TVTropes culture and behavior norms

Adapted from something I posted in a now-locked thread:

The Wiki, it seems to me, now has a dress code: black tie. I can see the need for something to get rid of This Troper- and first-person pasties, and even I Am Not Making This Up pajamas. I'm not totally opposed to striking a blow against the Please Elaborate and So Yeah wifebeater-boxers combo. But when you go after the strikethrough polo shirt/jeans ensemble and the subjective business casual, well ... And speaking at least for myself, those of us who looked through the window and saw people in polo shirts or business casual — those of us who decided to come in to begin with in part on the basis of looking in and seeing people in polo shirts or business casual — aren't being ridiculous for taking it personally. And saying "well, we meant to have a black-tie dress code all along, we just didn't feel the need to enforce it when there were just a relative handful of tropers" (like has been said in these discussions) doesn't really attenuate that. I appreciate that OGs who weren't in black tie were sent home to change, that it wasn't done in an anti-newbie way, but it still seems like part of the reason these changes happen is "well, it brings in the wrong crowd." And people don't like it when you call them the wrong crowd.

Particularly, dropping the metaphor, in the absence of changes that really are important when a de facto tight-knit community of people who largely know each other grows beyond the point where tight-knittedness is even possible, like clear and precise rules of conduct — the Rules Lawyering that might result is no harder to deal with than the confusion, and Rules Lawyering, resulting from an assumption of shared values that no longer holds.

In the same thread, Fighteer said the change the thread was about was the result of tropers (manque?) acting "irresponsibly." I wonder if everyone is on the same page with what constitutes responsible behavior, and if not, why not, and how people can be more on the same page.

The child is father to the man —Oedipus

Subjective stuff is allowed (except where it'll lead to flamewars). It got moved to another section partly because they aren't really tropes as we define them and partly because pages were getting so long the parser was breaking.

edited 8th Apr '11 9:04:43 AM by INUH

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

May I ask what thread was this? If it is what I believe, I think Fighteer has it way wrong when he says tropers acted "irresponsibly".

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?

InB4thelock.

Don't you know Thou Shalt Not Criticise The Wiki or the Mods. Thy Threads shall be full of praise only or they shall be deleted.

edited 8th Apr '11 10:14:03 AM by CrypticMirror

The other thread was locked because it was going off-topic. So I'm trying to make that discussion the topic. I'm not criticizing. Well, I'm not only criticizing. I just want to make sure the TV Tropes the mods are moderating is the same as the one tropers are on, to try to forestall similar incidents.

The child is father to the man —Oedipus

Y'know, it would be so much easier to take anything you said more seriously if you didn't act so pointlessly vindictive.

Experience has taught me to investigate anything that glows.

]Hahahahah, yeah I know what you mean, but trust me. Been there, done that. It will not change anything.

edited 8th Apr '11 10:26:16 AM by CrypticMirror

If the point of this thread is to discuss how the culture and behavior norms of the wiki is changing and why it is happening and what it means, that is a great idea for a thread.

If the point of this thread is to complain about the perception the mods have of the wiki as opposed to the other tropers, that is not quite such a great idea. The mods are tropers too. We just have to clean up shit. But if there is a need to point out constructive ways we can keep the wiki running then this thread is a good idea.

If the point of this thread is to complain about how things are changing but not using specific examples because of some Soviet era paranoia about secret police and midnight executions then it isn't a good idea for a thread.

So what is it?

edited 8th Apr '11 1:54:16 PM by blackcat

Absolutely the first.

I'm not going to pretend not to understand how you got the second or third, but my intent really is the first. I think a lot of people perceive cultural changes, and are getting upset, and I think there's an underlying pattern to the changes, and it has to do with Fast Eddie et al having one notion of what TV Tropes is and is supposed to be, and many users having a different idea, and I think everyone would be happier if we were all thinking in the same terms: people can say either

1. "I came to TV Tropes thinking it was X, and I've seen it becoming Y, and I'm happy to see it returning to X" or
2. "I came to TV Tropes thinking it was Y, and I see it becoming X, and I'm cool with X as well" or
3. "I came to TV Tropes thinking it was Y, and I see it becoming X, and fuck all y'all."

I don't like that last one, but it's better than whinging in the fora over and over again.

edited 13th Apr '11 7:46:34 PM by HersheleOstropoler

The child is father to the man —Oedipus

Hit the nail on the head. In the other thread, I mentioned this problem. Specifically, I think it's like this (long-ish post incoming):

The primary goal of this wiki is to document tropes in popular media. That's all fine. Along the way, Eddie and co. came up with a secondary goal that helps the primary one: specifically, documenting the popular media itself. This was done with the work pages.

The problem comes in when people get attracted to the wiki by that secondary goal, by and large ignoring the primary one. To them, the tropes are just definitions...to define what their favorite works X, Y, and Z are. It doesn't help that outside sources (such as Wikipedia's list of alternative wikis) tend to paint us as such either.

This is probably the real root reason behind the backlash against the YMMV move, as well as problems with it and other sub-pages: most people don't care if something is in-universe, subjective, guessing, or what-not. To them, it's information about the work, and they want (or at least don't mind having) that information put in one place rather than spread across multiple pages. Their stance: the work's page is ideally where the work's information goes; what the heck does YMMV mean anyway? (I remember making a mistake like that with a WMG during my early time on the wiki, and Eddie himself deleted my edit.)

Since Eddie tends to see the secondary goal as, well, secondary, he's willing to set it aside when problems occur. Naturally, this draws the work page focused people out to complain, and the people who don't really care about the work pages as a whole out to defend his decisions.

Me, I think having some people like that (here for the works pages) around is important, to prevent parts of the wiki from becoming too neglected. Just so long as it doesn't go too far. That probably means Eddie, to a degree, will have to cater to those who prioritize work pages (and I do think he tries, although his efforts are misguided). As long as the rest of the wiki is kept in good shape, I see no problems with that.

edited 8th Apr '11 12:14:24 PM by TotemicHero

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Apologies if this is missing the point a bit, but I have to take issue with the "black tie" analogy. The tone of the wiki is still informal and chatty, and it still contains puns, innuendo, allusions, self-demonstrating articles and so on. What it is not is an Internet forum.

I dislike the removal of strikethrough, but I dislike the abuse of it more. That's how I feel about a lot of these kinds of changes - it sucks to have a limitation imposed on our writing, but it's sometimes necessary when the wiki is accumulating ugly, careless-looking natter and unfunny forced memes.

As for people who are here primarily for the works, not the tropes, I think that's fine, but it would be ridiculous to make changes which harm the wiki's primary goal just to further a secondary one.

Welcome To TV Tropes | How To Write An Example | Text-Formatting Rules | List Of Shows That Need Summary | TV Tropes Forum | Know The Staff

Not just strikethrough: Hiding Darth Wiki EDIT

. Subjectives entirely out of the Main namespace. Stripping and locking True Art, since you brought up Self Demonstrating Articles.

You*

may say "well, those things were never how the wiki was supposed to be in the first place," but that needs to be clearer, and you can't be surprised that, when the trend towards that wasn't nipped in the bud, the wiki attracted an undesirable element (such as Hershele Ostropoler) and that element is resistant to the trend (back?) away from it.

edited 8th Apr '11 8:27:10 PM by HersheleOstropoler

The child is father to the man —Oedipus

Agreed, we shouldn't do anything to harm the primary goal. However, I think it's possible to do that and still meet the secondary goal quite adequately. It might involve more work than the current methods take (which is another problem altogether, given that Eddie is pretty clearly overworked when it comes to this wiki), but it's doable.

On a side note, I'll go ahead and point out that in every case I've seen of someone justifying a decision by a Lesser of Two Evils argument (as you just made), they later inevitably get proven mistaken. Usually very mistaken. Food for thought.

Edit: Whaddya mean Lesser of Two Evils isn't a trope? To YKTTW!

edited 8th Apr '11 12:50:27 PM by TotemicHero

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

I'm not clear that there is a distinction between these "primary" and "secondary" goals. Works and tropes are inextricably intertwined; you can't have one without the other. A straight cataloguing of tropes is dry academia without actual examples of their use. Correspondingly, works are illuminated and illustrated by their tropes. A list of works sans tropes is Wikipedia, or IMDB. I just don't see how any argument that one is taking precedence at the expense of the other could possibly be supported.

The cultural debate here has nothing to do with works and tropes. It's about people who want to use the wiki as a review site or a discussion board versus those who want to use it to catalogue works and tropes. Our "mission" is the latter. It was never really the former, but the informality permitted by the wiki's early history gave the mistaken impression that it was and attracted a large number of users who are now offput by our attempt to draw it back to the basics.

One major problem is the enormous explosion of subjective opinions about a work that masquerade as tropes to the uninformed. This is why we've been on the push to segregate them into the various categories of YMMV. Another problem is the tendency for pages to look like conversations between a bunch of people. That war has been fought since the wiki began. A third problem is the tendency of people to launch whatever the hell they feel like, call it a trope, and ignore minor issues like: is it a grammar train-wreck, do we have five tropes just like it but only slightly different, does it have any examples, or does it even have a useful definition to begin with?

In short, we're trying to establish some degree of rigor here, which flies in the face of people who prefer a free-swinging, anarchic site. Unfortunately that battle is one that can't be resolved through diplomacy for some people — it needs a stick.

As to the ineffable "fun" debate... one man's fun is another man's Face Palm.

edited 8th Apr '11 1:16:01 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I stripped and locked the True Art page, because despite the fact that it is a Trope index page, the only edits made to it were those that added more "funny" stuff; that further buried the actual index listing; and any attempt to trim or remove some of the extra stuff was met by an immediate replacement of it by those people who treated the page as their own private graffiti-wall. There was the additional factor that the whole chunk of stuff under the index was concentrated totally on demonstrating True Art Is Incomprehensible.

In other words, it was a textbook case of a tertiary purpose of the site (have fun) getting in the way of the primary purpose (catalogue and index tropes)

edited 8th Apr '11 1:20:06 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

The way I feel is, this site is not just made for "tropers". Other people come here too, people who never edit a page. If the first page I was linked to on this site was some works page full of opinions, Fan Wanking, sarcastic strikethroughs, long running gags and a page full of inside jokes I don't get (Darth Wiki) I would never come back because I would think it was just another obsessive fan wiki or Encyclopedia Dramatica type thing. Also, as I said in all the threads for the other big changes in the past, this is not everybody's wiki, you aren't personally paying for it. Fast Eddie can say "You know what? I hate Europe and will ban all Europeans." There's nothing you can do.If you want something to run your way, start your own wiki and put stuff there. Also, about the True Art page, when I first saw that I honestly thought it was an HTML error.

edited 8th Apr '11 1:26:46 PM by wuggles

The wiki is for its readers. It is not fundamentally for its authors, the tropers.

We have chosen to do something very difficult. Soliciting a friendly, breezy tone from all those authors who want to help contribute.

This brings with it some sets of problems. One set: There is always going to be a contingent who has a different take on what makes up breeziness. Another problem set: There are people who really have no idea how to do friendly. There are also people who would not like to be friendly. The would rather be bitter and nasty.

That last group is serving only themselves, not the readers.

The people differing on the definition of 'breezy' very often are at least serving a group of readers, but the group they are 'targeting' is too narrow. For example, there are anime fan communities whose online conversations carry a heavy mix of Japanese jargon. To that group, that's breezy. To another group it is an impenetrable secret language.

The wiki can't work with that definition of 'breezy.' The readership being served is too narrowly defined. The same applies to things like lol-speak and thumb-typing formulations. The 'breeziness' is too focused on a specific group.

I'm just restating the issue, here. The objective is to find and maintain a definition of 'breezy' that works for the widest number of readers.

We then have to find a way to keep folks pulling in that direction. That's not ever going to be easy, and it will never be accomplished without some group having difficulty accepting that their definition of breezy isn't everyone's definition of breezy.

edited 8th Apr '11 4:48:35 PM by FastEddie

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

True.

To explain. they don't just come to us for storytelling elements. They come to us for any and every piece of possible information related to a work. This includes things like reviews, fan reactions, and the like. In fact, I'll bet some of them probably don't even care about the storytelling elements...otherwise known as the tropes. In short, they want us be TV Tropes and Wikipedia and IMDB and who knows what else. They want one website that does all those things...and no such website exists. But unfortunately, we're the closest to it, so...

With less focus on the actual tropes, they get lost in the noise, so to speak.

edited 8th Apr '11 2:35:46 PM by TotemicHero

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

I think we can service those areas. Just not all on the same page. We can have reviews, fan reactions, just plain conversations about a show. We can have summaries and recaps. Character examinations. Analytic essays. In fact, we do have all those things.

All organized around a page about the thing we are best known for; storytelling elements. We can't let that aspect get lost. It's our 'brand.'

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

There's one thing I don't quite understand though. Now that the YMMV Tropes are segregated from the main wiki, why do we still have Darth Wiki and Sugar Wiki?

At first I didn't realize I needed all this stuff...

We have the segregation. Sugar Wiki is harmless and fun, and harmless fun doesn't hurt the wiki in any way. I don't have a defense for Darth Wiki.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

People are going to bitch no matter what you try to do, so we may as well have an easily avoidable place where they can be monitored.

I kinda figured Darth Wiki was kept around because of the massive whinefest that would result from deleting it.

Ninja'd.

edited 8th Apr '11 5:13:04 PM by INUH

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

I suggest deleting Darth wiki since people will and are *

using it to whine on the main articles, and we don't need or want a dedicated bitching namespace. It doesn't really keep complaining quarantined.

Do we really care about appeasing the people who want to use the wiki to rant?

edited 8th Apr '11 5:20:33 PM by SpellBlade

The question should actually be "Do we really want to deal with the people who want to use the wiki to rant when they are angry?" If you delete Darth Wiki, they'll move to the forums and cause hell for months.

It would probably be possible to phase it out. But deleting it outright would not end well.