Statler And Waldorf stingers: Part 2

I don't know. I have a feeling that as things stand if we start a crowner a lot is going to be decided by how it's worded and what it's asking about.

e.g. the answer to "Do the stingers need to go?" seems to be "No". Voting per individual stinger is really, just... It's like using bubblesort. It's a waste of energy.

If we're going to have one we should probably list like 4-5 positions regarding these stingers and what should generally be done (or not done) about them. Like: They should all go, they should all stay, the ones that help explain the trope should stay, the ones on articles which have nothing to do with Statler And Waldorf should go, etc.

edited 6th Jan '11 12:29:59 AM by TripleElation

Okay, having grown up with The Muppet Show, and having very fond memories of it, I have to point out that Statler And Waldorf do not, and have never, been around to enhance anything. Their purpose is to mock, heartlessly and humorously, the performers — or in this case, the tropers. That's it. They will generally reference the routine itself, but the only time they ever directly interacted with an act was with Fozzie, because bad comedians need a heckler.

I don't really care much about these things, but as someone who never heard of them before, I've yet to find any of them funny or insightful. From the look of it, it's a routine that doesn't work at all in text form if you're not familiar with them. At least that's my perception of it.

And sure, they're at a place that looks innocuous... but they do take the place of "proper" stingers that don't have an irrelevant meme shoehorned in. Their presence discourages tropers from adding meme-less stingers, which is slightly harmful to the wiki.

^Actually, a good chunk of the so-called "proper" stingers are usually a direct reference to some meme, obscure bit of narm, or a catch phrase themselves, including the one found on The Stinger.

Moreover, the same arguments about Statler And Waldorf stingers being pointless could be applied to all stingers on the wiki in general.

edited 6th Jan '11 9:03:17 AM by SeanMurrayI

I cant believe I am saying this, but you have a point. I think every page with a stinger should have a crowner to vote to whether or not to keep the stinger.

On a scale of importance of one to ten, I'm going to put stingers of any variety at about .05. Not liking a meme just isn't a good enough reason for instituting something as time absorbing as creating a crowner for every single stinger.

There have been seven pages of discourse about the subject most of it repetitive. Has any thing conclusive come out of this yet?

That would be such a monumental waste of time. Really? Lets vote on every stinger? Why?

Most of them are just humor. A tiny tongue in cheek joke. You don't get the joke. Fine, move on. I really don't see the point of opening hundreds of crowners coz a handful of people are raging against the fact that some pages have a tiny joke/meme at the end. And that's not counting on how ****ing pointless the exercise is. Take the crowner on Lone Wolf: It's what the books have at the very end of each paragraph if you die, the closest thing the series has to a catch phrase. If you know the book, you get the joke, if you dont, you wont. Crowner's not gonna do anything beyond telling us how many people have read Lone Wolf.

Same for the one on Metalocalypse: It's what the Omniscient Council of Vagueness says at the end of their briefing. You watch the show, you get it, you don't, and it just looks like the wiki is admitting it doesnt know the show too well.

The Statler And Waldorf could be improved on, but making a crowner on each is an exercise in pointlessness.

edited 6th Jan '11 12:15:54 PM by Ghilz

isn't that the whole point of a crowner? to decide things that are under dispute?

It's clear no one's going to win this argument, so how about a compromise? Delete the ones that aren't funny, and keep the good ones. Someone who actually likes them should do that, since I don't find even the "good" ones funny at all.

People don't start crowners to remove or modify a sentence or two of content on a page, they start them for major page actions which redefine or rename a trope. You could start a crowner as to whether something should be done over the S&W stingers on the whole, possibly including a compromise option, but start individual crowners for the tiny bit of content on every single page where it appears? That's insane.

It seems like, if you're lobbying to remove content that most people are okay with just leaving be, the onus is probably on you to nominate the candidates for removal. You're the one proposing a change, after all.

The only way to decide that is to have a Crowner.

I wish I know how to set one up.

At this rate though, I'm still not seeing much of a grievance being stated about Statler And Waldorf stingers other than "I think they're annoying" or "memes are bad" (the former being a superfluous argument, and the latter needing to pertain to a much broader topic on the wiki which, so far, proponents of this view haven't done much point out any harm to the wiki caused by memes or that certain memes in question actually are doing harm).

And as I said previously, there's nothing that any of us are saying in this thread that can't be said about stingers as a whole.

edited 6th Jan '11 2:36:39 PM by SeanMurrayI

Look, this is just ridiculous. It took all of one click of an edit button to put these stingers there, but to acknowledge that there is even a case against them being there you demand some sort of quantitative proof of the harm they're supposedly doing?

Qualitative arguments have been already given aplenty which go more in-depth than "memes are bad" and apply specifically to gratuitous, intrusive memes. Stingers in general have nothing to do with it. You may say, "I don't agree with these arguments". You may not say "la la la, can't hear you, you don't have an argument at all".

We really should find some compromise on this, if it is at all possible.

edited 6th Jan '11 3:02:25 PM by TripleElation

I wouldn't really call something at the end of the page "intrusive". "Gratuitous" does not necessarily equate to "Bad", nor does "Meme"

^^To acknowledge a "case" against something does not mean one finds the "case" to be valid, especially when the "case" hinges on descriptive adjectives that most people either don't see present on pages or just don't agree with.

How are any stingers being "intrusive"? How does the mere existence of a meme immediately determine that preventative actions need to be taken against something? Where has harm been done to the wiki by these memes?

There is nothing qualitative in only using an adjective like "intrusive" to support an entire argument. If you can't even direct readers to an actual page where a meme is causing a detriment to the wiki, then you don't even have a "case" at all.

And "stingers in general" have had everything to do with this since comparisons between S&W stingers and other stingers have been raised, even though they have a lot more in common with each other than not.

edited 6th Jan '11 3:46:02 PM by SeanMurrayI

I can't believe Triple Elation is still not understanding that stingers not needing to be related to the trope in question does NOT mean they can't be there. It's been about what, five pages already? And, man, a compromise has been being offered about one page ago.

Heck I went through a similar problem last week with a folk at a meeting who started calling everyone names and blabing something about we doing some conspiracy or trying to take over an organization because he wasn't invited, by mistake, to a meeting where it was being decided if we're going to consider trying to invite some new people to our organization. And for a whole week he just wouldn't understand the italicized parts!

I really don't see how the stingers are "intrusive". They are at the end of a page. I mean, if it wasn't because of the content policy and what not, they would be at the actual end of a page. Twenty six things are more intrusive, and I'm not counting the ons that are detrimental or not related to content "as well", such as ads. The stingers, IF they are there, which statistically they barely are, are met long after the reader has got the important information of a page. I don't see how they're "damaging" either, unless the definition of "damaging" being used is "that thing is throwing me a (deserved) You Suck speech and I (of course) don't like it". Or, in a quite justified apreciation, if the stinger is being used wrong.

If anything, yeah, remove the wrong and dull ones, preserve the ones that are both 1) helping to the understanding of the trope (like the one in Dead Baby Comedy) AND 2) nice Take Thats against either the wiki or the tropers (as that's the whole point of their style). And if the problem is "who decides which ones are good", let's just call the adequate people. There have to be editors more atunned to the S&W style that can tell us whether the stingers are being used the right or wrong way in a page, or how to fix them.

edited 6th Jan '11 4:09:00 PM by SilentReverence

@TE: But to us, your argument seems almost too weak to bother arguing against. Your side's arguments, as far as I can tell, are:

1. There's no reason to keep them.
2. They're annoying/not funny.
3. They're unnecessary/they show up on pages where they're not needed.

1 is not a reason to get rid of anything; once something is on a page you have to come up with a reason to take it off. Burden of proof almost always goes to whoever wants to change the status quo; that's not just here, that's in all arguments.

If 2 that was sufficient to take stuff off a page I ought to have deleted all the Twilight examples I've ever seen.

So that leaves 3, which only came up pretty late in the topic and which would take off nearly ever page quote I've ever seen. Sure they're not needed, they're a joke. Sure CIAPHAS CAIN shows up only when he would otherwise be mentioned and they're not, because they're not there because they're Staler And Waldorf, they're there because they're (supposed to be) funny, and funny can go anywhere.

If Statler And Waldorf can be removed because they don't fit the page, clearly any stinger on the wiki can be removed, right? Because no stinger on the wiki really illuminates the trope or else we would've put it higher up. But illuminating the trope isn't all we're trying to do; we're also trying to have fun.

Here's a compromise for you.

If, at any point, someone can think of something better, more appropriate, or more funny, they can edit out the Statler And Waldorf dialogue and add in their own stinger.

Wait, isn't that already how this place works?

In any case, this may be a molehill, and definitely falls under the acceptable variant of Don't Like? Don't Read!.

I've tried that, the person just deleted my stinger saying that the Statler And Waldorf stinger "was enough" I didnt even delete the Statler And Waldorf stinger, since I knew it would make people upset.

Well, two stingers is too much.

If yours was really better, just cut the old thing and replace it with yours. That's how the wiki works.

I tried that too, and I just got someone telling me not to delete a stinger.,( and in case you are wondering, the page is the joker.)

edited 6th Jan '11 5:05:50 PM by dontcallmewave

Okay. Stop mis-representing yourself.

The first time, you stuck a second stinger on, which kinda clashes with the whole idea of The Stinger (note, non-plural). With The Joker, you nuked the stinger entirely without adding anything in its place.

If you think the stinger is awful, you have two options. Either replace it with something better, or just ignore the thing. Getting rid of it removes the chance for others to see it and improve it.

I deleted it after I already put up the second stinger so there was a stinger there.

edited 6th Jan '11 5:32:02 PM by dontcallmewave

I didn't include SuperSecretSpoilers in my definition of "stinger." I thought a stinger was something that would just be there at the end of the trope page, not something that would need to be highlit by someone trying to find it.

Apologies.

well than, why is it ok for someone to delete it?