The 5T Incident - What went wrong, and how can we stop it?

As we all know, someone made that "Gay" draft on September 7, 2020 and regular, seasoned tropers filled the TLP with odd posts and (unfortunately) successfully tried to break Mario Pissing's record of most bombs on a draft, causing mass suspensions of a scope rarely seen on this wiki. Willbyr coined the term "The 5T incident" (The Time when TLP Trolled Terribly) to refer to this course of events, and many lessons will be learned about the TLP and how to improve it.

Some tropers have created the We're Improving the TLP sandbox to brainstorm solutions that will keep this from happening.

Edited by ccorb on Sep 9th 2020 at 6:12:09 AM

I posted my thoughts on another thread, but I'll reiterate them here. The mods should've stepped in sooner and nuked it. The other point I want to make is I don't think that the hats it got necessarily came from trolls. We have Het and Transgender. I think some people thought that we should have a similar trope page for Homosexuality.

If people want to joke about insane drafts, they should do so in Yack Fest. If people want to make joke drafts, they should also do so in Yack Fest.

They are funny, but unproductive. Speaking of which, I’m mentally considering this another part of the TV Tropes Apocalypse for shits and giggles.

As a recent addition to the LGBTQ+ community myself, I will admit that I’m hardly offended by those jokes. Still, it was causing a lot of clogging and just kind of out of control.

Edited by SatoshiBakura on Sep 8th 2020 at 3:02:04 PM

For the record, I don't think the jokes were meant to be insensitive. Most of them were just puns and/or in-jokes from LGBT tropers (myself included). But even while joining in the gag, I knew it wouldn't be a wise idea to encourage jokes about gay stuff on a wiki where people may actually be homophobic about it.

First, to historise it on Timeline.TV Tropes, I've tried my best to make it not humor-oriented (speaking of which, there'd be a dark event every month there for this year's last four months, but that's how it is):

• June 9, 2020: A Trope Launch Pad draft of Mario Pissing, blatantly lacking in effort, but otherwise a valid attempt at a works page, becomes the first known trope draft to reach 100 bombs as part of a social experiment, and hits 131 before being nuked. Mario Pissing eventually got launched as a legitimate work page. While the OP had no problems and everyone got away scot-free, the incident is later called the First TLP War of 2020 and served as a prelude to September 7's events.
• September 7, 2020: A draft simply titled "Gay" is created on the Trope Launch Pad in protest of Badass Gay getting dewicked and Homosexual not being usable as a trope. The thread became another social experiment in the vein of Mario Pissing, becoming the first draft to get over 500 comments and beating the previous record holder "Exempt From Physics" (which had 176 comments), most of them coming only about six hours after being posted. By September 8, the draft reached 132 bombs, dethroning Mario Pissing's title as the most bombed TLP draft in history. That said, due to more serious circumstances and memes and surreal gay jokes in the comments, the 30+ people involved in the draft are suspended from TLP for the next three days. The incident is later called the 5T incident or the Second TLP War of 2020 and makes people consider how to improve TLP further to prevent a third one from happening.

(For the record, I'm absolutely straight)

Edited by Piterpicher on Sep 8th 2020 at 9:06:58 PM

Sorry, I should have reworded that to "odd posts." I'm also LGBTQ+.

, Piterpicher, father of the P-Scale. At least TV Tropes is saving my life nowadays.

Edited by ccorb on Sep 8th 2020 at 3:02:45 PM

For the record, I was only in IP and the new account queue yesterday for mod stuff so I didn't find out about any of this until this morning.

I mean, "odd gay jokes" sounds pretty awkward in itself especially since much of it was LGBT in-jokes. I'd call them "surreal" or "obscure" maybe. But that's pedantic.

On the subject of the timeline, can I just say I always loved how "Mario Pissing" is immediately followed on the timeline by "the entire site crashes"?

I think that's a point in favor of adding a holler button to TLP. If the draft had been reported and nuked immediately, the rest wouldn't have happened.

By the way I want to just remind everyone here not to beat themselves up about it. Yeah we fucked up and it was immature but let's hold our heads high and learn from this with dignity.

Yeah, I said in the suspended thread this should be a learning experience, and I still stand by that.

Sounds good to me, unless the mods want to say no.

Yeah, getting in trouble sometimes is an inevitable part of life. A necessary and healthy one, some would claim.

Judging by the last time I got in this amount of trouble, that should get those urges out of my system for a good decade or so

I've no issues with that writeup but the other mods may differ and since I'm on mobile I can't check our offsite chat ATM.

Edited by Willbyr on Sep 8th 2020 at 12:16:17 PM

We're all going to be telling our grandchildren about this when they ask what life was like under COVID.

Edited by ccorb on Sep 8th 2020 at 3:13:30 PM

To be honest, I was always a little curious about what it was like to be suspended, but obviously I never wanted to invoke it. I'm just glad we're all in this boat together.

Indeed.

All I could say is that the 5T incident was the, for me so far, the Project X of TLP.

But, I do think let's prevent any further incidents than these. The mods are already overburdened (one stepped out), and I don't know what the admins are up to in regards to the pandemic, but this incident is a stepping stone to improving several aspects of the wiki.

Like, say, being nice to newbies, and telling them not to touch the "Launch" button like Dee-Dee to a big red button.

Edited by alnair20aug93 on Sep 9th 2020 at 3:18:14 AM

I take it you guys aren’t on college club discord servers. That’s where I channel my batshit insanity.

#maketvtropesdiscordserver

Edited by SatoshiBakura on Sep 8th 2020 at 3:19:26 PM

I'm not even in college, but SMS group chats, etc. are the same thing.

And I believe tropers have made their own Discord servers, but we're getting off-topic.

Edited by ccorb on Sep 8th 2020 at 3:23:01 PM

A bit late to the party, but just to reiterate, I’m sorry, I know you all are too, and the mods have every right to be disappointed in us. We’re not children. We are fully developed or almost fully developed individuals. This especially applies to users such as myself who aren’t regulars on the TLP. I accept partial blame for letting it escalate and contributing to it. I didn’t realize how contributing to Funny.TV Tropes could be harmful (besides, that page should probably just be cut entirely), and now I’m suffering the consequences by being restricted to the forums. This should have happened back with Mario Pissing, so we could know better now.

I still support the creation of an Administrivia page, or at least add these two TLP drafts back to the Timeline—only with a more serious tone. We should not be entirely off the hook from this; we should have been responsible, as we were all capable of being responsible.

If I am caught doing this again after my suspension is lifted, I will accept a permanent ban.

Right. I find it humiliating to admit I took part, but I only started getting those inklings of doubt after going to bed, and it was too late then. Can't beat myself up over it. Just need to hold myself to higher standards from now on.

Personally I didn't care about records or anything. I just found it cathartic and fun; it was mindless meming.

there's a difference between hating yourself for a mistake and acknowleding the mistake while still being able to move on- better this time.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 8th 2020 at 3:33:10 PM

Why shouldn’t we beat ourselves up over it? Yes, we’re learning from it, but we still did it.

Learning from your mistakes is not the same as beating yourself up over them. We don't dwell on the fact we did something bad; we accept it and move on to be better people.

Anyway, apparently there's a draft in TLP that I obviously can't click on titled "Undertale Effect" that's gotten eleven bombs in an hour and I'm worried. (Though thankfully it only has four comments so presumably people aren't trolling it.)

I'm starting to like the option to discard a draft that's nigh-unsalvageable after it receives a certain amount of bombs (like, say, 15) even before the three-day deadline. Drafts awkwardly sticking around after being clearly deemed unsalvageable are more likely to attract unhelpful comments.

Edited by mightymewtron on Sep 8th 2020 at 3:33:42 PM

Why should we beat ourselves up over it?

We know it was a mistake and we're learning from it, so what further benefit is there to feeling like crap?

Maybe if we make an Administrivia page, we should list the names of every user that got suspended, so we can always be held responsible for this.

Personally, I don’t even trust myself to not do it again. For some reason.

Edited by PurpleEyedGuma on Sep 8th 2020 at 3:34:53 PM

Nah, that seems counterproductive — like it'll get trolls looking at it and thinking "wow, I too can be immortalized if I do something equally terrible".