Keyword merging

I changed dead-body-on-a-slab because dead-body-on-slab (which, in no form of English I'm familiar with would make a dead body a type of slab.) was much more common. There was no reason to create a new keyword. I have no problem with it being called body-on-a-slab but body-on-slab had many, many, many more titles attached and there is no way for us to rename keywords. The real problem is that there is no way to chain similar keywords. I.E. if the keyword was body-on-a-slab and someone entered body-on-slab, then it should correct it to body-on-a-slab and not create a new keyword.

Keywords are very inconsistent on including words like 'a' or 'the'. The goal should to be return as many results as possible. I cannot fathom why you would want separate keywords dead-body-on-slab and dead-body-on-a-slab. There were 5 titles attached to dead-body-on-slab and nearly 300 to dead-body-on-slab. Since you would have to edit each of the 300 titles to change dead-body-on-slab to dead-body-on-a-slab, I chose to change the 5 titles instead.

I'm also at a loss of your problem with reference-to-mozart being merged to reference-to-wolfgang-amadeus-mozart (which is eventually what happened. The employee first merged into reference-to-mozart but then went back and changed it to reference-to-wolfgang-amadeus-mozart). There is a small chance some other Mozart was being referenced but it is highly unlikely.

EDIT: Re-reading your comment, you may not have read that entire thread about reference-to-mozart.

Will, an employee said: Thanks for your comments. Unfortunately as stated on the other keyword thread there are no current plans in our roadmap to invest in this area and it is unlikely to be prioritized at any point soon. I take your point regarding the ambiguous nature of reference-to-mozart. For the sake of consistency I've changed this back to reference-to-wolfgang-amadeus-mozart which will show up if Mozart is used as a search term.

A couple of other random thoughts.

1) If you use keywords to find titles, merging keywords should be a boon, regardless of what the final keyword is determined to be. I've notice, as in the case of dead-body-on-slab, there is generally one keyword with a lot of titles attached and then a couple of other that are slight variations with a handful of titles attached. Getting them all under one keyword gives better results.

2) I've asked for functionality like Name Merging for keywords. This would have allowed me to merge dead-body-on-slab into dead-body-on-a-slab without having to change nearly 300 titles in the process. This seems like it would be easy functionality to add and in the end would end up with the best results. (Because, if you were really unhappy with dead-body-on-slab you could merge it back into dead-body-on-a-slab and all the titles would go with it.) Alas, there are no plans for IMDb to provide any new functionality with kewords.

Two recent example, which should both be reversed:  merging "reference-to-wolfgang-amadeus-mozart" into "reference-to-mozart"

For the record: This has already been reversed: https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/topics/more-keyword-merging-ddbnbfm0qri2p
I totally agree that these referenced-to-keywords should always use the full name of the person.

Ya know, sometimes a keyword with fewer titles is a better keyword than one with more titles.  Over the years, I have often, one-by-one, submitted changes for 300+ titles to a keyword with fewer titles that was a better keyword.  While the keyword with most titles can usually be a better keyword, that is NOT always the case.

Thanks for the "reference-to-wolfgang-amadeus-mozart" reversal.  One often only needs to look at similar keywords to see why this is the more accurate keyword.

I won't tell you, for fear of disasters, that there are certain keywords that I have audited and corrected. one-by-one, for days/weeks, to make them more uniform.

Any policy is not always applicable, so keywords must be handled as carefully and as consistently as possible, with attention to detail and specificity.  Making blanket, all-encompassing changes can do much harm.  There are always exceptions that must be allowed.

Hi All -

Just to re-confirm what has already been referenced on previous threads, to ensure that Keywords are consistent for referenced names, our preference is that the full name for the individual be used, for example: reference-to-wolfgang-amadeus-mozart or reference-to-oprah-winfrey

We understand that this may not be ideal for every individual name reference,  if there are some unique cases that you feel our staff should review and re-consider you are welcome to report those names to us, however, in most cases the full name referenced in the Keyword is our preference.