TV Tropes called out by The Mary Sue

Pretty sure you meant the other way around on that last bit, Vyctorian.

Well, if only those are noticed who fall off the cliff and not those who stay on top of it, you want the good people to fall off the cliff, i.e. the good examples to be noticed and the bad people to stay on top, i.e. the bad examples not to be noticed.

It's not really the best allegory for this case.

Programming and surgery have a lot of things in common: Don't start removing colons until you know what you're doing.

I keep a Google News alert going for "TV Tropes", so I see if things go up about us, good or bad. It's kinda useful.

Overall, I think this incident was a net positive for us; it showed that we have a fair amount of support out there to stand up to Google censorship, and I've put a bunch of people in my contacts to talk to should it happen again.

It also served to remind us that there's value in our documenting even unpleasant tropes — I think perhaps we focus overmuch on the problems we see all the time and don't notice the value. We've had a tendency to assume that the only people who care about the rape tropes are rape fetishists looking for wank material, for instance, because we notice it when they're a problem.

It should also remind us not to pay too much heed to our obsessive critics, many of whom are not rational in the least in their dislike of this site, or at least their stated reasons for it. People like rationalizing "I hate them because they banned me!" into all kinds of pseudo-reasons.

A brighter future for a darker age.

Who is this we? Many of us know that unpleasant tropes can make good fiction.

Some people seem to think that because the things discussed in some tropes are "objectively" wrong, the tropes themselves should not exist. Anyone with a modicum of common sense will tell you that's ridiculous — you can't get rid of an unpleasant thing by pretending it's not there. However, these folks have unusually loud voices and tend to be self-appointed Moral Guardians.

Balanced against that is the fact that there is a very real culture out there that fetishizes creepiness. Any open site like TV Tropes tends to become a hangout for these folks unless we take strong measures to prevent it. Our current content policy (and the backlash to it) demonstrates this very starkly.

edited 2nd Jul '12 7:54:17 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I don't think there's a single culture that fetishizes creepiness, I think there's some people who are creepy, and of course, this is the internet. There's a rule of large numbers here too. If 1% of a large number puts something creepy on a page, then the page will have a lot of creepiness.

edited 2nd Jul '12 8:01:12 AM by animeg3282

Well, it's multiple subcultures, but they do undeniably exist, and the Internet is the perfect place for like to attract like.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I do not think I know about these subcultures.

They're definitely out there. And some have been here on this site for quite a while. Remember the Fetish thread?

We Are Our Avatars Forever (Now on Discord by invitation, PM)

No. I've never even seen the fetish thread.

It got renamed to "The Nunnery", and is largely harmless. Several mods go there a lot and keep it fairly sane.

A brighter future for a darker age.

The site is having a frustrating dilemma, because both of those "sides" are complaining at the same time. When the policy was established, people were afraid that it would lead to the site deteriorating because of cuts. But on the other hand the problem was exaggerated and people perceived the site of being at risk because of certain content.

Similar issue came up with moderation. Some people think the mods are too arbitrary and not transparent enough, and are afraid. Others think that there's not enough moderation control (I honestly think this side is dubious).

Now using Trivialis handle.

That last side has to do with the folks that want us to be kindergarten teachers and personally supervise every nook and cranny of the wiki. It also has to do with the fact that there are some folks out there who have dedicated themselves to searching out those nooks and crannies for stuff that the moderators missed, and throwing it in our faces as "proof" of the theory that we willingly harbor creeps.

On the other hand, most of the calls for transparency strike me as a projection of personal disagreement with the rules. "I don't like this decision, therefore I want to nitpick the way in which it was made." Clearly not all of the disagreements take this form, but enough of them do that we're very skeptical.

edited 2nd Jul '12 11:48:59 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Of course, that's assuming the two are entirely separate concerns. I figure this is as good a point as any to explain a couple of my recent posts, so get ready for a long post.

Recently, as most of us probably already know, there were quite a few complaints about lack of communication between the wiki's leadership and the normal tropers, in the "appeal to the moderation" thread. At the time, I had been thinking of some new software ideas, that would make moderation easier, to pitch to Eddie, so I decided that I could kill two birds with one stone. It would give Eddie an opportunity to take a look at this software, and give him a chance to post and reassure the people calling for more communication.

Obviously, due to the nature of this thing, I couldn't resort to PMs. Nor could I explain what I was trying to do publicly. Everything, at least for the initial part, would have to be done openly, without me telling anyone my real reasons.

So I made my post...and the mods and Eddie apparently missed the opportunity. It honestly would have taken no more than a couple of minutes for Eddie to type a post saying he agreed to listen to me, but he didn't. And in doing so, he provided another argument (however flimsy) for both the side calling for more transparency ("OMG Eddie won't even talk to his own forum heralds!") and the side calling for more moderation ("OMG Eddie won't listen to new ideas about how to improve moderation!") Not exactly a good indicator.

The fact that I'm explaining it now, of course, means the chance is gone, so Eddie doesn't have an opportunity to win points anymore. (I'll probably send the PM with my software suggestions later this week.)

In short, I'm now fully behind the idea of a PR mod, and I'm not entirely sure we need to wait for another tabloid-ish article from The Mary Sue or anywhere else. Little gaffes like that can add up to be just as damaging as bigger issues like the content cuts, after all.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

I think this isn't helped by the fact that the wiki infers that there's no such thing as an "Objectively wrong" trope. With the Tropes Are Not Bad section of Tropes Are Tools saying things like:

Along with the no negativity rules leaves some people feeling it's better to not talk about something morally wrong rather than have to treat it like it isn't morally wrong & bad and what not.

Not saying the no negativity rules are bad, or that the wiki creates those attitudes, there's always going to be prudes, and the internet is practically made for bitching and whining about whatever offends one's self, so I get why those things are there.

edited 2nd Jul '12 2:39:31 PM by Ghilz

The issue isn't whether we treat it as morally wrong or not. That's irrelevant and actually not the wiki's job. Our job is to document, "This work contains this trope, used in this manner." To be quite honest, the people who moralize about it in the example are the ones missing the point.

• X Rapes Y
• X Rapes Y, And That's Terrible

The second is extraneous. No person should need to be told that rape is bad, but even if they do, this is fiction. Fiction has different rules than reality. We should be talking about the fictional use of the trope, not how it relates to real life (unless of course the relationship to real life is part of the trope, like Values Dissonance).

Edit: The above being said, there are some phenomena that we've decided are too inherently creepy to be allowed on the wiki, precisely because it gets the Moral Guardians in a tizzy and makes us all look creepy by contamination.

edited 2nd Jul '12 3:08:03 PM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

It doesn't make us look creepy, people who would misrepresent us make it look creepy. It's not this site's fault that a few idiots jump to conclusions about this site based on seeing a bit of creepy stuff in some parts of it.

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

I think I'll say this: I've been looking at what other forums say about us, and my conclusion is that any one person's opinion of us comes from a pre-set bias. Those who didn't like it when we renamed "Spikefication" and enforced norms assume the paedophilia argument is an excuse to censor anything sexual, and we are in permanent decline due to a dictatorial management. Those who were driven off by our wiki's occasional creepiness and unreadable articles think our clean-up is too little too late and only a matter of window-dressing. There's plenty of evidence for either side to pick up. I'm saddened, not for the wiki which will be little affected, but for human rationality.

I'll add that anyone who believes an article that cites forum posts (including SA) to prove a point is probably only trying to confirm what they already think.

A blog that gets updated on a geological timescale.

And a gold star for post 143. Couldn't have put it better myself.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

As I've said before, the issue is that the wiki, at the present point in time, is far too dependent on external sources of funding such as ad revenue to ignore these issues. (To be honest, having read Adsense policies, I'm slightly worried we may not be going far enough to prevent more Google incidents, but that's for another thread.)

There is nothing preventing us, once we move to a more independent financial model, to take a second look at the cut content. At that point it will be a question of our value as a reference site versus our value as being family-friendly and not offensive. Ultimately, that choice will rest with Eddie. All we ordinary tropers (and while I wish I had more clout as a forum herald, I don't) can do is offer our opinions.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

except none of the pedo-stuff will come back.

Keeper of The Celestial Flame

lu 127> Do they seriously not know it's a Google issue? We can't exactly ignore our money resources.

...and the quality is already seen as dropping at least in some parts. Which, theoretically, further harms Google's ads... already more concerned with subjects other than income or its own reputation.
And disagreement with modera^H^H^H er, not proper position already incurs bans - just like in old good wikipedia everyone disagreeing with the hive brain's "NPOV" is clearly a sockpuppet of trolls and commiemutanttraitors.
People never wonder how the world goes round, but the picture grows rather curious, doesn't it?

Fighteer> Some people seem to think that because the things discussed in some tropes are "objectively" wrong, the tropes themselves should not exist. Anyone with a modicum of common sense will tell you that's ridiculous — you can't get rid of an unpleasant thing by pretending it's not there.

May your words reach the wikipedia colony's ears... but then, would they go beyond ears?

But you see, if this line wasn't a quote from you, i'd probably be banned. It's not a guess or an overblown speculation. I already was and is, on the censorship subforum.
Moreover, since anything done from under moderators' hats can't be attributed to anyone in particular, this sort of crap effectively sticks to everyone with a hat. Including, yes, personally yousrself. Think about this. Do you consider this situation acceptable or not?

...And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense - R.W.Wood

I haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about, T Beholder, and your incredibly awkward formatting doesn't help.

We have never banned anyone merely for having an opinion and never will. However, deliberately misrepresenting the moderators' position to stir up trouble is most definitely ban-worthy. You received a P5 ban for strawmanning our position, exactly as you are doing right now. Consider this a final warning.

edited 7th Jul '12 11:36:34 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"