14 DAY TRIAL // One of the most famous sites dedicated to movies, IMDb, has announced that it will be closing its message board.
Although it was created with the purpose of encouraging people to discuss movies, actors’ performance and so on, the forums were actually full of haters and trolls, attacking not only movies they disliked but also the people who expressed an interest in one movie or another.
February 20 will be the day the boards finally close, IMDb said. This decision was made after they determined that the boards were no longer providing a positive and useful experience for most users. There’s also the fact that traffic to the forums wasn’t that high anymore either, so they’re cutting back on those areas that are no longer profitable.
Not a surprise
This might be sad news for those hardcore fans that like to dissect movies, to talk about the blunders they noticed or the plot holes they discovered, but it really shouldn’t come as a surprise. The boards were very lightly moderated, which made the movie fans relatively happy, but also left the door open for trolls to do their bashing left and right.
Empty comments, personal attacks, racism, bullying and so on, they all went unchecked. It is easy to figure out that there probably were loads of complaints from those earnest users who simply wanted to discuss their favorite movies.
There’s also the fact that message boards are not really that vital anymore. They’re something that people used to frequent in the past. This, now, is the age of social media. Facebook alone has countless pages dedicated to movie fans, thousands of groups dedicated to all movies, some movie genres or some franchises. If you want to discuss your theories about a plot twist, you can do that there now, instead of visiting a message board.
Times have changed, and message boards are borderline obsolete at this point.