Full announcement here:IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. As part of our ongoing effort to continually evaluate and enhance the customer experience on IMDb, we have decided to disable IMDb's message boards on February 20, 2017. This includes the Private Message system. 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.
http://www.imdb.com/board/announcement
Reactions from around the media:
http://variety.com/2017/digital/news/im ... 201977581/
http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/3/145013 ... s-comments
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 62701.html
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/i ... rds-971905
Personally, this will be a big loss. Despite the recurring issues with negativism and trolls, the thousands of message boards at the IMDb have been a tremendous resource for many years. There's a board for every film, tv series, tv movie and mini series, and everyone who has ever been credited in any/all of the above. When I'm considering watching a movie I have not seen before, old or new, or when I'm starting to binge-watch a tv series, I'll always check out its board at the IMDb to see what the viewers have to say about it. They are a great place to share opinions, bits of information, trivia, and to ask questions. There are some alternatives such as TCM's message boards for classic cinema and sitcomsonline.com to discuss comedy series; but where would you find a forum to discuss a drama series, recently-released films, or some obscure character actor who has always had his/her own board at the IMDb?
Sigh. There are some petitions circulating, but most likely they will make no difference. For example:
https://www.change.org/p/imdb-stop-imdb ... age-boards
I just don't believe their position that social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter have made their boards obsolete. They still get a lot of traffic. Well, two weeks to go, and that's that.