Letterboxd?

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Master of My Domain
Supiriority is subjective. People who post here are active because they enjoy this place the best. That statement of yours won't work here, or anyplace else. Stop advertising and if ya don't like it here I suggest you go back to Lettetboxd.



I have tried Letterboxd. I am interested on the aspect of being able to find and rate movies, list them and read reviews rather than the socialization AKA giving 'likes' and accumulating followers. My views are not about as extreme as Yasashii's, I think that anybody can choose how to use a social website, and if somebody tries to get attention I'm fine if it doesn't interfere with the way I use it.

My experience with this page is not too positive, however. First and firemost the layout looks incredibly overloaded to me. I think it tries to bring too much information in every single page, and while it looks nice, it is not intuitive to me -maybe I am too used to older layout styles.

On the other hand, about the actual content... Letterboxd has a problem there. Let's look at the three applications it lists in the home page:

-Keep a film diary. This is probably the most well-known of them and I remember that at least at the beginning it was treated as the main novelty. It is a really good idea, a great one considering that the main competitors (such as IMDb) don't have anything similar to that. However I have been rating for more than seven years in a Spanish website (FilmAffinity) which makes the film diary better, and more simple, than Letterboxd. Just by voting you have the date of your rating in your profile. Compare that to having to manually choose the day you watched and/or voted a movie, just to keep track of a diary.

-Create & share lists. The only essentially new thing it offers compared to IMDb is the aesthetics. The process is exactly the same. And here is where the simpler layout takes advantage. You can do things there much easier and much faster than in Letterboxd. The aspect of sharing them is nice, but you can do this in other forms in most social websites.

-Follow your friends. This is funny because the site doesn't have yet basic interaction tools such as forums or chat rooms that older sites do have, or the option to keep easy conversations with users that any of the networks it links have. So basically this "follow your friends" thing is a very minor thing, what many similar sites already have, in another guise. I admire the effort put on connecting Letterboxd with social networks but it doesn't serve to build a solid and proactive community inside of the page. And for one reason: it does not promote discussion. It is more about being well-known than knowing. I admit that many forums from similar film-related sites are not that good and some of them are quite a mess, but this still helps a lot more to building a community than the lack of.

Finally there's some other aspects that bug me. Letterboxd PRO is the biggest one of them. Why should I pay for importing my ratings and lists from an external web? Many rating sites do this for free. Criticker, Icheckmovies... or in anime form, since I use these a lot: Anilist, Hummingbird, etc.

The search tool. And it has improved a lot from the time when I used it regularly (filled with duplicates, names in cyrillic (?????) that were impossible to search with a latin keyboard, different entries for different DVD packages of the same film), but still, I think it needs to filter better the information that appears in the list of results. IMDb or FilmAffinity do that automatically, as the results appear ordered in categories in the list, while Letterboxd does that in two steps, meaning that you have to pick an option and wait for the page to load again. I can't say that this is an advantage.

And the database. It is no doubt a good one, and it grows consistantly, but if I remember correctly it depends on an external web (TMDb) and that kills it, because it will never be able to exceed the limits of its source. For instance one of the movies I watched this year, Lessons at the end of spring, is not there (which is quite outstanding because, despite it is not a well-known movie, it originally premiered internationally in two festivals, one of them being category A). What can I do to solve this problem? Register in TMDb and add it there. So in the end, what advantage does Letterboxd bring in terms of its database? None. If I want a database I'll go to the original source, the one I can edit or help to grow.

In the end (sorry for the long rant), what is left in Letterboxd? Just a fine place with many applications that doesn't put effort on making any of them actually great and competitive (to me at least, because the site seems to be quite popular). They just work and make a nice experience, but not enough to justify it as a replacement of sites that, through the years, have built similar interfaces and tools and have done it significantly better.



Letterboxd is a nice site. As a web developer I admire it. But the other people here are right, it satisfies a very different desire. You might as well say eBay is superior to Facebook; it depends almost entirely on what you're looking for.

In my experience, you don't get to know people there. People track things and write reviews but it's mostly people trying to build their profiles, as opposed to building a community. There's not a lot of conversation; it's mostly the rote cataloging of isolated opinions. People talk at each other more than to them, it feels like. If someone wants that, more power to them. They come here if they want to really talk to people. Not for everyone, but it's clearly for a lot of people, so I'm happy with that.

Thanks for the feedback anyway, though.



You ready? You look ready.
Hey man, you ever had an orange? It's vastly superior to that apple you're eating.
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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza



Because I'm nice, it's nearly Christmas and you're probably not a bot I'll not nuke this thread as Spam.

It's not good form to advertise a site while slagging off the one you're posting on.
Seriously, can we please not make the two best sites on the net enemies here.



My name's Bobby Peru, like the country.
The problem with a larger user base is that trolls come to be fed. You ever try to have a serious discussion on, lets say, Screen Rant or a prime example, Youtube?

The advantage here is, real discussion.



Is anyone here on Letterboxd? It's vastly superior to this site, it doesn't offer forum style posting, but I never cared about that anyway. I just wanted a good mix of movies and social media. If anyone is on there, or creates an account, you can follow me and I'd love to follow back. Username is the same as it is here, "thekgproject"
Mr. Spam, you might show some respect for the people here.



The People's Republic of Clogher
Seriously, can we please not make the two best sites on the net enemies here.
Hopefully this was directed at the OP and not me.
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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan



Hopefully this was directed at the OP and not me.
It was, I was agreeing with you.



I use letterboxd frequently and love to use it for keeping a diary, making and viewing lists, reading reviews and searching the database for films.

However, as a community, it's not very tight. The lack of a forum hurts it as a social aspect, and that's why I came searching for a place like this. I doubt that my name is recognised here yet, but I already recognise the names of several users and I like that. It's good to have a forum with a community feel, where everyone likes to discuss film.



I thought there really wasn't a reason to create a whole new thread, so... How many MoFos are on Letterboxd?

Personally, I use it a lot. I use the same name as on here, so if anybody wants to follow me on there, you are welcome to do so.



A system of cells interlinked
Wait - is someone in here trying to claim SOCIAL MEDIA builds better community than MoFo?


BUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! NO.
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Precious tritium is what makes this project go.
I personally quite prefer Letterboxd, but I do like the forums too.

Here I am
http://letterboxd.com/KeeganEatsPie/
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Oxfords not brogues.



A system of cells interlinked
Seriously though - MoFo isn't just forums, either - we have lists, tournaments, games, music discussions, a chill room, and last but not least, the best damn community on the web, and I have tried many.



Lmao, I really shouldn't have bumped this haha. I should have made a new thread instead.

All I wanted to know was if people were on Letterboxd. Instead I start a war which was already put to rest a long time ago. YES it's completely stupid to compare Letterboxd to MoFo if I really has to answer to this obviously stupid question.



I started an account over there - seems very different so far!

Name is Sedai on the site, of course.
What I personally like about it is the fact that it seems like a more social and user-friendly version of IMDb. I love to use the diary function to keep track of what I watch, when I watch it, and if my rating changes over time (as it keeps the first rating you gave it, and all the following ones).

It's a great site to do reviews, make personal lists, look up others movie taste in detail, and so on... But it is NOT comparable to MoFo in any way imo. This forum is, well, a forum in its purest form with a lot more freedom and interaction and personality and so on... But I like Letterboxd a lot for what it is, and what it can do.



I like letterboxd a lot as a diary. I go there to log and keep track of my lists in a more organized way. I come here to talk movies. Letterboxd is terrible for what I really care about doing. For that I need my MoFo.
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