Topic on Talk:TV Tropes

This page badly needs one that the prioritizes actual information and criticisms over paragraphs of "Complaining About Sites You Don't Like" that goes well beyond Shooting the Message. If we're gonna be a fork that's ostensibly about freedom of criticism, we should hold ourselves to a higher far standard of it as opposed to building on a grudge that makes the site as a whole look all the more petulant and works against whatever justifications exist for that grudge (and indeed they do exist), on top of making a flat mockery of the supposed neutrality that's also subscribed to as a standard. I've been trying to do that here and there myself but aside from not wanting this to become another case of Righting Great Wrongs™, I'm legitimately just one editor end of the day and I only have so much mental energy.

Tapping admins and frequent editors to make sure this actually gets read and so no one can pretend to be surprised (in good faith) by my most recent edit, nor by any I make down the line in the near future:

@Agiletek @Bauerbach @Dominicmgm @GentlemensDame883 @H-Games~Documentation @HelljmprRookie @HeneryVII @Jlaw @Just a 1itt1e bit further @Kuma @Lequinni‎ @RivetVermin @Tad Cipher @The23rdCamper @TheEric132 @Utini501 @Xemylixa @Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak

I support your desire to do this.

I cannot help, because I never had an account on TV Tropes and thus only have secondhand information about the current or previous state of affairs there.

I think you're trying to defend a site known for banning articles because of their sexual content, a site where admins pretty vocally said that they dislike any kind of sexual content that may be classified as fanservice. I've also taken notice you didn't notify me despite excluding my edit.

It's just my opinion. Just my opinion.

Actually, insofar as we keep our spaghetti in our pockets and refrain from being petty when criticizing TV Tropes, I'm all for calling them out, but I believe we do so without making it personal, being petty, or vindictive.

That said, they are indeed guilty of many of the things you state, from where I'm sitting, but I see no reason to jump in the pigpen to call out the pigs for wallowing in filth. We can call them out without being just as crass ourselves.

@HornyLikeIAmA14YearOldGirl As to your point, actually, TV Tropes made a fairly sane choice on that. The line between typing with one hand and pointing out legitimate examples of the Hot Mom/Dad trope was getting out of hand, and TV Tropes took an axe to it mostly because those who could keep their fetish posting under control were sorely in the minority. Keeping it confined to in-universe examples was actually a fairly reasonable way to fence in those trope examples, and I can't say it was a bad decision.

"I think you're trying to defend a site known for banning articles because of their sexual content"

...by pointing out that you're undermining your own argument?

I mean I figured you'd immediately and predictably act defensive, but come off it. If the evidence is on your side you shouldn't have to use something as clearly subjective as "TVT won't let us call moms hot" that doesn't stand up to the slightest application of scrutiny - especially not when, related to what Geth pointed out while I was typing this, we've literally had problems with editors typing one-handed on this fork specifically, to the detriment of actual troping as recently as the last month (the name "Xander Martin" should ring a bell for much older editors in the know).

"This set of tropes was likely made into disambiguations to stop people overusing it for any and every character they personally found hot" is logic that neither defends TVT's administrative miscues nor requires such a defense - on top of it all, trying to shoot down any amount of introspection as Defending The Enemy™ is crass factionalism that reflects poorly on the shooter and justifies the entire reason I did this in the first place.

As I did when I alluded to this three years ago, I would think people so vocally critical of TVT were well above the attitude of "criticism for thee but not for me".

I will say this just one time: I do not think banning tropes because their content may disgust you is a good thing. Tropes exist because they exist. We do not create them; we describe them once we notice them. We have several fanservice tropes and you basically defended a possible exclusion of all of them, apparently because some editors may go too deep into describing those tropes.

A mother or dad being attractive is a known way of creating fanservice for those who are into it. It is an archetype, just like The Hero or The Chick.

An archetype that has several potential subdivisions depending on the type of character in question - and the tropes that describe them should be just as varied, rather than lumped under something as subjective, vague and begging-the-question as "Hot Mom/Dad".

Thank you for expertly making my point for me, while arguing against an exclusion that I never once supported or stated support for, and subsequently failing to see the forest for the trees.

The problem here is that TV Tropes ran into Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things in that regard. The people who could keep their libido in check in while posting versus those who had to let us know the contents of their porn folders got too much, so they had to fence the trope in with the "In-Universe examples only" rule to keep a lid on it.

For a trope like, say, Hacker Cave, that has a nigh nonexistent chance of people posting IRL libido posting due to the nature of the trope. Unfortunately, some tropes the temptation is just too powerful. Besides, we are for the objective discussion of information, meaning something everyone can confirm with general observation. The attractiveness of anyone is an entirely subjective thing IRL, but it IS objectively confirmable what people in-universe have to say on the subject about another party.

Ergo, said limit makes sense by the logic TV Tropes used to restrict discussion. While I regret having to put fences around discussion here, even I have to concede that was a good idea given the hassle that resulted from NOT having the fence.

I personally just think of the Troper Tales fiasco - I don't think they're in a hurry to repeat that mistake anytime soon, and I doubt anyone who's witnessed this firsthand or via the YouTube videos is in a hurry to blame them, either.

I repeat, plenty of criticisms to be had about their handling of the Second Google Incident, and I said as much to that effect in my edit summary: there's so many such criticisms that making that argument shouldn't be hard at all, so to see all of that and still rely on gray-area stuff like the bits I just reverted genuinely strikes me as a sign of intellectual laziness - I've been fairly consistent about this going back to around my edits on Fuck No TVTropes. A poor argument is a poor argument, and In My Opinion™, I'd rather someone outright say to me that they want to continue pissing on TVTropes than try to barely disguise umbrage at the idea that we might only have 99 paragraphs of anti-TVT vitriol instead of 100.

"Anti-Fan" Wank with an Acceptable Target is still wank. And wank makes for bad articles.

I'm going to have to side with Umbire on this one. I for one have generally abandoned any earlier resentments I had with TV Tropes, and I'd prefer to see us do likewise openly even if we can't abandon such privately. We've been around long enough and have tried to maintain cordial relations in regards to preventing plagiarism and otherwise respecting each other's turf, so to speak that we should clean up any sniping and keep any criticism dispassionate and objective.

As I just recently stated elsewhere:

I've been thinking about it on and off, but especially more so after that whole deal with another editor, and I personally think we deserve a far better caliber of audience than "people with grudges against TVTropes", especially when disliking the place is about the lowest bar in the world at this point: A lot of people are currently sick of the anti-intellectual approaches to media inspired by shit like pre-Second Incident TVT, various Caustic Critic-Aspirants, and too-online media junkies. ("Umbire, why did you repeat the same thing exactly thrice?")

Beyond that, it makes infinitely less than zero sense to continue lobbing barbs from my perspective - speaking in the sense of recent editors on that article, rather than referring to admins specifically since you've generally been working on that yourselves (which I commend) - when we've had to instill restrictions of our own regarding one-handed editing, drive-by anonymous weirdos, anti-spam measures and so on. All of those are reasonable, but if they are, then it's not very hard to see reason in some of TVT's own actions and, at barest minimum, write up something on them that isn't 2/3rd complaining about a pair of admins of whom at least one isn't even on the site anymore (that I'm aware of, so don't quote me on it).

I will do my best, but can make no promises. TV Tropes hurt is still fresh in me. With that said, I will look at the page and see where I can make factual fixes.

I ain't asking you to dismiss or ignore that hurt - all I ask is honesty about it, just don't halfass assertions to justify criticizing them.

MOD: I've just added a cleanup tag to the page, as per this discussion.

Thank you, Rob - looking forward to LT's input on this as well.

I honestly don't talk about it much, given I've legitimately little reason to, but I was a frequent browser of the site pre-SGI, with very occasional edits made - the point being, I witnessed a lot of the site at its worst firsthand, as well as much of the over-correction that occurred to curtail it after the fact. Aside from informing my current perspective on this - I definitely felt the shifts in site quality so I can speak to some of this directly, but since I don't have a personal grudge against that old administration, I gain nothing from them being misrepresented: if we make claims we either cite them or cut them, same as any other subject.

It also makes me wonder exactly how many people were trying to warn about the direction it was headed in during the Troper Tales era that were unheeded...

In any case, getting a start on that now - on the note of admins, Fast Eddie hasn't been active in the forums at all and last edited in 2016, and there is a dedicated thread to discussing (and yes, criticizing) quality of moderation on the site, where I also discovered that Fighteer is taking a break from moderation as of less than two weeks ago. So while there's some stuff worth noting for historical purposes, by and large most of the complaints about them both aren't applicable to TV Tropes at present - whatever's kept that still applies and isn't just unhelpful vitriol should reflect those historical perspectives and be dated accordingly.

I've read through all the edits so far, and I have no quibbles with any of them, save for one -- the second point under "Stop Having Fun!" Guys regarding the tropers patrolling Made of Win for things to delete. I would like to see that retained. I also wanted to inquire about Umbire's edit of 11:35 this date -- the edit reason mentions moving entries to Trivia, but I see no such move. Was that a note about something you changed your mind on? Or is the new page simply still awaiting creation?

Now that that's done, I will admit here as I have elsewhere that I am responsible, at least in part, for any venom in this and any other articles referencing TVT. As I've told the other mods in our off-wiki discussion area, I hold grudges -- more than that, I treasure them, and clasp them tightly to my breast and nurture them for years, sometimes decades. That said, I was at the time of the 2GI the oldest continuous user of the site (and an ex-staff member); the claim was made around that time that I was the closest thing TVT had to an elder statesman. However by that point, Fighteer had already told me I was a "troublemaker" just because I objected to a change in ... something, I can't remember what at this late date, only that it was in my opinion a troubling departure from TVT's earlier values. For my part, I made it clear at the same time I viewed him as a jumped-up Johnny-come-lately. <grin> (And may I note that I remain amazed that he was never kicked from the wiki by the new owners for the legal hole he put it in with his ignorance of copyright law? In the nearly forty years I've been employed, a mistake like that would have gotten anyone fired with prejudice by any of my employers.)

Anyway, I saw the response of Fast Eddie and the staff to the 2GI as a combination of unbridled prudery and crass money-grubbing that betrayed what the site was originally about. Feddie made it clear that the wiki wasn't a community, but a money engine benefiting him and only him, and the users were the galley slaves who enriched him. And anyone who threatened his cash flow was to be ejected, wailing, into the outer darkness.

I took this all as a very personal betrayal, and that's fueled a lot of my vitriol against the site and Feddie himself over the years. (I understand that in return Feddie had some kind of personal hate-on for me, although I never found out why. Maybe because ATT was basically born in my forums, and it threatened to take away some of the captive userbase who made money for him?) It's also driven me to a few... interesting actions off ATT, including hinting to fellow members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America that TVT was actively hostile to creators who didn't toe their line and suggesting they not only stay far away, but they let other creators know about it; and also planning an (as-yet unwritten) novel just so a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of Feddie could be used as a blatant Hate Sink.

Anyway, I wanted to explain a little and apologize for any bias I've injected into the wiki regarding TVT. I will do my best in the future to resist my urge to sling further Take Thats at them.

Re: the Trivia page, I'm in the midst of finalizing those edits - there's a bunch of Trivia/YMMV stuff that's each ended up in the other's space, which is a whole other can of worms to open from the mainspace issue. There's also the fact I'm looking into a recent development involving the moderation team and trying to hash out what's going on with that all at the same time as I'm trying to help resolve this matter.

Far as the Stop Having Fun Guys point, I can certainly re-add that.

And while I was writing all that, further edits took place.

I object to hiding Abomination Accusation Attack. There is no question about that. It happened, it happened with disgusting frequency -- all objections and questions were shut down for months will pointed accusations of pedophilia. The very name of the P5 was initially formed as "Panel Preventing Perversity, Pornography and Paedoshit", although it was later retconned.

Likewise, I feel Death of the Author should remain, although if you wish to remove the snarky ref note, feel free. (However, its claim was not made up.)

EDIT: It would appear that the public threads in which accusations of pedophilia were slung have been stalinized, but if one does search the site on "pedoshit" you will find a number of threads from 2012 complaining about the excessive use of the term.

Right, the only reason I commented it out is exactly so I could get some form of citation or pointing in the right direction - and now I have that I'll gladly comment it back in.

Far as Death of the Author, the snark was removed with the trope being kept, though I moved it to YMMV since it's an Audience Reaction trope - I hadn't finalized the edit on YMMV itself at the time of you asking, since as I said I'd discovered that a bunch of tropes were mis-sorted in both sections.

Yeah, I saw the new page the next time I refreshed Recent Changes. Maybe I should have waited a few hours. <grin>

No worries, no worries. The pages had in fact already existed all this time, just that they weren't being used for whatever reason.

Honestly, the next thing I want to do is properly populate each section for TVT with appropriate tropes - this is after I noticed "Stop Having Fun" Guys is classified as an audience reaction as well, but I'll deal with that after.

Sorry for not responding to this when it first came up about three weeks back; life hasn't been kind for a while.

I could take a look, I guess, but the wound hasn't wholly healed from getting a first-strike, no defence allowed boot for saying things with allegedly undesirable connotations that I hadn't been aware of. I don't know if I can be objective about the subject.