Removing Gushing from the Wiki

Fine. A reaction is not a trope. It is a reaction, and an opinion. Opinions are not facts. Tropes are facts, they are specifications of what is in a work. Reception is outside of a work. Since a trope is within a work, rather than outside of it, it only matters there. Which is what we document, tropes and their usage within works. Studying and analyzing works is not part of that mission, particularly when it gets used to make people think the wiki is some kind of work review wiki.

Fight smart, not fair.

Except that in order to understand why a work has certain tropes to begin with, it helps quite a bit to understand what a work is and why it is the way it is, and reception sometimes is a big part of that. Especially when there are some works which owe their very existence to begin with to critical or fan reception of a different work.

You can't just artificially separate one thing from the others and pretend they're not connected in any meaningful way. Reception isn't outside of a work at all; it can and sometimes does have profound effects on it, which eventually end up affecting or resulting in tropes.

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Reception, by definition only occurs after release. If it occurs during, then the reception matters through Word of God, and Word of God only.

Fight smart, not fair.

It obviously can't be YMMV. Awards won are objective facts, as are sales figures (although they both indicate the subjective feelings of certain groups of people).

As the trivia tabs are conceptualized right now, they don't fit there either. Any fact external to the work could theoretically be placed there, including release dates, cast listings, staff, production companies involved, budget, etc. But currently trivia tabs are only for information at a higher level of specificity than that, and more general facts are allowed in the description.

We claim the land for the highlord, God bless the land and the hiiighlooord!

Since this wiki considers every work notable, does it really matter how many people saw a work or how they may have felt about it, least on the main page?

The way you're defining "trope" doesn't match how it's defined everywhere else on this wiki.

The "trope" page says that a trope is "a convention" and "storytelling shorthand that the audience will recognize and understand instantly". By that definition, a trope is not just a common combination of onscreen elements. It has to do how the author is using the expectations of the audience to a certain end. Which has everything to with context.

For example, a guy who stops a crime in his underwear in an obscure story written in 1770 is not an example of Underwear of Power, because running around in your underwear was not shorthand for being a superhero in 1770. Also, Oscar Wilde could not have subverted the Standard '50s Father trope even if he were writing a story set in the future — there was nothing to subvert.

I'll concede that works are rarely influenced by their own commercial and critical reception — well, actually, unless they're TV shows, or ongoing comics, or some other form of serialized media, in which case they usually are. A larger point is that all works are profoundly influenced by the commercial and critical reception of the works that came before them.

edited 23rd Aug '11 5:43:42 PM by Bailey

Awards are trivia, in the sense of being just a factoid. A movie getting six Golden Guppies has as much to do with tropes as does the fact that it is on 1600 feet of film.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

It's not the awards themselves that are notable, exactly, it's the fact that getting those awards indicates the work was thought of as being good enough to get the awards that's notable. In the sense that it's a proven fact that sort of acclaim can have profound effects on media and in turn which tropes are more likely to get used or not used and how.

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This is veering toward establishing that some work or the other was 'seminal' in the distribution of a trope. Either it was or it wasn't, it makes no difference to the trope.

Staying out of the business of judging a work is good for us, It allows us to focus in the tropes. Awards and popular reception have a whole Hell of a lot more to do with marketing prowess than they do with the nature of the work itself. That, and the fact that stating that something is great is just going to attract someone who disagrees and start them nattering.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

It's not at all an issue of quality though, or of judging.

The argument that's being put forward*

is that we shouldn't make statements about quality but should be able to make objective statements about factors affecting a work's visibility. Visibility is not the same as influence, but is a prerequisite to influence. A work seen by four people cannot be a trope codifier. Having a sense of the sort of thing helps us to know what storytelling shorthand was recognizable to audiences at what time. It also helps us to properly describe tropes on their own description pages — how they manifest, how they've changed over time, what informs them, etc.

edited 23rd Aug '11 7:57:06 PM by Bailey

Plus reception can have an affect on how a work develops, or even why a certain work exists to begin with (or why it exists in its current form), which in turn affects and dictates which tropes it has, thus making it important from that direction as well.

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But we're not about works. An analysis page about a work can go into all that influenced by/influencing stuff. It could even be a good read, that analysis page. The main description, though, should be just enough information to determine which work we are talking about and proceed as quickly from there into the tropes as possible.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

We are about works, in that a list of tropes is kind of useless on its own without context to understand how and why they're used.

And, Analysis/ is for analyzing themes in a work. I mean, saying a work has lots of Lighter and Softer tropes mixed in with some seemingly out-of-place Darker and Edgier ones because the show started out dark and moved towards comedy due to fan reaction isn't an analysis of the work's tropes in and of itself, it's an explanation providing context for analyzing the work's tropes.

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I was hoping you could explain it better than I.

Fight smart, not fair.

^^Nope. We are not about works. A work description does nothing for us but anchor a list of tropes.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

And in order to "anchor" the tropes, you have to provide all the context needed to understand how and why the tropes are used in that work. Which sometimes means talking about the work's reception, when it turns out to be part of the required context for that work.

You can't pretend a list of tropes in a work is useful all on its own with zero context. Because it's not, it's just a random list of words.

edited 23rd Aug '11 8:35:46 PM by Jeysie

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Talking about the reception is not necessary and causes problems. Just don't do it in the main description, please.

Make full use of the Review sections and Analysis pages for that stuff.

edited 23rd Aug '11 8:49:02 PM by FastEddie

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

I wasn't going on about just reactions though, I was also concerned with date it was released, what genre it is and anything else that can help understanding. To use my Triumph Of The Will example again, if we removed when it was made and who financed it all we have is "A movie was made."

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

I'd say it's a terrible description since it seems to lack any sort of information as to what is inside it beyond being a propaganda film.

Fight smart, not fair.

I removed the editorial stuff from the description of Triumph Of The Will. It could use some summary info. The date of release is fine. It helps identify the film.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

@Fast Eddie

Talking about the reception is necessary, because again, sometimes the reception is the entire reason a work even exists, or exists in the form it does. How can you say that talking about something whenever it turns out to be a major part of the reason a given work exists and has the tropes it does is "not necessary"? That literally makes absolutely no sense.

And, Reviews and Analysis are the wrong places for that stuff. Reviews are for my personal review and opinion on how good or bad I think a work is and why, not about how well a work was received in general. Talking heavily about reception in general would be an abuse of that namespace. Not to mention that nobody is going to think to look in a random troper's review for information that will help them understand a work and why it has the tropes it does.

And Analysis is for an analysis of the themes within a work itself... while reception can maybe help inform an analysis, a description of how a work's reception shaped the work itself is not an analysis in and of itself.

"The dichotomy between the implied harshness of the setting and the light and soft nature of the writing", with examples taken from within the work itself, is an analysis.

"This work was changed to be lighter and softer because fan reception indicated that was liked better" is a fact usually based on Word of God, not an analysis. It can be used to inform an analysis, certainly, but simply talking about the reception on its own is at best a poor usage of that namespace.

If a work's reception is important to its development somehow, or important to other works in the genre, then it should be a part of the area that presents crucial information about the work: The introduction.

And no, it is not a problem at all. Gushing is a problem. Bashing is a problem. Talking about reception that's had a profound effect on the work or related works, in a tone that is neither gushing or bashing, is not a problem. How can something that gives someone useful information for understanding a work and its tropes be "a problem"? Why this drive to make the site less informative, or artificially separate information that isn't actually separate?

Addendum: I mean, I guess if we want to create a new tab or something called "Development" or whatever that stores any part of a description that isn't pure summary, that would actually be appropriate than trying to shoehorn it into inappropriate tabs or delete it altogether. It just seems pointless/a waste of time to worry about separating it, however.

edited 24th Aug '11 8:02:41 AM by Jeysie

Apparently I am adorable, but my GF is my #1 Groupie. (Avatar by Dreki-K)

One reason I'm not sure about having reception is that I can't tell if the person who wrote that bit is familiar enough with the fanbase. Especially with works that are not in English, and fansites in English are somewhat of a minority. I think Kamen Rider falls under that. For example, I can't tell whether the editor who wrote that "Shin Kamen Rider Prologue is often shunned by Kamen Rider fans due to its Deconstruction nature", meant by fans. Did they mean "fansub downloaders", or the people in Japan who actually bought the film on DVD/home video? It probably makes quite a big difference which part of the fanbase they meant.

edited 24th Aug '11 8:16:54 AM by ThatHuman

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I'd be willing to advocate limiting any writeups of fan reception to either Word of God or something else that can be concretely cited, to avoid Fan Myopia, and to make sure it is informational, rather than gushing/bashing or just one fan's opinion.

Critical reception is generally easier to cite/be objective about.

edited 24th Aug '11 8:13:44 AM by Jeysie

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Yeah, critics are at least easier to cite, since one can just provide a link to the review. But, I don't see how critics are important either, unless they had some effect on the work. Like say, season two was criticized as having annoying humor, which led to season three scripts getting rewritten to change/remove the jokes. Even then, I'm not quite sure if this stuff really belongs.

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FWIW, I'm not saying I think reception should always be mentioned on a work. If a work's reception has honestly had little to no effect on it or its genre, then I agree the information really is pointless.

It's this idea that a work's reception is never useful information that I'm pushing against, because I know for a fact that's simply flat out wrong. There's plenty of works where the reception is important to the work somehow.

I mean, you're a Transformers fan. Surely you're not saying fan reception wasn't, say, important to Shattered Glass's development, or to why we got no American-made televisual TF works for almost a decade? RID and the Unicron Trilogy either wouldn't exist or wouldn't exist in their current form if it wasn't for Beast Machines bombing out, and they in turn have influenced other TF works.

edited 24th Aug '11 8:24:20 AM by Jeysie

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