TV Tropes 2.0: Database level redesign (Not in active development yet)

Hey guys. Curious about something else now: What's the plan for RedLinks?

I noticed in the discussion about renaming YKTTW that there's some debate over whether or not we should require new works pages to go through it (hence why naming it something like "Trope Builder" would be inadequate). My understanding of the current policy is that

• New trope pages are required to go through YKTTW. If it hasn't, even if it's a valid trope, it gets zapped.
• Work pages are not required to go through YKTTW, but it is highly recommended if you want a good description.
• If you add an example on a trope from a work that doesn't yet have a page, wick it anyway so that someone who sees the red link would realize that the page doesn't exist yet and it should be made. It is in response to this policy that we have Works Pages Are A Free Launch, which is nice but seems to conflict with the second policy a little bit.

But with the 2.0 site, it would be impossible to add an example without linking it to an existing work. The system would give you suggestions for works to link to. But if the work doesn't have a page yet, what happens? Does the system reject the example, or do you create a new "stub" work? This "work" would presumably collect every example from it out there — even if there's only one or two — but would have no description or metadata about it, would not be indexed, etc.

I wonder if under the new system, all descriptions must pass through the new-YKTTW. This means that you can link examples to the "stub" work just fine, but if you wanted to flesh it out, it would have to go through what's basically a peer review. I think this is the best solution because

• It combines the best of the conflicting policies; you would be able to categorize every conceivable work, but if you wanted to describe it, you would have the community's feedback on how to properly introduce it.
• It allows you to completely lock out new tropes that haven't gone through new-YKTTW. Presumably, if you tried linking an example to a trope that doesn't exist, then the system would block you telling you that it's not a trope (yet).
• It allows the community to pitch in on things like indexing and such. I read the Edit Banned thread frequently enough and see a lot of people in there who get suspended because they launch work pages without indexing them. The new system may prompt them to do that on their own, but if the description process goes through new-YKTTW, it would allow others to index it as well (especially if auto-indexing by metadata — e.g. Czech Films from The '80s — is happening as well).
• This may be a misunderstanding of our Content Policy, but I understand that you are allowed to add an example from a P5-cut work from a trope page if it's not pornographic or otherwise doesn't violate the content policy in and of itself. If so, the 2.0 site would recognize if you're trying to add a bad example to a cut work. What I don't know, however, is if the system will distinguish between red links for works that don't yet exist but should and works that did once exist but don't anymore (and shouldn't come back). If it does not, then in theory it may still be possible to list all examples of an otherwise cut work (with no description, metadata, or actual explicit examples), and I don't know if you guys want that.
• Related to that, cut works would have no metadata or indexing or anything like that. Given our page on the Permanent Red Link Club, would we want to list cut works? My understanding is that a big reason the P5 cut all those works was that indexing them amounted to a "list of porn we like," so I don't know that the Permanent Red Link Club is even something we'd want to advertise. Perhaps if you tried to create or link to a cut trope or work, you'd get a message saying "this trope/work was cut because [reason]." Combined with the "no new tropes without proper launch" policy, the only possible red link you'll see on the wiki would be a work that doesn't yet exist.^note Or perhaps It Looks Like This, which is designed solely to demonstrate what a Red Link looks like and was apparently locked to keep it that way. Nicely done, guys

Fighteer explains the approach earlier in this thread, but I think I can explain just to assure you on the following point:

A Red Link would still be possible, and it would continue to collect wicks as work pages do now. The difference would be when someone tries to make an article page for it, the examples would automatically Cross Wick themselves onto the page.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

How to deal with cut anythings is a bit of an issue in 2.0. I'll have to comment tomorrow, though.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

My understanding is that a Red Link will still be a Red Link. Tropes that link to it will not be visible all collected together, but if someone wants to write a description for it, they'll be there, waiting. Boom, your description already has all these tropes linked to it, congrats!

edit:

edited 15th Feb '16 3:38:50 PM by HeraldAlberich

Making a redlink would, first, prompt the user to disambiguate it by suggesting articles that they might have intended to link to (including virtual articles that may already exist). If the user confirms that they meant to do it, then they would be offered the chance to say what the redlink is: a work, creator, etc., and give it basic metadata. This would go into a repository of virtual articles.

When a user clicks on a redlink, it would go to a screen showing all of the existing virtual links to it, much like the normal article interface but lacking description, image, and other elements. They would then be offered the chance to create the real article by filling in the missing elements.

Note that redlinks will only be allowed for media articles. Trope redlinks will be prohibited.

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

Most of the examples on trope pages I see not leading to actual pages would probably be advertising examples, since ads most of the time don't have pages, but they're still rife with tropes. Possibly some obscure works, but those seem to at least get a page once in a while.

Check out my fanfiction!

We intend to create linkable articles for media categories that don't collect specific work pages. Things like Real Life, Advertising, and such. You'd use the category as the article link in the example, and it would be suppressed in the category view.

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

Where would the line be drawn between those and examples that come from works that could have pages, but don't? Some ads to get pages, after all.

Check out my fanfiction!

I suppose it would depend on what you chose as the linking object: a work article or a media category. For categories like Film, Literature, etc., you would be required to use a work link for examples, although it could be a redlink.

edited 15th Feb '16 9:10:33 PM by Fighteer

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

So only some categories would allow category links rather than work links? I assume there would be a way to search for the ones linked to categories in case you make a work page in that category, since there could be examples that won't show up automatically like they would if they were work-linked.

Check out my fanfiction!

There would have to be such a search function, yes.

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

Why wouldn't we want to force a Creator or certain products for advertising?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Please ask that again in lexically correct English.

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

Why make wicks to articles for media categories that don't collect specific work pages instead of the Creators who generate them?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Suggesting that we should have a Creator article for, say, Coca Cola if we are going to list advertising trope examples for it? Not a bad idea, but it does imply a whole lot of redlinking until someone makes all those articles.

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

Noting here that I've just created a draft document 2.0 about the design plan. It's a bit messy right now.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Good to have a writeup to refer to. As a suggestion, it seems to me that automatic crosswicking is a huge advantage of 2.0, and so a plain-language explanation along the lines of "adding an example to a trope will automatically add the corresponding example to the work and vice-versa" should go in the Purpose folder.

It's not so much that it adds the example in the corresponding work/trope as much as it's a single example that can be viewed from both work and trope pages.

Check out my fanfiction!

Added.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

You guys have a lot of stuff to work on, apparently. Will this happen before 2017?

(Asking ~drewski about that)

(Recommeding that we first sort out what kind of translation support system we use as discussed in this thread - translation support is prep work that may be more opportune when done before other work)

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I was gone for nearly three months working on other things and I'd just seen Septimus' thread on discussion pages and was planning to write a response when I fell off the map. Looking at the discussion in this thread from last month:

This seems similar to an idea I've had, or at least liked. What sort of Q's actually get A'd in the discussion page anymore, certainly that wouldn't go just as well in one of the broader categories? I don't want to imply the discussion pages are completely abandoned, but they do seem to be increasingly deserted, something that has been bugging me for a long time.

My impression has been that the threads on the media forums are for discussion of the work itself, while the discussion pages are for discussion of the page itself. The problem is that the discussion-page wasteland has led to much of what might otherwise take place in the discussion page instead drifting to TRS, Trope Talk, and Projects (and to some degree Ask the Tropers), which of course means there's that much less that takes place on the discussion page making them even more of a wasteland. This, in turn, has arguably contributed to some of the dysfunction and distrust surrounding TRS, and makes them that much more of a problem; because there isn't much of a community around individual tropes, problems that might not otherwise be that serious are that much quicker to end up in TRS and in the hands of its own insular community, which of course worsens the TRS backlog as well (even if 2.0 should make it largely a thing of the past by making link-fixing, the biggest cause of threads bogging down, irrelevant). Golden Seals in post 200 suggests that under the status quo, "discussions on specific examples and defining tropes...should go in a Discussion thread" as opposed to ATT, but I almost get the sense you might as well say those questions should go in the forums.

Considering the somewhat inherently subjective nature of the lines between tropes, the deprecation of the discussion pages may have been somewhat inevitable once the wiki grew beyond the size where most tropers would be familiar with the vast majority of tropes. Any "discussion on specific examples or defining tropes" is likely to end up incorporating other tropes under its purview.

There is definitely a tension between the simple-thread format of the discussion pages and the Lost and Found/Trope Finder/Ask the Tropers family of pages on the one hand, and the forum format on the other; the latter seems to be perceived to be more unfriendly, especially to newbies and with the gingerbread on. On the other hand, the former format doesn't work well with threads with a ton of posts, which TRS threads and lengthy cleanups can balloon into easily. I can see the argument that trying to have the two formats coexist on the same page could end up burying the latter format since it's easier to take part in the former style of conversation. Having some sort of "preview" function, like showing just the first post on the discussion page similar to how YKTTW (de facto) works now, could be good for that purpose.

Perhaps the question to ask that would best illuminate a solution is, what would happen to Ask The Tropers? A number of things talked about there would seem to be of a type that would be worth attaching to a particular page. Would those things become forums if we ditched the simple-thread format? Relatedly, what about the Long-Term Projects threads? Here, Septimus had an idea for "per-element thread links" that would link to a given thread for all elements of a given type, such as all quotes linking to the quotes thread. Thinking about it, I decided that some of the LT Ps might work better under an Ask the Tropers-style "mini-forum" format, which I guess would mean expanding them to full fora if we ditched that format.

That's one of a class of LT Ps involving more complex clean-up that take a laser-like focus on one page at a time (often forks for specific classes of TRS problems), which is harder to make fit. The problem is that if the thread is currently focusing on Trope A, and someone comes in to the thread from Trope B, then talking about Trope B might come off as derailing the thread. It's a good idea to tag any page slated for eventually being covered by the thread (assuming the thread is working its way down an index or other list of pages), but it almost seems like the best solution is to somehow link to just the posts that concern that trope, if it has any. It could be moved to the mini-forum format, but that would greatly change the way it works, and it doesn't help that the thread may also include general discussion on how the thread itself should go (especially early on). More likely the reverse would be an option: the LT Ps that I suggested moving to the mini-forum format might work better on a link-to-just-the-relevant-posts system. And here's another wrinkle: Fighteer has suggested moving WMG, Headscratchers, and maybe Moments to some sort of "discussion" system. I think that means moving WMG and Moments to your first category of discussion, on grounds that they are purely about a single troper's opinion and so don't have much need or desire to be edited by anyone else, which is slightly different from how you're dividing them up (although post 250 suggests he's open to something closer to the second category). Anyway, post 250 also suggests he'd want to move them to the mini-forum format, so we likely wouldn't be dropping that completely, although there have been experiments in moving WMG and the old Just Bugs Me to full-fledged fora that never went anywhere.

Regarding the draft Administrivia page, at some point there's going to need to be an explanation that's less jargon-filled and more plain-English, but I can understand if that's further in the future.

edited 24th Feb '16 7:16:17 PM by MorganWick

Speaking of the discussion pages, I have a question. I've often in the past used the discussion pages to post really long edit reasons, and just posted the link to that in the actual edit reason. So:

1. Is that actually what you're supposed to do in the first place?

2. What would be the replacement for that in 2.0? Forum threads? An new "expandable" edit reason box?

I don't really have anything specific in mind to support "overly long" edit reasons. I feel that those should be used as sparingly as possible. However, it may be possible to tag a particular Discussion thread as applying to a specific example. This way you could indicate, "Hey, someone wants to talk about this very specific thing," and draw people's attention to it.

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

~Morgan Wick: I can try to work on something less "jargon filled", but you'll have to point out what is the jargon that's the problem.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman