Broken Base Cleanup

I lean towards agreeing with High Crate, but I should note that I'm biased by how annoying that entry is in its current state.

I can confirm that the first two at least still lead to bitter arguments to this day, at least on places like Tumblr and Twitter. Quite a few people complaining that Iron Man's presence ruined this film and people arguing back against them that he saved it and so on.

"Something that sometimes leads to arguments" =/= "an issue so divisive it has literally split the entire fanbase into rival camps".

While there are certainly fans who would have preferred a tighter focus on the core Captain America cast, and extrapolating from that I am willing to believe that there are some for whom that preference is so strong that they still get into arguments about it to this day, they still don't constitute a "large, vocal, and entrenched faction."

The MCU fandom isn't divided into "people who would have preferred a tighter focus" vs. "people who liked the broader focus" or "people who would have preferred less Tony vs. people who liked the amount of Tony they got" and never the twain shall meet. Most Cap fans (and MCU fans in general) are more or less fine with the film, and those that aren't largely seem willing to accept that it's one entry in the franchise that they like a little less than some of the others and move on.

edited 1st Jun '17 9:01:27 AM by HighCrate

If this is about the third Captain America film, then I feel Pro-Accords vs. Anti-Accords debate within the fandom is the only thing worth documenting compared to what was on the page previously.

edited 1st Jun '17 11:46:47 AM by VeryMelon

(not completely sure this thread includes Base Breaker , my bad if that's not the case) Somebody added Berkut on the Base Breaker entry on the Fire Emblem Gaiden page.

• Berkut, another new addition to Echoes. His fans see him as a well-written Tragic Villain they can't help but sympathize with. His detractors see him as a Wangsty brat who has long since crossed the Moral Event Horizon.

Except on the same page, Berkut is praised "as one of the most well-written and complex antagonists in the entire franchise' in several instance.

While the enty looks like a plausible case of the trope, the fact that it contredicts, sometimes directly, what is said elsewhere on the page makes me feel it's a case of Opinion Myopia. And it feels a bit one-sided. Either it needs to be cut out, either the rest of the page need to stop praising Berkut that much.

edited 10th Jun '17 6:05:29 AM by Yumil

Copied BrokenBase.Star Wars over to Sandbox.Broken Base Star Wars and BrokenBase.Zootopia over to Sandbox.Broken Base Zootopia in case anyone wants to argue for any of those examples to be salvaged, and cutlisted them. Copied BrokenBase.Film over to Sandbox.Broken Base Film and changed that to a redirect to the main Broken Base page. Moving on to BrokenBase.Food And Cooking.

Edit:

Unsurprisingly, there is nothing in BrokenBase.Food And Cooking that works as written. Virtually everything on the page is written as a simple, binary question (e.g. "mustard or ketchup? chocolate or vanilla?") with no further context. Unless any arguments are made for keeping it, I'll be putting it on the cutlist soon. Moving on to BrokenBase.Internet in the meantime.

Edit x2: Equally unsurprisingly, BrokenBase.Internet doesn't have anything I'd consider worth saving. Will cutlist it soon if no arguments are produced to the contrary. Will move on to BrokenBase.Literature next, but want to let these sit for a hot second in case there's discussion to be had.

edited 10th Jun '17 8:35:51 AM by HighCrate

I would say the only possible candidates for Broken Base Food would be "does Chili have beans in it or not?" — that can win or lose you chili competitions, if you pick the wrong side.

Maybe Pizza- Chicago-style (deep-dish or thick crust) or New York style (thin crust), although on that question, there is a pretty substantial middle ground made of both "Who cares, they're both good" and "It depends on the pizza"

Possibly the Marmite — good or horrible? one, That has two things going for it — the only third faction I've ever heard of is "I don't know, I've never tried it" and the fact that Marmite actually references it in their ads.

Although I have had friends in England comment that there's a substantial amount of dissension over which way you make a proper Devonshire scone/Devon Cream tea: From the wikipedia page:

The rest of them are school of thought that most people ignore, except for a few assholes who decide to make it a crusade, or they're 'in-fun' wars — differences it's fun and acceptable to twit your friends and acquaintances about.

edited 10th Jun '17 8:58:32 AM by Madrugada

If we define "the base" as "people who attend and/or compete in chili competitions," then MAYBE, but only if it's split into "chili MUST have beans or it's not chili" versus "chili MUST NOT have beans or it's not chili." If there's a significant "chili can have beans or not and still be chili" faction, I'd consider that a middle ground.

I'd argue against the New York vs. Chicago pizza wars for the same reason you gave: the vast majority of people outside of those two cities just eat what they like and consider people who take that feud seriously to be assholes who need to lighten up.

I think that maybe saying "there is absolutely no middle ground" is going to make this far too difficult to meet. Every group is going to have some people who don't care about picking sides, or don't think that what the base is broken over is the important thing to be concerned about.

Either that, or we need to require more specificity about what constitutes the "base"; right now it's implied to be "everybody who is interested in <this thing> at all", and it should be a narrower subset.

So for a lot of the examples, the base is being implied to be "everybody", but it's really much narrower: "people who use cast iron cookware" — that does tend to fracture into factions over how fastidiously it needs to be treated; "People who take chili seriously" also take the beans/no beans thing seriously.

edited 10th Jun '17 9:24:23 AM by Madrugada

I see what you're saying, but I think we have to take care to avoid the No True Scotsman fallacy. If we define "people who take chili seriously" as "people who have a strong opinion on beans vs. no beans," then yeah, by definition it's a Broken Base, but only because we're employing circular reasoning.

I think defining "the base" in this case as people involved in the competitive chili cookoff scene is perfectly reasonable; what I don't know is whether there's a significant middle ground within that scene. Emphasis on "significant": you're right that there's always going to be someone somewhere in the middle, but if that middle ground is in the vast minority within that scene, it can still be an example.

In examples like these, I think that defining exactly what "the base" that is supposedly split consists of is necessary to establish full context.

edited 10th Jun '17 10:12:01 AM by HighCrate

OK. I can buy that. So the clean-up is going to be "can we identify a substantial "base" that isn't ridiculously narrow?"

In Philly and the area, "what's a Philly Cheese Steak?" really is a broken base. outside of that geographic area, it's mostly not. "In the chili cook-off world, are beans allowed in chili, or not?" is a broken base. Outside that milieu, it's not, so much, although there are pockets of it. People who buy and use non-enameled cast iron are split over how to care for it. People who don't, aren't. Professional chefs are divided into three camps over microwaves: tools of the devil, never to be used in a serious kitchen; useful for some things, but not for cooking in general; and a perfectly legitimate cooking tool that can and should be used when appropriate.

Or maybe a subtrope would be helpful here: Memetic Broken Base. A battleground that has become memetic in its intensity and universality, but that most people really use as a joke or a way to tease someone else — Ketchup. The proper way to eat Nutella. Pizza. Mayo or Miracle Whip. Kirk or Picard. Star Wars or Star Trek. For most of those, the "base" that is broken can be defined as "People who take this ''waaaaayyyy'' too seriously and think everyone else should, too.''

edited 10th Jun '17 10:05:12 AM by Madrugada

Hmm. I think that might be more of a Sister Trope to Broken Base than a subtrope, and I think naming it something like Memetic Feud might be better than Memetic Broken Base. "Mayo vs. Miracle Whip" is definitely one of those things that people enjoy getting into silly arguments about, but there's no "condiments fanbase" that's broken over it, so trying to define it as a Sub-Trope of Broken Base could be a little too limiting.

There's certainly overlap: Kirk vs. Picard was a legitimate Broken Base within the Star Trek fandom for a long time, but it's since passed into being a pretend feud that almost nobody takes all that seriously.

I think the idea has potential.

edited 10th Jun '17 10:21:10 AM by HighCrate

That honestly sounds like a more worthwhile trope to have than Broken Base itself.

Found another Broken Base page for a film that's not released yet, this time it's Transformers The Last Knight. It's even split into separate sections. I feel like the entry covering the overall character designs can be moved to the YMMV page, but everything else can be scrapped. The specific character design entries reiterate a lot of the same points, the character and plot entries are too early to make judgement calls on, and the trailer entries just cover points that happen to every blockbuster trailer nowadays. Thoughts?

I don't think anything that falls under speculation qualifies, as there's almost certainly a very large group of people who fall under "wait and see", "let's not judge the plot before it's hatched", or "we don't know, so I'm not sure".

News websites are not popular opinion. They're a small minority of all opinions out there, but naturally very vocal, or more specifically, very visible.

But all in all, I'm very sceptic about anything that involves reactions to stuff. That's usually filled with people who're in a rush to have a strong opinion about something they don't really have much of a clue about if you dig deeper than a screenshot or a line of dialogue.

I am strongly in favor of cutting anything that hasn't been released yet on principle. As Another Duck said, there's nearly always a large "wait and see" faction that constitutes a built-in middle ground, and they also fail the "sustained" test because opinions nearly always shift once the final product is in the wild. As a rule of thumb, I'd give any given example at least six months post-release to see whether the base remains broken or gets bored and moves on to the next controversy of the week.

On YMMV.Mary Poppins Returns, could I remove the accusations of "nepotism", regarding the hiring of actors who worked with Rob Marshall before? It's not like for the original Mary Poppins, Disney didn't hire anyone who worked on any of their movies before...

edited 12th Jun '17 12:33:06 PM by dsneybuf

@Berkut: Not super familiar with Echoes myself but I know people that are and they were all in the latter camp. The Berkut praise probably needs to be toned down.

I'm cutting the whole thing. It's nothing but blatant complaining.

Yes. It's misuse. Nepotism isn't "I worked with you before so I'm hiring you again." It's "I'm hiring you because of your family connections."

I found one last Broken Base page for an upcoming release, this time it's Marvel Vs Capcom Infinite. Anybody want to voice their opinions here?

Cutlist it.

Done for both Transformers and Marvel vs. Capcom.

There's a recently launched BrokenBase.Samurai Jack with just 7 examples.

edited 12th Jun '17 2:29:08 PM by Silverblade2