Keywords now displayed on the IMDb iOS and Android apps

@Peter_pbn​ Great suggestion, thank you. We will pass this on for consideration.

Here's the GWTW contribution, in which, interesting, three of the Plot Timeframe category submissions were not accepted.

Now, EVERY SINGLE KEYWORD will need to be audited and corrected to place EVERY SINGLE KEYWORD into a category!

I don't see anyone asking you to add categories to all existing keywords.

Keywords without a category are displayed alongside those marked Plot Detail, so I wouldn't spend time adding that category.

One must change to "Correct" on EVERY SINGLE KEYWORD before one can even begin correcting them.  (There should be some way to automatically do this rather than the time-consuming manual, keyword-by-keywird way!)

There is.

I had to enter the "Other" option for the following subgenres

By using "Other" you will keep the keywords away from the main title page, so I would suggest leaving them alone.

Thanks for your feedback

You are right that it will take some time to backfill keywords into the correct category. For now we have defaulted all keywords to "plot-detail" - the category that most keywords apply to. We then migrated all valid subgenre and plot timeframe values to their respective categories, and also backfilled the 1,000 most common keywords in the catalog to their appropriate categories. We definitely appreciate that it may seem daunting to migrate the long tail of remaining keywords. Please do share any keywords that need migrating to new categories on this thread and we will look into moving them. Please bear with us - you are right that it will take time.

To your point about plot timeframe keywords - we are in the process of removing this prefix from all items in the catalog and relying on the category field instead. This is in part a response to the feedback we received about the prefix from this community. Please bear with us while we process through these. In the meantime, we have made updates to the Help guide and contribution interface to reflect this new policy.

Thank you for pointing out those candidate subgenre options...

Regarding the following suggestions, we are still opting to tie subgenres to genres. "Epic" is one of the rarer and more extreme examples, where we have created it as an option for most genres, e.g. epic-action, epic-adventure, epic-fantasy. We realize there are drawbacks to this approach, but have also found this structure to be useful:

• epic: Epic is currently an option for most genres, e.g. epic-action, epic-adventure, epic-fantasy.
• melodrama: This is a potential subgenre option for drama. 
• farce: We opted to capture farce as "slapstick" for now. We appreciate this isn't always entirely accurate, but feel that slapstick would be more familiar to the broader entertainment audience.
• opera: We have the option "operetta-musical". We could also include opera under the music genre if that sounds right to you?
• neo-noir: This is a tricky one that we discussed a bit and don't yet have a solution for. The Film Noir genre guideline states that the neo-noir keyword should only be submitted as a keyword for titles that do not fit all criteria of the Film Noir genre. We are curious to explore solutions.

For the other candidates:

• political-drama: This is already included in the subgenre options.
• romantic-drama: In response to previous feedback from this community, we have opted to capture these scenarios with combinations of genres (Romance+Drama genres instead of romantic-drama subgenre) going forward, instead of duplicating the same data under subgenre keywords.
• tearjerker-womance: We have this option as "tearjerker-romance".
• tragic-romance: This is already included in the subgenre options.
• wartime-romance: We would capture this with the genre combination of War+Romance.

Thank you again for your feedback and for bearing with us! We look forward to discussing further.

@bradley_kent​ Those 3 plot-timeframe items are now approved - thank you for flagging those.

Just to say that biographical-documentary and history-documentary will also be removed from the subgenre options in the Help guidelines. The update just hasn't reached the Help site yet. We will instead rely on combinations of those genres, per previous feedback from this community.

Thanks

Farce and slapstick are two different kinds of “low comedy.”  A farce MAY include slapstick comedy, but not necessarily so.

Oxford Dictionary definition of farce:

a comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations.

Definition of slapstick:

the type of humour that is based on simple actions, for example people hitting each other, falling down, etc.

“slapstick-comedy” is a better keyword than “slapstick” since “slapstick” also refers to the literal object (a slap board) used to produce a slapping sound, most commonly used in Punch and Judy puppet shows, but also in other “low” forms on comedies, as in Scaramouche (1952).

@mike​ 

Looks like some good improvements have been made.

I do question the idea that each subgenre keyword should have to fit underneath a specific genre. I understand why this might be your goal, but in reality a lot of subgenre keywords don't work that way.

Here are just a few random "subgenre" keywords (for lack of a better term) that don't necessarily fit with one specific genre:

giallo (1913 titles)  

exploitation (2329 titles)

exploitation-film (995 titles)

sexploitation (1483 titles)

sexploitation-film (922 titles)

italian-exploitation (317 titles)

psychotronic (24 titles) (whoah! what happened to this one? in my opinion all of the various "psychotronic-" keywords should be merged into "psychotronic," rather than the other way around. but that thinking may outtdated given the new changes to the site)

psychotronic-film (8894 titles)

psychotronic-series (1251 titles)

social-guidance (215 titles)

nunsploitation (138 titles)

bikersploitation (45 titles)

teensploitation (267 titles)

drugsploitation (47 titles)

creature-feature (1247 titles)

rape-and-revenge (1369 titles)

women-in-prison (289 titles)

grindhouse-film (2416 titles)

slimehouse (1130 titles)

shrekcore (144 titles)

b-movie (4279 titles)

z-movie (856 titles)

trash-movie (864 titles)  (this one should really be merged into "z-movie")

euro-trash (852 titles)

sleazy-giallo (251 titles)

candy-cinema (252 titles)

lgbt-interest (265 titles) (some of these lgbt keywords could potentially be merged)

lgbt-cinema (389 titles)

queer-cinema (502 titles)

lgbt-film (51 titles)

lgbtq-film (29 titles)

surrealism (10982 titles)

avant-garde (2848 titles)

experimental-film (4740 titles)

experimental (3846 titles)

Most of those are probably not even properly classified as subgenres in the first place. That explains why it's hard to pigeonhole specific keywords from this list underneath a single genre.

I don't regard wartime-romance (106 titles) as a subgenre keyword either -- or at least not on some titles where it has been used. In fact, I find "wartime-romance" to be a good plot keyword for titles that do not qualify for both the War and Romance genres. 

@mike​ 

• neo-noir: This is a tricky one that we discussed a bit and don't yet have a solution for. The  Film Noir genre guideline states that the neo-noir keyword should only be submitted as a keyword for titles that do not fit all criteria of the Film Noir genre. We are curious to explore solutions.

This is only a problem if IMDb staff continue to insist that all subgenre keywords must contain a main-genre suffix and must be grouped under a single main genre.

It has never made much sense to handle subgenre keywords that way, and in fact it is borderline dysfunctional because it excludes dozens of established subgenres and quasi-subgenres.

I see absolutely no problem with treating "neo-noir" as a Subgenre keyword. Furthermore, this keyword doesn't need to be grouped under the Film Noir genre just because they both contain the word "noir." It's not like there is a genre hierarchy/mapping on the website that forces each subgenre to be grouped under only one genre. Yet staff are treating subgenres this way. I don't even recall ever seeing a justification or explanation of why this approach has been adopted or deemed necessary.

Finally, I see that IMDb staff are categorizing the keyword "alternate-history" as a Subgenre keyword, even though this keyword by definition does not fit underneath the History genre. I am completely fine with this; "alternate-history" should be a subgenre, even though all titles that have the "alternate-history" keyword will not qualify for the History genre.

The staff should treat "neo-noir" the same way it treats "alternate-history," by allowing both keywords to be designated as subgenres. 

@keyword_expert​ 

I don't even recall ever seeing a justification or explanation of why this approach has been adopted or deemed necessary.

The usual definition of subgenre is a subdivision of a genre. Thus I don't think it is hard to see where the idea of attaching subgenres to specific genres comes from.

@Peter_pbn

I wasn't asking where the idea came from, but rather why this approach has been deemed necessary. ​

Is there more to it than just a broad conceptual understanding of what a subgenre is? That is more of a philosophical/etymological question than a programming/data/website question.

We need to hear an explanation from staff. 

@mike​ 

To your point about plot timeframe keywords - we are in the process of removing this prefix from all items in the catalog and relying on the category field instead. This is in part a response to the feedback we received about the prefix from this community. Please bear with us while we process through these.

This has clearly still not happened.

@keyword_expert​ 

forest-adventure was removed from the subgenre list in July, as I documented.

@Peter_pbn​ Seems like it should go back on the list. It definitely shouldn't be categorized as a Plot Detail. 

@keyword_expert​ 

Yes, but I have an iPhone.

@Peter_pbn​ I figured it out. I simply needed to update my phone's installation to the latest version of the IMDb app.