Duplicate Keywords - List #50 (developmental disability keywords) (Proposals for Permanent Merger and Auto-Conversion)

@Michelle​ I know you are only the bearer of the bad news, so this reply is not personal, but this response from IMDb is simply not good and respectful enough.

It is of course completely understandable that IMDb can't fix everything all at once. No one is asking that. Some things might take months and some things might take years. The fact that some things (the five new genres for example) take over a decade is crazy and shows that IMDb is (severely) understaffed and probably should straighten out its priorities, but at least IMDb seems willing to fix these issues.

But to simply refuse to make the database fundamentally better after people have voluntarily put in a lot of time doesn't make any sense. First of all because it only creates more work in the future for both contributors and members of staff and secondly, because with this, IMDb demotivates contributors, which potentially means fewer updates and contributors, which leads to a less complete database...

As it has seemed from the beginning, the Contributors Charter sure looks like a one-way street...

Also, as you stated IMDb won't solve this issue, can someone remove the Solved tag as it is untrue?

Hopefully the lists will not be deleted so they could be used if a new mechanism ever materializes.

I was positively surprised that IMDb accepted so many requests since they previously refused to make such edits, years ago.

While I have supported requests for a tool for bulk keyword edits, I think proposing them here and seeking comments has its benefits. If there was a tool for bulk corrections there would be a risk of multiple contributors making contradictory edits.

@Michelle​ I am disappointed but not surprised, given that the staff stopped acting on my keyword merge lists many months ago. 

You said IMDb needs "an established mechanism in place for reporting and actioning these bulk keyword clean-ups." The truth is there is such a mechanism, and that mechanism is this forum. It worked well for a long time, until one day staff stopped acting on my lists. 

@Michelle​ I also don't understand why all those threads have been marked as "Solved." It's one thing to close them, but to mark them as both "closed" and "solved" is just not accurate. 

@Michelle​ For what it is worth, I do feel like we as a community made a lot of progress on the keyword mergers, and it was time well spent by both volunteer contributors and paid staff. And because I focused my lists on keywords or groups of keywords that involved at least 50 instances, it allowed for focusing on the biggest problems first.

I also feel that if the mass mergers had continued, less work would have been needed over time as further progress would have been made. But we will never know whether I am right about that since IMDb staff decided to cut the work short.

@keyword_expert​ Good to see you back. To answer your question on the threads being marked as “Solved” … this is to take them out of the admin view of pending work for the IMDb Sprinklr team.  If we do not do this, then every time the team check on which threads need a follow-up, they would have to skip over them.  This has been one of the issues causing us to lose track of older threads needing attention, which in turn has been the cause of greater frustration and unintended Sprinklr backlogs. On reflection, the threads could have been tagged as “No action required” which achieves the same effect, but I am not sure that would have made you feel any better. 

On the wider point, we too feel there had been good progress and we are grateful for all of the effort which you and others have have contributed to the clean-up. However, by continually, manually, and inefficiently fixing these issues, there was no pressure on the software teams to create a scalable self-service model for keyword management. The end result will be that there will be a much easier way to fix these errors going forwards. 

Hope this helps. 

@Col_Needham​ 

On reflection, the threads could have been tagged as “No action required” which achieves the same effect, but I am not sure that would have made you feel any better. 

It's not really an issue of how I "feel" about it, but rather an issue of accuracy. Marking those threads as "solved" was inappropriate and misleading, and it confuses those threads with my prior lists that actually were solved. For the sake of accuracy, clarity, and posterity, the "No action required" option would have been much more appropriate. I don't know if it's possible to retroactively change those threads to "No action required," but if so, I would support that.

However, by continually, manually, and inefficiently fixing these issues, there was no pressure on the software teams to create a scalable self-service model for keyword management.

One irony is that the only solution that remains currently available -- manual editing of keywords by contributors in the form of individual contributions -- is much, much more time consuming. This is a lot more inefficient (and pretty much impossible for the larger-scale keyword problems).

The end result will be that there will be a much easier way to fix these errors going forwards. 

You say that there "will be" such a solution. Does that mean the solution is actively being developed? If so, how soon might it be available? Can you provide any further details -- for example, will this be a method that contributors themselves will be able to use, or will contributors still vet these mass mergers in this forum, with staff taking final action? Personally I would prefer the latter. As @Peter_pbn noted, there is a big potential for major irreversible conflicts and errors if the power to make mass keyword changes were put in the hands of contributors (even just Top Contributors):

While I have supported requests for a tool for bulk keyword edits, I think proposing them here and seeking comments has its benefits. If there was a tool for bulk corrections there would be a risk of multiple contributors making contradictory edits.

@keyword_expert​ 

It's not really an issue of how I "feel" about it, but rather an issue of accuracy. Marking those threads as "solved" was inappropriate and misleading, and it confuses those threads with my prior lists that actually were solved. For the sake of accuracy, clarity, and posterity, the "No action required" option would have been much more appropriate. I don't know if it's possible to retroactively change those threads to "No action required," but if so, I would support that.

We have changed the status of those threads now, thanks. 

One irony is that the only solution that remains currently available -- manual editing of keywords by contributors in the form of individual contributions -- is much, much more time consuming. This is a lot more inefficient (and pretty much impossible for the larger-scale keyword problems).

Yes, that’s the point; beyond single keyword edits, this process is painful whether done via the contribution interface or done by the Sprinklr team.  You may not appreciate this, but at the height of these threads, one Sprinklr team member was working a significant portion of their time solely making your keyword edits (at the expense of processing other submissions and answering other Sprinklr threads — we only have a fixed set of resources / staff / time, so if someone is working long hours on editing keywords they cannot be working on anything else). By not processing these difficult manual corrections, we are adding weight for the software team to develop a better and scalable solution. 

You say that there "will be" such a solution. Does that mean the solution is actively being developed? If so, how soon might it be available? Can you provide any further details

It is not under active development, but the request to create it is in the queue with added pressure given there is no practical workaround (see previous paragraph).

Hope this helps. 

@phillip​ I agree with you, but I think you responded to me on the wrong thread. I think you meant to respond here.