Darth Wiki - Dealing with the complaint pages

This popped out of the Permanent Redlink thread, but there's apparently a concerted effort to turn all redirects to Darth Wiki pages into permanent redlinks. As part of the process, I feel this is essentially defeating the entire purpose of Darth Wiki. The idea was that, by sending people to Darth Wiki tropes, they would keep all issues on those topics off the main wiki. However, it seems the current practice is actually making it harder to get there - currently, pages such as So Bad Its Horrible and Wall Banger, which were deleted merely an hour after being cutlisted and creating literally thousands of redlinks, are not able to be easily found.

I feel like this makes the existence of the Darth Wiki rather useless - if we're trying to hide it as much as possible to the point that the only way visitors can find it is to literally know there's a link on the main page and then try to find the trope they're thinking of, there's not a point in keeping it around. Covering the wiki in redlinks already discourages users from even trying to find the Darth Wiki tropes, and it's also creating the impression that Darth Wiki tropes themselves are being deleted. Furthermore, if we hide that part of the wiki anyway, it's hard to justify that Darth Wiki is actually capable of pulling flame-happy discussions off the main wiki, and I'd think the impression that the wiki isn't allowing any negative or complaining discussions would discourage more of them.

Right, I just opened a huge can of worms, but I think this needs to be discussed.

I mostly agree.

The very existence of these pages, and the fact that we tolerated them for so long, has had an adverse effect on the precedent of what's acceptable on the wiki.

If absolutely ZERO outlets for complaining exist on the wiki, how are people going to complain? If you look at a page we're cleaning, you'll notice that most of the bile came in the form of potholing to subjectives. In fact, those made up the meat of the page, making it difficult to clean without completely cutting the article.

If those didn't exist, would we have this problem in the first place?

edited 14th Feb '11 12:38:14 AM by SpellBlade

It's a compromise. Compromise often isn't rational from an outsider's POV.

The way it is now, we can have our fun while making life much easier for the mods and curators.

Please note that a sufficiently determined troper can still Pot Hole to the actual Darth Wiki article. It just means you have to know how to do it, which means that Joe Random Casual troper won't know and therefore (hopefully) won't bother.

But the entire point of redlinking the main pages was to get people to not link to Darth Wiki in any form.

It's not much of a compromise if we're making it harder and harder to find. If that's the case, it's better to just junk it and declare the experiment over.

Yea, I know that's tossing a lot of stuff, but right now, we're trying to make it invisible. The directive does not match the intent.

I thought it was less making it invisible and more "Make it so that people who don't know how to make a DarthWiki.ThisExists pothole (or to whatever page they want to go to) need to look it up, thereby making it so that people don't spam things like So Bad Its Horrible everywhere." It isn't too hard to actually make the pothole go to where you want.

...Ok, I know we got rid of the Main redirect, but can I make a DarthWiki.So Bad Its Horrible redirect? Currently the only one we have is DarthWiki.Horrible, and that's so unintuitive that people who actually want to use it for the right thing need to look it up.

edited 14th Feb '11 9:11:42 AM by TheInferno

Looks like Darth Wiki.Horrible doesn't work either.

Let's try this

edited 14th Feb '11 9:30:09 AM by YamiiDenryuu

Yes, you currently have to think about it to Pot Hole the Darth Wiki. I don't see the issue with this. It makes people take a moment and think about if the pothole is actually needed or not. That's a good thing.

Could we perhaps have a different color than red or blue for Darth Wiki links? Like, if the links were purple to signify their status, and unregistered people have to go through a "you're going into an area of the wiki where you'll find opinions that may be considered volatile, you have been warned" screen?

Hmm. I'm not really sure how I feel about this, but for right now, I'm going to let it go. My question is this, though - what are we supposed to do with existing references to Wall Banger on the Main namespace if we see them in articles? Edit them so that they refer to the entry for the subject on Darth Wiki? Delete them?

misread the question, nevermind.

edited 14th Feb '11 11:00:55 PM by SpellBlade

If they're used in a place where they're allowed to be used, aim them at the Darth Wiki page.

Okay, thanks. Will do. And if they're not, I'll delete them, or move them to where they should be, if possible.

edited 15th Feb '11 12:15:28 AM by Agent0042

Use this for reference.

Wow, that page doesn't even list works pages.

I think Horrible.Horrible is the only redirect that still works.

You know, there was a time when Darth Wiki wasn't just a dumping ground for extreme natterbait tropes.

↑yeah, I seem to recall it too. Nowadays people are quick to tag things they don't like as "Darth Wiki" or "YMMV" so that they can get rid of them. They've undergone some sort of Trope Decay, which is a shame.

Wow, that page doesn't even list works pages.

What? It's about what tropes go where, and work pages are included. For example:

By the way, can you link me to the discussion where they decided to eliminate the main link for Wallbanger? I miss being able to pothole it. :(

It was because we were never supposed to link to Darth Wiki pages from outside Darth Wiki, but people were doing it anyway, so now it doesn't show up as a bluelink.

This thread. It was my idea in addition to cutting So Bad Its Horrible.

edited 9th Mar '11 4:27:11 PM by nuclearneo577

Just had a mildly funny image go through my head of tropes acting like the cars in Worthless from Brave Little Toaster as they're deleted.

"I once had 10,000 wicks.

But I was needlessly potholed too much, and I got under the wrong Mod's skiiin.

(Crush)

You're worthless....."

edited 9th Mar '11 11:15:11 PM by Surenity

@Spell Blade: I meant that it doesn't tell you where works pages go. It briefly mentions the various works namespaces in passing, but makes no statement about them.

Then again, I recently learned that we don't all seem to agree on whether works pages go in the Main namespace, so It's no wonder there are no clear directions.