Announcements Changes to the Movie and TV forums

Kevin

Code Monkey
Staff member
Some changes have been made to the Movie and TV forums. In short, when starting a new thread in either of the forums a valid TMDB URL or ID is required.

TMDB is short for The Movie Database and it is community driven index of movies and TV shows. For those familiar with IMDB, the concept is the same but instead of acting as a shell for promoting Amazon sales & service (IMDB was bought by Amazon some years ago) TMDB instead relies on public contributed edits.

Just visit TMDB and find the movie or TV show that you would like to create a new thread for. Then you can copy and paste either the URL or ID into the subject field of the new thread in the Movie and TV forums.

For example, if you wanted to create a new thread about Wheel of Time the TMDB URL is https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/71914-the-wheel-of-time. Copy & paste that URL into the subject field when in the TV forum and your new thread will automatically pull in the TV shows description, poster, and other information! The ID is the numeric part of the URL so in this case the TMDB URL is https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/71914-the-wheel-of-time and the ID is 71914. Either value can be used when creating new threads.

When creating your new thread, enter the TMDB URL or ID as the subject and enter your comments about the show as normal. The TMDB automatic information will be inserted as the post #1 in the thread and your comments will be inserted as post #2. Note: Only TV shows can be entered in the TV forum and only movies can be entered in the movie forum.

For general discussions about movies or TV shows, like "Do you like drama shows?", can still be created in the Open Chat forum.
 
Had a look at TMdb, not bad, not bad at all.
I joined and started building a watchlist (I didn't reference my IMdb watchlist yet).

I noticed TMdb doesn't offer (or I haven't found it) a connections list to movies.
I use IMdb connections list to figure out which films are in the set so I can build my sets of movies.

I also haven't seen individual movie trivia lists (tho I haven't really read any of the discussions yet).
I use the trivia lists along with wikis and dedication pages to create threads on my movie forum.
For example: In my Godzilla Collection section for some of the Showa Era godzilla movies I did some extensive research to gather trivia and movie details while building the threads.
*9: Destroy All Monsters `1968 (1969) is a sample of how I put the threads together.


I also like to read "Goofs" about the movie.

All in all the pages look cleaner. I'll try it out and explore it (I still have IMdb on my speeddial too).

From the edits I've seen so far, I like where you are going with the Movie/TV sections (forums). Page listings 'look' cleaner and better but the common discussion threads break the look.
You might consider a sub-forum for those general title discussions separate from the actual Movie/TV but not lost in General Discussion (Open Chat). That forum is huge (548 pages right now).
 
You might consider a sub-forum for those general title discussions separate from the actual Movie/TV but not lost in General Discussion (Open Chat).
I was actually contemplating that, and was how I was originally going in the direction of, but wasn't sure if new general "Movie Chat" and "TV Chat" sub-forums would get missed by users. Sub-forums don't stand out much in the forum indexes so it's easy to not notice them. We can give it a try though, I'll set it up later today.
 
Ran into an issue I mentioned in the Godzilla Island thread.

TMdb must be fairly new because there are a few titles they don't seem to have.
Not an issue unless someone wants to post a thread on one.
The thread won't go thru because there is no TMdb link.

With me, not really an issue as I'll find a work-around but for someone new to Alien Soup, it might dissuade them from creating new threads.

One possible solution (Go Code Monkey) is to write a script or whatever you call it to override the restriction. Perhaps you could include a counter which only allows one override per day or week for that ip address or member? LOL, I have no idea what would be involved or if it could even be done or if you even want to do that.

In the case of Godzilla Island

VS TMdb
 
I'm running into an isse with the Television forums.

When I post a reply, what looks like a preview window pops up with my reply.
I then hit reply again and it posts a double reply?
Is there a reason for the preview pop up?

So far, the only forum I find this happening is the Television forum and only when posting a reply to an existing thread. To stop this, I leave the forum and come back. Never had to do that before to sere my replies.
Haven't noticed it in any other forums.
 
Back
Top