Duplicate Keywords - List #57 (nudity keywords pt. 3) (Proposals for Permanent Merger and Auto-Conversion)

@Peter_pbn​ Good catch. I will make that change.

@abdurahman​

Thank you and I agree.

List #22 is already finished by IMDb staff. (I only linked to it for the sake of reference).

List #28 has been pending for 3 and a half months, though. I will tag @Fran here so she sees your comment -- she has been covering most of the pending keyword lists lately, and has been doing a great job of getting through the backlog. This is one of the very few lists that remains pending for months.

Duplicate Keywords - List #28 (Proposals for Permanent Merger and Auto-Conversion) (nudity keywords pt. 2)

Hello all,

We are still working on the lists backlog. We will hopefully get to all pending lists soon.

The "Implemented" flag is for idea-type threads, just as "Solved" is for problem-type threads, and "Answered" for question-type threads. I don't know what could apply to announcement threads and praise threads.

@jeorj_euler​ Thank you for the details. Fortunately somebody read my message and removed the "Implemented" label from this thread.

Also, there are statuses of "not a problem", "no action needed" (maybe "no answer needed") and "acknowledged". Sometimes threads flagged as acknowledged stay that way for years, so it may be the most worrisome of the statuses.

@bradley_kent​ 

The relevant dictionary definition for "explicit" is "having sexual acts or nudity clearly depicted: explicit movies; explicit books." 

So I guess the nudity keywords with "explicit" are intended to distinguish from nudity that is censored, blurred, pixelated, obscured, etc.

If I am correct about that, then it would seem that the "explicit" nudity keywords shouldn't exist at all, but rather should be merged into their counterparts without the "explicit-" prefix. I can understand the need for a separate "explicit-sex" keyword, but the explicit nudity keywords seem like overkill (and they have not been frequently used).

I will adjust the list accordingly.

@bradley_kent​ I believe explicit refers to when a vulva, anus or a penis is clearly visible in detail, usually using close-up shots. 

@abdurahman​ I think you are probably correct about this, and I had a similar thought in my mind, although I was not able to articulate it nearly as well or succinctly as you have.

With that said, I do wonder if some people who have used the "explicit" keywords might have different definitions than you have articulated. 

What do you think of my proposal to simply merge the "explicit" keywords into their counterpart keywords without the "explicit-" prefixes? To see what I mean, search for "explicit" in the pending list above.

@abdurahman​ 

I hear what you are saying, but deleting and blocking keywords is a different thing from what this list is all about, which focuses on duplicate keywords for merger.  I try to be very careful about limiting my "duplicate" lists to true duplicates, unless there is a good reason for merging non-duplicates.

Admittedly, some of the keywords in this particular list are not true duplicates. But since this list is for mergers, the impact will not be nearly as harsh as deleting and blocking the keywords.

My suggestion is to see how this list works out in the future for a while, and then maybe a new post can be started to discuss blocking some of these keywords, and that can be discussed or debated further.

If the nudity is censored, there is no actual nudity, which means the keyword is useless.

A character being nude can be a plot point even if the viewer doesn't see any nudity. This is presumably also why some have used implied-nudity and others.

If nudity is covered in a particular way on screen, I can understand that contributors may want to describe that and be able to search for it. To me, covered-nudity and censored-nudity are both a bit unclear: covered how?  censored by whom?

@Peter_pbn​ 

I agree with your points and questions.

I will also throw a couple other keywords into the mix that are not included in the duplicates list for this post:

strategically-covered-nudity (69 titles)

nudity-hidden-from-camera (8 titles)

off-screen-nudity (1 title)

offscreen-nudity (1 title)

concealed-nudity (234 titles)

@Peter_pbn​

I can pretty much guarantee all the "censored" keywords were added by a handful of contributors, and 99.99% of the user base doesn't know or care they exist. We need to stop assigning grand benefits to clearly useless items added by people padding out the number of their contributions.

The amount of useless and redundant nudity related keywords is absurd, and we need to do something serious about it.

@abdurahman​ 

If someone wanted to "pad" the number of their contributions, adding a keyword or two about censored nudity would not be a very efficient way of doing it.

And these particular keywords might be useless to you, but they might be useful to someone else.  What if a filmmaker is looking for examples of how nudity has been censored in films, to give them ideas for filmmaking techniques? Or what if someone is doing an academic study on this topic? These keywords would be a good starting point for it.

Of course, I do agree with you that there is a lot of unnecessary redundancy. I think we have already made a big dent in that through our posts on this board.

@keyword_expert​ 

I appreciate your thoughts on this, but as I said before, if the censored keyword is necessary, everything should be consolidated into a single new keyword, like (censored-nudity).

@abdurahman​ As much as I really want to agree with you on that, I have to admit that these various keywords are not duplicates, and there are very likely reasons to keep them separate. Nudity censored by a black bar across the screen, versus blurring, versus pixelation, versus a physical object like a chair in the way of the camera, versus the character covering the nudity themselves, versus offscreen/implied nudity, are all different things. And there may be reasons to filter searches based on these different filmmaking methods and techniques.

I think there can be some consolidation -- for example, "concealed" and "covered" are close enough to be considered duplicates in my book, and there is no reason to keep the subjective prefix "strategically-covered-".

But I'm not willing to go to an extreme approach of consolidating all of these keywords.

In general with keywords, I try to find a middle of the road approach. 

The remark "If the nudity is censored, there is no actual nudity, which means the keyword is useless" stands out as a leap in logic, therefore isn't logical at all. Maybe there is a misunderstanding as to how certain adjectives or perhaps adjectives in general work. Consider the adjectives "false", "fake" and "phony". How does a term/phrase become useless just because one of these adjectives describes a noun found within the term/phrase? So, for example a phony automobile is not an automobile. We get that. So, how does such a realization translate into the idea that there is no such thing as a phony automobile? Rather, how does the realization translate into the idea that no need exists to designate any particular physical object as a phony automobile? The whole point of the overall term/phrase is to denote that something isn't what it seems. Okay, maybe the analogy doesn't exactly work, because the whole point designating a sight as nudity is that the nudity is visible, but yet it is quite possible for there to be nudity that is only obscured to the eye of the camera or audience, meaning that the nudity existed in the actual shot, unless the redaction aspect of the output (or finished product) only serves to hide the fact that wasn't and couldn't be any actual nudity. On account of that, there might be cause to distinguish between censored nudity and censored non-nudity as though there were nudity. What further obfuscates this, though, is the matter of computer-generated genitalia applied to shots that didn't originally capture any nudity.

@keyword_expert​ 

I'm sorry, but I'm not convinced. You keeping saying there are reasons, but are they valid reasons? We're not talking about censored keywords that number in the thousands. Nothing truly beneficial is lost by merging all of them into a singular keyword conveying the fact there is censored nudity in this film/episode.

@abdurahman​ 

I gave you two examples as potential reasons:

What if a filmmaker is looking for examples of how nudity has been censored in films, to give them ideas for filmmaking techniques? Or what if someone is doing an academic study on this topic? These keywords would be a good starting point for it.

Although I didn't create or add any of these keywords, I have to give the benefit of the doubt to those who did, especially because they are not part of our conversation.

@abdurahman​ 

Besides, I am not even sure that "censored" would be the logical term for all of these different methods of addressing nudity, even if I were to agree with you that all of them should be consolidated and merged. To me, the word "censored" implies the action of a third party who is forcing the filmmaker to change the film somehow. 

cen·sor
1. an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds.
2. any person who supervises the manners or morality of others.
3. an adverse critic; faultfinder.
4. (in the ancient Roman republic) either of two officials who kept the register or census of the citizens, awarded public contracts, and supervised manners and morals.
5. (in early Freudian dream theory) the force that represses ideas, impulses, and feelings, and prevents them from entering consciousness in their original, undisguised forms.
–v.t.
6. to examine and act upon as a censor.
7. to delete (a word or passage of text) in one's capacity as a censor.

@keyword_expert​ 

You're very generous for someone who deals with arbitrarily added keywords all the time.

Regarding the use of word censored, any equivalent which conveys the same meaning is fine; I hope we're not turning this into a semantics debate.

@abdurahman​ 

Thanks. I do my best to see issues from other perspectives. This board helps with that a lot. And I realize we all have a common goal with keywords, which is to make them as useful as possible. 

In some contexts, the word "bondage" refers to binding of the arms and legs, but in other contexts, it refers to the more general idea of detention, captivity or involuntary servitude, so we ought to bear that in mind. On that note, I can see why we would want to avoid it when context is enhanced by certain adjectives.

@jeorj_euler​ 

Exactly. 

The problems with using the word "bondage" in this context were thoroughly explored in this thread:

Should the keyword "bare-chested-male-bondage" be kept or deleted?

@jabrenner​ 

I think brief-frontal related keywords shouldn't be merged into just female, or male nudity because there is a difference in terms of the form of nudity.

Just to be clear, I wasn't proposing to merge the "brief" nudity keywords into "female-nudity" and "male-nudity," but rather into "brief-female-nudity" and "brief-male-nudity." 

brief-female-full-frontal-nudity (93 titles)  -->  brief-full-frontal-female-nudity (13 titles)  -->  brief-female-frontal-nudity (120 titles)  -->  brief-female-full-rear-nudity (14 titles)  -->  brief-female-rear-nudity (79 titles)  -->  brief-topless-female-nudity (176 titles)  -->  brief-female-nudity (243 titles)

brief-male-full-frontal-nudity (80 titles)  -->  brief-male-frontal-nudity (251 titles)  -->  brief-male-full-rear-nudity (14 titles)  -->  brief-rear-male-nudity (11 titles)  -->  brief-male-nudity (21 titles)

Are you suggesting that all of these keywords should remain separate?

If so, why would it not work to simply add the keywords "brief-male-nudity" and "male-full-frontal-nudity" to the title together? Do we really need the exact type of nudity described both within the "brief" keywords and within the separate nudity keywords?

After all, most contributors do not use the "brief" nudity keywords, and will instead just add "male-full-frontal-nudity" (and potentially also add "male-frontal-nudity" and "male-nudity" and "nudity" to the same title). Then another user could come along and add "brief-male-full-frontal-nudity" and "brief-male-frontal-nudity" and "brief-male-nudity" -- all on the same title.

Again, do you really think all these keywords should remain separate on the IMDb website?

There are simply too many separate "nudity" keywords, and too much bifurcation among them. At some point there needs to be some (reasonable) consolidation.

I understand your point that technically the "brief" nudity keywords are distinct, but I also continue to believe that consolidating these keywords by gender is reasonable. 

@jabrenner​ 

I should add that the "brief" nudity keywords have been the subject of past discussion over the years. Here is a post by @abdurahman @abdurahman49 calling for entirely eliminating the word "brief" from the nudity keywords:

These keywords need Merging

I wasn't ever willing to go quite that far, and instead suggested a reasonable compromise of consolidating all "brief" nudity keywords into either "brief-female-nudity" or "brief-male-nudity."