Problems with keywords assignment (hierarchy is included)

Question

Hi group,
this probably happens after I was letting Lightroom to a catalog optimization, but I am not quiet sure about this.
So what happens: As you know, you can create a keyword tag hierarchy and sometimes LR does this automatically.
If I now do some keyword assignments in the library mode (right panel), then these keywords get replaced by a hierarchy-to-keyword string.
E.g. if I enter a keyword 'female' and LR has a hierarchy for this (e.g. female and male are sup-levels of person), then the keyword tag entry area contains the following: person > female. If e.g. I assign both male and female e to an image, then I get as result: person > female, person > male.
This blows up the list and does not make it very readable.
Does anybody knows how to stop LR doing this? If haven't found any flag value in the options.
Thanks in advance
John

Answer 1

John, I think this is just part of the poor design of the key-wording feature.  There are many oddities.  I got my initial keyword list from D65.  I found that when I use the "Enter Keywords" view of the keywords assigned to a particular image, many of them show the hierarchy they are part of, as if I had selected the "Keyword & Containing Keywords" option, but some do not.  Adobe told D65 that this is related to how you create the hierarchical entries.  If you create a keyword and use the "Create keyword tag inside XXXXX" option, in use it will act differently than if you drag-and-drop a keyword into an hierarchical relationship.  This is completely at odds with proper programming practice!  I have also found today (in LR4, by the way) that if I sync from an image with keywords to an image without keywords immediately to its left, I get duplications of keywords in the rightmost image, as if the rightmost image had updated the left one, and it had reflected the sync back to the originating image. This does not happen if I sync from the leftmost image to the rightmost one.  So I went into the keyword list and unchecked that keyword for the image that had the duplication.  Now I have the keyword just once, but there's no check beside it in the keyword list showing that it is being used.  I'm also getting duplicates of nested keywords popping up at the top level of the hierarchy.  I've just realized that this has been happening for some time. The whole keyword feature is a mess.  Adobe needs to:
1. fix the keyword feature so that it works in a simple, consistent and predictable manner
2. provide users with a documentation update to explain how it now works
3. provide a cleanup utility of some sort (if necessary) to let us get our keywords rationalized
Perhaps step 0. should be "stop ignoring and/or denying the keyword problem".
I've just gotten into such a mess with my latest batch of imported photos that I'm going to have to delete all assigned keywords, including those added on import, and start again.  I am not amused.
JVH