Films forum feedback - Are you not entertained?

Sad Professor

One of the things that came out of the recent AH feedback thread was the suggestion that forums consider having regular feedback threads where users could share any thoughts they might have on the direction of the forum and how it works. Based on some private concerns we've received from people over the last while we've decided this is worth having and might be a good opportunity to thrash out any issues anyone has.

So if you have any (preferably constructive) feedback, be it comments, suggestions, questions or concerns, please share them below.

pixelburp

Good idea!

Not sure I have any immediate, constructive feedback (but will think on it), but certainly it'd be useful to engage on where to take the forum. I can't help but notice the quantity & quality of discussion has dipped in the last few years; several heavy contributors leaving / disappearing certainly didn't help, but half the conversations seem to devolve into bickering over aggregator scorings or taking swipes at critics/fanboys etc.

tigger123

The Star Wars threads being a prime example; two polarised positions just taking shots at each other continuously.

It does stop me posting in them tbh. You feel like you end up defending a film rather than discussing it (which is what you'd prefer to do), so then you just don't bother.

HandsomeBob

pixelburp wrote: »

Good idea!

Not sure I have any immediate, constructive feedback (but will think on it), but certainly it'd be useful to engage on where to take the forum. I can't help but notice the quantity & quality of discussion has dipped in the last few years; several heavy contributors leaving / disappearing certainly didn't help, but half the conversations seem to devolve into bickering over aggregator scorings or taking swipes at critics/fanboys etc.

As long as I've been a member, all the way back to when I joined in 2008 when The Dark Knight was released, that has been an issue. Thus, I wouldn't personally feel the quality has dipped in the last few years, but maybe a lot of posters have gotten bored with the same debates and have left.

I used to love discussing on this forum but it gets to the point where you realise that people have their own personal tastes and are unlikely to be convinced by an alternative view, especially when it comes to an art like Film. And that's fine. I mean if I compared my posts in the thread for 2012's Dark Knight Rises to my posts in the thread for 2016's Batman v Superman, I'd be pretty sure that I'd spot word for word the same arguments and the same posters giving the same opinion.

I mean that's when you realise you've wasted your time arguing online and instead should have just been happy that you either loved or hated a film. For me that is why the forum has probably suffered above anything else. That's just a wider symptom of what all of boards is suffering from right now I think.

pixelburp

That's a fair point; I do distinctly recall the thread dedicated to Dark Knight Rises becoming as tedious & toxic as The Last Jedi devolved to, but I would be convinced that there's a tendency of 'discussion' (if it can be called that) degenerating into quoting Rotten Tomatoes scores as weapons. As you say, posters would quickly get bored with trying to debate any topic, if someone else trots out that 52% aggregate score as a Source of Truth.

As for concrete feedback: well, just to spitball on suggestions to enliven the forum some more:

• Film club? Was suggested before IIRC and participation was always a problem
• More 'off topic' threads? Not sure where I'm going with this one, but there aren't that many 'blather' threads.
• I had been thinking myself of starting a 'short film' thread, dedicated to sharing some noteworthy or interesting short films that I'd come across. No idea what the take-up for that might be.
• Film in Ireland being a fairly niche topic, would there be any scope for some AMAs, some hook-ups with 'official' areas of Irish film?
• Maybe the aggregator boll*cks could be lessened if we added more polls to the threads for bigger releases. Might have steered the conversation better in Last Jedi had the poll indicated a predominant feeling.

Slydice

OOH! Could we have occasional Mod v Mod gladiator style debates about films?

Locked threads, 2 Mods Enter, 1 Mod .. eh.. well I guess 2 Mods leave! Public votes at the end? Guest Mod appearances?

I think that the forum is a victim of modern fandom in which you can no longer discuss a film without causing offence to fanboys or those trying to be cool and hate on it. Any criticism is seen as a personal attack, the Last Jedi thread is the perfect example of this culture, I posted a couple of thoughts on how middling I found the film only to then be called a woman-hating misogynist because I wasn't a big fan of Rey amongst other things. People seem incapable of discussing a piece of art but instead, both sides just want to tear chunks out of the other. It's hard to know what to do about it, as you can't really stop the discussion, though a niceness policy may not be a bad idea. I genuinely think that before people get access to the internet they should have to do a test on how to behave like an adult.


Looking at the forums now I notice how few of the old die-hards are still about and posting, I know myself that I rarely post in threads as all the big threads are about Marvel and Star Wars, both of which I think are at best meh and also, I just can't be bothered to read page after page of bickering over nothing. The constant discussion of film scores and what this rating means when compared to this is just tiresome. People have forgotten how to discuss the art and instead are more concerned with proving that the pop culture they love is better than the pop culture you love. Any DC or Marvel thread will no doubt devolve into this nonsense.

The main thing I would like to see is the sense of community return, I know this may sound like utter nonsense but the film board should be a fun place where people don't have to worry about being attacked for liking or disliking something. The idea of safe spaces is ridiculous to me but when you see the level of toxicity in some of the threads here you have to wonder if maybe it's not such a bad idea. In the past, these boards were full of intelligent and fun discussion and debate. If a poster hated something another loved then healthy discussion was grown from it. People actually shared opinions and analysis of why the felt such a way, now instead it's petty insults and a desperate race to be the most biting and scathing toward the other poster.

tigger123

Not to get too hifaluting about it, but society itself has become far more polarised in its opinions.

Would the threads in Films be any different to the threads in any other forum? Everything is A vs B, Marvel vs DC, New Trilogy v Original Trilogy, US v Russia, men v women, yada yada yada...

johnny_ultimate

pixelburp wrote: »

Film club? Was suggested before IIRC and participation was always a problem

Yeah, translating enthusiasm to participation is typically a problem. However, given renewed interest in it recently, it might be worth a try. If we are to experiment, I would initially suggest a 'Netflix only' policy for the films in question - while that dramatically lowers the number of films there for consideration (although there's enough hidden gems there to sustain it for a while), I think it's the best way to ensure lots of posters have easy access to the film in question.

I had been thinking myself of starting a 'short film' thread, dedicated to sharing some noteworthy or interesting short films that I'd come across. No idea what the take-up for that might be.

Always worth a try

Film in Ireland being a fairly niche topic, would there be any scope for some AMAs, some hook-ups with 'official' areas of Irish film?

Could definitely chat with the admins to see if we can use the existing AMA structure to tie-in with such a thing!

Maybe the aggregator boll*cks could be lessened if we added more polls to the threads for bigger releases. Might have steered the conversation better in Last Jedi had the poll indicated a predominant feeling.

My personal concern with polls is that it would only feed that sort of thing: that people become more concerned with the poll results as an 'objective' marker of consensus and use it as a stick accordingly. A kind of 'look at the poll - you're wrong!' sort of attitude. But if it's something people are interested in seeing implemented, the tools are there!

tigger123 wrote: »

Not to get too hifaluting about it, but society itself has become far more polarised in its opinions.

Indeed, while the Internet has never really been a site for great, high-level discourse, things have become much more toxic everywhere over the last few years in particular. Conversations around relatively innocent concerns such as films or video games can be impossibly unpleasant, but that's exponentially the case for politics or social issues.

This isn't a boards.ie problem by any stretch, even if it's naturally impacted. Other than coming down harshly on obvious trolls (which thankfully we still get few of around these parts) and actual personalised insults / abuse, is there anything people feel we could do to make threads friendlier or more inviting? While we're very aware of how uninviting certain threads have and do become, in reality there's often very few posters doing anything outside the rules - so from our perspective it's a challenging situation to mod. If anyone has any suggestions or approaches they'd like to see, we're all ears

CastorTroy

I decided to try and post more in here. Just I don't watch as many films these days.
And if I plan on seeing a film I would usually avoid threads about it to avoid any spoilers.

I would probably be interested in the film club idea, though I've never been the film critic type. As far as I'm concerned, Airplane is one if the greatest movies. If I find a film boring, I'll say it. Too many films are, as I like to compare them, treated like The Emperor's New Clothes.

Maybe add a movie release date sticky thread?
Maybe a resources thread as well for those looking for movie posters, memorabilia, indie cinemas. I know when I lived in Dublin years ago, i found a handy shop for posters