bradley_kent's profile

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Wednesday, March 31st, 2021 1:50 AM

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Genres Should Not Be Keywords

The guidelines are very clear in stating that genres should not be repeated as keywords.  Yet, this problem continues to happen.

Recently, I have audited and corrected 96 "thrilller" (Yes, three l's) keywords and 80 "mistery" (yes, with an "i" instead of a "y) keywords as well as many, many other keywords that duplicate genres.  I have yet to get to over 200 titles tat have "dramas" as a keyword.  (A genre, as well as an unacceptable plural.) There were a few 2018-and-before titles with these mistakes, but almost all were 2019-2020-2021 titles, many of them Shorts.  I can only surmise that, in recent years, contributors and keyword list managers do not know and/or do not enforce the guidelines.  

To help control this problem, contributors must be informed of their mistakes and keyword list managers should review and enforce the guidelines.

There is also something else that seems to contribute to this problem.  Genres are processed later that keywords.  But, since genres and keywords are so closely related, it seems that they should be on the same processing schedule.

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3 years ago

Just also audited and corrected incorrect generic keywords "si-fi" (13 titles) and "si-fi-movie" (3 title). (Yes, "si" instead of "sci.") Thank God, there was NO "sigh-fie (-on-goodness-fie)" incorrect keyword!  Or, maybe it's a Spaniard saying yes to a Frenchwoman "si-fifi!"

P.S. I couldn't resist!

(edited)

Employee

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17.2K Messages

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310.1K Points

3 years ago

Hi bradley_kent -

 

It is correct that main genre's should not be listed as Keywords, however, we are flexible in allowing sub-plot genres to be displayed as Keywords, such as: "dark-comedy", "supernatural-horror", "psychological-thriller", etc.

 

In instances where you are seeing primary genres that are not eligible (sci-fi, drama, thriller, documentary) please continue to report these for removal and our editors will take the applicable actions to remove.

 

Cheers!

 

 

Champion

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14.2K Messages

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328K Points

3 years ago

In some cases, the genre guidelines direct contributors to submit genres as keywords:

Under Romance:

Note: Reminder, as with all genres if this does not describe the movie wholly, but only certain scenes or a subplot, then it should be submitted as a keyword instead.

Under War:

Note: for titles that portray fictional war, please submit it as a keyword only.

This is not "repeating genres" as only the keywords and not the genres would be listed for such titles.

Yesterday Michelle approved a submission of the war keyword, so I assume she agrees.

If IMDb prefers that main genres should not be listed as keywords at all, they should update their own guidelines.

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These two guidelines may need to be revised.  In order to avoid confusion. In the first case, the keyword should be "fictional-war," not "war,"  and, in the second case, "love-interest," not "romance."    

Currently, the keyword count is:

fictional-war    1242

war                       89

love-interest.   1724

romance                 0

UPDATE: After an audit, the number of titles with "war" as a keyword is now 2.  One of these is for an episode where the series keywords already cover it (this has already been submitted, but not accepted),  and I'm waiting for research to correct the other one.

(edited)

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23.1K Points

Just audited 28 titles that had "comedie" as a keyword. All had Comedy as a genre, and did not mean the comedie-francaise.  I have also worked on many other titles with keyword-genre problems.  Is anyone enforcing the guideline that genres should not be keywords?  Perhaps every genre or combination of genres should have a stop on them when submitted as a keyword.

2.7K Messages

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47K Points

2 years ago

@bradley_kent It is a "mistery" to me why you didn't ever (until recently) ask for any of these genre keywords to be perma-banned (blocked from the system). You have been working for years to manually edit these substitute genre keywords down to zero, only to see the keywords reemerge shortly thereafter. Why did you not simply ask for the keywords to be permanently blocked? 

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23.1K Points

2 years ago

I had asked.  And I had (incorrectly) assumed that the staff would adhere to IMDb's own guidelines regarding genres being banned as keywords that just combined one genre with  another. Many times, I hesitated to ask the staff because they seemed so unresponsive.  You have much better luck at getting them to respond than I have had.  Oh, well...

(edited)