Updates to Characters

The pages are unreadable.  For *any* kind of information.  This must be a deliberate sabotage to kill IMDB.

Why would you want to do a fool thing like this?  I mean, why?  I oddly just want the regular old imdb, read the cast, crew, reviews.  You know, information about a film like you've done for 25 yrs. 

R.I.P., Wackjobs.

I too hate the idea.  IMDb was most useful to finding out what other shows any particular actor was playing in.  For example, if I saw an actor I didn't know anything about but I liked his/her performancce, I'd look up what else the actor playeed in, there were links to the shows I was intrerested in, together with ratings, brief description of content, what other shows were people interested in, etc., and we could instantly check it out.  Now I will have to find another site  that provides all this info.  The proposed changes really suck!  Good bye, IMDb.

Well, frack. It seems that the function is shutting down already. I used to be able to find every movie and TV show with Captain Marvel, but now when I enter the character name "Captain Marvel, I only get four listings, including two with variants of the name, and that means there are a whole bunch of appearances I am not getting. And I really need to find all the movies and TV shows with a Captain Marvel in it for a research project.

Well, this is a f@*king stupid change. The very function of character pages is to be able to find out which titles include that particular character and who the character was played by. It is a very good way to get a list of movies with that particular character, as an example listing all the Jack Taylor or Jesse Stone movies in publication order. Especially if you only have the translated name of the title, it's easier to find the title in such a list than using the search feature, which has always been kind of crap.

It's idiotic to expect all the character pages to be filled to the brim with useless trivia, as you seem to have been doing. Those things are a bonus. The real gem are the connections on the page and now you're removing them? I mean seriously, I've yet to see a change on IMDb that hadn't made the user experience worse.

Of course one of the reason why the character pages weren't perhaps used as much as they could have is that you, IMDB, did not improve them. For example, there was a longstanding problem with them that you couldn't get a full list of all the episodes with that character in them. It was always limited in length and the longer version removed the actor information. That resulted in not being able get the list of all the actors playing that character easily. An example would be Laurie Forman in That 70s Show: I don't think the character page ever listed Lisa Robin Kelly, because of the episode limit. And the full list removed the actor information. I reported the bug, but nobody f@*king cared.

The thing is, if you, the IMDB, want to stay as the go-to resource for movies, you need to support and come up with more of the sophisticated uses, or the users will find alternative resources and leave you behind. (Well, you're at least throwing out people who like Kevin Smith's movies by removing a very nice resource for the characters in his universe.) The connectedness of the information and access to those connections is the very thing that sets you apart from run-of-the-mill movie sites and now you're destroying it.

You may think that the cast lists and forums are your core, but you of all people should know that discussion forums and the database of information is surprisingly easily rebuilt elsewhere by crowd-sourcing, if you manage to piss off the community and drive them away. That's how you did it in the first place. With decisions like these, you're a myspace waiting to happen.

@Col Needham

Can you help us understand why the Character pages must be removed before the new Search functionality will be implemented? Are you re-using the character codes, so that doing a character search would get mixed results if you leave the existing pages in place?

(I don't see any evidence of that yet, since ch0000574 is the code for Bugs Bunny under the old hand-built page http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000574/, but when I open the new version for one of his titles, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119160/characters/nm0123354? the nm0123354 is for the actor voicing Bugs, and I don't see the ch-code anywhere.)

Also, can you explain how you will build a good automated search for a character's filmography? Especially for something like a religious figure, whose name is frequently adopted by the general population. Ex: searching for Jesus won't just yield portrayals of the religious figure.

Because I couldn't find a way to automatically archive all the character pages there, I was going to suggest people start saving character pages to web.archive.org But I think that's only useful to view later if you know the url of the archived page you want. If you eliminate the ability to search for the removed pages, I suppose Google search could help with that, but I'm not clear how long they keep dead links.

Thanks in advance.

Does this mean that user created character bios go off into oblivion or do they have a place in the improved IMDB?  Is there any user created content in IMDB that the IMDB admins can definitively say will not be deleted to improved user experience?

IMDB admins, whomsoever in your staff gave you this idea was terribly terribly wrong. I am pleading you not to go through with this change. It's one of an integral part of IMDB and is used a lot by people who are an avid fan of TV shows and movies. You've to understand that some people just care about ratings and that's all they come to IMDB to see. Some enjoy new trailers(but weirdly youtube is faster in playing them- so better improve that) and see what's the new movie that's coming and that's what they come here to see. But any avid fan does seriously check out where a particular character has been elsewhere the movie he/she was watching. Like for example I found out through IMDB only that Frasier wasn't just a character in Cheers but has a whole show based on it named same as his name and boy oh boy that show is on top of my list.

So if someone of you out there is really listening to me and trust me I am not the kind of person who spends his time babbling about politics on social media or similar crap like this, I am telling you don't make this change.

It's my sincere request, please let this particular feature be as it is.

So, you're taking away the only feature I used character pages for, i.e. looking up which actors that has played a certain character? Well, that's.. just not logical in any way whatsoever.
Would you be so kind to please reconsider that change and not take away a great feature?

I'd rather IMDB delete this character section and bring back the message boards. They were far more useful when looking for opinions from the average person, instead of relying on professional "critics." That gutted the site.

Massively disliking this decision. I often use character pages to find film prequels, sequels and chronology. This will now only be possible IF the same actor has played that character and therefore you can see by the actors credits. 
I think rather than taking time to change the character pages the time could be spent sorting out the problems.
Very disappointed and a tad annoyed.

Regarding the reference to keywords, which gromit asked about in a previous post, I noticed this addition to the keyword submission guide:

-character Used to denote a character's appearance in a title. The formatting should be presented as the name of the character first, followed by "-character". So, for Star Wars, we'd list Han Solo as "Han-Solo-character". This can be used for both fictional characters, and fictional portrayals of real life people (including when someone is playing a fictionalized, scripted portrayal of themselves). Please note that if the character is recurring in a series the character keyword should only be added to the parent and not individual episodes.

https://help.imdb.com/article/contrib...

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Stop ruining IMDb!! There is nothing wrong with it the way it is. First the message boards now this. Just because you're the biggest and most popular online movie database currently doesn't mean you can't be overthrown. Plenty of giant seemingly indestructible companies managed to meet their end through constant poor decisions, don't take your success for granted, LISTEN TO YOUR AUDIENCE WHEN THEY DON'T LIKE SOMETHING (Don't just censor their criticisms like you did with my previous comment regarding the boards). You want your site to stand the test of time? Then don't destroy it, pretty simple really.

For instance, if someone wants to see all the quotes Yoda has to offer, they'd need someplace to go to: www.imdb.com/character/ch0000015/quotes

As stated above, quote pages of pages don't have any option of viewing quotes that are only spoken by specific characters.

If there's a way to screw good things up or make bad things worse, IMDb will find it eventually and do it "to improve the experience."  I'm surprised anyone is still surprised by this.