Suggestion: Automatically remove keywords when two-thirds of their votes are "not-relevant"

You have described how spammers use sock accounts to up- or downvote keywords. So is it really a good idea to give more weight to votes?

There are ways IMDB could mitigate that issue, if they so chose to - even under the current system.

@Peter_pbn Sock accounts and spamming are separate problems that absolutely need to be dealt with, but I don't see them as uniquely related to this proposal. If someone wants to go to the trouble to downvote keywords using three different sock accounts, they could just as easily manually delete the keywords via the keyword editing function (using only a single account).

Instead of "automatically remove", perhaps "automatically submit for deletion", which (at least theoretically) gives contribution processing a chance to catch vandalism.

@Peter_pbn I would support that idea as well. In 99% of cases, a keyword contribution in fact ends up being automatically processed. Your idea would allow for the 1% of cases where something special is going on, potentially including vandalism and bots.

Where did you grab that number from?

@Peter_pbn From my experience with keyword contributions. Only a very small number of keyword contributions are actually reviewed by humans. And this is as it should be -- it would be ridiculous for every single keyword edit to be manually reviewed. 

@Peter_pbn Another way to corroborate that 99% of all keywords are automatically approved is to check the Data Processing Times webpage, especially on weekends. This webpage typically shows a keyword backlog of only a couple hundred keywords. Those are the keyword contributions that have been pre-flagged for human review, such as keywords that include certain sensitive words within them (e.g., "rape"), sometimes newly created keywords, and keyword editing done by new users. The number of pending keywords displayed on that webpage will grow on the weekends, because that's when IMDb staff are typically not working. And it's also on the weekends when the automated approval of 99% of keyword contributions is most readily observable -- again, because IMDb staff are not working, and yet the keyword contributions are nevertheless being "approved." 

Lately, it can take a lot longer for keywords to go through the automatic approval process -- it used to be about 20 minutes, but these days it can be more like 24 hours -- but the vast majority of keywords continue to be automatically approved (which, again, is as it should be).

@Skavau If a keyword has 3 of 3 not relevant votes (i.e., 0 of 3 relevant votes), I would be completely okay with that keyword being deleted from the database altogether.

@keyword_expert Well, I suggested that to mitigate the fears people have with an accurate keyword being removed entirely on a small number of votes.

Also seems to me that if it's removed entirely someone could just re-add it and we just get a circle of people adding and then it being downvoted, and consequently deleted?

@Skavau In my experience, it's pretty rare for a deleted keyword to be added back in. There are exceptions -- particularly trolling, strong-willed users, and situations where the deletions themselves occurred through trolling or sabotage -- but when a bad keyword is deleted, it typically doesn't show up again.