Please reinstate easy deletion of keywords that contain main-genre suffixes (e.g. vietnam-war, environmental-crime, interspecies-romance)

I decided to create a new post on this issue, to make sure IMDb will see it.

Fairly recently, and simultaneous with IMDb's decision to allow specific subgenres as keywords, IMDb also set up "flags"* within its system that makes it extremely difficult to delete any keyword that happens to contain a main genre as a suffix. Some examples are "hollywood-entertainment-news," "teenage-romance," "framed-for-crime," "exiled-royal-family," "avengers-infinity-war," "environmental-crime," "space-western," "culture-war," "tug-of-war," "vietnam-war," "interracial-romance," "danish-royal-family," etc. Any keyword that ends in a hyphen and a main genre (e.g., "-war," "-crime," "-romance," "-drama," "-western," "-family," etc.) is covered, even if the keyword is not on the list of "accepted" subgenre keywords.

As a result of this recent policy change, keyword approvals of such deletions are no longer automatic, but instead are routed to a human and/or rejected by an algorithm or bot. Most of these deletions are not approved. This makes it very difficult to delete irrelevant keywords, which is discouraging and counterproductive.

As just one example of the effects of this policy change, the recently released title Aylan Baby (2022), which was spammed (probably by the film's creators) with hundreds of irrelevant keywords, cannot be edited any further to remove dozens of irrelevant keywords that remain. These include irrelevant keywords like "police-procedural-crime," "interspecies-romance," "vietnam-war," "space-war," "galactic-war," and a bunch of other keywords that were part of the massive wave of spam keywords that was applied to this title.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10449310/keywords

IMDb staff should remove this overly broad flag, which obstructs deletion of any keyword that happens to include a main-genre suffix.

I could understand if IMDb wanted to have a more narrowly tailored flag, for example a flag limited to the exact list of "accepted" subgenre keywords. Even that narrower solution would be unnecessary--particularly in the long run--but it would be far preferable to the current arrangement.

* I'm not sure if "flag" is the correct word, but that's what I'm calling it.

Responses

Accepted Solution

Michelle

Employee

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17.5K Messages

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313.3K Points

3 years ago

Hi keyword_expert -

I reviewed the keywords for "Aylan Baby" and can confirm that even though these keywords may have a partial genre text, they can still be reported for removal through the Contribution Form.

Is the issue at hand that you are submitting deletion requests for these keywords and your updates are being declined?

keyword_expert

2.7K Messages

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47K Points

@Michelle Yes, that describes the problem exactly.

A good example is my contribution #220316-190749-428000.

I tried to delete 40 keywords, but 8 of them were declined, all of which contained "timeframe-" keywords or keywords with main genres as suffixes (e.g., "-war," "-family," "-history").

A currently pending example is #220319-033521-955000.

For that one, I tried to delete 78 of the keywords that remain on Aylan Baby. Seven of them were automatically deleted, while 71 are still pending, all of which have "timeframe-" prefixes or main-genre suffixes.

There has definitely been a "hold" or "flag" placed on deletions of keywords that contain "timeframe-" prefixes and main-genre suffixes. Maybe that is a good thing for the "accepted" subgenre keywords, given the overzealousness of a certain top contributor to try to keep deleting the accepted subgenre keywords before the related policy issues are sorted out. But my advice is to limit that flag to only block or restrict deletions of the specific "accepted" subgenre keywords, rather than the current setup of blocking or restricting deletions of all keywords that happen to end in main-genre suffixes.

(edited)

3 years ago

Peter_pbn

Champion

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14.4K Messages

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329.9K Points

3 years ago

I have deleted the keywords danish-fantasy and danish-horror today without trouble.

I don't share a complaint over data not being deleted automatically. In general, the more checking the better. It's a different story if data can't be edited at all.

keyword_expert

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47K Points

@Peter_pbn Perhaps they have already lifted the "flag."

Keep in mind that ~99% of keywords can be deleted automatically, at least by top contributors. This "flag" has thrown things out of whack and has increased the backlog for keyword edits, without much rhyme or reason.

I can understand the prior flags for adding keywords that contain words like "porn," "penis," and "rape." But this particular flag is overly broad and not grounded in any valid policy basis. That's all I'm saying.

3 years ago

gromit82

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3 years ago

This is strange. I would have thought that IMDb would be more likely to flag keywords which contain genres and restrict them from being added (even if some of those keywords are appropriate for some films) -- as opposed to restricting them from being deleted.

keyword_expert

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47K Points

@gromit82 It is possible that the flag is/was reciprocal. I am not sure whether it includes adding these keywords, but if I can confirm that, I will let you know.

3 years ago

keyword_expert

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47K Points

@gromit82 p.s. My theory is that IMDb instituted the flag against deletions while they were working on the new subgrene keywords policy. Specifically, they wanted to make sure no good existing subgenre keyword data were deleted while they worked on developing the list of "accepted" subgenre keywords and applying them to titles.

Either way, I see little reason to keep the flag in place -- especially in its current broad form.

(edited)

3 years ago

keyword_expert

2.7K Messages

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47K Points

@gromit82
@Peter_pbn

After some further testing, I can confirm that the "flag" is not reciprocal. It did not prevent automatic approval when I added keywords like "space-western" and "interplanetary-war" to a title.

Also, the "flag" for deleting these types of keywords appears to still be in effect. A few minutes ago I deleted 100 spam keywords from a title. 97 of them were automatically approved, while the following 3 keywords are still "pending" (flagged for actual review). These keyword deletions will most likely be denied, which has been my experience over the past week in these types of circumstances.

KEYWORDDELETION

irish-famine-drama

Thank you for your contribution - this item is awaiting processing by our data editors.
Estimated processing date21 March 2022

KEYWORDDELETION

irish-famine-history

Thank you for your contribution - this item is awaiting processing by our data editors.
Estimated processing date21 March 2022

KEYWORDDELETION

the-irish-famine-documentary

Thank you for your contribution - this item is awaiting processing by our data editors.
Estimated processing date21 March 2022

(edited)

3 years ago

bradley_kent

1.3K Messages

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23.4K Points

3 years ago

A "bad" keyword that includes two genres is supposedly banned, although they keep reappearing, and IMDb, for some unknown reason, keeps accepting them --- all against IMDb guidelines!

In other words, if the prefix AND the suffix are both genres, that should not be an acceptable keyword. This duplicates information already available in a title's list of genres,

(edited)

keyword_expert

2.7K Messages

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47K Points

@bradley_kent Can you give example keywords?

3 years ago

bradley_kent

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23.4K Points

I have been giving many examples throughout this post, like "biographical-documentary," "sports-documentary," "crime-documentary," "tragedy-drama," etc.

Combine any two genres, and you will find such "bad" keywords.

As I said, this information is already In the list of genres for any title. A genre SHOULD NOT be combined with another genre to create a "bad" keyword. There is even a guideline that outlaws this, but they are still being submitted--- and accepted by IMDb. Look at that terrible list of subgenres, and you will also find examples. I have even come across "bad" keywords that combine three and four genres!

You seem to have a better relationship with the staff than I do. Please, get them to do something about this.

P.S. These "bad" keywords are apparently "protected," so one cannot even deleted them! And, these "bad" keywords need to not only be deleted, but audited to be see if they are listed as genres for the title.

(edited)

3 years ago

keyword_expert

2.7K Messages

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47K Points

@bradley_kent

I have been giving many examples throughout this post, like "biographical-documentary," "sports-documentary," "crime-documentary," "tragedy-drama," etc.

Actually, this is the first time in this particular post that you have offered any examples. But now that you have given these examples, I will give you the same response that you have heard from me and several others in other posts: all of your examples are included on the list of "accepted" subgenre keywords. That explains why those keywords are valid keywords (as far as IMDb staff are concerned), and why it may be difficult to delete those particular keywords from titles.

Because these keywords have been deemed "acceptable" by staff, they shouldn't be deleted from any particular title, unless you are sure they are irrelevant to a particular title or have been mistakenly applied to a title. If that is the case for any particular keyword deletion that you have tried to make, and if it was still denied, then I encourage you to start a new thread with the specific details of what you believe went wrong and why the keyword(s) should be deleted from particular title(s).

Your philosophical objections the very existence of these "accepted" keywords is an entirely different topic that I believe is outside the scope of this post. I happen to agree that many of the "accepted" subgenre keywords are "bad." But that has been thoroughly raised in other posts, and staff have already promised to look into it. I am patient and am willing to give staff some time to consider our feedback and look at these keywords. There is not much else that can be done in the meantime.

(edited)

3 years ago

adrian

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3 years ago

Why would you want to delete keywords like "vietnam-war"? This makes zero sense to me. Just because war is a genre, having keywords for various wars seems useful to me.

And "tug-of-war" has nothing to do with war and is a specific activity? Why wouldn't you want to know which titles feature a tug of war?

(edited)

keyword_expert

2.7K Messages

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47K Points

@adrian You are misunderstanding. I don't want to perma-ban or block these keywords. I want to be able to delete them from specific titles to which they are not relevant. But IMDb recently changed its system to effectively block me from doing so.

Take the example I have given:

Aylan Baby (2022)

Recently, nearly 2,000 keywords were added to this title as pure spam. At least 90% of these keywords were completely irrelevant to the title. I was able to delete more than 1,700 of them, but 260 keywords remain. Many of the remaining keywords are completely irrelevant to this title, yet they can't be deleted if they contain a main genre as a suffix.

Take the example of "vietnam-war" that you mentioned. The title Aylan Baby is about the Syrian Civil War, not about the Vietnam War. Yet IMDb will not let me delete "vietnam-war" from this title, simply because this keyword includes "-war" as a suffix within the keyword. I have tried repeatedly to delete the irrelevant keywords from this title, yet I cannot get my requests approved. And this is just one example.

(edited)

3 years ago

adrian

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3K Messages

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72.5K Points

I delete non-relevant keywords all the time. Someone has added the keyword "ned-flanders-character" to all Simspons episode. I can effectively delete them. Not sure why you can't delete non-relevant keywords.

3 years ago

keyword_expert

2.7K Messages

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47K Points

@adrian I explain everything at the top of this thread. It is only keywords that have main genres as suffixes that are posing a problem, and it is because of changes that IMDb recently made to its processing system for keyword deletions.

Here is my sample list of what I mean by keywords with main genres as suffixes ("-character" is not a main genre, so I would have no problem deleting "ned-flanders-character" either).

"hollywood-entertainment-news," "teenage-romance," "framed-for-crime," "exiled-royal-family," "avengers-infinity-war," "environmental-crime," "space-western," "culture-war," "tug-of-war," "vietnam-war," "interracial-romance," "danish-royal-family"

3 years ago

keyword_expert

Please reinstate easy deletion of keywords that contain main-genre suffixes (e.g. vietnam-war, environmental-crime, interspecies-romance)

Michelle

keyword_expert

Peter_pbn

keyword_expert

gromit82

keyword_expert

keyword_expert

keyword_expert

KEYWORDDELETION

KEYWORDDELETION

KEYWORDDELETION

bradley_kent

keyword_expert

bradley_kent

keyword_expert

adrian

keyword_expert

adrian

keyword_expert

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