Drafting a clearer definition of "Fan-Speak."

The term fan-speak needs to be defined in a way that let's know what to do with it in terms of "examples."

I'm proposing that fan-speak is a class of terms that are useful for labeling the ways that fans feel about things. We've learned that these terms are useful for when fans are speaking to each other, but are not useful as tropes, because they inevitably cause fans to "speak to each other" via edit warring over examples. Therefore, having examples for these terms doesn't benefit us. It ups the noise, drowning out the signal.

I'm hoping in this thread we can reach a mutual understanding of the term 'fan-speak' that will result in a clean up of the current Fan-Speak index so that it contains only terms that we don't want examples for, that we then do that clean up, and then enforce that around the wiki.

Throwing it out for comment.

Perhaps Fan Speak isn't the proper term for what we're going for. Fan Speak sounds like and is used around the wiki as any trope name that is a pre-existing term regardless of whether it's actually a trope or not because that's how the term is used outside of the wiki.

Shall we draw a line between objective Fan-Speak tropes like Nakama and junk like Narm?

That's the main rub. There are trope names that are used primarily by fans. Those are tropes. Naming them in ways that fans will use is the main thing we do.

Then there are things that are not tropes, other than by being a recurring pattern in fan schools of thought or fan actions. Narm is one of these. It's all about how some fan feels about some scene. By definition, not a trope used to tell a story, just a side effect of telling it.

We've tried many ways to get at this distinction. Calling fan-speak "subjectives" was another stab at it. I'm trying to get at a clear way to say "This is a storytelling technique: examples welcome." and "This is an opinion. We've named this opinion, but we're not interested in hosting arguments over opinions."

edited 25th Jan '11 6:49:46 PM by FastEddie

Well, I strongly support this course of action.

The whole different titles and description but same examples list thing that was planned a while back would fix the problem I think.

But the coding would be harsh I think.

Where was this discussed? I'm not familiar with it.

@Fast Eddie: I think that's the proper way to go. We separate the opinions and the facts.

But, things like The Scrappy and The Wesley, which are based on fandom and fact, what do we do with them?

It was in the Yandere thread a while back and you were talking about having different description pages for same tropes describing each medium use of the trope but they would share the same examples list.

The page doesn't seem to exist anymore it was like 6 months ago.

(The way we do pages now with separate pages via medium this wouldn't be too hard now Pages could have different images ect.)

edited 25th Jan '11 7:02:28 PM by Raso

That wouldn't make any sense for this one though. The problem is we have the same name more or less for two different groups of tropes. Not the other way around.

True... bah misunderstood, sorry.

Anyways I take it this stems from the whole Nosebleed thing?

edited 25th Jan '11 7:04:49 PM by Raso

No, this has nothing to do with the Nosebleed thing. I'm really not sure what page you're on, but re-reading Fast Eddie's first post might help. This is about figuring how to classify our entries that are basically just a fandom version of Urban Dictionary as something different than tropes with Fan Speak names.

edited 25th Jan '11 7:09:31 PM by shimaspawn

The Scrappy and The Wesley are opinions. Perfect examples of what I would call fan-speak. The terms are in use. Boy, howdy are they in use. But we are never going to be able to say "this guy is a wesley and this one ain't" because the thousands of us would have to all agree. And that is not going to happen, nor would it matter a wit if it did happen, because it is only an effect of storytelling, not a technique of storytelling.

This sort of thing has been needed for a long time. If there's just one thing that's the scourge of this site, it's the endless edit wars between fans over the pettiest issues.

Just to clarify, this does refer to tropes about fan opinion (basically our audience reaction stuff) and not tropes named primarily by fans. Correct?

The inevitable consequence of placing the words "fan" and "speak" next to each other, in that order, is that it means "colloquial language or jargon as said by or in the manner of fans". Inserting a hyphen only increased that inevitability.

The fact that an article is about something subjective, I would think puts it on Subjective Tropes. That it describes an effect taking place in the audience puts it in Audience Reaction Tropes and so on. People self inserting or how they feel seems to be bugger all to do with anything called Fan Speak. They are issues that don't have anything to do with being a labelled fan, they don't have anything to do with speech.

Right. We have all these names for it. "Audience reactions" is also another. We really only have two things. Storytelling technique elements (tropes) and these fan opinion elements that we have named. Time to stop letting it flail around and nail them down.

Personal Reactions. Audience Reactions.

Fan Reaction Speak?

YMMV Crap?

Seriously, Audience Reactions sounds good.

edited 25th Jan '11 10:25:56 PM by SpellBlade

Grr. If we completely banned examples for the things that are pure opinion the entire Internet will catch fire. Not only that, but there is some fun in them.

Grr. Argh. grits teeth How in the Hell are ever going to strike a balance on this?

the entire Internet will catch fire

Pardon me?

We could try pruning the YMMV index and only zap the absolute worst, most irredeemable crap in the index. Or we try slowly deleting things over time, like with the IJBM sub-forum.

These Terms though have some use/fun in them and just look at The Wesley that one is referenced everywhere.

(sorry for misunderstanding what this thread was about)

edited 25th Jan '11 10:54:15 PM by Raso

I thought of Fan Speak more as a description of the page's function than the trope itself. Like, for whatever reason, it's not something we want as a trope, but we still want a page to define the term.

What's your point?

Author-originated tropes and audience-originated tropes?