11 keywords accepted then deleted (Edit: NEED INPUT FROM CONTRIBUTORS)

@jay_spirit​

Regarding "widow" and "war-widow," you are very much in the right. A title with a character who is a war widow needs to have both of these keywords, and adding both of these keywords facilitates keyword searches. 

If the widow in the title is a young widow, you could also add the keyword "young-widow." 

@keyword_expert​ I suspect we have a contributor who has made it his mission to delete supposedly "duplicate" keywords from keyword lists, even though the rule about "duplicate" keywords has been out of date since 1999. Just about every keyword list I look at seems to be scoured of anything that could possibly be considered a "duplicate" keyword.

I dislike duplication in keywords and I believe it is an honorable thing to weed out duplication. With that said, "widow" and "war-widow" are not duplicates.

@keyword_expert​ An old, old rule (which didn't even make sense at the time) in the contributor guide said that if a list has a specific keyword, like war-widow, it should not have a more generic keyword, like widow. The staff considered these to be "duplicates." The specific keyword took precedence over the generic one, and the generic one was to be deleted.

I'd like to see the current guide inform contributors that this rule is long dead and that these supposed "duplicates" are not considered duplicates any longer.

The tips in the update form say, "Before submitting, search the keyword database to see what already exists - if it does, please use it instead of submitting a new keyword." That seems to be a rule about duplication. The guidelines also mention that duplicate keywords can be reported.

Yes, but I'd like to see the guide make clear that a generic keyword and a specific keyword are not duplicates, e.g, widow and war-widow, cat and alley-cat.

Long ago, the contributor guide said that these types of keywords were duplicates and that the more generic keyword should be deleted. And it seems that some contributors, and even staffers, still believe that that rule is still in place. As far as I can tell, it's not. It certainly should not be.

@Michelle​ 

Thank you. I hope the guide will now make clear that unless two keywords are exact synonyms, they are not duplicates.

Widow and war-widow, for example, should not be treated as duplicate keywords.

Hello,

I'm following up here to confirm that this issue has now been resolved and the help guide updated.