That's interesting. As someone who supports TT, do you not see any personal value to you in keeping other people's Troper Tales?
Wiki Cleaner Award gratefully accepted
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
There isn't anything to be gained, nor is there any value in keeping the Troper Tales. As a member of TV Tropes, I derive my enjoyment from reading fun things about media and its associated traits, not from other tropers discussing non-trope elements in a section or violating guidelines of writing and discussing things that are taboo.
edited 14th Aug '11 12:26:28 PM by tehnubkilr
I'm the editor TVTropes needs but does not deserve.
watching down on us
Yeah, I wouldn't see the value either. Most Troper Tales look like they would be more at home in people's diaries.
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.
Well, yeah, guys, I agree with that, which is why I'm fully on board with deletion, but I want to hear from someone who likes TT.
Laugh it off, everybody
The argument is not that troper tales has no value, it's that it has no value relevant to the wiki.
Something that's a bit more quantifiable.
I spread my wings and I learn how to fly....
watching down on us
Yes! Thank you for bringing that up.
Brony? Moi? surely you jest!
I just wanted to point out that the attempt of fixing Troper Tales in the other thread is something along the lines of a complete reboot, and that anything from the old system will only exist on the Troper Tales wiki off this site.
To Copy-Past Madrugada's summary of the policy of the new Troper Tales:
'''^ Working on it. ETA here you go:
Meta: • pages with nearly all irrelevant content are stripped and restarted from scratch. • Lock TT pages for tropes that can't realistically have "troper tales". • Could lock down all TT creation by default and have mods open them on request. •Delete all the archived old-format pages, give the new format a fighting chance for more than 6 weeks. ◦Take advantage of the fact that most editors pay more attention to what's already on the page than what the rules or guidelines say
•make a button that goes with the namespace buttons at the top of the page (or elsewhere, up to discussion) that can link to a forum thread that exists to discuss the work/trope somewhere here, on the forums.
Rules related:
• I'd like to see a rule against entries about yourself unless, perhaps, you've been confirmed as an example by an outside party (i.e. someone lampshades it for you). • Replace the vague rule against "really boring stuff" with something more objective like a rule against nonspecific entries ("this trope happens to me all the time" as opposed to "here's a specific time this trope happened to me" • Make the guidelines less like a suggestion. Instead of "You should try not to use 'this troper', use 'I' instead" it should say uses of "this troper" will be erased and corrected •quicker, clearer rules at the top of the page (in this case, Troper Tales), besides the link to the guidelines already in place. • Put the Troper Tales Guidelines somewhere where they attract more attention, like the Troper Tales main page itself.
Warning related:
• Warn people that inappropriate and irrelevant content will be flagged and deleted • Encourage people to report troublesome entries instead of going somewhere else and complaining about them. • the "don't use This Troper" notice at the top of every TT page could be replaced with a "please flag inappropriate (creepy, not the trope, clearly made up, etc) entries" notice.
Entry-content related:
• Make it clearer that the tales must be relevant to the tropes. • put a brief description of the trope at the top of each TT page • Replace the "<Troper name> Sez": with something that sounds less flippant. Even just spelling "says" correctly would help.
I think that's all of them. Some were suggested several times in different wording; those I combined according to the overall idea. Otherwise I tried to simply lift the suggestion from the post as it was written if I could.'''
I understand that this post is off topic, but I think it is something that people reading this thread should know. any response to this post could go here
.
EDIT: How to I put quotes in those Box-thingies anyways?
edited 14th Aug '11 12:45:23 PM by dontcallmewave
He who fights bronies should see to itthat he himself does not become a brony. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, Pinkie Pie gazes Also
I've just gotten Bobby's permission to repost his rebuttal which I shall do so here:
The one which attempts to directly address the primary concerns of those who want Troper Tales gone is the argument that they are, in fact, fulfilling their official purpose of explaining the tropes, or that they will if given sufficient time under the new system. I consider this to have already been refuted by the tropers who have gone through Troper Tales and demonstrated that the majority percentage of tales sampled have been direct violations of the guidelines, but I have a couple points that I think may be worth adding:
The first is that two good examples to every bad one, even if true, is still a terrible record. That would mean that one in three Troper Tales, or around 33%, are failing to meet the standards the site expects.
The second is that in order to effectively illustrate a trope, a Troper Tale must be held to a higher set of standards than an ordinary example. An uninformative example from a work of fiction, while obviously a bad thing, is nevertheless useful to a reader who is familiar with the work in question. An uninformative Troper Tale is no use to anybody unfamiliar with the troper who wrote the example. If the only information conveyed is "some person on the Internet is an example of this trope", with no explanation as to how it applies, that is of no use to anybody.
So those are my thoughts on that argument.
The other major argument in favour of retaining Troper Tales, as far as I can see, is that they are beneficial to the community, in the form of a just-for-fun troper hangout, similar to the forums.
Now, before I address this, I want to clear up a possible misconception here: I am aware that many users who edit Troper Tales do edit other areas of the site. I am also aware that many of them may well be doing a fine job; while Square Peg Round Trope is a problem on Troper Tales, it doesn't make up the majority of bad Troper Tales entries. So it would be inaccurate to class everybody who posts there as some kind of freeloader, and my intention is not to drive valid contributors or interested readers away from the site.
With that out the way: it would also be inaccurate to treat Troper Tales as beneficial, even hypothetically, to the community as a whole, because the community is fragmented. You can see this on these very forums, where different boards - sometimes even specific threads - have their own subcommunities. They overlap, sure, but the forums are not a single community. The days in which the more prolific posters could be readily recognised in every subforum are long gone. This also holds true for other parts of the site, such as YKTTW, Ask The Tropers and Headscratchers.
In this sense, Troper Tales represent yet another subcommunity, the problem being that this subcommunity is not self-policing. That is to say, those who frequent Troper Tales don't appear to be doing anything about the abundance of bad examples there. They aren't even reporting them. We've recieved a lot of hollers since Troper Tales went up, sure, but the vast majority of those were from a single user on a single scouring of Troper Tales beginning with "A". Of the relatively miniscule remainder, notably, two IJB Mers who don't even post Troper Tales were responsible for a number of the reports.
Admittedly, Troper Tales are subject to stricter rules than the forums; they have to be, because Troper Tales are presented to readers as a resource supplementing the main example sections, not a place of discussion. But this makes it all the more problematic that Troper Tales are, if anything, even less capable of any kind of quality control than the forums themselves (itself no mean feat).
So yes, there is a community that enjoys Troper Tales as a hangout. But when that community is irresponsibly abusing that hangout in spite of its purpose as laid out in the guidelines, is it really worth keeping said hangout? I'm having difficulty seeing how the plusses outweigh the minuses here, as far as the wiki as a whole is concerned.
The other argument in favour of retaining Troper Tales that I keep seeing is the argument that it keeps the natter off the main pages. It's been stated numerous times here that it's not doing so very successfully, but regardless, nobody in favour of retaining Troper Tales has actually defended them on those grounds anyway, and besides, if we had a problem with, say, people spamming guro images all over, we'd ban them and delete the guro, not give them their own special Guro Wiki namespace. Not saying Troper Tales = guro, but they're enough of a problem that the same principle should apply.
edited 14th Aug '11 12:48:23 PM by ninjaclown
watching down on us
I can hear the birds chirping and the angels singing.
How much longer until the crowner closes?
Currently taking a break from the site. See my user page for more information.
I don't think anyone here thinks that bad examples don't exist. The question is more about how prevalent they are, how much work it'll take to remove the existing bad examples and prevent new ones from popping up, and whether or not TT is on-mission inclusive of whatever bad examples exist.
There's a lot of room for argument there, but it starts with the size of the namespace (huge) and the percentage of good entries. Several attempts have been made to estimate the latter by random sampling, and have generally come up with figures around 70% bad for the new system.
It seems a lot of people have been Thread Hopping here (and I don't really blame them; it's a long thread to be trawling even when you've read it before and know more or less where everything is), so, for everyone's convenience, here's where the numbers that get thrown around are coming from. Note that these are all random samples: they are not cherry-picked, and can be assumed to be representative of the namespace as a whole unless you can offer some good reason that the sample might be biased. In other words, take these as Troper Tales writ small, not as a validation of the idea that some bad entries exist. We know that. You know that. It doesn't need validating.
Here's my analysis of Troper Tales' failure modes, inclusive of the archives. Results: 82% bad. I didn't break things down between new and old systems, but estimated around 66% bad in the new system.
Here's thatguythere's analysis of popular new-format pages, with more detail here. Results: 70% failure to demonstrate the trope. Additionally, about a third "really boring", though these were not counted in the main breakdown.
Forzare's posted some random samples directly without attempting to estimate a percentage of good entries, starting here. You'll have to do your own conformance estimate, but his examples don't look too good to me.
Ninjaclown and Cygan Angel have also posted a large number of tales starting around the same page that Fozare did, but I don't know what their methodology was. If you guys are still reading this thread, where'd you get those from?
edited 14th Aug '11 1:21:27 PM by Nornagest
I will keep my soul in a place out of sight, Far off, where the pulse of it is not heard.
watching down on us
silver: The crowner's supposed to close later today. Eddie said "end of sunday".
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.
Unchanging Avatar.
I just read through a few extra-special archived pages. It was a magical experience.
You see that? That was minor deadpan snarking. Not great, but it still counts, unlike-
Sorry, still a little jumpy.
Delete it.
I would say Kill It with Fire, but that would be adding unnecessary and extreme tropes to mundane situations. That's not something that should happen on this wiki.
Except for 4/1/2011. That day lingers in my memory like...metaphor here...I should go.
This post superseded. We no longer host Troper Tales.
edited 17th Nov '11 8:04:47 AM by FastEddie
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
Crown Description:
Should Troper Tales be removed? Vote down for no, up for yes.
At this stage, it isn't really a question of whether or not bad examples exist. We've demonstrated time and time again, that
- There are far more bad examples than good ones
- Refreshing and revitalising the system will mean a problem for the future.
- Maintaining the current system demands unreasonable amounts of effort and time investment from all involved parties.
I'm the editor TVTropes needs but does not deserve.