Today we are announcing changes to User Reviews as part of the broader site update announcement (https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/upcoming-changes-to-several-imdb-features-du6man1opd5q0). After in-depth discussion and examination, we have decided to simplify the features and functionality for reviews as follows:
Karen
- “Your Reviews” are now ordered by Date and reviews on each Title sub page are ordered by Helpfulness.We will continue to update functionality in the new year, starting by bringing back the ability to sort reviews from newest to oldest/oldest to newest. We appreciate your patience as we continue to improve the overall experience.
- We have removed the Index view.
- We updated the way that reviews with spoilers are displayed.
Karen
Karen, Employee
Posted 3 years ago
Col Needham, Official Rep
Col Needham, Official Rep
I agree that the changes to the reviews are awful, and, as it stands now, I plan on not writing anymore reviews for IMDb. Also, I didn't see anyone else mention this, but it seems that some older reviews have had their paragraph spacing removed. Correct me if I'm wrong; granted, I'm having enough trouble navigating the new site with my mere 515 reviews (I can't imagine the horror for someone like planktonrules/Martin Hafer). I approached the 1,000 words limit on some of these reviews, and they're quite ugly as a single paragraph blob.
I just pass by the walls of text, some of which are made even more difficult as users don't space after punctuation such as commas or close parentheses. I saw some of my own reviews were marked as containing spoilers but I usually don't go past the first 1/4 of a film. Just enough to tease someone into watching it. There's one person on the site who gives every detail right down to "The End" in every "review" - they're actually summaries, little or no critical content.
Just dropping in to add my voice to the general dismay.
Good things:
Bad things
The thing that strikes me the most I guess is how unsurprised I am by this. IMDb continues to move in a certain direction with a specific business focus which does not involve non-value adding elements. And as much as the user comments adds significant value to my IMDb experience, it doesn’t add value as defined by the business – hence it is gone, with the same “limits of technology” excuse rolled out...because apparently producing a list of titles in index view listed alphabetically is beyond the wit of man....
I appreciate the responses in this thread – we had a great community of individual user comment writers for many years, and it is sad to see that lost by this removal of features and functionality.
bob
note: I am not an IMDb employee, nor in any way affiliated with IMDb
Good things:
- I like the sexy little side popup of the “add review”; it is pure cosmetic but it feels swish
- I like the spoilers tag and the changes to how spoiler-tagged reviews are shown
Bad things
- Index view / view all etc of my user comments page: finding a specific comment of mine on most titles is now impossible without endless clicking. Index view made it hugely easy either with Ctrl-F, or listing all alphabetically.
- Sorting of title comments: I used “prolific commenters” and chronological and occasionally a few others. I really never used Helpful or Best since mostly the highest rated seemed to be those of simple thought who state popular opinion and get upvoted by the majority
The thing that strikes me the most I guess is how unsurprised I am by this. IMDb continues to move in a certain direction with a specific business focus which does not involve non-value adding elements. And as much as the user comments adds significant value to my IMDb experience, it doesn’t add value as defined by the business – hence it is gone, with the same “limits of technology” excuse rolled out...because apparently producing a list of titles in index view listed alphabetically is beyond the wit of man....
I appreciate the responses in this thread – we had a great community of individual user comment writers for many years, and it is sad to see that lost by this removal of features and functionality.
bob
note: I am not an IMDb employee, nor in any way affiliated with IMDb
Hello, Mr. bob. I'm a great fan of yours. I love your work, and respect your dedication, since years. You're an icon, and a role model, for all of us (I have only 1200 reviews on IMDb). Though, I have to disagree with you on one thing; this recent change has no good things whatsoever :) Really, it can't be more shocking. How come they thought that that was improvement by any mean ?? I hope, just hope, that they may reconsider. Because of our anger, and - more - because of simple reason. Best regards.
(Edited)
Hey Bob I have read a lot of your reviews. Wish I could continue but as of this newest change I've simply given up.
If the worst comes to the worst Bob let us all know where you've transferred to . I'm sure I'm speaking for all of us when I say how much I;ve enjoyed your reviews over the years and your reviews are always the first I look to
@Elshikh4 @Mark Grindberg @Theo
Thanks for the kind words; I think over the past 15 years I have had quite a handful of messages from people saying they look for my reviews – which was really encouraging to know.
I was lucky that having visibility has given me some credits on films/tv from filmmakers who checked out something I had written on their work. Ironically, it makes these changes sting more that nice little moments of community such as that are now gone.
Theo will confirm that I also had many writers (such as himself) that I regularly read for the pleasure of reading their opinions, or to see their thoughts on something I just watched. The only saving grace is that when I do that now for Theo’s thoughts on the original Doctor Who episodes, there are usually only a handful of comments – so not too much scrolling.
It is terribly sad to think that for any title of note, it will not be incredibly time-consuming to find a comment by a specific writer unless by chance it happens to be one they wrote very recently, or conversely to have been considered one of the most “helpful” ones.bob
note: I am not an IMDb employee, nor in any way affiliated with IMDb
Col Needham, Official Rep
These boilerplate statements overlook the elephant in the room: will the functionality of user reviews be restored once all the updates/changes have been completed, or is it gone forever? If the former, wouldn't it have made more sense to hold off on releasing the updates until they're fully functional? If the latter, can you please just tell us this is the case so that we can stop wondering and hoping?
Col Needham, Official Rep
If the latter, can you please just tell us this is the case so that we can stop wondering and hoping?It is the latter ... from the (updated yesterday) text at the top of this thread:
"We will continue to update functionality in the new year, starting by bringing back the ability to sort reviews from newest to oldest/oldest to newest. We appreciate your patience as we continue to improve the overall experience."
so, yes, the sorting functionality will return. To answer your other question
If the former, wouldn't it have made more sense to hold off on releasing the updates until they're fully functional?At any other time, yes, however the systems powering over 210 features at IMDb are closing down on or before 31 December 2017. We have quite the incentive to be off them before this date, as the alternative is that anything still on the old software come 1/1 would simply cease to exist. The IMDb product and software teams have pulled off a minor miracle in already migrating / retiring / re-inventing 202 of the 210, mostly in the last 4-6 months so we have just 8 to go now and we will make it before the holidays.
I trust Col Needham when he says
"We will continue to update functionality in the new year, starting by bringing back the ability to sort reviews from newest to oldest/oldest to newest. We appreciate your patience as we continue to improve the overall experience."
Needham has himself more than 10.000 ratings, and I'm sure he understands the needs and frustrations.
I trust that the migration is a difficult one, and that the changes was badly explained.
Advanced search could be better with a top choice "My ratings".
"We will continue to update functionality in the new year, starting by bringing back the ability to sort reviews from newest to oldest/oldest to newest. We appreciate your patience as we continue to improve the overall experience."
Needham has himself more than 10.000 ratings, and I'm sure he understands the needs and frustrations.
I trust that the migration is a difficult one, and that the changes was badly explained.
Advanced search could be better with a top choice "My ratings".
To be honest, I don't care much about the new/old or old/new sorting, yes I like to have a chronological overview of work but I think what reviewers want, what's most important to them is to have the capability to get to any review immediately, in less than say three or four clicks.
All right, I've been doing reviews since 2010, suppose I sort them chronologically so I can either have the 2010 at the top or the 2017 ones, what if I want to read one of my 2013 reviews? If IMDb provides a system that allows you to have a full listing of your reviews at once, then it'll be an improvement... but there's more.
What's the point of allowing users to vote for helpful reviews if the reviewer can't sort his own reviews by helpfulness. Yes, we want to see the reviews that were better rated than the others, call it an "ego" thing but since we're dedicating a lot of time for something we're passionate about, don't get paid for it and don't care about not being paid for it, how about allowing us that bit of satisfaction.
And how about reviewers who want to give their reviews some publicity, one who wants to apply to a movie-related job and provides the link to his reviews or one who just wants to show his writing skills, this new format doesn't help at all.
It all comes down to a simple thing: we write reviews so that anyone can be read by anyone and that means us too, IMDb's previous format was the best, whatever changes they make now, it'll never be like it used to be, because you can't guarantee that every review you wrote can be found and read, so what I'm doing right now is protecting my work, for all it's worth.
Maybe migrating it is useless because it's just a matter of time before Letterboxd comes up with similar "updates" but I also copy paste them on Word files, I thought IMDb was the safest place to put my reviews (I really trusted it since I never copy-pasted any review before) but I was wrong.
There's no alternate scenario: the only way to make any review accessible is to get back to the old format, and that will never happen.
All right, I've been doing reviews since 2010, suppose I sort them chronologically so I can either have the 2010 at the top or the 2017 ones, what if I want to read one of my 2013 reviews? If IMDb provides a system that allows you to have a full listing of your reviews at once, then it'll be an improvement... but there's more.
What's the point of allowing users to vote for helpful reviews if the reviewer can't sort his own reviews by helpfulness. Yes, we want to see the reviews that were better rated than the others, call it an "ego" thing but since we're dedicating a lot of time for something we're passionate about, don't get paid for it and don't care about not being paid for it, how about allowing us that bit of satisfaction.
And how about reviewers who want to give their reviews some publicity, one who wants to apply to a movie-related job and provides the link to his reviews or one who just wants to show his writing skills, this new format doesn't help at all.
It all comes down to a simple thing: we write reviews so that anyone can be read by anyone and that means us too, IMDb's previous format was the best, whatever changes they make now, it'll never be like it used to be, because you can't guarantee that every review you wrote can be found and read, so what I'm doing right now is protecting my work, for all it's worth.
Maybe migrating it is useless because it's just a matter of time before Letterboxd comes up with similar "updates" but I also copy paste them on Word files, I thought IMDb was the safest place to put my reviews (I really trusted it since I never copy-pasted any review before) but I was wrong.
There's no alternate scenario: the only way to make any review accessible is to get back to the old format, and that will never happen.
Col Needham, Official Rep
It all comes down to a simple thing: we write reviews so that anyone can be read by anyone and that means us tooWe have heard the feedback in this thread, and as explained already, we will be adding sorting options in the New Year for both readers and authors. We agree it is important that people can access all reviews easily and we will look at the issues with navigation. However, from our earlier official reply to this thread, you may have missed this point:
- One change already live in the latest app versions (updates to these are rolling out now) is that all customer reviews are now available on the popular IMDb iOS and Android apps as well as the IMDb mobile site. Until this change, only a subset of reviews were available on mobile. Far from limiting the audience of your reviews, we have more than doubled the audience with this single change. This also clears the way for reviews to be written and submitted on mobile which is also a popular customer request.
(Edited)
Thanks for the reply, I guess I'm too conservative... sorry, I registered in 2004 and I got used to using the desktop for 95% of my IMDb activity. I can't stand these new changes... or let's just say: were they really incompatible with the old format?
To be honest, I never felt that my reviews had a limited audience because they were less available via the mobile medium, and I don't know how their audience can double if you can only sort the reviews in order of helpfulness, the oldest ones are the most likely to be at the top, unless you write the review of a new movie at the very time of its release, but we reviewers review old movies as well.
And supposing our reviews have a bigger audience, so far there's no way to know it, you have to sort your reviews chronologically and check at the end of each one how many users found it useful, one by one... can you imagine?
In the old system, you sorted your reviews by helpfulness and could find which ones were rated or not with the "show summaries" and we could all tell when a movie was "upgraded" because it would always affect the order in the listing and it would show at the top of some specific pages. Anyway, in less than 20 seconds, you could see if there was some new ratings of helpfulness or not.
I had my "reviews" page on my mobile and any time of the day, I could do a little check-up. But now, whenever I get to my reviews' page, I find the oldest reviews I wrote and it's perhaps the order I'm least interested in.
Maybe the new features are more interesting for the review of a newly released movie, which might explain the insistance on writing reviews on mobile, like a gut-reaction after leaving the theater... but speaking for myself, I don't know how can anyone write a review on a mobile, I think it's really diminishing the 'intellectual' value of a review to assume it can be done on a mobile.
I could never have written what I just wrote to you right now on a mobile, how shouldn't that apply for reviews? If you can allow users to write reviews on a mobile, they will not be different from Twitter reactions.
And you should also understand why people are so perplex, there's been so many infuriating changes recently, the removal of the message boards being one of them, I used to invest a lot of time and intellect on IMDb, sometimes at the expenses of my professional responsibilities, just to be able to share some thoughts with fellow movie lovers and these exchanges were all erased from the memory of the website.
I spent time suggesting polls during the daily poll days and the history page has been completely erased, it's like everything we do for IMDb can disappear at any time, and I just don't want that to happen with the reviews.
To be honest, I never felt that my reviews had a limited audience because they were less available via the mobile medium, and I don't know how their audience can double if you can only sort the reviews in order of helpfulness, the oldest ones are the most likely to be at the top, unless you write the review of a new movie at the very time of its release, but we reviewers review old movies as well.
And supposing our reviews have a bigger audience, so far there's no way to know it, you have to sort your reviews chronologically and check at the end of each one how many users found it useful, one by one... can you imagine?
In the old system, you sorted your reviews by helpfulness and could find which ones were rated or not with the "show summaries" and we could all tell when a movie was "upgraded" because it would always affect the order in the listing and it would show at the top of some specific pages. Anyway, in less than 20 seconds, you could see if there was some new ratings of helpfulness or not.
I had my "reviews" page on my mobile and any time of the day, I could do a little check-up. But now, whenever I get to my reviews' page, I find the oldest reviews I wrote and it's perhaps the order I'm least interested in.
Maybe the new features are more interesting for the review of a newly released movie, which might explain the insistance on writing reviews on mobile, like a gut-reaction after leaving the theater... but speaking for myself, I don't know how can anyone write a review on a mobile, I think it's really diminishing the 'intellectual' value of a review to assume it can be done on a mobile.
I could never have written what I just wrote to you right now on a mobile, how shouldn't that apply for reviews? If you can allow users to write reviews on a mobile, they will not be different from Twitter reactions.
And you should also understand why people are so perplex, there's been so many infuriating changes recently, the removal of the message boards being one of them, I used to invest a lot of time and intellect on IMDb, sometimes at the expenses of my professional responsibilities, just to be able to share some thoughts with fellow movie lovers and these exchanges were all erased from the memory of the website.
I spent time suggesting polls during the daily poll days and the history page has been completely erased, it's like everything we do for IMDb can disappear at any time, and I just don't want that to happen with the reviews.
Shoot. Everything we do for any website can disappear at any time.
Like life I guess, everything you do for someone else can be thrown in a trash bin, serves me for being such an idealistic prick... but seriously, if it wasn't for these "updates", I would have written like ten reviews by now. I'm not sure they realize that this decision was totally counter-productive.
Before the update, if I wanted to see if I had already reviewed a title on IMDB, all I had to do was click the "write a review" button and, if I had already written a review, it would bring up a page saying that I had already reviewed the title, and I could edit the review or replace it.
Please bring back this feature. As it is now I have really no way of knowing if I have already reviewed a movie; the panel comes up to write a new review regardless. I also can't just search through all my reviews either, as the site doesn't list them all on the one page (you have to keep clicking the button to make it load a few more each time).
Please bring this feature back so we can easily see and edit/replace our old reviews from the title's page.
Thanks,
-James
Please bring back this feature. As it is now I have really no way of knowing if I have already reviewed a movie; the panel comes up to write a new review regardless. I also can't just search through all my reviews either, as the site doesn't list them all on the one page (you have to keep clicking the button to make it load a few more each time).
Please bring this feature back so we can easily see and edit/replace our old reviews from the title's page.
Thanks,
-James
I'm curious what happens if you have a review already and add another? Will there be an error message or is it simply added/ignored?
I have been wondering about this myself. I assume it won't let you review the same movie twice, but since it doesn't tell you if you have already reviewed the movie, you will waste time writing a new review and won't find out about the old one before you click submit.
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Review requirements.
I hate to go on about this, but I see that there's now a minimum of 50 characters for a review. Could you change this to, let's say, 200 characters? 50 characters is short, as short as this sentence. (!)
Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: New IMDb Help hub.
I hate to go on about this, but I see that there's now a minimum of 50 characters for a review. Could you change this to, let's say, 200 characters? 50 characters is short, as short as this sentence. (!)
Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: New IMDb Help hub.
Definitely a clear example of IMDb wilfully dumbing down. I would now go as far as to say that it is now actively encouraged to post super-short reviews here, hence why the system is geared towards very short reviews on the display in that with those you would never need to click on the button to expand your review to see if it had a useful tick. The unwritten rule seems to be, keep it really short for less hassle.
With the 50 character minimum rule I could now take ten seconds to submit a review for Ingmar Bergman's Persona that only says:
'This film ROCKS my SOCKS! If you don't like it you SUCK!!!'
And that would qualify as acceptable. That doesn't sound like a step in the right direction.
With the 50 character minimum rule I could now take ten seconds to submit a review for Ingmar Bergman's Persona that only says:
'This film ROCKS my SOCKS! If you don't like it you SUCK!!!'
And that would qualify as acceptable. That doesn't sound like a step in the right direction.
I'm afraid this thread isn't the right place to talk about this issue, but as you can see, IMDb has placed it here...
Anyway, I hope more people will speak their mind about the "50 characters is enough" rule.
(this post contains 208 characters)
Anyway, I hope more people will speak their mind about the "50 characters is enough" rule.
(this post contains 208 characters)
(Edited)
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled The new format sucks..
The new format sucks. Before I could quickly scan several reviews just by the number of stars given. Now you have to look for a numeric rating on a scale of 1 to 5 at the right side of the review. The new design makes it look like all the reviews are positive when they aren't.
The new format sucks. Before I could quickly scan several reviews just by the number of stars given. Now you have to look for a numeric rating on a scale of 1 to 5 at the right side of the review. The new design makes it look like all the reviews are positive when they aren't.
Yes, this is horrible. Removing visual clues is just awful design.
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Problem with the new user review system.
I am trying to add a review, where I wrote a list like this:
- argument 1
- argument 2
etc.
Everything else gets added, but all the points with " - " before it are removed? Do I need to list it with 1. 2. or a) b) ?
And second the reviews are sorted to "by helpfulness" I would like to sort it chronologically or by "hated it" "loved it", how is that possible now? Thanks for any help
I am trying to add a review, where I wrote a list like this:
- argument 1
- argument 2
etc.
Everything else gets added, but all the points with " - " before it are removed? Do I need to list it with 1. 2. or a) b) ?
And second the reviews are sorted to "by helpfulness" I would like to sort it chronologically or by "hated it" "loved it", how is that possible now? Thanks for any help
It's not possible to sort the reviews now, they removed that feature. IMDB has special formatting rules and certain characters are not allowed in reviews. I don't have a complete list, you just have to work around them.
"And second the reviews are sorted to "by helpfulness" I would like to
sort it chronologically or by "hated it" "loved it", how is that
possible now?
At this point, unfortunately it isn't.
At this point, unfortunately it isn't.
You don't need numbers, if things get added, just get back to the text and click on "Enter" to add spaces between the paragraphs. It should work normally.
Sdk ElMaruecan: The OP is referring to a bulleted list. Pressing "ENTER" doesn't create a bullet point.
I got it... my point is that you've got to put the bullets yourself or the numbers, it also works with the "-" but you've got to add them manually, pressing "ENTER" won't create a bulleted list... anyway, I've always written the reviews on Word and then copy-paste it.
It might be good idea if the "helpfulness" of a review was calculated with the following formula:
Where
It would seem that a similar formula has already already in place. I'm not sure how "helpfulness" metric is exactly determined.
The same message over again but using SVG instead of PNG...
Where
Where
-
would be the helpfulness for a given review
-
is the number of "Yes" votes for a given review
-
is the number of "No" votes for a given review -
is the number of "Yes" votes plus "No" votes for the review with highest number of such -
is some positive fraction significantly smaller than (like one thousandth) a whole number
-
is a fractional weight constant between half and one
It would seem that a similar formula has already already in place. I'm not sure how "helpfulness" metric is exactly determined.
The same message over again but using SVG instead of PNG...
Where
-
is the helpfulness for a given review
-
is the number of "yes" votes for a given review
-
is the number of "no" votes for a given review
-
is the number of "yes" votes plus "no" votes for the review with highest number of such
-
is some positive fraction significantly smaller than (like one thousandth) a whole number
-
is a fractional weight constant between half and one
Seconded.
Any kind of decent algorithm would be great. The existing one is very bad. Deadpool 2 for examples lists a review with (32 / 58) helpful ratings at the top when that should be a very unhelpful review.
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Display the number of stars given in the ratings.
One strange change made to the User Reviews listing is displaying only a single star beside a user's rating, whether it's 7/10, 5/10, or anything else, instead of the actual number of stars. Why eliminate such a simple and convenient visual aid?
One strange change made to the User Reviews listing is displaying only a single star beside a user's rating, whether it's 7/10, 5/10, or anything else, instead of the actual number of stars. Why eliminate such a simple and convenient visual aid?
Yes, this (among other things) is so infuriating... I'm so shocked by what happened to IMDb. Why fix what isn't broken?
Just think - all of this could have been avoided (and I'm sure it has been a headache for Col and company) if IMDb ran a beta version for users to interact with and offer feedback. Or announced their intentions to the public ahead of time. Nope, not for them! They just made huge changes without a care for the users at all. Think, McFly, think!
(Edited)
Col Needham, Official Rep
Yes, in an ideal world. Unfortunately practical considerations sometimes intervene, please read all of https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/upcoming-changes-to-several-imdb-features-du6man1opd5q0 for context
This doesn't explain hiding previously available free features such as box office, filming dates, or company credits behind a paywall now.
Col Needham, Official Rep
The context is all on Get Satisfaction (quoted text from the threads in italics) ...
Box Office -> https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/announcement-updates-to-box-office-on-imdb-title-pages-imdbp...
I think it's a misunderstanding. It is useful we have a really firm example here with which we can work though. Here is how things were before last week: IMDb box office information was available in three different places, with three different data sources: IMDb.com / IMDbPro.com / Box Office Mojo (remember we own BOM and the same software team is responsible for its upkeep). The layout of the old IMDb.com box office page dates back to when we launched the section in 1996 -- it had not changed in 20 years and has a simplistic data model; meanwhile Box Office Mojo has a superior data model and more information / reporting. The three systems (more than) triple the on-going support and future enhancement costs. Every fix we make to any box office feature (twice over) is time which could have been spent adding or enhancing something else instead. We are done with this old approach.
The situation we are in now with box office is better than last week, but it is still a bridge to where we want to go in 2018. We now only have two box office systems instead of three; on IMDb.com we have added more box office data to the main pages so more people will see / benefit from this than any updates to an under-used sub-page. Next we can tie all three sites better together, get things down to one underlying system, and enhance box office related searches across all three sites.
Nothing has changed in the fundamentals of what is in the Contributors' Charter @ https://contribute.imdb.com/charter nor what we are doing and what we are about in the help section (and history and press room) @ https://help.imdb.com/article/imdb/general-information/what-is-imdb/G836CY29Z4SGNMK5 -- the changes allow us to do all of these things better and faster.
Filming dates -> https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/announcement-updates-to-box-office-on-imdb-title-pages-imdbp...
Sorry this should have been covered above; the information on filming dates will return in an update to one of the other title sub-pages. The timing should be early in 2018.
[BTW these dates are not behind a paywall either; they are currently not in the IMDbPro data set either]
Company credits -> https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/company-credits-see-more-link
Thanks for the extra details on your usage. We have taken another look at this and the best way to build this with the new system would be as a search result. We already offer limited company searches on the advanced title search page at http://www.imdb.com/search/title so for example, wherever we reference "20th Century Fox" on the site, the company name would be linked to the corresponding search results, as in http://www.imdb.com/search/title?companies=fox
The same would apply for all companies, so in your examples, companies like JC Films, Fernsehen der DDR, MarVista Entertainment, Xces Film, Paramount Pictures, PETA, MPAA etc. would be linked to their advanced search results similar to Fox.
Box Office -> https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/announcement-updates-to-box-office-on-imdb-title-pages-imdbp...
I think it's a misunderstanding. It is useful we have a really firm example here with which we can work though. Here is how things were before last week: IMDb box office information was available in three different places, with three different data sources: IMDb.com / IMDbPro.com / Box Office Mojo (remember we own BOM and the same software team is responsible for its upkeep). The layout of the old IMDb.com box office page dates back to when we launched the section in 1996 -- it had not changed in 20 years and has a simplistic data model; meanwhile Box Office Mojo has a superior data model and more information / reporting. The three systems (more than) triple the on-going support and future enhancement costs. Every fix we make to any box office feature (twice over) is time which could have been spent adding or enhancing something else instead. We are done with this old approach.
The situation we are in now with box office is better than last week, but it is still a bridge to where we want to go in 2018. We now only have two box office systems instead of three; on IMDb.com we have added more box office data to the main pages so more people will see / benefit from this than any updates to an under-used sub-page. Next we can tie all three sites better together, get things down to one underlying system, and enhance box office related searches across all three sites.
Nothing has changed in the fundamentals of what is in the Contributors' Charter @ https://contribute.imdb.com/charter nor what we are doing and what we are about in the help section (and history and press room) @ https://help.imdb.com/article/imdb/general-information/what-is-imdb/G836CY29Z4SGNMK5 -- the changes allow us to do all of these things better and faster.
Filming dates -> https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/announcement-updates-to-box-office-on-imdb-title-pages-imdbp...
Sorry this should have been covered above; the information on filming dates will return in an update to one of the other title sub-pages. The timing should be early in 2018.
[BTW these dates are not behind a paywall either; they are currently not in the IMDbPro data set either]
Company credits -> https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/company-credits-see-more-link
Thanks for the extra details on your usage. We have taken another look at this and the best way to build this with the new system would be as a search result. We already offer limited company searches on the advanced title search page at http://www.imdb.com/search/title so for example, wherever we reference "20th Century Fox" on the site, the company name would be linked to the corresponding search results, as in http://www.imdb.com/search/title?companies=fox
The same would apply for all companies, so in your examples, companies like JC Films, Fernsehen der DDR, MarVista Entertainment, Xces Film, Paramount Pictures, PETA, MPAA etc. would be linked to their advanced search results similar to Fox.
Is there any way for users to access their deleted reviews? There are one or two that I regret deleting that I would like to post again.
if we could just access our non-deleted reviews :)
Col Needham, Official Rep
Thank you for the on-going feedback on user reviews (and a reminder to see https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/upcoming-changes-to-several-imdb-features-du6man1opd5q0 for the wider context). This is an update for 12 January outlining the progress so far:
Already implemented:
In progress across Q1:
Ideas for the longer term:
Please bear with us while we work through the above list (and equivalent lists for other impacted features). Our aim remains to make IMDb the best place to read, write and discover reviews of movies, shows (and other title types) ... both on the web and on mobile.
Finally a reminder from the above list: the IMDb iOS app already supports sorting of reviews by three options if you have access to an iPhone or iPad.
Already implemented:
- Make all user reviews available across all IMDb platforms (web, mobile web, iOS, Android) [DONE]
- Allow voting for reviews from user/reviews pages [DONE]
- No longer display reviews with spoilers on the main title page [DONE]
- Integrate reviews into main IMDb database to improve management and processing [DONE]
- Add reviews and “Report This” to the “Track My Contribution” feature for better feedback on processing [DONE]
- On the iOS app, add sort orders: chronological, by rating given to title by reviewer, by helpfulness (all in both directions) [DONE]
- Fix “Load more” functionality on Internet Explorer [DONE]
- Allow IMDb mark-up in review text to link name/title pages from inside reviews [DONE]
- Increase default view of reviews shown before “Load more” from 10 to 25 [DONE]
In progress across Q1:
- On the web site & mobile web, add sort orders to the title/reviews page, ideas under review include: chronological, by vote volume, by rating given to title by reviewer, love/hate view, by volume of reviews by reviewer, by helpfulness (all in both directions)
- On the web site, add sort orders to the user/reviews page, ideas under review include: alphabetical by title, chronological, by vote volume, by rating given to title by reviewer, by helpfulness (all in both directions)
- On the Android app, add sort orders: chronological, by rating given to title by reviewer, by helpfulness (all in both directions)
- Allow review contribution from mobile devices (mobile web, iOS, Android)
- Fix known issues posting new reviews with certain browser / system combinations
Ideas for the longer term:
- Allow helpfulness voting on mobile devices (mobile web, iOS, Android)
- Improve the algorithm used to determine default helpfulness sorting
Please bear with us while we work through the above list (and equivalent lists for other impacted features). Our aim remains to make IMDb the best place to read, write and discover reviews of movies, shows (and other title types) ... both on the web and on mobile.
Finally a reminder from the above list: the IMDb iOS app already supports sorting of reviews by three options if you have access to an iPhone or iPad.
(Edited)
- On the web site & mobile web, add sort orders to the title/reviews page, ideas under review include: chronological, by vote volume, by rating given to title by reviewer, love/hate view, by volume of reviews by reviewer, by helpfulness (all in both directions)
- On the web site, add sort orders to the user/reviews page, ideas under review include: alphabetical by title, chronological, by vote volume, by rating given to title by reviewer, by helpfulness (all in both directions)
That's good enough for me, thanks!
Is it possible to add a small encapsulation of an Actor's performance in a specific episode of a TV show they were guest starring in?
Example. As Angelita in Maverick, The "Guatemala City" Episode, Linda Dangcil's Angelita is a Remarkably Precocious presence that invites one to connect with her on a multitude of levels. Angelita immediately shuts down Maverick's anger in one scene, Instantly reminding Maverick of the honor in being gentlemanly in non violent situations. Besides Dangcil's on screen high energy yet calming presence, in another era she might have been a Shampoo Ambassador for her unending but well managed Tresses.
Example. As Angelita in Maverick, The "Guatemala City" Episode, Linda Dangcil's Angelita is a Remarkably Precocious presence that invites one to connect with her on a multitude of levels. Angelita immediately shuts down Maverick's anger in one scene, Instantly reminding Maverick of the honor in being gentlemanly in non violent situations. Besides Dangcil's on screen high energy yet calming presence, in another era she might have been a Shampoo Ambassador for her unending but well managed Tresses.
(Edited)
I'm a prolific author myself, and I miss also putting my own E-mail, beside my IMDb name, on every review of mine. Is it possible to see that again ?
Col Needham, Official Rep
No sorry, this is not something we feel it is wise to encourage these days. If you wish to be contacted by email then you may add your email address in the "Your Description" section on http://www.imdb.com/profile
Bear in mind, each of person would be wise to avoid using the same e-mail address that he/she uses to log into IMDb (unless via Twitter or Facebook is the method) as his/her contact information associated with reviews. There is always the possibility of the e-mail account being targeted and illegally commandeered, which then allows the hijacker to compromise all accounts associated with the e-mail address via password reset functions. Remember, the Internet is like the wild west. You have to be careful.
"Spoiler alert" was added to some of my reviews, including one of a documentary. How can you "spoil" a documentary? There is no "plot" in a documentary to spoil. A documentary consists of historical or scientific facts, and if you don't know the basic facts already, shame on you! If I write a review that states the sun rose in the east in the film, will it be tagged with a spoiler alert??
Not all documentaries deal with facts that are common knowledge, though. Just because they are factual historically and/or scientifically doesn't mean that you can't spoil the experience of watching a documentary by revealing too much in a review of it. Many watch documentaries to learn things, and would perhaps prefer to learn them there, instead of in the review.
Not saying that "spoiling" a documentary is as bad as spoiling the plot twist of a popular movie, or something, but I can certainly see the point behind a decision to also consider giving away certain details about a documentary could be construed as a spoiler to some.
Not saying that "spoiling" a documentary is as bad as spoiling the plot twist of a popular movie, or something, but I can certainly see the point behind a decision to also consider giving away certain details about a documentary could be construed as a spoiler to some.
gromit82, Champion
I agree with Cartman. For example, there are documentaries about true crimes which were not well known to the public beforehand, and in some cases there are aspects of the story which are clearly meant to be a surprise to viewers as they are revealed.
