Edit Warring: Fanfic Recs.Ptitlegynukzwikxmd

For a while now, there's been a persistent, low-level Edit War over the fanfic recs page for Ranma 1/2, which has a notably different format to most pages of its kind. The issues are too convoluted and numerous to list here (especially since I have only superficial knowledge of them), but judging by the discussion page and edit history, several people seem to have lost their objectivity, and it would probably be useful to have an outside perspective on what's going on.

No argument from me, it does need sorting a bit. And some of the comments need trimming with a chainsaw as it is way beyond the natter stage. The problem is we have one troper that has appointed him/herself as being the sole interpreter of the Ranma universe. Anything that contradicts their view is either edit warred until everyone else gives up out of exhaustion&frustration or met with screeds of text more suitable to a discussion or Just Bugs Me page.

It's happened (by the same troper) on the main Ranma page too with one character in particular being repeatedly added to Complete Monster, Moral Event Horizon, and Character Alignment for true evil, despite not doing anything even remotely near the standards required for those tropes (especially for a series that explicitly runs on Rule of Funny and Comedic Sociopathy). This troper by their own admission (on Ranma fanfic recs discussion page) uses two handles due to previous warning on edit warring.

As someone who has been trying to maintain the balance of the page, I would really appreciate a mod weighing in on this. It's been going on, on and off, for over a year now and needs a long term fix.

This individual even objects to the Sturgeon's Law disclamier on the grounds that the fic recs are not precisely 10% of the fics out there and is concerenced that there might be some self promotion (despite no self promotion ever having occurred) a problem even the more vociferous and popular Twilight And Harry Potter fanfic recs have avoided and wants an objective criteria for adding fics. That they need some sort of citation to be added.

At the risk of being accused of trotting out the old "The Lurkers Support In Email" from Usenet, it is turning people off the fandom in specific and this site in general.

edited 3rd Oct '10 7:29:27 AM by CrypticMirror

Please be specific as to which handles are the problem. No way am I dragging myself through that edit history trying to guess who we're complaining about.

I could just lock the thing altogether, I suppose.

OK - it's mostly been Sensu Bean at the centre of the edit warring, though given the tangle it's in, I can't for the life of me figure out how much is them repairing vandalism and how much is them screwing with things beyond the wiki's remit. Certainly, though, Sensu is the one responsible for the unusual structuring of this page and removal of 'proof that the remaining ten per cent is worth dying for' messages in other fanfic rec pages.

This is why I was looking for outside perspectives here, particularly regarding how a fanfic recs page should best be run.

edited 3rd Oct '10 8:15:56 AM by Iaculus

A lock would be okay with me, but I think most others would kill me for suggesting that. Erm, Antvasima AKA Sensu Bean.

^ Yeah... it's kind of sad since he was a great contributor in the beginning but he seems to be adding overly long comments and I guess he tried to organize the page by "quality" of the fanfic?

At least that's what I get from the discussion page.

I have no problem with the division between general and shipping fics, and the other current divisions. It certainly needed it.

Maybe a stern warning would be sufficient to make him back off. One of his comments when making an edit was the "Fast Eddie doesn't care about anime" apparently thinking this means he is free to do as he wishes because Fast Eddie won't punish him.

edited 3rd Oct '10 3:16:32 PM by Sackett

Put a block in on the Sensu Bean and antvasima handles. He needs a break.

That complete horseshit about removing the 10% thing ... seriously in need of a chill pill.

edited 3rd Oct '10 3:45:36 PM by FastEddie

Ok, to start with the only thing I have done to the page is add folders. I completely removed all other changes after most of the Talk disagreed with me. The folders as far as I understood were an appreciated effort on my part, so I don't get what the supposed logic is.

The only, and purely cosmetic/should be seen as irrelevant, thing that I actually changed was the removal of the "top 10% guaranteed" text. The actual context of the quote removal was the lengthy discussion that we had to create some at least semi-reliable, as opposed to personal promotion/attention grabbing, driven system for verifying that the recommendations actually were within the supposed "top 10%". Then no matter what angle I took somebody decided to get offended and proclaim that there were True Art pretences in action. As this was not the intention, and most people didn't like the idea to collaborate with sorting the fics into some sort of "quality scale", but I was told that the folders should stay and the effort was appreciated, I personally undid the changes.

However, following the same (There Is No) True Art rationale, which I basically agreed with, to logical consistency, or more specifically, given that giving a specific quality-control number is impossible to determine for any reviewer, but it would be matter-of-fact to simply state that "these are fics that somebody liked and you might too", I thought that removing the phrase was an acceptable and uncontroversial cosmetic-level compromise that nobody should have any logical reason to mind.

Second, I have made efforts to be far more polite and flexible than Cryptic Mirror or Comartemis have been, and have consistently made modifications to my additions when put in question, including severely shortening them down. However, getting non-stop seriously insulted while trying to keep a reasonable tone and openminded mindset is getting tiresome very quickly.

Third, this kind of unfair history and context rewriting, without even informing me, while removing all self-distance and admittance of shared fault, definitely paints the attacker in far worse light than myself on the personal honour scale, but then again, I'm Literal-Minded as Cryptic Mirror has given me a few insults about. I don't deliberately lie, period.

As for: "apparently thinking this means he is free to do as he wishes because Fast Eddie won't punish him"... Uh, no, that's more putting completely out-of-context words in my mouth, either due to gross misunderstanding of my intents or outright deliberate manipulation. This is getting into sufficiently bizarre demagoguery territory that it's hard to tell.

The actual context was that Cryptic Mirror did a blatant manipulative Shout-Out to Fast Eddie claiming that I intended things that I did not:

"Check out the other fanfic rec pages. You are not the defender of the one true way. Unless Fast Eddie wants to back your new format we'll go with general convention."

Whereupon I replied:

"Fast Eddie doesn't have an opinion in the matter as he's completely uninterested in anime as far as I remember, and doesn't tend to care about these types of minor appearance issues. The point is that there is no "one true way" in this case, no higher mandate. The only thing that matters for these types of details is matter of fact logic and some reliability, and the "top 10% guaranteed" definition is near impossible for any reviewer to define, and pretentious in the sense of declaring an inate superiority and absolute reliability in anything that some passing strangers (you, me, the others) happen to like or want to market. Without specifics I'm entirely fine with some sort of catchphrase, so feel extremely feel to modify if or insert an alternative. Also, I removed it from the main page and a few others without any complaints some time ago, but haven't got around to all of them yet."

Meaning exactly what I said. As far as I understood there was no existing "absolute standard" in action, and it was misleading and factually wrong to claim so, or invoke that Eddie had supposedly given a personal mandate, especially given that I had personally seen a comment of his that stated that he wasn't even interested in anime, making it even more unlikely that he was the one who inserted the "top 10%" phrase. And it was also factually wrong to claim that it was still the standard, as nobody except Cryptic Mirror seemed to care either way about the cosmetic detail, and didn't mind when I removed it from the main page for consistency's sake.

That's pretty much it as far as I understand things, but then this entire situation reads as insane to me, either based on a number of misunderstandings, or blatantly attempting to manipulate the moderator for petty personal gains, likely depending on the user (from my experience/POV the latter for Cryptic Mirror, and the former for the others), but then again, I'm obviously too unfiltered/sincere to deal well with deceit or backstabbing.

Btw: I'm autistic, as is pretty well documented chill-pills developed for neurotypical brains generally don't remotely work the way they should on us.

edited 4th Oct '10 5:12:01 AM by SensuBean

Taking off the 10% line doesn't come across as trying to bring "honesty" to the page. It makes it look like you're sour about your changes not being appreciated and that, because not all the fics on the page conform to your standards, clearly they can't fit any objective standards at all.

Is there an objective standard in play? No, there isn't, but not because such an idea has been rejected out of hand. It's just that trying to implement one when other tropers' feedback can help weed out any bad fics is just not worth it. At any rate, no one else is reading into that one line that there is a massive objective standard in play. It's like trying to rename a trope that's not being misused.

Are there other valid concerns here? Sure. We've had a couple handles in the last week or so (first Aggroking and then kjyl) show up out of nowhere just to prop up Interview, and I think it would be fair to be a little more skeptical of recently-created handles if there's reason to believe they're created just for the purposes of advertisement on a rec page. I mean, folks can already create their own work pages if they want.

But I do think it's safe to say that, honestly, no one else is so concerned about having the fics on the rec page meet some minimum standard. Somebody liked it, and around here, that's good enough. If someone else doesn't like it, they can say so, and the great should sort itself out from the good and so on, and I think that's fine. The pages aren't long enough to worry about having a huge proportion of "bad" fics (without even defining what bad is) cluttering the page.

No, I'm very simple that way. You don't have to read into my intents as I usually state them out loud to avoid the usual confusion. My intentions were exactly what I say they are. (I may or may not be an aberration that way, but yeah, the general deceit in the world surrounding me does tend to be very frustrating... I wrote an entire story on the theme in an effort to make some sense of it after all):

Since consensus was against me I changed things back. However, to follow the used rationale as I understood it, i.e. that there were no reliable standards, which isn't an argument I can find fault with, then the calim of specific reliable standards should preferably go as a much simpler and tidier solution.

Is this something that I'm fanatic about? No, not remotely. The way I remember, I left it alone for Cryptic Mirror to do a modification she felt comfortable with last time around, but I also don't see why this cosmetic detail is made into a major issue in the first place? Why would anyone care if I remove it and leave the page the same othervise, beyond simply using it as a pretext to launch an attack (see above, or CM's recent various completely misrepresented, unfair, and either completely context misunderstood or deliberately manipulative illogical accusations on the talk)? Nobody seemed to mind when I fixed this small detail on the main recommendation page.

And why are people saying that I have completely messed up the page structure, when you formerly told me that you wanted me to spend time improving the page layout through folder systems, and afterwards that these should be kept, and everything else was changed back? Wandering Browser made some additional indexing changes, but there was nothing wrong with that either as far as I could see. Or am I misremembering anything?

Also, why exactly is the likely most compulsive-level sincere/honest contributor to the page suddenly completely context-twisted overkill ganged up upon behind his back without even getting a chance to defend himself? If I somehow deserve a ban, then per extension/logical consistency almost everyone involved deserves a ban, because there is no solid foundation for it here, nor remotely any warranted "I behaved, or compromised better than you did", as I took considerable time to consistently adapt and has made an effort to act as general class act trash can for common unprovoked extreme rudeness, petty sniping, or apparent outright lies. So again, this doesn't make any sense, but if this Wiki weeds out the anal-retentive honest editors and keeps the dishonest manipulators, then the quality level will drastically drop in the long run.

And no, this definitely isn't Eddie's fault. I mean, he's one single editor for a massive wiki on top of a real job! That's insane. Imagine just 20 editors somehow trying to handle all the complex feuding on Wikipedia... yeah. But it also means that he has to go with the quick misrepresentations or misunderstandings to save time and move on to the next case, which also opens for vulnerability from misrepresentation. Hence why I get annoyed by CM's Cry Wolf Shout-Out attempts. It seems so freaking low and blatantly ingratiatingly manipulative to me. Although it might not be a bad idea to start accepting recruit moderators from people he considers extremely fair-minded and who are willing to tackle the responsibility.

edited 4th Oct '10 6:58:58 AM by SensuBean

Sensu Bean, do you have anything to do with "Dave A" on the Ranma Wikia? Because that seriously looks like your style.

And if everyone here is "ganging up on you", then it may genuinely mean that you are doing something wrong. I will freely admit I've been an asshole to everyone since I came here, but from what I've seen, Cryptic Mirror, Three Headed Dog, Tyoria, and a number of other users who've butted heads with you have been quite polite and restrained about it, even if they do get a little tired towards the end of it all.

Also, the only changes I made were to make some new folders and rearrange the positions of fics to suit those folders — I didn't delete anything.

edited 6th Oct '10 2:07:47 PM by WanderingBrowser

hello just wanted to say that I am Kjyl and I am not a sock puppet of any sort, the only reason I said anything about "interview" was it was it seemed a bit mean spirited, in a " if you like this you are an maladjusted idiot" way and it was just plain long, in that it was more then the length of all the other recs.

to be fair the OP did agree to cut down much of the original post. There were several other posts of similar length/ natter level but as they were by the same poster I did not want to seem to be pursuing a vendetta against them.

possibly a 5 to 10 line rule with only one response per troper might be appropriate.

on the other topics, the Sturgeons Law disclaimer should be put back if only because it is kind of the standard for the fan fic rec pages, and while I do not beleive that we should try to sort fics by quality, because it would be impossible for everyone to agree, the folder system is really nice.

There's another topic around here discussing sweeping changes to the Fan Fic Recommendations section, kyjl. You might want to check it out.

Here's the link.

I think we can lock this one.