GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENTS

This thread is for announcements of general interest to the forum as a whole. Please don't use it for conversation. Thank you.

There is a new tool available to the mods, for use in the Trope Repair and Image Pickin' threads.

It's a three-day Deadlock Clock.

If it is applied to a thread, it will count three days from the time it is applied. If no action has been taken or no progress has been made in the discussion by the time it runs out, the thread will be locked, all associated crowners will be locked, and the "Under Discussion" tags will be removed from the page in question. The subject will be considered dead. Anyone who wants to bring it up again will need to start all over from the beginning.

"Action taken" includes making crowners if they were not previously made. "Progress in the discussion" means exactly what it sounds like; contentless bumping, repetition of the same points that have already been made, or irrelevant side-conversations are not "progress in the discussion".

Once the clock is in place, it cannot be removed. It can be extended, and will be as long as progress continues to be made, or at the discretion of a mod or admin.

Deliberate obstructionism in a thread with the Deadlock Clock running on it will be considered "arrant dickishness". Repeated obstructionism will result in at least a temporary forum ban.

edited 5th Oct '10 9:05:25 AM by Madrugada

"Where'd My Contributor's Page Go!?!?!???"

or " 'S okay, we just moved it..."

Since there have been more and more collisions between Contributor's Pages in the Main namespace and pages for tropes, works, or other pages that really should be Main-namespaced, Fast Eddie wrote a thingy that automagically moved all pages that were set as "page type > a Contributor" to the Tropers/ namespace.

There are two ways to get to your contributor's page now:

• you can use Tropers/name the same way you would use any other namespaced title: (Tropers/FastEddie goes to Fast Eddie)

• or you can use the shortcut @/ in front of the name:. @/FastEddie goes to the same place: Fast Eddie

If your handle is only one word, you'll still need to use double curly brackets around it: (Tropers/{{Madrugada}} or @/{{Madrugada}}) to get to Madrugada no matter which notation you use.

edited 5th Jun '10 7:21:55 AM by Madrugada

I had left the various elimination games under the media they specifically pertained to, but they are proliferating at great rate. I'm going to move all of them to Forum Games. Please make any new ones there. Thank you.

As I'm sure most of you are aware, there have been several pages pages chopped and locked recently, due to the fact that they were largely (or even primarily) bile and natter.

Two of those pages so far (Sonichu and Asperchu,) have been cleaned up, restored, then relocked to prevent a return to their former state. If you want to work on any of the others, make a Sandbox/Cleaning(tropename) page to do so. The page contents from before the chopping can be found on the page history for copying.

A list of active Sandbox clean-up pages is here

edited 5th Oct '10 9:06:00 AM by Madrugada

Due to a rash of vandalism (page blanking in the wiki and thread spamming in the forums) and ban-evading via proxies that were being changed almost as fast as Fast Eddie could swat the IPs, he has blocked proxies. In the man's own words:

"Also, have now blocked all proxies. Sorry, if you use a proxy for legit reasons. I just can't be online 24x7. ... If you try to access the wiki through a proxy, you will get an error message instead of a page. ... Unfortunately, it applies to everything."

edited 8th Jul '10 10:41:45 PM by Madrugada

This post in response to continuing confusion over the rules here. They're very simple:

• Administrative Policy applies here as it does anywhere else on the Wiki. The particular part that is relevent to the forums is "Nastiness and dickery: will not be tolerated". In other words, don't be a dick.
• A specific form of dickery which is banned is the personal attack.
  • If you're debating with somebody, attack their arguments, not the person.
  • Don't create crowners or threads complaining about your fellow tropers. Banning comes pretty quickly for that one. It's safe to assume that once is enough for a ban.
  • If it's patently obvious who you're talking about, the fact that you didn't mention their name doesn't make it "not a personal attack". You may safely assume that moderators are at least as capable of figuring things out as everyone else is. Most of the time.
• Contentless snowclone threads are prohibited. They tend to result in copycat threads and pointless wonderposting. A content-less snowclone is a thread which serves no purpose other than to make a pun based on the name of an existing thread. In the past they have been known to spread rapidly, but the current policy is to lock or zap any pointless snowclone thread immediately.
• Certain subforums have their own specific rules. Please make sure you know the rules of that subforum before posting there. That means no derails in On Topic Conversations, no exclusive clubs in Trope Covens, and try to stick to the guidelines in Forum Games.
• Never import drama here from another site. Any user who does so will face an immediate ban. This means don't use our forums for a battleground, don't encourage or instigate others to use our forums as a battleground, and don't use our forums as a launching pad for a fight.
• We wish to maintain an atmosphere of mutual respect. We request that you behave civilly. Failure to do so may result in a ban.
• On thread necromancy versus the creation of new threads: Neither one is de facto "bad form" here. Either is acceptable, depending on the thread and why it's being brought up again.
  • If the new post is in response to something relevant in the old thread, it makes more sense to necro the old one rather than try to recap the whole previous discussion.
  • If the new post is tangential or only partially related to the old thread, making a new thread may make more sense.
  • If the old thread degenerated into a fight or shitposting, there's no point in trying to necro it — it will simply pick back up with fighting or shitposting, 95 times out of a hundred.
  • On the left-hand side of the forum, it's almost always preferable to necro an old thread in Trope Repair or Image Picking than to make a new one.
  • The only things close to rules that we have about necro'ing an old thread is "don't necro just for lulz" and "don't necro to continue a fight."

Thank you for reading.

Clarifications added — FE

edited 5th Oct '10 9:06:33 AM by Madrugada

Raiding other sites, conducting raids on this site from other sites, that kind of thing.

I don't believe there's a precedent for dealing with that kind of thing. We don't ban tropers for complaining about other sites, at any rate.

With trolls, it's generally a case-by-case thing, based on how disruptive they are being and whether they are being malicious. That could theoretically include a troper who came to pick a fight with another troper over something that happened off-site.

Note that Madrugada doesn't ban people without warning, so it's not possible to get forum banned without knowing why.

Clarification on what "importing or exporting a war" means:

If Alice is a poster here, and Ben posts here in order to continue a fight or harassment that was going on on another site, Ben is importing a war. Ben will be banned. It doesn't matter whether Ben came here specifically to harass Alice, or if he was already a poster here.

If Greg uses his posts here to go on about how horribly Harry is behaving on some other site, and Harry comes over here to continue the fight, Greg and Harry are both importing a war, Greg by using us as a base for his attacks, and Harry for continuing the fight here. Both Greg and Harry be banned. One poster has been warned that he would be banned for this when he tried to stir up interest in launching a raid on ED and 4chan(!) from here.

If Sue posts here about something that happened on another site, and Tom, Una, and Vincent go to that site and start trouble because of it, in a way that causes it to bounce back here, Tom, Una And Vincent are exporting a war and will be banned. If I find evidence that Sue intentionally posted what she did to in order to instigate the others to react the way they did, she'll be banned too.

What it boils down to, very simply, is

• don't use our forums for a battleground,
• don't encourage or instigate others to use our forums as a battleground, and
• don't use our forums as a launching pad for a fight.

edited 5th Oct '10 9:21:40 AM by Madrugada

.

edited 5th Oct '10 9:25:08 AM by Madrugada

An amendment has been made to the forum rules post for the sake of clarity.

I hear Fighteer has ascended to moderator status, and then some.

Totally my idea.

The rules post has been updated with Madrugada's guidelines regarding thread necromancy and the creation of new threads. Hopefully that should answer a few questions.

Sufficiently large donations get ads blocked for you.

The code is installed to keep track of 'subscribers' and turn ad display for them off in the forum threads.

We settled on a flat donation of $20 being good for a third of a year. That is, the ads are off for four months per donation.

edited 5th Oct '10 9:07:54 AM by Madrugada

.

edited 5th Oct '10 9:24:45 AM by Madrugada

New tool in the war on natter!

A Subjectives page can now be made for a work, giving a place to move natter magnets to without having to outright cut them. Just clip out the natter magnet and its natter, change the URL from Main/Whatever to Subjectives/Whatever, paste, save and go.

A tab with the "Subjectives" icon will show up on the work's page indicating there are subjectives to look at.

Colors in the wiki and forums

For various reasons, the [[color:X]] tag has been disabled. In its place are ten other colors chosen by vote, plus one chosen by Rule of Cool. In order to use them, use the color's name, followed by a colon, followed by your text, all bracketed. (For instance, [[red:text]] gives text) The colors are:

• red
• gold
• green
• forestgreen
• blue
• teal
• cinnamon
• pink
• purple
• gray
•    evil   
• and [[white: some text]] for invisible text if it's used on a page with a white background.

This was a compromise between unrestricted use (which lead to eyesores and abuse) and Fast Eddie's original response, which was to take away colors entirely. So have fun, but    don't abuse them   .

edited 5th Oct '10 9:24:31 AM by Madrugada

The super-complicated site policy regarding making a page for your own work:

Do it if you want to, but keep in mind that once the page is made, it's not "yours" anymore. Other editors will rewrite and add and change and cut things. If you can't cope with that, don't make the page.

edited 12th Oct '10 6:10:40 PM by Madrugada

{Blanked this one, cause there's an official type one right below it. Thanks anyway, Haven—Madrugada}

edited 27th Oct '10 4:29:29 PM by Madrugada

Serious announcement regarding the wiki in general

Read this for background. Then read the latest update on Page 2 of this thread for the current situation. If you have questions, please post them in this thread.

Fast Eddie said:

Finally heard from Google. Here it is:

While reviewing your site, we noticed that Google ads were displaying on your site in a manner that isn't in compliance with our program policies. As stated in our program policies, Ad Sense publishers may not display Google ads on pages with adult or mature content. While we understand that it may be challenging to monitor user-generated content, such as comments, on your site, we require publishers to check that the webpages containing their ad code complies with our program policies.

This means a site-wide purge of adult-like stuff is needed. The Fetish stuff, the Porn stuff, anything else we might find. Like any image the least bit iffy.

This is a survival issue. Also, I don't think these things are important to the mission. They are just fun for the interested parties.

All advertising will be dropped on any page that accept comments. That includes the forums. That likely means we are at the level of performance we're going to have for the forum for a good long while.

I'm going to start in immediately on the things that got us in trouble, I think, cutting the fetish/pron tropes.

However!

What we will do is move these topics to another wiki on a different URL (one of the 'mediatropes' domains). That wiki (running the same software) will not run Google ads and will be linked to from here where appropriate.

The last step: edit accounts will be hardened. No anons. Email requirement for edit account.

Thanks go out in advance to the mods and all other tropers of good will in managing the coming shitstorm from the "IT'S RUINED FOREVER" crowd. Knuckle up.

edited 28th Oct '10 9:39:36 AM by Madrugada

That ^ up there was Fast Eddie. This is me, Madrugada, not speaking for Fast Eddie at all.

If you can afford to make a donation of any size, the Paypal button right here. We have a buffer that will hold through November. This has to be solved by then or we're out of money to pay the hosting bills.

At this time, no, we are not cutting the forums. Please try to quell any panicking and report any rumor-mongering. Fast Eddie is going to be working in this and keeping the mods apprised of what's happening. We'll be letting you all know as soon as we know.

Thank you.

edited 28th Oct '10 9:40:28 AM by Madrugada

Question. One part of googles adsense policy:

Ads or links to external sites containing adult content

Does this effect the "linking to media tropes site"?

Does this effect the "linking to media tropes site"?

A legitimate, and worrying, question. Damn.