Our technical staff is considering several ideas to improve lists, and a search feature is among them. In the meantime you can easily search IMDb lists via Google
For example, if you type the following in Google's search bar:
site:imdb.com/list zombie
you'll get IMDb lists featuring/mentioning the word 'zombie'
For a list of all vampire-related lists that do not mention 'Nosferatu', you'd search for
site:imdb.com/list vampire -nosferatu
etc.
I hope when/if IMDB finally makes Lists searchable, it'll be similar to how wonderfully searchable Keywords are on the site. I love how all the search options allow to narrow down the results. :)
IMDb's lack of response to this issue is slowly causing me to lose interest in this topic, this thread and this forum. It's a realatively easy thing for IMDb to solve and impliment, but nothing from IMDb on it.
So my interests have gone elsewhere. I'm even losing interest in IMDb in general, except for occasional reference. So long IMDb.
? ? 118 votes nowJust need what... 2,382 more votes from the 88,800 Members ? ?- - - Internet Archive Wayback MachineMessage Boardshttp://web.archive.org/web/20170210140000/http://www.imdb.com/boards/ Lists and Recommendationshttp://web.archive.org/web/20170213123718/http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000122/threads/.
The difficulty with using Google in such searches is that you might well end up with many lists containing "zombie" in the list description in a list that has little to do with zombies. The word "zombie" might well be included in a list description, while the list itself has nothing to do with zombies. The word "zombie" might well have been included in the list description as an exclusionary term, yet it will still show up in a Google search.
What is needed from IMDb is a means to search SOLELY list titles or list names. Dependence on Google doesn't do the job.
They could allow for this in a list search - so lists with the name in the title would get a big boost in relevance and would tend to group at the top of a list of results, followed by those that include the word in the description, and you could have an option to restrict to just the title. So a broader search wouldn't mean you couldn't do a more specific search.
I agree, but so far as I know, IMDb has not done anything to facilitate searching lists. It would certainly help a lot to promote movies and IMDb. We shall see if anything takes place.
personally, if imdb were to add a valuable search option, it would be to search a keyword in an individual message board. Currently if I want to search a keyword to see if my question on a film or actor has already been discussed, the only option is to search all message boards on imdb simultaneously. When the announcement of message board updates and improvements came a while ago, I really expected better searching (30 year old technology on bboards/forums) and not a lousy avatar option.
The idea of this thread concerns lists, not the message boards. Certainly an option can be made to search message boards as well, but this thread is specifically about lists.
This is a different thing - you'd be better off posting this as a new suggestion thread.
I have suggested replacing the message board system with a more fully-featured ready-rolled message board:
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topi...
I agree on need for a search facility for users' fav film lists. I'm frustrated because last week I viewed a user's list of something like 1,390? films in the thriller genre, yet I simply cannot find this list again, hard as I've tried. There are lists of thrillers films but this one is not included.
Our technical staff is considering several ideas to improve lists, and a search feature is among them.
Would you be interested in further suggestions? I have a few I've been pondering and I'm sure others could come up with more.
At the creation of any list, the user is first prompted whether he wants to make a list of Titles, People, Characters or Images. At that point lists are categorized into one of those four categories. That categorization should be maintained such that when looking for lists of films (ie titles), one doesn't come up with lists of characters or lists of people.https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topi...#
Each of those categories might be further sub-categorized (at the user's option), such as Films - Westerns, Films - Musicals, Films - Sci Fi, Films - Comedy, Films - General (default if no other sub-category selected). I can't think of any sub-categories for people & characters other than Male & Female, but there may be some.https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topi...#
Another user suggested making lists of lists, and that is just too cumbersome. Threads of lists would be created such as user comments on films. Lists of lists of lists of lists of lists would make things too complex. Instead users might be given the option to "Favorite" a list they like and keep that list listed in their account (at IMDb - NOT Facebook) somewhere, so they might come back to it in the future.https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topi...#
In a broader scope I would have IMDb become less dependent on other sites such as Google and Facebook. I do agree with the links to Amazon and Fandango, as IMDb should not be in the business of selling DVDs or movie tickets.
I am not any sort of programer, but it does seem to me a simple matter to create a means (within IMDb) to search for list titles, or to create categories of lists, or both.
As I stated in another comment thread, I would like very much for list comments to be posted within IMDb, such as film comments are. Facebook is far too political and users (myself included) have a difficult time keeping their political comments separate from the quality of entertainment.
Take Barbara Streisand for example. She is a fine actress (one of the finest comediennes today) and her singing is truly fabulous. However, I and many others intensely disagree with her politics. In creating a list at IMDb I would really like to keep comments on the list separate from political commentary. Posting the list at Facebook doesn't allow that. Someone at Facebook, who knows nothing about singing or acting, might comment on Ms Streisand's singing or acting as really poor, simply because of their political views. Hopefully users at IMDb know something of singing and acting and would thereby keep their political commentary separate from entertainment commentary.
IMDb should be for entertainment commentary. Leave political commentary to the media and Facebook.
I would have IMDb become less dependent on other sites such as Google and Facebook.
I completely agree with you. However, apparently IMDb is moving in the opposite direction.
Comments on lists used to be internal to IMDb and were only switched to Facebook quite recently. Also, until quite recently the only way to log in was directly to IMDb. The use of GetSatisfaction for Contributor support is also quite recent (although I tend to think this particular move was a good one, given the extra functionality provided).
Given these recent changes, I can't see IMDb reducing its dependence on external sites.
David,
I also agree with Bill Goode's statement:
I would have IMDb become less dependent on other sites such as Google and Facebook.
There has been an industry trend to have other companies provide functionality that would be prohibitively expensive to develop internally. The corporate parlance for this is the word outsource. IMDb appears to be following this trend.
The benefits to IMDb and other corporations is that they can provide functionality to the end user at a reduced expense. The big downside, is that IMDb runs a significant risk of losing users to Google and Facebook. IMDb also potentially loses control of its future.
As a user, I hope that Col and his staff continue to weigh the risks and benefits of outsourcing, and balance that with internal development that will allow IMDb to thrive and expand in areas that it has unique capability.
- - -
I just realized this post is starting to sound too much like a corporate mission statement. Please forgive me for my transgression.
I just wanted to say I agree with the original post, it is so frustrating to have this enormous data base with limited search options. Even if there was a search option in which I could search for multiple key words such as crime, drama, bbc,: in which I could find british crime dramas, or holiday, 1960's, comedy to find some holiday movies, i cant understand why this feature is unavailable
While a search engine would be helpful, a ranking system is probably much more valuable. The listing system suffers from clutter -- far too many lists with little or no value to the public (personal lists). A ranking system would help cull the lists and make going to a list more attractive. As it is, I rarely use the lists, assuming I will encounter endless drivel.
I have suggested that we need better sorting of lists to help us find the more useful ones and avoid those that are too general or too personal to be of use to anyone other than the listmakers friends and family:
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topi...
"... you can easily search IMDb lists via Google ...." True, but web search results won't provide 100% coverage of all existing lists.
In particular, some recently created lists may not be found in web search.
Example (not mine): http://imdb.com/list/ls073787513/
That list was created 2 weeks ago and last updated 6 days ago.
At the time of this reply, that list was not found in this search:
https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aimdb.com%2Flist%2Fls073787513%2F
It may appear there later if Google indexes the page.
But the point remains that web search coverage of lists will not be 100%.
I appreciated in his annual message that Need Ham included special thanks for the volunteers helping out in this community...I feel that the regulars here do good jobs of tracking issues to completion when it is in our power to help fix the problem.
Therefore it amazes me that this thread has almost 70 'likes' (more than I've ever seen on a single post) and yet the only staff contact is 2 years old and is basically "Google it".
I am frankly embarrassed...good customer service does not mean fixing everything - sometimes the answer is "no" or "in 4 years"....however good service does mean contact, at very least someone in the staff should have threads such as this bookmarked or on a reminder to at least drop by and give an update as part of appearing to be proactive or involved.
Great that it is "under consideration".....but communication buys a lot of goodwill and this thread is ridiculous.
bob
note: I am not staff nor in any way affiliated with IMDb
... the only staff contact is 2 years old
and is basically "Google it"Indeed, "Google it" sums up the old existing
official documentation on the topic as well, i.e.
the "How do I search..." item in the Lists FAQ:
http://www.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?listfaq
> "How do I search for a list in IMDb lists?
We don't have a list search feature available on the IMDb site today. But you can use your regular search engine to do this. For example, if you are looking for lists that mention the word 'director' you can use the following Google query: director site:imdb.com/list."
Apparently, that note was added about 4 years ago.
(As I explained in my previous reply, "Googling it" is not really a
complete workaround. A real IMDb-driven list search facility is wanted.)
Sorry for the lack of updates, but at this time the original response/suggestion still stands.
I am not aware of any short-term plans for a dedicated search feature for lists, and since Google provides a viable (albeit not perfect) alternative for searching lists, there isn't currently a huge incentive to divest resources from other features/projects that have potentially a greater impact on the user experience.
If/when circumstances and resources allow a different course of action, we would be happy to revisit this, but for the time being this remains a wish-list item.
No public web search engine can guarantee 100% search coverage of a large target corpus. The web is insanely large; even Google can't keep up with it all (realistically they don't aim to index everything) -- and they can't and won't prioritize your pages over the rest of the world; therefore, your targeted search coverage through Google or any public search engine is going to be considerably less than 100% complete, and certainly less than 100% up-to-date.
For example:
Today, I found some lists that were created long ago but last updated a few weeks ago. Google's search results do not reflect the latest updates to some of those lists, because Google last indexed some of them over 3 months ago.
I assume that I could find many such examples if I go looking for them. Of course, I can also found some recently created lists that Google hasn't indexed at all "yet". I might also find some older lists that are not indexed.
(I can also find some rather puzzling examples, such as a months-old list that Google indexed only from the hungarian.imdb.com subdomain; that search result now leads to a 404 error page, even though the list actually still exists.)
Google is not good enough! ... I will admit that I like their doodles though. (-;
Perhaps IMDb could look into enterprise search
hardware solutions, or ... wait, here's a better idea:
Question:
Could IMDb use Amazon A9 CloudSearch to
develop a great IMDb List Search solution?
http://www.a9.com/whatwedo/cloudsearch/
Could that work?
Another important point here is that using google to find IMDB list, you dont have the option to sort your results.
How many user list is created on IMDB? 100.000? 1.000.000?
In any case it's too much to browse through on the google website.
With a IMDB list search users could sort pr. iIMDB rating, year, list followers, "similar to my top rating", ecc.
This would be very helpful.
Anders Poulsen,
There is probably no easy way to determine the number of IMDb list pages that Google and other search engines index, and how frequently they index those pages. As such, as you and Lucus point out, the information available on Google will be incomplete and out of date. In addition, Google does not have access to the number of times a list has been viewed nor can it provide the kind of filtering and sorting options that would be useful when referencing lists.
You wrote:
How many user list is created on IMDB? 100.000? 1.000.000?
In any case it's too much to browse through on the google website.
We can, however, get a sense of how may lists exist on IMDb.
According to the "Internet Archive", the last time IMDb made the full list of lists available was around December 8, 2012. At that time, there were 471,902 lists.
https://web.archive.org/web/20121208174539/http://www.imdb.com/lists/
After that time, IMDb only showed the newest 250 lists on http://www.imdb.com/lists .
IMDb choose to discontinue that page November 15, 2014 to discourage spammers from publicizing Asian gambling sites and illegal streaming video sites.
http://www.imdb.com/lists
Saved 504 times between September 18, 2010 and November 15, 2014.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120615000000*/http://www.imdb.com/lists
In addition, IMDb now provides what appears to be a numerical index instead of a hash code for lists. After a little experimenting, the list number probably is also a hash code.
It is probably a safe bet that there are well over 2 millions user created lists on IMDb.
did any staff look in to Lucus surgestion to use Amazon A9 CloudSearch? Although, I cannot know for certain, I suspect that IMDb staff have not looked into Lucus' specific suggestion. However, since Amazon.com is the parent company of IMDb, there probably have been discussions for the technical staff of Amazon.com and IMDb to have had that discussion. Honestly, beyond looking at the website, I haven't thought about how this would work on IMDb.
This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled Search user lists. Get social!.
Why is IMDB not social?
There is a world of potential in using the creative forces of the Imdb users.
As it is Imdb is a dictionary. Why not let it be a community, a place to get suggestions, a place where everybody ges the possibility to be a film critic. A place where you can truly find good movies.
With the possibility to search user lists, to follow, comment and favorit, imdb would be this place.
Get social!
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