Trope Repair Shop: Does it need improvement? (also concerns Image Pickin')

Some people in the Nightmare Fuel thread argue that there's something broken about TRS. I disagree completely. To quote myself from that thread:

What's broken about TRS? People who care enough to go on the forums have their voices heard. The TRS thread is linked on the page in question. What do you recommend?

I welcome recommendations from anyone who disagrees.

"Did anybody invent this stuff on purpose?" - Phillip Marlowe on tequila, Finger Man by Raymond Chandler.

I think we should establish some guidelines on reopening old issues.

Obviously, we can't have all decisions be final, but we need something a little better than "Don't make a thread about the same thing six months later."

edited 5th Feb '12 5:48:04 PM by DrStarky

Put me in motion, drink the potion, use the lotion, drain the ocean, cause commotion, fake devotion, entertain a notion, be Nova Scotian

For a start its terms of reference are out of step with the rest of the wiki. That is why after nearly every action it takes the actual wiki-side discussion pages fill with complaints and people registering dissatisfaction with the action taken. That this dissatisfaction is then branded as "whining" by TRS users then exacerbates the issue. Most wiki users don't go on the forums, and do not want to either, the wikiside pages are where they go. The forums have made themselves a hostile environment by being so out of step with wikiside users that nothing will convince many to go near them (you can see that with Image Pickin, even Fast Eddie has had to admit it has become too insular, the same thing happened to TRS but no one will admit that yet), and therefore we have two different cultures emerging because of that.

I do not see a way of saving the TRS in its current form. I think it should be taken down, and then we can discuss a replacement. One fundamental change that needs to happen is that any repair shop must be separate from a renaming forum.

Needs to be extended to at least 18 months. Obviously nothing can be eternal, but the practice of continually dragging things in without letting enough time pass has to end.

If we are going to have this debate it needs to be in the headlines BTW. Otherwise it'll just be the same old forum dogpile that occurs.

edited 5th Feb '12 5:55:25 PM by CrypticMirror

The biggest problem with TRS is that major decisions are made without the vast majority of Troopers knowing about them. I wasn't even aware that the Forums existed beyond a vague "yay....they are there" sense until I noticed the little alert in the corner (which I missed or ignored several times) telling me that TT, one of my favorite parts of the site, was going to be cut. By the time I entered into the discussion the decisions had more or less been made.

What I am trying to say is that (yes cliché I know) 10% of troopers are the ones that are deciding what thing that effect the entire wiki, without input from people that might not even be aware TRS exists. Thus far they have done nothing but prove cut-happy disregard for the feel and sense of the wiki.

Any time anything is up for cutting there should be something (much larger and much more noticeable then the little burp in the corner) that tells people what is going on, right from the start.

Personally I would like TRS to disappear entirely myself. Major discussion (like cutting) can be handeld in Wiki Talk, anything else is good on a local level such as the page's discussion page.

"You are never taller then when standing up for yourself"

I think there needs to be a minimum level of participation before any change can be passed. At the moment we are seeing changes take place with as few as 20 people voting. We need to have at least triple figures involved in the voting (that is individual participants) before a change can go ahead. Also we need to have what many other websites have, a ban on campaigning. Some renames are driven not by the issues, but by who can drum up enough support amongst their mates.

I agree we need to get the discussion pages back into play more. They are the ideal venue for sorting out 99% of all issues. They've been neglected for far too long.

edited 5th Feb '12 6:01:49 PM by CrypticMirror

^^ Yes, Wiki Talk is useful for massive changes like the removal of Troper Tales, but I wouldn't want to overfill it with stuff like the renaming of Yandere Love Triangle.

As for the feel of the site, that's often the problem. For instance, Troper Tales was full of things that gave the feel that this site was a place for self-centered jackasses to yammer on about their own importance.

^ As for triple figure participation, how will you compel that? I'll use Yandere Love Triangle as an example again—there's no way you can get 100 people to care enough about the trope to vote one way or another on it.

edited 5th Feb '12 6:05:39 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Removing "because it isn't American English" from the list of rename reasons is also something that should change. It was the anime fans that drove the wiki to much of its success, lets not forget that. Anime and Manga is as much a part of the Wiki's identity as Buffy The Vampire Slayer itself. Plus it makes us seem a bit racist, I feel rather queasy with the "if it ain't English we're not 'aving it" direction. I feel certain I've seen very similar arguments on BNP leaflets.

edited 5th Feb '12 6:06:17 PM by CrypticMirror

The problem with discussion pages is that they are isolated to their own page. The advantage of a forum is that it allows all issues to be visible in one place.

However, I would like to see a greater level of actions to be taken without TRS.

If you don't agree with that particular rule, it's good to have some clear guidlines. It makes dealing with issues much faster and more consistent.

edited 5th Feb '12 6:09:15 PM by DrStarky

Put me in motion, drink the potion, use the lotion, drain the ocean, cause commotion, fake devotion, entertain a notion, be Nova Scotian

I wont bring back discussion of T Ts. It's over and done with and nothing will change how it ended.

But what I will say is that yy major problem with the whole affair was the it was cut one month after the new system was implemented because a few tropers thought it "wasn't enough". We never had the time to see if the new system would sink or swim. It was just cut without giving it a proper chance.

But...water under the bridge. What I think we need is more awareness, if TRS must stay then it should be much more public and open. As it is only the "Elite" that are getting to input.

edited 5th Feb '12 7:09:25 PM by LMage

"You are never taller then when standing up for yourself"

Personally, I have never called in people to vote. It's never even crossed my mind. I didn't even know it happened at all, until a questionable case in a recent IP thread.

People don't use the discussion pages. I've brought up issues with pages there and never seen a response. The problem is not the difference between tropers who frequent the forums and those that don't, it's between tropers that care enough to get involved in a discussion period, and those that don't.

edited 5th Feb '12 8:14:48 PM by Martello

"Did anybody invent this stuff on purpose?" - Phillip Marlowe on tequila, Finger Man by Raymond Chandler.

That is their strength. Each issue can be dealt with by its own page users rather than a centralised clique who may not fully understand the quirks of each page.

Often the reason there is no response is because the people who use the discussion pages do not consider it an issue that needs dealt with. That is the main problem with the TRS. It should be there to be neutral and first ask if there is a problem, but too often a problem is assumed on the "accusation is proof principle" and things start getting fired out.

The TRS's successor needs to have some decent protocols to slap down hard anyone firing out suggestions of change, or people offering up new names, before a problem has actually been proven.

edited 5th Feb '12 6:13:12 PM by CrypticMirror

Do I have to keep bringing up Yandere Love Triangle? It's a neglected page with 37 wicks. If the discussion pages were the only place where it could be renamed, there would never be enough people who knew about and cared about it to gather momentum for a rename.

edited 5th Feb '12 6:09:48 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

The only reason I really got involved in the fourms was because of a complete seprate thing (to follow a thread in Media). There are troppers that want to contribute and offer assitance, but they may not even be aware that it's open for them to do so. TRS is hidden away under the fourms and beneath the "Tools" section. (Which I didn't look until years after I began frequenting the site).

edited 5th Feb '12 8:46:30 PM by LMage

"You are never taller then when standing up for yourself"

Stupid question, maybe, but should we link the forums on the home page? (We already link them on Welcome To TV Tropes, but that's a little thick.)

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

@Cryptic But then that leads to no sense of consistency. We need to unite ourselves, not divide us.

edited 5th Feb '12 6:13:02 PM by DrStarky

Put me in motion, drink the potion, use the lotion, drain the ocean, cause commotion, fake devotion, entertain a notion, be Nova Scotian

One point I will agree with is that the forums could be linked more prominently on the front page. Either way, you still get the issue of tropers who just aren't interested in joining any discussion. And like I said, it's pretty obvious that discussion pages don't work.

"Did anybody invent this stuff on purpose?" - Phillip Marlowe on tequila, Finger Man by Raymond Chandler.

Edit: Never mind.

edited 5th Feb '12 6:14:05 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

I disagree, unity just means getting rid of the dissenting voices and forming an echo chamber. That is why we have this problem now. We need to find a way to distance forums from decision making. It is obvious the forums don't work.

edited 5th Feb '12 6:15:48 PM by CrypticMirror

We do link to the forums on the home page. There's a huge button at the top of every single page on the wiki that links to the forum.

As for individual pages, the most common reason a page comes up on the TRS is because it's so neglected that no one cares about it in the first place. Discussion pages would not help this tropes. Other things we deal with are missing supertropes. Page merges. Renames.

Cutting isn't actually something that happens forum side often. Normally that's entirely done on the cut list.

edited 5th Feb '12 6:15:54 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

@Cryptic: Wait, you're saying there's a problem, in contradiction to my saying there's no problem, because so many people are saying there's a problem when you think there's no problem?

edited 5th Feb '12 6:16:11 PM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

I'm not entirely sure of how this whole thing works, being a lowly peon, and all, so ignore me if I sound too stupid, but if the majority of people here are like me, they don't care about most of these things and don't see them as issues.

If this assumption is correct, and the majority doens't consider them issues, why are they still being treated as issues?

The impression I'm getting is that a powerful minority is making decisions, like deleting whole pages, for reasons the majority either don't care about or are completely unaware of, and I don't think that's a good thing.

The way things currently stand, a small elitle group of Tropers is making the vast majority of descions about this wiki. In it's current incarnation TRS is broken, because it is a fourm and like all fourms it has a small concise community.

I would recomned chaning the TRS format completely (if it must stay) to something like that of YTTW and putting it at the top bar alongside "Wiki Edits" "Liveblogs" "Reviews" etc.

"You are never taller then when standing up for yourself"

Yep, most people don't see what the TRS calls a problem as actually being a problem. That is why they don't do bother when someone goes batcrap on a discussion page saying there is one (why tackle an "issue" that really is a non-issue). Because it isn't actually seen as one outside the TRS's own culture. That is why I said, and will continue to say, that the TRS culture is out of step with tropers wikiside.

edited 5th Feb '12 6:20:02 PM by CrypticMirror

@Robotnik: There are actually three groups here. From smallest to largest, we have the people who care about fixing issues on TV Tropes, the people who hang out on TV Tropes and don't care about fixing issues, and the people who don't hang out on TV Tropes. One of the goals of Trope Repair Shop is to change more members of the third group into members of the second or first. This creates problems when group 2 has gotten so used to something that it objects to it being changed, despite it being something that makes members of group 3 unwilling to become members of group 2. (TT was one such thing.)

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

They're not "an elite group." They're the people who actually bother to say what they wanted. Every TRS thread is linked from the associated page for days. If someone really loved the page so much they can't do without it, or so much that they can't even stand its name to change, they could, you know, mention that.

edited 5th Feb '12 6:21:16 PM by INUH

Infinite Tree: an experimental story