Example Sectonomy: Darth Wiki.So Bad Its Horrible

Well:

• It is basically complaining about shows. And it is not playful or have good humor(or bad humor) about it.
• It is a page exiled in the Darth Wiki because of their tendency to natter and edit wars, not a page of fun as more pages in the Darth Wiki.
• Their counterpart in Sugar Wiki, So Cool, It's Awesome have it as last paragraph: "No examples, please. This just defines the term. Put examples in Gushing About Shows You Like (for works, although that can have merely liked works gushed about)."

I always wanted to use that clip.

In all seriousness, though, I agree that the examples aren't worth keeping. They should be scrapped, along with whichever entries on works pages may happen to be crosswicked with them.

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

I don't know... IMO just leave it as is which helps keep the bashing (or even stealth bashing.) off other tropes.

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

The page will serve no purpose without examples.

(That doesn't mean it should exist with examples. But it definitely shouldn't exist without examples.)

No, no. First, we'll have a shitstorm if the examples go - in which, I have to admit, I will participate. There's a lot of people out there who really enjoy reading it.

Second, it can't be linked to anyway, so it's not like it's intruding on other pages. As mentioned, it really keeps the natter off other pages.

Honestly, if we cut examples from here, how long will it be before we're cutting examples from So Bad It's Good, which I know many consider one of the best sections on the wiki? And then from other opinion pages like Tearjerker?

No, no - I think just leave it as it is.

Formerly Nolan Burke. Natch.

You know what else would keep the bashing off other tropes? Getting rid of the tropers who are doing the bashing. Giving them their own page in the hopes they'll leave other pages alone is nothing short of pandering.

It serves to highlight that something being worse than So Bad, It's Good doesn't make it more enjoyable; that the trend reverses again once a work is bad enough.

Slippery Slope Fallacy much? Tear Jerker is often, if not usually, used as a positive thing. So Bad, It's Good is also, in a way, positive, and highlighting the paradox of things normally considered flaws being enjoyable is considerably more interesting than just saying "such and such works are awful and I hate them" etc...

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

Yes, well, good thing the criteria for an entry is more than "I hate it" then, huh? Examples have to be critically panned and widely recognised as the worst of their kind - as you may notice, they're swiftly deleted when they're not.

Honestly, I think people will have serious trouble visualising "worse than So Bad It's Good" without a few examples - without them, we'll just have a page sort of vaguely saying "it's like this, but worse". And once again, this is very tightly controlled and can't intrude onto other pages anyway. I really think the examples have a purpose to serve.

Formerly Nolan Burke. Natch.

You're missing the point. I'm not referring to the criteria of SBIH, I'm referring to how SBIG's paradox of flaws being enjoyable is much more interesting than the concept of something being, well, so bad it's horrible, regardless of the criteria used to label it that. The whole idea doesn't strike me as particularly worthwhile, but I think the concept is worth a bit more than the examples.

That said, I wouldn't be particularly opposed to cutting SBIH altogether either.

edited 4th Jan '12 1:12:52 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

I just really feel that doing this is gonna start some kind of ball rolling. Sure, SBIG isn't as obviously negative as SBIH, but it's still hardly where an author would want to see their work listed, is it? All the examples got cut from the Mary Sue pages for much that reason, and I'm seriously afraid we'll see the same thing happening there. And what about Tropes like Narm, which has become all but iconic here and often plays a key role in defining various works and tropes, but is still hardly positive?

And look, if what you're concerned about is that edit wars could start on negative pages like this one: they could start just as easily on positive pages, because they're just as subjective.

I'm just not comfortable with this.

edited 4th Jan '12 1:23:12 PM by NolanJBurke

Formerly Nolan Burke. Natch.

Except that negative ones; especially ones that are purely negative by their very nature like this one; are more prone to hostility and the like.

And it is not just a matter of hostility, but also whether or not it is interesting enough to be worth it. Stuff like narm; meant to be dramatic but just worked out to be silly; is not purely negative, and it is interesting to see how such things work out. Stuff like SBIH is more prone to hostility and less likely to be worth it.

And if getting rid of this causes the edit wars to migrate to other pages, suspend the users causing them. If anything, getting rid of this page might cut down on such problems on other pages, if it leads to getting rid of the users prone to causing such problems in the first place.

edited 4th Jan '12 1:29:23 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

I'm for keeping the page and its examples. I instead motion to cut Dethroning Moment of Suck. So bad its horrible has standards and is regularly curated. Dethroning moment of suck is just tropers randomly whining.

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

Isn't that what the whole trope is about? I think it's pretty clear that anyone can edit as long as he signs, and that the trope is subjective and therefore it only depends on opinion.

There are no heroes left in Man.

Exist two motives to start it with So Bad its Horrible:

• It is too similar to Complaining About Shows You Dont Like
• Their counterpart in Sugar Wiki, So Cool Its Awesome have it as last paragraph: "No examples, please. This just defines the term. Put examples in Gushing About Shows You Like (for works, although that can have merely liked works gushed about)." The Sugar Wiki counterpart to Dethroning Moment Of Suck, Crowning Moment Of Awesome, not suffered Example Sectionectomy.

edited 4th Jan '12 2:10:05 PM by MagBas

I think the first point is wrong. While I may not like some shows that doesn't mean they're bad. For example, I don't like My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic (and I don't mean I hate it, if anything I hate it's memetic status that makes me see it almost everywhere) that doesn't mean I think it's a bad show. Whether I like it or not it's been an utter success, I think that must mean something.

About the second point I think that So Cool Its Awesome is more prone to have people wanting to add examples they really like, but that may be not as popular as they think. Since it's almost sure that some else also likes it the trope can easily fill with Natter.

On the other hand So Bad, It's Horrible doesn't suffer from the same thing. Good works get known easily, but for a horrible work to get known everywhere as something that must not be seen it must be truly, truly bad. And there aren't many works that can say that.

edited 4th Jan '12 2:17:43 PM by DrMcNinja

There are no heroes left in Man.

FWIW, I don't see the problem. As noted above, SBIH does have standards for addition, so it's not like just slapping in an entry of something a troper doesn't like is an issue.*

And as an aside, not a jab at you or anything like that, Dr Mc Ninja, but given your name and avatar caption your complaint*

about FIM's memetic status is kind of amusing.

All your safe space are belong to Trump

I really am heavily opposed to cutting these pages. First and foremost, they're enjoyable to read. Many people think this, and cutting them would remove a considerable source of humor and enjoyment from the wiki. Sometimes you have to make allowances for people's fun, and so long as the page's material stays on the page (and off the pages of the various works listed there), it's fine. I do agree that a bit of a cleanup for the aforementioned work pages might be in order, though.

Second, it's not like Complaining About Shows You Dont Like. It's strictly curated and heavily regulated – things like Hogwarts Exposed aren't allowed on, because they've got a large number of people who enjoy them despite the fact that most Tropers say that they're horrible. As is made very clear, only the universally reviled is allowed on. The editors of those pages try very hard to avoid Flame Wars, and a lot of things have been cut or edited to ensure this avoidance.

Third, it is a definable trope, and one for which examples can be used. It's not just worse than So Bad, It's Good; it's that which everyone hates, something that the world agrees upon to suck, something that you'd be hard-pressed to find a defender for anywhere. Basically, it refers to the phenomenon of a work receiving near-universal hatred from, not only its target demographic, but the entire populace. The bottom 1% of Sturgeon's Law, if you will. Though difficult, it's perfectly possible to find many works of that sort. I hesitate to post this for fear of accusations of bashing, but Ballistic Ecks Vs Sever is a fine example due to the fact that a sheer lack of favorable reviews prevented any laudatory quotes from being presented on the cover (they had to use plot summary instead).

Please don't cut this trope. I feel it would be a loss to the people who visit the wiki if you do. It would certainly be a loss to me.

edited 4th Jan '12 5:13:23 PM by PulpoOscuro

I think it'd be a mistake to remove either So Bad It's Horrible or its entries. As its main page says, "while these works may insult their respective forms of media, they serve an essential purpose — after all, without the '0', a perfect '10' would have little meaning." TV Tropes is a catalog of what fiction has to offer, after all, and that means taking the bad with the good.

Like others have said, the entries are curated and don't really devolve into plain old bashing or obvious bias. (Or if they do, they don't stay on the page for long). The page has clear, well-defined rules set up to prevent abuse.

And in my opinion, at least, SBIH is a genuinely entertaining part of the site, especially as an enabler for my masochistic, "it's a train wreck and I can't make myself look away" media-enjoying moments. It'd be a shame to completely wipe all that out.

Huh what who now?

No offense, but I really had to chime in as soon as I saw you compare it to "Complaining About Shows You Don't Like". Me, Anonymous McCartney, crazyrabbit, and others edit it regularly to keep it from becoming that and we do our research to make sure these works belong here (a combination of low sales, critical backlash, and numerous problems with the work itself). It is not and never will be another CASYDL.

I am so torn.

On one hand, I do enjoy certain subpages, like Voice Acting, while others... less so. The Fan Fic page is nigh-indistinguishable from High Octane Nightmare Fuel due to the subject matter described therin. But should we remove the right for people to catalog fan fics that are objectively bad? Considering Sturgeon's Law, I think not.

I don't think that SBIH is anywhere near as bad, cancerous, or wanky as Complaining About Shows You Dont Like; unlike the latter, it can serve a purpose in cataloging objectively bad works.

We are not a wiki for bashing things, but if we use SBIH to describe things that failed and how in plain terms, then it has served a critiquing purpose, unlike CASYDL. Almost all of the examples I've read on SBIH are well-written, to the point, and free of personal attacks (but not criticism).

There is some confusion between So Bad, It's Good and SBIH. I saw The Town With No Name (a Western-themed game saved from obscurity by Retsupurae) on both of these pages. I'd say we hunt down these confused examples and decide where to put them once and for all. (Personally, I'd move TTWNN to SBIH.)

So yeah, SBIH does serve a purpose, as does SBIG, unlike wanky, flame-baiting, natter magnets CASYDL and Fallen Creator pages.

edited 4th Jan '12 9:00:04 PM by BearyScary

I liked it better when Questionable Casting was called WTH Casting Agency

Fallen Creator itself might need a rename or repair. It was never intended to be a page to describe a creator that sucks now, but simply objectively pointing out that media fame is fickle and creators who are revered can quickly lose their success. If there's bashing on the page, it shouldn't belong there period.

It got expelled to Darth Wiki with no discussion or consensus - actually, it almost got deleted without discussion or any actual problems or flame wars resulting from it. But we didn't have a repair process for things like this back then either.

Aye aye, here's to all that. If there were no restrictions to the SBIH examples, and anyone could just list anything they don't like, I could see the problem, but it ain't like that, eh? I honestly think you'd struggle to find ANY entries that simply amount to "oh, I'm putting this here 'cause it's just bad". Pretty much all the examples are thoroughly justified.

Yeah, I say keep it - it has a purpose, and stripping it from TV Tropes will be a throughly jarring experience.

Formerly Nolan Burke. Natch.

The thing I don't like about Dethroning Moment Of Suck is that, even though there is a requirement to sign your entries there is no standard on what to add. That means, invariably many of the examples are wrong. There are a couple tropers(I won't name) who either love Alicia Fox or hate Melina Perez. Naturally one's dethroning moment is Melina's "Squash Match" with Alicia at some pay per view, even though that match wasn't a squash and the low quality was due to a miscommunication that was probably Alicia's fault.

Melina was trying to sell a knee injury but Alicia worked the arm instead in case you're wondering. I've seen them add such trite all over the wiki, including So Bad Its Horrible and I've seen the false claims removed by others when I did not do so myself. I can't correct them on dethroning moment though because their is no standard. So what's the point?

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

@Cider: I see what you're saying, but I think that subject needs its own thread.

Formerly Nolan Burke. Natch.

I'm all for keeping it. I'm very new hear as a troper, but I've been reading since last year, and it was all the "subjective" stuff that drew me into the site in the first place. TV Tropes had a distinct "voice" and that voice liked some things (Avatar:TLA, Doctor Who, Joss Whedon), and disliked others. As long as the subjective stuff is kept in its proper place, and doesn't get out of hand, in my humble opinion we should hold on to it.

What has it been...nine months since the last time this came up? And in a Special Efforts thread, no less?

We already decided the last time (and it was even put to a vote - something like six or seven hundred people voted) to keep them. They're strictly curated, on point and checked for accuracy or verification.

All I see are a bunch of new posters who have no understanding of the battles it took to keep those pages complaining about it.

BTW, DMOS has always been subjective. You may not agree with a certain example (in this case, a wrestling match), but every example is signed and noted to be that troper's personal opinion. That's different from SBIH, which (in almost every case) has objective evidence backing its inclusion on those pages.

edited 7th Jan '12 7:10:59 AM by crazyrabbits