"external reviews"

This is a good question. I do see that the IMDb Conditions of Use prohibit certain kinds of content, but nowhere therein is it stated that the venue/company/community's notion of "content" extends to the content that would be viewed or acquired through accessing hyperlinks (or unclickable URLs) found on the site. As a courtesy or because we don't want any trouble, many IMDb subscribers never include URLs to pages that have content which is obviously "illegal, obscene, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, infringing of intellectual property rights, or otherwise injurious to third parties" in any of their IMDb lists, IMDb submissions, IMDb forum posts or respective IMDb subscriber profiles. The may exist questions about how to define "obscene", but seemingly hardcore-pornographic pictures falls well within the concept.

Thank you all for your feedback! It's all very interesting. However, I'm still confused. I did use an adult movie as an example, but I've seen this with other movies, too, e.g. genre films, so maybe I should've used a different example.

(It really doesn't matter to me what IMDb's policies/guidelines are; I just want a way to find out what they are so I don't waste my time -- and IMDb moderators' time -- by researching and submitting stuff IMDb doesn't want!)

Karen_P makes an interesting point, and objections to "Adult DVD Talk [andyblake]" are valid, but IMDb approved that external review for "Bad Wives" that someone (not me) submitted. It's because I saw that website used frequently in review links that I thought it was acceptable. There are probably thousands of links to Adult DVD Talk from IMDb (seems like every adult movie has them). So that doesn't seem to explain why IMDb rejected the links to Adult DVD Talk reviews that I supplied.

Meanwhile, of the links I submitted that were rejected for "Teenage Lesbian," AVN, XBIZ and AIPdaily do not have any pornographic images, so wouldn't they be acceptable? AVN and XBIZ, as far as I know, do not host any (I only found the AIPdaily review via Google and was unaware of that site before then, so I really don't know about them.)

I'm glad to see Peter_pbn has found a guideline that says links to "prurient content" are unacceptable. But while that line is clear, IMDb's application of it is not. I have seen adult movie listings on IMDb with external links to "official site" that would certainly contain explicit sex (although behind a paywall). And if the IMDb definition of prurient is "nude or topless," certainly there are mainstream movies that would affect. Then there are lots of IMDb links to Twitter, which hosts adult content. (Many adult actresses post porn to their Twitter feeds, although some keep their feeds cleaner than Kim Kardashian, so I don't even know how IMDb could fairly patrol that.)

jeorj_euler makes interesting points, too. I completely agree with not linking to anything "illegal, obscene, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, infringing of intellectual property rights, or otherwise injurious to third parties." But all of that is illegal and the links I submitted were all to legal U.S. sites. Or by "obscenity" does IMDb mean "objectionable?" I suspect not, because some people find violence more objectionable than nudity.

I really wish IMDb's guidelines and rules were as easy to find and understand as Discogs! Does anyone know how to get further clarification from IMDb?

Karen_P, thanks, and if it was a one-time thing, I'd agree, but there are hundreds if not thousands of links to Adult DVD Talk reviews on IMDb, so I can't imagine they all got there by accident. And I'm sure IMDb could do a mass search and removal of a site from the database if it wanted to, but they don't. It also doesn't explain rejection of the review links to AVN, XBIZ and AIPdaily, which don't have adult photos or nudity, and it doesn't explain why it can also happen on non-adult movies.

I think jeorj_euler may be onto something, in that there does seem to be some policy IMDb is not making us aware of, or some reason for inconsistent application of the guidelines. I just wish they'd tell us. I don't really see a need for secrecy.

I rarely have submissions declined because I do my best to stick to whatever rules a website has, and when something is declined, I do my best to figure out why so I don't repeat it. But this one has me stumped. I wasn't aware IMDb had fraud and bullying problems that prompted some crackdowns on certain things, though I can't say I'm surprised — Wikipedia has a ton of that, unfortunately. So I'm glad IMDb was able to deal with that, but still, I don't know how they expect us to stick to certain criteria or guidelines with submissions when they don't tell us what they are.

Oh well. Thanks, all.

Thank you, jeorj_euler. I agree with your first statement.

How does one contact this IMDb customer service representative? All the external links in this example have reference #210123-050244-967000; is posting that here sufficient? If I went through my contribution history there are a few others, but they'd be similar, so all I really need is to understand this one.

It doesn't bother me that the submission was rejected; it only bothers me that I can't figure out why, so I don't repeat it. If it's the nudity, then three of the eight links submitted do not have any nudity and seem like they should have been acceptable, four do have some nudity and the eighth does have an explicit photo, so I can understand up to five of the eight being rejected, but not all eight. (And it doesn't seem to be the nudity because hundreds or thousands of other links to Twitter, external reviews on Adult DVD Talk, and more are readily found on IMDb.)

Karen_P, your first point is very interesting to know; I certainly would not have guessed that. Thank you for all that work! I've cleared out a few things myself and reported others (like people giving themselves fake credits) so I know there's some stuff that should be there, but had no idea of the extent.

I understand your second point, but I wasn't suggesting staff editors or volunteer contributors should do that; it wouldn't be their job. IMDb clearly has database developers because there are always software improvements being made to IMDb. It's not difficult for a developer to write a tool for buik search and delete (or to clear out dead hyperlinks for that matter). And finally, I'm not trying to contribute to the problem — my reason for starting this post was because I *don't* want to contribute to a problem! Sure, I made this contribution because those sites are there — but in the absence of any guidelines that I could find anywhere (and still can't get to the bottom of), I had no reason to think there was a problem until they were rejected. Now at least I'm aware there is a problem and am asking for clarification of what exactly the problem was with all eight of those external links, because if it's nudity, as you suggest, that doesn't apply to three of them. So what is it? I'd like clarification so I don't contribute to the problem! That's not an unreasonable request and there's no reason why whatever the issue is should be kept secret.