Hierarchical, flat or a mixed system? What are you doing?

[sinus]

Hello,
There are different ways to organize your keywords. Above all, it must be decided whether one wants to have a flat or a hierarchical structure.
With the flat structure, you simply enter individual keywords:

hound
grassland
bouquet
woman
laugh
...

In the hierarchical way, the whole thing is more structured.

Human / Sex / Woman
Nature|Landscape|meadow
Emotions|face|laugh

Many of you already know this, therefore only briefly the advantages of the systems.
Flat
Fast
Long list
may be confusing
new words are simply typed in and, if desired, added to the list

Hierarchical
short lists
nested, front keywords are also used
clear structures
new words must first be inserted into the system

Personally, I have changed from the flat to the hierarchical.
That means, all possible picture information is available to a logical system. If I have a mountain on the photo, then I find this keyword under "Nature|Landscape|Mountain", a woman under "People...".

Everything's clear.
Now my specific question:
Suppose you also have a hierarchical system, nicely built or downloaded somewhere (IMatch offers a lot of help).

Now you have (again and again) photos with things you want to include in the keywords, but on the other hand they are so rare that there will rarely be several pictures of them.

There are keywords like
curtain pattern
wedding ring
notches
mango bottle
faucet
...

What are you doing? Do you insert these rare keywords correctly into your hierarchical structure or do you just type them in as simple keywords?
That would somehow be a mix of flat and hierarchical structure.
Would be cool if you tell your strategy.


Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator

[Mario]

I apply KISS.

A hierarchical and well-maintained vocabulary in form of hierarchical keywords is very important.
It structures your keywords and makes finding and applying keywords easier.
It also helps to solve problems caused by keywords with different meaning, like USA|New Hampshire|Berlin vs. GERMANY|Berlin|Berlin.

But overdoing it by adding each and every rarely used keyword into the hierarchy is probably not a good thing. This would blow up your vocabulary with one-time keywords and make things more complicated.

Besides, if you later recognize that you have used the keyword Gardyloo on more than a few files you can move the keyword into the proper place in your hierarchy, select all files with Gardyloo (via the @Keywords|Gardyloo category) and swap the keyword. Takes only a few seconds. Easy to do with IMatch.

[Carlo Didier]

My interpretation of KISS would be to stick with the hierarchy, even if some keywords would be lonely in their branch of the tree. The same structure and principle for everything. Simpler than two systems in one.

As a compromise, you could have a branch starting with "Various" and just put them there.

[sinus]

Thanks, Mario and Carlo

Hm, yes, Kiss 

The idea with "Various" is a good one, Carlos. I will try this.

BTW: the new possibility to add keywords (even hierarchical) from GPS-stuff is cool!
Prevents to add these in the hierarchical system.
Only Switzerland alone would be akward to add every "Kanton" (state) and then every village.
Use GPS - and done 

(I must only find out, how I let store all the old GPS-info (what are already in the DB) inte keywords. New ones works very good!)

[Mario]

(I must only find out, how I let store all the old GPS-info (what are already in the DB) inte keywords. New ones works very good!)

Metadata Template.
Can do the same the new option in reverse geo-coding does.

[sinus]

(I must only find out, how I let store all the old GPS-info (what are already in the DB) inte keywords. New ones works very good!)

Metadata Template.
Can do the same the new option in reverse geo-coding does.

Thanks, Mario
I have to check this out on my main computer, this (with Metadata, e.g. "Assign Location based on GPS data in file") works here not on my laptop.
Nothing happens, but if I click on "Reverse Geocode" (the blue world) and then ok, the keywords based on GPS does assign miraculous. 
If it works not there, I would report it.

[Mario]

"Assign Location based on GPS data in file" if this means the option in the MD Template you are mistaken.

As documented, if this is on, the MD Template looks at the locations you have created in the Map Panel and tries to find one that contains the image. Then it assigns the coordinates and data of the location to the image. This is probably not what you want, right? As always, read the documentation for details.

When I understand you correctly you want to use the county/city/location data already in your images to create a hierarchical keyword. Right?
If so, then just use the corresponding variable as the source and the hierarchcialKeyword tag as the target. You can use the same variable defined under Edit > Preferences > Geo & Maps and the rest is like with any other MD template:

https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/#md_templates.htm

[sinus]

When I understand you correctly you want to use the county/city/location data already in your images to create a hierarchical keyword. Right?
If so, then just use the corresponding variable as the source and the hierarchcialKeyword tag as the target. You can use the same variable defined under Edit > Preferences > Geo & Maps and the rest is like with any other MD template:

https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/#md_templates.htm

Thanks. Mario, exactly what I wanted!  And it works, cool!

[Jingo]

My system has been hierachical for a very long time... however - I'm not sure it really matters that much to me any longer as I don't add extravagant keywords like I used to... ie: in the past, a photo of a red rose might have 20 keywords... Color|Red, Object|Flower|Rose, Object|Flower, Place|USA|New York|Syracuse|Syracuse University, etc etc...  now, I'm more than likely to just use Rose and a set a location via the Map panel...

I agree with Mario that the hierarchy can help with similar words..  with ease at which one can assign hierarchical keywords in IM - I continue to use it... but I"m not sure I would if I started over today!

[Carlo Didier]

"Assign Location based on GPS data in file" if this means the option in the MD Template you are mistaken.

As documented, if this is on, the MD Template looks at the locations you have created in the Map Panel and tries to find one that contains the image. Then it assigns the coordinates and data of the location to the image. This is probably not what you want, right? As always, read the documentation for details.

When I understand you correctly you want to use the county/city/location data already in your images to create a hierarchical keyword. Right?
If so, then just use the corresponding variable as the source and the hierarchcialKeyword tag as the target. You can use the same variable defined under Edit > Preferences > Geo & Maps and the rest is like with any other MD template:

https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/#md_templates.htm

Maybe some people get confused between "location" for a saved location and "location" for the XMP metadata field(s).
You might consider changing the wording in the help to use clearly different terms for those. Like "saved location" and "location in metadata"?

[sinus]

Thanks for your answers.
Hm, keywording and the right workflow for this is interesting.
Finally it depends, what we want to search for and e.g. if you must have some keys for stock-agencies and so on.

In this case (stock), the problem is also the language. I tend to create such keys for stock-agencies after I know, what they want to have.

Because IMatch offers so much, I think, we can later "rearrange" or "add/remove" keys, based on the keywords, what we have already in the files.

And yes, the challenge is to find the right means between not too many, but also not too few keywords.