Yeah, e X, I guess, because while there may be threads about certain works on this forum you have to look for them. And while there may be other places to talk about, say, Yu-Gi-Oh The Abridged Series, I'd kind of like to be able to talk to other tropers about it.
For instance, on the New Jedi Order page it says this:
- Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The Yuuzhan Vong seem to be a combination of the Nazi and religious forms of this trope. Their culture has a rigid caste system, each of which has a patron god, allows only the use of biotechnology and they harbor an extreme revulsion towards "built things." Rites of passage involve the sacrifice of body parts, the grafting of new body parts, tattooing and mutilation which leaves scars that they view as attractive. They also exhibit a more or less religious devotion to pain, and enslave or kill anyone who does not adhere to their beliefs.
- Honestly, the Vong seem much closer to the Imperial Japanese than the Nazis, with their emphasis on fighting to the death, willingness to die for their cause over anything (averted only by Nom Anor), Emperor-worship, semi-caste system (with warriors who seem a lot like samurai), and polytheistic belief system that places their Supreme Overlord as the conduit from the Gods to the Vong.
- They can also be seen as very Aztec, what with the religious emphasis on pain and sacrifice as driving forces of the universe, the exaltation of the warrior class, and the general imperialistic nastiness. Really, if you took all the worst aspects of hellish Real Life cultures and put them in a blender, you'd probably get something not unlike the Vong.
I enjoyed reading all of that, and sometimes when I see something like that I'm tempted to add my own observations. But under the "no discussion on the main page" rule, I'm not sure if they wouldn't just get deleted sooner or later. I'd like to be able to talk about this stuff somewhere, and have it accessible from the work's page. Kind of like Troper Tales, except without any tales.
edited 15th May '11 5:57:25 AM by KilgoreTrout
The second bullets would need to be deleted. Have you tried the Discussion page? That's the primary page for when you want to condense an example.
I believe there was a suggestion in the Tech Wishlist to make it so that Media threads could be linked to pages.
Fight smart, not fair.A few points:
- Natter has never been allowed, people were just lax about enforcing it prior to 2009ish.
- IJBM was never intended to be about complaining, it was for pointing out plot holes ans Fridge Logic. People misused it as a place to complain, which is why it was renamed to something more reflective of its actual purpose and the incorrect material removed.
- You can use this forum to discuss anything you like with tropers. That's what it's here for.
- You can also discuss a work or trope in a general way on the discussion page. In fact, the Yuuzhan Vong example you cite is precisely what should go on the discussion page, and out of the discussion of what the Vong resemble an editor can figure out what, if any, human culture they most resemble and whether the example belongs on the page.
@Deboss & @Vampire Buddha
If I may try, I think the problem is, you're saying, "Well, you can use X to figure out how to remove those notations from the page and/or fix the example", when his problem seems to be he enjoys reading those types of notations and thus is saying he dislikes having to remove or condense them.
He doesn't want to have the conversation for the sake of improving the page, but just for the sake of the conversation itself, because it's interesting.
And I kind of have to sheepishly admit I agree. Reading the various elaborations and mini-debates on given examples did IMHO used to be fun and often informative, and while I can understand if they need to be cleaned off the main page proper, I too wish there was still a different place to be allowed to put them. The forums, completely unlinked to the pages, with the dedicated threads often multiple pages long and thus cumbersome to read, and not really structured as reactions to specific things on a page (versus just freefloating discussion of a work or trope in general), they just aren't really exactly the same. They serve a similar purpose, but not really the exact same one.
edited 15th May '11 8:56:45 AM by Jeysie
Apparently I am adorable, but my GF is my #1 Groupie. (Avatar by Dreki-K)Alright, yet another complain-about-the-wiki-being-less-nattery thread. Oh joy. Seems like I get to reiterate the exact same points yet again, and we'll have another twenty pages of debating in circles, after which the thread will peter out and get locked. Oh, and I'll be accused of draconian moderation.
The short version:
- This wiki is about the readers, not the 1% of readers who are also tropers.
- Natter is detrimental to the function of a wiki, which is to clearly present information.
- We want the wiki to present information with a consistent voice that does not develop a case of schizophrenia and argue with itself.
- This wiki is not about "having fun" in the sense that "having fun" means "do whatever the hell you want."
- Sure, venting is fun. There are lots of places to vent that are not this wiki.
- We already have subpages and sections of the site where people can indulge themselves in opinionating. You can write a review, post in the forums, or, gods help you, visit Darth Wiki and add examples to So Bad It's Horrible and Dethroning Moment of Suck.
- We are not, no way, ever, under any circumstances, going to have an "unrestricted" subpage where people can go nuts. That will turn this place into ED, SA, or 4chan in a heartbeat, and that is not what we want.
- These policies are not up for debate. If you don't like them, and you cannot "have fun" on the wiki with them in place, then we invite you to move elsewhere.
Edit: Eddie feels that this conversation is worth continuing for now.
edited 15th May '11 11:17:08 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"There are forum users who never venture into the wiki and wiki users who never go to the forums. Honestly, I don't consider "don't visit the forums" as a valid excuse for not visiting the forums. However, we could do more to establish that they are the appropriate venue for certain types of conversation, particularly the "give and take" chatter that we do not permit on the main articles.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The percentage is a little bit complex. More people read the forums than post in the forums on a given day. That wasn't intuitive, for me.
Anyway, the forums get one tenth the readership as the wiki. Of the forum readership, about one tenth posts.
About 1/100th of wiki readers edit the wiki on a given day.
On a given day, around 5000 people edit the wiki. On that day, around 400 people post in the forums. Not always the same editors or posters, which is what that "given day" junk is all about.
Goal: Clear, Concise and WittyI guess my thing is... the forums are currently for discussing a work or trope, not discussing the work or trope page, if that makes sense.
And not discussing the work page in the sense of trying to improve it, but in the sense of hearing people's reactions to the examples on the work or trope page. Sometimes it could offer elaboration or other interesting insights that aren't really kept just by rewriting the info back into the example.
I do agree with keeping the main pages clear of natter, but there's not really any other venue that captures the same element right now. Reviews are for analyzing and discussing the work itself. And it's not always a matter of complaining about the work or venting, either.
And FWIW, when I say I miss the little informative discourses, I mean from back when I was a mere reader and didn't edit the site at all and found the discourses to be enjoyable extra information on top of the basic information. I guess I'm sorry if that makes me an unwanted periphery demographic. :/
And also FWIW, I'm not debating the policy exactly, in that I can accept a "No" answer. I'd just like it to be a "No" answer based on an understanding of some of our (or, well, my, anyway) actual motivations.
If there is some way to make the forums be also more connected to discussing and reacting to the content of the wiki in more of a, well, discussion way instead of just an "improving the pages" way, I'd be all for that instead.
Apparently I am adorable, but my GF is my #1 Groupie. (Avatar by Dreki-K)![]()
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I have asked that very question
multiple times.
My suggestions were:
- Add links on works pages to forum threads.
This has been suggested before for other reasons, and is apparently opposed by Eddie himself. (This jives well with
.)
- Rewrite some of the Administrativa pages
like TV Tropes Forum. Fighteer didn't like this idea.
Haven't thought of any more, really, but that doesn't mean there aren't any other options.
edited 15th May '11 2:00:44 PM by TotemicHero
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)I get that, Jeysie. Back when we first kicked up, the discussion pages were more like "And now, in depth..." discussions.
If we could get back to that variety of coolness somehow, it would be maximum groovy. How could we do that?
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty![]()
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Really? Eddie didn't want links to forum threads?
IIRC, When I suggested the idea a few months ago, he said that the feature suggestion is ok, but only on the back of the "to do list", and meanwhile we chould directly link to the threads from the work page descriptions.
Edit: ninjad.
edited 15th May '11 3:41:24 PM by EternalSeptember
Would admin (Eddie) or mod (Fighteer) care to elaborate on this? I thought linking a forum thread on works pages were encouraged (ie. Glee.)
edited 15th May '11 7:49:04 PM by chihuahua0

As others have pointed out, this site has become more restrictive.
For example, when I first arrived here sometime in 2010 it seemed like there was discussion on the main page of just about everything. I didn't see that as a problem; on the contrary, I thought it was interesting, I thought it was one of the things that made the site different from Wikipedia in a positive way. So long as the discussion doesn't become abusive, I don't see the problem. But since then it seems to me that there's been kind of a crackdown on that, as well as on "this troper", as well as examples of Fridge Logic or Brilliance on the main page when it had been totally fine before, as well as a number of other things.
It used to be that I was able to complain about things that bugged me about certain works in—as the name implied—"Just Bugs Me". But that has been renamed to Head Scratchers now, and you're not supposed to talk about what bugs you in there.
Here's what I think: people want to vent sometimes. If they didn't, we wouldn't have the Dethroning Moment Of Suck or Wall Banger pages. (And please don't get rid of those anytime in the future!) And people want to have discussions about a work, and the "discussion" subpage isn't the place they can do it because that is for discussing how to edit the page instead of, say, debating whether or not there was an Endor Holocaust after ROTJ.
So here's what I propose. Create a new subpage where people can do almost everything they can't do on the main page, apart from being abusive with one another (which I agree is unacceptable). I'm not sure what to call it, but I'm sure a name can be thought of. If tropers want to refer to themselves in the first person, fine. If they want to discuss or natter (potato/potahto, really), fine. If they want to say that a show's going down the tubes, fine. If they want to reply to something somebody else said with an example of Fridge Brilliance, fine.
It should be okay because if people don't want to be exposed to negativity, they don't have to click on it and read it any more than they have to visit a High Octane Nightmare Fuel page if they have weak stomachs.
I'm of the opinion that freedom is good so long as it doesn't make others feel uncomfortable. This would give people more freedom than they've got, and I doubt it would make anybody uncomfortable.
So please consider this. Thank you.