Project Thread Community Issues

Back in the Eddie days, he did often emphasize that it is impossible to tell how widespread an opinion is. It seems like we are beginning to run up against the fact that this is still the case today.

By the way, I would not say that the Complete Monster thread is exempt from the "house rules" problem. There have been contretemps in the past with improper example formatting and they have set up a subpage system that has no precedent anywhere else on the site.

I say that just discouragement can do a lot.

Also, I feel like we should do something about work bashing in the dedicated threads, as it can drive people away, but also due to it being off-topic.

Edited by Delibirda on Aug 9th 2021 at 1:53:08 PM

If by dedicated threads you're referring to the ones in Short-Term Projects for specific works, though, that's also a sort of catch-22 situation. Like, for a personal case, I'm reluctant to participate in a lot of them because I don't know the works, but because I genuinely despise all Caustic Critics I am especially averse to participating in the Nostalgia Critic thread in mightymewtron's signature. I find him and his fanbase utterly distasteful on many levels and am happier not thinking about them. But at the same time I completely acknowledge that that also contributes to just letting misuse foster, and I've felt bad about that in the past.

So the issue of balancing trying to clean up pages for a particular work with the fact that some of the people who would be willing to do it in the abstract don't like that work at all... it doesn't seem like a simple concept to resolve.

The same goes, incidentally, for the main topic of the thread - I think it would be helpful for people to periodically take breaks from the cleanup threads when they get too angry about things that come up in them, but given the participation levels of the left-side forums in general, that doesn't always feel practical. (There's a specific example coming to mind, but I'm not sure if naming individual tropers here is appropriate, especially since they haven't posted in this thread.)

Edited by nrjxll on Aug 9th 2021 at 9:45:59 AM

The funny thing is that the NC thread sometimes brings out the worst in my snark since it reminds me of my own fandom-related Berserk Buttons and I can even sometimes recognize the same few people's biases on the page. But that usually pops up more on my cleanup sandboxes — I try not to get too possessive on the thread.

I guess the hatred of the show does explain why nobody ever helps. I don't think people should feel bad about it — like I can't feel bad about not joining the Simpsons cleanup. It's better than joining just to remark about how terrible the show is, or cut things without the context of knowing them.

I remember while we were discussing Pony Life in the MLP cleanup, someone put a needless rant about it in their otherwise helpful post. Drove me away for a while.

A few times when the Critic or Mr. Enter are brought up I tend to mention that I hate the two of them, but I can cut back on that if needed.

Do you mean this? I'd hardly call somebody briefly saying they're neutral on the show a "rant."

I don't mind offhand "Personally I hate this guy" comments as long as the discussion doesn't spend a lot of time insulting the creators or fans of the show just for the content they produce or enjoy.

I might have misread it. I tend to.

I always wondered why we usually don't put a commented out link to a cleanup thread at the top of the page and in the discussion.

Guilt is definitely a motivator that keeps me frequenting the threads even if I'm a little burnt or disinterested. I'm the sort of person who feels bad if I don't the time to clean every single bad page I stumble across, even if I'm in the middle of doing wick cleanup or another equally important job. I realize that I can't possibly do everything all the time, but that doesn't stop me from being sad when I can't work on a page cleanup, since I know it usually means nobody else will get to it either. Heck, I feel bad when I focus too much on one cleanup project and neglect all the other ones, even if there's no way I can work on dozens of TRS threads and dozens of cleanup threads at the same time.

We all have to pick and choose what we want to do for our own health and sanity. But that leaves a lot of projects being neglected, and I think we all know that if we take breaks then less will get done. It's not like we're in a thriving forum environment where there's many other tropers who can pick up the slack; the long-term absence of a contributor tends to be felt when there's a lag in the amount of work we can do.

I'd like to contribute more to work-specific cleanups but I also don't know enough about most of these works to be very useful. On the surface level I can say whether or not something is poorly written or what, but I can't help with the work-specific issues. Take NC for example. When I watched and enjoyed him, it was years ago and things have changed since then. With a lot of the problematic content either being sexual in nature or about more recent developments, I'm simply not sure of how to help since was never part of that part of the fandom.

Honestly, I have to wholeheartedly agree on this... Everyone ultimately specialises in something, and trying to do multiple different things will wear you out or helping when one doesn't have prior knowledge on something will make it difficult. Perhaps there are just too many different cleanups and potential page problems as well. At least, that's what I gather. IDK, maybe people should have lists on their troper page for projects that they specifically want to partake in, and recommend no more than two dozen at once, but it may not be feasible. Just some kind of way to improve focus and not lose productivity/feel guilty, because trying to do everything is not healthy in any way.

Edited by Piterpicher on Aug 9th 2021 at 10:33:04 AM

It was only a matter of time before they created a cleanup thread for cleanup threads...

Well as the user that appears to have sparked this discussion (?) I should probably post my thoughts.

• If you want to call a page of mine laughably bad I wouldn't particularly mind (I'm sure I have some embarrassing stuff out there if you dig), but I do get that that it's normal to be more sensitive about one's writing and I apologize for going there.
• I went and checked that MLP rant link. I get that it could be somewhat unneeded but it does seem to be expressing an opinion about the show in a discussion about YMMV tropes, so using that as an example of being problematic is probably setting the bar too low, and perhaps unfair?
• It would probably be good if we added a general notice in cleanups that 'you generally should explain why you want X to be removed' like AlleyOop suggested.
• I dunno, overall this thread seems like a little bit of an overreaction based on what I've seen mentioned here. I said one comment that offended someone for understandable reasons, but I don't feel like a thread is going to resolve anything. No one seems to be slamming other people or even works (outside of people talking about CTC affecting their views on Doug Walker, which would be pretty avoidable with some sort of advance notice), and this is all people contributing for free online no? That said I am not in many cleanup threads, nor do I particularly follow them all so if there's something I'm missing or some examples of ill-advised behavior could be provided that would help.

I think the most productive thing that could come out of this thread is a list of tips/guidelines for working on these threads.

I think "tips" would be better than "rules" so it's more flexible. A lot of this can be taken on a case-by-case basis — we don't have to ban being critical of a work in its cleanup, or even sayign you dislike it, but don't distract from the conversation to push your own takes.

Derailment is already banned, so going off on a tangent about your own opinions might fall under that banner.

It could, but I'd like to see an example of someone doing that if it's an issue?

Well this thread wasn't really a reaction to you specifically. I partially created this thread because I am concerned our occasional snarkiness is driving potential new people away from the cleanup threads, and also because we are having issues with people just posting example lists with no explanation as to why they are bad.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Aug 10th 2021 at 7:59:18 AM

We must keep the Is This An Example? thread in mind too, as it is used as an example misuse cleanup.

Link?

It's one of the stickied threads in Trope Talk.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13543987200A54420100

Thank you that's handy.

Well if you all have other suggestions for what should be done I'd love to hear them.

I had suggested posting a link or banner to the threads to encourage more activity on that front.

Maybe make it a rule that you have to say why you think examples are questionable? Mew’s idea of PMs might be a better idea though.

So...

I still think a banner or link to the threads would be good to encourage activity.

a big green banner would nicely..

Hard no on the banner, IMO. It works for TRS because it's impermanent and it draws attention to something that has a time limit. But putting a banner on anything with a long-term project thread? It'd have to stay forever and it'd look distracting and unattractive, and probably attract people who comment out of curiosity but have no idea how to use a cleanup thread.

What about... an index of tropes with cleanup projects? With links to all of them? So people can notice on the index that the trope has a cleanup effort and we don't have to clash with the description. We could also put the link to cleanup in the discussion, maybe.