Lost in Space
Tropes attached to real things should only be those that apply generally to fictional works that depict them. Anything else constitutes gossip, which we do not permit.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
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Who is "we"? Evidently a lot of people like and enjoy trope lists on Useful Notes pages, especially the ones devoted to historical events. It seems pretty likely that the many many people who have edited those pages over the years would outnumber those calling for them to be gutted.
Lost in Space
Because something wrong has been overlooked does not make it less wrong. We are TV Tropes, not Real Life Gossip.
edited 5th Aug '15 9:35:02 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
No, there has to be a We to decide what is wrong and what is not wrong. There are a lot of people, many many TV tropes users over the years, that have believed that real life tropes on Useful Notes articles are not wrong. I'd bet a large sum of money that they greatly outnumber the people who say it is wrong. And as I've already pointed out there is nothing on the Useful Notes page that says Useful Notes pages can't have trope lists. If the people who own this site do think that, they should say so.
As I pointed out in the other thread that drew my attention, the Wars of the Roses article was edited over a period of 2 1/2 years by a lot of people, all of whom added to it and changed it. Now all that work is gone. What is left is two essentially useless paragraphs and a list of works.
Lost in Space
Past investment is not evidence in favor of a thing's desirability. People bitched about Troper Tales and Fetish Fuel and there was a lot more work involved. This is trivial.
And do you really need to find every policy thread about this and individually bump it? We get that you're upset, but the volume of identical complaints does not improve the quality of your case.
edited 5th Aug '15 9:52:16 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
If we aren't supposed to comment in any particular thread then that thread can and should be locked. Nor is the Sunk Cost Fallacy applicable. It costs nothing and harms no one to add a trope to a Useful Notes thread.
And frankly I think that yes I do need to post in each of these threads—none of which I have opened, by the way. As I've noted, we had many, many people over the years edit these pages. They are currently being wiped out by one person, having been given the go-ahead by one other person. Troper Phoenix was right to start those threads to at least give other people heads-up of what they were doing. More people, ideally some of the people that have edited these threads over the years, need to know about this.
edited 5th Aug '15 10:03:05 AM by jamespolk
No, the other one.
Having edited something doesn't give anyone more say in anything done with it. And appealing to how much work has gone into something is a Sunk Cost Fallacy.
The wiki is only mostly democratic. Things that have to do with the direction of the site has in several cases beend decided by a few people. And, in this case, I agree with that. This is not a gossip site. This is not a site to complain about real people.
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Sunk Cost Fallacy requires a cost. If my $20 million per year first baseman is hitting .165, I should not continue to play him. There is no cost to leaving these pages alone.
As for "gossip" and "complaining", it isn't obvious how a list of tropes on Wars of the Roses is gossiping or complaining. What it was, was making observations about history, which is a thing some people like to do. First trope that was removed on that page:
- All for Nothing: Edward of Westminster's death at Tewkesbury ended Margaret of Anjou's quest to reclaim England, and left her with nothing to show for sixteen years of war. She ended her life exactly as she began, as a poor relation of the King of France. Richard III's death at Bosworth undid all the Yorkists' gains. By 1485, the sons of the Lancastrian nobility that had been forced from power in 1461 were firmly in control of the country.
Is that gossip or complaining? Or is it someone noting how all Margaret's work on behalf of herself and her family came to ashes? Another:
- Dark Horse Victory: Does King Henry VI end up on the throne? What about his son? Or one of the Yorkists? Nope, it's some distant cousin of the old Lancastrian king who was living in Wales.
Is that gossip or complaining? Or is that someone observing that the Wars of the Roses ended with a minor Welsh nobleman ascending to the throne of England?
It is correct to state that TV Tropes is not always a democracy, but it's sometimes a democracy; there are votes for things on the forums. And all one has to do is look at the number of people who have edited to find out what the majority opinion is. And if whoever owns and operates this site—I don't know who that is, now that it isn't Fast Eddie anymore—decides that no Useful Notes page should have a trope list, then that person/those people should put that rule down on the Useful Notes page or somewhere else. Then discussion would be over. Failing that those of us who like the pages the way they are can try to convince people to keep them that way.
edited 5th Aug '15 10:19:31 AM by jamespolk
Well, tropes listed on ancient wars are "gossip"? Some liberal terminology there.
More generally, I have little issue with Historical Domain stuff being troped because too many times fact and fiction are not clearly distinguished. However, I want to be rather strict with any iffy trope usage.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
No, the other one.
And yes, that's gossip. Just because it happened doesn't make it not gossip. Personally, when it comes to Historical Domain stuff, I'd be a little more lenient, depending on what trope it is, since, as mentioned, history is often written and less true than what you read in newspapers. Unless it's about the NRLEP tropes, in which case nothing goes, no matter how old it is.
But yes, we do have votes for a lot of stuff. And those are pretty much always followed.
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"It makes people think it's okay to do that"
A lot of people do think it's OK to do that. I do. The folks who've edited those pages do. You are proceeding from the assumption that these trope lists are self-evidently bad.
"And yes, that's gossip. Just because it happened doesn't make it not gossip."
Well, it did happen, and in this case it happened over 500 years ago. This is not gossip in any sense.
No, the other one.
God-Mayor of Sim-Kind
Since when did having an list of tropes about Audie Murphy is considered obscene? I'd see if it was filled with hate; but to me, that list qualifies as triva.
Answer no master, never the slave Carry your dreams down into the grave Every heart, like every soul, equal to break
Lost in Space
Nobody said anything about obscene. It's a combination of factors including:
- Troping real people is gossip, little more than Troper Tales told about someone else.
- Tropes don't actually happen in RL; we allow examples as long as they are not problematic, but RL lacks the narrative intent required for tropes to occur.
- Real people are not characters; they cannot be reduced to a set of tropes.
- Allowing tropes about any real life person is a slippery slope, because users will see them and assume that it's allowed in a general sense.
- There is always room for argument about any RL trope example, even up to the facts themselves, inviting natter.
edited 5th Aug '15 12:51:28 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
God-Mayor of Sim-Kind
So the logical solution would be to merge some (if not all) of the info from the examples into a fence of text then?
Answer no master, never the slave Carry your dreams down into the grave Every heart, like every soul, equal to break
Pointed here from another thread.
Well, some of the tropes listed on that and other pages are Trivia, which, I believe, are allowed to be listed either on a Creator's page or on a Trivia subpage. Then some are about his works, which I don't think anyone has a problem with. The problem is that often pages about real life people attract tropes that are supposed to be No Real Life Examples Please. And there are some tropes that, by definition, cannot apply to real life; they get shoehorned in anyway. Then there are some people and events that do attract complaining, gushing, negativity, natter, and/or political soapboxing.
While we could allow only certain types of tropes on certain types of real life pages, that would complicate the maintenance of all pages about real people or events. Lack of consistency could result in well-meaning tropers to adding things that are in violation of the policy for a given page because they saw it done on another similar page that would allow it.
edited 5th Aug '15 1:07:22 PM by phoenix
Figure of Hourai
Whilst this is an argument against allowing tropes to be listed for people, it doesn't serve as an argument against listing tropes for events; many real life events serve as an inspiration for future fictional works and even then tropes such as Screwed Up Royals indicate that, yes, you can apply fictional archetypes to real life, since that's where they started.
It just gets stranger when deleting trope entries for (finished) wars: strategy and tactics tropes can definitely be applied to a finalised conflict, especially in such cases as the conflict informed fiction, even if the battle or anything in question is rarely portrayed. People might be too complex to break down into categories, but I don't see much of an argument for being unable to break down and analyse historical events.
The way that the patterns show up always struck me as a good indication that story patterns don't spring up from nothing. As above, especially in the case of war, politics, and governance. How these played out in real life is directly relevant to fictional portrayals.
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Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
There is a world of difference between being inspired by history and being history, you are conflating the two. History does not follow fictional narratives, story structures, or methods of characterization. While historical events can inspire and serve as a base for a story they aren't a story at all. Even realistic/immersive fiction plays out in a manner distinctly different from history to create a story in the first place.
This still allows the simple acknowledgement that fiction can be inspired by history. That was supposed to be the general function of the real life sections but hasn't quite worked out as intended. We shouldn't be spreading the problems of the assorted RL sections to other parts of the wiki.
edited 6th Aug '15 12:56:28 AM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?
so i made a new avatar
Apologies for the bump, but I have a genuine question.
Okay, so it's been said that troping real life events and real people is generally bad and we want to avoid it, right?
...so, what makes the North Korea page able to stand as it is? I sincerely want to know the answer to this question.
To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."
No, the other one.
A lot of that, if not everything, can probably be safely deleted. Anything that is on the NRLEP list should be deleted. Anything else I'm not entirely sure of whether it falls under the "as long as it doesn't cause problems" clause, or if it should also be deleted.
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This is one case where the lack of any clear policy or easy place to find the policies is a big negative. If "tropes associated with this country/person/etc" aren't ok, they should all be deleted immediately (which is obviously a big task, but we should get on it). Right now it's sometimes ok and sometimes not, with no standard.
Why can we trope Lets Players but not Historical People? I'm not looking to gossip about them, no, but I just want to know what is the exact policy we have regarding the troping boundaries between real life and fiction, and when they intersect.
edited 17th Jun '17 5:51:36 PM by Wuz
Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
Lets players frequently are playing a game with narrative elements including personas and characters just for their shows. Real life people and historical events lack things like a narrative and are a record of things that happened not a fictional construct.
Who watches the watchmen?
Lost in Space
Honestly, Let's Players, Twitch streamers, reviewers, reactors, and similar online personalities are a borderline case, since they are rarely producing original, creative content. To be tropable, they must create a distinct, memetic viewing experience — they must be known for particular gimmicks, extravagant personality traits, catch phrases, or something else that makes them more than just "a person recording themselves playing video games or talking about media".
I've recorded Let's Plays, but I don't pretend that the mere fact of doing so means I get a TV Tropes article.
edited 18th Jun '17 6:57:41 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Hi, I'm a little rusty on wiki policy.
When is it considered proper / improper to add a trope list to a real-world article (in addition to its depictions in fiction)? The U.S. Presidents each get one. The Men and Woman of Downing Street do not. World War I has a list of tropes attached. The Yugolav Wars do not.
edited 29th Jul '15 12:30:58 PM by johnnyfog
I'm a skeptical squirrel