Topic on Talk:Main Page

Second draft of the proposal was accepted without dissent. 'We are not a "reception wiki"' has been added to the list of what we aren't.

Since All The Tropes:What we aren't is one of the pages that explains exactly what All The Tropes is and is not, and we respect our Tropers' opinions, I thought it best to get some discussion about a proposed new section before either adding, modifying, or discarding it. Some people consider all pages in the All The Tropes space to be policy pages - or at least guidelines pages - so we should discuss whether to change them.

The text of the proposed change is below the cloud of pings.

Pinging the usual folks, but everybody is welcome to comment: @Agiletek @Bauerbach @Coffee Lover @Dominicmgm @GentlemensDame883 @H-Games~Documentation @Haggishunter @HelljmprRookie @HeneryVII @Ilikecomputers @Jlaw @Just a 1itt1e bit further @Kuma @Lequinni‎ @RivetVermin @Tad Cipher @The23rdCamper @TheEric132 @Umbire the Phantom @Utini501 @Xemylixa @Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak

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We are not a "reception wiki"

According to the definition used by Miraheze, a "reception wiki" exists to let people post about works that they really like or dislike (one or the other, depending on the particular wiki). While we do have Audience Reactions pages, they are not the focus of this wiki; writing well-thought-out and grammatically-coherent pages in the Analysis section, as small as it is, is much preferred here to simply posting bullet-point lists about what people like or dislike about a work.

We have also had core policies in place here since we founded the wiki, without changing them. One of those core policies is tolerance for others: "You may not agree with an editor, but you should always be able to respect another editor." Doxxing and edit wars are frowned upon here; if you aren't willing to at least pretend to be tolerant, you probably won't be comfortable here.

Believe me, I want nothing to do with those "wikis." Even the guy who started them with Crappy Games voted for them to close, disowned them, and even erased his own existence from the internet out of disgust for how they ended up.

Seconded. I tried (in vain) to help them bring some chaos to order, but trust me, they thrive on chaos, they are in no way conducive to orderly submission or debate. Anything they did that results in drama I agree should not be emulated here.

A lot of good users tried to fix the wikis. In the end that RfC was the only option.

Yeah, I've seen them on Telepedia as New Qualitipedia. And believe me with all the good users gone, they're even WORSE. More vandalism, bickering, insanity, stupidity and they ignored the founder's last advice to shut up about politics because their flipflopping made them an enemy of the left, right and middleground and tripled down on it. And I saw all this looking at a single recent changes. New Qualitipedia doesn't exist to fix the mistakes that ruined them, it exists so addicts can get their fix.

Looks okay to me.

In rereading the whole page to put the new section into proper context, I noticed the following sentence which is not accurate and needs revision:

We also do not permit advertisement of any sort, such as spam, either by bot or human editor produced, and it will be removed with prejudice and the poster tempbanned.

We have been permanently banning spammers pretty much from the first, and still do so when they post in places that don't get moderator review, such as the user pages. We also employ the Moderation system to permanently shadowban those who try to post in protected namespaces. This sentence should be revised to reflect that fact.

I concur with this. We haven't had actual humans try to slip spam past us, but it's not beyond possibility it might happen, just as a "just in case".

I like this new section.

Personally I would add merge some new ideas into this section:

• Yes, we have YMMV pages. Yes, YMMV pages are subjective, but 99% of YMMV tropes aren't related to the quality of something. The usage of the tropes that are regarding reception, like Sacred Cow, is tightly controlled. Under All The Tropes:Not a Trope, both Complaining About Shows You Don't Like and Gushing About Shows You Like aren't tropes.
• (Elaborating "While we do have Audience Reactions pages, they are not the focus of this wiki") Yes, we have other pages that are quite opinionated, like So Bad It's Horrible and Gushing About Shows You Like, but those aren't the focus of the wiki. While our users can choose to go there, the majority of them don't, and chooses to focus on troping instead.

This should clear up confusion users have when they go "wait a minute, this page is about the reception of something".

Wait a minute, what does that mean for the "review" feature of the wiki? Or the funny, heartwarming, awesome, tear jerker ones? Is something we inherited from TvT. Those are kind of subjective.

I consider Funny, Heartwarming, Awesome, and Tear Jerker to be audience reactions, which are mentioned as a group.

We should add Reviews to the part about Analysis, yes.

It looks good to me except what if an editor writes something subjective on a page that isn't YMMV and the like?

We're All The Tropes. We make a gentle suggestion first. If they take the suggestion, great. If they don't reply or never come back to even see the suggestion (something that is all too common, sadly), it'll eventually get relocated through the Wiki Magic. And if they get belligerent, well, we'll still give them a couple chances to do the right thing; if they don't, they get (temp)banned and the material moved anyway.

On the larger scale, I very much doubt Miraheze is going to implement some kind of opinion cop waiting to drop the hammer on ATT because of a misplaced bit of subjective content. We don't have to worry about small issues like that. We're already very much not what they're trying to avoid.

On the larger scale, I very much doubt Miraheze is going to implement some kind of opinion cop waiting to drop the hammer on ATT because of a misplaced bit of subjective content.

I've already received assurances from a Steward that hammer-dropping won't happen here. They like us - we only bother them when we can't solve our problems internally.

Here's the second draft of the addition that I proposed. It's longer than any other section on the page other than "We are not a revenge or troll site opposing TV Tropes" and "We are not officially affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation"; perhaps it could be trimmed a bit.

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We are not a "reception wiki"

According to the definition used by Miraheze, a "reception wiki" exists to let people post about works that they really like or dislike (usually one or the other, depending on the particular wiki). While we do have Audience Reactions pages (YMMV, Funny, Heartwarming, Awesome, Tear Jerker, and others), they are not the focus of this wiki, and contentious pages of any sort are monitored more closely than other pages are.

Writing well-thought-out and grammatically-coherent pages in the Analysis and Reviews sections, as small as they are, is much preferred here to simply posting bullet-point lists about what people like or dislike about a work.

While our readers and Tropers can choose to read contentious pages such as Gushing About Shows You Like and So Bad It's Horrible, the majority of Tropers don't, choosing to focus on troping instead.

We have also had core policies in place here without change since we founded the wiki. One of those core policies is tolerance for others: "You may not agree with an editor, but you should always be able to respect another editor." Doxxing and edit wars are frowned upon here; if you aren't willing to at least pretend to be tolerant, you probably won't be comfortable at All The Tropes.

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And here's a draft of the change that @Looney Toons suggested, adding in an edge case that should be mentioned EDIT and with a link to our wiki host:

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We are not soapbox/advertisement space

(two paragraphs snipped because they are not changed)

We also do not permit advertising of any sort, including spam, either by bot or by a human editor. It will be removed with prejudice and the poster permanently banned without warning. (Our wiki host occasionally holds fundraisers, which do not fall under this prohibition.)

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These are still draft proposals - feel free to continue making suggestions about them.

I'm not sure what you could trim from the new draft -- it seems both comprehensive and concise. And thank you for including my proposed change (and the edge case that I didn't think about).

Looks good. Perhaps add an external link to Miraheze and a note saying it's our host?

I've edited a link to Miraheze into to the proposed new text.

Ah, I was meaning a link to Miraheze for the "We are not a "reception wiki" section. This still gets the job done though; no need to change anything. It still serves as a good introduction to what Miraheze is.

We should add a line to We are not a "reception wiki" about how All The Tropes:Complaining About Shows You Don't Like goes into more detail on the matter.

Yes. We should. Add something about how we discuss each work instead of simply listing bad traits.

That's already in the second paragraph of the draft.

Seems fine to me. More focus on "what we aren't" as positive than negative.

I'm not seeing anybody opposed to the additions, and the discussion has resulted in some good changes to the original version of the proposal.

I'm making the change now.