"Twisted Tropes" and the main page Trope Depictions

I don't mean how it is coded. I mean how it functions.

Those are different.

Rare? Don't think I've even seen a Twisted Trope comic in the last two months. The majority are Mike Howland and The Earth Is Flat.

(Not that I find any better or worse tbh but imho the front page comics have all been sort of meh. Today's is a rare one that is completely nonsensical. I mean besides the word salad french; shouldn't the fish be the one speaking French for the joke to work?)

edited 18th Jul '16 2:06:25 PM by Ghilz

This - except I'd amend "not much exchange" to "no exchange".

And honestly, Fighteer, that point about Quality by Popular Vote causing trouble in the past is a good example of why this feature is so problematic. It's been a pretty hard-fought struggle to make sure that TV Tropes as a whole doesn't endorse particular works, and I don't like the way the trope depictions seems to be reversing that. I mean, I think Twisted Tropes is crap, but in a vacuum that wouldn't be a problem, because I just wouldn't read it. But it's another matter for the site to be actively advertising it.

edited 18th Jul '16 2:10:09 PM by nrjxll

I agree. Depictions come across as us promoting a work, which can leave a bad taste in users' mouths when they examine the work in question and think it's of extraordinarily poor quality. This is partly caused by the lack of transparency around the feature.

I really hate that I have to keep going "what he said" but... what he said.

You know, my biggest complaint about the trope depictions is that they often aren't trope depictions at all. There are quite a few comics where I try to play guess the trope and don't get it, then I see what the trope was and still don't get it, or it's barely related at all. The primary goal of the site in everything that we do is clarity. The comics on the front page should at least have that same standard.

edited 19th Jul '16 7:39:51 AM by arks

I don't really care for the content of the comic, but the biggest problem with it is that it's so huge! Especially if you have the Wide Load setting on. A good front page shouldn't require you to scroll down at all, and certainly a specific column on the front page shouldn't be broken so that you can see only part of without scrolling. Looking at those comics, most of them could easily be shrunk down so that they'd fit better on the front page, without them becoming illegible.

edited 29th Jul '16 4:28:46 AM by Tuomas

That's been my biggest gripe...It's bad when you're on a 1920 x 1080 monitor and the comic is off the bottom of the screen.

Hey, guys! I've been paying attention to the issues some of you have had with trope depictions. I put together some guidelines that should help future submissions avoid these issues. The admins are also hoping to make the approved queue visible to logged-in Tropers in the future.

For now, I'll handle moderation of the submission queue. (I won't be moderating the forums, the Wiki, or any other areas of the site.)

I want to make sure these guidelines address your concerns. If you have thoughts about them - if they fall short or go too far - here's your chance to weigh in!

At a cursory glance, those look reasonable.

One thing that stands out to me is that it says "It should be a 3-panel or 1-panel comic, designed to fit the aspect ratio of the Trope Depictions space" but doesn't say what that aspect ratio is. Not sure you should control the number of panels, either

Yeah, I'd been vague on the aspect ratio because it supports multiple aspect ratios. The gist was that I wanted us to be able to reject something that was too high-res to be readable, so I've rephrased that paragraph. I've also rephrased the reference to the number of frames... the old way I wrote it was overkill, and some of our published comics don't match it. Thanks for the feedback!

Here's how it reads now:

"Your submission should be self-contained, self-explanatory, original, and entertaining. It should be a comic designed to be readable within the Trope Depictions frame. 1 or 3 panel comics are easy to fit into the space, but the number of panels is flexible."

edited 23rd Aug '16 12:56:03 PM by Tanzmetall

I gave the guidelines a look and I find them to be pretty fair and reasonable. With a future shot at viewing the process in more depth I think we can roll with these guidelines.

What is with all the tepidity on these guidelines? They're perfect. Um, exclamation mark.

I might change one to three panels to one to four panels horizontal. What we seem to be shooting for is newspaper strip format.

I don't think responses have been particularly 'tepid'... my main concern has been the way Twisted Tropes entries keep being highly questionable, and the larger issues that go along with that, so the guidelines about technical details such as image size don't really matter that much to me.

My main concern now is whether these will actually be implemented in an effective manner. As noted previous, oversight on the trope depictions has been pretty lacking so far.

edited 22nd Sep '16 1:36:55 AM by nrjxll