IMDB Message Boards - what You Did or Didn't Like About Them

The message boards were not always active. For instance, I would hope that this website will be able to alert anyone on a specific thread based on whoever responds. On IMDb, you could never discuss movies nor shows because it could have been months, years, when the last individual would have responded.

What I didn't like was the trolls,esp the ones who would write paragraph after paragraph about something not even related to the movie.

One of the things I didn't like was how they would periodically wipe boards after recent activity. So many great discussions were lost that way. I could understand with something like the politics board or the soapbox that were both super-active and not movie discussions, but when it's a board for a movie like A History of Violence (which wasn't even THAT active of a board), it was quite annoying.

I still loved the site overall, but yeah, that was irritating.

I was really tired of "She looks exactly like" threads, especially because 99% of the time they looked nothing alike.

Two things come to mind:

The vast and generally nasty, arrogant and argumentative nature of threads that came in. (There seemed to have been some shift toward this within the last 10 years.) Some people say just ignore talk like that...but if I were at a party or dinner table (or job) where that became the atmosphere, I'd just leave. Or frequent it waaaay less. Life's simply too short.

Also, discussing classic movies or stars with starry-eyed fans who just post over and over that a certain star is, like...the second coming of, whatever. I've watched and read about old movies and who made them all my life; all those professionals had pluses and minuses, like performers today (EXCEPT, OF COURSE, TUESDAY WELD!!!) (sorry for the outburst.) But it's weird to try to talk realistically with a glassy-eyed fanatic who is, basically, out of touch. Especially when they have to insult other classic stars to build their own favorite up. It's just...stupid. And almost a little scary!

I liked that I could read opinions of people from years ago that provided insight to whatever I was looking at. Especially after discovering an old game or TV show that I missed when it was new. It was neat to go back and see the initial impressions and discussions when it was popular.

I liked that I could get alternate points of view that I wouldn't have thought of myself.

I liked that there could be frank and honest discussion, without fanboy moderation. Many fan sites won't allow criticism of the show they are built around.

I liked that I could establish relationships with board "regulars" and have limited off topic social discussion during the off season of TV shows.

Of course all of this can and did lead to outright trolling. I didn't mind it. I blocked whomever I felt necessary on the boards I frequented and moved on. But I can see how user can let it get to them, in general, leading to the downfall of the whole thing.

I just don't get why they didn't attempt a transition to a paid access. Even for a small fee, it would prevent the serious trolls from creating multiple accounts just to harass certain boards or individuals. Hell, I would have paid $5/yr or $25 lifetime or whatever. Trolls would be less inclined to be abusive, because once they were banned they would have to pay another fee every time they wanted to create a new sock account. As it was, a troll could create unlimited accounts for free for their trolling evils.

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The one thing I didn't like besides lack of moderation was the inability to search posts. It lacked other modern features such as the ability to embed photos or videos, or the ability to subscribe to threads or boards, but the size of the community made up for what was lacking. However, I think a site like this has the potential to be better than IMDb as long as the creator doesn't stop improving these boards after carrying over all the features we're familiar with.

Another feature I've seen talked about is crossposting, which is the ability to simultaneously post on an actor and movie board. I've seen it mentioned on Hashed, and think it would be a fine addition if it can be implemented here.