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

And I made my thoughts clear in ATT 2 whole hours before nuking the draft. Then I proceeded to nuke the draft and people were still commenting. Inexcusable behaviour is inexcusable. I moderate TV Tropes, not Twitter.

I'm a digital media discourse analyst (yes, that is my field of study). The gamification of a system such as TLP is a known coping mechanism facilitated by the existence of a known affinity space. When the interactional relationship breaks, chaos ensues. I could do a project on that but I really don't feel like it. Frankly, it irritates me.

I will concede to TLP's shortcomings, which are almost exactly the same as YKTTW's. I am quite unhappy with this display and despite my trying to push for some changes that would allow users to contribute more actively to certain areas of the site, I am seriously having second thoughts now. I prefer to avoid invoking mod authority and instead encourage the use of P Ms, but we will need some serious work to mend the trust regular tropers evoke.

Right. If it gets that many bombs so early, there's something unsalvagable about it.

To me, 99 bombs should be the insta-nuke bar. Is it too high (certainly isn't too low)?

As for the benefit of feeling like crap over past misdeeds... WWII, Germany (seriously, why can't I run out of comparisons to it)? And admittedly, I do see myself as still a child, my mental age is like x/2+4 of my physical age at best. Something like this may be similar to other tropers' ages. I have grown up on many games and achievement systems, that's my obsession and gamification is not an unknown concept. Still, I do intend to keep improving, and we will too.

Edited by Piterpicher on Sep 8th 2020 at 9:39:09 PM

Are we allowed to add this incident to the TV Tropes section of Old Shame ourselves? Is that Auto-Erotic Troping? Or rather....Self Flagellating Troping?

Personally I wasn't clear on whether your insistence on the conversation stopping applied to the entire situation or just the ATT, as ATT seems generally stricter when it comes to going off-topic and the ATT was locked before the TLP (I went to bed after the ATT lock and before the suspensions). We probably should have wised up regardless, though.

Edited by mightymewtron on Sep 8th 2020 at 3:38:09 PM

Tbf Lu, people on the draft thought you were talking about ATT specifically, not the draft. Doesn't excuse it ofc and I greatly apologize, but there was a miscommunication.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 8th 2020 at 3:37:43 PM

I was doing virtual schoolwork when I clicked on the draft and learned I was suspended from TLP. I kind of knew it might have gotten me suspended if I took part in the tomfoolery, but I just froze when I found out.

You can add it to your trope pages.

Edited by SatoshiBakura on Sep 8th 2020 at 3:37:42 PM

I was already asleep at this point, so I have no knowledge of how this part went down.

That said, the ability to lock a draft from being commented on would certainly prevent it from happening again. I'm kinda surprised nuking a draft doesn't already do that.

As I only knew of the draft through the ATT, I got curious on what the fuss was about. I could consider myself childish coming from this incident, and that has to do with my autism. But, even with autism, I should know my limits. Had I not knew my limits, I would have expected to use offensive and off-color jokes like a 13 year old edgelord would say.

Adding this: But also knowing my limits, and learning from it, I must also regain lu's trust. As serendipitous TLP is, we mush have an improved standard when it comes to helping drafts,

Edited by alnair20aug93 on Sep 8th 2020 at 4:20:00 PM

(9) Lu, I’ll try what I can to gain your trust back.

Here’s a thought: a trope should be instanuked if it gets 5 more bombs than hats.

But unfortunately, all these suggestions require a shit ton of coding. Every time we try to fix an issue, it just creates a bunch of new ones. It’s an eternal cycle of imperfection, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Edited by PurpleEyedGuma on Sep 8th 2020 at 3:41:46 PM

That would probably require the draft to be nuked in the first place, though. I don't know, maybe making 250 comments a hard limit could work as no real draft could help? Drafts reach that point very rarely. Once it's done, the sponsor could be told to launch, nuke, or make a new draft if more comments are still somehow needed depending on the situation.

Actually can we piece together a full timeline for what happened because it seems like most if not all of us have an incomplete picture of the event.

From what I could tell, here are a few of the learning opportunities:

1. Don't call for bombs. Especially when it's just to break some record. Doubly so when there's more than 10 net bombs already, since there's no point to that. (There may be some exceptions to this, but when there was only one hat, there's certainly no reason to do so.)
2. Don't take the piss out of someone and then say it's all in good fun when they are not responding. It's just laughing at someone by that point.
3. No gravedancing. When the draft is already dead (e.g. when it has over 100 net bombs), stop beating the dead horse.
4. If someone is in the process of flaming out, as the OP clearly was, given the ATT thread prior to the TLP thread, don't respond. Or at least keep a level head while responding.

I really don't think blaming the mods or their inability to act is helpful here. Yeah sure there wasn't a holler button. So why then did nobody send a PM? Or make a comment in ATT? It still falls on you, as a poster, to follow the rules, and the above opportunities I mentioned should be well known by now, or at least by the regulars.

Yeah, I came in several hours after it started.

The mods are right, and we are wrong. That’s why they are mods and we are insignificant users. You understand?

September 7, 2020 2:20 PM EST: A user called Mareon posts a query in Ask The Tropers protesting the removal of the trope Badass Gay.

~ 3:00 PM EST: Mareon creates the draft Gay.

I'll finish once I'm reinstated.

Edited by ccorb on Sep 8th 2020 at 4:07:57 AM

Drafts like this are such an unusual case, I'm really not sure how a non-coding change could prevent recurrences. Sure, we won't do that again, nor Warjay or Guma or the rest, but nothing's stopping brand-new users who weren't part of this incident from causing a new one all on their own.

I was talking with Mareon in private messages about better ways to handle it. I honestly thought I was getting through to them, actually, but the Gay TLP was posted after my last message to them. I mentioned that in the ATT query, too — I keep saying phrases to the effect of "mods lurk ATT so we don't really need a holler button for there", but maybe that's not as true as it once was.

Edited by wingedcatgirl on Sep 8th 2020 at 12:49:15 PM

I've actually slept through the first six hours due to timezone matters. Still, I guess we will be more mature per WB's post. As for a complete timeline, I don't think we'll know it unless we're unsuspended, but my writeups on the previous page should be adequate for the Timeline/ page as a historical record (in part to prevent some newbies from the Third TLP War).

Edited by Piterpicher on Sep 8th 2020 at 9:46:40 PM

That’s why documenting this in an Administrivia page is important.

I read TV Tropes every day and somehow I missed all of this. Probably because I do not take part in TLP, but whatever. (Although I do remember the Mario Pissing incident, so I'm not completely unaware.)

From an outsider's viewpoint clearly what happened sounds very stupid and immature, but I will not beat people up who participated in it and demonstrate that they are actually sorry about it. Let's just hope this doesn't happen again I guess. Although I probably shouldn't be saying anything at all because I barely even know what happened, so I guess disregard my comment.

Me too, I came in when the work was already a couple hours old.

Lu, I'm terribly sorry for the 3 comments I contributed to this mess, and I'm not sure how I can regain your trust, but I'll try my damndest to.

Yeah Lu, I'll do my best to prove you can trust me. Troper's honor.

Also, Vid, the image on your Troper page is a "Funny Aneurysm" Moment. It’s not funny anymore. (And hey, even I protested adding hats ironically.)

I object to coded instanuking and being unable to comment after a draft is nuked. The former because there are certain drafts that get bombed a bunch without good reason or giving the sponsor a chance. The latter because there are legitimate reasons to comment on a discarded draft.

And that’s the type of behavior we want to discourage. Worst comes to worst, the creator of the draft can give the mods a call. Also why hats and bombs shouldn’t be anonymous.