Nomination for the worst keyword of all times:

@bradley_kent​ Plot twist. I'm not a human.

To be honest "human-interest" is a really dumb keyword.

Vive la différence!

"unhuman-interest" may become a new keyword.  Or, "robot-interest"?

@bradley_kent​ 

How about ?? 

https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=dog-interest

0 titles No results

https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=cat-interest

0 titles No results

https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=horse-interest

0 titles No results

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@Michelle​ But Mr. Weasley is a human character. The wizards in "Harry Potter" are humans. Arthur Weasley was known for taking an interest in regular, non-magical people (muggles).

In any event, saying that "human-interest" refers to a non-human character being interested in human beings is likely to be confusing, since that's not how the term is used in the news business.

By contrast, a TV news producer looking for a "human interest" story might air something more like "Chicago high school mom's club holds dress re-sale event. A Chicago high school is holding a re-sale event to help young women afford prom and graduation dresses." or "Watch: Bodycam footage shows deputy saving dog from burning vehicle". 

@Michelle​ There may be some "human-interest" titles in the database which are about aliens, robots, animals, or other non-human entities who take an interest in humans, but it's not clear to me that most of the uses of this keyword are intended to convey that idea.

@gromit82​ I still think the best definition for "human interest" focuses not on whether humans take an interest in each other within the plot itself, but rather whether the title features something about humans that is designed to trigger an interest in the viewer. I base that on the dictionary definition of "human interest story" that I quoted above:

human interest story: a story or report, as in a newspaper or on a newscast, designed to engage attention and sympathy by enabling one to identify readily with the people, problems, and situations described."

All the news programs that used the keyword "human-interest" most likely had the above definition in mind.

I still think the best solution is to merge the keywords as follows. I will include this in a future list of proposed keyword mergers:

human-interest (4709 titles) --> human-interest-story (9 titles)

BTW, a full 4,593 of the 4,709 titles with the "human-interest" keyword are in the "news" genre. These keywords were added by certain news programs through 2016, at which point they stopped. The keyword "special-interest" (another dumb keyword) was simultaneously added to most of these titles.

I would argue that "special-interest" is an even worse keyword than "human-interest," and may actually warrant deletion/banning. Although maybe not, if the term "special interest" were properly used in accordance with its dictionary meaning: "a body of persons, corporation, or industry that seeks or receives benefits or privileged treatment, esp. through legislation." I suspect that the vast majority of applications of "special-interest" on IMDb did not have that meaning in mind, however.

@keyword_expert​ Just as "human interest" has a specific meaning in television news, "special interest" has a specific meaning in the direct-to-video business. 

Basically, to home video distributors and retailers, "special interest" is or was used to refer to productions that were released direct to video which were not theatrical movies or anything similar to that. Examples would include exercise videos, cooking videos, travelogues, sports documentaries, and other miscellaneous videos. See here, here, and here for example.

Whether this has anything to do with the way IMDb contributors have used the term is questionable. Anyway, I wouldn't want to label all the exercise videos, cooking videos, etc. in IMDb with the "special-interest" keyword as that is more like industry jargon than anything useful to IMDb users. (Actually, many "special-interest" titles would be listed under the Lifestyle genre, if IMDb ever gets around to establishing that genre.)

@gromit82​ Interesting. Thanks for those links. It appears that "special interest" has at least three different meanings: (1) corporate/plutocrat interest (effectively the opposite of "public interest"), (2) direct to video special categories, and (3) news segments on special topics. 

Given all these various meanings, I would argue that the keyword is hopelessly vague, to the point of being practically useless. However, I don't know that it warrants deletion/banning. It's a bad keyword, but not a completely useless one.

The ambiguity of these "worst," "bad," useless" keywords as expressed in the above discussions is the best argument one can make for why they should be deleted.

They serve no purpose whatsoever as a factual representation of a title's content, and are certainly not an assist for accurate research.

Again... how about deleting "psychological," "emotional" and "human interest" keywords.  Their meanings are so subjective and so personal, and so randomly applied, that they are practically useless.

@bradley_kent​ Michelle has already answered your questions as to all three of these keywords.

Also, the "human-interest" keyword has been subsequently merged into the "human-interest-story" keyword, in keeping with this dictionary definition of "human interest":

human interest story: a story or report, as in a newspaper or on a newscast, designed to engage attention and sympathy by enabling one to identify readily with the people, problems, and situations described."

As discussed previously, 4,593 of the 4,719 instances of the keyword "human-interest-story" are in the news category.

What is the accepted definition of "psychological"?  For the life of me, I cannot think of even one title that is not 
"psychological" and "emotional"!

An example?

@bradley_kent​ Scroll up. I have already linked to the Wikipedia definition of "psychological fiction" and the various subgenres thereunder.

Wikipedia: a narrative genre that emphasizes interior characterization and motivation to explore the spiritual, emotional, and mental lives of the characters. The mode of narration examines the reasons for the behaviors of the character, which propel the plot and explain the story.[1] Psychological realism is achieved with deep explorations and explanations of the mental states of the character's inner person, usually through narrative modes such as stream of consciousness and flashbacks.[2]

As director, actor, writer and acting teacher, this applies to EVERY character in EVERY title EVER undertaken.  

And, this applied to EVERYONE involved in the creation of a title.  This even extends to, not only the style, but the color of a prop or costume.  Everything has some psychological and/or emotional purpose.

A basic part of our work (art?) is the "deep explorations and explanations of the mental states of the character's inner person," even beyond stream-of-consciousness and flashbacks.

@bradley_kent​ 

Very cute.  But.. it's not opinion.  It's fact.

Some people are just "deeper" than others.