The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information related to movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, video games, and most recently, fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. IMDb launched on October 17, 1990, and in 1998 was acquired by Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. is an American-based multinational electronic commerce company. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, it is America's largest online retailer, with nearly three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples, Inc., as of January 2010.

History

History before website

The IMDb originated from two lists started as independent projects in early 1989 by participants in the Usenet Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980. Users read and post public messages to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. Usenet resembles bulletin board systems (BBS) in most respects, and is the precursor to the various Internet forums that are widely used today; 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 the World Wide Web. Newsreader software is used to rec.arts.movies. In each case, a single maintainer recorded items emailed by newsgroup readers, and posted updated versions of his list from time to time. The founding ideas of the database began with a posting titled "Those Eyes", on the subject of actresses with beautiful eyes. Hank Driskill began to collect a list of attractive actresses and what movies they had appeared in, and as the size of the repeated posting grew far beyond a normal newsgroup article, it soon became known simply as "THE LIST". (The first code to manage this list was a 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 amongst programmers. Larry Wall continues to oversee program written by Randal L. Schwartz Schwartz is the co-author of several widely used books about Perl, a programming language, and has written regular columns about Perl for several computer magazines. He popularized the Just another Perl hacker signature programs. He is a founding board member of the Perl Mongers, the worldwide Perl grassroots advocacy organization. Schwartz is to "invert the list", organizing the list by movies instead of actresses.^[2]

The other project, started by Chuck Musciano, was briefly called the "Movie Ratings List" and soon became the "Movie Ratings Report". Musciano simply asked readers to rate movies on a scale of one to ten, and reported on the votes. He soon began posting "ballots" with lists of movies for people to rate, so his list also grew quickly.

In 1990, Col Needham Col Needham is the one of four founding partners of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), and has served as General Manager of IMDb since its acquisition by Amazon.com in 1999 collated the two lists and produced a "Combined LIST & Movie Ratings Report".^[3] (His first posting of the database scripts is not available.) Needham soon started a (male) "Actors List", while Dave Knight Dave Knight is an American slalom canoer who competed in the early 1970s. He won a gold medal in the mixed C-2 event at the 1973 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships in Muotathal began a "Directors A film director is a person who directs the making or production of a film. Many people also consider film producers, cinematographers, film editors, and special effects experts to be filmmakers List", and Andy Krieg took over THE LIST, which would later be renamed as 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 is a 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. Today's Unix systems are split into various branches, developed over time by AT&T as well as various commercial vendors and non-profit shell scripts 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. Typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manipulation, program execution, and printing text 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. Later in the year, it moved onto the World Wide Web The World Wide Web, abbreviated as WWW and commonly known as the Web, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them by using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, British (a network in its infancy back then) under the name of Cardiff Internet Movie Database. The database resided on the servers of the computer science department of Cardiff University Cardiff University is a 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 the best university education in Wales. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, almost 60 per in the UK. 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. Notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web 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 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. Mirroring is a type of file synchronization across the world with donated bandwidth.

As an independent company

In 1995, it became obvious to the principal site managers that the project had become too large to maintain merely through donations and in their spare time. The decision was made to become a commercial venture and in 1996, IMDb was incorporated in the United Kingdom, becoming the Internet Movie Database Ltd, with Col Needham the primary owner as well as identified figurehead. The section managers were offered "shares" in the company in exchange for the amount of work-time they put in, and sometimes for monetary donations by them. A couple of these went to work full time for salary, which Needham had already been drawing. General revenue for site operations was generated through advertising, licensing and partnerships.

This state of affairs continued until 1998. The database was growing every day, and it was again reaching a critical point in terms of quantity of data versus number of personnel, and the need for more full-time managers, who would of course want to be paid. Most revenues were being spent on equipment. The system was also suffering noticeable slowdowns both in accessing the site and in having new data posted. Offers were solicited from academic institutions but they were not interested; private enterprises with interests in the entertainment industry were also solicited, and from some of these offers were forthcoming to purchase IMDb. However, the shareholders were unwilling to sell if it could not be guaranteed that the information would be accessible to the internet community for free. None of this activity was made known to the several hundred volunteers who were contributing the vast majority of information now incoming to IMDb.

As a subsidiary company

In 1998, Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston "Jeff" Bezos is the founder, president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board of Amazon.com. Bezos, a Tau Beta Pi graduate of Princeton University, worked as a financial analyst for D. E. Shaw & Co. before founding Amazon in 1994, 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.^[4] 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. Volunteer contributors were not advised in advance of even the possibility of IMDb—and their contributions along with it—being sold to a private business, which created some initial discord and defection of regulars.

IMDb continued to expand its functionality. In 2002 it added a subscription service known as IMDbPro aimed at entertainment professionals. It provides a variety of services including film production and box office details, as well as a company directory. Most information contained in the IMDb database proper continues to come from volunteer researchers.

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 2007 to the top 175. This incentive however is for overall contribution—not contribution on a nation by nation basis.^{[5][not in citation given]} In 2008 IMDb launched their first official foreign language version with the German IMDb.de.

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"^{[citation needed]}, and increased the number of titles in the database from 485,000 to nearly 755,000.

At present, 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 them. 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.^[6]

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 film makers, with direct links from their profiles.^[7] Due to licensing restrictions this feature is only available to viewers in the United States.^[8]

Ancillary features

User ratings of films

As one adjunct to data, the IMDb offers a rating 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 product 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 also recently 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 Psychometrics is the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of educational and psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes, and personality traits. The field is primarily concerned with the construction and validation of measurement instruments, such as questionnaires, tests, and, statistical and other criteria, the method suffers shortcomings.^[specify]

Filters and weights

IMDb indicates that submitted ratings are filtered and weighted in various ways in order to produce a weighted 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. The notion of weighted mean plays a role in descriptive statistics and also occurs in a more general form in several other areas of mathematics that is displayed for each film, series, and so on. It states that filters are used to avoid 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. In a government election, this is a form of electoral; 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 is a 2009 American concert film from Walt Disney Pictures and Jonas Films presented in Disney Digital 3D, Dolby 3D and IMAX 3D. It was released in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico (being the first Digital 3-D movie ever to be shown in Puerto Rico) on February 27, 2009 with the release in other countries 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.^[9][10]

Ranking

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.^[11] Only non-documentary theatrical releases running at least forty-five minutes with over 3000 ratings are considered; all other products are ineligible.^[12] 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".^[13] In addition to other weightings, the top 250 films are also based on a weighted rating formula referred to in actuarial 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. In the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and several other countries, actuaries must demonstrate their as a credibility formula.^[14] 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:

W = (Rv + Cm) / (v + m)

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)

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.^[15]

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.^[16]

Soon after its release, WALL-E WALL-E, promoted with an interpunct as WALL•E, is a 2008 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. He eventually falls in love with another robot named EVE, and follows her garnered high ratings from users, eventually pushing it to #6 on the list. Soon afterwards, WALL-E's message board became filled with posts from users urging others to vote it a "1", after which its rating dropped significantly.^[17]

Another example occurred in July 2008 when The Dark Knight The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero crime thriller film directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan's Batman film series and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins. Christian Bale reprises the lead role. The film follows Bruce Wayne/Batman , District Attorney Harvey Dent/Two-Face ( temporarily took the number one spot away from The Godfather The Godfather is a 1972 American gangster film based on the novel of the same name by Mario Puzo and directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola, and Robert Towne . It stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard S. Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte and Diane Keaton, and features. CNET's Harrison Hoffman theorized that the hype surrounding the movie outweighed clear thinking, and noted that the number of "10" votes for the film corresponded with a large number of "1" votes that suddenly appeared in The Godfather's voting bin (that knocked that movie down to #3 at the time) were the markings of a "drastic shift" that "hardly seems the work of a wise crowd." A "mob mentality", he maintains, can "greatly skew a product of its collective wisdom."^[18]

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 spoiler 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. Because enjoyment of fiction sometimes depends upon the dramatic tension and suspense which arises within it, may be included.^[19]

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)".^[20]

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.^[21] 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."^[22]

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.^[21] 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.^[23][24][25]

Plot keywords are keywords that contributors to the IMDb submit. These are keywords regarding objects and occurrences in each film on the IMDb.^[26] 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.

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 2009, TV episodes) and name entry, along with forty-seven main boards. This section is one of the more recent features of IMDb, having its beginnings in 2001. An interesting feature of message boards is that in order to be able to make a post, users must have bought something at least worth $1 on the parent company's website, Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. is an American-based multinational electronic commerce company. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, it is America's largest online retailer, with nearly three times the Internet sales revenue of the runner up, Staples, Inc., as of January 2010, within a year. This is dubbed by IMDb owners as "additional authentication to use advanced features of IMDb.com." Alternatively, users can use a cell phone, or their credit card for the transaction. Many credit card vendors will have $1 debited from the credit card by IMDb/Amazon^{[citation needed]}. As the IMDb expires older posts from all message boards variably, it is difficult to precisely measure traffic according to individual board, but the Soapbox and the Sport and Oscar Buzz are amongst the highest traffic boards on IMDb. The Sandbox, however, has dropped significantly in traffic since 2008.

Both the Sandbox and the Soapbox are general purpose discussion boards, with the Sandbox intended for relatively civil discussions, while users can go for "their more heated discussions" to the Soapbox, though its contents are still subject to the site's Terms and Conditions regarding language and content. Dedicated boards for popular current films or TV shows, performers, and political figures may also have a high usage rate. These message boards have been known to have people who frequent them often enough to have created a community of their own, seemingly detached from the actual Database. One can often find personal stories and anecdotes from board users, who may receive support from others – even in the rugged environs of the Soapbox.

^[27] The Sandbox is a general purpose, anything-goes board designated for test messages and off-topic posts.^[28]

Content and format

Sources of data

While IMDb has come to be recognized as the world's most comprehensive source of film data, many non-contributing users are unaware of the means by which information is added to the database^{[citation needed]}. IMDb essentially accepts data submissions from any individual who acquires a login and submits information using the site's submission pages. This information is then reviewed by an IMDb data manager, who decides whether or not 1.) to post the information on the website; 2.) to send the submitting party an email requesting further documentation or clarification; or 3.) to ignore or set the submission aside indefinitely. IMDb's data managers rarely engage in primary research in the effort to verify submissions: the data managers' most common form of verification involves web-based resources, a serious limitation given the vast amount of information that has yet to be made available on the internet and given the high level of erroneous, questionable and poorly documented data that circulates there. Since IMDb employs no formal method for determining the credentials of the individual submitting information, it is entirely possible for the site's managers 1.) to accept faulty information from a misinformed source, or 2.) to refuse well-documented information from a qualified researcher whose sources are not currently accessible via the internet. In a kind of methodological Catch-22, the surest way to ensure information is accepted by IMDb is to first make it available through other (often) less reliable and less rigorous web-based channels.

Policy on Wikipedia as a source

The issues raised in the above section about IMDb are mirrored in its own policy toward Wikipedia. IMDb will not accept Wikipedia articles as a source when users add material ("update" in IMDb's parlance) to one of its pages. The site's official policy toward Wikipedia is as follows: [N]ote that user-maintained sites such as Wikipedia...are not considered suitable evidence.^[29] An attempt to cite a Wikipedia article in an attribution field will lead to the following warning being displayed:

The URL is for a site with dynamic user-created content without sufficient editorial control, and cannot be used to prove anything.

Data provided by subjects

In 2006, IMDb introduced its "Résumé subscription service", where actors and crew can post their own résumé A résumé is a document that contains a summary of relevant job experience and education for specific employment search. The résumé is typically the first item that a potential employer encounters regarding the job seeker and is typically used to screen applicants, often followed by an interview, when seeking employment. The résumé is and upload photos of themselves^[30] for a yearly fee.^[31] IMDb résumé pages are kept separately from the regular entry about that person, but a regular entry is automatically created for each résumé subscriber who does not already have one.^[32]

Copyright 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.^[33] Credit is not given on specific title or filmography pages to the contributor(s) who have provided information (giving the impression that it is generally the work of Col Needham and his small staff of "data managers"^{[original research?]}). 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 submitted data or text reviewed by a section manager, IMDb is different from database projects like Wikipedia or OpenStreetMap OpenStreetMap is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world, contributors cannot add, delete, or modify the data or text at their whim, and the manipulation of data is controlled by IMDb technology and salaried staff.^[34] The advantage is, there is less incentive for vandals to attack the system, although incidents have been reported. Still the data itself is very often messed up in a technical sense which could be prevented with improved data checks on the entered information at the IMDb website. For example it's possible to enter release-dates for a movie without a date. Beside that there is a lot of data stored which link to movies (or episodes of TV-Shows) that do not exist. This can be checked with the IMDb plain text files that are available and updated weekly by the IMDb. The Java Movie Database (JMDB)^[35] is actually creating a 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 Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S. non-profit corporation founded in 2001 and the GFDL The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license. Since 2007, IMDb has been experimenting with wiki-programmed sections for complete film synopses, and FAQs about titles as determined by (and answered by) individual contributors.

Data format and access

IMDb does not provide an API. For automated queries, most of the data can be downloaded as compressed In computer science and information theory, data compression or source coding is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than an unencoded representation would use, through use of specific encoding schemes plain text files and the information can be extracted using the 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. This text-only interface contrasts with the use of a mouse pointer with a graphical user interface (GUI) to click on options, or menus on a text user interface (TUI) to select options. This method of tools provided.^[36] Beside that there is the Java based GUI application available that is able process the compressed plain text files and allow to search and display the information.^[35] This GUI application supports different languages but the movie related data is of course English as made available by IMDb.

Foreign-language films

Although the IMDb is written completely in English (but does have other versions in Brazilian Portuguese, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish), it lists the titles of foreign-language films in their original country-of-origin language, Romanized if not originally in the Latin script. Users in other countries must look at the AKA (Also Known As) list to find the title used in their country A country is a geographical region considered to be the physical territory of a sovereign state, or to a smaller, or former, political division within a geographical region. Usually, but not always, a country coincides with a sovereign territory and is associated with a state, nation or government on the title's page, although a search by the AKA will find the film.

See also

• Allmovie Allmovie is a commercial database of information about movie stars, movies and television shows. It was founded by popular-culture archivist Michael Erlewine, who also founded Allmusic and Allgame
• Allmusic Allmusic is a service of music guide, owned by All Media Guide. Allmusic was founded in 1991 by popular-culture archivist Michael Erlewine as a guide for consumers. Its first reference book was published the following year. AMG on the Internet predates the World Wide Web and was first available as a Gopher site – a similar database, but for music
• Animator.ru Animator.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. The database is available in Russian and English, while the other sections are Russian-language only
• Films considered the greatest ever While there is no agreement upon the greatest film, many publications and organizations have tried to determine the films considered the greatest ever. The films mentioned in this article have all been mentioned in a notable survey — be it a popular poll or critics' poll. Many of these sources focus on American films or were polls of English-
• Filmweb Filmweb is a Polish language online database of information related to movies, actors and television series. Filmweb was launched on March 18, 1998[citation needed] and is the second largest film database in the world .[citation needed]
• FindAnyFilm.com FindAnyFilm is an online film search service, which interrogates a database of information related to the availability of movies based on search terms including titles, actors, genres, or cinema names
• Internet Adult Film Database The 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 industry are found on the database if a U.S. release
• Internet Book List Online general-interest book databases are bibliographic databases intended primarily for general rather than academic use, and are often constructed in a way resembling social networking sites. Some of the most important ones are discussed below
• Internet Broadway Database The 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 Database The 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 worst The films listed here have achieved notably negative reception as being called one of the worst films ever made. The films have either been cited by a combination of reputable sources as the worst movie of the year, or been on such a source's list of the worst movies of all time. Examples of such sources include Roger Ebert's list of most hated
• Metacritic Metacritic 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, Yellow and Red summarize the critic's recommendation
• Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films, most widely known as a film review aggregator. The name derives from the historical cliché of throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at stage performers if a performance was particularly bad. Flixster has been the parent of Rotten Tomatoes since January 2010

References

1. ^ "IMDb.com – Traffic Details from Alexa". Alexa Internet Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and website. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the website where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's web traffic reporting, Inc. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/imdb.com. Retrieved 2009-10-17.
2. ^ The LIST inverted (05/30/90) Randal Schwartz (June 1, 1990, 4:58 am) rec.arts.movies, Google Groups
3. ^ "MRRLIST: Combined LIST & Movie Ratings Report". Google Inc.. http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies/msg/0203e8ba735348fd?dmode=source&hl=en. Retrieved 2007-01-15.
4. ^ "News Release". PR Newswire Europe Ltd.. http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=37602. Retrieved 2007-01-15.
5. ^ Col Needham (2008-01-01). "IMDb announcement: Top 175 Contributors for 2007". IMDb Contributors Help message board. http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000042/thread/93579520. Retrieved 2008-09-11.
6. ^ "Character Help Overview". IMDb. http://imdb.com/swiki/special?CharacterHelp. Retrieved 2007-10-02.
7. ^ Hoffman, Harrison (15 September 2008). "IMDb now serves full-length videos". cnet CNET.com is the online portal for CNET Networks, providing access to CNET's reviews, news, downloads, price comparisons and CNET TV as well as web search powered by search.com. CNET.com is divided into seven major sections, all of which can be accessed from the home or "Today on CNET" page. These sections are:. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13515_3-10042280-26.html?tag=mncol. Retrieved 2008-09-17.
8. ^ Modine, Austin (16 September 2008). "IMDb adds full-length streaming movies (Show your US ID card at the door)". The Register. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/16/imdb_adds_streaming_movies_and_tv/. Retrieved 2008-09-17.
9. ^ IMDb.com
10. ^ IMDb.com
11. ^ "Top 250 movies as voted by our users". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/top_250_films. Retrieved 2007-03-01.
12. ^ "Types of titles excluded from the Top 250". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/help/search?domain=helpdesk_faq&index=1&file=notintop250. Retrieved 2007-04-25.
13. ^ The user votes average on film X is 9.4, so it should appear in your top 250 films listing, yet it doesn't. Why?
14. ^ Ragnar Norberg, Department of Statistics (PDF). Credibility Theory. London School of Economics. http://stats.lse.ac.uk/norberg/links/papers/CRED-eas.pdf. Retrieved 2007-03-01.
15. ^ "Bottom 100". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/bottom_100_films. Retrieved 2007-03-01.
16. ^ , "#1 with a Bullet"
17. ^ O'Neal, Sean. "Your guide to the WALL-E controversy ->". Avclub.com<!. http://www.avclub.com/articles/your-guide-to-the-walle-controversy,8810/. Retrieved 2010-01-03.
18. ^ Hoffman, Harrison (2008-07-28). "When the 'wisdom of crowds' turns on itself - - CNET.com". News.cnet.com. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13515_3-10000650-26.html. Retrieved 2010-01-03.
19. ^ "example of IMDb main film page, with plot outline, plot summary page link, and full plot synopsis link with spoiler warning". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0440963. Retrieved 2007-09-01.
20. ^ "Plot summary page example with spoiler warning". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0440963/plotsummary. Retrieved 2007-09-01.
21. ^ ^{a b} "synopsis user editing instructions". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/swiki/special?SynopsisHelp. Retrieved 2007-09-01.
22. ^ "Plot synopsis page example with spoiler warning". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0440963/synopsis. Retrieved 2007-09-01.
23. ^ "Handy Hints – Trivia and Goofs section". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/help/search?domain=helpdesk_faq&index=2&file=tgq_hints. Retrieved 2007-09-01.
24. ^ "Submission Guide: Goofs section". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/help/search?domain=helpdesk_faq&index=2&file=goofs. Retrieved 2007-09-01.
25. ^ "Message Boards Etiquette". IMDb. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Internet_Movie_Database&action=edit&section=12. Retrieved 2007-09-01.
26. ^ "Submission Guide: Keywords". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/updates/guide/keywords. Retrieved 2007-03-01.
27. ^ "The Soapbox". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000044/threads/. Retrieved 2007-03-01.
28. ^ "The Sandbox". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000043/threads. Retrieved 2007-03-01.
29. ^ IMDb Help Pages: "How can I provide additional web based evidence of the eligibility of a new title?" [1]
30. ^ Lycos Europe and IMDb sign sales agreement for 9 European markets. Lycos Europe LYCOS Europe is a pan-European network of websites, offering services including communication tools, online communities, web search, e-commerce, web hosting, homepage building and Internet access. It is an independent corporation, sharing no corporate structure with Lycos, Inc. , but Lycos Europe was formed as a joint-venture between Bertelsmann press release, July 10, 2006
31. ^ IMDb Resume FAQ: Can I subscribe only for one month or one year? (accessed January 22, 2008)
32. ^ IMDb Resume FAQ: Is there any difference between a regular IMDb name page and an IMDb name page created via IMDb Resume? (accessed January 22, 2008)
33. ^ IMDb.com
34. ^ IMDb.com
35. ^ ^{a b} "Java Movie Database (JMDB)". http://www.jmdb.de/. Retrieved 2010-04-21.
36. ^ "Alternate Interfaces". IMDb. http://imdb.com/interfaces. Retrieved 2007-01-15.

External links

• Internet Movie Database – Official website
• IMDb.de – official German website
• Do You IMDb? – L.A. Weekly LA Weekly is a free weekly tabloid-sized newspaper in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1978 by Editor/Publisher Jay Levin and a board of directors that included actor-producer Michael Douglas. It is currently owned by Village Voice Media (formerly New Times Media), the parent company of other major weeklies such as the New York City's, August 5, 2004
• IMDb movie Database offline for Pocket PC, Palm and Windows Tomeraider format
• The Bottom 100 at IMDb
• IMDb Top 250: Historical charts, changes, new items & other statistics

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