Killing a movie forum: What happened to Boxofficemojo?

[Tuukka]

As most probably know, boxofficemojo is (arguably) the best and most comprehensive movie B.O site on the net. I've been wondering this for some time:

What happened to the Boxofficemojo forums?

The place used have hugely active forums and then suddenly at some point last autumn it seems that nearly all members have been banned and the place has like 10% of the traffic it used to have. I wasn't hangind around the site when the change happened.

I've never seen a thing like this happen in any discussion forum, so I'm really puzzled about it. Especially since BOM had one of the most active movie forums on the net, and is a very well known site with plenty of traffic (According to Alexa, it's on the same level as Joblo, AICN, etc).

I know that many Joblo members have been members at BOM as well, so I'm interested to know what kind of a situation can lead to administrator banning almost every member of the board.

I know I could ask this question on BOM as well, but I assume the moderators there probably wouldn' take it kindly. So I would like to hear some comments from our own schmoes. I'm interested in a bit more detailed answer, something that would allow me to understand the mechanics of the crisis in there, instead of just "The administrator was an asshole".

[MacReady]

Jon Lyrik explained it in the Suggestions thread (about who Winston Wolfe was and what he was going to do when it started) but I'll re-print it:

Originally posted by Jon Lyrik
was a regular visitor of www.boxofficemojo.com. The head of the site was hardly around and let his buddy run the board.

From June 2002 until December it was running smoothly, many members, big, family-like community. Then suddenly the admin went into authoritarian mode and recklessly banned 15 popular and prolific posters in one day, generally for no reason. If you just spoke out against his draconic actions he'd crucify you. Then a ton of people, including moderators (a few of which stepped down) tried to contact the real head of the site, but he's never around and probably didn't notice a thing.

That's why I really don't like the Winston Wolfe idea, because something like that can happen.

[Jon Lyrik]

A banning streak happened again in October. Another 15 people were banned (including my double account, and for these bannings I unleashed a nasty piece of venom against adminstrator Sean Saulsbury on the Real Life forum). All the major posters said it was the last straw and we left for the burgeoning www.worldofkj.com/forum , and since then the forums became a desolate wasteland, and forum activity at BOM dropped 88% (especially the Real Life forums).

I suggest you go to World of KJ if you want the forum goodies.

[JoBlo]

For the record, "Winston Wolfe" isn't one person on this board. It's a combination of a variety of experienced moderators, so that sort of thing would never happen here.

Second of all, we've been running this board for over 4-5 years now, and we've never banned ANYONE without any good reason.

Third of all, since Wolfe has been around (about a year now), our bannings have gone DOWN about 80% and less problems have occured.

I can name a ton of other positives with Winston Wolfe around, but I think the three above indicate clearly that Wolfe has been a good addition to the board.

[free]

I got this explanation from here. (http://boxofficemojo.com/forums/viewtopic.htm?t=47268&sid=a0ee11511d7cefdab92c2bd5c08031fd)

Oh, I knew that. I've been surfing in these boards since summer 2003, but I was mainly just "ghosting" around, and never really tried to take part in the discussions. I finally got to being an active member sometime during September 2004, about a month all the October events started to happen.

It all started when this user, Mr. X, who has been banned, or was irritated by the fact that some of his friend users were banned, created multiple users, and with their help started 'vandalising the forums". What that means is, that X started bumping up irrelevant threads, created stupid threads with fabricated numbers and stats, or just started posting meaningless words in existing threads. As I understand, X was also a moderator (mod), and had the ability to erase existing threads and move threads from one forum to another... and that's exactly what he did during one October Saturday. After that, A lot of users, who were already upset by the fact that many of their friend users were band, suddenly lost hundreds or thousands of posts due to the fact that many threads have been deleted, and all the forums just looked disturbingly bad. So when some of them found out "the other site", which isn't initially a box-office site, they decided to move there. Some of the active users at pre-October BOM, like Zingaling, Baba and Libs (i'm guessing here, don't grab me by the word. Maybe DP7 will read this and can correct me later on), became moderators at the other site, and people started to try and convince their fellow users to move over there with them.

The results have been devistating: only a few new active users joined BOM since those events, the ongoing attempts at reviving the forums by users like box-2005, charlie1967, myself and others have so far failed, and although there has been a mild recovery in the forums throughout the past three months, specifically since the holiday season, it still isn't what I am hoping for.

So Cotton, here's where I return to my intial question: What do you mean by saying that there's more to the declining numbers then the "events" of October 2004?

[MacReady]

Originally posted by JoBlo
For the record, "Winston Wolfe" isn't one person on this board. It's a combination of a variety of experienced moderators, so that sort of thing would never happen here.

Second of all, we've been running this board for over 4-5 years now, and we've never banned ANYONE without any good reason.

Third of all, since Wolfe has been around (about a year now), our bannings have gone DOWN about 80% and less problems have occured.

I can name a ton of other positives with Winston Wolfe around, but I think the three above indicate clearly that Wolfe has been a good addition to the board.

Are you refering to my post? Because it's a quote for Jon Lyrik from a post he made many months ago (whn Winston first started). He was just being inquisitive (I don't know if that's the right word).

[Jon Lyrik]

Yeah, I'm not worried about a BOM 2.0 on here these days.

BTW-the explaination from that post is seriously flawed. X did not spam the boards, but he did move and delete several threads. The spammers of the boards were several German posters (and also me, because I was bored), who only did it for reasons against the admin, not to be random asses.

And X was NOT the starter of this big uprising (I was browsing/posting on the forums and threads and knew of this well, and also know that X is not an internet troublemaker when not provoked). When certain big posters were banned for mysterious/no reasons (again), people got pissed off and amidst the chaos, X decided to (ab?)use his moderator privileges to annoy the administrator.

I assume the story came from Prime_2032, who perhaps is not a very trustworthy source on the goings-on, since he was not on the Real Life forums when this bit of insanity happened.

[free]

So, this Sean guy just banned a bunch of people for no reason? Did he even attempt to give one? Guess that's why on the rules part, he added in Oct. that they could ban someone for no reason, as well as breaking the rules.

Is your thread bashing him still on the Real Life forum, or was it erased? I just started looking through the forum recently. I think after hearing this, I won't be joining.

[BubbaStrangelove]

It sounds like that board wasn't a fraction as strong as Joblo's, and that's why it collapsed.

[Jon Lyrik]

Originally posted by free
So, this Sean guy just banned a bunch of people for no reason? Did he even attempt to give one? Guess that's why on the rules part, he added in Oct. that they could ban someone for no reason, as well as breaking the rules.

Is your thread bashing him still on the Real Life forum, or was it erased? I just started looking through the forum recently. I think after hearing this, I won't be joining.

a) It was deleted in like 30 seconds. And yeah, he basically banned people for no reason or just for speaking out against him.

b) Don't join. The place is a virtual ghost town now because all the big posters left or were banned and Sean is the Hitler of major movie forums. Go to www.worldofkj.com , because I'm there, the former big posters are all there, and it's a thriving, benevolent community; what BOM was before the Age of Purges.

[Jon Lyrik]

Originally posted by BubbaStrangelove
It sounds like that board wasn't a fraction as strong as Joblo's, and that's why it collapsed.

It was a strong board, and that's what worked against Sean's actions. The community of the board was closeknit and would get antsy when a major member got banned, and when 15 major members get banned...well, that'll just create a gigantic stir.

Then when Sean did it again in October, people decided "Fuck this place" and headed for KJ, since it was clear this would be a yearly cycle of "cleansing". At first half the big posters were banned or left, and in the latter stages of the second purge and post-purge, people saw the boards were extremely boring now, and that was basically the last of the big posters sticking around. And last I checked, all the mods but one or two are gone as well.

[TheJadedGamer]

Originally posted by JoBlo
Third of all, since Wolfe has been around (about a year now), our bannings have gone DOWN about 80% and less problems have occured.

That is because Winstone Wolfe is one intimidating person. Just the pressence of him/her lurking around is terrifying. He is like Jason Voorhees...we'll be sitting around, going off topic like we aren't suppose to...and BAM! He appears out of nowhere and shuts us down.

What an awesome dude/dudette.