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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3→Archive 5

Early discussion

What happened in the early days of IMDB? My understanding is that it was a collaborative effort on a Usenet newsgroup, but soon after the invention of http/www, it became a proprietary website.

It's a great website, don't get me wrong, but I've always wondered how they made that transition and whether it was controversial at the time. I think the story might make a great cautionary tale about why a free license is so important.

As I understand it, the people (i think they are british) that had physically the website, and managed and organized the entries, where contacted by amazon.com, who was looking for a way to sell more movies. So they bought the site, and hired the former owners to mantain it.

I also wonder whether or not the existence of IMDB (which is a great website, as I say) would undercut any possibility of my starting a similar but free effort, using similar software. Wiki software is unstructured for a good reason, but for some kinds of information (movie listings), a priori structure can be handled very easily. But the essential wiki nature (anyone can edit anything) might provide fertile soil for the growth of such an effort.

Alternatively, you might consider making custom changes to the Wiki software to support the encyclopedia effort, or make additional software to support Wiki. One obvious thing might be to write software to scan and Wikify free information like the CIA factbook so KQ doesn't have to type it all. Another might be to have "create page from template" pages at which a user could interact with forms and/or applets to create standard-format pages for things like movies, species, poker games :-) (with plenty of room for free-form text, of course). This latter can be done indepently of Wiki itself (for example, I could create a template on my own site that generated Wiki pages), but some extra software support might be handy (for example, being able to put non-visible comments into a Wiki page, or marking pages as editable only by such template scripts (this latter is already a feature of UseMod that Wikipedia doesn't use). I'll see if I can come up with a sample of what that might look like. --LDC

Actually I don't type the CIA info, but save the .html and cut and paste from notepad. But templates would certainly be handy for things with a fixed structure that people do have to type.

Wasn't the IMDB originally called the "Cardiff Movie Database"? --Robert Merkel

The servers that it ran on were at Cardiff University in Wales... here is the link to their own telling of the history of IMDb if anyone wants to see it http://us.imdb.com/Help/Oweek/history --mincus

I've seen several movie-related entries such as Mel Brooks. It contains biographical information, which is good. It also contains an incomplete list of movies he wrote/produced/acted in. I don't think this is so good. I somehow doubt that Wikipedia will ever be able to compete with IMDB in this regard. IMDB will always have more up-to-date information (at least for anyone still alive) because it has a lot of users itself, and is considered the resource for looking up movie facts. I think perhaps instead of trying to list out movies or other statistics here, we just put in a link to IMDB.

Now I'm not advocating we don't put in any movie info into Wikipedia. I'm certainly all for documenting significant works by anyone. Some movies and movie people have had a significant impact, either politically, or culturally or whatever, and Wikipedia is a good place to document such.

What do y'all think? -- ansible

I almost think it is beside the point. We don't HAVE to replicate the IMDB because it is there. But we have no reason to not replicate in each and every case that is useful to us, and also whenever anyone has a yen to just add stuff for the fun of it. Once our user level is up, I think that it is inevitable that we will compete with the IMDB. My feeling about the Wikipedia so far is that if there isn't explcitly a reason to not do it on the Wikipedia, then someone will eventaully do it. The only worry I have is in maintaining the few strictures we have (NPOV for one). Provided we remain strong on the core don'ts it's my feeling that everything else will get filled in sooner or later.-trimalchio

I simlpy don't understand this article about IMDB. Is simply doesn't contain any pieces of information. I wanted to know its history, the names of the founders, etc... it is a full disappointment.

Try this link in case you want to know more: www.imdb.com/Help/Oweek/history/

Accessing IMDb functionality from within wikicode

Shouldn't this section really be on the talk page to avoid self reference? --Phil | Talk 12:01, Oct 22, 2004 (UTC)

Yes. Here it is: Fredrik | talk 12:39, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I have now moved this to a <div> at the top of the page. —Mulad (talk) 21:41, May 19, 2005 (UTC)

Anti-Americanism on IMDB message boards / Koenig's Theory

Does anyone agree with me that the following passage is a pointless digression that doesn't belong in the article? The Singing Badger 03:11, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

One theme of IMDb flame wars that comes up with surprising regularity is American foreign policy and culture, generally in a deriding tone. This theme can come up attached to movies that do warrant a discussion about a perceived pro- or anti-American tone, such as Les Triplettes de Belleville, but it seems just as often that it comes up without basis and regardless of what is being discussed. The regularity of this phenomenon led to the forming of Koenig's Theory, which states: No matter what the original subject of the conversation and regardless of what subject is being discussed, the probability of any and every discussion, debate or argument on the IMDb message boards becoming an argument about America (pros, cons, etc.) reaches one. (See Godwin's Law)
Yes. The whole "Koenig's Theory" section seems strongly POV and unsupported. Elde 23:03, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I also think the "Koenig's Theory" section is a digression - and strongly POV. This is why -
  1. IMDB isn't a catalogue of singularly American works, so why bring up America when an entire host of artworks in the database potentially witness to the subjectivity of media consumers about many other contries?
  2. Why even of all of the myriad topics of discussion at IMDB message boards would we pick out conversations about America?
  3. Even if IMDB was entirely about America, what place is there in an encyclopedia to catalogue vague proofs of Anti-American temperaments, when again, people disagree about all kinds of things in IMDB forums?
  4. Since there is no reasonable context of singularly raising the question of America, and the seemingly arbitrarily injected attachment of the fact that some people hate America, some unseen agenda or "something to say" about America reeks right through the lines.
I think the entire section labeled "Koenig's Theory" is out of place.
--Mr alex hall 03:29, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
OK, let's remove it. The Singing Badger 13:43, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That's kinda true actually. The 'Kingdom of Heaven' board is swamped with flamers and trolls about religions, and hardly any movie discussions. Trolls, especially conservative ones, often make topics about that movie xxx is a pro/anti Bush film, and debates ensure. There are a lot of political extremists on the site due to the relaxed moderation system

Commercials?

Why does the first sentence say that IMDb includes information about commercials? Commercials are expressly included excluded from the IMDb according to the IMDb's entry form for new titles. --Metropolitan90 00:56, July 26, 2005 (UTC). (Edited. --Metropolitan90 00:58, July 26, 2005 (UTC))


Migrating to Wikipedia?

The "Caveat emptor' section contains this:

The added restrictiions ... has caused some longtime conrtibutors to abandon the IMDb in favor of other information sites, such as Wikipedia.

Is there any evidence to support this (typo-laden) statement, or is it merely an attempt to promote Wikpedia at the expense of IMDb? I submit that it is the latter: and there is little (if any) evidence of significant disenchantment or defection to be found in the "Contributor's Help" message board on IMDb, or indeed anywhere on the web. I propose that this sentence be deleted.

  • It does seem a bit POV but mainly it's unverifiable so I'll remove it. -- Lochaber 09:02, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
  • I was the one who added the statement because I and a number of others have abandoned IMDb due to their added restrictions. Unfortunately no one has bothered to write an article on this so it's difficult to cite. I'm going to put it back but I will rewrite it slightly. I tried to be NPOV about it the first time but I'll give it another shot. I am not about to start citing private e-mails, however. 23skidoo 12:06, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

All Movie Guide?

Hi. I just deleted a link to the "All Movie Guide" as spam. While it does seem to be a real site, half of each page is taken up by advertising, and it didn't seem appropriate to me to make that the very first link in the IMDB article's "External Links" section. However, if the consensus is that this is an appropriate link to have here, I'll restore it (at the end of the links section). What do others think? --Nandesuka 20:29, 10 August 2005 (UTC) (signed late)

I do not understand the need for deletion of the "All Movie Guide" link, especially as spam. Also I do not understand Nandesuka's reference that All Movie Guide has some advertising. If nothing else, most of IMDB's pages are a mass of advertising and affiliate links. Is this a point to be criticized? All Movie Guide is the only online movie database that comes close in overall comprehensiveness to IMDB. Many other articles do list alternatives, why not IMDB? -- Kenta 22:58, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a web directory. In the context of an encyclopedia article about the IMDB, a link to All Movie Guide doesn't make sense. There is already a category link to "Online databases", in which the All Movie Guide is included. There's also an "online music databases" category -- I would not object to creating an "online movie database" category and adding both IMDB (and AllMovieGuide, and others) to it. But like I said, I could be wrong -- if the consensus here is that the link belongs, we can restore it. It just seems like a nonsequiteur to me. --Nandesuka 23:17, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
  • The article for All Movie Guide doesn't have an external link to IMDb, just thought I'd mention that... Anyway it's not the advertising that swings it for me, as you say there is plently of advertising on IMDb, it's just that I don't think there's any point in putting external links for websites just because they do similar things. To hark back to my earlier example, does anyone think that all the search engine articles should have external links to all the other search engines webpages? If they were owned by the same company it would be different but if all that relates them is their content then how is the link relevent? -- Lochaber 10:40, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
    • I think it's precisely because we're encyclopedic that noting that there are other similar institutions is pertinent. Ceratainly, we don't want to become dmoz, but my personal interpretation of that is that it's on a page-by-page basis; surely one additional link doesn't violate it, particularly when the link is what it was? --Baylink 02:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
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