"Twisted Tropes" and the main page Trope Depictions

Are you calling my complaints hyperbolic?

This last one is weak, but there were two other complaints which were much more substantial.

Now, the owners have certain rights over a website they own. And apparently the owners are the admins. Which is a little weird for a larger site. Regardless, this situation is ridiculous. This is a community site, and trope depictions is not an example of advertising.

All features of the site should be community approved and community run. Ad space being the major exception, as that should be owner approved and administrator run.

Normally, in a community like this, administration is acting as tech support, making sure the site stays up, and fixing any problems the community runs into. Owners pay for the site, and they get any money the site earns. Mixing administration and ownership confuses things. It places administration above the community in the chain of command.

A non-financing related aspect of the site, like the layout and content of the front page being an unalterable black box to the community should be impossible in this kind of website.

This is not a personal website. Both moderation and administration need to act as representatives of the community.

I would like to point out that this is an applicable statement for wiki sites, but not so much for sites like facebook. Facebook is a community site made available to the facebook community by a company; it is essentially google for hosting personal bios. Wikipedia is a site constructed by the wikipedia community and hosted by a company. This is a very different arrangement.

edited 13th Jul '16 2:36:38 AM by war877

The only one I've had any kind of problem with is the Garfield/Alf one◊, but, yeah, this is something that should really be community-run, and the current situation is nearly the opposite of that

...Though administration/community disconnect has been kind of a problem in general

Don't know if you posted it, but the "this is tasteless, it ruins my childhood, and is a horrible message for the children" comments were either ridiculously hyperbolic or that person lives in a tiny bubble under a rock in space and has never been to the internet or seen an image.

edited 13th Jul '16 6:30:42 AM by Larkmarn

I had a lot more issue with the Alf one, since PG-13 means kids under 13 can view with parental supervision (that's what it bloody MEANS.) And the Kirk one reminded me of Naughty Tentacles, since that was cut due to Google, I was worried about that staying up too long. I must also note that nobody has complained about The World Is Flat, so it seems just to be Twisted Tropes that annoys people. I changed the Twisted Tropes wiki page to show which trope depictions have been done between here and their site, but I haven't written a trope write-up or anything else on the Twisted Tropes page, yet. And I do believe the front page is not the place for some of these comics. I have no problem with links in the sidebar, as the usual caveat (this is not our site and we are not responsible for the content,) applies.

Second major problem we'll have in a year or two concerning ALL trope depictions: Description and name changes of tropes will render old depictions redundant, or in the worst cases, outright misleading compared to the current definition.

I joined in on thinking the Alf one was inappropriate. Not because I was offended or didn't like it, but because I thought that was 18A level gore. I also joined in on the tentacle one. Not because I was offended or didn't like it, but because I thought it was 18A level explicit sex.

In either case, I didn't judge the work on the tackyness, tastlessness or unfunnyness of Twisted Tropes. We are not here to judge the quality of the art. We need real reasons to ban, and I thought there were real reasons.

Nor did I engage in hyperbole.

For the record, legitimate complaints:
att the naughty tentacles
Other thread about naughty tentacles
att the alf incident
Other thread on the alf incident

I disagreed:
att twisted tropes take a third option
att eating your friend

edited 13th Jul '16 7:34:02 AM by war877

Again, I think this is a bit of a digression. Without having the slightest positive regard for Twisted Tropes, I'm still convinced it's the symptom, not the problem. Regardless of how valid or silly any individual complaint about it is, the real issue is that there is no user control, input, or even understanding into the system that puts it and other trope depictions up. In this very thread, even a mod has described it as a "black box" of which they know very little.

Subjecting Twisted Tropes to higher scrutiny (or really, any visible scrutiny) would certainly be a temporary fix, but unless something is done to make the trope depiction submission process as a whole more community-friendly, the problem may eventually recur with some other source.

You just keep saying everything I'd like to say, but better.

So... is it possible to have a version that is not poorly written? The last two panels are gibberish and in no way are saying what the English version pretends they are.

"Même si vous êtes un personne de poisson géants" is not french. It's gibberish. In the last panel actually reads "I want to say, he/it does not allow..."

The wiki actually bans people for poor grammar and spelling, but that comic was deemed acceptable? At least link it to "Blind Idiot" Translation where it'll actually be an example and wont murder my native language.

edited 18th Jul '16 6:31:51 AM by CobraPrime

Google Translate disagrees with you on the second panel, but then again, it's Google Translate.

But with the last panel...yeah. As Long as It Sounds Foreign is not a trope I'd like to apply to anything in non-English that we put on the site.

Given this was almost assuredly done using Google Translate, I'd say that's not exactly... trustworthy.

My french is not good, but I can see there are a couple grammar errors there. If your french is better, you will need to contact the person who originally made the comic. Then we can worry about getting the comic replaced with an updated version.

Guess we know where the shit translation's from.

Second panel would be "Même si vous êtes une femme poisson géant." (French usually doesn't go "X Person (as in Ice-Person or Fish Person) and usually goes more "X-Men / X-Women depending on the gender of the individual. You could go for "Une personne poisson géant" but it'd sound weird.)

Third panel would be "Cependant, je doit dire que ça n'aide pas." (I mean as wordcruft isn't really a thing in french the way it is in English. If you say "I mean" it's to clarify what you said. Substituted "I must say".)

Has it not occurred to any of you that you're arguing over the crappy translation of a comic in a place that the author is highly unlikely to ever see? I'm pretty sure that whoever on our admin team approved the comic to be queued up didn't bother to check the French for grammar. At this point it just seems like sour grapes that Twisted Tropes is the main source of depictions, which could be remedied if anyone else would bother to submit one.

I'm starting to think that we should just ban all discussion of the issue if all you're going to do is whine about not liking the comic.

See, that's the thing. A lot of us have no real issue with the comic (or at least the comic itself isn't the major issue) but the issue is with the fact that the entire process behind the selection process is incredibly obtuse. If it weren't for this thread, I would have had precisely zero idea that these were chosen from submissions. Even knowing that, the only indication that this is the case on the front page is a size-10 button saying "submit a description."

Seriously, I have no issue with the comic and think that most of the complaints are ridiculously thin-skinned. That doesn't change the fact that (from what ridiculously little I can glean) I hate the system of how they're chosen.

And out of curiosity, where should he be commenting on the grammar? Other than a tumblr link, there's no contact information for the author. Even what I assumed was a TV Tropes handle was just a link to the top of the page.

The guy's tumblr doesn't accept comments. so where are we supposed to discuss it. I mean, it's not like you offered an alternative, and in fact, I was told to post this here by a forum herald. So it's great being told we should post somewhere else instead.

That's pretty clear.

I don't even generally care about the comics. I just care that this one's not even written properly and makes the wiki look like shit..

edited 18th Jul '16 9:26:59 AM by CobraPrime

I (there's no point in denying it's me, since everyone can see where I said it) told you to bring this here because you started a duplicate thread when there was already one for discussing the front page comics. Duplicate threads when there's an active thread already in that section of the forums are a no-no, especially in Wiki Talk. This is pretty much immutable regardless of the topic, except banned ones - but those shouldn't exist, let alone have duplicates. (Also, this thread started in the Webcomics section - my area of forum heraldry - and I called for it to be moved here in order to get more attention in the first place.)

I'm not the definitive word on anything, of course; any mod can overrule me.

That out of the way, continuously taking a belligerent tone is not helping your case. You might want to walk away from this for an hour or two, maybe have a nice cold drink (preferably not alcoholic), and then come back when you feel a little less hot under the collar.

edited 18th Jul '16 9:38:50 AM by TotemicHero

@fighteer. The world is flat is not twisted tropes. And I think that the author would be interested in upgrading their comic so that they look more professional.

Who the fuck cares about the bad grammar of text written in a foreign language? That's probably part of the joke.

These complaints are starting to get ridiculous.

edited 18th Jul '16 10:02:32 AM by Karxrida

My sense is that the problem here is that the trope depictions are being operated and seen by separate communities, and that there does not seem to be much exchange between the two.

I get that sense as well. Although a couple of the comics would fail a rating system.

You are belittling french. And also grammar and text. And also foreign people.

Probably not part of the joke. The grammar is not that bad.

And I repeat, the author will probably have an interest in appearing professional.

Wait... one of the rare times we get a depiction that is not from Twisted Tropes and people are still griping over it?

I suppose that comic authors who've already made it in the industry, so to speak, don't feel the need to promote their work via TV Tropes, so we get all the amateur submissions.

I suppose we could work on the prestige of trope depictions? Although for that to happen, we would still need more transparency and control. Otherwise, the feature is not likely to become popular.

And yet, Quality by Popular Vote has a terrible track record of promoting quality content on the wiki. I suppose we could ask the admins to make the submission queue public, so people could "like" them to indicate interest/approval...

No, that is not what I mean by transparency and control.

By transparency, I mean the whole story. Whose baby is this? What does the backend look like? What is it supposed to be?

By control, I mean control over how the backend is structured. How the queue is structured, and how it looks on the page. The actual comics that make it in, I wasn't thinking about that at all. I actually think the selection process is less important to the prestige and success of the project.

For image selection process, I would actually prefer to see a subcommittee of people whose job it is to review submissions.

Why the heck does it matter how the thing is coded on the backend? That's of no concern to anyone but the devs. We've asked for and been noncommittally promised a page to display the queue; whether we turn over the selection process itself to the users or not has yet to be determined, never mind how.