Receiving Criticism Within the Wiki

I'd say things that mention how well it sold can be sloughed off as well. You might stick it on the Trivia page if you could find a trope.

Trivia doesn't need tropes. It just collects random interesting facts, some of which we have Trivia collections of. Some of which we don't.

To be fair, I can see how discouraging excessive negativity while being a little more tolerant towards gushing could create a perception of bias among some people. It does explain why this wiki keeps getting accused of trying to stamp out any criticism.

edited 13th Jun '11 7:27:21 PM by RedViking

We don't encourage gushing, either. But fewer people get upset when they're asked to tone down their adoration. For some reason, there's a sizable group of people who think it's their immutable right to bitch and hate anywhere they want, at great length.

I really don't see what harm there is with having a sentence or two in the intro noting the general critical reception of the work.

edited 13th Jun '11 9:07:14 PM by Unknownlight

Well, I do. It encourages people to dump their bile into the article. Infallibly.

Only critical reception. Not any fan reception. Simple and informative.

"This show was generally met with a positive critical reception, garnering a 83/100 on Metacritic" or...something like that. Maybe not Metacritic.

That sort of thing is Trivia. It belongs in the Trivia tab.

Wouldn't the entire intro section of work pages be "trivia" then? The author, when it was released, general history of the series...none of that has anything to do with tropes.

Partially correct, the author/creator has little to do with being on the main page except as an acknowledgement in the intro. Critics simply are not important for the goal of documenting tropes. Because they're still part of the audience.

One of TV Tropes' strengths as a vehicle for describing and recommending works is that it's relatively unaffected by the "poor get poorer, rich get richer" effect. You get to decide for yourself how good a work sounds to you, and whether it'd be a good idea to experience it.

The media, on- and off-line, is full of people telling other people what they should and shouldn't enjoy. This is a rare corner of the internet that doesn't.

Hear, hear.

One other problem I have about mentioning fan reception/criticism is that it's hard to tell if that's representative of a large majority of the fan base, or just the section the editor was familiar with. Like say, the part in the Shin Kamen Rider Prologue article which says "Often shunned by Kamen Rider fans due to its Deconstruction nature". I'm not sure if this refers to Kamen Rider fans in general, or just the fansub-watching community, since KR stuff usually doesn't get official releases accessible to people who only/mostly speak English.

Also, may I bring some attention to the list of spinoffs on the Dinotopia page? It's got that "criticism" problem. Actually worse, it out-and-out calls a few things "dreadful". I'm not really sue how to fix that page due to my lack of familiarity with the works in question.

Now that I think about it, shouldn't the "not well received" not be on the main page anyway? Whether people like it or not is basically YMMV.

Here's a question, if we think a works page is too gushy are we allowed to even bring that up as an issue? And if so where and how?

I like Code MENT and I think it's one of the best abridged series out there, but the whole page is just LOL THIS SHOW IS AWSUM U GAIZ. The only reason nothing's been done about it, as far as I can tell, is either a because they're not using any subjective tropes on the main page, so it's kind of hard to quantify the gushing, or b) very few people but me care about Code MENT.

edited 29th Jun '11 7:56:01 PM by SpainSun

Yes, you are allowed to bring that up. And I can see how that particular article is on the gushy side. I'll take a stab at fixing it.

Thank you.

A way to look at it is that emotions within a certain spectrum tend to escalate, if you're in a bad mood you tend to remain in a bad mood. A bad mood is prone to be argumentative and angry, which is the number one cause of thread mode. If you're in a good mood you to tend to brush off the small things, you also tend to have a much clearer head and don't want to spoil your good mood by getting into a fight. This can happen between people as well, it's scary how one person can make everyone as miserable as they are.

The wiki's pages are the same way, if the page feels angry it breeds more anger. The biggest battle the wiki has isn't about how the admins deal with criticism but with the people who think the wiki is supposed to be about tropers bitching about tv shows. What makes the wiki fun is the celebration of tropes and media, which admittedly gushing is simply more likely to align with that premise.

A lot of people (myself included) have a kneejerk unpleasant reaction to gushing, the fact that it's brought up so often is a testiment to that.

My point is, if you're going to monitor So Bad Its Horrible (which you should) you should monitor So Cool Its Awesome too, since the latter has a natter problem as well.

Also, SCIH should be a main/ redlink too, it's not abused as much as SBIH is, but it still gets linked to every now and again and it's damn annoying.

edit: That was completely my bad. I am thinking of Gushing About Shows You Like, I think, not SCIH.

edited 30th Jun '11 10:19:47 PM by SpainSun

I can see an issue here, if we don't allow negative reviews because they don't "explain" why they did not like it but allow positive reviews that are the flip side of that coin. In fact why on earth do we even allow reviews on this site? It's farther off our mission plan then troper tales.

The thing is, we'll allow a review if it explains why something sucked/was awesome. If it doesn't go into detail and give reasons, it generally isn't construed as being a good review. It's probably that negative reviews that don't explain why something sucked tend to get deleted faster because they come off as mindless bashing, which we don't want since it tends to be a self-reinforcing behavior. By contrast, people who gush about works tend to be less likely to blow up in your face when you disagree with them, from what I've seen here.

That and folks seem to more easily notice bashing over gushing.

Yes, unrestricted gushing is not desirable in a general sense. However, it is not destructive in the same sense that unrestricted bashing is. In a nutshell, we'd much rather have people on this wiki who like things rather than hate them. That is, after all, what being a fan is supposed to be about.

You've obviously never met a doctor who fan :P

I didn't want to be the one that said it.