What to do with Audience Reactions' Real Life pages.

Courtesy links for the major Audience Reactions: Tear Jerker, Awesome, Heartwarming, Funny, and the former Nightmare Fuel page.

As some of you may be aware of, the mods have decided to cut the Real Life section for Nightmare Fuel because

1) It was overwhelmed with natter/Troper Tales/controversial Flame Bait examples/etc., and...

2) "A RL section for an Audience Reaction serves no purpose. Unlike a trope, which may at least provide information about the origins or inspirations of the trope and how it can differ in fiction; it provides nothing even tangentially related to our mission."

The first issue can be fixed, and if someone took the time to curate it, stay fixed (note: I volunteer to be the one who keeps the Real Life sections (at least for the major ones) properly maintained if they're kept).

The second issue is less clear cut, and as it affects all Real Life Audience Reaction pages, should be discussed.

If this discussion finds the second issue to be incorrect, I suggest the mods bring back the Real Life page for Nightmare Fuel. If, instead, the discussion finds the second issue to be valid, I suggest that the mods cut all Real Life Audience Reactions right the fuck now.

Inconsistency is annoying. Either cut them all or not.

edited 3rd May '12 3:37:17 PM by Ekuran

Agreed with your last statement.

Personally, I don't care if real life stuff from the moments pages stay or go - but I think either all should be cut, or none of them should be.

I would be sad if they were all cut.

They should be cut, really. Just one more section that serves no functional purpose. Besides, the site is supposed to work in media, not real life.

I'm actually in agreement with both of these posts. Some of them are fairly entertaining, and from a personal standpoint I'd be sad to see them go. But from a standpoint of what's best for the site, they need to die and die soon - almost all are natter magnets, and given how off-mission they are, it's not worth the effort to try and keep them clean.

So when they're gone, I'll be sad, but that doesn't mean that they should stay.

edited 3rd May '12 6:34:38 PM by nrjxll

Shouldn't this be in Wiki Talk? This is a policy discussion, not a time/troper-intensive effort.

edited 3rd May '12 9:01:38 PM by Nocturna

"Discussions of changes to multiple articles or whole namespaces go here."

This kind of told me to go here.

Also, since most people seem to be in agreement, the Real Life Audience Reactions should probably be cut.

Only about a half-dozen people have responded so far. While I feel they should be cut, I think something like this needs a crowner.

edited 3rd May '12 9:16:05 PM by nrjxll

That sentence means, if I'm not mistaken, discussions along the lines of the Rape Tropes rename thread, the Badass cleanup thread, the Wick Migration thread, etc. — things where there's a known policy in place, and discussion needs to happen within that policy.

What to do with the Real Life pages for the Audience Reaction tropes seems like a policy change discussion to me, which goes in Wiki Talk. I could be wrong here; the mods could disagree with me, but that's my two cents.

On the topic of the thread itself, I would be sad to see the Heartwarming Moments Real Life page go (I don't really care about the others), but I'm not going to argue too hard to keep it or any of the others, as I'm sure they're a mess and they are off-goal for the wiki.

But I also agree with nrjxll that it's way, way too early to take any actions based on this thread.

edited 3rd May '12 9:37:05 PM by Nocturna

I don't see why the "positive" ones can't stay. I understand that they aren't necessary, keeping them would be inconsistant, real examples of audience reaction tropes are pointless, etc., but I like those pages. Although they are a mess with indentation and natter and all, and should be cleaned.

I SERIOUSLY disagree with the notion. Real Life examples are important precisely because they set inspirations: a heartwarming scene in fiction is probably borne out from thinking how people might feel during some real occasion. Black Death was inspiration for many fictional plagues, Battle of Thermoplilae was inspiration for Awesome Moments, and many Funny examples are rip-pffs of known funny incidents. Furthermore, how did we learn about all those real examples? From our experiences? No - that would be Troper Tales. We lear from obscure sources, too, but mostly from boooks, dokus etc. So far none of the mods could explain why a book about ebola isn't a legitimate Nightmare Fuel, or why a documental film about Spartans isn't a legitimate Awesome Moment, or why the book about the death of Sadako (the one with thouthand paper birds) isn't a legitimate Tear Jerker.

So a crowner we need, and we need a crowner that would stand open for AT LEAST A WEEK (so that people across the board had time to get on it).

edited 4th May '12 3:26:20 AM by SS13

What in the world are you talking about? A book about ebola has nothing to do with a real life section. Make a page about the book and record Nightmare Fuel there. It has no place in RL. I don't believe I have to explain this.

Nightmare Fuel real life isn't coming back. If you want to kill all other real life sections for the sake of consistency, be my guest. I had no intention to kill them.

To Lu 127: I certainly don't want to cut anything, but what exactly is the moderators' stance on audience reactions? Can we keep the rest of Real Life sections for now? This is certainly better than "consistency".

edited 4th May '12 5:19:29 AM by SS13

Come to think of it, I rescind my earlier stance. Keeping the real life sections for Awesome/, Funny/, and Heartwarming/ actually may be a good idea - since those are all positive things. In fact, they can even be good to look at on days that you're feeling down. NightmareFuel/, on the other hand, is a bit too negative - and having a real life section for that can be too much of a downer.

Yes, they should definitely all go.

An indefensible slippery slope led to their creation. "We're analyzing fiction, so let's make pages about tropes. Well, I suppose a climax that inspires a certain feeling is a sort of trope, right? Wait, people are now just noting any scene that causes that feeling, trope or not. Okay, let's give those people a large section of the site to compile those scenes, and let's just cut those associated tropes. Oh, and now they want to write about things unconnected with fiction that also give them feelings of some kind. Okay, why not?"

Lists of heartwarming animals or awesome mountains are like lists of easy recipes or stock quotes. TONS of merit - but absolutely zero relevance to this site.

That makes sense.

Cut them all.

The positive ones aren't inherently worthless, but they just have nothing to do with what this wiki is about. Collecting funny or awesome stories is just off-mission.

Oppose here. No one has taken some consistency here - either cut all RL examples from everything, all examples from Audience Reactions, or keep them all. I don't see what sets Audience Reaction RL examples apart from other Audience Reactions or Real Life examples.

I think they should all be kept.

Can we at least split off the Sports reactions out of the RL sections and give them their own articles? Those are really the only Real Life reactions that I would be extremely disappointed to see gone.

My opinion. With the nature of how easily audience reactions can be a problem having a audience reation real life entry on a page is kinda asking for trouble. Some may be fine but I am willing to bet quite a few are more trouble then they are worth or are flame bait entries.

edited 5th May '12 2:02:03 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I would feel sad to see either the Real Life sections or the Audience Reaction sections go - but I do see certain instances where Real Life and Audience Reaction don't go well together, because they can lead to Flame Bait or whatever.

In the context of some subjectives like Moral Event Horizon, one point sometimes raised is that while most people would probably agree with applying that phrase to something like the holocaust, less obvious examples would be more heatedly disputed.

I think a similar problem exists here, albeit not in the same sense. Calling something like a particular political speech awesome might offend other users who don't consider it awesome at all, and such examples risk resulting in edit wars, let alone natter. This isn't to say we should never risk such things, but as has been pointed out it's tangential to our mission anyway, so it's probably not worth having to deal with.

On a sidenote, I'm surprised popular opinion comes down so clearly in favour of removing audience reactions' real life pages. If that's the case, why wasn't it done already?

edited 6th May '12 1:44:27 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

Its probably because the people here think it needs to be done, but don't want it to be done.

And only a few tropers know AR's Real Life pages may be dropped, so they're waiting for more tropers to chime in.

That's some faulty logic there. That's like saying: "C'mon guys. We have examples of tropes. We have tropes about fish. So why do you people want to remove my page on examples of fish? Let's have some consistency here!"

Real Life examples of media tropes can be relevant to our analysis of media tropes. Audience Reactions to media tropes can be relevant to our analysis of media tropes. Audience Reactions to Real Life non-tropes has nothing to do with our analysis of media tropes.

edited 12th May '12 1:45:21 AM by Routerie