Thanks ShadySue and Sjlocke for the explanation.

Quote from: gostwyck on May 05, 2010, 10:46

It's not down to 'technology', it's just a matter of them dedicating the manpower to provide adequate choices for words that have multiple meanings. I get the impression it has largely been left as it is rather than someone continually refining it.

I agree^^.  When the CV was first implemented there were lots of changes and improvements made on a regular basis.  Jordan (Keywords) was available to refine the CV according to contributor suggestions.  

Does he even still work for Istock?  The last activity on his account appears to be in 2007.

And AFAIK nobody else has stepped into the role of refining the CV.    It is still so far from perfect - there ought to be somebody in charge of continuously improving it.

The last I heard, Jordan/Keywords still works in Team Metadata, but he doesn't reply to emails and doesn't post on the forums. That part of the job has devolved to David/Ducksandwich.

In the past I sent Jordan many suggestions, with dictionary definitions.  Never saw any of them included, then stopped bothering.

I don't pretend to understand why some suggestions can be implemented immediately and other can take months or years. It took years for me to get my current home county in the CV - previously they only had Strathclyde, which only existed for 22 years and was abolished in 1996! Meanwhile my county existed before, during and after the Strathclyde fiasco. Ayrshire mapped only to Ayrshire Cattle (so unlike most other counties, I couldn't even add it 'for my own use')!
For a while, I couldn't understand why a search on Bustard (a group of species of birds) had loads of photos of water drops, then I discovered the Polish for bustard is 'drop', and it was causing the CV to seize. That's mostly been sorted now. :-) Off to wiki the few remaining non-Bustards. ;-)