Complaint about reviews taking days to post

@Fran​ you're response provided zero useful information and completely ignores the horrible experience this is causing for loyal IMDb contributors. Please escalate.

@Fran​ my review is still pending. There are now 232 reviews posted for Iron Lung. Can you really not see how backwards and infuriating this is? Can you please have someone look into it? Can you please let the team reviewing the submissions of these problems?

@FeastMode277- As mentioned above, depending on several factors, submissions might take longer to be processed than the estimated time. This why they might not be up on the site immediately. Your review will be process accordingly. 

Thank you for the feedback! Will pass it along to the respective team. 

@Maya​ thanking you for passing along the feedback. i feel that if the team really knew the frustrations they were causing, they would adjust the process

@MovieCat​ Here is my review.

My favorite genre is sci-fi. My second favorite genre is horror. I adore sci-fi horror. I went into this movie knowing nothing about it. And the first five minutes had me intrigued to the max.

Then the next two hours of the movie happen, and I was bored out of my mind. If a movie fiend, a sci-fi junkie, a horror lover is bored to the point of anger, then the movie has failed completely.

I've liked bottle films before. But with such a limited cast and locations, you need to supplement it with other things. It needs a great performance to draw in the viewers, but his performance is solid at best. It needs captivating dialogue, but it's basic and you can't even hear half of it.

It needs story, but nothing happens in this movie. There are like three plot points. It should have been a short film. If it was extended to 90 minutes, it would have still been boring. But this movie is over two hours for seemingly no reason.

I thought about leaving early, but it seemed like the kind of movie where the only cool stuff happens at the end. But no, there is nothing redeeming, nothing to make it worth the time I just wasted. This movie is garbage. Don't watch it. And don't trust these fake positive reviews by accounts that only have one review.

@FeastMode277​ You're pretty rude.

No one has guarantees that their reviews will be accepted, and with it accusing the IMDb of having fake bot reviews, I can understand why it's got held up for assessment.

It's not like your review is a work of art, it just says that the film was (in your view) boring, and not much else. 

@MovieCat​ 

they are definitely fake reviews with accounts that were created recently and have no other reviews than for this movie. if that's why it's not approved, then decline the review and notify me why. instead it's just sitting there pending (still!!!).

and i am rude because i have been dealing with this nonsense for years. i use IMDb more than other other website, my clicks are likely in the hundreds of thousands. i have had hundreds of reviews upvoted to the first page or even at the number one spot.

i have 2.6k reviews and they hold them for completely subjective reasons, but allow others through even though they don't follow the guidelines. and they never tell you if it was approved or declined. so i have to check every day to see if it was declined. they don't give me a reason it was declined so i have to guess.

they take down reviews without notification, many times incorrectly taken down. they say "just resubmit it" but i can't because i watched it a year ago and don't remember my thoughts. and who know how many have been taken down that i don't even notice.

and i never said my review was a work of art. i do this as a hobby and so my thoughts are stored somewhere since i watch too many movies to remember. their process of declining/deleting reviews is spitting in the face of their contributors. it's unacceptable.

maybe i'm rude but it's justified. but your response to my legitimate anger is rude without justification.

@FeastMode277​ I was a little rude with the "work of art" remark, but I was curious to see. Of course, the IMDb aren't obliged to accept any review. And, to be frank, I wish they'd accept LESS, as the quality has dropped considerably over the last few years, with the age of the emotispeak taking over.

"useless responder"... that's rude.

@MovieCat​ I agree about the low quality of the reviews they accept. And then they decline mine, which may not be works of art, but i actually take time and effort to write them. and they don't decline it right away, so i have to check back repeatedly to see if it posted or if i have to submit a new review and try to figure out why it was declined so i can modify it.

The useless responder comment may have been out of anger, but it's accurate, especially when i specifically asked in my original post that they don't just provide a generic response which doesn't address my issue at all. this isn't the first time i've dealt with this. it seems like they just try to close issues as fast as possible even if it means they aren't helping at all and leaving the user angry and unsatisfied.

notice how i thanked maya above since she actually passed the feedback on to the team instead of closing the issue with no resolution.

i recently posted reviews for new releases The Wrecking Crew, Mercy, and His & Hers. all of them were upvoted to be the #1 review. i also have the #3 review for Send Help. you know what all these had in common? the review didn't pend for a week while hundreds of other reviews were approved.

i don't get paid for this. i do it for fun and for the people who seem to like my reviews, to help them decide if they should see a movie or just to hear someone else's thoughts on it. and my free contributions are helping IMDb get tons more clicks. i'm guessing i've had near 100k upvotes.

and yet it's gotten to the point where i'm considering making the full switch to letterboxd. the only thing holding me back is them not having tv shows.

@FeastMode277​ Yeah, I didn't mean "work of art" as harsh as it sounded. You keep on doing what you enjoy doing.

Just out of curiosity, do you find you get more up votes for positive reviews? I rarely write them these days, unless the mood strikes me, but I've noticed if I write a negative one it gets downvotes from, presumably, someone who loves the film.

@MovieCat​ To call someone rude and then go on to dismiss their concerns with ad homs is quite an impressive feat. Your opinion on the quality of their review is irrelevant, and very telling.

The complaint raised in this post was a valid one. People put a great deal of time and work into writing reviews for this website. There is a massive benefit had from posting them as quick as possible. Traffic directed to a user review decreases exponentially as approval date and the film release date grow further apart. For this reason it only makes sense that @FeastMode27 would come across as frustrated in their replies. They are receiving intentionally vague and unhelpful feedback, which adds nothing to the conversation.

The approval process is designed to reject content which violate IMDB terms and conditions (e.g. AI-generated (spam), illegal, plagiarism). The work in question clearly does not do any of this.

@cc1ty​ i appreciate you saying this :) he already admitted he was rude. bygones are bygones.

@cc1ty​ I don't really want to drag this out, as FeastMode said, bygones be bygones.

And it's really not my business, I was just being curious/nosey.

But I'd say the quality of a review IS important. (Not necessarily in this case.) If someone is writing something of no substance and bashing it out quickly for clicks (as an overall point, not suggesting this is what FM is doing) then it doesn't really add a lot to the site.

I'd much rather read a review that's been thought on, rather than just some of the modern reviews which are "this film SUX" and not much else. If that means sacrificing a few upvotes, then so be it. (Again, this is a general point, not directed at FM)

@MovieCat​ my review was finally declined after 5 days. i removed the line about the fake reviews (which is 100% true) and the review was approved within a minute. But now there are now 634 reviews and it's unlikely mine will be seen by many (there were 34 reviews when i submitted).

The fact that IMDb still doesn't see this as a problem is baffling. They could have just declined it immediately.

They didn't notify me that is was declined, so if it wasn't for my OCD repeatedly checking the IMDB contribution history page (Beta), I wouldn't have noticed and my thoughts on the movie would have been lost forever.

And the reason it shows for being declined is "Does not meet eligibility criteria." Which tells me nothing. It does not show me how to fix the review or how to prevent this from happening in future reviews.

This is not rocket science. I can find simple solutions for all of these issues, including the 5 days it takes to decline a review. But they'd rather just ignore my complaints and keep frustrating their most loyal users.

@FeastMode277​ Back in the old days I did submit some more than once, when I used to write them. Sometimes it was 100% the same, and it just seemed arbitrary.

I'm going to watch this Iron Lung now, though, after this... you've got me intrigued about it.

@MovieCat​ did you watch it?