It’s the end of an era so to speak. IMDB has decided to shut down their message boards after 16 years. The news was announced on Friday but many people who are a part of the IMDB community are already mourning the loss.
IMDb, which stands for the Internet Movie Database, is one of the world’s biggest databases for film and television. According to the company, there is information on more than 4.1 million titles and 7.7 million personalities available on the site as of January 2017. The message board, which was introduced in 2001, reportedly remains one of the most used services on the website, but despite that, the company is getting ready to shut it down, citing a desire to foster a positive environment and serve its audience the best way they possibly can.
A statement on the site read “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.”
Many people who use the site have been vocal about not going to IMDB anymore because the message board was one of the only reasons they would visit the page. I have perused the message board years and think it is a bit of a harsh move for the people who use the board for the right purpose. That being said, I also have seen how vicious the boards can be and sometimes the attacks go beyond a disagreement about movies and into more personal territory. I have seen some pretty vile comments about race, sex and personal preference that should’ve been moderated long ago.
In its announcement, IMDb added that it understood the message boards were an important part of daily users’ visit, and that’s why the announcement was made weeks in advance. They went on to say “Because IMDb’s message boards continue to be utilized by a small but passionate community of IMDb users, we announced our decision to disable our message boards on February 3, 2017 but will leave them open for two additional weeks so that users will have ample time to archive any message board content they’d like to keep for personal use.” They added “During this two-week transition period, which concludes on February 19, 2017, IMDb message board users can exchange contact information with any other board users they would like to remain in communication with (since once we shut down the IMDb message boards, users will no longer be able to send personal messages to one another).”
