as the strange tolerance by the Majority of the towns folk towards the damage and humiliation that Eastwood's character was heaping on the community. Also I really wanted that pathetic little drunken dwarf (that Eastwood made Sheriff) to be strung up in the Street by the bad guys when they came to town.

Yes, unfortunately IMDb does that with many boards that have alot of activity. I too have felt the very same frustration. It makes no sense to me that they delete threads from popular boards with alot of activity, yet leave ancient old threads on less popular boards for YEARS. It's as if the only deciding factor is that each board has a limited amount of space available and that's it? I have written some awesome things on various threads that are sadly nothing but a memory now 😢. Written text takes up so very little memory space! It's obvious that IMDBb gets plenty of $$$ from the annoying movie ads that block or clutter up the screen at times, as well as "pro" memberships. Why not just archive the older threads like many online forums do, instead of deleting them into oblivion?? Boo!

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George Lassos the Moon
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From a legal point of view the IMDB's position is unusual, in that the forums are actively moderated; in the event of legal action they can't argue that they have a purely reactive role. Given that the IMDB has a massive database of living people - some of whom have a lot of money - I'm not surprised entire threads simply vanish. The content is worthless, so why keep it?

In fact I'm surprised the IMDB even bothers with a separate forum element. If I worked for them I would be tempted to outsource the forums to Disqus or something similar, something that can tie the commentators to a Facebook or Google+ account. Maintaining a proprietary forum is just a lot of trouble, especially given that it doesn't seem to be integrated with the advertising platform. It's a cost, not a benefit.

There's an argument that some people have put hours of their life into posting on the forums, but that's pathetic; they've wasted their time. If their writing was any good they would publish it elsewhere. As for "discussion", I can't say I've ever seen any discussion on the IMDB. I assume the original idea was that aspiring filmmakers could share tips about cinematography, but in practice the IMDB's forums are full of people who think that if they post rape jokes on Anne Hathaway's forum page, she will read them (and burst into tears).

Seriously, the Onion's AV club sometimes has some interesting discussions; Reddit has a few genuinely informative boards; even the right-wing gun nut website AR15.com occasionally throws up some fascinating viewpoints. In contrast the IMDB's forums are a kind of sub-Yahoo! backwater.

Very upsetting and there's no excuse. Storage is cheap and infinite these days.