Hmm, that's a tricky one, let me think. We could have a banner on top that says Before starting a new discussion make sure your question isn't already answered somewhere in [[Link the archives]]. If you want to continue an archived discussion, copy the relevant text into the opening post and start the topic title with (continued from the archives). If anyone ignores this, send them a PM explaining why we don't want repeated discussions. When things have been settled you can just reuse their posts for a new topic since they can be edited by anyone.
edited 25th Mar '11 7:46:53 PM by Killomatic
Regulated fun - the best kind! I don't make the rules, just enforce them with an iron fist.This might work, of course. I am just pointing this as a point against changing the system unless it is really necessary. I mean, why risk problems if we are not actually having any problem right now?
The best solution would somehow make every bullet in a
page a discussion thread automatically, but I suspect this is not viable.
Btw, as a
page fan, of all proposed actions, my favorite is Bailey's (just clean up and moderate). I enjoy this pages for their usefulness and would be very happy if they were more organized.
Forgive me for yelling, but this seems to be being ignored:
Before we change anything, we first need to establish whether the pages need to be fixed, and then establish what exactly needs to be fixed.
All of this stuff about proposed solutions are nice, but we've not identified the problem. It's like creating a new name crowner before we've made a one-issue rename crowner.
I personally do not want people's names attached to their comments directly. Sure, leave it in the history. But having it directly available will make it seem more like a conversation, and encourage rather than discourage natter.
(I assume natter is the point, since it's almost always the point. But we still need to clarify that.)
Everyone Has An Important Job To DoAs far as I know, nobody's exactly sure what the point behind
is anymore. There seem to be two main viewpoints: people who like the discussion aspect and don't mind the natter and people who'd like to see the pages organised in a way that would provide answers to valid questions without the added junk.
The first group are the ones currently editing most
pages and they don't feel there's anything that needs fixing. Some of them are also not fans of the forums for reasons I can't quite comprehend, so they may be under-represented here, but there's not much we can do about that.
The other group feels that
can be handled in a more sensible way, to make it into something of actual worth to everyone on the site, rather than something many of us just have to tolerate, because it has been here forever and a Vocal Minority has grown attached to it.
The official standing, up until now at least, was "it's too much work to police it and it's not part of the main wiki, so if you don't like it, just don't look at it." In that sense, if you choose to ignore it entirely, then yes, there is no problem.
One idea that came up, is to have a double system so that both sides can more or less get what they want - a FAQ-like permanent record regarding resolved confusing plot points and a discussion system, where you can just throw out your thoughts, provided you don't lapse into random bitching. The forum in its current state is apparently not good enough for that, so we're trying to come up with a more creative solution. Is this going to please everyone? Of course not, but than again nothing ever does.
On the subject of a tech solution, I wonder whether it really is impossible to automatically transfer the old discussions into Ask The Tropers-style threads. They employ the same syntax, wouldn't it just be a matter of making a script that copies and pastes the text in stages by bullet point, while starting a new topic for every top-level point? You'd still need to manually name the topics and delete the ones that are just complaining afterwards, but it's a start.
edited 26th Mar '11 6:21:08 AM by Killomatic
Regulated fun - the best kind! I don't make the rules, just enforce them with an iron fist.Would anyone be opposed to giving them a different-colored background, like Troper Tales, Sugar Wiki, and Darth Wiki? I mean, currently they're just a honeypot, but if fixing them turns out to be too much work we should at least acknowledge them as such and mark them as distinct from the main wiki.
That wouldn't help much. Troper Tales and Darth Wiki have continued to cause trouble regardless of the color. And I still don't think we should give up on them without at least giving it one more try.
Regulated fun - the best kind! I don't make the rules, just enforce them with an iron fist.I'm not saying there's not more we can and should do, but at this point we still have people convinced there's not a problem, and I was thinking until we can agree on a better solution (which could take a while) we might as well try something no one would object to.
edited 26th Mar '11 6:41:39 AM by joeyjojojuniorshabadoo
The "hybrid system" was, to keep the ![]()
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pages where they are, but cut all natter, to make them into "FAQ-like records", and redirect the natter part of these discussions for the forums. The forums are good enough for that, generic discussions are their main purpose.
The "Ask The Tropers"-style solution would make the FAQ-like record part unneccessary, as it could be organized into topics, but it would need to allow natter as well. So it wouldn't be a hybrid solution at all.
edited 26th Mar '11 8:45:43 AM by EternalSeptember
With the hybrid solution, the old pages themselves would be broken down to topics, and with the "Ask The Tropers" solution, those would be unneccessary, the natter and the FAQ listing would be at the same place.
Why would they be in the same place? That defeats the whole purpose of a double system. The FAQ doesn't need a discussion format and it's only good for questions you can give a definitive answers for. Everything else still needs to go somewhere and it still needs to be split by topic. In an ongoing series things will start with discussions and speculations only and when the answer to something is revealed we'll move that topic to the FAQ, cutting out everything between the question and the answer. That way there's no natter in the FAQ and no need to retread closed topics. It's not that complicated.
edited 26th Mar '11 10:38:16 AM by Killomatic
Regulated fun - the best kind! I don't make the rules, just enforce them with an iron fist.Most of them now are like:
- Question
- Possible answer 1
- Well, that doesn't work because [blah]. What about possible answer 2?
- You could also consider possible answer 3, which doesn't have problems x, y, and z.
- You guys are all ignoring [obscure canon fact].
- Possible answer 1
That is, they're like what I wrote in content, but much less organized. (And yes, the answers probably are fanwankery, but that's because the kinds of questions that show up on JBM pages are also the kind of questions that tend to only be answerable by fanwankery or "the author screwed up".)
I feel like "what is the appropriate kind of thing to put on JBM pages" and "what is the appropriate format for JBM pages" are independent questions that this thread is conflating to some extent.
edited 26th Mar '11 12:10:42 PM by Micah
132 is the rudest number.Idea that might have been suggested already: If we installed the Ask The Tropers system, we could add a box that lets you flag the question as not being a legitimate JBM, say it might be Complaining About Shows You Dont Like for example.
edited 26th Mar '11 12:17:22 PM by SpellBlade
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As far we know, the proposing was not transforming
in an actual FAQ. Just FAQ-like. Except the awnswers are, yes, FanWankery.
I like Micah suggestion of organization, btw.
Ask The Tropers would still cause Natter. And would associate the name of the poster, which is not needed nor wanted.
edited 26th Mar '11 12:28:07 PM by Heatth
The system, not moving JBM to Ask The Tropers.
What in the world is wrong with associating the name of the poster with the post? It makes following discussions with more then one person a whole lot easier. Also, how would the discussion page format cause more natter then the current format?
Not more Natter then the current format. Just more Natter then the other proposed formats. In other words, it wouldn't solve the Natter problem at all, which by itself makes dubious why we should change.
For not associating the name. It makes conversation easier, yeah, but that is not the objective (don't we want to stop the Natter?). And intimidate people from posting in reply to a post directed to someone else.
is more productive if people just say their opinions without being actually talking with someone.
Natter = Conversation in mainpage example list. How's it possible to have a discussion about plot points without actually discussing?
Edit: I suppose that your reasoning would apply to WMG, but not JBM.
Evidence for that assertion, please? Personal attacks are against the rules, so someone worrying about their handle being associated with the post isn't a problem if they know how to report people.
edited 26th Mar '11 1:15:58 PM by SpellBlade
Well, we may not call it Natter, but it is still conversation. There is already conversation in the
pages. It is not Natter either. If we don't want to get rid of it, why bother changing the system?
The problem is not personal attacks or something like that. In a wiki format, the
is less personal, and even if people do converse, it doesn't exactly feels like a forum conversation. Except for some big discussions, most entry in the
are more close to question -> answer format, without being too personal.
That's exactly the reason I've been proposing a double system. One for people who like conversations and wouldn't mind having their names attached to their words (which they already are thanks to edit history) and one for people who just want to find an answer to their question quickly without going through a dozen intermediate assumptions. Both approaches have their pros and cons and my hope is we can get some kind of synergy going between them. If you think about this Ask The Tropers and Lost And Found are also redundant with the forums around (I haven't posted there once).
Then again, I'm getting the impression most of us here do not really have a personal interest in
and
, which is a problem when trying to see things from their editors' point. I wish we could set up some kind of poll to see what they actually like or dislike about the current
and
and what changes they'd be willing to accept.
edited 26th Mar '11 1:56:39 PM by Killomatic
Regulated fun - the best kind! I don't make the rules, just enforce them with an iron fist.
I will say again that the problem with having the name attached to the post is not related to wanting anonymity (we don't have anonymous edits anymore, anyway). Just saying, because it seems it haven't become clear.
Anyway, I am not against having a double system. Specially if we could get interaction from them. If a bullet in the "FAQ" page start to have too much discussion, it get moved to the "Discussion" page. If a "Discussion" is resolved, it becomes a bullet in the "FAQ".
But, yeah, it is no good most here have no interest in those pages. Besides me, there is anyone else who like them here? And even I am not a good sample from the people who edit these pages, as I never open a WMG or a
bullet on my own, preferring to just comment in other's.
Like I said before, I think that we should also just cut out most of the IJBM pages related to Real Life things. Real life really doesn't have any Fridge Logic, so it seems like a lot of pages are just complaining.

In fact, if we combine "discussing even if there is a archive" and "tendency to not read archives", we rise the like-hood of repeated discussions, which is a problem on its own.