Removing Gushing from the Wiki

Nope. We've learned that anything review-like just causes trouble. Save it for reviews.

Anything? Really? For instance, is this sentence from the works page I recently added for Supergirl beyond the pale?

The resulting movie, directed by Jeannot Szwarc, fared poorly both at the box office and critically, though Helen Slater's performance as Supergirl was generally well received.

edited 17th Aug '11 8:43:26 PM by suedenim

Why would we allow only some of it and not all? Besides, that information is useless when it comes to tropeing a work. The only use if would have would be on some Audience Reactions like Critical Dissonance, some Trivia like Box Office Bomb, and of course So Bad It's Horrible.

To me it's just about providing some small amount of context. And a shorter way of doing it than The Other Wiki, which would have a paragraph about "The movie made such-and-such at the box office, and was the #15 movie in North America in 1995, and has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 15," etc.

Should all reception/criticism/popularity be removed? If so, the page on One More Day needs major rewrite, which I don't think I can do, considering that I'm not very knowledgeable on the subject.

edited 18th Aug '11 12:23:56 AM by ThatHuman

Didn't it recently have a TRS for just that issue? If you don't think it's enough, open a new one.

Actually, it seems the TRS thread was about whether or not One Moment In Time should be merged with One More Day. I'm not really sure what to do here, since I don't know much about One More Day.

Yes, technically it should all be removed. Many pages will require rewriting of some sort.

I pulled out that stuff in Supergirl.

What about when the critical/fan reception actually shapes a work?

I have one work I edit where it started out planned to be very serious/straightforward and had a first installment that was, but an unexpectedly and incredibly favorable reception to a goofy April Fool's comic related to the work meant that the plan was scrapped and later installments were deliberately made more light-hearted and kooky to cater to said positive reaction.

(And I have various Word of God statements to back this up as being the case.)

edited 18th Aug '11 8:08:31 AM by Jeysie

I think Jeysie's talking about Transformers Shattered Glass there.

Noting that popular reception shaped the evolution of a series in significant ways is relevant, but it sounds like a trope in and of itself.

• shrug* OK, you're the boss.

How much factual context are we allowed to give now? Is entirely non-opinion stuff like "It made blah-blah at the box office and was the #15 movie of 1992" off-limits too? If so, where is the line drawn? Just release date and maybe an actor's name or two? Summarizing a plot can be pretty subjective, so is that out?

Really not trying to be snarky here, just to nail down what the official-policy expectations are for descriptions on work pages from here on out.

Plot summary is fine. Actor summary is fine, in Character (Actor) format, as long as you don't try to be IMDB. Creator/director, medium, genre, release date. List some primary thematic tropes. Be a bit creative.

Critical reception and box office gross are not necessary.

We have enough examples on this wiki of properly written work descriptions that you shouldn't have to search around that hard. I wrote the description for Condorman — see that one.

edited 18th Aug '11 8:26:11 AM by Fighteer

There is Pandering to the Base, but that has a much more narrowly-defined and negative leaning than the sort of scenario I outlined. Hrm.

And now that I think about it, what about works where the work in question was a Genre Launch, Genre Popularizer, or a Star-Making Role; or conversely a Genre-Killer, Career Killer or Franchise Killer? Those sorts of things all tend to be influenced by how a work is received.

edited 18th Aug '11 8:27:13 AM by Jeysie

Genre Launch is fine. That's factual. Star-Making Role is trivia, as it says right there on the article. Genre-Killer and Franchise Killer (Career Killer is not what you think it is) are significant enough that they could be mentioned as well.

edited 18th Aug '11 8:27:49 AM by Fighteer

Argh. I meant the trope where a celebrity or creator's career gets derailed; I misremembered what trope it was.

edited 18th Aug '11 8:30:51 AM by Jeysie

Star-Derailing Role? It's linked from Career Killers, fyi.

One needs to be careful to keep the description about the work, rather than spending a lot of time talking about the actors, producers, authors, etc.

edited 18th Aug '11 8:31:53 AM by Fighteer

Yeah, but I was going off memory with my initial post.

I guess I can just think of lots of situations where the critical/fan reception for something is notable. That's why we have things like Critical Dissonance and Eight Point Eight, after all. Or Uwe Boll, where his entire career plan actually runs on deliberate poor reception so he can get the tax write-off.

That material is not germane to a individual viewer/reader's enjoyment of the work. That's why we call it Trivia.

Yes, but in order for tropes based on critical reception to make any sense at all, you have to provide context for them. Which means explaining it somewhere. And to me it makes sense to explain that up front in the intro rather than writing miniessays in examples.

I guess I just fail to see how factual information is bad, when it's germane to someone understanding a given work. There are ways to write about reception that aren't gushing or bashing.

Factual information isn't bad. It just belongs on the trivia tab and should stay there.

Not all reception-based tropes are Trivia. Some are YMMV. Some don't have any banner at all and presumably go on the main page as a result. That's why I think it makes more sense to explain in an intro rather than having to repeat the same info in multiple places.

Jeysie, that's why those articles (I hesitate to call them tropes) go in YMMV or Trivia. The mission of the wiki is to catalog tropes. All this RL stuff is tangential.

Edit: ninjaed. Non-trivia, non-YMMV tropes can go in an article's example list. That's what it's for. That's the "one place" you're talking about. And there's still nothing wrong with mentioning that a work is a Genre Launcher in the description.

edited 18th Aug '11 8:46:17 AM by Fighteer

You're not getting my point. It's not a matter of where tropes go, it's the matter of where the information that gives context regards why something is a Genre Popularizer, a Franchise Killer, a Star-Making Role, etc. goes.

I think it makes more sense to just put that context-providing information in the intro, once, as opposed to repeating it on multiple pages/entries. Or making someone have to look at the Trivia or YMMV page to figure out why something on the Main page fits.

I mean, it's not like there's only one single possible reason ever why something has a given reception-based trope.

edited 18th Aug '11 8:52:50 AM by Jeysie