Removing complaining, bashing and other negativity from the wiki

This contested entry for Oscar Bait.

• This trend was mercilessly spoofed by Tropic Thunder, in which action star Tugg Speedman previously made a transparently Oscar Bait movie called Simple Jack, about a mentally challenged farm hand. The film-within-a-film was a total box office bomb, and called one of the worst films of all time. Kirk Lazarus later explains to him that the successful Oscar Bait films described above worked because the actors didn't go, in his words, "full retard", instead playing their characters as more mildly challenged in order to fish for awards without alienating the audience.
  Kirk Lazarus: Everybody knows you never go full retard.
  Tugg Speedman: What do you mean?
  Kirk Lazarus: Check it out. Dustin Hoffman, Rain Man, look retarded, act retarded, not retarded. Counted toothpicks, cheated cards. Autistic, sho'. Not retarded. You know Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump. Slow, yes. Retarded, maybe. Braces on his legs. But he charmed the pants off Nixon and won a ping-pong competition. That ain't retarded. Peter Sellers, Being There. Infantile, yes. Retarded, no. You went full retard, man. Never go full retard. You don't buy that? Ask Sean Penn, 2001, i am sam. Remember? Went full retard, went home empty handed...

Do we really need that bashing and negativity?

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_history.php?article=Film.Paul

What about this one?

• It helps to know that calling someone a "spaz" in England is considered equivalent to most discrimination and hate speech.calling someone a "retard" in North America.

edited 9th Sep '16 5:21:00 AM by tsstevens

The first example seems to be in-universe, which should always be fine. We don't insist that works avoid complaining and bashing. Just contributors to the Wiki.

The second, aside from being a bit Conversation On The Main Page-y, looks fine. Saying "the word X can be offensive" does not count as an offensive use of word X except under extreme and unusual circumstances which I'm not seeing here.

Ah, that goes a long way to explaining, thank you.

I'm not convinced that quotes from works should get a free pass, personally. If a work used the word "nigger", I'd think the Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgement would prevent people from quoting it all over the damn wiki. Why should "retard" be any different? Do we really need to plaster those quotes from Tropic Thunder and I Wanna Be the Guy all over the place?

We seek to be Clear Concise Witty when it comes to describing tropes and works. We don't attempt to pre-filter information so as to present a view that is inoffensive to as many people as possible. We don't put trigger warnings on every article that might bother someone. This isn't kindergarten.

That said, there is a certain amount of discretion exercised in the choice of quotes to document from a work. If there are multiple quotes that adequately illustrate a trope example, then ones that do not contain grossly offensive language should be preferred. I cannot speak to the works in question: it seems that it is impossible to avoid such language entirely when talking about a work that intentionally seeks to offend or shock. That said, there is no law saying that every example must have a quote attached.

edited 9th Sep '16 6:57:01 PM by Fighteer

Some did not want this example removed. I can well understand they want this particular quote used.

edited 9th Sep '16 9:19:38 PM by tsstevens

I do apologize, I meant no malice in saying so but they did not want this example deleted.

Found this page filled with a lot of negativity. Should we clean or cut it?

Trimmed the negativity that I thought could go.

I found this entry in the Headscratchers page for the Disney film Moana.

"Is it me, or is Disney seeming to fall into the trap of using the same two character types as protagonists in their movies these days? The last four or five of them have had the premise of a young, perky and/or idealistic female character (Rapunzel, Vanellope, Anna, Judy Hopps, Moana) teaming up for an adventure of some sort with a usually older, savvy, and somewhat grumpy male character who doesn't want to go on the adventure at first, but eventually turns around (Eugene, Ralph, Kristoff, Nick Wild, Maui), and the two wind up becoming friends. It doesn't bother me very much if the relationship is done right - in most cases, they are - but I still don't really want Disney to take every fairy tale they haven't adapted yet and just turn it into a generic buddy comedy. (Especially since every one of these films has also presented a plot-twist villain and a Third-Act Misunderstanding of some sort, which I really don't want to see again in Moana.)"

It reads more like an entry that was written back when Headscrachers was still called It Just Bugs Me to me.

Most likely. I think nowadays entries that don't actually talk about plot points are to be deleted on sight.

Doesn't seem to skirt into the area of complaining...it's asking whether or not Disney uses the same storytelling convention and if so why.

Found this on Trolls:

* Broken Base: When the teaser trailer came out, people were quick to dislike it for its overly-modern flare, especially since it involved the trolls (a 1950s toy brand that became popular throughout the 70s and 90s) dancing and twerking to a remix of Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae). Some viewers liked it for the trolls themselves being cute whereas many accused it of trying to "be hip" and aim for today's generation of kids rather than kids in general. The backlash was so bad that even one of the workers Dream Works posted an (now deleted) tweet that talked shit about it as well.

• The reception became more mixed when the main trailer was released. Some felt it was an improvement over the teaser and actually looked decent. Others fear it's going to be another Shark Tale: a movie that showcases the worst elements of Dream Works, including out-of-place modern pop songs in a fantasy setting (such as The Sound of Silence, a song now popularly being used in Sad Affleck memes), celebrity voices for the sake of having celebrities, (including Icona Pop and Gwen Stefani who aren't even actresses), focusing on bright colors to try and keep the audience’s attention and saying 'cool' things like "solid burn" and "oh, snap".
• The worst example came from a clip involving a cloud guy doing an overly-long high five with Branch, including actions such as "gear shift", "helicopter" and "Last Supper" (in a fantasy world where technology, religion and humans don't exist)

Ignoring the Example Indentation issues with the entry, Broken Base is supposed to be about something that divides the fandom with both positive and negative opinions listed. But I can't help notice that most of the text appears to be negative in tone with only one and half positive sentences.

If there's anything salvageable about the entry, I think it might need to be re-written.

Nuked the twitter reference from orbit, as well as straight whining with nothing to link to there's no point. Gave the rest a trim.

Looking at the quote page for Giftedly Bad - despite the trope being an in-universe/no-real life trope, most of the quotes seem to just be Take Thats at various real-life works, and looking through the page history a lot of the examples appear to have been added by frequent ban-evader Johnnyfog (albeit before he was banned from the site).

Wow. Some of them don't even seem to be that, I can only assume tropers are adding them as examples of giftedly bad sentences.

I believe using quote pages to get around RL example bans was one of the things that brought johnnyfog into conflict with the mods to begin with. I personally wouldn't object to giving that page a good cleaning.

I removed the entire real life folder as a start.

To an unrelated thing: Good part of the description of the No Sympathy for Grudgeholders is complaining about the trope, specially the following bit: "This trope isn't done well most of the time and can easily lead to Designated Villain. In fact, two of the only ways to do it right is by using Revenge by Proxy or extreme Disproportionate Retribution."

Opinions?

edited 28th Sep '16 6:59:27 AM by MagBas

Wiped the whinging on how it's used, but I'm kind of hard pressed on how it could be tidied up further.

A very long entry about Star Wars was added to Seasonal Rot recently that seems complainy, particularly the Return of the Jedi section; I know for a fact it's many people's favorite in the whole series, including mine, incidentally, and the entry includes loaded statements like the Ewoks being "reviled" and the Leia-is-a-Skywalker reveal being an Ass Pull. From my experience in the fandom, the former are Base Breaking Characters at worst and the latter is near-universally accepted.

Thoughts?

edited 30th Sep '16 3:57:41 PM by HamburgerTime

Nix it. As much hate as there is for the prequels (hate that I wholeheartedly agree with, but that's neither here nor there), they've also got more than enough defenders to qualify as Contested Sequels at worst. The case against Rot J is even more specious.

Got it. I was concerned my own bias (I'm one of those crazy few who loves all of them) was making me see the entry as biased, which is why I brought it here!

The Leia reveal also isn't an Asspull because it was foreshadowed in Empire.

It was directly revealed there was another, but was there any Foreshadowing that it was Leia?