Mark titles as not interested.

@cinephile​ Yeah, I’ve seen that and it’s nice… certainly serves a purpose, but the user has little control of the Recommended section. The problem, however, is that I have titles I want to mark as not interested. There’s no way to visit those titles and mark them.

Can you walk me to this option on the Website? I noticed on the Watch guide, if I click on the "info" icon, I get a pop window for the movie with a "watchlist" button and a "thumbs down" button. I don't seen the option you mentioned on my user profile page. It just shows my activity and some badges.

@majorgear This thread is 4 years old and since the above was posted, those recommendations are no longer on your profile page. This functionality is now covered via the "Top Picks" section at https://www.imdb.com/what-to-watch/top-picks/ (accessible from the home page "Get more recommendations" link). Hope this helps.

As I explained in my post, I know about marking titles as "not interested" in the top picks (ie thumbs down button ) section, but that is limited to suggested titles. I believe OP was asking about proactively marking titles as "not interested" instead of waiting for the title to be suggested. A proactive option would be a great feature, IMHO. Not to be completely negative, the Top Picks is responsive. I can thumbs down a title and refresh the page to see it disappear. Marking a title as Watched without rating it and refreshing the page doesn't seem to clear it. If I rate the title and refresh Top Picks, that definitely clears the title from Top Picks. Top Picks is definitely and interested tool that I'm learning more about. I'm hoping to find ( I haven't looked ) a Web page that explains how it works so I can tune my ratings to get the best results in Top Picks. eg What properties - watched status, rating, genre, etc - tell the recommendation engine that a title as interesting to me? How are they weighted? No too deep as that is IMDB's secret sauce, but to what each rating means to the engine would be helpful. e.g. does a rating of 5 or lower meaning never recommend similar titles? What about a 6+ rating?

Those are definitely curious algorithms. My picks are usually just “popular” titles and not necessarily those I’m interested in… which is a bummer.

This page says that it uses your ratings and watchlist to decide what you might be interested in -> https://help.imdb.com/article/imdb/discover-watch/what-to-watch-faq/GPZ2RSPB3CPVL86Z?ref_=helpms_ih_gi_siteindex# It doesn't go into deep detail about the specific algorithm, my guess is it finds users who rate movies similarly to you, and recommends movies that they showed interest in to you.

@Col_Needham​ The suggested-for-you section has its place and I appreciate its availability. I often use it. In fact, it’s algorithms are pretty good. My desire, though, isn’t waiting for IMDb to recommend a title so I can mark it as ‘not interested’. My desire is to lookup specific titles and mark them as ‘not interested’ and later know that I’ve marked it. SCENARIO (and this happens often): A friend recommends a title or maybe it’s recommended on social media. I lookup the title and add it to my watchlist. Later, I may spend 5-10 minutes reading reviews and watching a trailer only to discover that I did the exactly same thing in the past—and ultimately wasn’t interested in the title. Honestly, in a few years, I may do it all over again with the same title. I would love to see, on every title page, the option to not only mark a title as ‘not interested’, but easily identify that I have previously marked it as ‘not interested’ (my thought is to use the thumbnail ribbon: yellow fill is in watchlist, red fill is ‘not interested’, no fill is no selection). * Of course, title marked as ‘not interested’ should never show up in the recommended-for-you section. * Bonus: Along with ratings, history, watchlist, my lists, etc. on the ‘You’ tab, titles marked not interested should be available here as a list because the user may want to review those titles. BTW, the lack of my idea isn’t a showstopper because your iOS app (plus Android & desktop for that matter) is quite the powerhouse. It’s this media-junky’s favorite and most used app! Thank you for asking about this idea.

@Col_Needham​ Another example today. IMDb user, ovidijusburokas, has compiled a wonderful list: Best Horror Movies Of All Time, https://www.imdb.com/list/ls003174642/ That list contains 282 titles. First, I can easily see the titles I’ve seen because the rating shows on the thumbnail. I can also easily see titles that are already in my watchlist. I can also sort by these indications. This makes it easy to weed out a number of the titles. Next, I want to weed out the titles that I am not interested in seeing. Over the course I’ve my life, I’ve quite possibly seen all or most of the trailers for these titles… and likely determined I was not interested. Frankly, I don’t want to rewatch 100+ trailers again. It would be so nice to have a “not interested” feature that behaved like the watchlist… displaying some sort of indicator on the thumbnail and being able to sort. This probably isn’t an issue for novice users that visit IMDb occasionally for information, but for power users, being able to manage “not interested” titles is essential. Thanks for reading this. Much appreciated!

@Col_Needham​ And another example. Sorry—I keep remembering reasons why this feature is needed. This one is quite the dilemma. I watch a rom-com with my husband and let’s say I don’t particularly think it’s a good movie, so I rate it 4 stars. The problem is that I don’t really care for rom-coms anyway. So is my rating unfair? This is something I struggle with. Imo, it would be more fair if I could mark the title as “not interested”. In the end, I want to leave my mark in some way… a mark that I can see, sort, filter, and manage at my discretion.

@Col_Needham​ I'm not seeing this "i" button in the web browser (windows). Am I missing something?

@Col_Needham​ I was in the "Top Picks" section, which you get to after clicking on "Top Picks" on the homepage. Weirdly, those "i" circles aren't on that page: I do see them on the home page, but the "What to Watch" page is a more useful place to bookmark and go back to. Odd that the info button is one place but not the other.

@grisenthwaite​ In my dreams… this. The ribbon would be replaced with a four-way toggle on every title. Yellow check = in my watchlist Blue check = in any of my custom lists Red ‘X’ = not interested Gray ‘+’ = no action/not in any listAnd, as stated, we should have access to a native list of those titles we have marked as not interested (because… tastes change over time… I might be interested in titles that I previously was not). Presently, the yellow ribbon is so helpful to see titles in my watchlist. It just takes a half-second glance. I simply want that same convenience… the same half-second glance… to see that I’ve marked a title as not interested (or even in one of my custom lists). Thanks for posting a reply. It’s been a while since the original post. It was time to revisit again.

Really want something like this. The ones you mark with an X cease to show up on the website/app. Only way to make them visible again would be unchecking them in settings, or at least specifically searching for said title. There are so many movies and television shows in the world. Decluttering them from view would make it so much faster to find new things you actually want to watch. That and I wouldn't have to see things I'm no longer interested in viewing. Personally would put an X on hundreds of different media within the first few days of a possible implementation.

@Ranpaq​ Exactly! Thank you for posting. I think there is a resistance to do so because money may be involved. I won’t pretend to know for sure, but studios may pay to have their movies/series featured a little more prominently. If we could hide them, the studios wouldn’t like it. That’s just my guess. There must be some reason for the resistance. I’ve been asking a long time for this. I would imagine that us ‘heavy’ IMDb users love this option that would GREATLY improve our browsing habits.

I like this idea. Maybe not to go as far as hiding titles, but rather make it an option on the "filter titles" menu. Even better, let the user set "hide not interested" as a default for all of their title views. They can change the filter if they want to see "not interested" again. The data is stored somewhere by IMDB somewhere, so it's a question of how to expose it to the end user, and how to let them interact with it. Nothing is free, so I understand IMDB being conservative with feature requests. If IMDB implemented every feature that I've thought of, they would go broke fro spending money on them within a week and I'd move to another list server. Hopefully this feature bubbles to the top. :)

Agreed. It’s possible that producers pay to promote certain titles. Allowing users to fully control what they see may infringe upon that.

@Ranpaq​ Regarding IMDb’s “recommended section” that gives you a “not interested” option, as you know, this is not what we are asking for. 1. It does not allow me to mark The Office as “not interested” right now. My only hope is to wait for it to appear in the recommended section one day. That could take months or even years. 2. If I do mark it as “not interested,” when I visit the page for that title, there is no indication that I have done so. 3. There is no way to see a list of the items that I have marked as “not interested” from the “recommended” section. Tastes change. Maybe I want to occasionally review this list. I appreciate your post—stirring up some attention on this much needed feature.

@stefan_ionescu​ I have done this. It helps, but only as a workaround at best. If viewing any list of recommended titles prepared by another user, there is no way to filter out titles that belong to one of your own personal lists. This would be easy to implement, so IMDb must have their reasons for avoiding such an option. We can keep hoping though.