Rework, possibly Cut List, "You fail X Forever"...

If you wanted a reason why it's okay to spot errors that isn't some variant of Drinking Game, I'd suggest it's proactively cataloging things that might become Hollywood Version of something, which tend to start as a mistake that propagates through out various media. So, if there's a You Fail Physics Forever that shows up three or four times, it's probably the beginnings of a new trope. Hell, You Fail Physics Forever has a horde of subtropes as is.

That might actually work.

I like that idea too. We could call it something like Cutting Edge Hollywood Physics.

If you would like an example:

I'm cruising through You Fail Physics Forever and I notice something. A lot of Space Opera have ships that have engines that die stop moving. Hm, perhaps this is a good idea for a subtrope. And thus, Space Friction is born.

Maybe we should make more effort to hammer the Tropes Are Not Bad point home on the descriptions and example lists.

Like any other liberty, these tropes can be used well or abused. You can deviate from physics to get a cool effect, and some deviations from physics are even Necessary Weasels (e.g. Faster-Than-Light Travel in Star Trek-esque settings). Some other times deviations from physics could have easily been fixed with little to no effort, which can give you the feeling the writer did not do the research.

An awful lot of tropes have a duality to this extent, where there's a distinct "flavor" when they're played well or played poorly (Third-Act Misunderstanding- powerful irony or Idiot Plot fuel? Conservation of Detail- tight plot or groan-inducing Untwist fuel?). They still work; the minor quibbles over how much slack to cut a work are relegated to specific examples on a case-by-case basis.

edited 17th Nov '10 3:06:31 AM by TripleElation

I already mentioned that the You Fail... tropes are a sort of "breeding ground" for new tropes as one of their major pros. In fact, I listed two tropes that I see in the examples of You Fail Physics Forever right now that don't currently exist on the wiki that I know of.

Anyway, the merge that has been proposed twice already would fix the problems listed by Fast Eddie - we would have a trope about liberties authors take with field X, whether those liberties were intentional (because they are an Acceptable Break from Reality, because of Rule of Cool, or because the author believes it makes a better story) or unintentional (Did Not Do The Research, making it a potential trope maker, or following the examples of other authors, which makes it a potential or missed trope).

For those You Fails that don't have a corresponding Art Major trope, just rewrite them to fit the new standard.

Then we come up with a snappy name that makes everyone happy, no cuts were done, we have workable tropes, and a larger number of people are happy than the alternative cutting.

edited 17th Nov '10 6:23:50 AM by ccoa

Sounds about right.

The mission of this project: Reduce fault-finding in the wiki articles.

The thing is big enough that identifying individual steps and putting together an order to do them in would be a good idea. Here's the way I see the sequence right now:

1. Identify and list "tropes" that are often used in examples to point out faults in a story.
2. Divide the list by the kind of action needed to fix the problem.
   1. Rework, which could mean all or only one of:
      1. Re-title to a title that does not entail fault finding.
      2. Rework description
      3. Cull bad examples, which might mean "pull out and incorporate into a sub-trope."
      4. Possibly axe examples in the article and label it a Fan-Speak definition.
   2. Merge with an article reworked as above. Change the wicks.
   3. Cut it.

Seems to me that #1 has been done for all the "You Fail" and "X Goof" articles.

Let's stop there and see if we have that much agreement.

edited 17th Nov '10 6:54:13 AM by FastEddie

Why didn't you post that plan at the start of the thread? If you had, you could have saved ten pages of arguments. Even so, I've still lost a lot of confidence in you after the last four pages.

edited 17th Nov '10 8:02:06 AM by Roxor

This is a development thread. Didn't know the plan at the beginning of the thread.

I wasn't planning to con you, anyway, so you can just hang on to your confidence.

Alright, I have a slight difficulty getting the whole "find faults in a story" thing. It seems a very broad and nebulous concept. A lot of things can be interpreted as "faults in a story." Some tropes frequently describe pretty legitimate faults in stories. Anvilicious morals can certainly be used as perfectly good story-telling elements, for example, but in general, a story being painfully un-subtle about its morals wouldn't be seen as a good thing. The Idiot Ball is rarely a great way to develop a plot, though of course it can be used well. Some tropes, like Women Drivers or All Gays Are Pedophiles might be victims of Society Marching On, but would be immediately seen as deeply negative aspects of a story today, with the only possible excuse being the story's age.

What I'm saying is, there are cases where "describing flaws in a story" and "describing a legitimate trope" are not incompatible concepts. Perhaps it'd be more accurate to say that there are some tropes that often (though not always) constitute faults in a story, but the point is the same: trying to change everything in the wiki that could be interpreted as "fault-finding" is a stretch, and might result in re-working, or even removing, many perfectly good tropes.

I don't at all disagree that "Fail At X" could use a re-work, but not because it's "fault-finding" — simply because it really doesn't seem like it's a trope.

I think as stated now, that there plan is way too broad, and "fault finding" needs some clear definition to prevent it from including too much.

edited 17th Nov '10 9:06:33 AM by girlyboy

I don't at all disagree that "Fail At X" could use a re-work, but not because it's "fault-finding" — simply because it really doesn't seem like it's a trope.

edited 17th Nov '10 9:04:05 AM by Stratadrake

I feel like that's going back to an earlier part of the discussion, and I don't feel like repeating for the umpteenth time why I don't agree that it's a natter magnet. My point was, I think creating a mission statement to remove everything from the wiki that could possibly be interpreted as fault-finding or that can lead to a lot of "fault-finding examples" is way too broad, and can do harm to parts of the wiki that don't need a re-work. It could also artificially limit the wiki's scope, or create the necessity of condescendingly sugar-coating some tropes.

edited 17th Nov '10 9:11:23 AM by girlyboy

I agree with girly, to a degree. However, I do agree that articles that are both fault-finding and not really a trope need to be looked at and fixed, however that fix may come.

For example, Critical Research Failure and Special Effects Failure (as mentioned elsewhere on this forum) are not tropes and consist of lots of fault finding.

edited 17th Nov '10 9:11:08 AM by ccoa

I agree to a great extent.

But actually, even with Critical Research Failure, there seems to me to be a case for trope-hood. It's defined as "a moment where convincing techno-babble gives place to a statement so wrong, that anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the subject would have their Willing Suspension of Disbelief challenged". It's subjective, sure, but it also seems like a useful concept when talking about how the audience reacts to a story, and how Suspension Of Disbelief is maintained or lost. If anything, it seems like more of a trope than Did Not Do The Research itself, since the latter basically amounts to "sometimes fiction is not realistic, because authors are lazy."

(It could definitely use a huge clean-up of examples, mind you, but the underlying concept doesn't seem all that bad to me).

edited 17th Nov '10 9:29:27 AM by girlyboy

If you don't agree that tropes filled with an unusual amount of natter are natter magnets I'm not sure anything productive can happen here...

I don't think anyone is contesting that. The issue is why they're natter magnets and what/whether it's fixable and whether it should be fixed.

I was replying to post 261: "I don't agree that it's a natter magnet."

I think we've seen that fault-finding does bring at least one kind of natter: justification/defensive edits, and that this sort of natter is particularly unpleasant, with lots of Flame War tendencies. Fault finding is the cause of a bad thing.

Also, the attitude associated with fault finding doesn't help the wiki. Nitpicking and snide sneering and putting great effort into coming up with a way to say that something sucks is just an enormous waste of energy having nothing to do with doing amusing write ups of storytelling conventions.

Maybe we should just make another sub-wiki, along the lines of Sugar Wiki or Darth Wiki just for fault-finding? If people are so fond of finding faults in works, let's just give them a place to do it where we won't have to look at it all the time.

Wouldn't that just go in Darth Wiki in that case?

edited 17th Nov '10 4:04:58 PM by troacctid

That was the hope for Darth Wiki, to drain away that sort of thing from the real articles. It hasn't been entirely successful. The Troper Tales experience made us think it might work, but it evidently isn't as immediately clear to an editor what kind of stuff is welcome there that is not welcome in the white pages.

Clearly, what we need is a time machine, so that Fast Eddie and Janitor can go back 5 years with a notebook full of note on "what to not do that way" for their past selves.

edited 17th Nov '10 4:25:13 PM by Madrugada

That will be done, of course. At the present moment, we are living in the section of the universal time stream that will be snipped out when the corrective trip is finally made. Hopefully, the changes will not have the butterfly-effect of preventing the invention of time travel necessary for the fix, thus canceling out the fix.

Risky enough undertaking that we should spend some energy on efforts that assume it won't work, to cover all the bases.

@Yamikuronue: You were taking what I said completely out of context, and I think maybe that could be an obstacle to productive discussion? If you had bothered to read what I was replying to, it would've been pretty clear that I was saying I don't believe the title itself was the natter magnet.

I don't feel that the points I brought up have been addressed at all. What does "fault-finding" mean? Do we need to re-write Idiot Ball, Anvilicious, and gosh knows how many other tropes, because they could be seen as "encouraging fault-finding?"

Also, the claim that negative titles encourage fault finding keeps being made. Several posters here, including myself, have argued at length that we are not convinced this is the case, and why we don't buy the arguments offered. I don't think any of that has been responded to either.

edited 17th Nov '10 8:21:08 PM by girlyboy

Fault finding means finding things at fault. No secret meaning intended. The wiki is not in the business of pointing out people's errors in story creation.

Post #267 deals with the "is it really a problem" question.

edited 17th Nov '10 8:25:48 PM by FastEddie

No, that post says "I think we've seen that fault-finding does bring at least one kind of natter: justification/defensive edits", which is a point that I think has been contested several times in this thread, but that you keep making as if it can't possibly be wrong.

Edit: Without actually responding to any of the counter-points brought up, mind you.

I was not implying there was a "secret meaning," I was trying to say, as I did above, that I think simply saying "anything that encourages finding faults in things, is bad" is way too broad, and could negatively impact a number of perfectly legitimate tropes that are quite different from the whole "You Fail At X" set.

edited 17th Nov '10 8:29:52 PM by girlyboy