Content Policy Discussion

Whether it's the moderation, the original 5P or a new group altogether doesn't really matter, the point is that's it's doable.

Has there ever been a case where someone admitted to being attracted to that form ink on paper outside of Troper Tales or Fetish Fuel? There was that one Troper with the "loli rape bunker", but that was in a discussion, not on an actual page.

As for your comment on KnJ, here's a story for you all to give some perspective on what's generally considered "creepy":

In my country, Sweden, it is illegal to produce, sell, buy, own and even look at images that sexualise children. Very few countries have gone this far to stop child molestation, and judging from research done on the subject, it doesn't appear to be very effective.

In any case, in 2010 a man was arrested for possession of child pornography; he was (and is) one of Sweden's most famous manga translators, and through his work he had obtained 51 images that could be consider child porn under Swedish law. In 2012, the case was examined in the Supreme Court of Sweden. The man was declared innocent since of the original 51 images, only one was considered realistic enough, and it was seen as acceptable considering his line of work.

One of the images explicitly depicts a grown man ejaculating inside a small child. The Supreme Court of a country where loli/shotacon is clearly illegal didn't think a picture showing something far more offensive than all chapters of KnJ combined was objectionable.

This decision was met by approval from people all over Sweden, from personal blogs to law professors, who'd been discussing if it's reasonable to separate fictional child molestation from fictional murder or fictional bullying (to make a long story short: the answer was an unanimous "nuh-uh"). There were those that decried the decision on account of the images being disgusting, but they were few and far between.

Moral of the story: the Supreme Court of Sweden and a large amount of law professors and practitioner would disagree on whether the stuff you've cut is too disgusting to even talk about. No one said that these images were good and they'd probably not willingly read or watch what's been deleted on here, but they've clearly stated that this kind of material is no different from other disagreeable topics.

So my question to you all is: why don't you? You don't have to find sexualisation of characters that look like children acceptable, but what makes it so different from all the other stuff I hope you disagree with, other than that you feel especially disgusted by this? Are you really saying you're going this far just because you've had more trouble with alleged paedophiles than any other group expressing views you don't like? No, I don't want to see erotic images of children either, but I know the difference between fiction and reality. I also know the difference between being creeped out and being hurt.

That's a very wonderful argument (and one that may have been raised up more than once before, with different phrasing, but definitely not this detailed), Lindaeus, but unfortunately, Eddie and Janitor have made it clear that they won't be swayed by such points.

There's something you need to remember here. While there may well be a legally binding precedent for something like this in Sweden, TV Tropes is not hosted in Sweden, so it is not subject to the interpretation of law used in Swedish courts. It is subject to the law as it is applied in the nation in which the site is hosted.

Too bad we're not Sweden. We have our standards and they're different from you. It looks like you'll just have to accept that our site evolved in a culture that wasn't Sweden.

I would like to remind everyone that the laws aren't the main driving force in this issue, anyway. Even if stuff didn't violate US child porn/pedophilia laws, it'd cut get cut anway if Eddie still thinks they violate his personal standards of what constitutes child porn/pedo-pandering.

This site's standards aren't really attached to any country's legality on the matter.

Note that there is also a difference between "mature people can have a conversation about it" and "our user-base can handle having a page on it." A huge difference. To give an example that doesn't involve anything related to this forum, we frown on negativity when describing works. Part of this is that we want to have a culture of celebrating fiction, but another big part is that experience has show that allowing unchecked negativity on our main wiki pages is a bad idea.

If a large portion of our user base sees a statement on a work's page bashing that work, and they don't much like the work either, they seem to be unable to resist the urge to add a statement of their own about how awful the work is. Over the course of just a few weeks—or in the worst cases, just days—pages for polarizing works go from describing the work and its tropes to This work sucks. Have I mentioned how much it sucks? This part really sucks. Except this other part sucks even more. How the work uses this trope sucks. This work sucks so much that you should actively keep it away from your friends. This work sucks so much that it's not even worth using as toilet paper. In case it's not clear, this work is awful, and you should feel bad for liking it. Mind you, this is before the fans of the work try to start defending it on the page, which really ups the Wiki Schizophrenia.

With a sufficiently mature user-base, a little bit of negativity here and there isn't a problem. On sites without such a user-base—by which I mean any sufficiently large public site on the internet—banning negativity from the main pages is the best way to stop every negative comment from being the seed for a hatesplosion. Our user-base as a whole just can't handle negativity on the main pages, even if there are many tropers—perhaps even a majority—who can.

Such is also the way with some of these topics. This is not the main reason for P5, but it is part of it.

Here's the deal in a nutshell, Lindaeus: Fast Eddie takes money out of his own pocket to pay to keep this site up, for the use and enjoyment of what is really, when you get down to brass tacks, a bunch of strangers. He's decided that he doesn't want to use his money to enable those strangers to get their collective rocks off at the idea of sexualized children. Further, he's looked at the traffic logs, and determined that a fair bit of the bandwidth he pays for (his own money, remember) was coming from sites that were not sites he wanted to be even remotely connected to. So he decided that he wasn't going to pay to support that content anymore.

It's really that simple. It's the way the internet works. The person who owns the site gets to make the rules. Eddie owns the site. He gets to make the rules. If you think the rules should be different, there are two ways you can accomplish that. The first is to come up with an argument that convinces Eddie to change his mind. (n.b. "I think the rules should be different" isn't good enough.) Or you can pony up enough money to buy the site from him, and then you get to make the rules.

Just out of curiosity (and somewhat off-topic, for which I apologize), but I had thought Eddie said he had stopped paying out of pocket for this site a while back, and it was running entirely off ads and the other assorted sources of revenue. Or did I misunderstand?

The wiki side supports itself. The forum side is a net loss— it costs more than it brings in. The wiki usually can cover the shortfall, but not by much. Anything unexpected, like an interruption in the revenue stream or server upgrades, still comes out of his pocket and Janitor's.

Hm? Janitor is still paying for the site? I thought Fast Eddie was handling that by himself now.

No, Janitor is still active on the real world side of this site's finances and stuff, last I heard. Most of us don't know that because it's been a couple of years since she last posted around here and practically nobody — not even the Big E himself — mentions her anymore, and indeed I only caught this fact by pure chance sometime within the last year.

edited 2nd Nov '12 3:45:22 PM by MarqFJA

Some things to keep in mind about this website and its policies:

• A professional publication can all pick and choose what content they want in to appear publicly in advance, and discuss sensitive topics in a constructive way that keeps out the cranks. TV Tropes can't. We do not have a practical way of pre-filtering edits or the creation of new pages. We can merely set the rules and fix things that break the rules if we find them, which could take days or years. We aren't an encyclopedia or an academic journal.
• While various folks have said that we want this website to be academic friendly, we are ultimately about having fun, and Fast Eddie consider certain topics to be repugnant rather than fun. We aren't a shock site.
• Fast Eddie does not want TV Tropes to become the pathway for folks being exposed to topics that he considers outside his idea of what a "family friendly" website should cover. See his remarks about things that the innocent should not be exposed to. We aren't a porn directory.

edited 2nd Nov '12 4:10:03 PM by Catbert

I will point out we are not solely about having fun, nor solely about being academic. Ultimately, we are about documenting patterns in fiction, for whatever purpose, and we strive to offer that to the widest possible range of uses without compromising our quality.

If people use our site for fun, fine. If people use our site for serious research, fine. We can do both.

If this requires us to cut objectionable materials such as porn, fine. If this requires us to document objectionable materials such as porn, fine. The practical concerns of what is best for the wiki are the ultimate guidelines, and morality, while nice, can take a place a little further down the line. Right now, those concerns demand the cuts, which conveniently line up with moral issues. That may not always be the case...and that's fine, too.

@458: "Further, he's looked at the traffic logs, and determined that a fair bit of the bandwidth he pays for (his own money, remember) was coming from sites that were not sites he wanted to be even remotely connected to."

Got a reference for this? That doesn't sound quite like anything I remember hearing.

I don't think that was discussed publicly.

Actually, I think I remember him saying that once. I believe it's referring to the inbound links.

edit: wrong thread.

edited 3rd Nov '12 9:32:08 AM by Meeble

Yes, inbound links. Page views from links on fap sites. We were paying for the bandwidth for folks to come here in search of jack-off material.

I'm well aware this site is situated in Eddieland and not Sweden. I thought I had made it clear that I realise the fact that Eddie owns this site and is allowed to do what he wants with it. I'm also aware that he hasn't done all of this just because he can, even if I don't agree that the situation ever called for it.

I didn't give you this little lesson in Swedish history to challenge that, it was to show that values differ, even on sexualisation of children, something you give the impression of being unaware of every once in a while.

While we're on the subject, let me add something I should have added yesterday:

You've said before that I should just accept that Eddie owns the site. I have. What I've been trying to do is question his (and your) reasons for these mass deletions. No one does anything just because s/he can. You have other reasons than that.

How do I know this? Because you've used them:

• Having pages on Creepy™ material attracts Creepy™ users.
• It would turn TV Tropes into an encyclopedia of works that (according to you) sexualise children.
• It lowers your revenue and reputation.
• It traumatises users who've been subjected to molestation (that one's not nearly as good an argument as you think it is, but I'll let you decide if you want to discuss it or not).

You can't bring up these arguments and then refuse to defend them when we who don't agree with Eddie's views challenge them. I repeat: "Eddie's the boss" is an argument for why he should be allowed to do something to the site, but not for why it would be a good thing in the first place.

There once was a page on an anime (Popotan, for those of you who weren't there or don't remember) that, while it was still up, I essentially treated like a project of mine. I checked it daily^note I might as well take the opportunity to point out the difference between not having a life and not having a lot to do, making note of any differences, be they on the page itself or on other pages referencing it. I'm a single user. You're an entire team of moderators. It's not too hard to check "recent wiki activity", and it's not too hard to figure out what pages might attract the wrong kinds of edits. That's what the members of the 5P do (whether they find the right pages is another question entirely).

See what I did there? I answered an argument that's not based on the fact that Eddie owns TV Tropes. May I continue to do so?

That's what I've been trying to do. I've come to realise that I don't represent a large enough group of Tropers to ever change his mind, but I still feel like expressing my opinion. It'll probably do some good.

How much is the site worth?

Could you please make your posts a bit shorter? Am I correct to assume that you want us to review all arguments pro policy instead of just saying "Admin fiat"?

I could try. And yes, basically. If I or anyone else can point out a flaw in your arguments, it would be nice if you presented your opinion on that instead of saying "Eddie wills it".

Except that, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what any of us thinks, because Eddie's word is final. We could debate back and forth all we want, it's not going to change anything. So why engage in a pointless activity?

Because that's actually a horrible way to run a wiki?

I'm not looking to change anyone's opinion. I know Eddie and I have such different ideologies that it would be next to impossible. I only wish to explain why I don't think your (that is, everyone on Eddie's side) arguments work.

If Eddie isn't here at all, then it would indeed be pointless. But I assume he doesn't sit behind his computer pretending that there aren't any arguments against what he's doing. That would be most unhealthy.

Morganite: Thank you.

edited 3rd Nov '12 11:15:15 AM by Lindaeus