The horror of IMDB message boards or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love the banhammer

bartholen_v1legacy

A dyslexic man walks into a bra.
Jan 24, 2009
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I browse IMDB quite a lot, and that has inevitably led to scouring the message boards. I wish I could fully encapsulate the horror of the majority of them, but suffice to say that whenever I see someone ***** about the low content rules here or calling the Escapist moderators uptight nazis, I want to smack them around with a steel baseball bat. The rules and the mods are there for a reason, and a damn good one at that! They are what keeps this site from becoming a wasteland of poor grammar, idiocy, smugness, trolling and pre-school level arguments.

I guess I should elaborate why the IMDB forums make me want to eat my own face, so just a few examples:

- A thread on the After Earth board titled "A thinking man's movie. Masses, stay away" with dozens of people agreeing with the title.
- People claiming Eiken is actually a funny anime
- A couple of neckbeards writing entire essays on The Counselor and dismissing anyone who levels legitimate criticisms at it with the classic argument of "Go watch your Michael Bay movies, dumbass, you don't get it". You thought Evangelion fanboys were insufferable? Check out the board on that movie and claw your eyes out in horror.
- The reviews have no standards for grammar, structure, informativeness or even coherent language. The only rules they have is to not have hateful or foul language, and the review must be over 10 lines of text. I could write a review consisting entirely of the words "Boom boom pow whacka wacka doodidlydoo" and not get written up.

As Yahtzee said it, you can't appreciate pleasure if there hasn't been pain to put it into context. I've been on this site for years despite having a diminishing interest in video games because the posts are usually level-headed, the topics interesting and the people nice. But only after seeing the wretched hive of scum and villainy that are the IMDB message boards did I realize what a great forum The Escapist is, and especially learnt to appreciate the strict modding and posting rules. If you honestly complain about the low content rule, you have no idea how horrible things could be without it.

For discussion value, have you known the horror of IMDB forums? If not, have you had experiences that made you appreciate The Escapist even more? If you disagree, why?
 

tippy2k2

Beloved Tyrant
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Mar 15, 2008
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I stopped going to the IMDB boards unless I'm absolutely desperate (and then just to browse, never to comment).

Spoilers in titles (and not accidental; they are purposefully spoiling because they're dicks), insane fanboys dominating everything with swears and personal insults, insane anti-fanboys dominating everything with swears and personal insults.

That board is just depressing. For all the grief our poor Mods get, I wouldn't have it any other way.
 

schrodinger

New member
Jul 19, 2013
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i used to comment on the IMDB boards, but obnoxious idiots drove me out around 2010 and haven't commented since. The problem with those boards is there are barely moderation to balance out the comments, allowing spoilers, offensive drivel, or the occasional 'why aren't there more black people in this move' trolling, ugh. If you ever visited the TWD comment board before season 2 aired it was actually pretty decent, but of course it became popular and all decency died in a fire. The worse is when maniac fanboys take over a board when a popular movie is coming out in the same week, i.e. the massive amount of TDK fanboys. I did manage to make some friends on the twilight board(DON'T YOU JUDGE ME) and that was fun while it lasted.


Try going the yahoo comments on news stories, your brain will not survive the amount of horrifying ignorance.
 

Barbas

ExQQxv1D1ns
Oct 28, 2013
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I didn't realise IMDB actually had forums. Your warning is appreciated!

I suppose the refugees from YouTube had to end up somewhere...
 

soitgoes19

New member
Jul 8, 2012
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schrodinger said:
i used to comment on the IMDB boards, but obnoxious idiots drove me out around 2010 and haven't commented since. The problem with those boards is there are barely moderation to balance out the comments, allowing spoilers, offensive drivel, or the occasional 'why aren't there more black people in this move' trolling, ugh. If you ever visited the TWD comment board before season 2 aired it was actually pretty decent, but of course it became popular and all decency died in a fire. The worse is when maniac fanboys take over a board when a popular movie is coming out in the same week, i.e. the massive amount of TDK fanboys. I did manage to make some friends on the twilight board(DON'T YOU JUDGE ME) and that was fun while it lasted.


Try going the yahoo comments on news stories, your brain will not survive the amount of horrifying ignorance.
Yeah, I think the lack of moderation is a problem. I post sporadically on a few different IMDB boards, and I've never seen anything be done about trolls. Even ones that basically copy and paste the same three inflammatory comments over and over never get banned. If IMDB didn't allow users to ignore other posters I wouldn't visit the boards at all. I've also learned to never visit a board for anything you're not up-to-date on, because the moderators definitely do not care about marking spoilers. It does vary by board, some have better decorum than others (and I spend most of my time on the Supernatural board, so you'll get no judgement from me), but all it takes is one or two bad posters to ruin the atmosphere.

About the only thing that ever actually gets deleted is spam. It is miles better than Yahoo commentary, but that's setting the bar real low. It makes me appreciate the other forums I visit though.

Although, the one thing I do like about the boards on IMDB is that they let you go off-topic. No one really cares when you go off on a tangent or steer the conversation in another direction. Sometimes threads become hard to follow though because the thread gets splintered and several different conversations are happening at once.
 

Uhura

This ain't no hula!
Aug 30, 2012
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schrodinger said:
If you ever visited the TWD comment board before season 2 aired it was actually pretty decent, but of course it became popular and all decency died in a fire.
Groan! When I saw the title of this topic, the first thing that came to my mind was the TWD board. That has to be easily the most pathetic message board I've ever visited.

OT: Yeah, I used to visit the IMDb message boards frequently a few years ago. I stopped going there once I realized that I spend more time putting people on my ignore list than actually reading the threads. The moderation is pretty much non-existent so many of the boards are full of spoilers, angsty fighting and personal drama. In most cases checking out the forums is just not worth it. Even if the forum is not infested with trolls, you are likely to meet either snobs ("go watch Transformers, this movie is too hard for you") or philistines ("you are just pretending to like this movie so you'll sound smarter, no one can really like this movie""). So often the quality of the discussion is really poor even if you manage to avoid the crazies.
 

SlaveNumber23

A WordlessThing, a ThinglessWord
Aug 9, 2011
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I go on the IMDB message boards from time to time when I'm bored, its pretty much like an online insane asylum and can be pretty entertaining at times. There's still plenty of reasonable people who actually want to discuss movies/tv shows seriously, but the message boards definitely need MUCH stricter moderation.
 

Redlin5_v1legacy

Better Red than Dead
Aug 5, 2009
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It's not that hard to stay on the straight and narrow here. It's just rather uncommon to have to, you know, check yourself before you wreck yourself on the internet. That's why people think the mods here are Nazis.

I've only seen a few matters where the moderation didn't fit the situation and those posts were successfully appealed. You get a lot of chances here on the Escapist, a lot more than when I first joined.

[sub][sub]Yes, the days where the term 'Probation' really meant something and when warnings weren't official policy. Times have changed.[/sub][/sub]
 

tippy2k2

Beloved Tyrant
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Mar 15, 2008
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reiniat said:
Who the hell thinks the mods here are Nazis?
People who break the rules, get in trouble and warned to stop it, continue to break the rules, get suspended, continue to break the rules, get banned, and then call the Mods Nazis because they are not allowed to break the rules.

If you think about it, it is unfair that they ONLY get 8 tries before they get banned ;)
 

Therumancer

Citation Needed
Nov 28, 2007
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schrodinger said:
i used to comment on the IMDB boards, but obnoxious idiots drove me out around 2010 and haven't commented since. The problem with those boards is there are barely moderation to balance out the comments, allowing spoilers, offensive drivel, or the occasional 'why aren't there more black people in this move' trolling, ugh. If you ever visited the TWD comment board before season 2 aired it was actually pretty decent, but of course it became popular and all decency died in a fire. The worse is when maniac fanboys take over a board when a popular movie is coming out in the same week, i.e. the massive amount of TDK fanboys. I did manage to make some friends on the twilight board(DON'T YOU JUDGE ME) and that was fun while it lasted.


Try going the yahoo comments on news stories, your brain will not survive the amount of horrifying ignorance.
To be honest I find Yahoo news comments to be fairly balanced for most part between the left and right wing, with a few trolls and troublemakers thrown in. That said I suppose a "nut" for either wing wouldn't like it much since they would see the other side as being painfully ignorant... one of the problems with a polarized nation.

Now as a news SOURCE I have a lot of issues with Yahoo, some of their people are just plain bad writers before you even get into issues like bias, and some of the things Yahoo decides to run as being newsworthy can give me a headache to contemplate....

As far as the subject, IMDB, it can be touchy to regulate something like that because by definition your trying to attract fans and fanboys for traffic. If you start banning fans for acting like fans, then your going to wind up alienating the very audience that you want. Truthfully it's very, very, rare for something like that to exist without being either a complete wild west (like your talking about) or having draconian mods waving banhammers around left and right so few people with something interesting to say want to post there because it isn't worth getting invested if a mod is likely to pound you at the drop of a hat. For the most part "wild west" type communities tend to be the ones I like to check in on once in a while since that's where your going to find the real gold along with the garbage. As I see it, the internet isn't supposed to be easy, anything worth having comes at a cost.

As negative as it was, I actually liked old school Youtube, for all the bad, there was a lot of good, and I actually agree with the (usually joking) comments that for a long time Youtube was a good place to really get a look at humanity as it is, the best and worst. Of course things that allow that level of expression don't stay that way for long, Youtube, Second Life (which I never really used), all had their heyday as being platforms of free expression, good and bad, but eventually got regulated to the point where they lost that magic.
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
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bartholen said:
I'm afraid the Escapist itself is not innocent either, given some of the things I perused on the Escspist.TXT thing or have - you know - actually seen around here. Nevertheless, there are some better things, so I'm not saying it's as bad. Even still, it's not 'my haven'. The Escapist is a good place to amuse oneself for a while. I got other places listed as 'haven'.

ANYWAY, I haven't ever been there, but I of course have to apologize as a Fallout fan for all the numbnuts of No Mutants Allowed, who are some of the worst people you could discuss post-apocalyptia with. I get my information on the place second-hand, because I DON'T WANNA LOOK. I value the input of others...and especially the warnings.
 

jhoroz

New member
Mar 7, 2012
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Yeah, the IMDb boards are a wretched, cancerous hive. This is especially true for big television shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. I remember when the final season of BB was airing and all the copious amounts shit-posting, mud-slinging and Straw Man arguments people were vomiting out on that board. It was basically Team Walt, Team Jesse and Team Hank-you were either in one camp or not. Absolutely no fucking grey area. And if you were in a team, then you automatically earn the scorn and demonetization from the other team, regardless of how well reasoned your argument is or if you even attempt to approach things through each team's perspective.

Team Walt was the worst-Walter White fanboys are the most obnoxious, fanatical and downright cultist bunch of little shits ever. They will use moral relativism and rationalize each and every crime and atrocity Walt has committed, and condemn his wife, son, Hank, Marie or all of the above as the standard knee-jerk reaction for whenever anyone criticizes his actions. It was actually downright scary at times reading the inane logic they would use. Some guy predicted that as soon as the show ends, it will turn into a giant hive of trolls, flamers and fanboys the same way the Soprano board did, and lo and behold, he was right:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/board/nest/224438276?ref_=tt_bd_1

The entire site is full assholes who just fanatically preach their point, regardless if they care whether it's right or wrong, and grief or use round-about methods of rationalization to belittle anyone who disagrees with them (like condemning an entire fanbase of a certain show/director simply because the person disagrees with their argument). Moderation is completely non-existent and for the occasional rational and constructive poster that may come along, they're immediately outnumbered by another ten idiots.
 

FPLOON

Your #1 Source for the Dino Porn
Jul 10, 2013
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Barbas said:
I didn't realise IMDB actually had forums. Your warning is appreciated!

I suppose the refugees from YouTube had to end up somewhere...
This.
I still can't fathom IMDB even HAVING a forum section...

Then again, I never was much of a "forum" guy... and yet, I find being part of The Escapist forums quite comforting...
(Still can't make a thread post for my life, though...)
 

Roxas1359

Burn, Burn it All!
Aug 8, 2009
33,758
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To be quite honest I'm surprised that IMDB has forums, so I must have never noticed them when I go there. Only real reason I go to IMDB is to get information on what star has been in what TV show/movie/video game for some of my projects. Guess I never fully looked around the site.

As for here, I like the moderation here, and this site gives you way more chances than it used to back when I joined. The healthbar was added in 2011 here, and I think it, and the updated rules, work fine.
Plus, nothing was worse than the G4 Forums...>.>
 

Balimaar

The Bass Fish
Sep 26, 2010
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tippy2k2 said:
reiniat said:
Who the hell thinks the mods here are Nazis?
People who break the rules, get in trouble and warned to stop it, continue to break the rules, get suspended, continue to break the rules, get banned, and then call the Mods Nazis because they are not allowed to break the rules.

If you think about it, it is unfair that they ONLY get 8 tries before they get banned ;)
My one and only warning rather amusingly came from a post DEFENDING THE MODERATORS and how they police the forum. Apparently I was rude. Huh.
 

Baron_BJ

Tired. Cold. Bored.
Nov 13, 2009
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bartholen said:
whenever I see someone ***** about the low content rules here or calling the Escapist moderators uptight nazis, I want to smack them around with a steel baseball bat.
My post will only be tangentially related to the topic at hand, but I don't care.

This was the part of your post that I took note of, the part that I care about the most. People on websites that complain about low-content posts, especially on this site; If your thoughts or "jokes" are so short that you actively need to pad them out to avoid getting banned then that's a sign THE SIGN that you've got nothing of value to add to the conversation and that you shouldn't bother. The mods making sure that people don't waste time/space posting this useless crap is one of the reasons these forums are superior to a lot of others out there (Another reason is that somehow people on this website are a lot more likely to spell things correctly and use punctuation).

This leads me on a further tangent, but I feel like this forum, to further remove posters who are literally only saying "I agree with this person", should add an up-vote feature to individual posts on a thread (not threads themselves, nothing like reddit), but not a down-vote and there would not be anything like a Karma system or the like. The only purpose of this feature is to say "I agree", should someone NOT agree with that post then they should make their own post which describes what part of their post they disagree with or their own thoughts on the matter (almost like an actual discussion), and those that agree with the new point of view could hit "I agree" on that post. Those who want a consensus on peoples opinions could simply compare post content and their "Agreement Score".

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to whine about that, you may continue with what your previous activities.
 

Tom_green_day

New member
Jan 5, 2013
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bartholen said:
no standards for grammar, structure
So they don't speak in the Queen's perfect English? Oh no, call the language police! There are plenty of languages other than English and something is always lost in translation, I see poorly written reviews as a kind of a non-point when it could be written by someone who isn't fluent.
OT: This is making me want to go to the boards now!
 

Lieju

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Jan 4, 2009
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Tom_green_day said:
bartholen said:
no standards for grammar, structure
So they don't speak in the Queen's perfect English? Oh no, call the language police! There are plenty of languages other than English and something is always lost in translation, I see poorly written reviews as a kind of a non-point when it could be written by someone who isn't fluent.
If you can't write a language well enough to make it comprehensible, maybe you shouldn't be writing in that language.

I'm not talking about small mistakes and typos, I'm talking about text that's incomprehensible.
I've seen plenty of that, walls of text lacking any punctuation, grammar that's so bad the meaning is totally lost etc.