Real Life section maintenance

Do we need to add Bourgeois Bumpkin to the crowner or can I go ahead and change the page directly?

I think we can try cleaning it first, and see if that solves it.

So, Nazi Nobleman. While there were certainly noblemen who were nazis, the description doesn't shy away from clearly describing a villain. Which is something we have an absolute no policy on. Of course, the description is also one of those that details a little too much about exactly how the character appears, to the point of a caricature, which probably isn't the case most of the time.

There's also the "Real Life — Exceptions" folder. I don't see why that's necessary under any circumstances, nor why it's even on topic. Many of those also use descriptors like "subverted" or "defied", which implies that this trope was the standard. The Analysis.Nazi Nobleman page disagrees with that, mainly detailing that it was a whole lot more complicated than that, and mostly not the case.

I see nothing worthwhile those examples could provide that the Analysis page doesn't, really.

RL doesn't "defy" or "subvert" a trope, in any case.

I'll delete the exceptions folder.

Opinions about the rest? While I read it as a villain trope, as I mentioned, the description is somewhat problematic, so I wonder if it's not appropriate to bring it up in the crowner.

I think it's pretty safe to cut them as well.

This Is for Emphasis, Bitch! claims that it's In-Universe Examples Only, and yet it has a Real Life folder.

Now, according to the history page, ccoa added a commented-out "In-Universe examples ONLY, please." notice in 2012, four hours later Dragon Quest Z added the In-Universe Examples Only pothole before the example list, and a few days later Willbyr removed the notice that ccoa had added for some reason... and yet at no point during that did anyone actually remove the folder for real life examples, which got renamed to "Other" a few days after the first notice was put on, then to "Other Bitches", and finally renamed to "Real Life" again years later.

So... Does it or does it not allow real-life examples?

edited 11th May '18 7:33:54 PM by MarqFJA

Never Found the Body has a boatload of Real Life examples. The thing is, the trope is about how if the body isn't found, the character is likely to return. So almost all of them aren't really about the trope.

I'm thinking the section should just be ix-nayed altogether. I'm pretty sure it would just keep getting munged up.

edited 12th May '18 4:27:55 PM by DracMonster

I don't see a problem with having an RL section per se. The trope does occur in real life.

It sounds like the section needs a good cleanup, though.

edited 13th May '18 7:58:27 AM by GnomeTitan

I'm on the fence on it. On one hand, sure, it does happen in real life. On the other, it's mostly a narrative device, which doesn't occur in real life.

I read through the now deleted examples. There might be some that fit. Josef Mengele is one, since he was believed dead but wasn't. Not sure if others.

Of the two remaining, I don't think they're examples. Legal presumption of death is a general "example". It's not an example in and of itself, but sets up how real life examples could happen. Osama bin Laden is just speculation.

It's brought up here that Worst News Judgment Ever might be No Real Life. Thoughts?

It would pretty much have to be, right? It's a great big ROCEJ violation as well as what amounts to gossip.

A good chunk of it is general examples as well.

It's pretty much explicitly about gossip most of the time. Specifically, news media reporting about gossip, which isn't exactly gossip in itself.

Some of it is talking about the trope itself, both specifically and generically. If the example only talks about an event being reported over another event, I think that's a generic example, since it doesn't specify the actual example, i.e. what source actually makes that judgement.

Speaking of casting judgement, this is what the trope is about. On one hand, it's not about casting judgement on people, but on news organisations. Those are more of a fair target, but they're still real life entities. I'm kind of undecided on that point. On the other hand, many of the examples are casting judgement on people, the people the news are about, and judging them to be more or less important. This is probably a more serious issue.

A few are about comparing two people who died and the news coverage they got. Those are probably non-examples.

As for ROCEJ, most of it doesn't hit that, I believe. Most of it doesn't seem to be politically charged.

Finally, the trope itself is kind of flawed in how it describes what's important news. If you compare a celebrity dying versus a bunch of people dying in a disaster, there's an argument that the latter is more objectively important. However, for the people watching the news, what's more important, the loss of a celebrity that affects their lives by bringing entertainment, or some unknown people dying in some faraway land that won't affect the news viewers' lives in any way whatsoever?

Sounds like what's consider bad news judgment is subjective enough that it doesn't work for real life.

Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good summary of the situation and a good reason to purge it.

Should Forever War have a real life section? Some of the conflicts mentioned there are hot-button current issues, and others are wars that have long since ended and therefore probably don't meet the trope definition.

The main part of the definition is, "Two factions are fighting over... something. The original reason has either been completely forgotten or reduced to a historical footnote. They've been fighting for so long that no one can remember anything except the war." The rest is basically just exploring reasons and ways it can play out.

Most real wars are about land ownership. As long as that's still on the table as a prominent reason to fight the war, it's not an example. Most examples listed are of this type.

A few comments on the examples:

• Aws and Karjaz war. It wasn't "forever", but longer than a lifetime or two, and they forgot why. Well, according to the example. As far as I know, it was originally about land dispute like most wars, and evolved to taking revenge according to the "eye for an eye" customs. Doesn't fit to my knowledge.
• The Hundred Years' War. This was a succession war, and while the original reason was perhaps forgotten, it's not like they were fighting over nothing significant. It was always about rule of the land. Not an example.
• The Cold War wasn't actually a war. It was an arms race.
• The War on Terror (and similar) also isn't a war. It's more of a concept or ideology.
• Bacteria and viruses... Seriously?

For the record, Forever War was brought up for discussion in mid-ish 2015, and the vote was clearly to keep RL examples (2y vs 13n votes).

edit: First brought up by Very Melon on April 28th.

edited 12th Jun '18 1:03:05 PM by Nohbody

Yeah, I don't think real life examples should be banned by definition. I think what's there are shoehorns. Also the argument then was that it was a narrative trope, which it isn't IMO. The examples there are mostly just "long wars", which doesn't fit the spirit of the trope.

Should Homophobic Hate Crime have a real life section?

Well, I'm of two minds. It's not technically against any policy I'm aware of, but on the other hand, I'm not sure we want to list murders. It's more a case of whether we want that on the site.

Isn't the point of NRLEP to avoid flame wars and or things that are slandering real people? I'm not sure how listing widely-accepted examples of this happening is flame-baity. Maybe if people started listing Ripped from the Headlines examples, or writing examples in a disrespectful way, but I don't see any evidence of that so far.

This is a trope that is definitely Truth in Television. Also, the events that are listed right now ^note  I added both of them have a clear relation to fiction and media- one inspired a large number of works [1], and the other is discussed in a documentary with a page on this wiki. Arguably, the attention given to Matthew Shepard's murder allowed for the production and acclaim of mainstream movies that use this trope (Boys Don't Cry, Brokeback Mountain), as most pre-1998 examples are from underground, queer-made productions.

The current examples aren't problematic, so I would leave it as is.