One of my favourite web sites dumbed down

I love watching movies and TV series although I usually only watch them on DVD. One of my favourite places to read about them used to be IMDb. Some time ago they already dropped the forums where you could often find interesting bits of trivia and discussions among an admittedly huge pile of garbage.

Today I wanted to check the user reviews for a movie only to discover you can no longer filter them by loved it, hated it and chronological order. Now the default and only option is "most helpful". Well # that! When I am passionate about something I like to check out the opinion on both extremes. If I love a movie I want to know if other people like it for the same things I do and if they hate it I am curious to get some idea of where they are coming from.

Chronological order also is useful. Often the first reviews are from fans, geeks, bots and paid shills. After a few weeks the reviewers tend to come from more diverse backgrounds minus bots and paid shills. It can be quite interesting to see the difference.

Well, what it comes down to is that they dumbed the site down and I lost interest in going there. Sad!

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

I think it's to help hide that the score of the movie is fudged from the actual review scores.

For instance I went through pages and pages of reviews trying to find one 5/10 or higher for last Jedi and I could not.

But the score was like 7.?/10

The vast majority were 1 star reviews.

Money money money..

Everything is getting dumbed down.

Netflix changed from a 1-5 star system to some completely useless system a while back too. It was about the same time that Amy Shumer special was released and almost universally panned.

It's like "Affirmative Action" for movies, really.

That's what eventually happens in a society where everybody gets a participation trophy.

a reply to: Reverbs

Ha, it was exactly this "Last Jedi" experience you describe when I found out I could no longer filter the reviews. And of course it is about money. Still doesn't make sense to me. IMDB belongs to Amazon. If I decide not to buy a certain movie I will buy a different one. Farewell IMDb it was nice as long as it lasted...

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

Correct me if I am wrong but wasn't there a problem with the new Star Wars movie on IMDB where "bots" were flooding the review section with negative reviews to drive rating down? If that did happen then that could be why they changed up that aspect.

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

What has dumbed down the internet is facebook and twitter with one two line banter. How developed are those ideas?

As expensive as the cost per line and in depth as the span of attention...

I blame disney. They'll probably buy IMDB soon and turn it into another marketing platform.

imdb lost my patronage after over a decade after they removed the forum section, or whatever they called it. saying go to their facebook page to discuss things.

I had spoked to many artists and members of the industry there. It was a good way to discuss the merits or lack thereof of many movies.

no longer.

shame, Did I find a movie a certain way, I'd check to see if others agreed or find insight as to why not. etc.

Now it's no more than a less confusing rotten tomatos.

and if I had one, I'd throw a rotten tomato at it. pthooey.

originally posted by: lordcomac
I blame disney. They'll probably buy IMDB soon and turn it into another marketing platform.

no loss, anyone who used it to be more than a "Who is that actor, I am sure I know them!" avenue, is no more.

let them eat cake.

a reply to: MindBodySpiritComplex

The reason was too many trolls, perverted comments and personal attacks.

I used to go on the site to find out what was happening due to detailed/confusing story lines/having missed an episode, find out history (ex: Vikings). It was a tremendous resource, and many message boards went back for many years; and I enjoyed reading people’s personal takes on movies/tv series. In my opinion it is a great loss.

“In an effort to continually evaluate and enhance the customer experience on IMDb,” the announcement stated, “we have decided to disable IMDb’s message boards on 20 February 2017.” Citing data and traffic and the boards no longer providing a “positive, useful experience” as reasons, the site’s CEO Col Needham later took to the boards to address the finer points of the shutdown, while confirming that all the content posted to the boards will be removed. “Message boards are always temporary in nature,” he wrote. He encouraged users to copy and archive content, if they want to preserve it.
www.theguardian.com...

I lost interest in IMDB quite a while ago. Now the only thing I use it for is finding the date that a movie was released and to find who that actor is and what they have been in before.

My favorite forums posts were the "100 things I learned while watching" threads.