Updates to List Pages

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Can I no longer put single episodes of TV show on my lists?.

I tried a few things; here's what worked & didn't for me.

On the title page of an episode, the + icon still brings up my lists, from which I could add the title.

In a list's edit mode, typing the name of the episode into the add box did not find it.

Pasting the code tt0583484 into the add box and hitting enter brought up the title of the episode, which I could then add.

I always found the search function within Edit mode to be more limited than searching from the top of a title page. This is even more limited than before, but it is still possible to add an episode to a title list.

Note: This conversation was created from a reply on: Can I no longer put single episodes of TV show on my lists?.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Changes to Lists.

The list function recently changed, and it is definitely for the worst. The layout is hideous and counterintuitive, and you've made it significantly harder to move change the list order. Furthermore, adding items to the list has been changed in such a way that makes it more inconvenient. I spend a lot of time using the list function on your site, but these new changes make me want to stop using it. I don't know why you did it, but it's really frustrating and if you insist on keeping it the way it is (which you really, really shouldn't), I would at least like to know why.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled IMDb rating order.

Yeah, you've finally done it. The advanced title search used to give us the perfect IMDb rating order. But, some time ago, you've change it, and the movies with the same rating number begun to appear in popularity order. At least on the personal lists we still had the perfect IMDb rating order. But now you've change the lists too, and like the advanced title search, now the movies with the same rating number are appearing in popularity order instead of IMDb rating order. And that sucks, cause there is a great difference between a 6.9 movie wich is closer to 7.0 and one which is closer to 6.8. I can't believe that you simply lost the knowledge on how to bring us a perfect IMDb rating order. My lists and my searches will now go all to Letterboxd, a much smaller site, but one that can do the basic: give us movies with a accurate rating order.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled List and Ratings Sorting System stripped.

Previously, when viewing your ratings or lists you would be able to organize titles by year, name, recently rated, ect., as well as apply filters such as, "Only feature films", but now the system has been stripped back and very minimal for no apparent reason. You are no longer able to view titles in a compact order, which now makes it challenging for me to look through titles because i have so many rated. I would like it to go back to the way it was before the seemingly unnecessary changes.

Both on my own list, and while reading the lists of others, there were two modes I used:
*Alphabetical order.
*Order by birth date.

Now I can't use either one, and can no longer make sense of lists. 

The list pages were fine the way they were before.  Also, there was no reason for you to shut down the character lists.

We're probably all just complaining about nothing anyway. Lists will be going the way of the message boards as soon as Amazon/IMDb decides that they don't add enough monetary value to the site. I'm actually still surprised that they made such sweeping changes to the list system when deletion has always seemed more likely.

I back my list up weekly because I genuinely expect it to disappear.

One thing nobody seems to be bringing up is this:

Tech constraints on the new system prohibit us from continuing to support drag-and-drop from the Edit view...

This is just false. If you wanted to support it, you could. There is no magical technical constraint that suddenly makes the old Javascript sorting system unworkable. I've done everything from developing websites for large pharmaceutical companies to professional x86 assembly programming. I know that this is nonsense.

By the way, the yellow bar on the right top side "Rated X of Y titles" is gone too now or was it just moved somewhere else?

This is horrendous.

The drag and drop function was incredibly important to how I use the lists because I actually like to be able to reorder them. Even if the numbers function worked properly (which in my experience, it never does - it only seems to register that you've typed a number in maybe 1/10 of the time), you'd still have to keep track of how many items you'd placed higher up or moved lower down and add/subtract accordingly in your head when moving more than one item at once.

Oh, and as well as the numbers never registering for me, the entire system seems bugged for me now because I'm unable to add new items to lists. I can type words into the search bar and it opens a search box with no results.

I was in the middle of creating a long list when this change happened overnight.  Adding some titles is easier but with others is much harder.  If you go to add a film and start typing it gives you several choices, but unlike the previous search method it shows you a limited number, and I can't find a way of making the choice wider.  This particularly hinders when adding films with short titles.  First problem was with the film Z (1969), which didn't come up in the options offered.  Also Daniel (1983) didn't appear.  The 1938 version of Holiday didn't show up, but did when I typed in the alternate title of Unconventional Linda (though it showed as Holiday!) 
I'm pretty good with alternate titles but the way this works has stumped me on a few.
Also you don't see the films being added unless you go back into the list again.  So if you've picked the wrong film and got another with the same title it is much more laborious than before in removing and replacing it.
For foreign films you need to guess the title that will come up, e.g. French or an English translation.  I typed in Gueule d'Amour and despite being a unique title it didn't come up.  

Luckily you've not changed the version on my iPhone (yet, and please don't!) where the search feature is much better.
Frankly not the sort of "improvement" I'd like to see IMDb doing.

My points about the extremely important necessity of an accurate IMDb rating order, which is now gone from the personal lists:
1. Most people don't know that the results are not accurate and will rely on them, oblivious to the fact that all the movies with the same rating number will appear in POPULARITY order. You should at least put a warning like "the IMDb rating results are not completely accurate anymore"
2. When I search for movies with the same rating number in IMDb rating order (for example, the best movies with 6.9), I will simply get a result in POPULARITY order. Do you think it is ok that I look for results in one given order and get results in an entirely different order? And again, most people don't know that they will receive a result that is wrong.
3. Can you imagine if the search for movies in alphabetical order would put all the movies beggining with A in popularity order instead of an accurate alphabetical order? Well, it is the same thing. Just as wrong.
4. I simply can't believe that you guys just LOST the software that used to give a perfectly accurate rating order in IMDb good old days, which is definitely gone. 

(sorry for my english)

Further to my comments above I've just found that short films don't seem to appear when you look to add them now!

1. Initially, the Your Lists page was removed and essentially merged with the user profile page. Why was this almost immediately reversed and are its days still numbered?

2. The refine menu for lists now includes an On TV option. Why doesn't the Watchlist, where it would be a lot more useful, have this? At the moment those listings aren't accurate and there doesn't seem to be a way to change your TV service provider.

Is there a way to somehow store/save the lists that I have created? I would like to make a backup in case they accidentally get deleted due to the recent problems. I can only use the export method but that is not really useful as my lists contain directors and comments.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled The Rise and Fall of the User-List.

As an avid list-creator, of seven years of intensive work, with the sole purpose of trying to create relevant lists that not only promote the films themselves but also the IMDb experience, the latest list of ongoing changes to user-lists is a real kick in the teeth. However, on a more positive note; time that would have normally been spent on IMDb can now be used for more practical purposes.

Thanks for that.

Yours sincerely
Dr-Faustus