Real Life section maintenance (New Crowner 19 Feb 2024)

I take it that's a greenlight to clean up Reliably Unreliable Guns?

Max, yes.

Also, Landslide Election and Stuffed into the Fridge have been added to the crowner by Doctor Cooper.

AGAIN without saying a thing about adding them. That tropes are discussed in the thread doesn't necessarily mean they'll be added to the crowner, so specifying that they are being added would be a big help.

I se that Mooks is now directly linked on the list so it's actually indexed on it. Great.

Technically Landslide Election meets the requirements to call NRLEP, but given a) today is a holiday (for some, anyway ), b) it's the weekend, and c) the entries were added without announcement, I'm going to wait on doing so for the moment.

Pending:

• Landslide Election: Added 29th Dec '15 at 06:42:56 PM, 9:1 (10)
• Stuffed into the Fridge: Added 29th Dec '15 at 09:51:01 AM, 9:0

Oh, my bad. Should Landslide Election be taken back off the NRLEP list for now? Also, I did add the generic types of Real life Landslide Elections back into the page, but with a disclaimer not to list specifics. Is that fine?

edited 31st Dec '15 10:53:26 AM by DDRMASTERM

With.the frequency of stealth additions, perhaps the 48 hour clock shouldn't start until someone actually mentions it in the thread.

How many of those actually fit the actual examples of the trope? They should cover what fictional examples are like, not what Real Life examples are like. They're not generic "examples" as much as they're part of the description for the trope.

I've proposed that before.

edited 31st Dec '15 1:27:02 PM by AnotherDuck

Zyf, I personally wouldn't mind, but this is hardly the first time Doctor Cooper has silently added things AFTER being told to post about the additions.

There are times that "burn it all to the ground and then salt the earth", in regards to RL sections of trope pages, is a really appealing option...

I changed it to specify the situations they occur rather than just real life. If any aren't common enough in fiction to deserve mentioning, they can be removed. It's probably worth keeping a reference as to why they happen in my opinion.

I shouldn't have put that Sinkhole in the reason.

What do you mean? I changed things around to try and fix that.

edited 31st Dec '15 5:47:46 PM by DDRMASTERM

Since General Failure no longer allows Real Life examples (for good reasons) Hollywood Tactics probably shouldn't either.

• For starters Hollywood Tactics is by definition about misconceptions by writers of fiction about military tactics, so listing actual military personnel is misuse.
• Benefit of hindsight makes criticizing people for decisions that turned out to be bad ones too easy. We know how those battles ended up and they didn't. We have knowledge about their enemies and the terrain they might not have had. Many of the people listed might haven been Wrong for the Right Reasons or just really unlucky

I wouldn't mind Hollywood Tactics losing its RL section, personally, though "Narrative trope" seems a bit of an ill fit for the reason to make it NRLEP, and everything else except maybe "too common" doesn't really fit at all.

Pending, with the wait until Monday to call:

• Landslide Election: Added 29th Dec '15 at 06:42:56 PM, 3.67:1 (14)
• Stuffed into the Fridge: Added 29th Dec '15 at 09:51:01 AM, 13:0

edited 2nd Jan '16 10:25:06 AM by Nohbody

Separate post to not confuse things:

Should we implement the "timer starts after announcing in the thread" suggestion by Zyffr, in this post?

It wouldn't apply to currently open items, since they've all been announced, but if there is agreement for that modification of the minimum "cook" time requirement anything after that point would apply the revised timing.

Seems like a good idea to me.

Hollywood Tactics has a lot of hindsight and modern knowledge involved in the examples, and many also ignore the specific circumstances in many of those battles that led to the tactics involved.

More generally, they're about specific commanders who take actions that end up not working so well. I find that the trope is more about presenting those tactics as sound under normal circumstances, so it's not quite the same thing.

I agree with cutting the real life section. It's way too open to armchair quarterbacking with the arrogance of hindsight.

While we're at it some of the sinkholes in a description should be fixed.

edited 3rd Jan '16 4:41:57 AM by maxwellsilver

Failures on Ice asks not to add Real life examples because it is quite common.

I agree. It's basically "people fall on ice". In fiction it's used for characterisation, comedy, and other plots. In Real Life, it's an accident like anything else with nothing to it other than "it happens".

Yeah, Failures on Ice is pure People Sit on Chairs material in RL. Added to the crowner as of this post.

Regarding Hollywood Tactics, at the risk of an Obvious Rule Patch, we may want to consider another listing category, working title "Other shit we don't need on the wiki".

Pending, with the wait until Monday to call:

• Landslide Election: Added 29th Dec '15 at 06:42:56 PM, 4:1 (15)
• Stuffed into the Fridge: Added 29th Dec '15 at 09:51:01 AM, 14:0

edited 3rd Jan '16 6:18:29 PM by Nohbody

I think Hollywood Tactics would fit under "Tropes Attracting Flamebait, Complaining, and Natter" if anything. I would say that includes tropes that attract speculation, shoehorning, and generic "examples". Then again, the last bit would hold true for just about any trope with a Real Life section ever. Still, that category is about attracting problems, rather than the tropes being problematic in and of themselves.

We could maybe rename it to just "Problem Magnet" and list the various types of problems that occur.

And Prayer of Malice? Maybe a Flame Bait magnet.

edited 3rd Jan '16 7:12:28 PM by DoctorCooper

The Flamebait (or whatever it gets renamed to, see below) category works, but given the... contentious issue, shall we say, of the effectiveness of faith, given the lack of scientific evidence, the "impossible in RL" category is also an option, where we already list several other spirituality tropes IIRC.

I like the "problem magnet" rename option, actually. As for the entry description, how about this:

• Some subjects lend themselves too easily to issues that can cause problems for wiki pages, even if they don't violate any existing rules. The following are common issues that would make real life examples a problem for the wiki; not an all-inclusive list:
  • Controversial subjects that attract arguments, irrelevant commentary only tangentially related to the subject, and Complaining.
  • "Generic" examples that don't actually contribute to understanding of the tropes.
  • Shoehorning something in real life to fit the trope.
  • Attracting speculation, whether using information available to tropers that wasn't available at the time of the example or hypothesizing how something in real life could qualify for the trope under certain conditions. Examples for tropes that aren't explicitly based on audience opinions are to be about what is, not what might be or might have been.

Now, that last part regarding speculation is a bit on the clunky side, but it's the best I can come up with at the moment. As with all of the rest of my suggestion, I'm open to input on how to better word the category description.

Current text, for reference:

• Tropes Attracting Flamebait, Complaining, and Natter: Controversial subjects can and often do lead to arguments, irrelevant commentary only tangentially related to the subject, and complaining, none of which are desired by the wiki. As such tropes about those subjects are subject to prohibitions against real life examples.

edited 3rd Jan '16 7:26:05 PM by Nohbody

Could probably mention a specific point with flamebait, in particular with politics and religion, since those are probably the most common subjects for that matter.

The speculation bit probably doesn't need the last sentence. Maybe it can be shortened by mentioning outside knowledge or something instead.

Revised version:

• Some subjects lend themselves too easily to issues that can cause problems for wiki pages, even if they don't violate any existing rules. The following are common issues that would make real life examples a problem for the wiki (not an all-inclusive list):
  • Controversial subjects like religion and politics that attract arguments and Flame Bait, irrelevant commentary only tangentially related to the subject, and Complaining.
  • "Generic" examples that don't actually contribute to understanding of the tropes.
  • Shoehorning something in real life to fit the trope.
  • Attracting speculation, whether using outside information that wasn't available to those present at the time of the example, or hypothesizing how something in real life could qualify for the trope under certain conditions.

(And that's as far as I'm revising it until there are some more contributors to the discussion, plus it's approaching my bedtime IRL. )

edited 3rd Jan '16 9:22:35 PM by Nohbody