Internet Movie Database
Encyclopedia
Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million unique users each month and a solid and rapidly growing mobile presence. IMDb was launched on October 17, 1990, and in 1998 was acquired by Amazon.com
.
(Founder and CEO of IMDb) in early 1987. The founding ideas of IMDb began with a posting by Col Needham titled "Those Eyes", on the subject of actresses with beautiful eyes. On October 17, 1990, Col Needham posted a simple software package to the USENET
newsgroup rec.arts.movies, which allowed readers of that group to create and search a basic movie and TV database. The original database was built from the lists of credits that Col Needham and two other readers had begun to publish on the rec.arts.movies group. Other film fans began to participate in the collection of data on the Usenet
newsgroup
rec.arts.movies.
Needham soon started a (male) "Actors List", while Dave Knight began a "Directors
List", and Andy Krieg took over THE LIST, which would later be renamed the "Actress List". Both this and the Actors List had been restricted to people who were still alive and working, but retired people began to be added, and Needham also started what was then (but did not remain) a separate "Dead Actors/Actresses List". The goal now was to make the lists as inclusive as the maintainers could manage. In late 1990, the lists included almost 10,000 movies and television series. On October 17, 1990, Needham posted a collection of Unix
shell script
s which could be used to search the four lists, and the database that would become the IMDb was born. At the time, it was known as the "rec.arts.movies movie database".
(a network in its infancy at that time) under the name of Cardiff Internet Movie Database. The database resided on the servers of the computer science department of Cardiff University
in the UK. Rob Hartill
was the original web interface author. In 1994, the email interface was revised to accept the submission of all information, meaning that people no longer had to email the specific list maintainer with their updates. However, the structure remained that information received on a single film was divided among multiple section managers, the sections being defined and determined by categories of film personnel and the individual filmographies contained therein. Its management also continued to be in the hands of a small contingent of underpaid or volunteer "section managers" who were receiving ever-growing quantities of information on films from around the world and across time from contributors of widely varying levels of expertise and informational resources. Despite the annual claims of Needham, in a year-end report newsletter to the Top 50 contributors, that "fewer holes" must now remain for the coming year, the amount of information still missing from the database was vastly underestimated. Over the next few years, the database was run on a network of mirrors
across the world with donated bandwidth.
The website is Perl
-based. As of May 2011, the site has been filtered in China for more than one year, although many users address it through proxy server
or by VPN.
On October 17, 2010, IMDb launched original video (www.imdb.com/20) in celebration of its 20th anniversary.
, founder, owner and CEO of Amazon.com, struck a deal with Col Needham and other principal shareholders to buy IMDb outright and attach it to Amazon as a subsidiary, private company. This gave IMDb the ability to pay the shareholders salaries for their work, while Amazon.com would be able to use the IMDb as an advertising resource for selling DVDs and videotapes.
IMDb continued to expand its functionality. On January 15, 2002 it added a subscription service known as IMDbPro, aimed at entertainment professionals. IMDbPro was announced and launched at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. It provides a variety of services including film production and box office details, as well as a company directory.
As an additional incentive for users, as of 2003, if users are identified as being one of "the top 100 contributors" in terms of amounts of hard data submitted, they receive complimentary free access to IMDbPro for the following calendar year; for 2006 this was increased to the top 150 contributors, and for 2010 to the top 250. In 2008 IMDb launched their first official foreign language version with the German IMDb.de. Additionally in 2008 IMDb acquired two other companies. Withoutabox
and Box Office Mojo
.
In 2011 IMDb was sued by an unknown actress for more than due to IMDb revealing her age. The actress claims that revealing her age could cause her to lose acting opportunities.
Shortly after, the database entries for TV series are in a state of flux, as listings are migrated from series titles to individual episodes. The maintainers anticipated "a couple of months for data to settle down and bugs to be ironed out", but inaccuracies were still present one year later.
makers, with direct links from their profiles.
Due to licensing restrictions, this feature is only available to viewers in the United States.
that allows users to rate films by choosing one of ten categories in the range 1–10, with each user able to submit one rating. The points of reference given to users of these categories are the descriptions "1 (awful)" and "10 (excellent)"; and these are the only descriptions of categories. Due to the minimum category being scored one, the mid-point of the range of scores is 5.5, rather than 5.0 as might intuitively be expected given a maximum score of ten. This rating system has since been implemented for television programming on an episode-by-episode basis.
In adopting this method, IMDb is following its widespread usage; the method is the same as rating in the range of a half star to five stars. The simplicity of this method makes it popular, but in terms of psychometric, statistical and other criteria, the method suffers shortcomings.
that is displayed for each film, series, and so on. It states that filters are used to avoid ballot stuffing
; the method is not described in detail to avoid attempts to circumvent it. In fact, it sometimes produces an extreme difference between the weighted average and the arithmetic mean. For example, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
is considered to be the worst film with a weighted average of 1.3 as of March 2009, but has a rather ordinary arithmetic mean of 4.1.
as a credibility formula. This label arises because a statistic is taken to be more credible the greater the number of individual pieces of information; in this case from eligible users who submit ratings. IMDb uses the following formula to calculate the weighted rating:
where:
= Weighted Rating
= average for the movie as a number from 0 to 10 (mean) = (Rating)
= number of votes for the movie = (votes)
= minimum votes required to be listed in the Top 250 (currently 3000)
= the mean vote across the whole report (currently 6.9)
The
in this formula is equivalent to a Bayesian posterior mean (See Bayesian statistics
).
An extended listing of the Top 500 – following the same formula – is available to IMDbPro subscribers. The IMDb also has a Bottom 100 feature which is assembled through a similar process although only 1500 votes must be received to qualify for the list.
The top 250 list comprises a wide range of films, including major releases, cult films, independent films, critically acclaimed films, silent films and non-English language films.
Soon after its release, WALL-E
garnered high ratings from users, eventually pushing it to #6 on the list. Soon afterwards, WALL-Es message board became filled with posts from users urging others to vote it a "1", after which its rating dropped significantly.
Other skepticism has revolved around The Godfather
. While many of the top films on IMDb have less than 4% of their total votes at "1", The Godfather has maintained a significantly higher percentage, coming in at 6.2% averaged over the last 5 years.
Some films see a spike in "10" votes around the time the movie is first released, and then as time passes, these films' ratings decrease. For instance, Up found its way to the #18 spot on IMDb's list shortly after it was released, but as of the 18th of November, 2011, it has fallen to the #104 spot.
may be included.
The plot outline is a short summary of the premise with a general overview, usually not including details that may be considered to be spoilers. The plot outline is presented on the main page for the film if short enough, and if it extends beyond a couple of lines includes a "more" link that opens to the Plot summary page for the film.
On the Plot summary page, IMDb includes the full text of the plot outline, along with the first few lines of the plot synopsis, followed by a link to a further more detailed page, with the link text written as "more (warning! contains spoilers)".
The plot synopsis is a more complete summary of the plot that can be edited by readers of IMDb, often including twists and turns that some readers may consider to be spoilers and may not want to know about if they have not yet seen the film. IMDb places the synopsis on a separate page, with a link on the film's main page using text that advises the reader as follows: "View full synopsis. (warning! may contain spoilers)". The separate Plot synopsis page includes the headline "Warning! This synopsis contains spoilers. See plot summary for non-spoiler summarized description."
The IMDb User's Guide advises user contributors to avoid revealing spoilers outside of the synopsis section where they are covered by the spoiler warning in the page headline. IMDb also provides a spoiler warning template for use when spoilers occur in an unexpected location, for example, according to their help page, when a synopsis includes a spoiler for a different movie. In the IMDb Submission Guide for the "Trivia and Goofs" page section and for their message boards, the guide states that spoilers should be avoided in general in those sections, but that if a spoiler is included, it must be preceded by an announcement, such as using the word "SPOILER:" or their provided spoiler template.
Plot keywords are keywords that contributors to the IMDb submit. These are keywords regarding objects and occurrences in each film on the IMDb. By adjusting one's preferences, users can have these keywords hidden if they have not rated the film. Otherwise, the keywords are revealed by hovering the mouse over the hidden text.
In the most recently updated version of the IMDb website, plot keywords are no longer covered by spoiler tags or obscured.
.
and upload photos of themselves for a yearly fee. The base annual charge for including a photo with an account was $39.95 until 2010, when it was increased to $54.95. IMDb résumé pages are kept on a sub-page of the regular entry about that person, with a regular entry automatically created for each résumé subscriber who does not already have one.
Due to the process of having the submitted data or text reviewed by a section manager, IMDb is different from database projects like Wikipedia, Discogs
, or OpenStreetMap
in that contributors cannot add, delete, or modify the data or text on whim, and the manipulation of data is controlled by IMDb technology and salaried staff. The advantage is, there is less incentive for vandals to attack the system, although incidents have been reported.
The Java Movie Database (JMDB) is reportedly creating an IMDb_Error.log file that lists all the errors found while processing the IMDb plain text files. A Wiki alternative to IMDb is omdb (Open Media Database) whose content is also contributed by users but licensed under CC-by and the GFDL. Since 2007, IMDb has been experimenting with wiki-programmed sections for complete film synopses, parental guides, and FAQs about titles as determined by (and answered by) individual contributors.
for automated queries. However most of the data can be downloaded as compressed
plain text files and the information can be extracted using the command-line interface
tools provided.
Beside that there is the Java based GUI application available that is able to process the compressed plain text files and allow to search and display the information. This GUI application supports different languages but the movie related data is of course English as made available by IMDb. A Python
package called IMDbPY can also be used to process the compressed plain text files into a number of different SQL
databases, enabling easier access to the entire dataset for searching or data mining.
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
.
History before website
IMDb originated from a single list started as a hobby by English film enthusiast Col NeedhamCol Needham
Colin Needham is one of four founding partners of the Internet Movie Database , and has served as General Manager of IMDb since its acquisition by Amazon.com in 1998.-Career:...
(Founder and CEO of IMDb) in early 1987. The founding ideas of IMDb began with a posting by Col Needham titled "Those Eyes", on the subject of actresses with beautiful eyes. On October 17, 1990, Col Needham posted a simple software package to the USENET
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
newsgroup rec.arts.movies, which allowed readers of that group to create and search a basic movie and TV database. The original database was built from the lists of credits that Col Needham and two other readers had begun to publish on the rec.arts.movies group. Other film fans began to participate in the collection of data on the Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
newsgroup
Newsgroup
A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
rec.arts.movies.
Needham soon started a (male) "Actors List", while Dave Knight began a "Directors
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
List", and Andy Krieg took over THE LIST, which would later be renamed the "Actress List". Both this and the Actors List had been restricted to people who were still alive and working, but retired people began to be added, and Needham also started what was then (but did not remain) a separate "Dead Actors/Actresses List". The goal now was to make the lists as inclusive as the maintainers could manage. In late 1990, the lists included almost 10,000 movies and television series. On October 17, 1990, Needham posted a collection of Unix
Unix
Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...
shell script
Shell script
A shell script is a script written for the shell, or command line interpreter, of an operating system. It is often considered a simple domain-specific programming language...
s which could be used to search the four lists, and the database that would become the IMDb was born. At the time, it was known as the "rec.arts.movies movie database".
On the web
By 1992, the database had been expanded to include additional categories of filmmakers and other demographic material, as well as trivia, biographies, and plot summaries; the movie ratings had been properly integrated with the list data; and a centralized email interface for querying the database had been created by Alan Jay. Later in the year, it moved onto the World Wide WebWorld Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
(a network in its infancy at that time) under the name of Cardiff Internet Movie Database. The database resided on the servers of the computer science department of Cardiff University
Cardiff University
Cardiff University is a leading research university located in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It received its Royal charter in 1883 and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. The university is consistently recognised as providing high quality research-based...
in the UK. Rob Hartill
Rob Hartill
Robert Hartill is a computer programmer and web designer best known for his work on the Internet Movie Database website and the Apache web server...
was the original web interface author. In 1994, the email interface was revised to accept the submission of all information, meaning that people no longer had to email the specific list maintainer with their updates. However, the structure remained that information received on a single film was divided among multiple section managers, the sections being defined and determined by categories of film personnel and the individual filmographies contained therein. Its management also continued to be in the hands of a small contingent of underpaid or volunteer "section managers" who were receiving ever-growing quantities of information on films from around the world and across time from contributors of widely varying levels of expertise and informational resources. Despite the annual claims of Needham, in a year-end report newsletter to the Top 50 contributors, that "fewer holes" must now remain for the coming year, the amount of information still missing from the database was vastly underestimated. Over the next few years, the database was run on a network of mirrors
Mirror (computing)
In computing, a mirror is an exact copy of a data set. On the Internet, a mirror site is an exact copy of another Internet site.Mirror sites are most commonly used to provide multiple sources of the same information, and are of particular value as a way of providing reliable access to large downloads...
across the world with donated bandwidth.
The website is Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
-based. As of May 2011, the site has been filtered in China for more than one year, although many users address it through proxy server
Proxy server
In computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...
or by VPN.
On October 17, 2010, IMDb launched original video (www.imdb.com/20) in celebration of its 20th anniversary.
As an independent company
In 1996, IMDb was incorporated in the United Kingdom, becoming the Internet Movie Database Ltd. Founder Col Needham became the primary owner as well as the identified figurehead. General revenue for site operations was generated through advertising, licensing and partnerships.As Amazon.com subsidiary
In 1998, Jeff BezosJeff Bezos
Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezos is the founder, president, chief executive officer , and chairman of the board of Amazon.com.-Early life and background:...
, founder, owner and CEO of Amazon.com, struck a deal with Col Needham and other principal shareholders to buy IMDb outright and attach it to Amazon as a subsidiary, private company. This gave IMDb the ability to pay the shareholders salaries for their work, while Amazon.com would be able to use the IMDb as an advertising resource for selling DVDs and videotapes.
IMDb continued to expand its functionality. On January 15, 2002 it added a subscription service known as IMDbPro, aimed at entertainment professionals. IMDbPro was announced and launched at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. It provides a variety of services including film production and box office details, as well as a company directory.
As an additional incentive for users, as of 2003, if users are identified as being one of "the top 100 contributors" in terms of amounts of hard data submitted, they receive complimentary free access to IMDbPro for the following calendar year; for 2006 this was increased to the top 150 contributors, and for 2010 to the top 250. In 2008 IMDb launched their first official foreign language version with the German IMDb.de. Additionally in 2008 IMDb acquired two other companies. Withoutabox
Withoutabox
Withoutabox was a website founded in January of 2000 by David Straus, Joe Neulight and Charles Neulight which created technology to allow independent filmmakers to self-distribute their films. The first product launched was the International Film Festival Submission system. Withoutabox works with...
and Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo is a website that tracks box office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. Brandon Gray started the site in 1999. In 2002, Gray partnered with Sean Saulsbury and they grew the site to nearly two million readers when, in July 2008, the company was purchased by Amazon.com through...
.
In 2011 IMDb was sued by an unknown actress for more than due to IMDb revealing her age. The actress claims that revealing her age could cause her to lose acting opportunities.
TV episodes
On January 26, 2006, "Full Episode Support" came online, allowing the database to support separate cast and crew listings for each episode of every TV series. This was described by Col Needham as "the largest change we've ever made to our data model", and increased the number of titles in the database from 485,000 to nearly 755,000.Shortly after, the database entries for TV series are in a state of flux, as listings are migrated from series titles to individual episodes. The maintainers anticipated "a couple of months for data to settle down and bugs to be ironed out", but inaccuracies were still present one year later.
Characters filmography
On October 2, 2007, the characters filmography feature was launched. The feature is similar to the existing title, name and company feature, except now users can see by whom a certain character was played and can read a biography about the character and memorable quotes from him or her. All data in the characters filmography is submitted by regular users and is largely not verified by the IMDb staff, in contrast to most other data submitted to the site, which is first verified and might be rejected by the staff. This lack of oversight is acceptable, however, because very little new data is sent in; the majority of submissions consist of existing data being connected together.Instant viewing
On September 15, 2008, a feature was added that enables instant viewing of over 6,000 movies and television shows from CBS, Sony and a number of independent filmIndependent film
An independent film, or indie film, is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced...
makers, with direct links from their profiles.
Due to licensing restrictions, this feature is only available to viewers in the United States.
User ratings of films
As one adjunct to data, the IMDb offers a rating scaleRating scale
A rating scale is a set of categories designed to elicit information about a quantitative or a qualitative attribute. In the social sciences, common examples are the Likert scale and 1-10 rating scales in which a person selects the number which is considered to reflect the perceived quality of a...
that allows users to rate films by choosing one of ten categories in the range 1–10, with each user able to submit one rating. The points of reference given to users of these categories are the descriptions "1 (awful)" and "10 (excellent)"; and these are the only descriptions of categories. Due to the minimum category being scored one, the mid-point of the range of scores is 5.5, rather than 5.0 as might intuitively be expected given a maximum score of ten. This rating system has since been implemented for television programming on an episode-by-episode basis.
In adopting this method, IMDb is following its widespread usage; the method is the same as rating in the range of a half star to five stars. The simplicity of this method makes it popular, but in terms of psychometric, statistical and other criteria, the method suffers shortcomings.
Filters and weights
IMDb indicates that submitted ratings are filtered and weighted in various ways in order to produce a weighted meanWeighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
that is displayed for each film, series, and so on. It states that filters are used to avoid ballot stuffing
Ballot stuffing
Ballot stuffing is the illegal act of one person submitting multiple ballots during a vote in which only one ballot per person is permitted. The name originates from the earliest days of this practice in which people literally did stuff more than one ballot in a ballot box at the same time...
; the method is not described in detail to avoid attempts to circumvent it. In fact, it sometimes produces an extreme difference between the weighted average and the arithmetic mean. For example, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience
Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience is a 2009 concert film released in Disney Digital 3-D, Real D 3D and IMAX 3D. It was released in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico on February 27, 2009 with the release in other countries later on. The film stars the American pop trio Kevin, Joe...
is considered to be the worst film with a weighted average of 1.3 as of March 2009, but has a rather ordinary arithmetic mean of 4.1.
Ranking (IMDb Top 250)
The IMDb Top 250 is intended to be a listing of the top 'rated' 250 films, based on ratings by the registered users of the website using the methods described. Only non-documentary theatrical releases running at least forty-five minutes with over 3000 ratings are considered; all other products are ineligible. Also, the 'top 250' rating is based on only the ratings of "regular voters". The exact number of votes a registered user would have to make to be considered to be a user who votes regularly has been kept secret. IMDb has stated that to maintain the effectiveness of the top 250 list they "deliberately do not disclose the criteria used for a person to be counted as a regular voter". In addition to other weightings, the top 250 films are also based on a weighted rating formula referred to in actuarial scienceActuarial science
Actuarial science is the discipline that applies mathematical and statistical methods to assess risk in the insurance and finance industries. Actuaries are professionals who are qualified in this field through education and experience...
as a credibility formula. This label arises because a statistic is taken to be more credible the greater the number of individual pieces of information; in this case from eligible users who submit ratings. IMDb uses the following formula to calculate the weighted rating:
where:
= Weighted Rating = average for the movie as a number from 0 to 10 (mean) = (Rating) = number of votes for the movie = (votes) = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top 250 (currently 3000) = the mean vote across the whole report (currently 6.9)The
in this formula is equivalent to a Bayesian posterior mean (See Bayesian statisticsBayesian statistics
Bayesian statistics is that subset of the entire field of statistics in which the evidence about the true state of the world is expressed in terms of degrees of belief or, more specifically, Bayesian probabilities...
).
An extended listing of the Top 500 – following the same formula – is available to IMDbPro subscribers. The IMDb also has a Bottom 100 feature which is assembled through a similar process although only 1500 votes must be received to qualify for the list.
The top 250 list comprises a wide range of films, including major releases, cult films, independent films, critically acclaimed films, silent films and non-English language films.
Criticisms of IMDb ranking
The validity of the Top 250 has come under scrutiny. The skepticism includes accusations of ballot-box stuffing or voting ambiguity. IMDb allows users to rate films long before their completion (so before the reviewer has actually seen the film).Soon after its release, WALL-E
WALL-E
WALL-E, promoted with an interpunct as WALL•E, is a 2008 American computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Andrew Stanton. The story follows a robot named WALL-E, who is designed to clean up a waste-covered Earth far in the future...
garnered high ratings from users, eventually pushing it to #6 on the list. Soon afterwards, WALL-Es message board became filled with posts from users urging others to vote it a "1", after which its rating dropped significantly.
Other skepticism has revolved around The Godfather
The Godfather
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic crime film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the 1969 novel by Mario Puzo. With a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola and an uncredited Robert Towne, the film stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard...
. While many of the top films on IMDb have less than 4% of their total votes at "1", The Godfather has maintained a significantly higher percentage, coming in at 6.2% averaged over the last 5 years.
Some films see a spike in "10" votes around the time the movie is first released, and then as time passes, these films' ratings decrease. For instance, Up found its way to the #18 spot on IMDb's list shortly after it was released, but as of the 18th of November, 2011, it has fallen to the #104 spot.
Plot-related features and spoiler warnings
IMDb main pages for each film include one or more of the sections titled Plot outline, Plot synopsis, and Plot keywords, and separate pages for Plot summary and Plot synopsis. The Plot synopsis pages are accessed through links that notify the reader a spoilerSpoiler (media)
Spoiler is slang for any element of any summary or description of any piece of fiction that reveals any plot element which will give away the outcome of a dramatic episode within the work of fiction, or the conclusion of the entire work. It can also be used to refer to any piece of information...
may be included.
The plot outline is a short summary of the premise with a general overview, usually not including details that may be considered to be spoilers. The plot outline is presented on the main page for the film if short enough, and if it extends beyond a couple of lines includes a "more" link that opens to the Plot summary page for the film.
On the Plot summary page, IMDb includes the full text of the plot outline, along with the first few lines of the plot synopsis, followed by a link to a further more detailed page, with the link text written as "more (warning! contains spoilers)".
The plot synopsis is a more complete summary of the plot that can be edited by readers of IMDb, often including twists and turns that some readers may consider to be spoilers and may not want to know about if they have not yet seen the film. IMDb places the synopsis on a separate page, with a link on the film's main page using text that advises the reader as follows: "View full synopsis. (warning! may contain spoilers)". The separate Plot synopsis page includes the headline "Warning! This synopsis contains spoilers. See plot summary for non-spoiler summarized description."
The IMDb User's Guide advises user contributors to avoid revealing spoilers outside of the synopsis section where they are covered by the spoiler warning in the page headline. IMDb also provides a spoiler warning template for use when spoilers occur in an unexpected location, for example, according to their help page, when a synopsis includes a spoiler for a different movie. In the IMDb Submission Guide for the "Trivia and Goofs" page section and for their message boards, the guide states that spoilers should be avoided in general in those sections, but that if a spoiler is included, it must be preceded by an announcement, such as using the word "SPOILER:" or their provided spoiler template.
Plot keywords are keywords that contributors to the IMDb submit. These are keywords regarding objects and occurrences in each film on the IMDb. By adjusting one's preferences, users can have these keywords hidden if they have not rated the film. Otherwise, the keywords are revealed by hovering the mouse over the hidden text.
In the most recently updated version of the IMDb website, plot keywords are no longer covered by spoiler tags or obscured.
Message boards
One of the most used features of the Internet Movie Database is the message boards that coincide with every title (excepting, as of 2010, TV episodes) and name entry, along with over 140 main boards. This section is one of the more recent features of IMDb, having its beginnings in 2001. In order to post on the message boards a user needs to "authenticate" their account via cell phone, credit card, or by having been a recent customer of the parent company Amazon.comAmazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...
.
Data provided by subjects
In 2006, IMDb introduced its "Résumé subscription service", where actors and crew can post their own résuméRésumé
A résumé is a document used by individuals to present their background and skillsets. Résumés can be used for a variety of reasons but most often to secure new employment. A typical résumé contains a summary of relevant job experience and education...
and upload photos of themselves for a yearly fee. The base annual charge for including a photo with an account was $39.95 until 2010, when it was increased to $54.95. IMDb résumé pages are kept on a sub-page of the regular entry about that person, with a regular entry automatically created for each résumé subscriber who does not already have one.
Copyright, vandalism, and error issues
All volunteers who contribute content to the database technically retain copyright on their contributions but the compilation of the content becomes the exclusive property of IMDb with the full right to copy, modify, and sublicense it and they are verified before posting. Credit is not given on specific title or filmography pages to the contributor(s) who have provided information. Conversely, a credited text entry, such as a plot summary, may be "corrected" for content, grammar, sentence structure, perceived omission or error, by other contributors without having to add their names as co-authors.Due to the process of having the submitted data or text reviewed by a section manager, IMDb is different from database projects like Wikipedia, Discogs
Discogs
Discogs, short for discographies, is a website and database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. The Discogs servers, currently hosted under the domain name discogs.com, are owned by Zink Media, Inc., and are...
, or OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap
OpenStreetMap is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. Two major driving forces behind the establishment and growth of OSM have been restrictions on use or availability of map information across much of the world and the advent of inexpensive portable GPS devices.The...
in that contributors cannot add, delete, or modify the data or text on whim, and the manipulation of data is controlled by IMDb technology and salaried staff. The advantage is, there is less incentive for vandals to attack the system, although incidents have been reported.
The Java Movie Database (JMDB) is reportedly creating an IMDb_Error.log file that lists all the errors found while processing the IMDb plain text files. A Wiki alternative to IMDb is omdb (Open Media Database) whose content is also contributed by users but licensed under CC-by and the GFDL. Since 2007, IMDb has been experimenting with wiki-programmed sections for complete film synopses, parental guides, and FAQs about titles as determined by (and answered by) individual contributors.
Data format and access
IMDb does not provide an APIWeb api
A web API is typically a defined set of HTTP request messages along with a definition of the structure of response messages, typically expressed in JSON or XML...
for automated queries. However most of the data can be downloaded as compressed
Data compression
In computer science and information theory, data compression, source coding or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation would use....
plain text files and the information can be extracted using the command-line interface
Command-line interface
A command-line interface is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks...
tools provided.
Beside that there is the Java based GUI application available that is able to process the compressed plain text files and allow to search and display the information. This GUI application supports different languages but the movie related data is of course English as made available by IMDb. A Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
package called IMDbPY can also be used to process the compressed plain text files into a number of different SQL
SQL
SQL is a programming language designed for managing data in relational database management systems ....
databases, enabling easier access to the entire dataset for searching or data mining.
Film titles
The IMDb has sites in English as well as versions translated completely or in part into other languages (Portuguese, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian and Spanish). The non-English language sites display film titles in the specified language. While originally the IMDb's English-language sites displayed titles according to their original country-of-origin language, in 2010 the IMDb began displaying titles by either their US or UK AKA, depending on the user's location. For those who wish to use the English-language sites and still see titles listed by their original title users can update their site settings with that preference or use the IMDb's AKA website.See also
- Allmovie
- Allmusic – a similar database, but for music
- Allrovi - a commercial database launched by the Rovi Corporation that compiles information from the former services Allmovie and Allmusic
- Animator.ruAnimator.ruAnimator.ru is a Russian website chronicling the films, people and studios of the animation industry in Russia, the former Soviet Union and the CIS. It also includes a forum, a news block, a photo-gallery and an animators labour exchange...
- DBCult Film InstituteDBCult Film InstituteThe DBCult Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization and film foundation created by film and cultural operators. The organization describes itself as "institute of cinematic memory", which aims to collect, preserve films from decay and to transmit future film productions on to cult...
- FilmwebFilmwebFilmweb is the second largest online database of information related to movies, actors and television series. Filmweb is Polish language site. It was launched on March 18, 1998....
- FindAnyFilm.com
- FlickchartFlickchart- Description :Launched in September 2009, Flickchart is the brainchild of web programmer Jeremy Thompson and web designer Nathan Chase. The impetus behind the site's creation came from an argument over the placement of Pulp Fiction and The Empire Strikes Back on the Internet Movie Database Top 250...
- Internet Adult Film DatabaseInternet Adult Film DatabaseThe Internet Adult Film Database is an online database of information pertaining to the American adult industry, covering actors, actresses, directors and movies. It is similar to the Internet Movie Database, in that it is open to the public and is searchable. Films produced by non-American porn...
- Internet Book List
- Internet Broadway DatabaseInternet Broadway DatabaseThe Internet Broadway Database is an online database of Broadway theatre productions and their personnel. It is operated by the Research Department of The Broadway League, a trade association for the North American commercial theatre community....
- Internet Theatre DatabaseInternet Theatre DatabaseThe Internet Theatre Database is an online database with information about plays, playwrights, actors, legitimate theater, musical theater, Broadway shows, and similar theatrical information....
- List of films considered the best
- List of films considered the worst
- MetacriticMetacriticMetacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
- Rotten TomatoesRotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...