OT: IMDB closing down its message boards

[fruitbat]

I just saw this now.

IMDb Message Boards Announcement

IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. As part of our ongoing effort to continually evaluate and enhance the customer experience on IMDb, we have decided to disable IMDb's message boards on February 20, 2017. This includes the Private Message system. After in-depth discussion and examination, we have concluded that IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide. The decision to retire a long-standing feature was made only after careful consideration and was based on data and traffic.

Full message, here:

http://www.imdb.com/board/announcement

I sometimes check out the boards although it's been years since I posted.

[Marie]

Probably another response to negative posting. I've rarely looked at the IMDB boards. However I was shocked at the body shaming some people did at Lady Gaga. I'm not a huge fan of hers - I like her music - and have no negative opinions of her. I did think she was amazing at the Super Bowl - and to have people tweet and post that she had a gut was horrible to me. It was absurd. If they think she has a gut - I cringe to think of what the anonymous posters would say about me. I was uplifted by her response though. She said she loved her body and everyone should love theirs!

[thunder]

I gave up on those message boards a while ago. Too much body shaming, as Marie said. And a lot of really persistent trolls just posting negative things to start discussions, and the people who doesn't have a life and just talk about themselves. Some of those message boards didn't look like they were related to movie it was supposed to be about at all...

[Helen8]

and to have people tweet and post that she had a gut was horrible to me.

One can only imagine what the negative posters look like. I'll bet they are far from buff.

[servalan]

I have never looked at the IMDB boards, but if they are anything like some of the foul personal comments on YouTube, I am not surprised they are being closed.

[thunder]

Sometimes they were OK, but most of the times, I felt people were just there to feed their own agenda. Didn't really work out. For the famous movies/TV-series, people who were constructive and wanted to talk about the topic was either ignored or attacked and the ones wanting to talk about themselves or anything else than the topic was given a lot of attention. You didn't miss much not checking it out. I remember the Harry Potter boards was a mess! People trying to post there about he movies was literally attacked by a group of trolls who had taken over.

[Hilary the Touched]

I'm genuinely saddened to read this.
I occasionally wandered over to get more ideas about a movie that had puzzled me, and sometimes I found real and interesting insights.
But there was a lot of rubbish too.

[fruitbat]

I often used it that way, Hilary. If I'd missed something important in a movie or episode and was too embarrassed to ask people I know who had seen it, I'd wander on over the imdb's message boards. There was always someone more clueless than me who had already started a thread on the topic.