Theories on why IMDb message boards were closed (and wiped)

Theories on why IMDb message boards were closed (and wiped) Apr 9, 2017 17:06:37 GMT

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Post by Dr. Miles Bennell on Apr 9, 2017 17:06:37 GMT

Apr 7, 2017 8:16:23 GMT Prelude said:

People saying it's because they didn't make money from having the boards -- but think about it: the boards existed for what? Something like twenty years, give or take?

If they were upset that it didn't make them money, why would they...be operating the boards for pretty much two decades, and even updating stuff, changing the emoticons a couple of years ago, etc, if money was the issue?

After 20 years of having boards I highly doubt "Wow, these don't generate us any money, lets dump it" was suddenly the concern.

You don't keep doing something for that long and then suddenly wake up and worry how it never generated money.

That's NOT the reason.

Agreed. The only way money might be involved is if overall revenues for IMDb were already declining and they could no longer a) afford 24/7 monitoring or/and b) afford additional equipment or upgrades to take on additional data and add other features. And available storage space certainly could be a reason: maybe a year before dumping the boards, they eliminated inactive posts beyond 3 months on all boards which had previously held posts indefinitely.

But then, this could also connect to the fact that some posts included information that IMDb wasn't the perfect movie website Needham likes to boast it is, and the longer these hung around, the more it confronted his ego with his imperfections. "Not enough to get rid of those damned older posts showing that; I'll do them all in".

IMDb had no boards in the beginning; it was first and foremost a data-content site. It was only around 2000 when the first boards appeared, and those were mostly movie-oriented. The "Sandbox" was the only board for "heated discussion" including off-topic stuff like politics and religion. When that got too heated for some, the "Soapbox" was added, and when *that* got too heated, along came all the other "mundane" topics, around 2005 or so. Trolling and negativity was always an issue with these boards, and they never made a dime. But they did increase the number of "hits" to the site, people coming back time and again to argue, even troll and bait, occasionally vandalize, over some sociopolitical sore spot not the least related to movies, TV, streaming, etc. And Needless was big on using the number of "hits" from "all over the world" to justify IMDb's existence, prominence and power among fans and industry alike.

So mostly it seems to me to come down to either egoistic whim - the boards have just become too boring or distracting to His Majesty to want to bother with - or internal need - to devote dwindling resources and energies to maintaining the other facets of the site. The fact that Bezos chose to speak for the decision to drop them makes me think the latter must be involved to some degree, as he has otherwise been just the site's sugar-daddy with a hands-off position toward content and management (or so CN tells it).

But then again, keeping Big Business Secrets about why this or that is done has also always been a hallmark trait of IMDb's owner-management; so we likely will never really know. What's more important anyway is how and whether the move will damage the site - and, what will happen next? Might they not next choose to drop titles or groups of entries based on so-called "lack of traffic" - silent film, black-and-white product, unaddressed TV programs entries (nightly news shows, e.g.) - and just push contemporary big-ticket items? That worries me most, as there is no site operating able to just take over the trove of obscure or historical interest data, and the couple out there seem hard-put to find the manpower needed to bring them up to IMDb's (imperfect) snuff.

--Col