WebVideo namespace and index cleanup

Wiki Talk has made a decision that all articles in the Let's Play namespace (list of pages in that namespace) should be moved to other namespaces.

Since let's plays are usually video-based, the target namespace is usually WebVideo/. However, some are text-based, and the consensus was to handle the namspacing of those on a case-by-case basis, with Blog/, Fanfic/, and Literature/ brought up as potential targets.

Before any given article is transplanted, we should confirm that it meets the standards for being a TV Tropes work article. Note that these often serve as hybrid articles for their creators in much the same way as the Music namespace. If there is insufficient content, the articles end up becoming about the creators, violating our "no troping real people" policy.

The crucial question is whether the article has any tropable, creative content. This means that it's more than just "Alisha plays games and makes faces." What counts as tropable, creative content? Here are some examples.

• Creating a fictional/roleplaying narrative that is distinct from the game being played or the real person doing the LP.
• Using the game as a medium to craft original content: songs, videos, machinima, and so on.
• "MST'ing" or creatively riffing on the game's content, as long as it's sufficiently transformative.

What are not criteria for a tropable Let's Play by themselves?

• Adopting a quirky personality, cracking jokes, making funny faces, or overreacting to jump scares.
• Cosplaying, playing with toys, unboxing merchandise, etc.
• Having a "gimmick" that makes them stand out, such as a repeated Catchphrase, eating loudly on microphone, or calling their viewers "Doggo fam".
• Playing games in a particular way (speedrunning, evil runs, no-kill runs, etc.) that fall within what it is possible to do in the game itself, with or without mods.
• Modding the game.
• Being very popular.
• Having lots of memes arise in their fandom.

Note that the same general principles apply to any Web Video creator, especially those whose main work is in news, reviews, vlogging, and/or reaction videos.

There are a few outliers that will need to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

• After-Action Report: I would move it to literature, although it could be considered fanfic.
• Liveblogs, which are probably not tropable.

Web Video cleanup sandbox

This project has several purposes related to all things Web Video:

• Cleaning up the WebVideo index
• Cleaning up the WebVideo/ namespace to move pages that belong elsewhere
• Cleaning up individual Web Video pages that have massive issues

Overview

The namespace (see here) is much more broad: "Live-action videos and video-based Lets Plays originally or only released online. Covers both YouTube videos and web-exclusive series, but does not include those that belong in the WebAnimation/ namespace. For big-budget series exclusive to streaming services such as Netflix, use Series/ or the appropriate animation namespace instead." — Not limited to original or live action footage, narrative works, etc. However, people have mistakenly created Web Animation pages in this namespace, made what are essentially creator pages, typed it as "Webvideo", etc.

Re: War Jay 77's question "Would 'commentary channels' count as reviewers? The sort of people who poke fun at, say, Jake Paul, rather than movies.", Fighteer said here:

No, because the subjects of those channels are Real Life topics. If your subject is a work of fiction, you are creating a derivative work, review, Let's Play, etc. If your subject is a real person, place, thing, or topic, then you are creating documentary, news, or an opinion piece.

Reaction channels tend to straddle a line here, but are not generally tropable unless they create some sort of distinct creative endeavor rather than stare at a video and laugh a bit. Also it helps if they are reacting to fiction, not to real life. The latter may be entertaining but falls into the same general category as gossip. We can trope these only for their use of production and artistic tropes, not for their topics.

Pages identified for cleanup:

• A Dose of Buckley — see this ATT for more info
• The Mysterious Mr. Enter and subpages — issues include troping the creator and not the works
• The Nostalgia Critic and subpages — see this project thread
• Smosh and subpages — Smosh is a channel, and the pages have multiple works (may need a hard split)
• Thomas Sanders — Creator, lots of biographical details, previously hard split for Sanders Sides but may need another

See also:

• Cleanup: Review/Let's Play YMMV Tropes
• TLP: Actual Play genre/index

Just the index cleanup itself is a considerable project, figuring out what stays and what needs a different index, but there are also many pages with significant issues to clean. This is a very big project, but I've seen other people notice these issues, too. I hope we can at least get the index under control.

( For clarity and re: review stuff. Continue to edit as things occur that are useful to keep at the top of the thread.)

Edited by GastonRabbit on Dec 2nd 2023 at 9:02:00 AM

Hey now, as per this, just earlier today, reviews can count as creative works.

Indeed they can, but we have the Video Review Show index for those!

But isn't this about the namespace as a whole, or...?

Both the namespace as a whole and the index. The namespace is a big catchall umbrella— the namespace description says "Covers both YouTube videos and web-exclusive series, except for those that go in the Let's Play/ namespace. For big-budget series exclusive to streaming services such as Netflix, use Series/ or the appropriate animation namespace instead.)" The index is a narrow part of the namespace, which confusingly has the same darn name.

Added Fighteer's commentary to the first post!

Edited by ImmiThrax on Aug 6th 2020 at 10:21:17 AM

WebVideo.Loose Change has three tropes, one of which is a ZCE and the other two look like misuse.

Should we just cut it?

Yes.

Yes please send it! That's just a stub and all.

I've found that sometimes, even poor quality pages full of ZCE have cut requests declined if they have a minimum 3 Tropers that aren't, even if nobody has taken interest in editing the page for yeeeears and never bothered to crosswick. So that's one of the problems with some of these pages.

Well, you only need 3 tropes for a page to exist even if the rest of it is garbage.

Indeed, it's just frustrating to see all the garbage even after commenting out, nobody took interest in years so it'll likely just sit there... smelling.

I'll pull together the pages that came up on ATT lately.

A Dose of Buckley, when it doesn't cover music, often discusses real life people and incidents that likely violate the rule of cautious editing judgement. Now, evidently, Buckley considers himself a comedian, and a lot of his humor is derived from making fun of people he considers obnoxious, crass, or inane.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

The question is, how much of this would be drama importation, or violate ROCEJ?

Exactly the page I was thinking of after your ATT post— thank you for bringing it here! I just did a long edit pass on the page, so I'll share more thoughts later. My overall impression was "I do not care what this guy thinks about X topic" since so much of it amounts to "let us recap what Buckley said about X topic". It's Fan Myopia.

And definitely don't need to know exactly how he insults real people. For instance, I trimmed down Bait-and-Switch which felt the need to quote exactly how he insulted both a dead man and people grieving the dead man, all because of his personal opinions about people who use drugs.

It's already starting to look a lot better.

FWIW, I also started a TLP draft Web Video Series in an attempt to clean up and organize the Web Video and YouTubers index.

It got stalled after a while.

Edited by XFllo on Aug 12th 2020 at 3:19:42 PM

Not sure this is the correct place to report this, but WebVideo.R Obotzi is in the incorrect namespace (and it's also miscapitalized, it should one word). It should be moved to the Web Animation namespace.

Oh, it's beautiful! I didn't know that existed!

It looks like we similarly think re-organization is needed... I like the idea of a separating out different kinds of stuff very much instead of mixing it all in. If someone wants to find, say, a narrative fictional series online, the current index doesn't help.

Indeed! Could you get the content moved over to the correct page and cutlist the old? I notice a lot of ZCE, too.

Edited by ImmiThrax on Aug 12th 2020 at 4:34:37 AM

If this is also a place to bring up problematic Web Video pages (I thought it was just for namespace/index issues but the Buckley thing made me believe it's more broad than that), I'll just let it be known here that I'm currently running a cleanup for The Nostalgia Critic and its subpages, because they're extremely bloated and full of speculation, misuse, troping real people, and putting tropes from crossovers on other channels on the NC page, which I believe should go on the page for whatever channel hosted said crossover (except for character tropes).

I'll put a link to that up top, thank you!

I think this could be a catch-all for cleaning up specific Web Video pages, though for the bigger undertakings like Nostalgia Critic, it makes sense to have a separate thread.

Updated the OP. Also found and added this cleanup for review and Let's Play YMMV.

Edited by ImmiThrax on Aug 13th 2020 at 3:35:09 PM

Thank you! The TGWTG anniversary movie pages (primarily Kickassia, Suburban Knights, To Boldly Flee) may also have similar (but lesser, due to being smaller) problems as the Nostalgia Critic page (because it's largely the same group of tropers working on the pages). This was partly cleaned up in a previous thread but may still have issues of gushing/complaining, and the ever-present risk that comes with the works being Overshadowed by Controversy. The NC cleanup is currently focused on the main NC pages, so I'd appreciate more help on the other Channel Awesome pages to ensure they're up to code.

Edited by mightymewtron on Aug 15th 2020 at 10:11:59 AM

All I know is, TBF needed a trip to the NF cleanup at one point.

And NC still needs one.

I'm not sure I'm brave enough to touch those yet But I finished the folder sorting on A Dose of Buckley (I think), and got through my sandbox queue. Leaves me with several works that I have nooo idea where to put them unless we create a new video game streaming index.

I can do the specials, or at least try. I used to love them. I...associate too many bad things with them now, but I remember them well enough to fix the pages.

Idea! Would anybody like to "adopt a letter"?

Basically, pick a folder on Web Video, and go through the cleanup process I've been doing. It involves determining:

• If it's a stub page — if you see a bunch of questionable examples, comment out every Zero-Context Example; if you're left with less than 3 tropes, send it (and any subpages) to the cutlist
• If WebVideo/ is the right namespace — if not, what is? (Usually Web Animation or Let's Play)
  • If you're comfortable addressing the move, get it done
  • If you're not, move the listing to the Sandbox.Web Video and note where it belongs
  • If you know it doesn't belong here but don't know where it does, move the listing to the Sandbox and note possibilities/details
• If it appears to be about a Creator — can a description/example rewrite refocus it on the works instead?
• If it belongs on a different index — if it's an Alternate Reality Game, Analysis Channel, Video Review Show, Vlog Series, or Web Video Series, move the listing to the relevant index.
• If it's some kind of video game streaming or otherwise focused on gameplay footage, move the listing to Sandbox.Web Video, and we'll discuss a home for that stuff (haven't done a TLP draft yet since it needs more thought)
• If it's a short work (quotation marks) or something longer or a channel (italics)
• If you need a drink, something for your headache, or what after all that

Edited by ImmiThrax on Aug 31st 2020 at 6:01:27 AM

Audio Play?