There are less facilities than perhaps there could be
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
When you first use this website, there is an option to read it in English or French. The log-in page is a pleasant medium green colour with a nice logo. I haven't looked at the French version but presumably it has the same lay-out as the English language version. The main site is green and orange, which looks more pleasant than it sounds.
YMDB stands for "Your Movie Database". The website is free and it enables you to make an on-line list of your favourite films and gather information on them. It is mainly a site for film buffs to discuss their favourite films - there are literally thousands of discussions on thousands of films. You can read the opinions of other users (as part of an informal discussion) and join in with polls. You have to join the website to get the full benefit and join in with the conversations but you can read the site without having to log-in.
The benefits of joining the site include being able to
> Discuss movies with other users. > Write comments on other user's Top List. > Receive the monthly newsletter containing: - updates & news about the site - the number of visitors on Your Top Movie list - the number of messages from other users
The newsletter aspect is quite irritating but you can opt out of it. Registering is no more difficult than registering for Ciao. You can only have one username per person but how would they know? It's a difficult thing to monitor, especially if more than one person uses a particular computer. The website also gather statistics so they can get a demographic picture of their customers but that of course relies on users telling the truth.
The site's main objective is apparently is "to allow people to state their movie preferences through their Top Movie List while giving them the opportunity to compare their taste in movies to that of the other members of the YMDb community. We hope that through this comparison with other people, professionals and amateurs, will deepen your movie knowledge and possibly will help you in your future choice of what to rent or buy."
So does the site do this? Well, to a certain extent, it does. Here is a list of what the site contains.
The homepage has the following options at the top:
HOME TOP MOVIE LIST YOUR TOP LIST USERS' INDEX ALL THE MOVIES
Underneath that is the log-in form and a Top Movie list as voted for by the users of this website. It's very busy with almost 16000 registered users.
There's also "Star Corner" in which a particular (usually professional) website user has their opinions featured, a poll, "Critics Corner", and "Spotlight On", which is basically a feature about the people who have recently joined the website.
"Critics Corner" is basically a list of real film critics who have registered for the site and what they think of various films. There is also a list of which publications they work for and links to those websites. Those links are very useful.
The alphabetic move directory (ALL THE MOVIES) is also very useful. There are literally thousands of films (including world cinema) being discussed. Of course, these are just peoples' opinions and there are very few film summaries but it could give you a taste of something you might like to get further information on. The layout of each discussion is rather annoying as you have to kind of read it backwards (the most recent is at the top of the page, instead of going chronologically) and a synopsis of the film being discussed would be very helpful.
There are links to the IMDB website next to each film being discussed, so you can get more info or purchase the film from that website. There are also links to shop websites such Amazon.com on some film discussions as well as links to reviews from magazines and websites such as "DVD Times". Those external links are often of more use than the actual YMDB site in all honesty. Of course, the links also provide revenue which allows people to use the site for free.
As for the site as a whole, it's quite interesting but if I wanted to discuss films, I'd probably go to the Guardian's FilmTalk. I mainly just browse around ymdb.com. I like the polls on ymdb.com as you don't have to log-in to take part or get the results.
Overall, this website is fairly easy to use in that it's easy to get around and literally takes seconds to load but its over-all purpose seems a little pointless. I also have no sense of how the website looks; it's a bit sprawling. I only tend to browse on it, personally, and I feel it could be so much better if it had an internal database of news stories or recently published reviews and film summaries. I don't especially need a list of my favourite films - I could easily write that down on a piece of paper, should I ever need to!
However, the website has been on-line since 2001 and is clearly very successful with a wide variety of members from around the world, so they must be doing something right. There are ways to contact the website and make suggestions, as well as an FAQ section so the website staff are very accessible. I may make some suggestions of my own. They claim that "Depending on the success of the site and on your possible demands, we hope to progressively add new features to enhance it.", so maybe it could be improved.
If you like discussing films of all kinds, and have a lot of background knowledge, then this may be the site for you.
More details
Navigation
Satisfactory
Frequency of content update
Satisfactory
Search facility
Good
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