How does the Plot Keywords section get filled?

@nick_burfle​ 

It's filled by individual contributors like you and me.  Many of them seem to list every object shown or mentioned, rather than just what is significant.  

I agree wholeheartedly. One of my pet peeves is when IMDb contributors severely overuse and even abuse the "character-says-" and "reference-to-" keywords, plus adding excessive keywords describing what each character is wearing in the title and all the physical objects shown on the screen, whether or not they are important to the plot. This is keyword spamming, and it disrespects our fellow users who actually use the keywords for both research and entertainment.

My solution is to delete (and sometimes correct) these irrelevant keywords. I probably spend just as much time deleting keywords as I do adding them. I consider this a public service to the community, sort of like cleaning up litter or removing graffiti tags in the real world.

I used to care, but since keywords show on the title page and may contain spoilers -- and IMDb for some reason refuses to move them to a separate page -- I've just about stopped voting for what is and isn't "significant". 

IMDb lists the top five keywords for each title on the main page for that title. That is exactly why you should keep voting keywords as relevant or irrelevant for particular titles -- to make sure that the top five keywords are in fact relevant.

And it's difficult to outvote the folks who consider 37 ways of saying people are nude to be more important than the plot or themes or major events.

Occasionally I have seen other users hijack the top keyword spots by upvoting their own spam/fetishistic keywords, but in those situations the best remedy is to simply delete those keywords. I have done a lot of those deletions as well, and the bad keywords rarely come back, and if they do, this forum can be used to ask IMDb staff to step in.

I do totally agree with you that all the "nudity" keywords are excessive and a waste of everyone's time. When contributors use keywords to describe every single body part exposed in a title, it just gets ridiculous.

@nick_burfle​ thank you, that is good to know! The overtagging of minor/insignificant things actually turns out to be helpful for me, since it helps me find anything and everything even remotely related to the subject I'm interested in :p The thing I find myself stuck against is keywords that are not explicitly confirmed by the work itself, so then I have to wonder is this confirmed by the makers of the title and should I go find a reference for that, or is this just a random person's interpretation?

@HanTheGene​ Keywords are never "confirmed" by the filmmakers. Keywords are entirely the work of IMDb contributors (users), with occasional intervention by IMDb staff.