Classifying Tropes, Trivia, YMMV, Audience Reactions and Flame Bait

Point taken, not everything that requires personal interpretation is natter-bait. We need to separate the flamebait from the YMM Vs, which is why I asked what the sub-categories of YMMV are.

Eh, we should do some research on these to see what starts fights and what doesn't.

edited 29th Jan '11 4:45:44 PM by SpellBlade

Really? I tend to find that most of the natter I see isn't on subjective tropes. It's on objective tropes from series that people love a bit too much and thus they must explain how the trope is used in far too much detail. Anime seems to be the largest contributer to Natter.

edited 29th Jan '11 4:48:59 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Well, we can't exactly apply restrictions by genre and series.

Regulated fun - the best kind! I don't make the rules, just enforce them with an iron fist.

Writing too long eamples is not natter on it's own.

Most natter happens with justifying edits, when one posts something like "Complete Monster", and someone who likes the character replies "To be fair, he had a Pet the Dog moment here...", and the first one replies "Well, that's not that significant if you consider that..." etc. That's the problem with YMMV tropes. If people wouldn't argue about them, we wouldn't have to remove them.

Happy Ending is cool, because even though we can't measure it with a ruler, most of the time people won't start arguing whether or not an ending was happy. Mainly, because it's usually obvious, and also because it's not such a big deal. In the same way, we can't 'measure' most tropes related to emotions, and characterization. Cute Bruiser, Book Dumb, Emotionless Girl, and Moe could yhypothetically be the frontlines of YMMV, but no one feels like nattering about them, so they are not YMMV.

And this is why Natter Bait would be a better title, that would finally remove this major misunderstanding.

Natter tends to show up depending on the tone of the article, which is why stuff like Wallbanger are complete natter-fests while the Moment of X ones seem to be fine.

It is when it's a normal example and then it gets into fourth level bullets of people expanding on the explanation. That's Natter, and it happens to all tropes regardless of subjectivity. Popularity is actually the most common cause of it.

Also, people Natter about all those tropes a fair bit. Emotionless Girl could use a natter clean up. The first example has some all ready. Book Dumb has fourth level bullets, as does Cute Bruiser, and Moe. All of three them have horrible natter infestations. I'm not seeing how not being subjective is making them less nattered.

edited 29th Jan '11 5:06:42 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

I don't know what causes the most natter, but it doesn't really... matter.

The point is, that we are restructuring these pages because they cause at least a significant part of it. That is the official purpose of this action.

Different kinds of natter. Natter on objective tropes seems to be of the Repair Dont Respond and the "don't forget X" variety, and natter on the YMM Vs tends to be disagreements and fighting.

People are nattering, but they aren't fighting over those tropes you linked to.

edited 29th Jan '11 5:10:30 PM by SpellBlade

These tropes are Natter Bait because they're subjective. The Natter is how we find out they're subjective in case we can't figure it out from the definition. This is simply going by the assumption that the amount of natter reflects the amount of ambient disagreement.

This is why I think going back to "subjective trope" is the best solution. Whatever we pick, it should probably have the word "trope" in it; it seems things are shaping up so if a category of item doesn't have the word "trope" in it (Audience Reaction, Trivia...) then it's not a trope.

I also think a bit of the argument here is revolving around lack of a distinction between vanilla Natter and Thread Mode. It's the latter that these tropes get and objective tropes typically don't. I was guilty of making this equivocation earlier in the thread, but Thread Mode is what I essentially meant.

edited 29th Jan '11 5:30:12 PM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

Tearjerker has exactly the same sort of Natter as those do.

The idea is to do things that are effective, not just throw the baby out with the bathwater. I don't see the point in giving up on some tropes when they're all being equally nattered. That's just silly.

edited 29th Jan '11 5:13:52 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

The natter on Tear Jerker isn't fighting, since the page doesn't assume a negative tone. It's still a bad thing, but the natter on those pages have mostly accumulated due to age and the lack of a curator.

I've zapped a lot of natter on some objective pages before curating them, and the stuff mostly stays zapped if I keep a eye on the page. Natter on flamebait pages and potholes will constantly flare up at a much more rapid pace.

edited 29th Jan '11 5:27:24 PM by SpellBlade

So it's not YMMV pages that are the issue then. It's negative pages. A different group from the subjective pages.

edited 29th Jan '11 5:32:28 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

On the subject of ending tropes, it should be noted that we do have a trope for subjective happy endings: Esoteric Happy Ending.

How would it fit under the new system?

Well, if you don't believe that subjective pages cause natter, why would you want to get rid of any of them?

OK, let's look at work pages. Which causes more natter and edit-warring over inclusion on the work page, subjectives or objectives?

edited 29th Jan '11 5:43:15 PM by SpellBlade

That doesn't really answer anything, as we mostly define the difference between these two exactly based on how much edit warring and natter they cause, to begin with.

If everyone would want to protect their favorites from accusatios of being a Book Dumb, that would be a subjective.

If everyone would be fine with having a Complete Monster entry, that would be objective.

edited 29th Jan '11 5:43:16 PM by EternalSeptember

I don't want to get rid of subjectives. I think classifying them into their own area helps people realise that they don't need to agree with them, but I don't want them gone entirely. It is NOT natter that makes things subjective. It is the fact that they can be view by different people in different ways. That doesn't mean that they cause natter.

edited 29th Jan '11 5:47:57 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

It's important to check the amount of natter in both the inclusions of the trope on work pages and the page itself. Natter isn't the sole factor in determining YMMV status, but it's important.

Also, how something fares in reality is more important then how it does in hypothetical situations. There's a lot more fighting over whether or not Bob is a victim of Character Derailment then if he's an Almighty Janitor, for example.

edited 29th Jan '11 5:48:32 PM by SpellBlade

I wouldn't go so far as to say that. The Natter / Thread Mode is a good litmus test and judging by it is very practical, but I'd like to think it reflects some meaningful inherent property.

edited 29th Jan '11 5:53:39 PM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

You are trying to objectively explain subjectivity.

Yeah, they will be preserved on a page that Eddie referenced as the garbage bin, where they will be mixed with a bunch of non-tropes, and flamebait.

It still begs the question. If you are not in it for fighting natter, why would you want to move them? Why would it be better for the wiki?

I am in it for fighting natter. I just don't think that getting rid of them entirely is needed. There are other ways to do things than to just throw out anything that happens to get a little bit of natter on it. That's not useful.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

1. If we get rid of them entirely  ^*

we'll be able to starve most of the natter since the main source will be gone, leaving the "residue" natter.

2. Not all natter is spawned from YMMV pages, but most YMMVs cause a disproportionate amount of natter compared to normal tropes.

edited 29th Jan '11 6:13:15 PM by SpellBlade

I think segregating is enough. I think cutting or getting rid of examples is over kill in all but the most extreme cases.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Yeah, we shouldn't have to take emergency measures against normal YMMVs, just against flame bait pages that get out of hand like we did with Award Snub.

So, uh, I haven't been around for a bit, and had couple of questions relating to what's going on with the current YMMV subpaging effort. (I realize much of this is still being worked out, so let me know if these are in the 'things we haven't figured out yet category'.)

• Some tropes (or non-tropes) marked YMMV have to do with an aspect of the creation process of the work, like Follow the Leader or Ms. Fanservice. Are these allowed on main pages if there's actual confirmation of what the creators were doing/thinking? For example, if it's actually widely documented that movie X was greenlit to capitalize the success of trend Y, is Follow the Leader still a YMMV item?

• Also, we presently have works pages for a few media review shows. Is it acceptable to include subjective/reaction tropes when describing a reaction to a work that happened IN another work? For example: should So Bad Its Horrible never appear on the page for Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which actually had a sort narrative, albeit one that was fairly inextricable from its opinions of other works)? And by extension, I guess, what are we doing with fictional, in-work examples of YMM Vish tropes in general?

• What do we do with comedy/lampshading/parody/played-less-than-straight use of generally-negative tropes? For example, the short comedy series Stella made a point of giving every episode an obvious, heavily lampshaded Deus ex Machina Happy Ending as a running gag. Stella may be an extreme example, but "bad on purpose" is fairly common in certain sorts of comedy, and only some of it falls under Stylistic Suck.

Have we reached a conclusion on any of these? Or are we still fighting it out?

edited 29th Jan '11 6:29:35 PM by Bailey