Taking Sides: talking about film on I Love Everything v. talking about film on I Love Film

I check i love film and enjoy it. I think threads on certain big releses will get threads on both boards etc but there you go. you can read opinions on the same things from the ppl who are really into movies and ppl who are occasional cinema goers.

- I think it needs input from people who know fuck all about films and hardly ever watch them. (Just like ILM is best when it's a mix of experts and innocents) (Maybe this only happens in my head.)

- I will learn stuff and enjoy films more.

It's interesting though that music threads are often best when they're here not on ILM - and Martin how does that board fit into your anti-split philosophy?

Martin I just think that ILM is a thriving precedent for in-depth topic boards, and ILE is far too big anyway (so is ILM but there's damn all that can be done about that), so bring on the new boards!

I'm intrigued about whether ILF will develop a kind of 'worldview' in the way that ILM seems to have established a kind of stereotypical identity for itself.

if you forget to check then I'm sorry martin but there you go. you'll miss out.

there will be ppl who know abt films and those who are just starting I'm sure and ILF will be pretty good.

anyone for 'I love books'?

No, I'm still against it, personally. I love the generality of this. I think it helps attract people with a breadth of interests, and those are the people who I've always enjoyed most. I was saying to Jerry the Nipper the other day that people you can have good conversations with about football and Pynchon aren't so common, but there are a bunch here. I think separate I Love Football and I Love Books boards will cut that down, and fragment the sense of community. Music started this and it's too big to try to merge the two, but I'll continue to oppose, in my tiny and insignificant way, more breaking up.

So I suppose my position is - bring on the specialist boards, but there should be a TITHE!! on them whereby one thread in five has to be started on ILE :)

I worry that it will mean that the people whose primary interest is film might be siphoned off to ILF; I think that as ILF establishes itself it will have its own separate community, including people who never visit other boards and have no great interest in anything much other than film. Some splinter-boards that have been proposed would, I think, be far worse. The feel of ILF could easily stay close to ILE, but there's little chance of that for long on an I Love Football spin-off. And some of this is that I like ILE enormously, and find it hard to see how changes of this sort can make anything better. I don't see the upside of this at all. Did anyone feel limited in the quantity or quality or type of thread about films they could start on ILE?

I say this bcz many posters who started posting on ILM just went over to ILE (and some are over here now full-time, I post on both but did start on ILM).

also if ILE regulars get burned out a bit or feel that the no of threads is too much they could take a break by posting on one of these boards (which i think won't be as big really).

we should def have a few more.

so far the talk over there is all a bit tentative and cautious - like everyone's suddenly realized that now that there's this film board, not many of us are actually film experts - so there's a sort of "state what you know, and move on" stiffness to it which will hopefully wear off once we all get comfortable. The wild digressions and variety-of-opinion of the ILE threads aren't in effect yet but these are early days and the traffic is still quite light

I'm glad Tico Tico made the point about these boards needing a mix of experts and innocents. (I sometimes feel like I should find an I Know Nothing board, but no, they neeed innocents! Rah!)

But, I agree 100% with Martin and others about 'specialist boards'. What will end up with is just another boring place where we have "I love sex" "I love art" "I love flirting" "I love books", "l love cookery" "I love football" "I love comics" etc, which I believe would kill of the spirit of ILX, as the man Clinton (Bill) says people should get out of their boxes and that's what a meta board like ILE allows. The term "everything" allows great freedom.

I like Julio's vision of people feeding into the central board from its satellites.

how much should you fragment?

how many of the regulars can keep up with both really? (you might do ned but others have work to do!) ;-)

I just been reading ILF. I'm getting a lot out of it.

This is true, but yes, it is also true that there is a lot of "non" specialist stuff on ILF. It was actually started as a reaction to milo's search for more "technical" discussion boards, and jess' subsequent suggestion that we start one with ILXOR. The problem is that there aren't enough regular posters on ILX who do dabble in filmmaking, and I am currently trying to get some people who do to take a look at ILF. I still start/contribute to film threads on ILE, but if people want to talk about Chevy Chase on ILF instead, they will. I would hate to think that we are "diluting" ILE, or that ILE regulars think we are "hardcore cineastes" who feel that ILE is beneath them. This is why I bristled at Mark S'(I think I said "people will want to lynch us") suggestion to put ILF up in larger type with ILM and ILE on the main page. If anything, I think we might want to move away from that (maybe even change the title of the board?). I don't know how any of my fellow ILFers would feel about this. Comments?

I guess it's also sort of funny that people are talking about ILF as a disappointing development for ILE, since I was actually feeling down on ILE until ILF came along. Right when it seemed like ILE was getting way too meta and cliquey, these great conversations started happening on ILF, and it renewed my faith in ILX in general. I actually like having an alternative when the other two boards aren't doing it for me. But I'll always contribute to all three.

Look, I think it's undeniable that the boards have always been growing in popularity, readership, and thus in number of postings. If the point is just to mash everyone together, why not merge ILE and ILM while we're at it?

Yes, the state of ILF is rather poor at the moment. However, I blame this mostly on the fact that a) many of the better film/movie/cinema threads get posted in ILE - and not without good reason, as more see them there, because b) the marginalization of ILF as an Other Board instead of a full-fledged board with equal rights and privileges as ILM and ILE. The problem is that I have difficulty seeing ILF ever approaching or retaining anything close to ILE or ILM's numbers unless it is elevated to said status. The number of ILE threads appropriate to ILF is more than enough to keep ILF active. And I would also wager that they are, second to the random music threads initiated on ILE (which will still happen anyway in either case), the most popular type of thread.

SO! I would like to petition for some sort of advanced status for ILF beyond its bounds at the moment, even if it be a temporary and/or intermediatary step and not full ILE/ILM footing. And if this isn't granted, I'd like to ask if there could be some sort of protocols established towards steps to be taken and prerequisites to be met so that ILF (and potentially other "Other" boards) can be elevated under the proper circumstances.

Carthago delenda est!

oh dear god no

As someone stated above much earlier, the fact is that movies are like music, the kind of thing that everyone is into at some basic level, unlike sports, books, art, or whathaveyou. I don't think it's any less valid to have an expanded ILF. The problem is that I am very pessimistic about independent expansion by the process of letting it grow. The lesson of the "Other Boards" is that their very status limits growth past ten or so posts a day. Yeah, there will be the occasional swell, but I'd be willing to venture that out of all the Other Boards, ILF is the only one that is both consistently viewable from the main ILXor page and of the kind of scope and inherent interest that would make for a viable and genuinely rewarding full board.

It's not about fragmentation; it's about fostering a larger community and perhaps even enlarging the ILx base by potentially bringing in a whole new group of people who can add something new to the mix in ILE and ILM. *images of Howard Dean go racing through my head* [Ed. - Eh?]

For example, I rented Irreversible and wanted to talk about it, so I actually check I Love Film first but didn't see any threads dedicated to it, so I check ILE and lo and behold there are three similar buried threads about it and I had to choose one to revive.

Now, I enjoy the movie threads on ILE and think that blockbuster discussions (especially pirate themed films - for whatever reason) are more a part of "Everything" as it were. We see many more posters, commercials, hear radio spots etc; compared to almost any music release.

However, I would really like to see more specific discussion about a broader number of films - and it would be great if ILE regulars knew where to go when looking for a specific film...

NOTE, if ILF gets going in earnest, it would be awesome if people started the thread with the movie title!

I say make ILF a real deal IL*.

Also, I think that the mass of ILE now would influence ILF's "success". It's not like ILF would be coming from nowhere at this point.

Another random point: I lurked for almost a year before I posted anything on ILM, now I would go directly and start posting away.

Also, what new person, interested in film, is going to want to deal with a bunch of kittens and pirates etc?

I think there could be more ppl but we all need to encourage that.

Blockbusters have to be discussed on ILF too, of course. Its whatever you want it to be.

the ILF link should be there, not for week or a month but 4evah and that's it.

how come I Love Film didnt catch up as I Love Music did?
i think it's all beacuse it's not at the top of the board lis,highlighted like ILE and ILM..

how come there isn't a iltmi type modding solution, ie immediate thread moving.

Zeno, you're thinking about it in reverse -- ILM was the first board, in August 2000. ILE was a spinoff of that in June 2001. The various other sub-boards followed in later years but ILM never needed to catch up to anything, by default, and its being highlighted is because it has always been one of the two core boards.

at least half of the topic sub boards really don't need to exist

plenty of things don't need to exist

have the people complaining about ILF's lack of popularity actually ever read any of the threads on ILF?

ok,thanks.
but i still think ILF could be the 3rd most popular board,cause a big percent of the threads in ILE are about films,and thats logical due to the popularity of the subject matter.
it's all about "marketing" ILF...
xxpost

this is how ILF looks today:

New Answers: I Love Film
Last on 22:59 יום חמישי 16 יולי 2009
Coffee and Cigarettes [Started by jay blanchard (jay blanchard) in June 2004, last updated 1 week ago by the heart is a lonely hamster (schlump)]
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Show me threads that were last updated in the last week.
Show me threads that were last updated in the week before last.
Show me threads that were last updated between two and three weeks ago.
Show me threads that were last updated between three and four weeks ago.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518TDDF5ESL._SL500_AA280_.jpg

or just bored...

ILF really suffered from a) a lack of an identifiable 'community' and b) being on subjects people want to talk about in a wider group (ie ILE). I think boards like I Love Books have pottered along relatively well in comparison because they had a relatively large and regular contributor list, plus books naturally lend themselves to a smaller and slower-moving board.

"being on subjects people want to talk about in a wider group"

so is music - and its the most popular board plus no one talks about music on ILE

er, yes they do

well ok but not as much as they do about film

ILM the most popular board because a) it was the first and b) it's the only part of ILX with any real profile outside ILX itself. If it had been launched as a sideshow to ILE in 2004 it would probably be relatively small.

dude are you arguing that admins should basically enforce the utilization of ILF?

no one uses it because it is awful

People had always talked about film on ILE. ILF was set up by and for people who were, like, really into film (and using the word "Film" rather than "Movies" was no accident) and wanted threads about, say, Bresson that wouldn't die in the busy context of ILE. (Unfortunately, they then died on ILF.)

I always wanted there to be more general movie discussion on ILF, but the fact that a lot of the threads on the board probably seemed rather obscurantist/specialist (it was also sort of a I Make Movies board) probably alienated a lot of ILXors not in the Index of ILX Film Snobs. Not to mention that certain posters, like Jay Blanchard and BabyBuddha, were outright snobbish in a tediously rockist way. Some of this made for good clusterfuck threads, but again, I can't imagine it was particularly endearing to ILX at large.