Removing Gushing from the Wiki

And then somebody adds something else, and then more gets added on top of that.

Even then, brevity is better than worthless junk information that other sites do better. If you want critical reception, go to Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB or Wikipedia. That's what they do. We're about tropes. Trivia, while neat, is segregated for that reason.

Fight smart, not fair.

Well I would at least keep critical reception, or put it on the Trivia page instead of just deleting it altogether. Like I said, it might be important. If the movie used X Trope, but it did so badly and was hated so much that X Trope forever became associated with that movie, then that's important.

I pretty much agree with what Bailey's been saying. Essentially, if someone's bothering to mention critical/fan reception at all on a work page, it's usually because it's actually significant somehow either to the work itself or to other related works. And putting the reception info up front in the intro as context for all possible related tropes across the various main and subpages is more convenient and useful for the reader than hiding it on a subpage.

And it's an entirely separate matter from removing gushing/bashing (which I could get behind), as you can mention a work's reception without doing either.

edited 21st Aug '11 11:42:12 AM by Jeysie

Apparently I am adorable, but my GF is my #1 Groupie. (Avatar by Dreki-K)

Puhretty much.

We're supposed to be cataloguing trends in media (Which we call tropes)

In order to do so, we need to understand where said trends come from and how they became popular. In order to do so, we need to have an understanding of the reception a work receives. Not to mention that in order to properly understand fiction, you need to understand how it affects the world around it and then understand how the world changes fiction in exchange.

"My life is my own" | If you want to contact me privately, please ask first on the forum.

Our home page defines a trope as "a device or convention that a writer can reasonably rely on as being present in the audience members' minds and expectations."

By that definition, it's impossible to identify tropes without examining the cultural context they occur in; they're cultural constructs from the start.

Though we might not specifically care how much money Jurassic Park made or what critics think of Citizen Kane, critical and commercial reception are extremely useful measures of how likely it is a work has influenced other works and shaped audience expectations; they give us a clue as to how many people have actually seen the work, and what audiences are likely to be familiar with it. There may be no such thing as notablity in our example sections, but when we're talking about how conventions of a genre evolve, describing Star Wars like it's Starcrash doesn't do anyone any favors.

Having a sense of work's prominance is also relevant to identifying parodies, expies, homage, pastiche, desconstruction, allusions, and so on.

These are among other reasons previously expressed.

Also: we already have 'Synopsis' namespace.

edited 21st Aug '11 6:28:29 PM by Bailey

You realize this has gone really off-topic for a thread that's supposed to be the gushing equivalent to "Natter alert" and things like that, right?

It was? I thought we were going to discuss what we're discussing right now? Anyways...

See, I'm worried that sometimes, the fan reception on the page is totally not relevant. Mainly for things with No Export for You, such as Kamen Rider, where the English-speaking fandom are mainly people who download fansubs. I'm pretty those people aren't very relevant to the creators of the show, or else there'd have been more Kamen Rider series with DVD sets sold in the west. Instead, only V3*

^{And the two American adaptations, but they're entirely diferrent shows from their source material}

ever got sold in the west.

---

Wass any of this post confusing?

edited 21st Aug '11 10:23:37 PM by ThatHuman

something

Synopsis is the wrong term. The description section. However, just "describing" a work in general isn't what that section is for.

If someone wants to talk about how a genre is evolving, that's what the Analysis page is for. Or tropes, we've got Trope Namer, Trope Codifier and all that lot for that purpose.

Critical and commercial reception still isn't part of the work, thus has no purpose on the page. We've got precedence for that too, namely that listing a secondary work based on it is forbidden in the main page.

Fight smart, not fair.

It's discussed on the first page. Originally, this actually looked like it would be about complaining about gushing, but the mods weren't happy with that, so I (or somebody else, I can't remember) suggested turning this into the "Gushing Alert" thread. Around the second page, this whole thing got started, and while it's a perfectly valid debate, it has nothing to do with Special Efforts - it belongs in Wiki Talk.

I'm not saying the work page is a great place for talking about how genres evolve.

I'm saying it's the place for the basic information about a work that inform our troping. I'm saying that having that information available in the main page, though it may be every bit as google-able as the details of the plot, is tremendously useful when one is identifying and describing tropes in ykttw and on trope pages. I'm saying that if this wiki is about tropes, and tropes are conventions of fiction, the concept of influence is very, very close to core of what we're about.

As for precedence, I am not arguing precedence. I am arguing wisdom. In my observation, nearly all policies on this wiki exist to make it a better, more enjoyable, more useful place, and there's never been a lot of aversion to making changes when those changes would better inform our quest for tropes. (Although I was unfamiliar with the thing about not listing a secondary work on the main page — I'd appreciate a link. What's meant by 'secondary work' here? Spin-off shows? Fanfic?)

(editing to add that cross-posted with the above, sorry.)

edited 22nd Aug '11 12:09:42 AM by Bailey

Fanfic specifically. The problem was that people were listing Abridged style Web Original on other work pages, as opposed to the Fan Fic Rec page. I might have made a leap of logic of some kind, I think it was the influence thing.

I have several issues with this part. The first part, I think is wrong, as the reception of the work isn't useful for determining trope/work influence, but whether or not a trope suddenly becomes widespread is.

I also take issue with assuming audience reactions of any kind, we're specifically segregating Audience Reaction because it's inherently subjective for exactly that reason, combined with an inability of casual tropers to not use them to gush/bash works of choice. Given a choice between something rife with abuse that might be useful at some point far in the future and killing the abuse and theoretical benefit, I prefer the second option.

The attitude that there's works that we can expect people to know is also something I take extreme issue with. This is a site meant to be useful to anyone interested in fiction, regardless of personal history. While we've had to restrict the requirements to "speaks english at a decent level to be understandable" for our users, I feel that creating a list of works that we expect people to know will just lead to a very high level of insulation. We have a very small list of works we can expect people to have a small amount of Broad Strokes knowledge about through Popculture Osmosis, and that list is unlikely to grow, but it might change some around. Trying to work any kind of "this was really popular among critics" requirement into it is just asking for trouble.

Fight smart, not fair.

Not sure how somebody could confuse the ideas of 'trend' and 'trope'. They aren't the least bit similar. A trope might be trendy, I suppose, but that is the only connection.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

Eddie, if if that's addressed to me, I don't believe I'm confusing the two. Throughout this wiki, tropes are consistently described as conventions*

which makes it fairly clear that the audience's expectations are at least a part of the picture. A trope doesn't need to be trendy, but, for example, if I've got an unfinished, unpublished manuscript sitting in my sock drawer, it cannot reasonably be the Trope Codifier for anything. Similarly, you won't find the Underwear of Power trope before a certain point in history, because the works that cemented the association between wearing boxers over tights and having superpowers didn't yet exist, so there was no such storytelling shorthand. Tropes are not trends or (by the internet's definition) memes, but they are memetic. They are imitated and imitative.

Deboss, you suggested "the reception of the work isn't useful for determining work influence, but whether or not a trope suddenly becomes widespread is." The trouble is that we don't always automatically know when a trope suddenly became widespread; the reference for that is us. And as is evident in YKTTW discussions and TRS, we're often stuck trying to figure out what does or does not qualify as an example of a trope with extremely limited information — considering our scope is all of storytelling, it's not shocking that we're pretty much always working with incomplete and imperfect information, right? In these situations, having information available that gives a hint as to a work's potential to influence*

is extremely useful for filling in gaps, or just giving us an idea of where to look.

Two more points before I end this shameless wall of text. Deboss, you said: "The attitude that there's works that we can expect people to know is also something I take extreme issue with. This is a site meant to be useful to anyone interested in fiction, regardless of personal history. " I agree with this 100%. However, I don't at all think that making information available is the same as expecting people to know something. I actually think of it as the opposite. Making information available to anyone who wants to participate in any conversation regardless of their background is the opposite of expecting people to know anything via pop cultural osmosis.

Lastly, I'd like to humbly suggest that all of our discussion of merits or dangers of including reception information hinges largely on the hypothetical. AFAIK, we've never had any consistently enforced rules in places regarding descriptions, nor prominently placed guidelines. I realize we've had problems with pages which are overrun with hostility and horribleness in the past; yuck. At the same time, I feel it's difficult to argue that if you give them an inch they'll take a mile, considering our standing offer has been nearly a mile since day one. I'm definitely not saying we should keep description pages exactly as they are now; they nearly all need work. But also consider that by the terms you seem to be suggesting (everything that's not a part of the work is trivia) at least 90% of work pages must be mostly trivia. Perhaps, with such an insane amount of work to be done before we ever conform to the no-trivia-at-all standard, perhaps it wouldn't hurt anything to conduct some sort of controlled, unobtrusive experiment to conclusively prove whether or not the slope is slippery here before assuming we can't have nice things?

edited 22nd Aug '11 6:17:38 PM by Bailey

I was remarking on juancarlos' #79.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

I don't see how having a line like "The movie was a critical success but only made X of Y budget" is so offensive as to need removal. It normally only comes up when it is very notable or important to contextualize the work. Not mentioning that avatar is the highest grossing film ever is kind of silly when that's the only reason anyone will care about it in five years.

I do see how it isn't relevant to the tropes, but it is important to have a piece of work in context, fiction does not occur in a vacuum.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

I don't see why it's important to see it in context, that's what reviews and analysis are for.

Fight smart, not fair.

Reviews are individual personal opinions on how good and bad the work is, and analysis is about themes contained in the work itself regardless of quality or development or such. Neither one has anything to do with critical/fan reception.

I just don't get this drive to remove information that's useful to understanding tropes out of some misguided attempt to be organized or whatever it is. The point of organization is to make information easier to find, not harder to find/notice.

edited 23rd Aug '11 6:17:32 AM by Jeysie

Apparently I am adorable, but my GF is my #1 Groupie. (Avatar by Dreki-K)

reviews don't help me contextualize a film. When it was made, how it did, who made it, etc does.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

Critical and fan reception are not useful to understanding tropes. Tropes are parts of a work. If it's a reaction it is not a trope. Both receptions belong on the reaction page: YMMV.

Fight smart, not fair.

Do industry awards count as critical reception? I think they do. Should information like "Blah blah won this many Oscars in 20XX" be removed?

We claim the land for the highlord, God bless the land and the hiiighlooord!

Dude, there's been multiple examples given in this thread about how critical and fan reaction very much are useful and relevant at times to understanding a work's development and associated tropes.

Apparently I am adorable, but my GF is my #1 Groupie. (Avatar by Dreki-K)

I agree. I'd call that YMMV or trivia. I'm not sure how to lean though.

Fight smart, not fair.

It's not about understanding the tropes, its about contextualizing the work so the tropes make sense. If we didn't mention that triumph of the will was made by the nazis someone who isn't familiar with it would wonder why on earth there is a pro nazi film.

Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?

that sounds like Values Dissonance.

Deboss, respectfully, many arguments for the usefulness and trope-relevance reception information have been raised in this thread. You may disagree with those arguments, but I don't think they are all so preposterous that it's fair to dismiss them without actually addressing them.