R.I.P. IMDB Message Boards 17Feb2017...

[Darren Dirt]

Yeesh bro, end of the work day discovery/distraction... (4pm+)

And yes, private** company, but providing a valued service to a community that rewarded that provision with their free contributions AND (presumably) their consumer business to Amazon. As a result of such a short duration from "warning" to "closure", there may be profit downside. But the content is going bye-bye instead of just being frozen, that's the main reason some of us are so emotional about this. History that means something to a lot of people, wiped, with not much time to archive it in any formalized fashion.

http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000043/nest/265829314?p=1 https://archive.is/MjDwR mentioned that http://archive.org/web/ has a "Save Page Now" tool. But IIRC if anytime in the future IMDB adds a "robots.txt" for the Message Boards then those stored pages might get wiped from the Wayback Machine anyway :-\

They also mentioned this -- but that seems a dead-end (relies on API, which pretty sure does not touch the Message Boards) http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=The_Internet_Movie_Database


but check out these guys' MAIN page! Ambitious (but noble cause).

http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

HISTORY IS OUR FUTURE
And we've been trashing our history


It's not just IMDB -- but this is a major one, considering its uniqueness and volume of content about to be lost.


** by your reasoning, back in 2009 that Time magazine article about Geocities being lost = an over-reaction -- http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1936645,00.html -- and there should be no need for Archive.org at all?

Seems you have the POV "I don't use that service or find it valuable, so I'm not personally impacted by it being taken away with virtually no warning." Fine if you have that POV I guess, just doesn't mean others don't care.

Not about a private business "right" to do something, but what is reasonable for humanity as a whole, in a way -- precedent setting etc. Myopic businesses gotta be myopic... But Amazon boycotts are being talked about seriously all over the place. Like if Microsoft suddenly arbitrarily broke their OS end of February, sure you could say "free to choose another OS" but it's about reasonableness of moving data to elsewhere. If no stopping/delaying it, consumer backlash would be huge. IMDB decision here is not Microsft scale but definitely not small scale.

[Mr. Analog]

No, the attitude is that your content is at risk when you create it for a hosted service. iMDB has absolutely no obligation to users beyond what is agreed in the terms of service, in theory you agree to this by creating an account and using their services.

Again if deviantArt goes tits up the main thing people like me would lose are the comments. If twitter or tumblr went poof I'd lose extensive networks of semi-anonymous acquaintances, which would be a goddamn shame. In all these cases there's zero obligation on the host to make information that is important to me available (some of them actually do have archive options, again nice that they would do that, but I don't expect it)

I get where you're coming from, I've had the same feeling over the years as some large communities caved in for various reasons, you lose SO MUCH but that's the risk and there's little you can do. Feel free to vent but like... the next stage is acceptance. That pig is never coming back

[Darren Dirt]

Never doubted the "obligation" of companies -- legal or otherwise -- but there are impacted human beings that are responding like humans with emotions and whatnot.

Rewatching "Enterprise" has educated me that normal humans sometimes experience these things.


Based on a simple Google search there's a lot of folks upset but there are some that care enough to want to do something to prevent this massive chunk of history being lost for good. (Keep in mind, the most common REASON for the "upset" feelings is because sharing/reading other people's INTERPRETATIONS of [older/esoteric] movies/tv shows is WHY a person ever uses IMDB, and they have contributed over 10+ years to a public knowledge base that is used in a way similar to Wikipedia, now gonna vanish with no attempt to keep a "backup" of any kind.


Although it does seem the archiveteam folks have something running right now. There were 3 dozen folks in this IRC channel http://chat.efnet.org:9090/?channels=%23imdbgone

A few dozen Virtual Machines doing what they can http://tracker.archiveteam.org/imdb/ , using http://archiveteam.org/index.php?title=ArchiveTeam_Warrior

HUGE amount of data by the looks of it. Even after all the deletion of troll/flame garbage.


I helped spread the word that they could use help http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000043/nest/265905912 https://archive.is/vnvFK -- and now I am letting this go. If it fails and it's all gone, fine, if not then that's a bonus.

Knowing this ArchiveTeam is on it = gives me a kind of closure. I'm serious.

So, back to work I go! /MorningCoffeeBreak

[Darren Dirt]

http://tracker.archiveteam.org/imdb/

1.8 TB of data. Hopefully will be made readily available on Archive.org or elsewhere in the near future.

This weekend I went through my 812 posts since March 2005.

Was like a personal diary in a way, reminding me where my heart and mind were at during the posting.

I'm a weirdo, a nerd, I speak Pop Culture since I suck at Human. But mostly motivated by wanting to help others or make others chuckle -- that is how I feel connected and/or valuable to humanity.

That's what I got out of that post history review. Good I guess, unlike other folks who just flame and troll as a default.

[Darren Dirt]

Speaking of "speaking Pop Culture" here's a HUGE time-saver...

http://giphy.com/search/full-movies/

Found this "keyword" at Giphy because I had looked up http://giphy.com/search/fight-club and BOOM there's the entire movie in a < 60 second GIF. Wow, what a blipvert of a concept!

[Darren Dirt]

Less than a year after removing one of the highest value interaction components of the site...

...and another feature is getting the axe.

Literally, all character pages will die.

Since they have been created manually -- painstakenly, for free, by fans -- they are not consistent or structured enough to keep, apparently.

Which means 2 things to the average casual visitor of IMDB.

1) when you watch a movie and say "hey what else was he/she in?" it will not be as one-click easy and simple as it is now (apparently the FUTURE will be a "full featured character search" but in December when the current data goes bye bye there will be NOTHING.

And 2) stuff related to characters also will get Memory Hole'd. Like POLLS. IMDB offers this "solution", LOL... #OutOfTouch


1. As part of this change, IMDb will no long be supporting character lists
and polls after Dec 6, 2017.  If you wish to retain your past Character
polls, they recommend recreating any Character Lists as an Image List
and then building the poll using the new image list. They apologize for
any inconvenience this has caused, and want to stress the decision to
deprecate their existing Character experience has been an extremely
difficult one.


- via https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/changes-to-imdb-characters https://archive.is/4Z2EM



Our new character experience will support title specific images, quotes, and keywords.
Yup, no more "Moriarty" fan-built single page written over the last 2 decades by volunteers.
Now there will be a "Sherlock" ==> "Moriarty" page (maybe even one for each individual episode).

SMRT. (not.)



(Comment representing the voice of many casual users) "When I click a character page link, I expect and NEED to be taken to the main character page! There should be a link in place to be taken to the main character page, getting rid of it does no one any good.


(Another, more human response) Nooo..... I loved this function, despite it's (minor) faults.
Removing it altogether means removing access to a source of information ('what titles had a Sherlock Holmes character in it, and who played them') for which it will be hard to get a good and easily accessible answer, without IMDb.
I mean, even if the data wasn't 100% correct or complete all of the time, it was still the most comprehensive and most easily accessible source for this kind of information that I know of. Besides: even if there are other websites where I can find an answer; I don't really want to have to do that, because I go to IMDb for my film/series information.

#Sad

PS: other updates in the works at IMDB, if you care:
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/upcoming-changes-to-several-imdb-features-du6man1opd5q0



Funny thing is, I only found this by accident because I was looking up quotes of Quotes for Lewis Prothero (Character) from V for Vendetta (2005)

http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0002916/quotes
...imagine if it was for a character like BATMAN or THE JOKER or similar. Would take more work than what the results would be worth. This increasingly-casual visitor to IMDB is essentially DONE. Ciao imdb... idiots.

[Darren Dirt]

**yup, a separate page for each EPISODE.

for example, the aforementioned Moriarty

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1664530/characters/nm0778831
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1942612/characters/nm0778831

Same character, 2 different pages for 2 different appearances in the same show. Quotes just from each, instead of a single page with all quotes clearly distinguished from each other like the old format.


Good luck (for example) gathering up all your Michael Scott TWSS outbursts... 

[Mr. Analog]

Sounds like it's time to re-build a new iMDB from the ashes of the old. I mean the whole reason it started in the first place was people wanted an easy to edit community that extended beyond the old newsgroup communities.

I wonder how hard it would actually be to get something like this rolling?