Back in the halcyon days of never, the IMDb Top 250 list — which ranks the “Top 250 movies as voted by our users” — used to mean something. Any argument about the greatest film of all-time…actually, there were no arguments because That Jerk That You Were Friends With For Some Reason would go to IMDB, point to The Shawshank Redemption‘s #1 ranking, scoff at you, and then quote all of Red’s speech about geology.
But beginning a few weeks, there were BIG policy changes a-foot at IMDb, which knocked Life Is Beautiful, Kind Hearts and Coronets, and Anatomy of a Murder, among others, off the list, leading to the inclusion of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Duck Soup. Also, The Dark Knight Rises is the 10th greatest movie ever?
On July 19th, the following was posted on the IMDb message board:
In an effort to keep our charts and voting system relevant and accurate, we have made a small change to the way the IMDb Top 250 chart (https://www.imdb.com/chart/top) is calculated: the minimum number of votes needed to be included in the chart has been raised from 3,000 votes (a limit that had been set many years ago) to 25,000.
The change only affects whether a title is eligible to be featured in the IMDb Top 250 chart. Because of this, the composition of the chart will change slightly, as some titles that don’t meet the threshold are excluded and replaced by others with more votes. (Via)
Which resulted in the following changes, via Roger Ebert’s Journal:
Lest your Jerk Non-Friend worry too much, though, Shawshank remains #1.
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