Sagwa Wallbangers Page I made

What happened to it? I spent a good chunk of time writing it and now it's gone.

A decision was made to cut Wall Bangers here. Part of the reason was redundancy with Dethroning Moment Of Suck.

Way, way too hasty a decision. One with very little participation from the Troper body, all taking place in an eight-day discussion. The people in the "discussion" — it was really just a short list of "me-too" posts— only made argument that was rules-based. That is, a strict application of the letter, with no consideration of the intent.

If no case can be made that the section is harmful, it should be restored. By "harmful" I mean actually causing harm to the wiki, not some vague declaration of it being "off-mission." And, frankly, it should be proven that that section of the wiki cannot have its own "mission" which does not harm the wiki's mission.

This is not a case like Troper Tales or Fetish Fuel. Harm to the wiki could be demonstrated for those two. That is not the case here.

I noticed it was cut soon after I posted this. I was a little shocked.

x2 It's gone and a good chunk of people voted. Good riddance, I say.

The page is still in Google Cache so hurry while it's still there.

We are talking about WallBangers.Sagwa The Chinese Siamese Cat, yes? It is still avaliable to a moderator, if the text is useful somewhere.

We are talking about the whole Wallbangers namespace. I could care less about the Sagwa page, whatever that is.

Oh, and the idea that 30 total votes is a significant quorum for a change of this size is just silly.

edited 28th Dec '15 4:31:26 AM by eyebones

I promise that it won't be missed.

And I promise you it will. Is. Really, how about a reply about the railroading? Can we get the title of this thread renamed to "Wallbangers Namespace Is Being Deleted"?

I think nobody has any idea that a change this big is even being contemplated. '

edited 28th Dec '15 8:29:22 AM by eyebones

You of all people should understand the reasoning behind certain aggressive decisions. This, however, has been on the table for years. There's never been a convincing "keep" argument that doesn't amount to, "We really, really, really want to bitch about stuff."

Nor is there a meaningful way to engage the wiki body. You also know that.

edited 28th Dec '15 8:30:10 AM by Fighteer

The size of the namespace to be deleted is the reason it was run for a whole week. It did not receive very many votes, which to me is usually an indicator that there isn't much interest in the issue.

Well, I think that THAT is what needs to be fixed. The namespace shouldn't be required to post a "keep" vote, but it probably could, given a chance.

Slow down and think about what happens when a popular namespace is zapped. Many, many, many pageviews go away. Track the pageviews for Wallbangers then decide if you want to wreck into the site's revenue stream by that amount. There is more at stake here than the slight annoyance felt by a few people.

And, yes, people DO want to bitch a lot. Giving them a place to do that isolated from the people who don't want to hear it helps pay the bills, no?

edited 28th Dec '15 8:40:27 AM by eyebones

Becoming known as a repository for hateful negativity may generate revenue but it isn't good for our reputation. Which is more important is an exercise we can leave up to the student.

edited 28th Dec '15 9:27:33 AM by Fighteer

That namespace was not particularly popular, actually. There are plenty of tropes which have that many subpages, and more.

There has to be some way to track pageviews, IMO. But the problem is that this would be a tech change.

It is up to you guys, of course. I'll just register that it looks like, from out here, that there is an echo-chamber thing going on. There isn't any higher priority for the wiki than fixing this. Working without one of 1)real data or 2)real consensus is a really bad play.

Getting pageviews is just some access log work. Shouldn't stall any other tech work, really.

Of course it looks like an echo chamber for people who're on the outside not even bothering to do anything but complain about it. It's not like it's an exclusive club you have to be invited to, or that dissenting opinions are silenced.

I'm not sure you can call it a high priority issue at the same time as you're saying we didn't get enough people for consensus. If it were high priority, more people would've chipped in, wouldn't you think?

To paraphrase a wise old fellow that we used to hang out with more, "This is a wiki for celebrating media. Not that other thing." Pageviews are not the most important metric; the quality of the experience of our tropers is the most important.

We are not removing Dethroning Moment of Suck, for one thing, so people can still go there to bitch about stuff they don't like. The difference is that DMOS has strict rules: one moment per troper per work, signing one's moments, no arguing. Those were absent from Wall Banger and it was easily apparent which was the superior system. Never mind that WB and DMOS were basically redundant.

It's not like people will ever stop finding ways to bitch about media. That's how we humans roll. But we can attempt to channel it down to the least toxic format possible.

edited 28th Dec '15 9:42:34 AM by Fighteer

I am personally sceptical that the ill-formatted salads that were the WB pages attracted much readership.

The "echo chamber" perception is something we could work on, though. Myself I think the amount of commentary these threads get nowadays is fairly low; perhaps there are too many disconnected discussion bubbles on TV Tropes that need to be merged somehow. (Take note, that connecting stuff with each other and networking are a passion of mine, so this may be motivated reasoning.)

Also, the issue with tech requests is not so much the effort it takes but rather the time; the current admin corps isn't around 24/7 just waiting for work to do - unlike me and occasionally Fast Eddie.

The top priority I'm talking about is that reduction in input/involvement/community. The Wallbangers thing is looking like a small group making big moves. Wallbangers themselves are not so much the issue. It is the lack of consensus, without a clear danger to the wiki.

I think it would be better to fix whatever it is that is limiting participation before making large moves like this deletion.

Consensus requires a quorum. That is, a body of voters that has representative(s) of all the sides of question. Let's look at that question for a moment. The question of wheher or not there is a quorum. My guess is that there isn't, really. How would we go about disproving that guess?

Stalling for a quorum is a fantastic way to prevent major decisions from being made. We've seen that often enough. It's human nature to ignore the decision making process yet gripe about the decisions. That said, the beta wiki design has a lot more involvement features built-in. That's where all the development effort is going now; we're just biding our time on the current design.

edited 28th Dec '15 12:31:07 PM by Fighteer

Actually, the current beta site does mostly keep discussion venues as they are, except for moving the Tech Wishlist to two Ask The Tropers like venues. ATT, Trope Finder and You Know That Show also get to share a discussion system with these two venues - they are enhanced with respect to the current ATT, TF and YKTS but they cannot handle long discussions and are somewhat cramped. There is no fundamental overhaul of discussion systems.

Personally, I've considered a long term project to have one discussion system for all instances instead of 5 (ATT and such, discussion pages, YKTTW comments, forum, liveblog and review comments). That's a big change that would require a large discussion.

Not at all sure the problem is technology. How can we know when, or if, we have consensus? The present methods are not working. Sorry, I know this is uncomfortable to confront, but it has to be recognized and worked on. It is not self-healing.

Part of the problem (not the entire one, probably) is technology. Too many separate and isolated discussion venues that require too many clicks will reduce the input on each one. With low numbers, it's hard to tell whether there is a consensus.

Most wiki visitors don't give a damn about policy until a decision they don't like slams them in the face. This is fact.