About a week or so ago, I recieved an e-mail from a website that I used to frequent. Some of you guys did as well. The e-mail was telling me all about the changes to the main page, and asked for feedback, and damnit, I couldn't resist replying to that e-mail with some feedback, and here's what I said.

I think the administrator of BOM should get his priorities in life strait, and make changes where he himself is concerned , before making changes where a website is concerned. Your forums are dead, and that is a reflection of your personality. The embarrassment must be so thick that you can choke on it. Just think, if you were a decent person, none of that would have happened. If you didn't decided to act as if you had some kind of power over me and others, as if your site was the only one in town, we wouldn't all be laughing at you like we are. A once thriving forum is a ghost town, and it's nobody's fault but yours. You definitely do not have the smarts to handle responsibility or maturity, and you are poor with business and social skills.

\:D/ That was the best feedback I could think of giving.

Much to my suprise, I recieved an e-mail back, and here is what it said.

Thanks for your comments. I will share them with our team.

Best,

Sean Saulsbury
Box Office Mojo
sean@boxofficemojo.com

You know what's sad? I couldn't figure out if that was a personal reply, or an automated response, because he's got a personality of a cyborg to begin with. It kinda makes it look like the feedback isn't even being read, though, doesn't it?

I'll be forced to close this thread if this turns into another aggressive sean/bom bashing.

though i must admit, the new design ... terrible ... the world isn't ready for sites that require a 1280 resolution .... tooooo much data... no website should stretch out that wide .. i rather liked the old design.

Yes, it doesn't look professional to anybody with an 800 resolution or so, because those pesky scroll bars come up, and makes for too much work for the lazy computer users. :razz:

And hey, a little Sean bashing is good for the soul sometimes, but I do hope that nobody starts ranting, but I did think they would find that e-mail typical.

any site that requires a vertical scroll bar when maximized needs to have its designer thrown out.

That's a rather broad statement; you go to any blog, any news site, basically any site that updates its content regularly, and it will most certainly have vertical scroll bars. Otherwise, accessing relevant information would be a pain.

Ooooops!!

Sorry, i meant horizontal scroller

Oh. Well then, yeah

I'd go even further, and say that any site that fills up 100% of the width with content is offensive. There's no place for the eyes to rest.

Mav I got the same email so I'd guess it's automated.

Glad to see that the "team" over there was really interested in opinions and feedback. I have a bad case of pnuemonia, so I'm a little more cynical than normal. (I'm actually glad it's pnuemonia, which is something you don't hear everyday, because I thought it was terminal. #-o )

Oh Mav...if its any comfort I don't think pnuemonia is terminal anymore. I had a very bad case when I was 17 because it was misdiagnosed as asthma and they actually gave me medicine to weaken my immunity system the first time around. I had it for about two months and it was terrible but I think the doctors have all the meds to handle it now. Is it viral or bacterial? You need to get someone to hit the sides of your rib cage everyday to help break everything up, and that old-school boiling water and putting it in a bowl with a towel over your head works too. Good luck and get better.

Thanks, dolce. I had it twice before, but I was just a young pup who could bounce back a lot quicker than I can today. It's viral, and as soon as it got bad, I went to my doctor. I've got my meds, my puffer, and all I need now is a little time to get better, but I feel like hell.

To be honest, I thought it may have been the same cancer that killed my brother, because it went to my back out of nowhere. That was the first thing that happened with him, and it's a symptom of pancreatic cancer, and once you have the sympton, it's over. I was relieved to hear that everything else checked out perfect on me. I've never had back problems, so feeling sudden and sharp pains reminded me of my mortality pretty quickly, but it's just a little pnuemonia is all. \:D/

Never heard of that "get someone to hit you in the ribs everyday" remedy, but I wouldn't have trouble finding willing participants. :razz:

The new design for Box Office Mojo is perhaps one of the worst thought out designs in a major website's history.

Not only does BOM shun all graphics, apart from advertisments to supposedly save bandwidth [and money] but the sites new look is crammed and just awful. Theres WAY too much information and not enough structure which leaves it looking like a mass of words. Its just one of the worst designs ive seen; and that has nothing to do with my feelings for the site and its administration.

On the side of BOM becoming a wannabe buisness - whats with the ads EVERYWHERE; including the incredibly annoying ringtone frog. The way the "sign up" page appears is terrible to. Popups are abudnant as well.

Furthermore, ive noticed that BOM are starting to show a bias in their reports, which i would understand if it was any other site, hell i make no real attempt to mask my affiliation with a certain pic or star in my reports, and i feel most other sites dont really anyway - its not nice to be a robot; so why not have a personality? Preferences and opinions are vital - but BOM has built such an image of static processing rather than tying facts with opinion [and making that line clear] that giving a bias appearing can cause conflict, as with other sites of the same nature/goal. Like if Reuters starting saying "Idiotic Bush was not appearing in the conference, he probobly forgot how to speak and so retired for the day" then its reliance as an unbias news source would drop dramatically.

Blah blah blah Sean sucks blah blah blah Sean is a Nazi blah blah blah. :wink:

Anyway, as Ahmed said, the forum decay is spreading to the rest of the site. The new design is an awful, cluttered mess (my screen is big enough that it doesn't require horizontal scroll bars for it, though), the reports get more and more biased, and they take forever to receive Friday numbers. Ugh. And to cap it off, Furher Sean, but I don't want to go any further on that.

New design is cool.

He is, indeed, A.I.

And I hope you get well soon. Take care of yourself, pneumonia is nothing to play around with. I had it twice back in 2002/2003 and ended up in the hospital both times.

Agreed. Looks way too packed.

=D> =D> =D>

And did I mention the BOM site looks now as cluttered as the CNN layout?



Both of these designers need to get their asses kicked.

My understanding is that the forums were only a very small part of the overall site. Most of the activity was people looking for straight numbers, and most of the revenue was from ads and premier pass. The forums themselves are a sort of add-on.

What I DON'T like is that the ads are from IMO unethical sites. In addition to content-cover pop-ups, those banners put a ton of spyware on my computer including home-page hijackers. Ad-aware, Spybot, and Spy Sweeper together couldn't fix it. BOM is the reason I decided to junk my old computer and cancel my home dial-up.