As people may know, the latest Mad Max movie has come out in the last few weeks and gained some praise for its handling of its female characters. As expected of any movie that receives critical/commercial success, this has turned its IMDB board into a pit of vipers. Beyond the typical differences of opinion that get out of hand, Rape and beating threats have been thrown about, out and out verbal abuse against other posters, stalking and harassing posters when they move on to other boards, the works. My question is: based on people's experience or impressions of the site as a whole (not just that example in particular), what do you think of how it is regulated? Do people think the modding should be more severe and repeat offenders quickly get the boot, or that the current system of 'put them on ignore' should be left as it is? Just what do people think of its board system in general?
Unreadable format, youtube level commentary. And no reason to change that, IMDB doesn't exist as a forum. That's just an extra.
Exactly. And some of the forums are just insane. The X Files one I don't visit that often due to crazies. @ Hela: Not as bad as what you mentioned, but it's still insane what some people do on their boards.
The Comments and User Reviews for films, series, episodes, and personalities have always had their share of nutbags.
Well, not quite. I think the average level of comments on YouTube is actually getting dumber every year. As for IMDb: If you don't like it, don't read it.
I've never understood that reasoning, and I don't mean just for board posts. How are you meant to know whether you like something, unless you read it? Although maybe I've just seen it used too many times to try and deflect any personal responsibility for whatever is being criticised (and usually accompanied by 'lots of other people like it, so STOP BEING A BIG FLAMING BULLY!') That may have made me a bit cynical of its use.
The IMDB boards are as bad as the Aint It Cool News Talkbacks or the youtube comments section...they're a bunch of mouth breathing foul mouthed morons. A wretched hive of scum and villainy.
New or current shows/films are monumentally trolled and banning people does nothing as they can create a new username in five seconds. I've never understood the point of an ignore function though since my own innate ability to ignore things works just fine. Trolling can be funny though so i'm content to wade through a slew of ripe anal discharge if it means getting some top quality lulz Youtubers are comedy fried gold [yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr31WIu8Ifo[/yt]
IMDb boards are ridiculous. Anyone who can find their way to the internet shouldn't be allowed to post.
Especially on Twitter, since what passes for news these days is sometimes some stupid post by someone who's considered a celebrity because they were once a contestant on a "reality" show.
The IMDB boards make 4chan look inviting. I was once browsing it and ended up on the page for the Tim Burton version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. There was some poster who was obsessed with Mike TeeVee, the kid who loved TV and got shrunk. Every thread was about how great the character was, how the character deserved to win the price, how the movie should have been rewritten so he was the main character and how the poster was a guy in his 40s. It may have been a troll, but I decided that IMDB was full of nuts, creeps and morons.
The message boards are like a car wreck to me, I can't look away. It's interesting that every actress' board has a thread on how "hot" they are and a thread on who they look like (usually multiple of the latter). So much so that when I looked recently at an actress who was on Modern Family, her board had a post entitlted, "No hottie post?," as if it were a requirement for her being on IMDB. Sometimes, though, the posts can be entertaining. My favorite are the ones that talk directly to the celebrity, as if they set up this page themselves. These range from the benign "Happy Birthday" posts to stalker level creepy. Other favorites are the people who post that they saw the celebrity in real life, usually at a restaurant where they were acting spoiled. The boards for TV and movies are a crap shoot. Sometimes you do find some decent discussions, especially for movies that leave a lot to the imagination. While not quite college-level theses on the movies, you can find some good insights. More often, however, you do get the "How is this rated so high, people who like this movie are idiots" posts, as well as their twins, the "How is this movie rated so low, people who don't like this movie are morons." All of which makes me either feel like a reporter who was sent to investigate and is returning to report to you guys what he's found. I have to feel that way, because the alternative is to think...
Same here. I use IMDB for informational purposes only, whenever I see something on TV and I think "who is that?"
IMDb is full of angry, overly nitpicky, misanthropic, sexist, racist, homophobic weirdos, however there's an "ignore" function, but I noticed that the unseen "administrators" seem to delete posts arbitrarily (fairly normal posts or threads can get taken down quite suddenly while troll posters ramble on and on and on). But interesting posts can be read and fairly normal conversations can be held. Going onto IMDb is OK in short spurts and you can find nuggets amongst the chaff, like on YouTube.
Well, the IMDb system for handling offenders isn't to put them on ignore as punishment, it seems to be nothing more tha na feature to keep users from repeatedly reporting on a user. Now, you can uncheck it so that user isn't automatically ignored when you report them, or remove them from your ignore list after the fact. Plus, unless I missed something, I've yet to actually see an IMDb staff member moderate anything. They seems to solely rely on the Report Abuse submissions. IMDb does das boot users for undisclosed numbers of infractions of certain infractions, but it's a little weak. Users can get away repeatedly with offensives like threats and disgusting sexual inuendos and still have active accounts. But it can be hard to deal with them. They litterally have tens of thousands of users, some who post rarely, others who post frequently, and if you ban a person, then come back and register under a new name, even if you ban them by IP. It's a little much for the staff to handle. The best things to do are to report the abuse every time -- don't assume somebody else did. Do NOT reply to the topic (feeding the troll; likewise don't click on it if it's obviously bullsit). And make the appropriate suggestions on the help forum in regards to banning offenders. Mad Max and the piss-poor examples of humanity is certainly nothing new. Everybody can site their examples; I have seen terrible behavior on the forums to any Joss Whedon project, and duchebags on the M. Night Shyamalan projects (what ever you think of his body of work). I'll use myself as an example. Over at anotehr forum I posted at, we had this user with nutty behavior: constantly having arguments with users, lying and said he didn't say something when all he did was go back and edit his post after the fact and pretend the edit never occured, send harrassing e-mails, etc. This all stemed from one thing: he's obassessed in a deeply unhealthy way for an animated cartoon called "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic". He kept talking and talking about, trying to get people to appreciate it. It looked like diabetes for the brain to me, but I figured what the heck -- I'll check it out and make a judgement. So I made it through a few minutes and my verdict was not kind: childish eye cancer. Now, we've all seen somebody berate our favorite something or other at one point, but we (mature individules) don't start being nasty little e-bitches about it, no matter the wording or tact they've used. No so with this user. This just made him flip his easily-flipped lid. The way he interacted and treated members got worse and worse and finally he posted a nasty sexual thread and got banned, after being given ridiculous amounts of chances to behave. But it didn't end there. Anytime we brought his name up or made some kind of joke about his unhinged obssession with the cartoon, he would re-register and bitch, send threatening e-mails to the staff and users if he could find an e-mail. He wasn't content unless he got his harangues from his e-rostrum spewed all over the internet. I got my threatening e-mails to, but after the first one, I simply deleted and didn't read the others (well, maybe the first few words, as a batshit crazy person like him would use deceptive subject lines). I also got registered by him to various websites where he and other members meet (I assume he's banned from most of them, unless they're all like that), so I had to block and pre-emtively block e-mails. I seriously beleive this person will one day hurt somebody, like a threater full of people -- that crazy. What lessons are to be learned from that? There's only so much IMDb can do. Even if a person gets banned faster for offenses, it doesn't stop them from taking the behavior to other places their target goes to or send them e-mails that make the Unibombers manifesto look like a work by Mark Twain. All you can do is report the offenses to the e-mail providers. Eventually he'll be tracked down and his service yanked by his internet provider (if possible, he may be ussing other people's), but short of hunting him down and hiring hackers to find out who he really is so you can show up and knock his lights out like in "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back", you have to tolerate it. Also, you have to pick your "battles" sometimes. If something looks like brain and eye cancer, you have to decide whether the person hyping it is worth replying to. Will he or she cause a shit storm a 12 year-old hitler woudl have done on the internet? Or can you speak freely? Is it any bit ironic that I'm posting a thread about banning/ignoring that shows at least one user on my ignore?
Note: some. I've been on the Perry Mason board there and some of the people there are a little crazy.