Improve the Trailers Page

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The Trailers page (http://www.imdb.com/trailers) in its current form fails to appropriately give exposure to 'new release' titles as neither of the available views, "Most Popular" and "Most Recent", both provide an insight into new content.

"Most Popular" is skewed towards populism, and as such will entirely fail to give lesser known content equal coverage.

"Most Recent" (despite the common understanding) sorts by most recently added rather than most recently released. This makes the page prone to 'flooding' when a content provider mass uploads content, perhaps making up for gaps in previously added titles. It also means that, again, content relating to actual current/recent/future releases is easily pushed down the list and/or hidden within a sea of much older content.

Case in point, here is the list visible on a single page view at time of writing this:


Of the 18 trailers visible as "Most Recent" the breakdown is as follows.
Release Year:
2017 : 1
2016 : 4
2013 : 1
2011 : 1
2010 : 1
2009 : 2
2008 : 1
2007 : 2
2005 : 1
2002 : 2
1989 : 1
1973 : 1

Of the 18 films listed on the front page only 3 are likely to be currently screening.
Looking at the breakdown of studios/directors/writers etc of the 18 50% are under release from Everest Entertainment.

Whilst there are a number of writers and directors involved 14 of the 18 films are no doubt 'recently added' because of the creating of the India subsite breakdown https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/imdb-india

Parochial grumblings aside (where's the /australia site? the /france site? /japan?) the generation of that site has clearly led to an influx of updated titles, including mass-uploads of trailers.

And that's just the first 18 results. The list of results of "Most Recent" doesn't improve much the further you go down. The first 2017 release listed in "Most Recent" trailers comes in at #9 (left-to-right, top-to-bottom). We see some of 2016's festival screened films come in at #21/22/23 with releases in 2017 and another 2017 film at #25. Aside from that it's more 80's/90's/00's films, largely due to the India subsite introduction.

However if only this was a new problem!
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/old_trailers_listed_as_new_trailers
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/hi-why-in-most-recent-movie-trailers-appears-old-movies
The first is from 3 years ago, and the question gets asked still from time to time. In that case I don't believe that was due to a mass event, but rather 'just the way it works' ('by design' or 'as intended').

Now, here's the quirk. If it's 'by design' and simply based on when files get uploaded what's the meaning of the response from this question:
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/trailers-k3u6tssqw0n4u
"No, trailers are not automatically added to the referenced page. This page is curated by our Editors."

So are the Most Recent trailers curated? Someone is intentionally putting all the trailers uploaded for older releases (whilst it's awesome to have trailers available for older films, having a trailer for a film released over 43 years ago as "Most Recent" is really unfortunate), or is "Most Recent" and automated process.

Depending on which of the above is true (it's curated, or it's automatic) I think a change would be beneficial not only to visitors to IMDB but to the artists, creators and studios putting their trailers online.
If curated: stop curating older releases onto Most Recent. It makes _no_ logical sense.
If automated: provide an option to sort by Title Release Date rather than Trailer Upload Date.

IMDB is a valuable tool for users and the industry, having Most Recent trailers provide additional value would I'm sure be appreciated by everyone.

Please consider a small change, to allow sort by Title Release Date and not Trailer Upload Date. Even if the list is curated this would provide people much better forward vision of what's current or upcoming.
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paulj

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Posted 4 years ago

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