YKTTW entries are overflowing

IIRC, in around July there was only 100 pages of YKTTW entries. At the end of September, there are 120 already. (It's 121 as I'm checking now) It represents a problem: lots of tropes didn't recieve enough attention to grow and launch, even if it's a good one; And even when a trope finally launches, it'll take very long to achieve that, generally speaking.

In other words, there are too much YKTTW entries for us to actually be able to deal with, and they're still increasing. Is there any way to solve this? It'd be very painful to see YKTTW growing 30 more pages at the end of 2012. With lots of entries that has around 3 hats or so, all mostly ready for launch.

We could cap it, but inspiration doesn't happen according to slots available. A drive to launch items ready for launch would be a good play.

I would suggest a drive to discard bad entries. That's more important than pushing ready ones to launch.

This Special Efforts thread was created to help with this very issue, but hasn't seen much activity. To start with I'd recommend discarding the ones (no doubt many) which aren't tropeworthy, are duplicates, or have other obvious issues meaning they'll never launch. After weeding those out it may be easier to focus on the slower process of launching good ones.

YKTTW Salvage List, for ease of use.

Can't give much on solution of the problem as I am not a YKTTW expert. Discarding bad entries and launching good ones surely sounds like an option here. If too many YKTTWs split the workforce to much, a cap might help as well.

Yeah, good call. Getting rid of the things not worth working is the better play, rather than pushing for launches. Has the added benefit of helping people understand what is worth YKTTW.

I'm not particularly keen on the idea of a cap, and if we have one then it needs to be implemented after discarding bad YKTT Ws, since we currently have no real idea how many (potentially) good and active ones there are.

Clearer guidelines on discarding — not another policy page, just a slightly longer OP in the SE thread I linked — may help; I don't currently know if a short and long-dead draft which hasn't been declared untropeworthy, a duplicate, or similar can be discarded. A glance through older pages of YKTTW suggests that's the most common thing there, and trying to launch every one just won't work.

Speaking as someone who has successfully salvaged old abandoned entries before, I'm leery of making discarding too easy. In fact, I recently went hunting for one I'd been thinking of salvaging, and it was gone, so I'll have to start from scratch if I want to make that trope. (Couldn't even find it on the launch/discard list, and I know I had it flagged. My fault for waiting too long I suppose, but still....)

I'm fine with making it easier, though. Things are getting a bit swamped over there, and I can live with the occasional potentially-good proposal getting discarded.

Any way to Bribe Our Way to Victory? Not beating tropers may be good incentive.

I've got a YKTTW cooking, seems agonizingly slow for something I know is a trope, so I've tried to get more active on the system. Everything needs some Wiki Magic, maybe if I spread some around a little will get back to me.

If we're going to filter through and focus on getting things done: the zero and single hats are the primary discard candidates, and I'd guess the four and five are the primary "get to work and launch" ones. Can we sort or filter by hats?

Can we mark the "Tropeworthy" tagged as some kind of priority review? Clean out some clutter from the ones that aren't tropes, and answer the question for those that are?

Filtering out the untropeworthy is a good first step.

EDIT: In hindsight I really shouldn't have bothered this thread about it, I'll sort them out myself later on.

edited 19th Jul '15 1:51:06 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

That's pretty much what happens for anyone who uses YKTTW. I'm bumping my entries like, 10 times a day, I guess? But still no hope.

Floating an idea here: a YKTTW-dedicated moderator with authority to dump bad ones on the spot. What thinkest the wiki mind?

edited 2nd Oct '12 12:01:25 PM by Fighteer

I dump bad YKTTWs on the spot, isn't that what everyone does?

I rarely venture in there. I didn't know we actively moderated it, to be honest.

I think only the staff and the YKTTW entry's owner should be able to discard a YKTTW entry, since otherwise anyone could discard any entry for any reason.

Don't get me wrong, I'm open to discussion about whether or not something's tropeworthy, but at the very least I'd rather it be discussed before it be scrapped, so that I know it isn't scrapped based on a misunderstanding of what the trope idea is about or anything like that.

Same here...I don't even know if my YKTT Ws are still in the system.

Insta-scrapping bad entries - I am sure this is already done. And I doubt it needs any mods for that.

There was a large WT thread about improving YKKTW a while ago, and as far as I can tell a lot of profitable discussion came from it (and I think the current tag-system?), but it's locked now. Should it be unlocked again (I hollered some time ago, to no response)? It's much more general than only reducing backlog, though.

Willbyr: Have you looked here?

Septimus: It is? Sure doesn't seem like that to me from the launch list.

edited 2nd Oct '12 12:59:20 PM by Telcontar

Discarding bad YKTTWs on the spot surely can be done - the main issue is to define the "salvageable" portion of the YKTTWs there.

For now, complaint and Stock Phrase YKTTWs are discardable, but some other entries I see did actually have discarding consensus at the end but no one bothered to scrap them. Others simply fell off the radar. I am not sure if the rather crowded YKTTW interface somehow limits the amount of work that is being done there (due to the locked-in feeling).

Hidden Faced Matt's first idea is right out, since a) this would likely increase the backlog, b) the restore button is already there to make abuse less ... abusing and c) from my Google wanders it seems that YKTTW holds discarded or launched entries far longer than the launch list, so I figure we could easily expand it to hold even old YKTTWs so that they can be restored even if discarded during a drive and thus fell off the current page (of course, IANAP^note I am not a programmer).

The second idea is a good safeguard, but we need to ensure that consensus is followed through and that discussion actually takes place.

I think a YKTTW cap is more of a long-term idea, and I worry that it would lead to more tropes being launched without YKTTW and thus lose quality.

Actually, I hadn't, thanks for posting that. *sigh* Still no hats, I see...

Maybe some sort of barrier between initial suggestion and proceeding into the comment phase? In other words, if it can't get out of 'suggestion' level quickly, we chuck it?

I'm not sure that that's a good idea. YKTTW tends to move at the speed of interest, which is not necessarily a mark of quality of the draft or a mark of the tropeworthiness (or lack thereof). As an example from personal experience, Double Meaning took three months to make it through; I doubt it would ever have made it past such a "suggestion" stage, even though it was a straightforward Missing Supertrope.

^^ Comments are often what reveals something as chuck-worthy.

Okay, and I think problems are starting. This is my recent YKTTW entry. Well, a mod just discard it all of a sudden... without giving any reason to show why it's discarded. At least I expect when discarding other's entries you should let the OP know why. Or the whole thing becomes pointless.

Maybe we need a YKTTW launch/discard reason box.

edited 3rd Oct '12 4:10:45 PM by tryourbreast